“Gods?!” Duan Baozhai was moving backwards, nearly tripping over the boy who still had a grip on her sleeve.

In one swift movement, she pushed him away and ran off. The boy looked at Liu Ying for a moment, eyes no longer fearful but instead solemn, before taking off after her.

Jielong looked paralyzed where she stood, as if she were truly an unfortunate, one-armed, adolescent girl with nowhere to go.

“Terrorizing another village, Jielong?” Han Chuanli asked, brandishing his war fan from his sash, “Looks like we were quick this time.”

“If I weren’t stuck in this pitiful dead body, you’d have been too late,” Jielong quipped.

Han Chuanli’s large, expressive eyes traveled over to where Liu Ying was pathetically lying with his hand still impaled by Duan Baozhai’s dagger. He glanced at Xu Qiang and not another word needed to be said between them – the God of Earth made his way over to him and carefully wriggled the dagger until it was no longer piercing the ground and pinning him there.

Liu Ying hissed, pulling his now free arm away from Xu Qiang’s grasp.

“Here, I’ll remove it,” he said, frowning.

“No, get off, you–” Liu Ying stopped himself before he could mutter ‘you big oaf’, which would have so simply yet so easily revealed who he was to him.

Xu Qiang blinked at him in confusion, the hostility seemingly unfounded. But funnily enough, if he had known he were dealing with Liu Ying, he very well may have laughed at his misfortune or even stepped onto the hilt of the dagger to dig it in deeper.

“Don’t be stupid. You have an entire blade through your hand. Give it here.”

Liu Ying ignored him and instead yanked the dagger out himself in one swift, painful motion. He grit his teeth hard as blood began to flow freely from the wound.

“I suppose you won’t let me heal it either?” Xu Qiang scoffed.

With a shake of his head, Liu Ying used the dagger to cut a piece of cloth from the hem of his robe and wrapped it tightly around his palm several times before tying off the ends. Xu Qiang looked on with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance before walking off back towards Han Chuanli, muttering under his breath about stupid and heedless mortals. In reality, the wound was already beginning to heal, albeit slowly, but he couldn’t let anyone see it.

While Liu Ying and Xu Qiang had been going back and forth, Han Chuanli had made such quick work of Jielong that barely a ruckus had been made aside from the sound of harsh wind and the sound of her body being slammed around the ground. The deceased girl’s body was now lying on the ground on her back, eyes peacefully closed and an expulsion talisman pinned to her torso.

Liu Ying pushed himself up to his feet and looked on from a distance while the two gods mumbled between each other. He decided that was the perfect time to take his leave – while they were distracted.

As soon as he had his back turned, however, Han Chuanli called out to him, “Hey, wait! Can you tell us what happened?”

“Ask the old lady if you can catch her,” Liu Ying threw over his shoulder.

Han Chuanli said something else but he didn’t hear it – he was already walking quickly down the road, only then realizing how hard his heart was thumping in his chest. People were beginning to emerge from their homes cautiously, watching him hurry past with curious eyes. Surely, he was an odd sight with his robes all torn and bloodied. If he could just get away from all of the asking eyes, he could use some spiritual energy to clean himself up, if he even had any to spare…

A swirl of panic hit him right in the chest then. He needed to leave Ludong as quickly as possible, but on what spiritual energy? The disguise was already scraping what remained of his reserves. He could spend the night back in the shrine outside of the village but what if Han Chuanli and Xu Qiang came knocking after they asked around about him? Aside from that, Duan Baozhai was gone and the house down the hill was filled with corpses – he’d be a prime suspect straight away.

He had to run. That was his path of reason.

The night air was cool and crisp in his hair and it felt nice against his feverish, burning skin. Lack of spiritual energy always made it feel as though his veins were passing gravel through them and he knew that soon, it would force him to rest. Chasing the dark through a patch of woods behind the shrine he’d been in earlier, Liu Ying had originally intended to at least make it out of the region before morning, but he had sorely overestimated his capacity. It didn’t take long before he was falling to his hands and knees atop a scattering of grass and dirt, panting hard and vision darkening around the edges.

