Grass. Blue skies. Warm sunlight on her skin.

Qian Shanyi blinked in confusion. What was she doing? She was in Wang Yonghao’s world fragment… Last thing she remembered, they’ve just come back from stealing the paleworm queens. Did she zone out?

“Thank you,” a quiet female voice said behind her. Qian Shanyi spun around, and saw a naked woman, kneeling on the grass right next to her, her head angled in a small, deferential bow. She was blushing a bit, covering herself up. “I am much better now.”

“Who are you?” Qian Shanyi asked suspiciously, taking two steps back. Her hand dropped on the pommel of her sword. If the spiritual energy flow was any indication, this woman was an ordinary person, but then what in netherworld’s name would she be doing here? She’d sooner believe one of Wang Yonghao’s swords acquired sentience.

“You left a note,” the woman said, pointing towards a small triangular envelope on the ground. Qian Shanyi picked it up warily, surprised to see her own handwriting on the front.

She didn’t remember writing any of this.

The woman made to stand up. “Stop,” Qian Shanyi ordered. Something was really, really wrong here. She felt like someone had put her through a mincer, for all that her body was fine.

Where was Wang Yonghao?

“I’ll just dress -”

“No,” Qian Shanyi cut her off sharply. “Sit down and don’t move. I am not letting you out of my sight until I know what is going on.”

The world fragment was plenty warm, in any case, clothes or not.

She focused back on the envelope. A seal on the front, with ink and glowing dust, probably made with the Crushing Glance of the Netherworld. Whomever wrote this clearly didn’t want others messing with the contents. Or wanted her to think the contents were not messed with.

She pulled it apart, careful to note the construction, watching out for any signs of tempering. Inside were three sheets of neat handwriting. Her handwriting. They were also sealed together, just like they used to bind documents back in her sect.

A word on the first page caught her eye, and she immediately pulled out her sword and retreated another five steps.

Kitsune.

The naked woman didn’t move from where she was sitting, eyeing Qian Shanyi’s sword with weary resignation. Qian Shanyi breathed out, and kept reading, keeping one eye out.

The notes were really concise, covering a day she couldn’t recall - only it should have been two days, one here, and one on the outside, if the written schedule was any indication. She had to guess at some parts, novel symbols and characters she presumably invented on the spot to write faster, as was her habit. A character in a circle probably meant name or title, for a person or a sect - either the first one, 王 for Wang Yonghao, or cobbled together from the entire thing. There were arrows between different lines, where she did not want to write the same thing twice, and references to other notes she couldn’t recall.

Deal signed 9SV, 10/50% -> 436SS + C./3Mo.

Nine Singing Vessels, something for over four hundred spirit stones, plus some kind of commission? Based on the price, perhaps I sold them our tribulation materials. With any luck, I’d have it all on paper somewhere.

Assuming any of this was real, in any case.

“Where is Yonghao?” she asked, skipping to the end of the notes. Allegedly she tricked a spirit hunter into chasing down a false lead, had a fight with this kitsune, and then, for some bizarre reason, decided to let an actual spiritophage feast on her soul.

“You told him to stay upstairs,” Linghui Mei said, “in case someone else came by.”

Plausible, I suppose.

The trouble was that ‘her’ notes only included facts and decisions, not the reasoning she supposedly used to derive them. It made it difficult to truly verify she was the one who came up with any of this. Some of the things she supposedly did sounded asinine on the surface, but almost any decision was reasonable in some circumstances.

And the one person whose memories were supposed to stay intact was absent.

The ache all over her body must have been her soul, a dull, vibrating feeling with no real source, but incredibly distracting. Her spiritual energy was a bit low, too - consistent with this supposed fight.

What she wanted was to investigate her soul, make sure there was no irreparable damage, but that would take so much of her concentration she’d be left all but defenseless. Unthinkable.

“Start talking,” she said, putting away ‘her’ notes once she read through them twice. “What happened? Who are you?”

Linghui Mei spoke, her tone halting and anxious, eyes flickering between Qian Shanyi’s face and her sword. Her eyes looked guilty, some shame bubbling forth. Pretending or actual? Impossible to say.

“I promised you we’d develop a new recirculation law for you?” Qian Shanyi interrupted her tale.

