Chapter 32:
The beautiful, well-endowed fox lady led me into the underbrush. For some reason, I felt that there was something wrong. But that couldn’t be right, could it? What was wrong with getting a chance to hook up with a gorgeous fox babe? Yes, foxes were kinda assholes, but I’m sure fox women were much better.
I tried to reach for the fox lady, but she giggled and pulled just out of my reach. I grinned at her and moved to chase as she beckoned me. I wanted to wrap my arms around that slim waist of hers and pull her to me. And I could tell she wanted it too, with all the flirty and lusty looks.
We continued like this for a bit before we found a cramped clearing with a small spring running through it. There, another fox lady waited. Her robes were partially open, showing off her very ample assets as well. I wanted to bury my face in them.
With a grin, I walked over to the two gorgeous women giving me bedroom eyes. I wasn’t any kind of casanova and only had one girlfriend before. But I was certain that I could handle these two lovely ladies. Even if I couldn’t, I was pretty sure that at least making the attempt would be worth it.
The more well-equipped of the two ladies reached out a hand to me, fluttering her eyelashes. I reached out happily, my heart beating hard in my chest—
“And that’s enough of that.”
Someone appeared to the side of the fox lady and kicked her hard. What the hell? Who was this assho—wait, what?
I blinked several times as I registered what I’d just seen. The girl—it was Sun Yun!—had kicked the foxy lady, but her leg hadn’t connected properly. Instead, it seemed to phase through the woman at the same time as something smaller was sent flying.
I blinked again and shook my head. “What’s—”
The other foxy woman snarled in anger and charged. Sun Yun spun and lashed out with her palm, but again her hand phased through the woman. This time, though, nothing else seemed to have been hit, and the woman just disappeared into a haze.
“Oh, that’s annoying,” Sun Yun muttered.
“Su—” I started to say, still feeling a bit confused. It felt like my mind was a little foggy. But then something grabbed me from behind and pulled me back.
I reacted on instinct and tried to elbow them to get away. But my assailant caught my arm and kept me from hitting them.
“Let go—”
“It’s me!” A familiar voice shouted in my ear, making me wince. “It’s Lin!”
I froze for a second and then quickly turned to look. It was Lin. She was holding onto me, looking annoyed as she kept me from driving my elbow into her stomach. I winced at her look and stopped my attempt.
“So—”
Lin grabbed me again before I could ask one of the many questions I had. She pulled me to the side just as blue flames smashed down where we’d been. It left a small crater and a heavily burned patch of earth.
I stared wide-eyed for a moment before turning to look at where that came from. Jianfeng—when did he get here?—was with Sun Yun, and they were both fighting four different opponents. Two foxes and two fox women. But the foxes and women both had oddly similar angry snarls on their faces as they fought. And every time Jianfeng or Sun Yun seemed to hit one of them, their blows ended up just phasing through their opponents who then disappeared.
A moment later, one of the remaining opponents would split into another fox and a woman. And while this was happening, balls of eerie blue flame were being hurled around by the four as well.
The flames moved with unnatural agility, chasing Sun Yun and Jianfeng as they fought. When they smashed into the underbrush or trees, the balls of fire seemed to just bounce off, not catching anything alight. However, the few times the flame grazed Jianfeng, they exploded brightly and burned his robes.
It was all very confusing, even as my mind was beginning to clear.
“What’s happening?” I asked as Lin and I both moved to avoid several more of those eerie blue flames.
“You were enthralled by those Spirit Foxes,” Lin said, not moving to join the battle. Instead, she stayed close, eyeing me carefully every so often as if to make sure I wouldn’t do anything stupid. “They were trying to lure you away to eat you.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling a bit dumb as the foggy feeling around my mind completely left. It then became super apparent what had happened. “So how did they—”
My question was interrupted by a shout from Sun Yun.
“Okay, enough of this!” She shouted as she waved her whole arm in front of her. A wave of air seemed to explode from her and push away everything around her except Jianfeng.
Two of their opponents were sent flying. One of the dog-sized foxes, and one of the fox women. Though after the woman smacked into a tree, she turned into a fox as well.
“No more illusions!” Sun Yun shouted. Then I felt something strange yet familiar. Spirit sense! Despite only being at Mid Qi-Gathering, she already had that ability.
And apparently, it was enough to let her see through whatever illusions the foxes were using. Right after I felt her spirit sense, she moved in a rush and attacked again. Despite another two fox women splitting off from the foxes, there was no more hitting and phasing through illusions for Sun Yun.
One of the foxes was smashed into the ground so hard it left a crater. The other—which had been hiding in the illusion of a fox woman again—was smashed into a tree, leaving a small crater and making the massive thing shake at the impact.
