Qing Shen was currently panicking more than she could feasibly hide. The hands that were holding onto the hastily breathing Li Ling had instead reached towards the guandao on her back, holding it as if to buffer the giant flaming tiger staring at them. Talismans had been scattered on the floor from her fumbling attempts at releasing her weapon, and they were now drifting closer to the dying inferno nearby.

Qing Shen had heard horror stories and all sorts of cautionary tales of Corrupted Beasts eating misbehaving children. It was the fear of their unknown prowess, and seemingly terrifying abilities, that was the catalyst for Qing Shen wanting to become an unstoppable immortal. Now, sitting feebly in front of the blazing tiger, she felt that everything she had heard was all too insignificant of a warning when compared to the real thing.

The beast radiated oppressive strength with each simple step, and Qing Shen was forcing her body to stop its trembling. It felt like her entire soul was being yanked out from the close proximity to the beast even when they were a couple chi away from it.

The tiger had simply been staring at them, daring them to move, as it continued to swallow the now placid flames. Qing Shen felt that it only needed a brief moment for it to cross over to them and end them in an instant.

Her terror was slowly beginning to override her grasp of the area, and her mind was whirling about in order to try and save herself. In this dangerous situation, her panic was slowly leading to an end that there was no escape from.

Then, Qing Shen was startled by someone grabbing her arm. Li Ling had gotten lucid enough to finally move about, and had knowingly seen the predator stalking in front of them. What Qing Shen didn't expect was the fragile smile that held her face together.

"Go, Sister Shen…" Emotion choked her up for a second. "I'll… hold it off; you go get help. You're much faster than me here, so I won't have to hold on for long."

Qing Shen's mentality was slowly crumbling. She could only endure so much. Her roiling emotions accidentally caused her to brush up against a shield talisman, and her eyes burned as a wave of blue grain glowed brightly in front of her.

Sadly, the shield attracted the attention of the Corrupted Beast. It easily crossed the distance that separated them in only seconds, warm air billowing with each breath that it took. Qing Shen's heart jump into her throat as the large tiger seemed to study the bright blue sphere that currently surrounded them.

Then it raised a curious paw, tapping the shield as if it were some toy it had just found. When its claws came into contact, the blue grains were then torn apart by the the orange veins that surrounded it. Qing Shen slowly began to realize that the blue grains were most probably Spiritual Essence, and that those orange veins were whatever Corrupted Beasts used.

She only lamented that it didn't help her immediately.

As the tiger drew closer, a thought came to her when the feeling of her strength leaving her became stronger. She quickly pulled her Spiritual Essence as close to herself as possible, and the feelings of terror and weakness were abruptly alleviated. Her inner turmoil hurriedly feld as her thoughts slowly became clearer. Qing Shen knew she needed to act fast.

The tiger was curiously poking around the disintegrating barrier of Essence, and was distracted for a moment. Li Ling was slowly going into shock as the Corrupted Beast's orange veins were sucking the blue grains of Spiritual Essence from her faster than Qing Shen knew what to do about it.

Thinking on her feet, Qing Shen slapped another shield talisman down, and the tiger jumped back at the sudden intrusion like a startled kitten. If it wasn't such a dangerous situation, she might have marveled at how such a creature looked cute for a second.

Using the distraction, she took Li Ling into her arms, and ran off in the opposite direction of the corrupted beast while occasionally slapping down a shield talisman every few paces till she ran out, hoping to distract the beast for just a few seconds longer.

Li Ling was weakly struggling in Qing Shen's arms, her voice squeaking for every twig or root her carrier stumbled over, "Sister Shen… stop… please just go."

"Hush you, that's just whatever that monster is doing to affect you. You need to hold your Spiritual Essence in. Can you understand me, Li Ling?" Qing Shen responded, listening as trees were toppling ever closer to them. The ground vibrated as a roar caused the trees nearby to rattle incessantly. Li Ling just pleaded for her to leave her again.