“You did, yes,” Linghui Mei nodded, swallowing anxiously, “is it…not in your notes?”

Qian Shanyi narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why do you ask? If you ate my memories, you would already know.”

Linghui Mei scowled, then bit her lip, swallowing her first response. Or pretending to do so. “It… doesn’t work like that,” she shook her head slightly. “I only get impressions, tendencies. Names, if they are on the mind often. Not words or specific pictures. I do not know what you wrote.”

Convenient. If she isn’t lying.

“It is in my notes,” Qian Shanyi finally admitted. “I don’t trust them.”

The notes were very well made, and certainly seemed to have been written by her own hand - but that did not mean by her own will. It was entirely plausible she was threatened into it - there were no signs she would have left for herself if that was the case, no hidden code among the characters, but if Linghui Mei could eat memories, all the codes she knew might well have been compromised. On top of that, there were those legends that kitsune could subvert minds directly. She could hardly trust her own writings blindly.

“Now speak, I need details,” Qian Shanyi prompted, gesturing with her sword. “What exactly did I promise?”

Linghui Mei’s eyes stayed glued to the sword tip. Smart. “You… didn’t give details. Just said you would teach me to cultivate, help develop a recirculation law, so that I won’t have to consume souls anymore.”

“Ridiculous,” Qian Shanyi scoffed. “I would have never promised that.”

Entire sects spent decades working on developing new spiritual energy recirculation laws. And the three of them were going to develop a new one from scratch? One that fixed an unprecedented problem in someone’s constitution?

“But…you did,” Linghui Mei said uncertainly.

Qian Shanyi pursed her lips. This line of questioning had no future. “And then I let you feed on me? Why?”

“You didn’t want to, at first,” Linghui Mei said, looking away. “I was dying quickly. We spoke about my children. Then you changed your mind.”

“Why?”

“How should I know why?” Linghui Mei finally snapped at her. “I eat souls, I do not read them like a book. Your soul tasted of sweet hope, with a bit of bitter guilt. That is all.”

“Answer the implied question, spirit,” Qian Shanyi said coldly. “What did I say, how did I supposedly justify this baffling decision?”

“You said I had the mindset to be a cultivator,” Linghui Mei said, spitting out the last word with a mixture of fury, shame and yet more guilt. “You said… ‘To cultivate is to spit in the face of death, and so you will not die today,’ or something like that.”

Qian Shanyi narrowed her eyes further. That did sound like something she would say… Or was it what someone who read her memories would decide she would say?

She glanced down at her notes. At the top, in bigger characters, was written “You’d be suspicious. Don’t kill the kitsune.”

If you didn’t want me to be suspicious, past me, where are the answers to all the questions I have?

She idly tapped her sword against her own shoulder, contemplating the situation. Admittedly, the nature of knowledge was such that every question usually led to three more. Not having all the answers might not necessarily be a warning sign.

All things considered, she saw no glaring loopholes in the story or her notes, and this ‘Linghui Mei’ did not seem like a great actor either. So suppose it was the truth, or some version of it. What did that leave? Either things were entirely as described, or perhaps the kitsune had manipulated her past self, for one reason or another. She could imagine some circumstances where she could even decide to lie to herself.

She needed more information. What didn’t her past self write about?

“Go, put something on,” she said after ten seconds of deliberation, “And while you do, tell me more about your abilities. How often do you need to feed? Do cultivators differ from ordinary people, men from women? What else do you eat - my notes simply say ‘meat’, which is unhelpful. Meat cooked how?”

“Just raw meat,” Linghui Mei grumbled, with a hint of something Qian Shanyi couldn’t discern. She got up off the grass, and headed towards their hut. Qian Shanyi followed, still keeping some distance. “And I don’t need to feed on souls that often. More often when I change forms, or use qi. If I don’t, rarely.”

“I need numbers, spirit, ones I can plan around. Once a day? Once a week?”

Linghui Mei didn’t respond. Qian Shanyi gave her ten seconds, before repeating her question. “Just let me dress first,” the kitsune snapped at her, disappearing into the hut.

Qian Shanyi let her be. Perhaps keeping her naked on the grass, held at swordpoint wasn’t a good start to negotiations, but needs must.

