Xu Ying followed the snake demon toward Wu Wang Mountain, where Qinyan Cave lay nestled at the mountain's base. The journey would not be a short one. When they passed through Huangniqiao Village, they spotted a towering woman, well over ten feet tall, standing guard at the village entrance. She possessed four arms, each gripping a gleaming sword, and her eyes swept the horizon with predatory intensity. This was the village's patron deity.
"Guard every road junction. Do not slack for even a moment," she commanded the villagers under her watch. "The one called Xu Ying will pass through here. He must not slip away."
Xu Ying and the snake demon halted immediately. Every approach to the village was covered—armed villagers stood at each intersection, and even the rice paddies had been posted with lookouts. Xu Ying's heart hammered against his ribs, and a wave of dizziness washed over him. The City God's kill order had mobilized an impossible number of deities. Lingling boasted eight hundred mountains, five hundred rivers and lakes, and countless villages and towns. The gods and spirits serving under the City God numbered over two thousand. Escape seemed a fantasy.
"Leave this to me!" The snake demon hissed with a wicked grin and shot forward like an arrow released from its bowstring, charging straight at the roadblock guards. The villagers, confronted by a serpent over thirty feet long rearing up with jaws agape, dropped their weapons and fled shrieking. Amid the chaos—cries of "Snake demon!" and "It's eating people!" and someone shouting that the goddess had already been devoured—Xu Ying slipped through unnoticed. The snake demon caught up with him soon after, sporting two fresh sword wounds.
"It's nothing serious," the serpent said magnanimously. "The goddess of Huangniqiao Village was a woman. She managed to land two hits, but I forgave her on account of her sex."
Xu Ying bowed formally. "Thank you, Snake Brother, for saving me. I still don't know your proper name."
The snake demon straightened with dignity. "My grandfather practiced the Elephant-Force Ox-Demon Fist, so naturally he adopted the surname Niu. When I was born, my father said that in ancient times, venomous serpents like us were called *yuan*. Since I was the seventh hatchling, he named me Yuan Qi."
Xu Ying hesitated before speaking. "Brother Niu, the 'Ox' in the Ox-Demon Fist doesn't actually mean you cultivate into an ox demon. It refers to the berserker state of mind—fighting with the fearlessness of an ox demon. The fist technique itself has nothing to do with oxen whatsoever."
The snake demon Yuan Qi froze, blinking slowly. "So... my grandfather fundamentally misunderstood the technique? My name is correct, but my family name is wrong?"
Xu Ying suggested delicately, "Perhaps you could change your surname?"
Yuan Qi threw back his head and laughed. "My grandfather bore the name Niu. My father bore the name Niu. How could I betray my ancestors? A true man does not change his name or surname! I am Yuan Qi!" The ox surname, however, was quietly discarded and never mentioned again.
Throughout the journey, they faced constant pursuit from rural deities. Yuan Qi repeatedly served as a decoy, drawing the gods' attention while Xu Ying slipped past. These deities came in bewildering variety: some with four arms, some with two faces, some with an eye in the center of their foreheads, others with eyes growing from their palms that swiveled in all directions. Most were the spirits of the dead, bound to sacred idols by the worship of the living. Over time, the accumulated incense offerings enabled them to animate their wooden hosts and act freely in the world.
Xu Ying avoided villages and towns, traveling instead through trackless wilderness. But even the deep forests held danger: mountain shrines, earth god temples, river sanctuaries—each housed a spirit that could be alerted. These wilderness gods were often different from the village deities. They were demon cultivators who had achieved their transformation through sheer power—Great Demons who had reached the pinnacle of Qi-Gathering, cultivated martial techniques to the seventh level, and gained the ability to assume human form. After accepting the City God's authority, they were appointed mountain gods or river lords. They were far stronger than the village shrine gods, and far more dangerous, their wild natures barely tamed.
According to Yuan Qi, Xu Ying's current level only matched that of a fully-realized Great Demon. He was still a long way from challenging a Demon King. The pair crept past villages and mountain shrines with agonizing slowness. By midday, they had covered barely twenty miles.