Qing Shen was slowly growing to her wits end as more and more leaves drifted down from shaking branches. Her plan to have Li Ling run away while she held the Corrupted Beast back was slowly crumbling so long as her friend couldn't think past the fear that the beast instilled. The growling nearby wasn't helping her state of mind either, and she could only hold her Essence closer to herself.

The technique that she was unknowingly using to stop her Spiritual Essence from being swallowed by the corrupted beast was something she hadn't ever tried before. As such, her skill with it was rather abysmal, and it had the extra consequence of making her unable to further strengthen her body with Spiritual Essence. Adding to the fact that she had no more talismans that could hopefully distract her pursuer without directly fighting it, Qing Shen was disliking her odds of running away with her friend. 

After a brief second of thought, Qing Shen finally came to a decision. She only had to distract the beast away so that Li Ling could get better having left the area that the Corrupted Beast affected. Killing the thing might be possible, but getting her friend out of the fight was her top priority.

"I don't suppose you brought those lightning and cutting talismans that you told me about, right?" Qing Shen joked to her black haired friend. Li Ling groaned form her place on the ground.

"Right, I asked for too much…" Qing Shen's gaze trailed to the treeline, watching as a few fell to something traveling nearby. "When you can think straight again run back to the villa and get help. I'll be able to hold it off much better than you. Also… if I don't make it back... thanks for being my friend, Li Ling."

Qing Shen took off the next second. Packs on her hips were stocked with all the talismans she had ignored before as well as the ones that she had liberated from her friend. She had left some back with Li Ling just in case the girl was attacked on her way back, but had taken the rest. The cuts on her body were no longer bleeding, and the large gash on her thigh from the previous fight had gotten a fresh set of bandages. Her guandao hung limply on her back, its blade glinting in a shimmer of red from the uncleaned blood of the wolves from earlier.

Her charge took her to the fire tiger in only a few moments. The creature was rather distinctive with aurora of orange veins that glowed vehemently in the dark forest. The trail of fire on its spine flicked dangerously close to a few low hanging branches, but it seemed to bend out of the way in order to avoid spreading the fire. Baleful orange eyes locked onto her form the second she had appeared before it, anger straining them into thin slits. It growled, sending trails of acrid smoke from between its teeth, before sniffing the air.

Horrified, Qing Shen realized that it was looking for Li Ling as well.

"I'm right here!" Qing Shen had heard about how the Corrupted Beasts were intelligent to some degree, and hoped this would work. "And you won't get past me, you… stupid kitten!"

Qing Shen wanted to apologize right away for that horrible insult until she felt the intense glare of the tiger on her. She honestly didn't expect that to work, but wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Quickly, she grabbed her guandao and readied it in front of her. Her blue eyes locked onto every move the beast made to carry out that objective.

The tiger slowly circled around her, as if finally assessing her as a threat. Qing Shen could finally think through the fear aura that seemed to radiate due to her little trick, and could subtly tell that its strength was above hers, though only barely.

It meant that she needed to fight it while also maintaining her hold on her Essence, but at the same time, the beast probably wouldn't kill her in seconds. A small hope. 

Both of them shot into movement at some unknown signal. Qing Shen had dived behind a nearby tree before the tiger shot through it like it was only a minor obstacle, narrowly missing her as she had ducked low when it lost sight of her. Using the brief distraction of the pulverized tree, Qing Shen swung her guandao towards the beast.

The blade struck true, its edge slamming into the underside of the tiger's coat. However, it didn't bite deep into the soft tissue like it had with the wolves. Instead, the weapon rattled fiercely as if it had struck a large slab of iron.

Qing Shen bit her lips, keeping her hands held tightly to her weapon as the pain from the recoil subsided. She hadn't expected to kill it with that attack, but had hoped that she would at least do something other than cut a small red line into its hide. The cut didn't even bleed!

Qing Shen then gaped as the tiger, still in the air, spun and slammed its hind legs on a nearby tree, breaking it in the process. It then used that recoil to slam its front paws into the ground, causing a tremor to expand from the impact. 

The girl was then forced to dodge as rocks, flaming sticks and steaming gravel were sent careening her way from the impact. 

