Dawn broke across the Grand Desolate Forest with the cool, crystal-clear clarity of autumn mountain air.
At the campsite by the Clear Stream, the three Crimson Flame Pavilion hired blades were untied from their bamboo stalks. Their faces were pale, their clothes still damp from the morning dew. But their eyes were clear of the feverish arrogance that had brought them into the valley. Xiao Hei stood over them, his eight-foot black glass frame streaming the calm, lethal menace of a sleeping storm. With a single low rumble of his throat, the hired blades scrambled onto the western logging path. It ran as if the king of the underworld himself were snapping at their heels, swearing never to set foot within thirty leagues of the river again.
Lin Xiao watched them vanish from the comfort of his shaded pool.
Reaching Early Foundation Establishment had brought subtle yet deep shifts to his physical and spiritual existence. His semi-clear sapphire body now possessed a deeper, richer indigo luster, laced with tiny spirals of golden origin qi that orbited his central core like tiny galaxies. His baseline mass had settled at roughly fifty pounds of high-thickness fluid. Even so, he could compress himself down to the size of a tea cup or expand into a fifteen-foot dome at a moment’s notice.
More importantly, his sense network had swelled. He no longer merely saw the immediate thirty yards around him. His spiritual sense rippled through the river current and the morning mist for nearly a full li in every direction.
Beside the hearth, Tie Shan was already hard at work despite having downed fifteen gallons of fifty-year rice wine the night before. The giant titan bear hummed a rhythmic earth-clan ballad as his new golden titan arm effortlessly lifted hundred-pound granite slabs, squaring the foundation of a permanent stone pantry beside the weeping willow.
“Morning, Lord Xiao!” Tie Shan called out, wiping coal dust from his forehead with a grin. “The earth here is rich and deep! Once I finish these pantry walls, I’ll quarry some white slate from the upper falls to build a proper outdoor dining pavilion!”
“Take your time, Tie Shan,” Lin Xiao said with an amused ripple. “An immortal palace isn’t raised in a single dawn, and neither is a proper riverside retreat. Old Ba, how is your shell feeling this morning?”
Old Ba, lounging on the heated quartz terrace, stretched all four webbed legs with a contented groan. “Master Lin, in four hundred years, my joints have never felt so light. That Hundred-Mountain wine burned away the last leftovers of cold dampness from my marrow. I feel like an eighty-year-old hatchling.”
Xiao Long was lazily coiled in the deep center of the pool, his pearl horns shimmering beneath the surface. Lin Xiao floated near. Then, the young river drake lifted its elegant, whisker-draped snout, blowing a ring of sparkling mist that drifted over Lin Xiao’s head.
It was a picture of total, pastoral peace.
Until the wind shifted.
A sudden northern gust swept down from the upper ridge. It carried a harsh, acrid stench that shattered the peaceful morning fragrance of pine and damp earth.
Lin Xiao’s sense nodes tightened.
It was the smell of thick, greasy smoke. Not the clean, aromatic perfume of dry cedar and pork fat from their hearth, but the bitter, choking odor of green wood choked by fire. Mingled within the oily smoke was a delicate, tragic undertone. The charred, sickly-sweet scent of burned up wild jasmine blossoms.
Burnt jasmine? Lin Xiao thought, his core twitching with immediate distaste. There are three wild jasmine groves along the northern boundary stream. The blossoms were just beginning to open for the autumn tea harvest!
Beside the pool, Xiao Hei’s ears snapped upright. The huge shadow hound rose to his feet in a single fluid motion, his silver star-pattern runes pulsing with a dark, low-hum. He raised his black snout to the wind, sniffing deeply. Then he let out a low, menacing growl that rang through the quartz stones.
Master, Xiao Hei’s voice echoed through the Primordial Soul Circuit, sharp and alert. Arson on the northern boundary ridge. Human poachers are burning the underbrush. They’re using sulfur-pitch fire to flush prey from the hollows.
“Sulfur fire?” Lin Xiao’s azure membrane flattened slightly, an unfamiliar edge of cold irritation entering his thoughts. “They’re burning the forest just to drive out animals? Do they have any idea how long it takes a wild jasmine bush to reach prime tea-harvest maturity?”
Lin Xiao hopped out of the water basin. “Xiao Hei, with me. Tie Shan, Old Ba, stay here and guard the base. If any sparks drift down the gorge, use the river water chute to keep the arbor wet.”
“Understood, Lord Xiao!” Tie Shan roared, slamming his golden fist into his palm with a booming crack. “If those arsonists come down this creek, I’ll forge them into chimney pipes!”
Lin Xiao didn’t waste another second. He tightened his mass into a wind-cutting sphere and bounced onto Xiao Hei’s broad, muscular back.
Xiao Hei leaped into the air. Activating his [Shadow Melt Step], the eight-foot hound became a blur of midnight wind, bounding across the rocky chasms and leaping through the dense pine boughs with breathtaking agility. There was zero jostling, zero rough churning. Lin Xiao’s non-Newtonian thickness anchored him perfectly to Xiao Hei’s silken black mantle like a drop of liquid silver.
