This particular stretch of the mountain range was home to herds of Curl-Horned deer, a semi mystic species that was harvested regularly by the sect. It had many useful parts, but the most important was the use of its hide to create vellum. Curl-Horned deer naturally accumulated qi in their horns but by using a special technique when cutting off their spiral horns, a flood of qi would descend into their skin. The animal was then killed and skinned. Qi-rich vellum could be used to make technique scrolls which would seal an ability for later use. Such scrolls were quite valuable for mid tier cultivators as it allowed them to increase their breadth of strategies.
Recently a Man-Faced Liger had moved in to feast on the defenseless ruminants. A Man-Faced Liger was an abomination, a low level demon with base cunning. It indeed had the face of a man, but its mouth was much too wide and filled with spine-like teeth. A broad golden mane and a pale striped body completed its looks.
John and Kai had a simple plan, scout the valley for traces of the monster, confront it on sight or track it to its lair, and kill it. John would be acting as interference, primarily defending and keeping the beast occupied while Kai laid into it with offensive techniques.
It didn't take long.
The Man-Faced Liger left a trail of destruction across several mountainsides, it had enormous strength clearly; knocked over trees, huge gouges in the ground, carnage remains of scores of deer were common sights. With such obvious tracks, they were easily able to find it lair. The beast was hiding in a cave along the banks of a small lake near the middle of the valley. The rocky formation overhung an eroded clay floor that was littered with bones. It stank horribly of rotten and damp remains. Many of the carcasses still had scraps of meat on the bones as the beast was mainly predating them for their rich qi. Every skull was missing its horns.
Kai only had a few healing pills and it would not do to waste them now, so they approached carefully. John was in front with woven qi blades fanned out in front of him, flat side facing out. Kai stood behind him with a technique standing ready--several shards of ice floating in the air ready to launch at the first sign of trouble.
The beast suddenly leapt out of the darkness at John, claws first. Only the connection to his own claws saved him in that moment. The liger impacted his splayed qi claws and pushed him out of range of the strike, at the same time Kai launched his ice lances, but only a couple were able to pierce its hide, all of them shallow.
Spirit beasts like this were significantly physically stronger than human Foundation Establishment cultivators. Beasts had an innate ability to passively accumulate strength in their bodies by consuming qi from their prey. The liger was so well fed that its bones were like steel, its muscles were strong enough to crush rock, and its skin was tougher than plate armor. Luckily, before forming a core of its own, a demon beast had limited techniques, usually only able to enhance its own senses, camouflage, and maybe an active enhancement to its physical abilities. Certainly no offensive techniques outside of its body. That being said, many demon beasts biology did allow for ranged attacks.
Continuing the fight, John used one set of claws to attack the Liger's weak points, going for its eyes, nose, and throat, the other set of claws was held back for defensive emergencies. The demon was quite adept at avoiding his strikes and they ended up dancing around the cave for several exchanges. In the meanwhile, Kai launched a barrage of many smaller and sharper icicles, hoping sharpness would work where mass had failed. Dozens of the needles connected and opened small bleeding wounds on the demon, but it was not enough. It merely snarled and got increasingly aggressive and reckless in it's attacks. The liger would lunge at Kai occasionally too, making John scramble to block the attack.
Kai, seeing his attempts piercing attacks fail, tried a different tactic. He channeled ice qi into the air and the surrounding temperature dropped rapidly. Flurries of ice and snow fell on the demon like it was an inevitable outcome, tracking it through the cave no matter how much it tried to shake off the technique. The below freezing temperatures eventually slowed it down enough that John could slip into its weak points. One claw slashed the demon's eyes, but a moment later it managed to catch the claw in its jaws and crush it, shattering the woven technique.
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John was able to slice into the demon through one of the wounds on its hide after multiple attempts were thwarted elsewhere, cutting right to its heart. The beast finally collapsed dead. The whole fight took barely three minutes, but John was totally exhausted by the end. Simply moving around fast enough to escape attacks or get in position to defend Kai took an enormous portion of his focus. Each missed attack was like sawing a knife into a brick, regaining coherency and sharpness took even more energy. Kai wasn't much better, he didn't need to move around as much but he needed to apply constant pressure with attacks, quickly forming and launching blades. The last attack that slowed the demon down took most of his remaining qi.
"What now?" John asked.
Kai grimaced, "Lets rest up by the lake for now. Not much is work taking from the demon, except maybe some of it's bones. It killed too many of the deer so we will be penalized a little, but there was nothing we could have done except do the mission weeks ago."
They dragged the corpse outside and John began butchering it. Kai had no experience with such tasks, luckily John grew up on a farm. Also luckily, it is significantly easier to cut tough hide from the inside than it is from the outside. John left the rather human-looking head alone, but they were able to extract the valuable long bones for storage. After a quick bit and rinsing off in the lake, they were once again running to the next mission.
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Back at the sect, the new cultivators were breaking through the second trance and constructing their dantians. One disciple by the name of Lambton had just developed a strange egg shaped dantian. His vision had been extremely frightening, and his convulsions were especially intense. Most people after a breakthrough would feel refreshed and clear, even if they were covered in filth. Lambton felt feverish and sick. His dantian was filled to bursting with wriggling red worms, each with a vicious hooked mouth. He reeled back his senses, almost falling over in the process and shuddering with disgust. In addition to the black ichor covering his body he almost threw up on the spot.
Quickly running to the bathroom to scrub away the filth, Lambton scraped and scraped at his body with soap and sand, but it wasn't helping. By the time his skin was clean and rubbed raw, he was so nauseated that he couldn't help but double over and throw up. After vomiting twice, he kept dry heaving with greater force until finally, a deluge of long red worms poured out of him and into the water. He leaped in disgust and fright out of the water, but it was too late. Several worms had latched onto his body in places that were difficult to see, forming tattoo-like lines on his body. The rest swam out of the tub and out into the cistern.
The tubs in each pavilion worked like a localized swimming hole, clean rainwater flowed from the roof into a small pool which drained at a certain height of water out into common cisterns. Rain water sluiced in drainage ditches all over the sect into places like these where formations would clean and sanitize the water before sending it back up to the rain clouds. It was an elaborate formation-controlled water cycle that generated qi by utilizing the heavenly principles governing weather and storms. Unfortunately, some of these red parasites were able to survive the cleaning formations and escape into the water supply.
Lambert himself quickly collapsed into his bed, physically exhausted and now drained of qi, he couldn't sustain his consciousness and needed to rest.
Several disciples that day discovered strange twisting red lines on their bodies. Scanning it with their spiritual sense didn't show anything unusual, it was nearly undetectable in fact. Some of those disciples brought it up with their friends, or even passing elders, but no one was able to sense anything too strange and chalked it up to a simple skin rash. After several days the lines seemed to disappear, so it was ignored.
Lambert was unconscious and was unable to notice, but he could sense the lines on his own body as the parasites moved around under his skin, sliding into position in extremely difficult spots to see or notice. Under his hair, in the middle of his back, anywhere that he would have trouble finding on his own. By the time he awoke the next morning, even he couldn't sense them.