Hui fell into darkness. His qi searched into the pitch, desperate for a light, any light.

At last, a distant heat. He turned toward it, peering after the heat. It flickered, sometimes ice cold, other times blazingly hot. Hui pushed onward, searching. Where?

Flickering, Xue’s dantian appeared before him. Fire burned now, his dantian a center of heat and flames, while his illusory ice dantian hung in the shadow.

Curse symbols crawled over the flames like ants. They scurried faster than ever, so thick they almost blocked out the fire altogether. Hui squinted, lips pressed together. The way they squirm is sickening.

He inched closer, searching around Xue’s dantian. The heat this close was almost unbearable, beating against his qi. Only the curse marks made it bearable. The curse marks radiated death qi, nearly as cold as the illusory ice dantian.

Hui reached out to the curse symbols with a trace of his own death qi. One of the curse marks peeled off Xue’s dantian and circled his death qi. He reached out and touched it.

From out of his death qi, the tiny head of a duck reared up and swallowed the curse mark.

Eh? Wait… does it work like that? Hui frowned. He urged his death qi on, pointing it at the curse marks.

A ghost duck peeled out of his death qi and bit at the curse marks. It swallowed down a dozen, then vanished back into his qi. Another duck took its place, followed closely by another, then another. Ducks flooded into Xue’s dantian, peeling away from his. They descended on the curse marks and devoured them, hoovering them up like bugs.

Wait, wait, seniors, if you’re all here, my dantian—

Pain drew Hui back to reality. Bai Xue squeezed, crushing down on Hui. His mouth opened wide. Panicked, Hui threw his hands up and managed to catch Bai Xue’s jaws before they closed on his neck.

“Bai Xue, stop!” he shouted.

The ghoul ignored him. He pressed harder against Hui’s hands, struggling to close his jaw.

Dammit! Without any death qi, I can’t disguise myself as a ghoul! I need some death qi of my own that doesn’t belong to those unfilial ducks!

Locking his arms in place, he submerged part of his consciousness back into Xue’s dantian. Under the ducks’ hungry maws, Xue’s dantian slowly cleared. The curse marks trickled down their beaks and into their stomachs. Through their translucent bodies, he could watch the curse marks bump around inside them.

As they ate, the ducks grew larger. From tiny things barely the size of his thumbnail, they ballooned up to the size of his finger, then his palms. The bloated ducks bounced around in Xue’s dantian, satisfied.

Hui reached out and drew his death qi in. The largest ducks came with it, swirling dreamily back to circle around his dantian. The smaller ducks fought the pull, surging forward to snap up more of the curse marks. He let them go, watching the curse vanish from Bai Xue’s dantian. If it works, why fix it?

At last, the final ducks floated away, swimming back to his dantian. Hui reached out with his own qi. The weakened curse wavered, exhausted and defeated. A black blot at the bottom of Xue’s dantian, it barely had enough energy to let off a curse mark or two.

Hui reached out and offered his qi to the curse, coloring it with a hint of death qi. It leaned toward it, hungry, but he drew it away at the last second. The curse fell back, frustrated.

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“Want it? Come to me,” Hui taunted it, leaning his qi toward the curse again.

The curse struggled. It pulled free of Xue’s dantian, reaching out toward Hui’s death qi with all its might. A thin strand anchored it to Xue’s dantian.

Curious, Hui leaned in with a separate strand of qi. A tiny needle, hair-thin, stuck into the bottom of Xue’s dantian. Is that the anchor of the curse? He coiled his qi around the needle and yanked it out of Xue’s dantian.

Instantly, the curse whipped around. It leaped at Hui and bit into his qi, blackening his qi, crawling up it. He instantly cut off the strand of qi. The curse tumbled down inside Xue, desperately devouring Hui’s qi.

Dangerous, that was dangerous! I should be more careful next time. He hovered, waiting. The curse ate his qi away, then reached out, searching for more. Hui drew all his qi out of the curse’s reach. It struggled some more, then fell back, falling into the needle.

