Life in the Forest of Wandering Phantoms was deceptively peaceful. The air was nice and cool, although it often wavered between eerily groaning breezes or deathly quiet chills. Once you got over the noises, it was even relaxing, but it did mean growing accustomed to quiet whispers, alluring singing, and the occasional crying or screaming.

I wonder what it said about me that I could find such a place relaxing, when I laid the details out like that…?

Really though, as relaxing as it was, there were still Spirit Beasts to deal with. I hadn't gone hunting for any, simply practicing the refining technique, and I like to think I'd gotten pretty good at it. The soup that came about from simmering everything and breaking it down with my Qi wasn't even that bad, although it was rather plain. It was something I could live off though, even as I drew the Qi out of it.

But I guess the smell of it was too enticing for a hungry Howling Ghost Wolf to bear. I almost didn't hear it approaching - or well, I did, but I originally just chalked it up to another noise in the Forest until I saw it out of the corner of my eye. And then for a moment, I wondered if it was an illusion. The Forest was that kind of place, after all.

Reaching out with my senses suggested it was real however, which left me in the awkward position of having to see if I could perform some of the combat techniques with the Cauldron in a live combat situation without having any real practice with it.

Admittedly, I kind of brought this on myself.

I lock eyes with the Wolf, slowly stirring the cauldron with a ladle made from Cloud Fisher Heron bone. There are a number of basic techniques one can use the Cauldron to attack with. The simplest is quite literally bashing someone's brains out with it, but whilst I have it full of soup, I have access to some other techniques.

I pour Yin Qi into the soup down through my ladle, focusing on it carefully. Yin was the element of passivity, of the soul and the mind. It was darkness and the moon, it was glittering gold and fungus, gentle hearthfires and frozen ice.

And right now, it was a gently wafting scent that poured out of my cauldron. "Savoury Bewitching Broth."

The wafting aroma hits the Howling Ghost Wolf, and it freezes for a moment. I can't read its expression and body language, but when it takes another step forward, its almost tentative, ears pricked and rotating.

Savoury Bewitching Broth was a hypnotic technique - the idea behind it being you hypnotised your target with Qi-infused aroma of the soup, and like a siren luring them to a rocky end, you lured them into the soup to die. And potentially be cooked and refined, but that was something I'd only do to Spirit Beasts. Doing it to people would be cannibalism at best, Demonic Cultivation at worst.

For my first go, confusing the Howling Ghost Wolf wasn't too bad - but it seems to realise that I am more delicious than the soup, and lets out a terrifying howl. It really does sound like the screams of the damned, and I can feel its Qi trying to infiltrate and overwhelm my mind with fear and panic.

"Mystic Art Devouring!" A swirl of the ladle, a current of Qi, and the Howling Ghost Wolf's attack is drawn into the soup… alongside a lot of the ambient Qi around us. The Mists, the Wind, all of it is sucked into the cauldron. Technically, Mystic Art Devouring is the name of the very basic refining technique - this is just the process sped up more forcefully, allowing me to drain the Qi out of attacks, which is why it also tends to drain the local area of all ambient Qi as well.

The Howling Ghost Wolf looks confused for a moment, as though the idea that something might drain its howl had never occurred to it. Seeing as its Howling Ghost half had failed, it decided to rely more on the Wolf part of its existence, and proceeded to lunge directly at me, teeth bared in a snarl.

And this is the part where all my fancy techniques… kind of ran out. There were moves I could theoretically pull - I could summon a double of the Wolf from the Cauldron and have them fight, I could summon shadows, or even just call on the soup itself to lash out, but I wasn't really willing to rely on those untested abilities when it was coming right for me with death in its eyes.

I swipe my hand along the rim of the cauldron, activating the spatial formula and draining it of soup for now, allowing me to swing it up and right into the wolf's jaw with a dull clang. I'd like to say I'm particularly graceful about this, or that there's some secret Cauldron Kung Fu I'm practicing, but no.

I'm beating this wolf's brains out with a cauldron.

Using it in combat is a bit strange - its equal parts shield and bludgeon, which is roughly true of most shields to begin with, but I have to grasp it by the rim and use it to alternate between blocking and bashing, occasionally swinging it by the leg like a very strange hammer. For the Heavenly Misty Peak Sect, which prides itself on elegance, this is a grave shame I am committing. But nobody is here to see it, so it's not like it actually happened.

Unfortunately, even with my Qi-enhanced strength, the Wolf is just… too stubborn for me to kill like this. I'm sure I'll get to it eventually, but it must be said that I'm not very good at this, and not very strong besides. My soft form is coming back to bite me. If I had a build like Shan Guojin, Big Brother Broad Shoulders, I could probably kill this like Heracles killed the Nemean Lion - by strangling it.

That does give me an idea though, so I flip the cauldron around and use it like an impromptu muzzle. Once the Wolf's head is secured within, I use the handles to keep it in place, pulling tight even as the Wolf snarls and bites, trying desperately to pull back faster than I can pull the cauldron - but I've swung my legs around its back now. There's no way it's getting out of this.

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I could summon the soup back, and try to drown it, but that sounds awfully messy - and a waste of good soup. I'm still refining that. So instead, whilst I keep a hand on a handle to keep the wolf muzzled as best I can, I draw my Heron bone knife from my qiankun pouch and plunge it right into the beast's neck.

A particularly sharp bucking motion throws my aim off, and instead of the nice deep (and lethal) cut I'd been aiming for, it turns into more of a jagged slash. More troubling, the Wolf howls directly into the cauldron, creating an oddly echoing sound - I don't need the soup to perform the Mystic Art Devouring, technically speaking, but that doesn't mean I can just do it in a situation like this. Unfortunately, the Cauldron is designed to amplify Yin techniques.

