His stock of Scarlet Sun Dragon Spittle kept dwindling, and the territory Li Changshou trod grew ever wider. He had combed the region the ancient texts promised; nothing. He had circled the Chaotic Miasma Treasure Forest; nothing. Three days had passed since he had gone out of his way to save Youqin Xuanya, and still the Immortal-Resolution Grass eluded him. He had, instead, reaped a fortune in venoms and spirit herbs the deeper he pressed into the Northern Jambu Continent. He had even caught a pair of prized corpse-burning insects for smelting into corpse-refining powder, raising to a full twelve the ways he could dispose of a body.
It rankled, but he never forgot where he stood. This was the Northern Jambu Continent; every branch could hide a fang. By rights the grass was a strange, particular poison, its buyers rare. Every region he marked off was precisely the soil the texts had promised for it—yet not one young shoot. It stank of sorcery. Surely the decades of poison manuals he had crammed between breaths of cultivation were not all lies.
'There it is, then,' he told himself, the only comfort on offer. 'Master simply carries the very worst luck.'
He drove the sourness down and set a course for home. Two hundred more li west; if nothing surfaced, he would give it up. He set off, afterimages trailing each heel. Fifty li, nothing. A hundred, and he made a full circuit of every patch that might bear the grass. Still not a trace—though he stumbled on rare plants fit for compounding the finest soft-grade Immortal-Weakening Powder. See? The poisons that served himself marched of their own accord into his pouch, while anything that could help his master was nowhere to be found. Therein lay the gap between merit and sheer face.
No grass, no Immortal-Dissolving Pill, and that whole road sealed shut. But this was precisely why he had laid out backup plans two and three. Hmm—a pulse in the very breath of heaven and earth. Someone was fighting.
His spiritual sense shot toward it, but the miasma ahead was too thick; he could reach only some twenty li. The clash sounded thirty li off, and he caught several figures twisting and wheeling. Then, beyond, lay the territories where the 'free cultivators' roamed—qi practicers who pushed deep into the continent for rare flowers to trade for resources. The Thorn-Dove he had put down had scraped a living just this way.
His instinct was to retreat. He halted behind a rock and thought it through. Every region from the texts was done; this heading held fighters. If not now, when? A wise man does not linger beneath a crumbling wall. This venture would end in regret, quite—quite—
His spirit, cast wide, caught something, and his heart leapt.
Twenty-three li off to the northwest, atop a cliff's lip, three unremarkable blades of emerald grass swayed. Shaped like orchid turf but far shorter, faint secret patterns crawling across each leaf, each wrapped in a dim nimbus. Immortal-Resolution Grass! The grass that could poison a Primordial Immortal to death and wound a True Immortal's nascent soul! By the count of its demonic runes, the middle stalk must be three thousand years old, its two companions past a thousand each.
He nearly vaulted out from behind the rock, then forced the Heart-Clearing Incantation through his mind and made himself calm. Get to it. He cast Earth Escape and shot toward the grass, his sense reading the terrain. A bare old cypress stood beside it—good, he could switch to Wood Escape at the base. But a poison spirit of several thousand years was a feast beyond price to venom beasts; something had to be guarding it.
Sure enough, he soon found a Three-Eyed Ripple Snake. The creature had hidden with insolent cunning beneath the cliff, smothering its own aura, its three-zhang body blended into the rock. Only his inch-by-inch combing had caught it. At its crown a fleshy knob had thrust out—ugly, inviting unwise thoughts. Its triangular skull was narrowing, its body thickening. Plainly it stood on the verge of transforming into a flood dragon to become immortal. That longest stalk was the key to its crossing.
'Trouble.' He noted, too, the scatter of white bones under the cliff, more than one shaped like a man. No head-on fight; it had to be taken by wit. His nine differently-tuned venoms, lethal to an ordinary Primordial Immortal, would bounce harmlessly off it. Against its strength he might not even lose a straight duel—but the field was murderous, every ledge a hazard.