Okay—quickly! Hui darted down and touched the needle. The second his qi hit the needle, the curse jumped back to life. Before it could infect too much of him, he snapped the needle with his qi.

The curse struggled weakly. It kicked, twining like a worm on a hot sidewalk, then fell still. The black energy dissipated slowly, completely dead.

“Aha! Take that!” Hui grabbed the broken needle with his qi and drew it out of Xue. The needle dissipated as it left, composed of only energy, unable to sustain itself outside of Xue.

“Good job, good job, Xiao Hui!” A familiar hand scrubbed Hui’s head vigorously.

Hui jumped back only to run into an arm. He ducked instead, twisting out of Bai Xue’s arms. Yin-form Bai Xue beamed back at him, pleased.

“I broke the curse?” Hui asked, unable to believe it.

“You did it!” Bai Xue replied. “I take back calling you a demonic cultivator. There’s clearly a reason to cultivate death qi, even if you’re a righteous cultivator!”

Li Xiang ran over and hugged Hui, petting his head again. “Congrats, congrats!”

Hui started to shove her away, then hesitated. Her soft body pressed against him, gentle and sweet. He leaned into it and let her pet his hair. Ah, this… isn’t too bad, is it.

Bai Xue gave Hui a meaningful look and covered her mouth with a hand, not-quite-hiding her smirk.

Hui rolled his eyes. Somewhat reluctantly, he extricated himself from Li Xiang. He looked upward. “We’ve still got to get out of here.”

The other two stared up as well. The cursed seal blocked them in, closing off the hole overhead.

“That? I can break that. He’s only a fourth-stage cultivator,” Bai Xue said.

“Eh? Bai Xue, did you get your cultivation back?” Hui asked.

She closed her eyes. Cold air swirled around her. Frost broke out, spiraling over the floor around her. White energy blasted around her, cold enough to freeze at a touch. Hui and Li Xiang backed away, shivering.

Bai Xue smiled. “It’s coming back to me with every passing second.”

She lifted her fan, ice trailing after its leading edge. At the last second, Hui grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

Bai Xue and Li Xiang both frowned at him. “What?”

“We can’t take them all on alone. Bai Xue, you can probably sweep the lower-stage cultivators, but are you confident you can take both Zhang Zhou and Bai Fenfeng while protecting Li Xiang and I?” Hui asked.

Bai Xue frowned. “It would be difficult. I couldn’t guarantee your safety.”

“We have to beat them and break the barrier around the lotus before the lotus blooms.” Hui glanced up, through the gaps in the curse-mark blocking them in from above. The lotus slowly unfurled its petals, black already shimmering with deep purple.

She furrowed her brows. “There’s a chance…”

“We can’t take that chance. Not unless there’s no other option. The lotus is too dangerous,” Li Xiang declared.

Hui nodded. “Which is why, instead, we need to call the main family here. That way, they can engage the other cultivators, and you can focus on Fenfeng and Zhang Zhou.”

Bai Xue harrumphed and crossed her arms. “Don’t look down on my clan. There should be at least one other fourth-stage cultivator around to help me with the two of them.”

“All the more reason to call them. Bai Xue, do you have a way to call your clan?” he asked.

“Naturally. But we need to break the barrier on the ceiling of the room first. It would block the signal.”

Li Xiang tilted her head. “Why didn’t you call them earlier, before we entered the room?”

Bai Xue waved her hand. “I thought I could handle it alone. Besides, I had no idea who else was in on the plan, or what the plan was. If I called attention to myself earlier, I might’ve just alerted the enemy and startled the rats back into hiding. Now, though…” She shrugged. “They can’t exactly get much more alerted, and I know it’s too late for them to scurry back into their holes.”

“So many barriers. The underground barrier, the lotus barrier,” Li Xiang said, shaking her head.

Hui gestured them in. “I have a plan. Listen…”