“That was kinda annoying,” Sun Yun said, hands on her hips as she looked at her two downed foes. Then she turned to me. “Well, come on. Do you want to finish them off or not?”
I blinked as I realized what she meant. Oh, right. I could harvest these. Annoying asshole they might be—I was starting to get a complex about hating foxes—but the illusions they used could be a pretty amazing Skill depending on how it worked. I might as well get something out of this mess.
I unsheathed my sword and made my way over to the two badly wounded foxes. Quickly and cleanly, I decapitated both of them, finally putting an end to this whole confusing and dangerous incident.
Sun Yun stored them away right afterward, and I didn’t bother checking what they might have to harvest. I could do it later, and I was more than a little sick of the Great Southern Forest now. I wanted to leave and put this whole day behind me.
It was only a couple of minutes after we began heading north again did I remember the question I’d wanted to ask during the fighting.
“So how did the foxes sneak me away?” I asked the rest of the group as we jogged through the forest. “Like, did they use an illusion to hide that I’d been taken or something?”
With my mind more clear, I could remember that the fox’s illusion had led me away for several minutes before we reached that clearing. So, another illusion hiding what had happened was the only thing that made sense to me. We kept too close an eye on eachother out here for them to not notice me walking away.
“Pretty much,” Sun Yun said, nodding. “It was subtle and took a moment for me to realize what was happening. Then it took just a bit more effort to find you.”
I frowned as I considered that. “Which meant that if they’d been a bit faster, I might have died.”
That was not a nice thought to have. Even with everyone around me and all my new strength, I’d just almost died. The only silver lining was I might get the ability to do the same from the fox carcasses.
“Probably not,” Sun Yun said rather flippantly.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Whatever the foxes did, I was totally confused and had no idea I was in danger.”
“Yes, but charm techniques like that are very easy to break,” Sun Yun said very confidently. Was that general knowledge she had or first-hand experience? “When they actually moved to harm you, your survival instincts would have likely broken you out of your trance. It's the reason they worked in pairs and the reason that spirit foxes like these aren’t more common. If the charm ability was so effective, they would easily hunt other spirit beasts and humans.”
“I guess you're right…” I said, thinking it through. It was a bit disappointing that charm abilities were so weak since I might have been able to get one of my own. But at least that meant that I hadn’t been in as much danger as I thought.
It wasn’t much, yet it made me just a bit less nervous as we made our way through the quiet forest.
Unfortunately, the quiet did not last. Not long after the battle with the foxes, we ran into more spirit beasts. It wasn’t an issue at first. They were just Early Rank 1s, and while most of us were a little worn out, it wasn’t that bad. We dealt with them as they came, even taking a moment to harvest the cores—We had more than 30 now, but we encountered no new spirit beasts, so I didn’t bother trying to get them for harvesting.
The only exception to this was a large bird of prey that tried its luck while we were fighting other beasts. Unfortunately, a quick check before Sun Yun stored it away showed that it did not have a Skill that could let me fly, much to my dismay. It would have been a pleasant surprise after those Crystal Drakes and the foxes.
But that disappointment didn’t bother me for long as things started to get worse. As we continued to travel north—where there should be fewer spirit beasts—the number of encounters we had only grew.
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It seemed to just be bad luck at first. Yet it kept getting worse. And worse. It was like all the spirit beasts in the forest had become suddenly extra aggressive, and they were far more easily drawn towards us from the sound of fighting.
As this continued, we abandoned wasting time extracting cores, and Sun Yun just dumped the corpses directly into her bag. But the problem kept growing, and we gave up on that too soon after. Instead, eventually, we just had to start running, leaving behind some cripple spirit beast to distract the others.
Thankfully, that seemed to work, and the rampaging beasts got drawn towards what we left behind. They seemed to fight amongst themselves after that, drawing even more spirit beasts towards the fighting. But at least not towards us for the most part.
We had to do this a couple more times before we finally made our way out of the forest at a run. I would have been more panicked about the whole thing if it wasn’t for Sun Yun’s treasure being available as a fallback plan.
“So I guess there isn’t any more doubt about if the spirit beast problem is spreading,” I said sarcastically after we’d put a considerable distance between us and the tree line to the Great Southern Forest. It was around late afternoon, given the sun’s location.
“It would seem so,’ Lin said in a deadpan voice beside me as we looked back towards the forest. Even from here, we could see movement within the trees. None seemed to be rushing out to chase us or anything, but it was more than a little disconcerting.
“Do we need to tell somebody about this?” I asked. “Like, beside Sun Xia?”
“I don’t think we will need to,” Jianfeng said. I turned to him, confused, before I saw that he was pointing at something behind us. Then I saw what he was referring to.