While in the process of dodging, Qing Shen caught small, orange threads spreading from the tiger's paws to underneath her body. Without a moment to spare, she dove out of the way as the spot she stood on began to glow before a pillar of fire burst forth from underneath the ground. 

A few trees caught on fire from the attack, and Qing Shen watched as the tiger hurriedly rose to swallow the growing flames. Qing Shen paused momentarily to watch, realizing that it had done that with the forest fire she had created earlier. Then, a plan formed in her head. 

"Hey, big baby kitten! Your fire is weaker than a candle!" Qing Shen taunted once again, hiding a cringe as she hoped no one ever heard her insults. Her words still gathered their intended results of causing the tiger to face her with murder in its eyes. However, it quickly returned to finishing off the dying embers around it, as if she was only a minor annoyance.

Qing Shen decided that she wanted to prove it horribly wrong.

The blonde's smile brightened as she drew a couple fireball talismans in one hand. With a tiny flex of her withheld Essence, the talismans in her hands activated, sending fireballs haphazardly around the area. In an instant, the forest blazed into a new inferno as the tiger jumped up and into it, trying to put out the fire to what Qing Shen now assumed was its home. Qing Shen shot into motion, not even questioning why a tiger that looked like it was made of fire would be living in a forest.

Heat licked at her exposed skin, causing large red burns to begin appearing despite not even toughing the fire. A couple strands of her hair caught aflame, burning her as she ran through the pain. Her eyes watered, and Qing Shen dived through a large curtain a flame, stifling a yell as she patted out a patch of fire that caught on her shirt. With her last suicidal maneuver, she found the large cat sucking down the flames around it as quickly as possible. In a hurry to get out of the sweltering heat, Qing Shen slapped an armed explosion talisman on the side opposite of her weapon's edge as she neared the frantic beast.

"One… Two…" Qing Shen counted the time for the talisman to blow. The tiger was too preoccupied to notice the girl that had decided to run through the fire, sustaining serious burns and causing parts of their clothing to catch alight. "Three!"

With the final countdown, the talisman blew and Qing Shen's guandao shot forward with a speed that she couldn't hope to muster even at her strongest. The blade sank into the base where the its tail connected to its backside. There was a little resistance before her blade passed through, Slamming into the ground so hard that Qing Shen had to grit her teeth. 

A moment later, its tail thumped onto the ground next to her, and the beast gave out a roar that was more a mewl of pain. 

Using the moment that the beast roared, Qing Shen hurriedly activated and slapped down most of her explosive talismans along the beast's side, right over the small cut she had previously given it. However, in her haste, the girl didn't see the blind swipe that the beast had sent out.

In the second before her guts were ripped out, Qing Shen flooded her body with Spiritual Essence as she tried not to focus on the sheer fear and weakness that flooded her. Her feet pushed off the ground, and the blonde was sent carrening through the air with four bloody furrows that cut deep instead of having been eviscerated.

Still, the force of the blow, along with her timely instincts, caused her to fly uncontrollably with enough speed to blow through the first tree that stood in her flight. Wood shattered again as her back slammed painfully into another tree, sending hammers of pain to echo into her chest. Through the blood thundering in her ears, Qing Shen barely caught the explosion that blasted from where she previously was, signalling that her talismans had been a success. 

Slumped at the base of the tree that stopped her, Qing Shen coughed, feeling air try to enter her lungs. Blood filtered through her teeth as she gasped in pain, knowing that she would have broken her back had she not used Spiritual Essence when she had. Through misty eyes, she could see the forest fire slowly losing its fuel, dying down to occasional plumes of cascading embers.

She grimaced in the direction that she had been sent from; her eyes tracing through the tree that had been snapped in half on her flight. Blearily running through her memories, she had heard the huge blast that was the explosion talismans she had stuck earlier, and desperately hoped that her last attack that dealt the final blow.

After a few silent moments of stifled, hoarse breathing, Qing Shen began to patch up the profusely bleeding gashes on her stomach that were added to her growing plethora of wounds. She took a roll of fresh bandages she had taken from Li Ling earlier, and decided that she would bring more supplies next time she went out.