Within two minutes, they reached the crest of the northern boundary ridge.
The scene that greeted them made Lin Xiao’s origin core flare with genuine fury.
Along the rocky boundary stream fifty yards below, a swath of ancient forest was engulfed in creeping, oily flames. Thick, yellow-black smoke billowed into the morning sky. It smelled heavily of sulfur, pitch, and scorched living matter. Dozens of towering bamboo stalks were crackling and exploding like firecrackers in the intense heat, while a dense, amazing thicket of wild white jasmine—hundreds of flowering vines that had draped over the granite rocks for decades—was withering into blackened, smoking ash.
Scattered along the edge of the burning clearing were cruel, serrated iron stakes driven deep into the earth. Each stake was wrapped in charred spirit-magic charms designed to generate bone-shaking thunder-claps and flash-fire, terrifying wild beasts and forcing them to flee down a narrow, funnel-shaped ravine where heavy iron cages and pit traps awaited them.
“Omniscient Dao Spirit: Rapid situational test,” Lin Xiao commanded.
A crisp bronze chime rang through his mind:
“Tactical analysis,” the Dao Spirit added in her calm, deadpan rhythm. “The fire is spreading at four meters per minute toward the eastern hardwood grove. If uncontained, sixty acres of prime botanical terrain will be destroyed. Leftover cursed iron stakes bear the crest of the Iron Vulture Gang—an illicit rogue fighter mercenary outfit specializing in live captures for demonic slave syndicates.”
“Not on my watch,” Lin Xiao said coldly. “Xiao Hei, hold the high ground. I’m putting this garbage out.”
Lin Xiao launched himself off Xiao Hei’s back, soaring eighty feet through the smoky air.
In mid-flight, Lin Xiao opened his internal void dantian wide. Reaching into the boundless, tightly packed reserves of clean mountain water he had swallowed from the river rapids, he channeled twelve thousand gallons of liquid into his front squeezing chambers.
“Outward Deluge Configuration: Activated,” the Dao Spirit announced.
WHOOOOOOOOSH!
Lin Xiao didn’t merely spray water. He became a living, sky rain squall.
A massive curtain of tightly packed, ice-cold blue water erupted from his ball-shaped mass. It spread across a three-hundred-foot arc like the wings of a dropping water dragon. Soaked with ancient chaos life-force and chilled to near-freezing mountain springwater, the pouring downpour struck the roaring sulfur fire with bone-shaking, overwhelming force!
HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Clouds of harmless white steam billowed into the morning air as the oily flames were snuffed out in a single breath. The burning pitch was instantly cooled and crystal-hardened into brittle, inert crust. The exploding bamboo was drenched and put out. And the smoldering ash of the burnt jasmine thicket was washed clean by the clean spring torrent.
Within thirty seconds, the entire forest fire was dead. Not a single ember remained.
Lin Xiao landed on a wet, moss-covered boulder in the center of the drenched clearing with a soft, heavy thud. He rolled his mass through the puddle, inspecting the charred remains of the wild jasmine vines.
Many of the outer branches were blackened and dead. But thanks to the rapid deluge, the deep root balls nestled in the damp dark rock fissures were still alive, weeping fragrant sap into the cooled soil.
At least the roots can be saved, Lin Xiao thought, feeling a deep sense of relief. A little wood-element dew and some fertile compost, and they’ll sprout new shoots by spring. But the wanton waste... The sheer, callous stupidity of burning down a living ecosystem just to trap an animal!
Xiao Hei trotted down the slope, his paws making no sound on the wet ash. He stopped beside a jagged iron stake that had been driven into the mud, sniffing the charred magic charm fluttering from its tip.
The wolf’s ruby eyes narrowed. He looked up, his snout pointing toward the narrow, rocky defile leading north into the Ironwood Gorges.
Master, Xiao Hei sent through the soul link, his voice tight with hungry focus. The scent of copper and fresh blood. A small creature... A fox maiden... Is fleeing through the northern rocks. She was struck by a poisoned crossbow bolt during the fire.
Lin Xiao’s sense nodes turned toward the defile.
Beneath the wet smell of put out sulfur and charred wood, a very faint, tragic scent drifted down the wind. It was the delicate, floral musk of a young fox spirit, mixed with the sharp, metal stench of fresh blood and the sickening, oily rot of ghost-weeping poison.
And closing in behind that fragile scent were the heavy, arrogant footfalls of three armed human pursuers, laughing as they dragged heavy iron chains across the granite stones.
Lin Xiao’s semi-clear azure dome tightened, his non-Newtonian fluid specks locking into dense, resolute determination.
“Xiao Hei,” Lin Xiao said softly, his voice devoid of its usual playful warmth.
The eight-foot shadow hound lowered his head, his ruby eyes glowing with lethal excitement. At your command, Master.
“Let’s go meet these Iron Vultures,” Lin Xiao said, bouncing cleanly onto Xiao Hei’s back. “And let’s teach them why you never, ever burn down someone’s tea garden.”