He Yu kicked open the door of the workshop. It splintered into a hundred pieces. Dust and splintered wood showered what little free space lay within. Before him was a sight that turned his stomach. Behind him, Chen Fei gasped and Zhu Feng retched.

Bodies were piled against two of the workshop’s inner walls. They lay in various stages of mutilation and decay. Some appeared to have been chopped up and butchered—organs, sinew, and bone pulled out and stacked against the third wall. Others had been flayed, skin stripped and peeled away to reveal red exposed muscle. Others still looked as though they’d simply been left to decompose, or had been partially burned. All of it, for whatever purpose this place served.

“An alarm formation triggered,” Chen Fei said from behind him.

It must have happened when he kicked open the door. Before the boiling blood that rose at the sight before him, He Yu found it difficult to care about an alarm.

“Let them come,” he said. He was being careless, he knew. “Zhu Feng, get in there and try and figure out what’s going on. Anything, notes, elixirs, strange treasures—I don’t care what it is. Figure out what they’re doing here.”

Zhu Feng swallowed, and gave He Yu a salute. The Third Realm alchemist looked as though he was about to be sick again, but he shuffled inside the workshop, regardless.

“What are you doing?” Chen Fei asked, her voice a harsh whisper. “There has to be someone coming.”

“Then we’ll just make sure that either we’re gone before they arrive, or we can deal with them when they do.”

“What if it’s that Emissary Senior Sister Yi warned us about?”

For the first time since Chen Fei told him about the alarm, it fully settled over him just how reckless he was being. He looked around and caught sight of a bird fashioned of bone and animated by shadow.

Speaking directly to the construct, He Yu said, “Chen Fei said an alarm was triggered when we entered the workshop. Keep an eye out and make sure you warn us of anyone who approaches.”

After a moment, the bird’s head bobbed in what He Yu assumed was an approximation of a nod.

“He Yu, this—I have no idea what this thing is,” came Zhu Feng’s voice from inside.

When it became apparent that he’d need to go in, He Yu finally entered the workshop fully. The stench inside was even worse than it was outside. The sick-sweet smell of burnt flesh and the overwhelming stench of rot mingled together. Blood and vital essence assaulted his spiritual senses. The very life force of those people had been harvested in here. Once more, rage threatened to boil out of control at the sight.

Then he saw what Zhu Feng wanted to show him. Sitting atop a worn, blood stained table was a box carved with formation characters. The lid was open, and in the silk-lined interior sat something similar in appearance to the core of a spirit or a beast. Unlike spirits and beasts, it wasn’t the smooth shiny sphere of condensed qi that held their cultivation base. It was dark and dull. It seemed to drink in the light rather than reflect it. From deep within, He Yu could sense a hunger—a want.

Although certain he knew what it was, he activated the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment.

The demon core reacted instantly. Sinuous tendrils of twisting black and red reached for him. Then they recoiled as they touched upon the outer edge of his still tightly restrained presence. The feeling of want he’d felt from the core—a faint shadow of the overwhelming and endless desire to possess—turned to rage. To rage, and to fear.

The core screamed. Zhu Feng and Chen Fei both clapped their hands over their ears at the core’s reaction. It wanted to fight and to flee both at once. Deep anger that had smoldered for a thousand years demanded it destroy this presence that it had mistaken for someone far older and far more powerful than He Yu.

But the core knew it was powerless. Without a host, it could do nothing. It was at the mercy of this bearer of the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace. This steward of the one power that had defied the demon core’s true master and had survived. The core hated He Yu—and He Yu felt a discomforting mix of pity and contempt in return.

“What is that thing?” Zhu Feng stammered.

He Yu slammed the lid of the formation box shut, blotting out the core’s pitiful and enraged screams. “Don’t worry about it.” He banished the box into his storage treasure. If there was one thing in this place he was certain Yi Xiurong would want, it was the demon core. Before Zhu Feng could ask any further questions, he asked, “What else have you found?”

Not much, it turned out. Some elixirs, most were similar to those they’d found on the overseer at the mine. Closer to poisons than medicine. Likely creations of the overseer himself, or someone like him. To one side of the table sat a pile of bamboo scrolls that, upon brief inspection, contained notes on the demon core. He Yu tucked these away in his storage treasure as well.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A chest containing dried herbs and some other miscellaneous raw material for alchemy nestled in a corner between the table and the wall. He Yu let Zhu Feng deal with that. Upon the table itself was also a full set-up for alchemical work. As Zhu Feng was breaking down the apparatus and packing it into his storage treasure, Yan Shirong burst through the door.

“Someone’s coming. Fire aspect is the strongest.”

He Yu exchanged a look with Chen Fei before reaching out as far as he could with the Peerless Judgment. Without releasing his presence, there was only so much he could do to examine the surroundings. When he failed to detect anyone coming, he asked, “How strong?”

“I couldn’t get a good sense, as they’re keeping themselves as unobtrusive as possible, but I’d guess no higher than somewhere in the Fourth Realm. The only high-level cultivator that I’ve met able to make themselves so unobtrusive is Senior Sister Zhang.”

He Yu to relaxed, if only fractionally. Water was a particularly “quiet” aspect, and those who cultivated it had an easier time masking their presence. Fire was the opposite. That he couldn’t yet sense their approach was a small stroke of fortune.

