Chapter 36: More Foxes

“And that’s what happened.” After Yin Tai and the rest of Qian Zhi’s goons—who were apparently not his goons, given what they said about him

“And that’s what happened.”

After Yin Tai and the rest of Qian Zhi’s goons—who were apparently not his goons, given what they said about him—left, I rushed back to the others as fast as I could. Then I recounted everything that I’d overheard. 

As I did, I watched both Lin and Jianfeng carefully, trying to gauge their reactions. Given their history with Yin Tai, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to want to perhaps try and take their revenge on the guy. We were out of the city, and the only witnesses would be whoever survived the fight.

But the enemy matched us in numbers and had two stronger cultivators. I’d gotten a lot stronger just from our hunting trip yesterday. And my spirit beast cultivation was improving again thanks to the cores I’d been eating since then. But four cores didn’t make as much of a difference now as they did before, and I didn’t think my new improvements would be enough to make this a risk worth taking.

Nor did I like the idea of fighting against that middle-aged man. Something about him still spooked me even now. And I just couldn’t help but think he was more than just a Mid-Stage Qi-Gatherer.

“Should we try and go find another ruin?” Jianfeng asked after a moment of silence, much to my relief. He made no mention of Yin Tai and directed his question to Pan Song. 

Pan Song frowned at that and squinted his eyes as he thought. Finally, he shook his head. “No. Even if this Master Zhang Ru is my superior in terms of Skill, if he only created something for someone else to set up, and inside of such an already complex formation, then they are still underestimating me.“ His frown deepened. “It… might have been able to catch me off guard if I didn’t know about it. Maybe. But now that I do know, I am pretty confident in my chances.”

“Well, alright then,” Jianfeng said, nodding in the direction of the ruins. “Since the Young Miss has acknowledged your skills, then we will be relying on your expertise.”

“Yes,” Pan Song said, nodding. “I won’t let you all down. When we get there, I’ll set up formations to protect and hide us. Then you can all just sit back and watch.”

“Great,” Jianfeng said. “Then let's go. We can still accomplish what we came here to do.”

“What about the assassination thing?” I asked, able to focus on that now that it was clear Jianfeng wasn’t going to suggest we do anything rash. “They couldn’t possibly be targeting Xing Yaling, right?”

“It seems unlikely,” Jianfeng said as we began heading in the direction of the ruins. “They didn’t mention her by name or title. And I can’t see what they could possibly gain from killing her and drawing the Soaring Cloud Sect’s attention to our city. They could be referring to a strong member of the branch sect or a cultivator from another sect that we’ve never heard of.”

“Yeah, I guess you are right,” I said, nodding. It was probably a stretch on my part. She was the only cultivator that I knew that fit the profile, but that was probably just because I didn’t know that many people. And without more details, there really wasn’t anything we could do about this except maybe look out for mysterious deaths.

A shame, but something I would have to accept.

I sighed at that as we neared the stream. As we did, I couldn’t help but look at Lin out of the corner of my eye. Since I mentioned Yin Tai, there had been a frown marring her face. She also hadn’t spoken up since. But the way her right hand was clenching and unclenching her war club was telling.

Likely sensing my gaze, Lin turned to look at me as we followed the stream. We stared at each other for a moment before she sighed and shook her head. Then she deliberately relaxed her grip on her club as well as her shoulders.

“I’m fine,” Lin muttered lowly. 

Not wanting to push her, I just nodded as we descended the side of the small cliff the stream surged off of to land below. As we did, I got a far better look at the ruin than before. It looked like an ancient pagoda made out of stone and wood. Around it was a wooden fence that surrounded a courtyard.

The most notable thing about all this was that three stories and below, including all of the courtyard, the ruin didn’t match the name at all. It was called the Crumbling Amber Blossom Pagoda, but what remained of it looked almost pristine. There was no sign of dirt or plant growth inside the courtyard. The wood and stone were clean and well-kept, with no rot or wearing from the elements.