Linghui Mei came out a minute later, dressed in one of their spare cultivator robes. They were tied up wrong, clearly by someone not used to this form of dress. “What does it matter, anyways?” Linghui Mei said, looking away. “I am the one who needs to feed. I’ll tell you when I am hungry.”

“You are being cagey,” Qian Shanyi said, pursing her lips. “Why?”

“Because I tell you, and then you tell someone else, and then the next thing I know spirit hunters are that much better at finding us,” Linghui Mei said, glaring at her. “My secrets are the secrets of every jiuweihu. You expect me to betray them just because you saved my life?”

That was… not an unreasonable concern.

Did she care?

“Are you blind?” Qian Shanyi said flatly. “Look around you. Half the sects would carve us up just to get their hands on this world fragment. We know how to keep secrets. Now speak.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll assume you need to feed frequently enough that me and Yonghao couldn’t supply you alone, no matter how we twisted ourselves up,” Qian Shanyi said, and paused for emphasis. “Then I would chop your head off.”

Linghui Mei looked at her with hurt in her eyes. “I thought you were different from other cultivators. But as soon as I say no, you threaten to slaughter me like a pig.”

“Cut the nonsense,” Qian Shanyi snapped. Her soul ached more, and she wasn’t in the mood for these emotional mind games. Especially not with her as the mark. “You don’t get to keep secrets if I have to lie to thrice-damned spirit hunters to hide you. I am not even asking you where you find your victims, no matter how much I want to know - just how often we have to feed you.”

Linghui Mei looked away guiltily. Qian Shanyi tapped her sword against her own shoulder again, calmly waiting for a decision. If her notes were to be believed, she had nothing to fear from a fight, as long as she kept her distance - and if they weren’t to be believed, then peace wasn’t feasible in the first place.

“It depends on how much I take,” Linghui Mei finally said quietly, sitting down in the doorway of their hut, supporting her head with both hands, elbows on her knees, tucked in. Qian Shanyi paced in a semicircle around her. “And I try to take as little as possible. Never from the same person twice, lest they feel ill, go to a healer. I took much more from you than normal. Usually, I feed only once or twice a week.”

Like squeezing water from a stone.

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“How long does it take for their soul to fully recover?”

Linghui Mei bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said warily. “My mother said if you drain the same person a lot, they get holes in their memory. Not just recent things, but way in the past. Take even more, they might forget how to write, speak, or walk. It’s too noticeable, so we never do it, if we have a choice.”

This was the critical question, in the end. How many people did the kitsune need to rotate between in order to be sustainably fed, without permanently harming those involved? If it was one, Yonghao could manage it alone. If it was two, Shanyi could perhaps chip in, if she could be convinced of Linghui Mei’s good intentions. If it was three…

“Cultivators taste so much better than ordinary people,” Linghui Mei continued, with some pleading in her voice. “So much more filling. It feels like even a single one should last me years, but after only a couple months, I get hungry again. I’ve never left one alive before, but…”

“You are saying that cultivator souls are more nutritious,” Qian Shanyi said, catching on to the meaning. “Perhaps. We should also recover quicker, and the rich spiritual energy here should help significantly. I suppose we will just have to try and see if we can make it work.”

“And if we…can’t?”

“Then you die,” Qian Shanyi said calmly. Best to be open about this right from the outset. “We will try other options first, obviously. Letting Yonghao recover in here while you spend a day on the outside should help, for example. Or perhaps you could derive the same form of nutrition from demon beast cores. But I won’t let you go on feeding on ordinary people. Not without their consent, not when you can’t even guarantee they aren’t harmed in the process.”

“Please. They always recover,” Linghui Mei said with conviction in her voice, “they wouldn’t even know.”

Sure of the facts, or trying to convince herself?

“With respect,” Qian Shanyi responded, “you have neither the skills nor the opportunity to diagnose long term soul damage. If you were clever - and you’d have to be, to survive this long - you’d avoid any contact with the people you fed on. At best, you’d observe them from a distance. Your statement can’t be anything but a guess. An educated one, perhaps, but still a guess.”

Linghui Mei bristled. “This is not my guess, this is the knowledge of all jiuweihu. It goes back generations!”