“Others?” he asked.

“There’s at least five of them,” Yan Shirong said.

That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. “Keep watch and let us know when they get close. Chen Fei, outside with me. If a fight breaks out, keep Zhu Feng safe. Zhu Feng, pack up anything you can and let me know when you’re done. If we can get out of here before a fight starts, all the better.”

Zhu Feng responded by redoubling his efforts to break down the alchemy workshop. Yan Shirong faded to shadow, and Chen Fei fell in behind He Yu as they left the workshop. He pushed aside the slight twinge of discomfort at how easily he’d stepped into authority. Although he’d spent plenty of time thinking about that conversation with Tan Xiaoling on their way back from the mine, he also remembered their time in the wilds.

That deep-seated desire to lead—that had gone unnoticed for so long—had been turned against him. It had made him vulnerable to the Sunset Empress’s influence. That feeling of wanting subjects and adoration had been so strong, so real. He’d not really spoken to anyone about it, and it had lingered in his spirit as a black spot—a vulnerability that someone far stronger than he was could exploit.

But Yi Xiurong had explicitly put him in charge. He was, after all, the highest ranked disciple present. And the most advanced. Zhu Feng had deferred to him as a matter of course. That was simply how authority worked in the sect. It didn’t matter; he told himself. He could worry about it later. Regardless of how he felt about it, the others were clearly looking to him now, and he needed to step into that role, whether he liked it or not.

One of Yan Shirong’s constructs sat on the eaves of the workshop. “They’re here,” he said through the bird.

He Yu summoned his guandao and cycled his cultivation base. His presence slipped out a bit as a result, but it seemed violence was unavoidable. Next to him, a circle of formation characters faintly glimmered around Chen Fei’s wrists.

When Cui Bao burst from the undergrowth with another four cultivators in tow, He Yu locked eyes with his former sect brother.

“Figures,” Cui Bao said, spitting on the ground between them. His twinned hatchets fell into his hands.

“What do you know about this place?” He Yu demanded. His anger at what he’d seen inside the workshop hadn’t yet faded, and it was clear the court had been doing something with those bodies. Zhang Lifen’s words about mercy echoed in his memory.

“Eh?” Then Cui Bao barked a sharp laugh. “Oh that? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’d get all twisted up about a bunch of mortals.”

He Yu fully released his presence. The storm broke over the hollow the workshop was nestled in. Winds whipped at all their robes and howled as it rushed through the trees and the ruined door of the workshop. The air grew heavy and wet as He Yu’s spirit pressed down on all those gathered. Lightning crawled along his guandao, held in one hand with the end planted in the ground.

Cui Bao answered in kind. Flames licked at his hatchets, and his grin took on the appearance of a snarl. A leopard with crimson fur padded around the space between them, its eyes two burning embers, and flames licking its footsteps. Its teeth and claws gleamed with killing intent. As Yan Shirong had guessed, Cui Bao had taken his first steps into the Fourth Realm.

“I haven’t been standing still,” Cui Bao said, taking a step forward.

Although his presence had grown stronger with his advancement, it still wasn’t as well-defined as even Chen Fei’s or Yan Shirong’s. Which He Yu took to mean he’d not yet formed a Wayborn Seed. A glimpse at Cui Bao’s spirit with the Peerless Judgment showed him a cultivation base that was poorly established—likely propped up by elixirs, if his association with the Sunset Court was any indication.

“False dragon,” He Yu said.

“True enough to take your head. I still owe you for what you did to me, and to Xiang.”

The four cultivators with Cui Bao all released their own presences. They cultivated a mix of aspects, and their combined spirits were an ill-defined riot of sensations. Noticeably absent from any of them was the distinct sense of wrongness that He Yu had always felt from Sha Xiang. None of them had demon cores of their own. They were also all at late Body Refining.

“I’ll take Cui Bao,” he said to Chen Fei. “Just stay out of our way. You should be able to deal with the rest.”

He hoped she would pick up on his meaning. Although he’d spent more time training with Yan Shirong than she had, over the past year, all of them had been training together under both Zhang Lifen and Yi Xiurong’s direction. Yan Shirong would, as was his preference, strike from the shadows, making himself hard to pin down.

He Yu knew just how durable Chen Fei was, and he also knew how capable a fighter Yan Shirong was despite his protests to the contrary. These four may be at the same stage as both Chen Fei and Yan Shirong, but He Yu would put every last spirit stone on his friends every single time. His only real concern was Zhu Feng, but Chen Fei knew what to do about him. He Yu would just have to trust in her abilities there.

Out of them all, he was the only one capable of dealing with Cui Bao—and he couldn’t afford to let himself be distracted.

“I’d been hoping you would say something like that,” Cui Bao said, hopping from one foot to another.

He Yu activated the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering. “You overestimate yourself,” he said as lightning arced from his guandao to his arm, and sparks of heaven crawled over his body. “You think your stage of advancement is the only thing that matters?”

“Strength is the only thing that matters,” Cui Bao snapped back. Embers burst from the blades of his hatchets. The heat lapping off him in waves redoubled as he activated some body enforcement technique.

A leopard threw itself into the storm. The sky broke, and heaven touched the earth.