Weak… weak… weak.

The word was chanted in his mind even as he crumpled forward and lost consciousness.

----------------------------------------

Both the sound of a crackling flame and the smell of something being cooked made Liu Ying stir from where he laid.

For a moment, all he could do was blink tiredly at the wood fire a few feet away, gentle smoldering flames bright against the dark night. It was warm and comforting in the way that it reminded him of spending nights in the woods near the marsh by himself as a child. He would wait until his shizun had gone to sleep, and in the deep hours of the night, he would escape from his room and dash into the thick woods that surrounded the area, nothing but cold air and the freedom to be alone in his lungs. The fires he made always lulled him to sleep like they cradled him between the dancing flames and whispered little prayers in his ears.

It took a few fleeting seconds before Liu Ying realized that no, he was no longer a twelve-year-old budding cultivator finding solace from the rigor of everyday life, but when he did, he jolted.

His eyes swept across his surroundings as his brain tried to make sense of it all.

There was a figure dressed in pure white sitting on a log by the fire, holding out a stick that pierced a fish through the middle. It was a young man, likely no older than twenty-four or twenty-five. His hair was pulled up into a perfectly-placed ponytail, much unlike the lopsided one that Liu Ying wore that looked like he had taken a rock to the head. He was very handsome despite his plain features – each part of his face looked symmetrical and narrow, as though they’d been drawn on. His eyes were focused on grilling the fish evenly on both sides, although he spared Liu Ying a glance when he convulsed into an upright position.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

What the fuck? Who the fuck…?

He immediately looked down at himself, heart racing. Thankfully, he was still in his mortal form, telling by the tattered and bloodied robes he was still wearing. But how? He’d passed out from almost burning out the last of his spiritual reserves…

“You’re fine,” the man suddenly said, voice deep and clear, “I gave you a bit of healing bittercress extract. I hope you don’t mind – you looked like you’d been trampled.” He wore a barely-there smile at his own light jesting.

Liu Ying looked at him, still struggling to take in what was going on. “Thank you? But… Who the hell are you?”

“Chen Yun.”

“I hope you don’t expect your name to mean something to me.”

The man shrugged before extending the grilled fish towards him. “Not particularly, no. But you asked.”

Looking between the steaming fish and Chen Yun’s expectant gaze, Liu Ying almost refused it. Food and water stopped being a requirement for gods to consume upon ascension, as their digestive systems stopped operating. Instead, mortal sustenance was converted into small, temporary bouts of spiritual power halfway down the gullet. Many gods still indulged in food and drink, especially around celebratory periods, but Liu Ying was raised to not enjoy excess.

But this was different. He needed all of the spiritual energy he could get until he could high-tail it out of Ludong.

When he reached out to take the offering, Chen Yun looked slightly surprised for a moment before he averted his gaze back to the fire.

After a few bites of the crisp skin and white meat, Liu Ying asked, “Are you a cultivator?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“No,” he replied quickly, “What are you doing around here? The closest sect I know of is up north.”

Chen Yun nodded. “You’re right. I come down to Ludong once a month to see my younger brother.”

“It doesn’t really explain why you’re in the woods in the dead of night, helping a stranger.”

After a moment of silence, Chen Yun hummed, “Hm. I suppose it doesn’t.” He thoughtfully poked at the fire with a stick he found beside the log. “I arrived shortly following the demon attack on the village and found my brother outside of his house with his mother. He was very frazzled but safe, and he mentioned he’d been rescued by a young man in tatters and one sleeve longer than the other.”

Liu Ying frowned and looked down at his sleeves. “That kid was your brother? I mean, you look similar enough, but…”

“We have different mothers.”

“And… you purposely sought me out? For what? To thank me?”

“Aren’t you thinking very highly of yourself?” Chen Yun said, a teasing smile on his handsome face, “I sought you out because the old woman who’s suspected of causing the demonic possession is gone, and she needs to be brought to justice. I was wondering if you could help me find her. I have an ox and cart out by the road, and I think we can catch up with her if she’s on foot, which I’m led to believe she is.”