Her plans and wrappings were interrupted as the earth trembled beneath her. Realization caught up to her before her eyes caught the signs of orange lines spreading out under her, and she took off despite the pain that lanced through her. The previous resting place that she had taken to erupted in a large gout of angry red flame that burst forth from the earth, sending steaming soil and flaming twigs everywhere.

"Can't you wait a couple minutes…" Qing Shen moaned.

Her now mortal enemy stalked unsteadily from between the growing flames that now were growing around each step it took. She watched as the orange veins around its paws glowed without end, its path illuminated by uncaring embers that lashed out at anything flammable nearby. The forest around it suffered in the Corrupted Beast's rage as blood pooled in small streams from a large wound on its underside that sometimes caused small fires of their own, telling Qing Shen that its blood was as hot as the flames around it. Whatever reason it had for protecting the forest now was long gone and replaced with pure anger directed at Qing Shen.

Feeling fear and weakness beginning to set in, Qing Shen quickly pushed her Essence down before she jumped aside again. The moment she left, the ground burst apart as a pillar of flame shot into the sky again. She was forced to then duck, pushing her chest to the warm soil as the tiger pounced at her. Burning claws just tickled her back as it passed overhead.

She quickly shot up and stumbled as fast as she could in the opposite direction of the anger fueled fire tiger. Her eyes caught the line of orange forming under her feet, and she was forced to hurriedly limp away from another pillar of fire. Her blue eyes glanced behind her as the tiger spin around to chase after her. Due to its lost tail, the action was no longer as smooth, but it still managed to turn faster than anything its size should be able to.

Qing Shen knew she had to fight. She couldn't keep running as her vision was beginning to blur and her limbs were slowly starting to becoming weaker, and she was sure that she wouldn't win out in a battle of attrition against the enraged beast. The constant forest fire that inevitably surrounded the tiger as it chased her was also making it increasingly hard for her to dodge around in without risking serious burns. Counting how many more explosive talismans she had, Qing Shen quickly formulated a plan in her head.

Bouncing on her feet, Qing Shen spun around a couple of trees as her pursuer blasted past her in a reckless charge, smashing through the trees in its path. A grin pressed into her face as she weaved between a couple more trees, causing the tiger to bash through a few more to get to her. The distance between them lengthened for a bit. It was subtle, but it slowing down from crashing through so many solid trees.

Still, her own body slowing down faster, and Qing Shen hadn't even attacked back yet. In the two life or death fights she had been in, including this one, she had learned that acting rashly would get her injured badly. As such, she just kept weaving circles around the angered Corrupted Beast that continued charging through more vegetation. Every once in awhile it would send one of its fire pillars underneath her, but since they had a long activation time, and she could identify them with Essence Vision, Qing Shen could easily dodge them. The only worrying thing was the growing fire that was now surrounding them.

However, instead of feeling stifled by the growing flames, Qing Shen dashed through a low curtain of flame into a clearing that was rife with depressions where trees were forcefully uprooted, and grinned as she saw that there was barely anything to catch fire in the small area she had cleared with the help of an angered tiger. Her adversary limped into the clearing as well, glaring at her with uncontained hatred. The fire that normally trailed after it was failing to catch onto the dirt, charred bark and burnt twigs nearby. Then came the moment of truth as Qing Shen watched the beast square up against her in the fireless clearing instead of running off and attacking with those fire pillars whilst it hid in the forest fire.

She gripped her guandao so hard that her knuckles turned white, and realized that now was the time to fight back.

Both of them breathed in harsh, hurried gasps, studying each other to find some mortal weakness that they could exploit. The final conclusion to their struggle was finally coming to a close, and the first to act was the Corrupted Beast.

The orange veins around its throat and mouth began to glow brighter, and before Qing Shen knew what it was going to do, it opened its jaws. She barely had a moment to get out of the way before a stream of liquid flame burst forth like a streaming river.