It was only when looking beyond the courtyard did everything resembled what I would have thought of when thinking of a place called a ruin. Rubble lay strewn about. Rubble that most likely came from the rest of the pagoda. Everything above the third level of the building was gone. Torn off like a giant had ripped it apart and possibly smashed it all around the rest of the ruin.

It made a very odd sight, to say the least, the contrast from the near-immaculate sections of the pagoda and everything else.

“How old is this?” I asked once we’d reached the entrance to the courtyard of the building. “It looks so well maintained. You know, if you ignore the ripped-off sections.”

There was no sign of Yin Tai and the others. Pan Song was already working on setting up his formation, and the rest of us were staying on guard for threats.

“No one knows,” Pan Song said as he worked. “Some say a thousand years. Others say ten thousand. An immortal old enough might know the exact number, but the rest of us are in the dark.”

I couldn’t help but glance back at the ruins in wonder. They did not look even close to that old. Especially not with all the perfectly preserved wood. 

“So, do we know anything else about these ruins?” I asked. “You guys said they're everywhere, right?”

“As far as I’ve heard, yes,” Pan Song said as he started creating hand seals. “This is only the second I’ve seen. But my master said that ruins like these can be found all over the continent. That they are all that remains of an empire of immortals that dominated this entire landmass long ago. One so great and powerful it lasted for a hundred thousand years.”

“Oh, wow,” I said, trying to imagine it. 

During my week confined to the Sun Compound, I’d ask just a bit about geography. Lin and Jianfeng couldn’t tell me much, as neither had ever left the area around Everlake City, let alone the rest of the province. But according to them, from what they heard from Sun Xia, Soaring Cloud Province was over a thousand miles wide. The empire was hundreds of times as large. And despite all that, the empire only covered a fifth of the continent.

I wasn’t the best at geography, but was pretty sure that meant the continent was wider than the circumference of the Earth. By a lot. If it wasn’t for my knowledge of Xianxia, I would assume they were wrong, or my System translator shouldn’t be translating whatever word they used for long-distance measurements as a mile. But given what I knew about worlds like this, I couldn’t help but think it might be true.

Which was insane to think about. And even more insane to imagine an empire spanning such a massive amount of land. Sure, they had magic and stuff. But it still felt like too much.

“That's one of the stories about the ruins,” Lin said, surprising me by speaking up. She’d relaxed a little, but I expected her to brood a bit longer. “I like the one where they fell from the sky more. Seems more fitting for an immortal empire.”

Pan Song seemed to finish his seals, and the flags he scattered around us all lit up. Then a thick mist started appearing outside the barrier, obscuring us from view.

“I’ve heard that version, too,” Pan Song said, dusting off his hands. “But I asked my master about it, and he said that was unlikely. Even for immortals, having an empire large enough to scatter across our whole continent and float above in the heavens is unlikely.”

“And your master is an expert on immortals?” Lin asked, raising an eyebrow as we all turned away from looking out for threats. It wasn’t like we could see outside anyway.

Pan Song paused and then shrugged. “I suppose not… I’m honestly not too sure about the old man myself. He rarely talks about himself. But he taught me all I know about Arrays, and if he can raise a bumpkin like me to Mastery, then he must be pretty knowledgeable.”

“Maybe,” Lin said noncommittally. 

I, on the other hand, couldn’t help but perk up at what Pan Song said. A mysterious old man, who Pan Song knows nothing about, but taught a random farm boy how to be an Array Master? Sounded like a stereotypical hidden master scenario.

“Alright, now that this is set up, I’m going to look into just what they thought they could surprise me with,” Pan Song said before I could ask more about his master. He had an eager gleam in his eyes as if he couldn’t wait to test out the trap set for him. When he started tossing out formation flags to each of us, I decided to wait until later to ask more about his master. “Keep those on you. If we get attacked and end up needing to flee, those will help you see through the obscuring formation.”

“Thanks,” I said before I tucked the flag away. 

Then Pan Song got to work, leaving the rest of us to just wait around in relative safety. After only a couple of minutes of waiting around, I started messing around with my foxfire again. But without a target to drain, I couldn’t help but feel rather unproductive.