Qian Shanyi shook her head sadly. “We cultivators have a long history of knowledge that was assumed to be true for hundreds of years -”

“You cultivators have a long history of thoughtless slaughter!”

“- and the reformation had shown it was simply never reliable enough. Unless you will tell me there are kitsune that have managed to conduct long term studies?”

Linghui Mei did not respond, simply glaring at her more. Qian Shanyi shrugged. “You cannot. I’ll study what you did to my soul once Yonghao comes back. And if it will take me many months to recover… You would have three options. Starvation, poison, or going to the Empire, in the open, and hoping they could help you in ways we cannot. Perhaps they would agree, especially if we swore to your trustworthiness. Ever since the reformation, making peace where we can has been a core purpose - and there is plenty of precedent.”

“To think I trusted you two,” Linghui Mei said bitterly, springing up on her feet and out of the hut. “You said I could always just leave. Just another lie, was it?”

“I have no idea what past me had said to you. Your life is not worth more than that of other people.”

“They are fine,” Linghui Mei growled. “This isn’t about other lives. This is about you needing to feel so damn certain and in control. That’s why you cultivators slaughter. So that you don’t have to feel even the possibility of danger.”

“In control?!” Qian Shanyi snapped, her even voice breaking a bit. “Damn straight I want to feel in control! My soul just got feasted on! I can’t remember anything, all I have to go on are some curt notes allegedly written by me, and now you are refusing to answer my questions! After you have tried to kill me and I supposedly saved your life? Just how entitled can you be?”

“I am entitled?” Linghui Mei snarled, fangs growing out for a moment before she got herself back under control, “I thanked you for saving my life, but all I get in return is a cage! And you even want all our secrets? Just like that? After slaughtering my people for generations?”

“I have never slaughtered a single kitsune. How many people have you killed?”

“I do not kill people,” she snarled again, “I kill cultivators.”

Qian Shanyi slowly inhaled, filling her lungs with air, and then exhaled sharply. Her ribs ached. Her soul, even more so. But she couldn’t just let that go.

She raised her sword with both hands, stepping towards the kitsune. Linghui Mei’s look changed, certainty faltering as she started to back away.

“Say that again,” Qian Shanyi said in an icy tone.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean -”

“Say I am not even a person. Go on, then, spirit. Say it.”

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

Wang Yonghao gently blew on a small figurine he was shaping out of a small piece of pine. His fourth attempt at carving a rosevine - their tentacles were very thin, compared to their body, and broke off easily when he put too much pressure on the wood. His new tools helped massively, but it was still slow going.

He didn’t mind. Slow was good. Slow was peaceful.

A pot of soup bubbled right next to him, and he tasted it with a little spoon. Just about ready - time to bring it back to the world fragment, put it on ice. He carefully closed the pot with a lid, took it off the fire, careful not to let hot steel touch his fingers, and let it cool down for a while.

Once the steel was tepid, he opened his inner world, and picked up the pot, holding the lid in place with one finger. Shanyi and Linghui Mei were already asleep, and he didn’t want to wake them with an accidental clinging of metal.

This was going to be a nice, quiet night.

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

“Liar!” Qian Shanyi’s voice cut through the still air of the world fragment. In her slow advance, she had backed Linghui Mei up against the edge of the world fragment, and now they were slowly circling around the place, a good twenty meters between the two of them. “Tell me what the spirit hunter has against you. The notes said it ‘seemed personal’.”

“I don’t know! I swear!”

For all that Qian Shanyi felt furious, she wasn’t planning on actually killing Linghui Mei. But she needed answers, and where calm discussion got her little, a bit of terror seemed to be working wonders. Perhaps it was down to playing into the misconceptions the kitsune already had about cultivators, or perhaps she was exploiting a bit of guilt she clearly felt from their previous fight. If nothing else, it confirmed what the notes said about their fight - Linghui Mei seemed intent on avoiding her.

Even then, for all she knew, everything the kitsune said was a lie. Still, the best she could hope for in these trying times.

“Notes said I’d forget one day,” Qian Shanyi continued, switching over to a different track. “Why am I missing two?”

