Gao Long sat on a nearby rock as Xiahou Ren and Yang Shao continued to speak. As he sat there, he pulled back the sleeves of his colorful robes, revealing two iron bracers that ran the length of his forearm. Gao Long’s left bracer was lined with deep scratches from the wolves’ teeth, and the sleeve of that arm was deeply torn. He opened his robes in the front, revealing that he was wearing similar iron armor on his chest. Casually, Gao Long adjusted the straps on his damaged bracer and brushed off the scattered iron flakes that had been ejected during the wolf attack.

“If I use both Howl of the Black Wolf and Leap of the White Wolf, I should be able to get a few paces past Wei Fenhua before she can react,” Shao said.

“We will probably need Gao Long to take an attack from Wei Fenhua while we’re setting up.” Xiahou Ren scratched his chin as he spoke. “Do you think you can handle that?”

“One.” Gao Long held up a finger. “If I’m able to catch her blade on my chest or forearm, I can survive one hit by Wei Fenhua. After that point, my armor will be too damaged to be useful, and the next hit would kill me.”

“Oh!” Xiahou Ren cried out as if he just had an idea. He began rummaging through his bag. “I should have a fortification pill in here somewhere.”

Eventually giving up on fishing out the fortification pill, Xiahou Ren merely crouched down and removed all the pills in his bag. He used the map as a surface on which he placed nearly twenty pills. Many of the leaves covering the pills were jarringly stained with blood.

“Here it is: all the pills I brought with me and found on the battlefield. We have two frenzy pills, one fortification pill, and fifteen healing pills.” Ren pointed at the pills arrayed in front of him. “Both of you should take four healing pills, and Gao Long should take the fortification pill.”

Without putting much thought into it, Yang Shao took four of the bloodstained healing pills. Gao Long, however, frowned in distaste at the prospect.

“You looted these pills from the other dead participants,” Gao Long said in a voice that left no room for doubt.

“If it was against the rules, they would have told us,” Ren said with a shrug.

Gao Long stared at the pills for a long time. He clamped his teeth shut as if physically holding back the insult on the tip of his tongue. Eventually, he let out a deep sigh and reached for the pills. He took the fortitude pill and the two remaining healing pills that were not stained with blood.

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Xiahou Ren returned the remaining pills to his bag and passed a matchbook to both Gao Long and Yang Shao. Ren looked at Shao as he said, “Make sure to shout, ‘light,’ a second before you light the match. That will be the sign for Gao Long to light his match and for me to start reciting the incantation.”

Shao nervously placed the strange paper box in his pocket. In another time, he might have marveled at the ingenuity of that small tool, but his thoughts were only focused on his upcoming fight with the inner disciple. It was a strange feeling, Shao thought. He had never been nervous at the prospect of a coming fight before, but the knowledge that Gao Long and Xiahou Ren would be relying on him weighed on his mind.

The three men began to walk up the long staircase leading up to the Southern Gate. As they walked, Gao Long fiddled with his matchbox and lit two matches in order to practice the process of striking the red orb against the matchbox’s rough surface.

Holding his iron staff in the crook of his elbow, Shao followed Gao Long’s lead and experimentally lit a few matches before the battle. The first match caught on the abrasive surface, and he had to strike it once more before the match lit. The second match broke in the middle and fell to the ground without lighting. The third match caught flame without incident, and Shao felt confident in his ability to light a match under pressure.

The three men and the three-tailed fox spent several minutes ascending the stairs to the Southern Gate. Soon, the temple walls rose into view over the top of the neighboring trees. Those walls must have been more than forty paces high, and the downward-sloped roof at the top of the wall would make climbing it very difficult.

Shao wondered if he would be able to leap the wall with the white wolf’s technique. Even if he did, however, he figured there would be some kind of cultivator magic that would prevent him from entering anyway. He could feel a calm flowing tide emanating from the walls and knew they would have been strengthened by ki in some way.

At the end of the long staircase, there was a large red gate that stood even higher than the temple walls on its sides. To Shao, the large structure looked like a massive door frame that was missing a door.

“The Great Torii Gate of Shigong Temple…” Gao Long muttered at a volume that Shao could barely hear.

As they approached the base of the torii gate, a woman dressed in the blue haori worn by the inner disciples of the Shigong Sect entered view. She was kneeling down on both knees, and a sheathed katana laid across her thighs. Blood was splattered on the ground around her, and the corpses of two other participants in the Rite of Initiation were splayed upon the ground. One of the participants had passed through the Great Torii Gate, but he must have succumbed to his wounds within seconds.

The inner disciple regarded the three approaching men with a cold glare. If she didn’t represent a serious danger to Shao’s life, he would have called her beautiful. Though she had messily slaughtered two men within the last few minutes, not a single hair was out of place, and not a single drop of blood touched her body.

“I am Wei Huang Fenhua,” the woman declared as she slowly rose to her feet and slipped her sheathed katana through her belt. “State your names so that you may be remembered even in death.”