The Howling Ghost Wolf's fearsome howl is not an exception.

I hit the ground in a roll, springing to my feet with agility born of desperation as the jaws snap right where I was a moment ago. My hands are trembling as ice cold fear worms its way into every nerve, a quiet voice whispering this is it, this is the end, this is as far as you go.

Compared to the Cloudfisher Heron, a Howling Ghost Wolf is nothing. That reassurance does little to stay my nerves however. This fear is not a rational thing. It is pure and insidious. There is no reason for it beyond its own existence. The only answer to it is to be something even more outrageous and irrational.

"Ah, you dare?!" I bluster, "You're courting death, beast! I, Hei Lian, have faced down worse than this! You are nothing more than soup that hasn't realised it yet!" It's strange to admit, but it honestly helps with the nerves. Call it 'method acting' if you want, but when I act like an arrogant young master, I feel the tension lift off my shoulders.

The Wolf doesn't care at all about how confident I feel, even if it is merely a facade, and begins to pace around me - a motion I match, knife held carefully in one hand. My only other weapon is my ladle… if that can be called a weapon. If I at least had a fork or a spatula, then I'd at least have something with an edge or point to use. But I chose this path. Now I must walk it.

I wait for the wolf to strike, and it doesn't take too long before it lunges again, a howl echoing from it even as it goes to bite down on me. Somehow, I manage to parry with the ladle, hooking the cup of it against the wolf's muzzle as I smash it to the side, knife scoring across its side.

The beast stumbles, snarling and snapping as it rears around for another pass. The closer I get to it, the skinnier it looks - this attack is borne of desperation it seems. I can understand that. I can pity it even, but there's no room for mercy in the wild.

I shove the ladle down its open gullet, letting it choke. A flash of sympathy burns through me as I watch it stumble, still choking on my ladle as it tries to bite down or force it out. The ladle is well and truly wedged in now, and the bones and metal its made of are far beyond the capability of such a creature to bite through. It tries to howl again, but the noise is choked and weak, and falls off within seconds as it staggers down.

"It's okay," I say gently, kneeling down to stroke it along its head as it looks up at me desperately. I inject as much Qi into my voice and touch as I can. "It's over. Let go."

Its eyes slip closed with a strangled whimper, and I wait for its chest to still. I wait a bit longer, just in case it's playing possum, and then slowly remove the ladle. It's covered in wolf saliva, but that's hardly a concern. I give the dead wolf one more stroke along the head, gently pressing against its skull… and then I move over to grab my cauldron.

Hanging it from a tree by its ankles is easy enough, and lets me drain the blood out into the soup to be refined later as I make sure my knives are sharpened for the task ahead. It's strange to feel bad about this creature, I think, considering its not the first I've butchered. I guess I just associate a wolf more with feelings and consciousness than I would a snake or fish. The Heron I didn't kill, nor did I the Wyvern.

The wolf though… it just wanted to eat. But the Heron wanted to protect its eggs. I can't really draw a line between them and say one was more innocent than the other. If anything, killing the Heron was worse because it did nothing but mind its own business.

I shake my head. There's no point worrying about it. "The strong do eat, the weak are meat," I murmur. That's all there was to it. We all need to eat, and we all eat each other. There's no hatred in it, no love. No good or evil. Just survival.

I take a deep breath to clear my mind, and return to my work.

Once the wolf is finally drained of blood, I set it on the ground and begin butchering it. I carefully flense the pelt off, setting it aside for later. The meat is stringy and unpleasant looking, but if I stew it, it might be worth eating. The core is deep in its throat, and rather small at that, but its worth putting aside for later as I pack the meat away.

Finally, there's just the bones and they go straight into the cauldron with the rest of the soup.

It boils and bubbles almost immediately, the rich Yin energy already seeping through. The blood adds an element of Yang that's not unneeded if I want to keep my Qi balanced enough to avoid becoming some sort of vampire.

It does kind of throw off the taste of the soup though. I'm going to have to balance that back out, or it'll be completely inedible!

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I'm getting better at the Savoury Bewitching Broth Technique. I've gotten it down fine enough that I can lure weak creatures into it - only creatures at the First or Second Step of Qi Condensation so far, which is enough for my purposes. I've got to admit, it's kind of funny watching birds fly directly in, even if it splashes soup a little everywhere. I've gotten a handful of small robins and other birds from the Forest. I think they're Beguiling Songbirds - they captivate and hypnotise creatures with their song, luring them into danger.

Not to eat, mind you, they eat fruit and nuts. They do that to be dicks, presumably, so it's only fair that I lure them into my soup.

It's taken me a handful of days to reach this point though, and that's when I've been doing very little other than practice the Savoury Bewitching Broth Technique, alongside the Mystic Art Devouring. I've gotten a lot faster at refining things with the cauldron as well - I can break a Songbird down into Qi in less than ten minutes now, leaving the broth clear and pure, with nothing but rich Yin flavour to it even after the little fuckers kamikaze right on in.

I can't really describe what Yin tastes like, but it's sort of like… imagine eating the moon. That's what it tastes like, the Moon. And also darkness. And its cold. Kind of like ice cream. Dark Side of the Moon flavoured ice cream, that's Yin Qi, only its all soupy instead of ice cream. Which is a terrible description, but I did say I can't really describe it.

At times, I'm tempted to venture deeper, in search of greater sources of Yin to improve my cultivation faster, but I'm pretty sure that's the Forest talking, trying to lure me in deeper so it can claim me like so many others. I'm safe here, and although it might be slow, I will rise.

No rush, I remind myself. No rush at all.