So: wit. Slip in by Wood Escape, wrench the grass free, and bolt? Such snakes were fleet beyond reason; that plan was out. A dozen schemes jostled in his mind. But then, the closer he drew, the farther his sense reached—and spying the distant battle, he choked, coughed in the dirt, and very nearly turned on his heel.
Her. Again. Was this Youqin Xuanya a walking toxin? Might as well rename her Toxin Xuanya. He had drawn her a map and sent her southwest. How had she ended up here, a full two thousand li from where she was meant to be? His mouth twitched. Somehow he had blundered against the blind edge of his own knowledge.
'Hm? There's an immortal's pressure among those chasing her?'
A glimmer of light struck him. His sense traced that chase—and all at once a plan to take the grass by craft snapped into place. Were it not for the battle's tremors, he would never have found these three stalks; seen that way, he owed 'Toxin Xuanya' a debt of thanks. "I saved you once," he muttered. "This time I use you a little. That makes us even."
He crept to the cliff's edge and studied her pursuers. There she was, a ring of fire-wreathed swords whirling about her, hovering and edging toward the cliff. But he saw at a glance she was hollow inside—she knew fixed moves, not improvisation, and while she guarded she could not strike back. Her six pursuers, two of Return to the Dao and four of Return-to-Void rank, never once aimed for her vitals: they meant to capture her alive. Li Changshou's luck: two more Primordial Immortals of their crew were busy holding a Trapped-Dragon Array.
'These few won't even fill the gaps between that snake's teeth.' Yet two auras above still held back, both familiar—Yuwen Ling, palace general to that royal house; and Yuan Qing, the warmth, fellow disciple of the Potian Peak. Within thirty li, Yuwen Ling was the only immortal.
His mind began to churn. Yuan Qing, that fine warm man—why wouldn't he commit to a kill? Did he think the Du Xian Sect had no strong men of its own? If Uncle-Master Jiu Jiu and her five comrades failed to return at the chosen hour, immortals would ride north to hunt them down. His lot dawdled so—a suicide in slow motion. Strip it down, and this false warm man only yearned for a false ice maiden's body. Tch. Despicable.
From the immortal on his cloud to those below, everyone was now Tool Number One, Tool Two, Tool Three...
He fixed his sense on Xuanya and mouthed the Wind-Message Incantation, sending his words straight to her ear. "As you face is the qian direction. Pull back to the zhen, eight feet."
Youqin Xuanya, swinging her swords against the bombardment, gave a start. Senior Brother Changshou! How was he here? Yet she obeyed on instinct, stepping her sword back low—and twin streaks of light sliced right past her array! A short knife and a long spike, falling cleanly wide.
"Back again. Li direction, six feet." She dodged; two more streaks dropped on the far side. Then his voice came in a steady stream: "Don't gawp. If you have spare strength, strike back. Mind your face—don't let them catch on. There's a nasty beast cornered under the cliff. Lead them here; let it break them. Li direction, three feet. Turn, zhen direction, five."
The dimness in her eyes brightened at once; she pressed her lips tight and gave a small 'mm' by way of answer. Soon she was growing smoothly composed, and to all six hunters plus the two above she had suddenly turned deft. A breakthrough in the field? Her guards turned to blades the moment they found an opening, and likely half their strikes came to nothing. She slid with care toward the cliff that hid the snake.
Meanwhile Li Changshou had slipped into the rock above, a mere hundred-odd zhang from the grass. The snake poked its head from under the cliff and scanned the world. Before the grass sprawled a meadow, and a stiff black-barked cypress stood sixteen zhang from the ledge, its shade falling over the grass. He found its taproot, released Earth Escape within the stone, braced against the crushing pressure, and threw Wood Escape, boring into the root, cloaking his aura, then driving upward without a sound.
The old cypress: ...
Hm?
Hm...