“It’s - it’s not precise, I am sorry!” Linghui Mei bumped up against the edge of the world, almost losing her balance. Qian Shanyi slowed down her threatening advance as a courtesy, letting her find her footing. “I needed a bit more than I expected, I have never been this starved, I just didn’t know!“

“Uh huh. And why didn’t you warn me in advance this might happen?“

“It’s - I was dying, what was I supposed to do, scare you away from helping me?”

“And I didn’t even ask? Unbelievable.”

“Listen, lady,” Linghui Mei snarled, suddenly halving the distance between them, fingers shifting to claws. “You made me promise I wouldn’t kill you, but I am starting to change my mind! Enough questions! I told you what happened already!”

“Oh ho ho!” Qian Shanyi laughed, pouring spiritual energy into her sword to make it swirl in the air around her, like an eel in a river. She didn’t stop walking, calling Linghui Mei’s bluff. “Young cultivator dares? To cultivate is to dare, it’s only your right. Go ahead! Let’s have a second fight. Only this time I won’t hold back.”

Linghui Mei’s face went white with terror, and she backed up to twice the previous distance, almost as far as there was space.

In the air above, she heard the entrance of the world fragment open. Wang Yonghao gasped. Finally, he showed up. Linghui Mei glanced upwards, but Qian Shanyi didn’t take her eyes off the kitsune. Best to be safe.

Two seconds later, something heavy hit the ground with a thud.

If that moron actually passed out from the shock…

“How many people did you kill?” she asked, snapping the fingers of her free hand, bringing Linghui Mei’s attention back to her.

Linghui Mei scowled, speaking on instinct. “I don’t kill people -''

Qian Shanyi’s flying sword pierced through the air between them, veering off to the side just five meters away from the other woman.

Linghui Mei screamed in terror, falling on her butt. “Eleven! Eleven cultivators!” she finally answered, raising her hands up defensively.

Qian Shanyi stopped, folding her arms on her chest, letting her flying sword return to hovering at her side.

“Shanyi, what are you doing?!” Wang Yonghao shouted, finally descending from the sky. “Why are you two fighting?!”

“Yonghao,” she replied neutrally, “do you know this woman?”

“What happened here?!”

“She fed on my soul. Allegedly I consented.”

“You did!” Linghui Mei shouted, still cowering on the ground.

“In either case, I cannot remember it,” Qian Shanyi said, grabbing her sword out of the air and sheathing it with a flourish, before turning her head towards Wang Yonghao. “But now that you are here, at least I could confirm her words. Did we really agree to help her?“

Wang Yonghao sighed, coming to a stop in between the two of them. “Yes. We did. I said I’d let her feed on me,” he said, turning towards Linghui Mei. “Why didn’t you just say it if you were hungry? Do you have a death wish, feeding on Shanyi?!”

“She tried to kill me,” Qian Shanyi said, approaching Wang Yonghao. “We had a bit of a fight. Then she ran out of power and I had to feed her to save her life.”

Wang Yonghao’s eyes snapped to her. “What?! Oh, Heavens, no…”

She gave him a soft glare, pulling out her folded notes. “Here,” she said, handing them over. “This will catch you up to speed. Guard me while I investigate my own soul, please.”

Leaving Wang Yonghao to his reading, she walked over to the edge of the world fragment, took a lotus pose with her back to the edge, and turned her senses inwards, her twelve meridians shining like rivers of light in between the lakes of her dantians. After a cursory check up of her body - ribs and lungs more than halfway healed, no new damage - she focused on her heart dantian, and through it, on her soul.

In the refinement stage, cultivators mostly refined their body. In the building foundation stage, they rebuilt their soul. It was simply not feasible before their senses and control over spiritual energy advanced to a new level.

Her awareness of her own soul was still fairly rudimentary, not extending much past the eight meridians passing through it, but even she could sense the damage, like cuts and scrapes on the surface of a mirror. She quieted the worry in her mind, and started to meticulously go over it, piece by piece, making sure all the essential parts were still in place.

She couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

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

Linghui Mei rocked in place, sobbing into her knees. The male cultivator was shouting something at her, but it went completely past her ears.

Why wasn’t she dead?

That cultivator could have killed her a dozen times over. So why didn’t she? It didn’t make sense.

She was so, so tired.

She swore she would be careful, but she just… Couldn’t. She was barely keeping herself awake as it was. She snapped.