Coming towards us were several mounted riders. They approached at speed, and for a second, I thought they might try and run us over. But no one else moved to run or dodge, so I forced myself to stay still, and just watch the approach. In the end, they stopped only a couple of feet from us, halting their movement far more easily than I thought possible.
Given the slight feeling of Qi I could feel from them, I assumed that was a feature of whatever kind of spirit horses these were.
“Halt!” the lead man said rather aggressively. “Do not attempt to enter the Great Southern Forest.”
The lead rider and the rest were all dressed similarly. They wore impressive-looking scaled armor, with full coverage of their bodies. There were some minor yellow and red embellishments decorating the armor, but for the most part, they looked practical. Their helms were open-faced, though, making it easy to see the stern no-nonsense look on the lead man’s face.
“We weren’t planning to,” Jianfeng called out, taking the lead. “We just got out and have no intention of going back in soon. The beasts are incredibly aggressive at the moment.”
The lead rider seemed to be taken aback for a second by Jianfeng’s answer. It seemed he hadn't expected that, and he gave our group an evaluating look.
“I see,” he said, nodding to himself. “It is good that you manage to get out safely. We’ve gotten dozens of similar reports in the last hour or so. We were sent out to the East to intercept anyone trying to go into the forest, as well as to watch out for spirit beast incursions. What can you tell me about your experiences?”
“Well…”
Jianfeng gave a quick recounting of our experiences. From how normal it had been before noon, to the disaster with the drakes, then to the surge of beasts as we left. He did alter the story though, so that we triggered the Crystal Drake trap from afar, and fled after seeing just how many there were. Probably to keep Sun Yun’s treasure a secret.
“I see,” the man said, a concerned look on his face for a moment. Then it was wiped away, back to the stern visage he had before. “Very well. You four should leave this place at once, then. The imperial garrison shall manage this disaster, as we are doing in the East. Only large or more powerful groups should enter the Great Southern Forest until this matter has been settled.”
“Oh, course,” Jianfeng said, giving the soldiers a quick bow. The rest of us did the same, even Sun Yun before we started walking away.
“Well, at least someone is looking into this mess,” I said once the riders rode off and seemed to be far enough away.
Sun Yun let out a dainty snort at that and shook her head. “They said similar things about managing things when things got bad in the East. Now, more than a month later, they are still tied up there, and bandits are running around the countryside, causing problems practically uncontested except for private efforts. I wouldn’t put too much faith in them dealing with this.”
“Oh,” I said, looking back at the forest one last time. If that was the case, then this might be a sign of more troubles to come.
I turned away from the forest and shook my head. Well, it wasn’t like I was at the level of strength to really deal with that right now. Better to leave it for others to handle, even if they weren’t doing so well. Instead, we should just head back to the city, and rest and relax.
Or, well, I would do that just as soon as I figured out everything that I’d gained from this whole mess. Despite some nasty surprises, and the hunt getting cut short, I’d still gained a lot. More than enough cores to fuel my cultivation, two Skills that gave me two great boosts to my stats, a powerful new defensive Skill, and potentially a couple more Skills that would hopefully turn out to be either useful or powerful.
Overall, not bad, though I hoped not all my trips out of the city would end up being like this one.
—Line Break—
The trip back to the city was thankfully a lot less eventful than our trip getting out of the forest. No issues with spirit beasts, and our only encounters were with other people—none of which were bandits. Most of them were either people like us, traveling on the main road back to the city after having fled the forest, or people who’d been turned away by the imperial army for being too small a group or too weak.
A few groups were actually coming from the north, apparently willing to brave the Great Southern Forest at night or just looking to make a quick trip. Once we told them about what the imperial army was doing, most turned to head back to the city.
One group, however, didn’t turn back. Given that it was a large group of more than a dozen people, several at mid Qi-gathering at least, that wasn’t too surprising. They should be able to keep safe, and for them, the trouble might be a bit of an opportunity to get a lot of spirit beast cores or even full carcasses to sell.
Or to get killed if things got worse.
Aside from these encounters, we did stop a couple of more times on the way back. I needed to check if the oldest of the corpses Sun Yun was still carrying in her spatial pouch were still good. If there was a time limit and the preservation power of her pouch didn’t help with it, then I’d have to harvest everything on the road.
Thankfully, each time the carcasses came out glowing blue, and we did not have to deal with that.
When we got back to the city, it was approaching evening, and the sun was starting to set. We headed straight for the Sun Compound from the southern gate. News about the troubles in the Great Southern Forest seemed to have just reached the city, and I heard many people talking about it as we made our way through the busy streets of the merchant district.