The smile that was on Chen Yun’s face made Liu Ying freeze for a moment. The way it curved, the way his eyes twinkled with mirth when he said those words, were strikingly familiar to him.

Who does he remind me of? It feels… strange.

Chen Yun must have taken his stunned silence for hesitance, because he then said, “I understand you don’t owe me any assistance. But the gods that had descended to take care of the demon are busy with removing traces of demonic qi where the murders took place, and the villagers seemed all too content with the outcome. This isn’t… sufficient for me. And while you protected the woman and my brother both from the demon, I can’t help but think that it isn’t sufficient for you either. She’ll go on to do this as long as she isn’t held responsible.”

“... I don’t have the faintest idea where she could have gone.”

“If I thought you did, I would have just asked. Chen Ning says you uncovered her treachery, so I can at least count on your powers of deduction.”

“I’m not a cultivator. I’ll just weigh you down.”

“You don’t look very heavy.”

Liu Ying stared at him, mouth agape as he searched for some other excuse. “You don’t know the first thing about me, and yet you’re asking me to accompany you. Aren’t you being heedless?”

“I know you can hold your own against a bloodthirsty demon. Is there more I need to know?” Chen Yun asked, raising a brow, “You’re allowed to say no, but you don’t seem to want to. Instead, you’re trying to give me reasons to change my mind. Just say no and I’ll pack up my things and go on my way.”

This man is presumptuous for someone who just missed a demon attack by a few minutes and now wants to make up for it, Liu Ying thought to himself with a bemused frown, Although, if Han Chuanli and Xu Qiang are still in the region, an ox and cart might be the quickest way out of here. We’ll find the batshit lady, I’ll let Chen Yun take things from there, and then I’ll cut him loose.

“I accept on the condition that I’m paid for my services.”

Chen Yun shrugged and fished a small drawstring pouch from his robes. “That’s fine. Half now, half later.”

Liu Ying watched with bright eyes as a shiny gold coin was pressed into his palm. It was more than he made for almost five full days of working at the docks or other small jobs. But something about it brought a question to his lips, which slipped faster than he could catch it, “Money doesn’t seem to be hard to come by for you, but your brother wears tatters no better looking than mine?”

Chen Yun was quiet for an extended moment before he reached down on the other side of the fire, where a small bamboo basket sat. He brandished a bunch of white cloth and tossed it at Liu Ying, where it fell into his lap in a heap.

“What should I call you?” he asked, completely ignoring his observation.

“Xiao Fan,” Liu Ying replied, naturally using his mortal name he’d made for himself.

He stretched the white cloth out in front of him – they were the same plain robes that Chen Yun was wearing. He stood to go change clothes behind a tree, thus not catching the look of perplexment on the cultivator’s face when he heard his name, which he then chuckled inaudibly at.

Liu Ying looked down at himself once he stripped off his tatters and replaced them with a fresh set of white cultivator robes. He took advantage of the fact that he was hidden behind the tree to use a spell to freshen himself up – rolling around in the dirt with a corpse left him feeling filthy, after all. The robes were too long on the limbs and hem but otherwise felt comfortable enough, and Chen Yun agreed once he emerged from behind the tree.

“A bit too long, but as long as you can move freely, it should be fine.”

The fire continued to gently crackle and burn between them. Chen Yun’s eyes stopped sweeping over his form and landed on his face, lingering for just a few seconds too long. Liu Ying averted his gaze quickly, embarrassed to be staring back.

“Yes… Uh, thank you, for the change of clothes,” he said awkwardly, smoothing down the front of his robes for lack of anything better to do with his hands at that moment.

Chen Yun also moved his gaze away and back towards the fire, something solemn creeping into his eyes and a slight frown forming on his lips. “You should rest until daybreak in a few hours. We can’t stay too long, not that I don’t think we can’t catch up to an elderly woman.”

Liu Ying decided not to mention that the elderly woman was, in fact, faster than him. Instead, he wordlessly laid down by the fire, arm propped up to support his head, and let the dancing flames rock him to sleep.