They frantically searched for the letter from Xuán Chè 's sifu in the inn's mail post, in the innkeeper's office and found a lot of letters, some old, some newer, but not Xuan Che's letter to his sifu.
"It's not here," Xuán Chè whispered. "Sifu could still be alive. But where is he?"
The ground began to shake as the beast walked closer. They stopped in their tracks, and dispersed, taking cover in the inn's shadowed corners. The beast entered the town's center, the shaking the earth with each step, causing dust and debris to fall.
It was a monstrous bipedal horror; its form was a blasphemy against nature. It stood taller than two men, its body shaped like a powerfully built bull standing on two legs, its skin the glistening, void-like color of a starless midnight.
Curved horns, sharp enough to pierce stone, swept from its head. Its hooved feet cracked the cobblestones with each earth-shaking step. But its most terrifying features were its eyes—two pools of seething, malevolent crimson that held no light, no awareness. They were blind.
It stopped in the town square and unleashed another horrifying scream, a wave of sonic force that slammed into Li Wei's barrier, causing the frosty dome to flicker and groan.
This won't hold, Li Wei thought, a trickle of blood escaping his nose from the strain.
The beast slowly paced back and forth, its head tilted, its cavernous nostrils flaring. It was reading the vibrations in the earth and tasting the air for the unique flavor of living spiritual energy. It was a predator that hunted by sensing the very life force it sought to consume.
"It's searching for something," Qianyi whispered, her voice barely a breath. "Us."
They continued to observe, looking for a weakness. Then Xuán Chè noticed the subtle, constant twitching and swiveling of the beast's enormous, bat-like ears.
"It can't see," he realized, his own voice hushed with a mix of terror and revelation. "Its eyes are useless. It's tracking us by sound and spirit. It can hear our heartbeats and smell our power."
A cold dread, colder than Li Wei's ice, settled over them. Their very existence was a beacon.
"Gē," Yisha whispered, the childhood title slipping out in her panic. She clutched his arm, her knuckles white. "Is your barrier concealing our heartbeat and língqì?"
Li Wei looked at her, and for the first time in centuries, he saw raw, undisguised fear in her eyes. The sight gutted him. He wasn't going to let anything happen to his little sister. Or to Qianyi—his Qianyi, who had grabbed a spear and clutched it close, her face a mask of fearless determination that he knew was paper-thin.
He met Yisha's gaze, not wanting to lie but unable to bear adding to her terror. "For now," he said, his voice low and steady, a stark contrast to the flickering barrier. "But it will not last long. The beast's scream is pure corruption. It's breaking the formation down from the outside."
Seeing the fear threaten to overwhelm her, he placed his free hand over hers, his touch a familiar anchor. "Bié pà," he said, his voice softening into the tone he used only for them. Don't be afraid. "We need to come up with a plan to take this thing down. That's what we do, right?"
Over the centuries, they had dealt with scheming clans, corrupt royals, the occasional rogue cultivator. They had faced danger with confidence and cunning. But this…this was different. It was primal, mindless, and it consumed life itself. It was terrifying.
While continuing to analyze the beast, Qianyi's eyes caught a flicker of movement on the rooftop of the building across from the inn. There were two figures, silhouetted against the bloody sky, their hands moving in a synchronized, ritualistic pattern. A faint, malevolent purple energy swirled around them, tendrils of which snaked down into the town square, connecting to the beast.
"Nǐ kàn," she whispered, directing their attention to the chanters. "Are they trying to take down the beast?"
Li Wei's eyes narrowed, tracing the lines of dark energy. "No," he said. "It looks like they're controlling it."
The situation was now clear. They couldn't just fight the beast; they had to sever the strings. But to do that, they needed to get past its sonic scream.
"We need to get to that roof," Yisha said, her fear hardening into resolve. "But that thing will shatter our ears and our focus the moment your barrier drops."
Li Wei's mind raced, then settled on a brutal, simple solution. He met each of their eyes. "We cannot fight what we cannot hear. We will make it so we cannot hear."
He didn't wait for debate. His mind had already calculated the only viable path. With two sharp, precise motions, he conjured small, dense plugs of packed snow and ice, infusing them with his energy to keep them solid.
"It will block the sound," he said, his voice a clipped command, already moving. "This will hurt. You will be disoriented."
There was no time for them to prepare. In one fluid motion, he deftly but firmly inserted the freezing plugs into Yisha's, Qianyi's, and Xuan Che's ears, then his own. A shared, sharp intake of breath was the only reaction. It was not comfortable; it was a small, purposeful violence.
The world around them instantly became muffled, distant, and unnervingly silent. Their own heartbeats and the rush of blood in their ears were now the loudest sounds, a frantic drumming against the eerie quiet.