Jianfeng and Lin took the opportunity to cultivate a bit, rendering them rather dull company.

After another ten minutes of this, I had enough and decided to do something else. This part of the Amberwood was still rather safe, and with Discreet Earth Wader, I would have even less to worry about. So perhaps I could scout around and patrol for dangers. At least that would be something to do. And maybe if I was lucky I would find something harvestable.

With that decided, I told everyone else about my plan. 

When no one objected or seemed that worried, I felt a bit more confident about what I was doing. Especially since the formation didn’t block out noise from outside, so I should be able to call out for help as long as I didn’t go too far.

I left the protective formation behind and walked out into the obscuring mist. Immediately, the mist seemed to go semi-transparent, letting me see through it. I looked around to make sure it was still safe, then walked out.

Just in case, I decided to start my patrol using Earth Wader first. Swimming through the ground was pretty fun, and it would let me get the drop on anything I ran into. So I dove into the earth like I was diving into a swimming pool and began feeling around for any signs of trouble.

After taking a big lap around the whole ruin—not just the courtyard but the debris-filled area around it—and only finding Rank 0 spirit beats and normal animals, the boredom began to set in again. Then I remembered how I wanted to test out Foxfire, so I rose out of the ground somewhere isolated. 

Then I began looking for an acceptable target. Originally, I wanted to try it on a Rank 1, but it seemed I would have to settle for some Rank 0s.

Not long after, I ran into a pair of Rank 0s I’d sense before. To my surprise—and suspicion—they turned out to be foxes. Still, they weren’t even Rank 1s, so I doubted I actually had anything to worry about. And as I thought about it, maybe this was fate.

A chance to let out my frustrations over my encounters with foxes so far. 

Was it unnecessary and a bit silly? Perhaps even cruel? Maybe. But it wasn’t like I was going to kill them, as I’d have to drain them dry and beyond to do that. So it was fine. Probably. I totally did not have a problem.

Pushing those stupid thoughts aside, I raised a hand towards the pair of foxes. They were prowling slowly through the underbrush and still hadn’t noticed me yet. I activated my Skill twice, and two balls of dim foxfire appeared. I moved them slowly towards my targets, doing my best to keep them out of sight.

It seemed to work since neither fox noticed what I was doing. Even when the balls of foxfire brushed up against them, they didn’t seem to notice either. I also quickly figured out that I could essentially stick the Foxfire onto their tails, leaving me free to let go of control, and they remained affixed. A neat and useful feature in a fight.

But that wasn’t what I’d been hoping to test, so I moved on and started draining their Qi. I had a lot more control of this than my original Qi Leech Skill for some reason. So I started the drain as low as I could go, to see if either of the foxes reacted. They didn’t, making me grin.

Then I started uping the drain. They noticed soon after, though they didn’t seem to understand what was happening. They let out some distressed yips and looked around in fright. But they didn’t notice the foxfire, and soon both fell to the ground.

I turned off the drain after that. As much as I didn’t like foxes, I wasn’t going to kill two random animals just like that if there was nothing to gain. Then again… did people eat foxes?

I moved up from my crouch to go examine the two unconscious foxes. I shook my head. No, they were carnivores. And carnivores didn’t make good food as far as I knew. Still, there was something satisfying about seeing two foxes defeated like this… Perhaps I was really gaining a complex about them.

“Whatever,” I muttered and gave the two foxes the middle finger. “Get fucked, you stupid foxes. All foxes suck.”

It was a bit silly, but it made me feel just a bit better to vent my spleen like that. A little more relaxed.

“Is that so?” a feminine voice asked. It was right next to my ear and scared the shit out of me.

I jolted upright in response and leaped away from the speaker. Then I turned around, my hand moving to my sword. But I froze when I saw who had surprised me. Fucking hell! 

It was another fox woman! Not again! 

She was tall, not just for a woman but in general. Her hair was long and a pitch-black color. She wore similarly black cultivator robes, and she had two big fox ears sticking out of her head. Behind her, a tail—no, fuck—two tails swayed behind her.