Fire curled around the edges of the attack as Qing Shen hurriedly ran to get out of the way. Behind her, the liquid flame cut deep into the earth below, burning anything that it came in contact with to ashes. Its head followed Qing Shen, the stream of fire edging dangrously close to the girl as she desperately hoped that the attack ran out before her legs did.

Finally, Qing Shen felt the heat behind her cut off. Her head swiveled to her opponent, finding that the tiger just sat there, exhausted. Even the orange veins surrounding its body were barely glowing anymore.

Not even caring for the fires that caught onto her clothes, Qing Shen rushed the tiger as fast as she could. It tried to move. Each of its once mighty paws dug into the loose soil, desperately trying to get away from Qing Shen to recover its spent energy, but it was too late.

She had already arrived.

An explosion talisman was placed on her guandao in the instant she caught up to it, and Qing Shen timed her swing so that it set off at the apex. The blast sent the blade into the back leg of the tiger. This time the edge only reached partway into its flesh, creating a sizable wound, but it still wasn't that great.

However, the damage she had caused wasn't on her mind, Qing Shen was too busy with dodging the retaliatory swipe to even care for how effective her attacks were. She was slowly growing into a trance that was spurred by her blood loss, instincts, and cultivating talent. Her movements were becoming more streamlined, more effective.

With a thought, she stuck close to the body of the beast, feeling the scorching fur that threated to burn her as she slapped another explosion talisman on her guandao. After her attack finished, another angry, red line would appear on the tiger's hide before beginning to bleed. Sometimes, the girl would just forego using her previous explosion talimans, and instead just attacked the beast as a fient, scoring a dozen weaker blows before finally causing one to bleed. It would attack like she expected only to once again come up short as she rolled, ducked, dived and threw herself out of the way.

Like a rotating cycle, she continued her assault while under her trance. Her eyes wandered along the orange veins that surrounded the beast, and she somehow felt that they represented something. A system of sorts. It too was a continuous cycle that repeated on a different energy source. In that moment, an epiphany came to her.

Qing Shen felt her Meridians throb as the thought struck her. Spiritual Essence roiled inside her, cycling relentlessly in an effort to copy the veins it saw on the tiger.

Normally, when one wanted to step through the threshold of the Cycling Essence stage they must achieve some epiphany, or revelation, to understand the process of the next stage as well as having Spiritual Essence in excess. Qing Shen had been holding her Spiritual Essence back for most of the fight, for fear of her Spiritual Essence leaving her and making her weak, and she already had above average amount of Essence in her body from submerging herself into the overflow of Spiritual Essence two weeks earlier. Just now, she had finally understood the concepts needed to full realize what one must do when putting their Essence into a cycle.

All her Meridians thrummed, each one pulling a bit of Spritual Essence through them before handing it off to the next one. Before, in the Meridains Opening stage, all she had to do was open each of the veins, allowing Essence to flow through them to strengthen them.

However, the Cycling Essence stage built off of that. Each Meridian could contain Essence, but they could do so much more. A single grain of Spiritual Essence would flow through one Meridian before passing onto the next one, yet that grain would become more condensed, more refined. Finally, when it passed through every single Meridian, that single grain of Essence inside would be worth more that a hundred of its single parts. Soon, every single grain would be pulled into this circulatory flow, multiplying the effectiveness of a Cultivator.

When a single cycle was complete, a cultivator could safely say they reached the early step of the Cycling Essence stage.

And with the sudden breakthrough, Qing Shen's movements grew more assured, and the Corrupted Beast could only cry out in pain as soon her regular attacks were adding deeper cuts to its once pristine skin. It tried to stop her, sending wild swipes in every direction before sending more of its orange energy below. However, Qing Shen easily avoided them as her eyes caught sight of what it was planning.

She hurriedly leaped back as a much larger pillar of fire burst forth, surrounding the beast in itself own explosion. Qing Shen was forced to cover her face as debris swirled around the clearing. Her attention taken suddenly as the blade from her guandao finally broke under the continuous explosions that it sustained.

Then, she had to leap away as another gout of liquid fire streamed forth from within the cloud of debris. Her eyes caught that nearly all the orange veins within the debris were all dull except ones where the flame was coming from.