Li Wei gave a sharp, final nod. He took a deep breath, and with a forceful exhalation, he dropped the sound barrier.
The sudden absence of his power was a vacuum. For a single, suspended second, there was only the muffled silence of their self-imposed deafness.
Then, the beast's head snapped toward the inn. It had felt the shift in spiritual pressure. It inhaled, its massive chest expanding.
They saw the scream coming before they heard it, a visible distortion in the air. When the sound hit them, it was a physical blow, a deep, painful pressure that vibrated through their bones, but the ice plugs held, turning a mind-shattering weapon into a debilitating, but survivable, obstacle.
"Now!" Li Wei yelled, his own voice a faint rumble to his ears.
The trio burst from the inn, splitting apart like a well-rehearsed assemblage of violence.
Qianyi and Yisha dashed to the building where the two dark practitioners here positioned. They lept into the air simultaneously as Li Wei conjured and threw two thick icicles for them to step on to reach the height of the roof and land safely.
Qianyi swept her hand lightly across the rooftop's grimy surface, and the dust, ash, and fragmented stone coalesced in her grasp, forging itself into a blade of sharp, gritty earth.
Likewise, Yisha reached upward, her fingers splaying to capture the oppressive, crimson glow of the sky, weaving the bloody light into a solid, shimmering sword of furious luminescence.
The fight on the rooftop began without a sound, a silent, brutal ballet under the hellish sky.
Below, Li Wei faced the beast alone. It charged, the ground trembling. He didn't retreat. Instead, he dropped into a low stance, slamming his palms onto the cobblestones. A wave of frost exploded outward, flash-freezing the ground beneath the creature's hooves.
The beast stumbled, its massive legs skidding on the sudden, frictionless ice, its enraged roar reduced to a dull, pounding pressure in Li Wei's plugged ears.
From the doorway of the inn, Xuán Chè watched, his heart hammering. He was no mighty cultivator, no demon or nascent god. But he was not useless. It hunts by sound and spirit.
As the beast regained its footing, its blind head swiveling to lock onto Li Wei's potent, aura, Xuán Chè acted. He focused, drawing on every trick he had picked during his travels. He couldn't create a powerful illusion, but he could create a decoy.
He slapped his hands together, not with world-shaking force, but with a precise clap that rippled his meager spiritual energy. Twenty paces to Li Wei's left, a shimmering, man-sized mirage of heat and sound flickered into existence: a perfect copy of Li Wei's spiritual signature.
The beast, its senses confused, hesitated. Its head jerked between the real Li Wei and the false signal. It was only a brief moment of distraction, but it was enough.
Li Wei didn't question the gift. He used the opening to unleash a volley of spear-like icicles that hammered into the beast's chest, not to pierce its hide, but to anchor fast and begin spreading a crippling layer of frost across its torso, slowing its movement.
He didn't look back at Xuán Chè, but gave a sharp, acknowledging nod, which was all that was needed.
Qianyi and Yisha continued their battle with the dark practitioners, swords and magic, clashing. Qianyi moved with the relentless, grinding precision of a landslide. Her earthen sword was an extension of her will: heavy and unyielding.
She didn't finesse; she overwhelmed. When her blade met the dark cultivator's staff, it wasn't with a clang, but a deep thud that sent cracks spiderwebbing through the wood. Forcing her opponent back step by step, her movements created a cage of sheer, gritty force.
Yisha was her opposite: a supernova contained in human form. Her blade of solidified crimson light was a searing brand in the gloom. She was not a brawler but a duelist, her movements a series of blinding feints and swift, precise strikes.
She didn't block the second cultivator's attacks; she unraveled them, her light-sword dissolving tendrils of dark energy before they could fully form. Where Qianyi was the unmovable mountain, Yisha was the unavoidable dawn.
Finally, the two practitioners were defeated. Qianyi and Yisha jumped down to help Li Wei, but defeating the practitioners rendered the beast useless, and it fell to the ground with a loud, final thud.
Xuán Chè came outside to join the others. Li Wei immediately grabbed Qianyi by the shoulders, his eyes scanning for any injury. "Méi shì ba?" He'd forgotten about the ear plugs. He did the same to Yisha. "You okay?"
"I can't hear you!" Yisha yelled.
He flipped his hand, turning his palm toward the sky, and the ice plugs instantly melted, draining from their ears.
"This may be the cleanest my ears have ever been," Xuán Chè joked, shaking his head.
A rare, Li Wei smirked. "Nice work with the illusion... di di." Calling him little brother was a nod of respect, an acknowledgment that Xuán Chè had just proven himself as part of their unit.
The four of them stood in the town's center, gathering themselves, wondering why the blood-red sky was still shrouded.
