Silence filled the thick mist as the Howling Spirit Monkeys stopped shrieking and chattering. Pair after pair of fiery red eyes turned toward me, and one by one, silhouettes became monkeys as they approached me out of the surrounding mist.

  I stayed as still as I could inside the torso of the larger monkey. Cabbagy and I watched from a pair of holes I’d poked into the tall monkey’s chest.

  When the monkeys were all gathered close, I turned and lumbered away.

  “This way!” I shouted. “Follow me!”

  I left the mist and entered the pines, and the monkeys followed. They ran on all fours or hopped up to swing through the trees. My ungraceful steps were no match for their bounding speed. I tried to push faster, but I couldn't keep up with them. They slowed, gibbering and shrieking at me.

  I had no idea what they were saying to me, so I blustered my way through as much as I could.

  “The mortals are nothing!” I shouted. “We must complete Ghost Fang’s secret mission!”

  The monkeys shrieked and bared their fangs, but they jogged alongside me, and we swept through the pines in an arrowhead formation.

  I sagged my control over my broken bones, sparing no willpower as I focused on keeping myself moving.

  “This was your plan?” Cabbagy asked me, his voice slightly muffled by us being curled up inside the tall monkey’s ribcage.

  “Yes.”

  “This is fucking insane.”

  “It’s working, isn’t it?”

  For a blissful moment, Cabbagy was speechless.

  “I never want to hear you say I have problems ever again, kid.”

  “No promises, Cabbagy.”

  “I mean it. Whatever worry you have for me, save it for yourself. Damn, I think I’m going to puke.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “No promises, kid.”

  ###

  Qian Ling focused on the vast technique she was weaving. If her speciality hadn’t focused on forming delicate threads out of her raw qi, there was no way she could have covered so large an area. As it was, she almost taxed her ability, not to mention her qi reserves, as she finished up.

  Mu Min’s mists had a naturally obscuring quality to both physical and spiritual senses, and with Qian Ling’s qi threads, the two suspended wire traps inside the mist that would entangle and dissuade any spirit beast that dared get too close while they were away.

  Lowering her hands as she finished the technique, Qian Ling let out a deep sigh.

  It wasn’t the most complicated working she’d ever done with her qi, but it was the largest, and there were actual stakes attached to failure. It had taken them the better part of an hour, but they were finally done.

  Only then did Qian Ling notice her dark-haired friend standing beside her.

  “The monkeys were drawn away some time ago,” Mu Min said. “No spirit beast remains in the mists.”

  “Thank you,” Qian Ling said. “I’ve done my part. The defenses are complete.”

  They stood there for a while, actively cultivating to replenish their dantians before heading out into the waiting pines.

  Qian Ling had finished her technique with around a third of her dantian full of liquid qi, and she was close to half full when she felt confident to move on.

  “Was it overkill?” Mu Min asked. “We’ll be weaker if any more spirit beasts return.”

  Qian Ling shook her head.

  “The hidden master said he would lure them away. Even if he’s trying to hide his power, we don’t have to worry about them returning.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “You disagree?”

  “No, I’m just not used to you being the insightful one.”

  Qian Ling smiled as bright as the moon.

  “I’m also the ambitious one, so let’s head out and track down this Ghost Fang.”

  “You’re insane!” Mu Min gasped. “There’s no way the two of us can take down that monster! It’s rumored to be in the peak of the Foundation Establishment realm and capable of using advanced qi techniques.”

  “This is a test given to us by the hidden master,” Qian Ling said. “It must be within our capabilities, or else he would not leave it to us.”

  “He didn’t leave it to us,” Mu Min protested. “He told us to stay and defend the mortal village. A task we just used up a lot of qi doing.”

  “Did you catch the secret task he gave us?”

  “He never said that.”

  “I read between the lines, Mu Min. We can do both.”