She kept an eye on its position as she dove away once again from the scorching hot flame, and groaned as she saw the tiger had decided to start spinning, causing the gout of fire to trace the entirity of the clearing. The liquid flame digging a series of trenches as it passed by her several times. For a few terrifying seconds, Qing Shen found her back pressed closer to the forest fire that wasn't dying out around their arena as the attack gored into the dirt nearby, and was only saved when the stream of flame ended.

She held her breath, as if waiting for the signal that some other attack was going to come. In an instant, her worries were rewarded as her eyes caught the fact that there were lines of orange spreading underneath the entire clearing, like a terrifyingly slow parasite.

"I really don't like you." Qing Shen glared at the origin of the lines as she hurriedly ran towards the center where an extremely injured tiger lay. Blood pooled below it, dribbling out of the multitude of wounds that crisscrossed over the entire beast's body. Its orange eyes bored into her with an unprecedented rage that screamed that it would try to kill itself in an effort to kill her.

Her mind whirled on how to save the situation, and she came to the solution that she had to kill it faster than it killed her. A simple strategy. Still, it looked like it was putting all of its orange energy into its attack; as its orange veins surrounding it were slowly winking out of existence, like they never existed in the first place.

On an insane thought, Qing Shen limped towards the tiger, staring into its eyes. It didn't even flinch as she approached, but it hadn't moved at all, either. 

Qing Shen knew that, even with her new strength, she wouldn't be able to pierce deep enough to kill it in one shot, so she improvised. She drew out the last of her explosive talismans, wrapped them around the sharp stick that was what was left of her guandao, and kicked the tiger in the eye. And as the tiger opened its maw to roar in pain, Qing Shen had already armed the talismans only to shove the stake into its open jaws.

"I'm too expensive for you to kill." Qing Shen announced while remembering the conversation she once had with Li Ling's mom. Whether it was her life, Li Ling's or Zhang Yong's, she intended to fight for them.

"One…" She began as the tiger gagged on her weapon, trying to take out the obstruction to its throat. Without looking back, Qing Shen ran towards the lowest flames that surrounded the clearing. They were still dangerously high, and undoubtedly hot, but Qing Shen paid that no mind in the moment.

"Two…" Qing Shen whispered as she brought out the Spiritual Essence that she had held close. She shielded her body with her arms and legs as she jumped through the fire, briefly seeing dull blue veins surround her right before she closed her eyes.

Qing Shen didn't finish counting before two blasts rang out simultaneously. The first was muffled, as if something was in the way before it blew. It was the next one that rattled the surroundings so much that she felt her teeth shake, and then a huge pillar of fire spiraled at least a li into the sky. Its blast sent earth, trees, and a stifling heat everywhere in a wave of unparalleled power.

Her body floated for a moment, caught within the blast. She felt like she was flying, but dared not to open her eyes as debris pelted across her form. Finally, she felt her body land. A painful crash forced her to gasp out in pain as her injuries opened up again, and she rolled for a few seconds until she finally stopped.

When her eyelids finally cracked open, Qing Shen didn't know if she had passed out at some point, but she didn't feel like moving from her spot, half covered by dirt and charred twigs. Her tired eyes, however, locked onto the angel that had come to rescue her after all the hard work was done. His brown eyes and short hair were fuzzy in her blurry vision, and what she thought was a proud smile currently spread on his face.

"You look like you had fun." He remarked as Qing Shen realized that she had been grinning the entire time she had lay there.

She huffed, knowing that maybe she had a little fun, despite almost dying. Her mind quickly came up with the only worry she currently had, "Li Ling?"

"Other than trying to come back here and get you, Miss Ling is fine. Though she is a quite a bit... indisposed, at the moment. She had sprinted all the way back to the villa despite being already exhausted and wounded. You're lucky I had giant pillars of fire to find you, or else you would've been here for awhile." Zhang Yong said.

Qing Shen just grunted, hoping that counted as an answer. Then she fell asleep, knowing that she would be safe so long as Zhang Yong was there.