‘‘He will be fine?‘‘

Li Bo retracted his melted right hand from the fireball and rubbed it on his robes.

‘‘His dantian is breaking apart, trying to absorb the freezing Qi. He will be a Rocksmote any moment now, and when he does he might very well lose his life.‘‘

What kept Zhang Cai alive was not a moment of immeasurable brave will and wit as Li Bo thought, but the simple way of a cultivator‘s ascension to another level. He had long been prepared to depart from the Glassmade, called as they were much alike glass in durability of body and mind, into the Rocksmote that most remained for the rest of their fifty or sixty years of life.

But this kind of ascension needed conscious effort and diverting of Qi from the dantian. So that remnant power of his remained condensed in his dantian, kept safe and volatile just enough to keep his heart beating and brain inhaling oxygen. But the moment that power was left alone, it would tear through his ravaged limbs and they would not take such force very well.

What kept him alive also killed him, in a sense.

‘‘There is not much path left.‘‘

Li Huan nodded. She stood up and gathered their belongings.

‘‘Take out a thick coat and robe,‘‘ He said. ‘‘I will need it to keep him warm.‘‘

‘‘I can carry him and cast a flame, senior brother.‘‘

Li Bo looked straight at his sister. Her eyes remained unsteady, brows furrowed, hair stamped behind the ears in wild curls. The small lowered edge of her lips did add to this indignant expression of hers. What she thought he had an inkling for. It could be a sense of responsibility she felt towards him or Zhang Cai, whom if he thought in her narrow perspective she failed in some way.

But this kind of failing was not a fault of hers. She had a big mistake she did, that he would deal with later at a more appropriate time, but not this kind of disillusioned debt mentality. If she were to advance like this in this kind of a world, would her debts have an end or a limit? When, as world always could do at a moment, he was gone and her mentors were dead, would she be fine with thoughts like this?

Li Bo looked straight at the boy laying cold and frail. His eyelids shut, face relaxed, and his hair gathered by a pair of iron hairpins laid curled on the ground like a pony tail.

He and his sister were similar in that aspect. Both had a narrowed view of their own against people they thought they owed a debt. The fundamental difference between them was Zhang Cai‘s awareness of the rougher world that made him more grateful and Li Huan‘s awareness of the cunning world that made her more anxious.

He thought for a moment, why he had, throughout their journey, made such comparisons between his sister and Zhang Cai. Why he treated him, though not so warmly, like he treated his sister. His mother once told him, ‘‘Your sight is so broad you can not differentiate between the similars.‘‘ and he thought long upon it for years after her passing.

Many moments, when he fought with his father and his second mother and those who tried to use his sister for clan politics, he grasped new meanings from those words. And this one seemed to be one another moment that he gleamed a new truth; that he, perhaps, looked too wide indeed, and when he could not see the difference projected what he knew to the unknown.

This kind of projection, then, might be the reason he had such deep kindness to those weaker than him, like Zhang Cai.

‘‘Weaker...‘‘

That one word made him doubt himself. Weaker in strength? Weaker in spirit? Experience, life, resilience? When Zhang Cai found out the poison eating away at him, was it not his own mouth that told Li Bo he understood? The understanding they reached there was something not visible to those unaware of certain truths revolving around human life.

‘‘These kinds of thoughts are not suitable for the moment.‘‘ he thought. He could not delve deeper into such matters here, where they remained in danger of the elements and many more beasts that might awaken from their slumber one last time. Many of them remained in Il-Ich, and the stronger or queerer of the few burrowed deep in these lands.

He stood up and took the cloak from his sister‘s hands.

‘‘It is not easy to care for a wounded person, junior sister.‘‘

‘‘I can.‘‘ she said.

Li Bo waited for a moment and her determination seemed solid. He put the soft fur back in her small hands and patted her head. With his index finger he pushed a wild curl before her nose on her forehead and planted a soft kiss on the top of her head.

‘‘Then I will entrust him to you. You can carry him with yourself, right?‘‘

‘‘I can.‘‘

‘‘Good. Let me look out for a moment, then we will depart.‘‘

She replied with a soft nod and crouched once more. Li Bo glanced once, then leaped out. He walked a few meters, cast another glance and did not see her peek over. He walked some more until the mist cloaked him from that pit and he collapsed on the snow.

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On his knees, he clutched his chest and belly. His Qi burned inside. The Qi that was like water in the belly, which he felt all around his body like the muscles stretching all the time flared in searing pain. He punched at the ground, slammed at it, and took deep breaths.

A few seconds passed and he took out a silver-gleaming white pill from the spatial pouch. With his tongue he wrapped it and gargled in his mouth until it melted, then he swallowed. The shivering of his body calmed down, and the blaze of his insides calmed. The remaining two hundred units of Qi trickled out of his body, scattering flying sparks of scarlet and gold around him in a shower of light. They floated around and mounted the whirling winds to trail after the clouds until a hundred was left, purified of poison but not ridden of its roots.