She was sure she talked herself into her own death. But then it… just didn’t happen. Second time, now? Third?

Why wasn’t she dead?

Linghui Mei continued sobbing, trying to put her mind together like a deck of scattered cards.

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

“My soul is fine,” Qian Shanyi breathed out half an hour later, opening her eyes. “Past memories too. A week of rest, and I would be back in top shape - by which point my body should be healed as well.”

She got up, and headed towards the others. Wang Yonghao was berating Linghui Mei not far from her. Linghui Mei was sitting down on the grass, hugging her knees, only occasionally cutting back. There were tears in her eyes and all over her cheeks. The two stopped, hearing her speak.

“This is great news,” she grinned. Now that she knew her soul was fine, it was like a small mountain of tension was taken off her chest. For all that it still hurt, her soul buzzing as if she had gotten drunk with none of the upsides. “This means you can just feed on Yonghao without any big problems.”

“Thank you. I guess,” Linghui Mei said quietly, sniffling.

“How do you know your memories are fine?” Wang Yonghao asked.

“I had studied some memory techniques, back in my day,” Qian Shanyi said, “there is a way to memorize events by putting them in a sequence that flows from one to the other, with rhymes or links of meaning. It’s also good for meditation - or falling asleep - by going through such a sequence in order. If there was some damage, the chances were that the sequences would have fallen apart… but no, it’s all still there.” She tapped a finger against her cheek. “Perhaps it’s good this happened, in some sense - this way, I can be sure your already patchy memory won’t vanish entirely.”

Wang Yonghao seemed too exhausted to parse her joke.

“Oh,” Linghui Mei said. “So…what now?”

“Now I am going to sleep. I advise you to do the same,” Qian Shanyi said. “Everything else can wait until tomorrow. Rising sun brings wisdom with it, as they say. There is no point in discussing things when we are both wired up on nerves.”

Qian Shanyi crouched in front of Linghui Mei, bringing their eyes to the same level. “Listen, I am sorry for terrorizing you just now,” she said apologetically, “I know I can be a bit paranoid.”

“Yeah. You said that before,” Linghui Mei said, sniffling again. She paused, fighting with herself over her words, but then turned to Wang Yonghao. “Can I talk to… Shanyi… alone?”

Wang Yonghao gave her a questioning look, but Qian Shanyi waved him off. He sighed, threw his hands up in the air, and stalked off. She turned back to Linghui Mei with a questioning look.

“Why didn’t you kill me just now?” Linghui Mei asked after a minute of silence. “You could have. For all that I’ve put myself back together, I don’t have the strength to fight. And you were stronger than me before, too.”

Qian Shanyi blinked. “Didn’t even think about it, honestly,” she said, “past me thought you deserved a chance, and nothing you said was deserving of an execution.” She paused, thinking it over. “Though if you say cultivators aren’t people again I will punch all of your teeth out.”

“I think…if our places were swapped, I would have killed you,” Linghui Mei said with some trepidation, staring off into space. “I promised you I would not provoke you, but… I failed. I am sorry for what I said.”

Qian Shanyi shrugged. “Don’t worry too much about it. You can forget what I said about not letting you leave. If you want to, you can. Or you can stay, and we’ll figure out how to fix the constitution of all kitsune. I think I’ve already figured out some of what I must have been thinking, before - but let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

“How could you just…do that?” Linghui Mei sniffled. “I was ready to kill you so many times, but you just… let it go? Why?”

Qian Shanyi scratched her head. How could she explain this? “I have a… I don’t think she’d call me a friend. But she once told me that the rules of the Empire are written in blood, so that cultivators do not kill each other. Used to be, our conflicts drenched the land in violence. Our past record about other species is worse still. Learning to forgive - is that not a necessity, if we are to rebel against the Heavens? Your aggression is understandable, I think, and thus not something to hold over you.”

“Did you mean what you said?” Linghui Mei said, wiping her tears. “About helping me learn to cultivate. So I could blend in better. So I wouldn’t be hunted.”

“That sounds like something I would say, yes. If you are not a danger to others, helping your entire species is only virtuous.”

“Okay,” Linghui Mei said. Qian Shanyi stretched out her hand, and Linghui Mei took it, getting up off the ground. “I think I’d like to stay, for now.”