  “You overestimate your abilities, young mistress!”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “You underestimate us!” Qian Ling said. “You underestimate yourself. Defeating this monster is the only true way to protect this region. The hidden master will keep the spirit beast hoard distracted while we work together to defeat their leader. Think of the honor we’ll gain! The prestige! The enlightenment! The glory!”

  Fervor glowed in Qian Ling’s eyes.

  Mu Min shook her head.

  “Our qi reserves are too low… what is that? How do you have that?”

  Qian Ling slyly held up the small qi-rich plum she’d summoned from her storage ring.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “How did you afford that?” Mu Min asked with wide eyes. “There’s no way you earned enough contribution points without me noticing.

  “It was a serendipitous bounty from my last out of sect mission,” Qian Ling said as she spun the plum on her finger. “I found a spirit tree with one ripe fruit.”

  “That’s unbelievably lucky.”

  “We make our own luck under the heavens.”

  Qian Ling punctuated her statement by biting into the dark red fruit. Juice filled her mouth, and qi filled her body. She barely held onto the plum as dizzying waves of qi pulsed through her meridians and flowed into her dantian. She felt it gathering inside her, filling until it pushed against the walls. It would have taken a week of continuous cultivation for her to achieve results like this.

  The charge inside her was too much; a buzzing passed along her skin as her hair glowed. She closed her eyes, cycled her qi through her body, and broke through to the 8th Stage of Qi Condensing.

  A gentle ripple of qi flowed out from her, and the strings in the mist rang as though plucked.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “How does it feel?” Mu Min asked with fascination.

  Qian Ling held the plum out to Mu Min with a wide smile.

  “Take a bite.”

  Mu Min took the plum and bit through the unbroken side. She was far more delicate than Qian Ling, but even her eyes snapped open as the plum’s qi flowed into her.

  “That’s incredible,” she said as she eyed the fruit. “This is why you were so confident.”

  “The Hidden Master must have peeked inside my storage ring. He knew if we advanced a rank, then we would be a match for Ghost Fang.”

  Her friend nodded, her eyes closed as she steered the qi overflowing from her dantian. A pulse flowed into the mist, strengthening the obscuring qi, as Mu Min broke through to the 6th Stage of Qi Condensing.

  Qian Ling smiled as she inspected the spirit fruit. Despite it being smaller than the average plum, enough red flesh remained for a single bite.

  “One of us could take a bite and increase our cultivation again,” Qian Ling suggested.

  “To try and break through two stages in a row would leave us weakened,” Mu Min said. “Sure, in a few days, whoever ate the fruit would be a powerhouse, but they’d have to wait in the village and recover first. Though, maybe staying on the defensive isn’t a bad idea…”

  “Even with this qi rushing through your body, you still have doubts?”

  Mu Min shook her head slowly.

  “No… you’re right, Qian Ling. We are powerful enough to slay Ghost Fang.”

  They clasped hands in a martial greeting before separating and dashing through the mists and toward the pines. Ghost Fang’s true origins weren’t known, but there were rumors. It lay to the North, near the entrance to Sleeping Ruin Pass. With the qi rushing through their bodies, Qian Ling and Mu Min knew they would find their prey

  Their spirit senses swept out ahead of them as they activated movement techniques and propelled themselves through the trees faster than any mortal could dream of moving.

  ###

  It turns out that moving a tall, heavy, inhuman body with only my blood manipulation was incredibly taxing. More than once, my control almost collapsed completely. I would stagger, and trip, and barely manage to seize hold of the blood spread through the one-eyed monkey’s corpse and remain upright.

  As I led the monkeys into the pines at random, my running became a slow plodding, and the spirit beasts that once screeched and hollered now circled me with suspicion blazing in their fiery red eyes.

  “This is a good place for us to rest,” I said in my best monkey voice. “We need our strength before we complete Ghost Fang’s secret mission.”

  If I’m being honest, I suspected my best monkey voice wasn’t very good.

  One monkey walked close to me, sniffing and eyeing me — not the head of the monkey I manipulated with my blood, but the me curled up in the chest cavity of the spirit beast.

