"YAAAAAAAAAAAAUR!"

The Demon King shot a blast of demonic qi at me. My divine sense flared; hot damn! That qi had to be sharper than a newly-cut sword!

I deflected it off Destiny Blade with a grunt. There was a scraping noise as I was pushed backwards by the roiling black qi.

"Hey! Demon King Fong Jue! Let's talk about this? Maybe we can sit down over some tea and — "

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Fong Jue swiped his silver claws through the air, and I threw my hand out, casting an Armor Deflection Technique.

Still, the force was too much. As his claws smashed down on my technique, the air vibrated.

Shit. Not good.

I doubled over, coughing out a mouthful of blood. Then I stood, wiping my immortal mouth with my immortal sleeve. I grinned half-heartedly.

"So...I'll take that as a no?"

In response, Fong Jue caught fire.

Yeah, that was something ancient demons liked to do. I'd read about it in the Quiet Cloud Library; it was "in" for demons to run around on fire thousands of years ago. It was cool or something. Fashionable? I don't know; didn't really matter right now!

"ARRRRRRGH!"

Fong Jue rushed at me, a roiling black mass of demonic qi that was now flaming wildly. His claws and slashed and shot bursts of qi at me so fast I didn't have time to even open my mouth! I swung Destiny Blade, cast about a million Armor Deflection shields, and ran around wildly while he chased me around the throne room.

This...was not very professional immortal of me!

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This was embarrassing!!!

Fong Jue, however, evidently didn't care about my professional immortal reputation. He laughed as he chased me, which shook the whole room again and made more stones fall from the ceiling, making things even more dangerous.

"This is the most fun I've had in decades! Centuries! Immortal cultivator, you are good at this! RAAAAAAAH!"

He slashed down with his claws again, and I ducked.

Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit!

The Wise and Mighty and Beautiful Awesome Great Immortal Xia...was totally out of her ability zone right now! I mean, sure, I was an immortal, and I was freaking amazing and everything — but I'd only been doing this immortal stuff for, like, five years or something. Ten? Whatever it was, it hadn't been that long, and I'd never faced a thousand-year-old demon king head-on before!

If I didn't do something ASAP, I was gonna get crushed!

How embarrassing would that be? Imagine having that on your tombstone:

"The Once-Awesome Immortal Xia, Unfortunately Crushed by a Bored Grumpy Demon King Who Drinks Lukewarm Water."

NO! That could NOT happen!

Out loud, I hollered:

"Xianxia system! Hey! It'd be — shit! — really helpful right now — oof! — if you could give me a hand!"

I ducked a giant black sword of qi Fong Jue had hurled at me. The air vibrated violently as it bashed against my Armor Deflection shield, almost shattering it.

To my extreme relief, a calm Siri voice spoke in my mind:

"Xianxia system activated. How can we help you?"

"Assist me by helping me not get KILLED! What was that thing last time? Survival Token? SPEND IT! SPEND! IT!"

While I lopped off one of Fong Jue's cloudy black arms, causing him to roar so loudly in pain that a giant chunk of stone fell off the ceiling and almost crushed me, the system calmly answered.

"Are you sure you want to spend another Survival Recommendation Token? You have two remaining tokens."

Two?! Two remaining tokens?

DOUBLE SHIT! TRIPLE SHIT!

I was only five to ten years into my immortal career in this life. I'd basically already wasted one token on getting that rat demon Wu Zai to eat up my ex-shijie's demonic altar. If I used another one now...and I met a ton of even more fearsome demons in the future...

I'd be dead meat!

Didn't immortals fight more and more dangerous demons, ghosts, and demonic cultivators as they got more experienced?

Future Even-More-Awesome Immortal Xia Yue probably needed those tokens a lot more than I did!!!

"Shit! DON'T SPEND THEM! I TAKE IT BACK! I'll do it myself. I've got an idea!"

A really shitty idea, but this was gonna have to work.

Come on, Xia Yue — I had to do this. For the future, more awesome version of me who might need those tokens.

Suddenly, I whirled around and dropped my sword, putting my hands in the air in surrender.

"FONG JUE! HEY, YOU! I SURRENDER!"