‘‘A month...‘‘

A month he would not be able to cultivate if he could get rid of it now.

‘‘Difficult...so difficult.‘‘

He stood up and made a short survey of the area. He planteed a unit of Qi down to the earth and spread it in webs and circles invisible to the human eye. He felt two bodies get caught in it some dozen steps to his back and nothing more.

He returned and found Li Huan carrying Zhang Cai on one shoulder, standing on top of her flying sword.

They could fly, indeed, but not high for the cold would become too bitter. He took out his own sword and mounted it, and he took out a compass from his pouch to look at.

This one had a metallic round shell of green, a jade pointer apart from the two-sided hands showing north and south which pointed at the Li Family Estate. One look and he tilted right, placed the compass back and rose six meters on the ground.

‘‘Let us go.‘‘ He said.

‘‘Mhm.‘‘

They flied away from that mound and the sky their lives were almost laid and went past greater clouds than before. Ground all straight and plain in time rose in bulks and rounded over each other in hills either too steep or too thin, like stick mountains donning the scenery of many buddhist sects. But snow itself never ceased. It rained and piled again and again, covering the face of many caves and rocks and the trees that appeared here and there in bulk with thin crowns and thick barks of crimson red.

These trees housed great birds like velvet blue pheasants of frost and gray-brown sparrowhawks nested around the branches. Each they flew by and listened their chirping and shrill calls that brought color to the desolate lands. On their way Li Bo saw several cultivators flying away and near, whom he greeted and asked news of the mainland. Emergence of serial killers, more demonics, last hordes of beasts from the west, Xian conquests of the northwest New Frontier...

And he responded to their inquiries of the wastelands and southern frontier in kind, and he spread the tale of the nine Spirit level Drakens and their base to them as well, for it was not something to be withheld or confidential. These matters were mankind‘s, not just Zhang Cai‘s or the Southern Frontier‘s to know, and spreading it would do more good for the brave adventurers to avoid or find any similar.

When the second day came close Li Bo found a cave carved by another cultivator inside a snowwy hill. They made a fire in there from wood and lit by Li huan, and they rested there for some time. Li Huan sat beside the entrance showing the snowstorm, legs crossed and Qi moving to cultivate, and Li Bo watched the fire and the pale face of Zhang Cai that did not regain color.

His breath the same, but the Rocksmote Qi a little wilder than before, Li Bo put one hand on his forehead and felt his body warmer.

At least he was warmer.

He took out fresh bandages and ointment to apply on the wounds. It could reduce pain, and Li Bo knew better that Zhang Cai as he was would not feel it. But pain itself was a burden to the body. Removing it by a little bit, albeit slim chance, could stabilize his precarious state.

He heard a sizzle then and saw Li Huan turn her head. They saw yellow urine slithering under the fireplace, flowing from Zhang Cai‘s waist.

Li Huan crawled over and looked around, hands up shoulders tense. She looked over once more, her head bobbed left and right, and she did not seem to know what to do. A few moments he watched her, then stood up.

‘‘I shall take care of it. You need to cultivate.‘‘

‘‘I can do it.‘‘ She replied.

‘‘What are you going to do, junior sister?‘‘ he asked.

‘‘I...I will change his clothes.‘‘

‘‘Is that it?‘‘

Li Bo glanced at the flame and the urine, and thought not so noticeable from the reddened shadow cast over the liquid, he saw scarlet mixed in it.

‘‘I will clean him as well, and the ground.‘‘

Li Bo waited a moment more, yet no answer he heard.

‘‘I will take care of it.‘‘ He simply said and crouched beside Zhang Cai.

‘‘But senior brother-‘‘

‘‘Zishen.‘‘

She stopped.

‘‘Go cultivate.‘‘

‘‘Okay.‘‘

She retreated to the entrance. Li Bo turned his back to her and took out Zhang Cai‘s clothes. He poured warm water over his lower body and cleaned it with a spare cloth, and with a thin stick he pried open the entrance to his private organ to let out the remaining urine. Indeed, most left inside had sticky blood covering, and he washed them as the Laoshi in the family estate taught him.

He wiped Zhang Cai‘s body once more, cleaned the surroundings, then clothed him thick and steady. He checked the wooden supports they used to straighten his legs and found no damage, and he replaced the bandages over his chest. A little Li Bo washed his hair and checked his ears and nose, and he looked into his mouth to check the color of his tongue.

He found nothing amiss and let Zhang Cai lay in a comfortable position.

He turned back and saw Li Huan hugging her knees.

‘‘Zishen, can you give me junior brother‘s belongings?‘‘

She raised her head. For a single second he saw her queer shock, but that expression died and she took out the ripped pair of books and the map.

Li Bo took them, put them on his lap, inspected the tear and the rip over their rough textures. Before the cackling fire he glanced at the frail, small shadow of his sister, and the pale countenance of the boy. They seemed alike.

Raising his head, he smiled at his sister.

‘‘Why did you tear the precious gifts of your friend apart, my dear junior sister?‘‘