  It hooted, and I held my breath.

  The curious monkey reached out, but before it could touch me, a massive nine-foot black furred monkey crashed down onto the ground out of the trees. He held a studded iron club that was as long as I was tall. The other monkeys scrambled away from the imposing, upright spirit beast.

  Yellow fire glowed in his eyes as he looked at the white monkey I hid inside. A deep growl curled his lips and shook the rib bones around me.

  “Brother,” said the black monkey. “Have you destroyed the mortal village?

  My heart pounded in my chest. With any luck, it would sound like I was just the white monkey’s overactive heart.

  The black monkey cocked his head.

  “Why don’t you answer?” he asked with a fanged grin. “Are you not proud of your accomplishments?”

  “I destroyed the village,” I growled in my best monkey voice.

  “Oh? Then how do you explain the mortal village three miles to our east?”

  Did a monkey just call me out on a lie?

  “Umm…”

  “And how do you explain this?”

  He held out his open hand, and a silver ring sparkled on his black-furred finger. Activating his storage treasure, he summoned a massive red organ: the white monkey’s heart that I had scooped out and thrown onto the ground.

  My own heart thundered.

  I knew I should have eaten the organs, but I just didn’t have time!

  “Brother,” I said with the deepest growl I could manage. “I can explain this…”

  The black monkey took a deep bite out of the heart in his hand and chewed it like an apple before swallowing.

  “Please do, brother. I would love to know why I found your organs heaped in a pile outside the blasphemy that is Falling Hen Village.”

  The black monkey leaned on his studded iron club as he ate the heart as though it were an overripe fruit. With every swallow, the yellow fire in his eyes burned brighter.

  “This is bad, kid,” whispered Cabbagy. “I think he might be manlier than you.”

  I snarled silently at the battered cabbage tucked inside my robes.

  “Shut up,” I whispered as I desperately tried to think of something I could say to get myself out of this predicament.

  “I don’t know if you can talk your way out of this one, kid.”

  Blood swirled around my hands as I gripped the white monkey’s ribcage. My manipulation flowed out of the limbs and filled the space around me.

  “Well, brother,” I said as the white monkey’s corpse sagged. “The reason for all that is…”

  Blood controI ripped my way through the tough flesh and bone. I burst out into the air. Kicking off the white monkey, I grabbed two broken ribs and cracked them off as I leaped toward the black monkey. I gripped a snapped bone in each hand like crude daggers as I sailed through the air with a primal snarl on my lips.

  The black monkey’s yellow eyes widened as I shot toward him. The scraps of heart slipped from his fingers as he reached for the club. Before he could grab his weapon, I crashed into his chest and jammed both bones into his shoulder.

  The bones barely sank an inch into his flesh.

  He howled and backhanded me, sending me flying away. I crashed into the pine needles and rolled as the larger monkey’s howl shook the air like a gong. My body took a moment to move. Most of my legs and spine were in pieces, and I had to use blood control to even keep myself intact.

  That last hit shook me. So far, that was the heaviest blow I’d taken besides jumping off the side of the mountain.

  Smaller monkeys swarmed me as I struggled to my feet, but the black monkey slammed his club into the ground hard enough to send pine needles swirling into the air.

  “Leave him!” the black monkey shouted.

  The lesser monkeys retreated, their red-eyed gazes locked onto me as they climbed up into the trees to watch.

  I pulled myself to my feet as the black monkey ripped the bones out of his chest. Blood oozed from the two puncture wounds I left there, but it was obvious I hadn’t inflicted any real damage. All I’d done was enrage the already dangerous spirit beast.

  “Kid…” Cabbagy wheezed.

  I pulled the battered vegetable out from my robe and gasped.

  His leaves were loosened and peeling away. It looked as though a small shock might cause him to fall apart completely.

  “Cabbagy…” I whispered.

  He coughed.

  “We had a good run, kid.”

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