Li Xiangping rode the wind for a stretch until a small orchard came into view, fenced with brown wood, golden citrus drooping from the branches — a peasant farmer's crop, by the look of it.
"Counting the distance, I've gone deep into Ji territory. This farmstead must belong to one of the Ji family's subjects."
Li Xiangping had fled all night; his face was deathly pale, and the talismans in his hand had dimmed, plainly spent to the last one. He drew the slate-blue magic mirror from his bosom, brushed a hand across its surface, and closed his eyes a moment, sensing the old daoist's aura still trailing far behind. He cursed low under his breath.
Within the mirror, Lu Jiangxian saw the scene far more clearly. The old daoist had forcibly suppressed his wounds, swallowed several medicine pills, and steadied his aura by sheer grim resolve, his eyes full of savage hatred, speeding the flying shuttle after Li Xiangping.
"If this old daoist tries to seize or strike my mirror body with his arts, I'll act the part of a natural counter-attack and kill him on the spot."
Lu Jiangxian frowned and watched for a while. With his left arm lost, the old daoist's spiritual power flowed sluggishly, and the leftover force of the Profound Lunar Radiance was still roiling inside him, forcing him now and again to close his eyes and settle his breath for a few counts. His pace slackened, though he remained a step faster than Li Xiangping.
"Just catch up, just catch up with the whelp, kill him with a single palm, take that mirror and be gone."
Within the old daoist's mind, fury, greed, and reason waged a tug of war. He thought savagely:
"A man at the Embryonic Breathing stage wielding this mirror can carry such force. In my hands, the sky would be the limit. But he used it once and fled rather than press the attack — that must mean the strike costs him dearly, and he couldn't call it out twice in a row."
The old daoist rode his flying shuttle, steadily picking up speed, as a village appeared before him. In the orchard ahead, a man was darting and doubling back among the golden citrus trees, no longer riding the wind — his talismans, plainly, were spent.
Li Xiangping turned his hand over and pressed his last talisman into his palm: a Vajra Talisman. Once cast, his skin and bones would take on the hardness of iron, enough to weather a few of the old daoist's blows while he fought for his life.
The old daoist had begun to descend when Li Xiangping whirled around, raising the slate-blue mirror again.
"Again?!"
The old daoist nearly spat blood, wrenching his shuttle sideways to lurch, dizzy and off-balance, onto the treetops. Yet there stood Li Xiangping, sneering, not moving, leaning against a golden citrus tree as he watched him.
"A fine boy."
Not angered but delighted, the old daoist clapped his storage pouch to dismiss the shuttle and floated lightly to the ground — only to see Li Xiangping already charging at him.
The old daoist wasted no words. He clenched his hand and conjured a brilliant fleck of golden light, hurling it straight at Li Xiangping's chest.
Li Xiangping's body thrummed as a soft white glow rose around him, striving to dissolve the incoming golden light. The old daoist's art spun a few turns within the gentle radiance before finally slamming into Li Xiangping's body.
"Puh."
His five viscera shuddered as one. Li Xiangping spat a mouthful of blood, and the mirror flew from his grasp, tumbling crookedly toward the ground.
The old daoist's gaze was hooked at once. The white whiskers of the fly-whisk in his hand lengthened in the wind, spreading like a great hand to snatch at the magic mirror.
A vicious glint flashed through Li Xiangping's eyes. Seizing on the fact that the old daoist's attention had been lured away by the mirror, he gathered the Golden Light Art in his left hand and aimed it at the old daoist's head.
Within the mirror, Lu Jiangxian watched layer upon layer of whiskers reach for him, and a thick, inexplicable revulsion rose in his breast — as though some overreaching child had snatched up the chopsticks from the table and pointed them straight at his eyes.
All the while he thought: "A golden opportunity!"
The whiskers had no sooner touched the mirror than they sprang back as though they had brushed a burning coal. The slate-blue mirror, as if insulted to its very core, rose over them on its own, floating a foot into the air, spitting white radiance in quick, angry breaths.
The twelve seal scripts ringing the mirror's edge lit up one by one, a blinding white light rippling like water across its surface, dazzling to the eye, hanging between the two men like a small, still sun.
A fear so thick it made a man tremble rose in both their hearts. The crushing pressure held Li Xiangping and the old daoist fast, unable to stir, as though the play had frozen mid-scene, the two stood there dumbly.
"Not good!"
The old daoist's heart plunged. With ten-thousandfold regret he thought:
"I should never have reached for that mirror with my fly-whisk!"
He had practiced cultivation for many years and had heard of those uncanny artifacts possessed of a fierce sentience — treasures that must be entreated and reverenced, hedged about with taboos. The Qingchi Sect's Great Snow Absolute Peak was one such: unless driven by one it acknowledged, it would lie unmoved as a boulder even in a master's hands.
"Curse it, curse it — this mirror is so uncanny? I've plainly crossed this slate-blue mirror's taboos."
Li Xiangping was about to slap a Golden Light Art onto the old daoist's skull when the pressure held him frozen. Seeing the mirror rise on a shroud of white light just as his father and second elder brother had described on the night of the wolf fiend, he understood at once that the old daoist had tripped the mirror into its own defense, and he breathed a long sigh of relief.
Yet the old daoist somehow managed a way through, and a thin voice crept into Li Xiangping's ear:
"Young friend, this old Daoist is a fool as dense as a pig. I know not which taboo I've crossed to set this art against us both. I beg you, young friend, if you know any rite or incantation, save us... there will be a rich reward after..."
Li Xiangping rolled his eyes hard in his heart and paid the old daoist's babble no mind at all.
Watching the old daoist helpless as a statue, Lu Jiangxian gained a new measure of his own strength, and mused:
"So when I gather the Profound Lunar Radiance, if only I draw close enough, I can hold even a Qi Refining cultivator frozen in place."
As his spiritual consciousness swept outward, Lu Jiangxian noticed that someone in the farmstead had awakened. A youth in a tattered hemp robe was creeping his way, crouching behind a tree to stare fixedly at the two men.
"Best settle this quickly."
At a thought, the pure-white Profound Lunar Radiance poured down. The old daoist could manage only half a syllable from his throat before he and his fly-whisk dissolved as cleanly as snow.
"Pat."
A small brocade pouch fell to the ground, and the handle of the fly-whisk, forged of some unknown spirit material, melted into a puddle of pale-green metal that landed lightly on the earth.
Then Lu Jiangxian slowly let the white light die, and floated silently in the air.
At last Li Xiangping stirred. He spat blood once more and crumpled limply to the ground.
He had barely begun to settle his breath when his skull took a savage crack. His vision swam with stars, and with an effort he turned to look.
There a farm youth in a tattered hemp robe, his face twisted with greed and delight, sat astride him, a stone raised in his hand, raining blows down on his body.
"Damn it! You've got some nerve — picking a dead cultivator's pocket like a carrion crow!"
Bracing himself, Li Xiangping mustered the last flicker of his spiritual power and raised his left hand to block the stone while his right scrabbled along the ground. Dazed and star-flung from the battering, his fingers finally closed on a branch, and he drove it at the youth wrapped in a thread of Golden Light Art.
The branch, sharpened by the Golden Light Art, punched clean through the boy's throat. The youth's eyes went wide and blank, blood-flecked spittle bubbling from his lips, and he clutched his neck as he pitched writhing to the ground.
Li Xiangping lay sprawled, watching the boy thrash, dreading that the struggle would draw more people. He snatched up the brocade pouch and the lump of metal, tucked them into his clothes, took the mirror from the air, hauled himself unsteadily to his feet, and staggered out of the village.