I ignored it all for the most part, as we were moving too quickly to really hear more than snippets of people’s conversations.
Then, finally, we arrived at the Sun Compound. Sun Xia was there to meet us at the main entrance, looking quite unhappy. Even though she didn’t glare, the blank look she had was enough to make me nervous despite it not being directed at me.
Despite her bravado from earlier, Sun Yun was equally cowed as she was led away for a ‘talk’. Thankfully, Sun Xia didn’t seem to blame the rest of us for Sun Yun’s decision, and she even smiled and thanked us for getting her sister back home safely.
It was only when the two of them were gone did I remember that Sun Yun had all the spirit beast corpses on her. Meaning that I wouldn’t be able to see what rewards I might have gotten for braving the crystal drakes and those foxes just yet.
Annoying, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So, instead, I split from Jianfeng and Lin and headed back to my little house. There, I got cleaned up and ate a small meal. Normally, I’d either have to eat a whole lot more or take some fasting pills to ensure that I felt full. But, as it turned out, the cores I ate for my cultivation helped with that, keeping me able to eat a more normal-sized meal.
An interesting side effect. And with all the cores I’d gathered, it seemed like I would be able to eat more like a normal person for quite some time.
Once I was done with my food, I planned on just going to sleep, given everything that had happened.
However, before I could actually go to bed, there was a knock on the door.
—line break—
“I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you for a while,” I told Sun Yun as the two of us entered a large single-room building. It was quite a bit larger than my guest house, with a two-story tall ceiling and geometric formations inscribed on the floor.
It was apparently a cultivation room meant to be isolated from the outside. A good place for privacy, according to Sun Yun. Technically, Sun Xia could look inside with her Spirit Sense, but Sun Yun was adamant she wouldn’t do that. And even if she was wrong, it wasn’t like I had a better place to harvest and test Skills.
Any other location would be less private, and another snooper would be much worse than Sun Xia.
Sun Yun scoffed. “I told you that I was in the right. Big Sis couldn’t ignore my perfectly sound arguments as to why joining the three of you was a good decision.”
“Is that right?” I asked.
“Of course,” Sun Yun said, holding her head up high for a moment.
“So if we were to head out tomorrow,” I said, eyeing her skeptically, “then I suppose you will be free to come with us? No sneaking out needed.”
Sun Yun winced at that and then turned to glare at me. “You know, perhaps I’m feeling too tired tonight. I should probably head to bed instead of helping you with this.“
“Never mind, never mind,” I said, laughing just a little as I shook my head. “Forget I said anything.”
Sun Yun glared at me for another moment before she nodded once. “Good. Now, how do you want to do this?”
I took a moment to think about it before directing Sun Yun to just take out the Crystal Drake and Foxes first. The other spirit beasts were just maybes at the moment. I only had so many Skill Slots, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to start consolidating more for subpar Skills. The Crystal Drake and the foxes, however, I had high hopes for.
Once that was done, Sun Yun left as she had better things to do than just watch me go about harvesting things. Which was fine with me as I wanted to take my time with my choices. I needed to consider just which Skills would be best, as well as how they might affect my consolidation options.
So, I carefully read through all the available Skills first, making sure I didn’t miss anything. When I was done, I had a shorter list of six Skills that stood out the most to me.
Crystalizing Beam (Active) (Rank D): Unleash a beam of energy that will attempt to turn anything hit permanently into crystal.
* Cost: 20 Qi per second
Qi Crystal Storage (Passive) (Rank D): Gain the ability to store and retrieve Qi from crystals. Quality and type of crystal effect rate of Qi stored and retrieved.
Qi Crystal Body Growth (Active) (Rank D): Grow temporary crystals spikes from any part of your body. Size and strength depend on Qi expended.
* Base Cost: 30 Qi
* Duration: 30 minutes.
Foxfire (Active) (Rank C): Create and control foxfire. Foxfire is part illusion and part reality, unique to every being able to create it. It can burn or not based on the desires of its creator. When it burns fuel, it can replenish itself and even grow.
* Cost: 5 Qi
* Upkeep: 1 Qi per hour
Illusionary Form (Active) (Rank D): Create an illusion over yourself that you can control. Most complex or larger illusions will cost more Qi.
* Base Cost: 5 Qi
* Range: 10 yards
* Base Upkeep: 5 Qi per minute
Environmental Illusions (Active) (Rank D): Create an illusion over the environment around you. Most complex or larger illusions will cost more Qi.
* Base Cost: 10 Qi
* Range: 20 yards
* Base Upkeep: 5 Qi per minute
The six Skills were not equal, but they were all quite tempting nonetheless. I could only have three of them, however, and only one of those three could come from the Crystal Drake. The only question that remained was which three would I take?