Behind them, three figures descended from the sky on wisps of corrupted dark energy. The foursome turned. The men walked toward them, the one in the lead, clapping slowly, sarcastically.
"Bravo," the leader said, his voice slick with malice. "You've got some talent, don't you?"
"Nǐ shì shéi?" Yisha shot back, her voice sharp.
"I'm the one whose business you've just interrupted," the leader sneered. "And the one about to claim your lives and your considerable power as my own."
Li Wei didn't waste a second. With a thought, an arsenal of ice daggers crystallized in the air around him. From the palm of his hand, he drew forth a long, serrated sword of pure, glacial ice, its edge humming with deadly cold.
The battle began not with a shout, but with a silent, simultaneous explosion of motion as Li Wei charged toward the dark trio behind his racing daggers.
Li Wei met the leader's charge, his ice sword screeching against the man's dark, serrated blade. Where their weapons met, shards of frozen darkness and splintered ice exploded outwards.
The leader retaliated, unleashing a wave of shadow that withered the ground, but Li Wei stomped his foot, and a wall of permafrost erupted, swallowing the darkness whole.
Qianyi didn't wait for the second attacker to reach her. She leaped to meet him, the heavy earthen sword in her hands.
Her movements were a dance of precise, grounded lethality. She didn't deflect his shadowy strikes; she shattered them, the dense, packed earth of her blade absorbing the corrosive energy with a deep, resonant thud.
She used his own frantic momentum against him, twisting and using the flat of her sword to unbalance him. As he stumbled, she planted her sword into the dead earth.
Vines of golden energy, pulsing with the last dregs of the land's stolen life, erupted from the ground, binding him. The more he struggled, the more the vines tightened, siphoning his dark energy and feeding it back into the barren soil in a futile attempt at purification.
Meanwhile, Yisha became a storm of harnessed fury. The third cultivator launched volleys of piercing black needles. Yisha stood her ground, her own blade glowing in her hand.
She didn't dodge. She spun, her blade becoming a whirlwind of scarlet energy that atomized the needles into harmless, dissipating smoke. Enraged, the cultivator conjured a massive, swirling vortex of absolute shadow, a void meant to consume all light.
Yisha answered by thrusting her crimson sword into the heart of the vortex. Instead of being extinguished, her light exploded within the darkness, a supernova of scarlet energy that tore the vortex apart from the inside, forcing the cultivator to recoil from the backlash.
As they fought, the three dark cultivators maneuvered with sinister synchronicity, falling into a triangular formation. They chanted in unison, their voices a guttural chorus, and slammed their hands onto the blighted earth.
A massive crimson cyclone erupted before them, roaring as it tore through the town square, hurling debris and ravenous energy directly toward the trio.
Before they could react, more of the violent funnels sprouted from the ground around them, encircling them, trapping them in a cage of howling, life-draining energy.
Qianyi dropped to one knee, pressing her palms to the ground, desperately trying to conjure an earthen barrier. But the soil was a dead, spiritual vacuum. "There's nothing left!" she cried out, her voice strained.
Beside her, Yisha made a sharp, pulling motion with her hands, bringing them to her chest as she tried to wrest control of the crimson energy itself. She focused, her voice a strained whisper against the cyclone's roar: "Guāng míng fèng xiàn..."
Light, heed my call...
But the corrupted energy resisted her, its nature too alien and violent. Nothing happened.
The cyclones drew closer. They could feel a terrifying suction, their very língqì, being pulled from their bodies, stretching toward the swirling crimson tendrils. The light around Yisha dimmed; the frost on Li Wei's sword began to sweat. They were being devoured.
When the leading edge of the cyclone had just begun to lick at their robes, a being surrounded by pure, divine light descended from the heavens like a falling star, landing directly between them and the onslaught.
His radiance was a physical force, a calm, unwavering dawn that pushed back the violent crimson, creating a safe haven. He dropped to one knee, placed a single, open palm on the blighted earth, and did not ask for its power: he gave it his own.
A wave of radiant, golden light shot forth from his touch. It did not simply dissipate the cyclones; it unmade them, erasing them from existence with a sound like a sigh of relief.
The wave of light continued, striking the three dark practitioners and lifting them off their feet, knocking them back with such concussive force they slammed into the ruined buildings and fell, unconscious.
The silence that followed was absolute.
The man stood and turned to face the four stunned companions. An amused, knowing smile graced his features as a greeting.
He was clad in immaculate white robes with golden embellishments on the hems that seemed to glow and dance with a life of their own. His hair was long and flowed freely, the color of a night sky without stars.
He looked at each of them in turn and his smile widened.
"Two deities, a rare frost fox demon, and a displaced prince walk into a tavern..."