I moved to unsheathe my sword as I looked around for any signs of the real fox. But I kept my eyes on the possible illusion in front of me, as I knew they could hide themselves in their illusionary form. As my sword left my scabbard,  I tried to open my mouth to shout for help, just in case this thing tried to charm me again.

But, before I could, I froze.

Horror filled me as dread built up in my heart. A pressure unlike anything I’d ever felt pushed down on me, and I collapsed to my knees in an instant. It felt like my heart was going to pop out of my chest, and part of me wanted that to happen so the terror would end.

Then, just like that, the feeling disappeared.

It took me a while to realize that it did though. The horror and the pressure were so overwhelming that even when they disappeared, I was still locked in place. Terrified. 

It was only when I felt a hand on my head did I come back to my senses. For a second, I had the vision of her grabbing me by the hair and ripping my head off. But instead of that, she just moved her hand back and forth slowly.

It took me another long moment to realize what she was doing. She was fucking petting my head. What the actual fuck.

“There, there,” she said, her voice soft despite the power she wielded. “Don’t worry. I won’t kill you, little one. It would be such a shame to kill a human who has started on the path of emulating my kind. But I needed to teach you just a little lesson. After all, someone who wields the flames of my kin shouldn’t be so hostile to poor innocent kits.”

I grimaced, then bit off the first thing I wanted to say to this woman. Which was mainly obscenities. But I held my tongue as she was clearly not what I had thought she was. This wasn’t a Rank 1 spirit fox illusion. With the two tails, I might have thought this was a Rank 2 spirit beast. Maybe even that one that had fought Master Fang Hong. But her ability to talk and the feel of her very real hands on my head made me think this might be something worse.

Either a Rank 3 or a very powerful Rank 2 that could already take on a human form. I just hoped she didn’t have any connection with the foxes working with the Black Wind Marauders. Otherwise, I was screwed.

“Honored Elder,” I started to say, calling up every last bit of polite etiquette that I could remember. “I—”

“Nope,” the fox woman said, tapping me on the head. I tried hard not to think about how she could probably use the same amount of effort and make my head resemble a splattered watermelon. “None of that, little one. I don’t like to be called Elder. I’m not even that old.”

“Of course, Honored… Miss?” I said, hedging my bets. Though I wasn’t sure I believed her about not being that old. If she really was a Rank 3 like I thought, she could be at least a hundred years old. Likely even more as humans at the equivalent level could live for more than three hundred years.

Not that I was going to mention this to her, of course. If she wanted to pretend to be young, then I wouldn’t do anything to contradict that.

The woman pulled back her hand but hummed as if content. So I continued on, not daring to look up to judge her expression.

“Honored Miss, I apologize for my… um… unbecoming actions to the foxes. And my words. Please accept my sincerest apologies. I will never harm another fox or any of your kin again.”

“My, my,” the fox lady said, sounding amused. “Humans sure are good at groveling. But you don’t need to make such promises. Doing battle with my lesser kin is not a problem for me. It isn’t like we don’t fight amongst ourselves. However, I just did not enjoy your words. It hardly makes sense for you to show such enmity to an entire species. Especially not when you mimic one of our abilities so well.”

She wasn’t wrong about my grudge against foxes not making sense. Though admittedly, I couldn’t help but feel like my complex against foxes had gotten worse because of this. However, instead of wanting to hunt spirit foxes in revenge, I kinda just wanted to run the hell away anytime I saw them now. 

“Honored Miss is very kind,” I said, trying to figure out how to reply to her. “Then I will make sure not to harbor such enmity again in the future against your noble kin.”

“Good,” she said before she neared and grabbed my chin. She pulled up and made me look up at her. Despite how soft her fingers were and the gentleness of her actions, I tensed up wondering what she was going to do now. “Now that that’s settled. Let’s talk about your fox flames.”

My gut twisted at that. She wasn’t angry about how I copied her kind’s technique, right? Hopefully not, because if she was, then there wasn’t much I could do. So all I could say was, “Of course, Honored Miss.”