Yuan Qi raised his head and tasted the air. "There's moisture in that direction—a water source nearby."
Xu Ying had finished the last of his fruit and was parched. Following the serpent's lead, they came upon a mountain stream that widened into a clear pool. A carriage stood beside the water, a master and servant drawing from the pool. Beyond it lay the post road.
"It's Administrator Liu," Xu Ying said, recognizing the figure, and stepped into the open.
Liu Zongyuan's carriage was laden with heavy chests, suggesting a long journey ahead. Xu Ying approached and bowed. "Is Administrator Liu leaving Lingling?"
Liu Zongyuan smiled at the boy and his serpentine companion. "Xu Ying, my young friend. I have received an imperial summons to the capital."
Xu Ying was genuinely happy for him. "Now that Administrator Liu returns to the capital, the emperor will surely entrust him with great responsibilities. I have little education and don't know the proper words, but you have witnessed Yongzhou's suffering firsthand. When you rise to prominence, please do not forget the people of Yongzhou. When you have the emperor's ear, remember to ensure that the common folk have food in their bowls."
Liu Zongyuan straightened his robes with solemnity. "Young friend, you may rest assured. When I reach the capital, I will root out corruption, lighten the crushing burden of taxation, and institute reforms that will restore our golden age. I will not betray the trust of our people."
Xu Ying was moved to the depths of his heart. He bowed low. "This mountain rustic shall await good tidings from Administrator Liu."
Liu Zongyuan returned the bow. "I am unworthy of such courtesy." His servant called that they must hasten onward. Liu Zongyuan boarded the carriage, and Xu Ying waved farewell, watching until the dust settled in the distance. "Administrator Liu cares about the whole world," he told Yuan Qi with a smile. "Life will get better now."
History, of course, would prove otherwise. Liu Zongyuan's return to the capital brought not recognition but renewed persecution. He would be banished further south to Liuzhou, where he would die in despair a few years later, only forty-eight years old.
Yuan Qi asked in confusion, "Xu Ying, since you know such a high-ranking official, why not ask him to plead your case and clear your name?"
Xu Ying smiled. "Brother Niu, you spoke earlier of a true man not changing his name. I also have a principle." He straightened with fierce pride. "A true man takes responsibility for his own actions. Why borrow another's hand? I killed that deity. I will bear the consequences alone."
"Well said!" A voice of admiration rang out from beyond the waterfall, startling birds from the surrounding trees.
Xu Ying's heart seized. He turned to see a young official in blue robes standing on the far bank—perhaps twenty years old, with refined features and a scholarly air that marked him as far better bred than any country boy. An official. The very thing Xu Ying feared most. He had seen too many officials storm into villages to seize cattle and sheep, their faces hard as iron as they ignored the wails of the desperate. And among officials, there were Nuo shamans—masters of terrifying, incomprehensible sorcery. *Please let him not be a Nuo shaman,* Xu Ying prayed silently.
"Well said indeed," the young officer repeated, clapping in appreciation. "Xu Ying, since you speak of taking responsibility, then face the consequences of your treason: murdering a deity, violating Heaven's law, and killing Master Jiang. Surrender yourself now."
Xu Ying laughed. "Surrender to your grandmother! I've killed a god before. Don't you think I can kill you too?"
The officer smiled faintly. With thumb and forefinger, he plucked a tender leaf from a vine growing near the water's edge. In his palm, the leaf sprouted, grew branches, and within moments had entangled the trunk of a nearby willow. Xu Ying's heart dropped. This man wielded Nuo sorcery. He had opened one of the Hidden Gates of the Body, gaining access to powers beyond mortal comprehension—commanding spirits, banishing demons, the strongest combat force in the world.
The willow tree collapsed with a groan. The vine, animated by Nuo sorcery, had coiled around it like a great python and crushed it into fragments. Xu Ying's eyelids twitched.
"My name is Ding Quan, judicial officer of Lingling," the young official said. He stepped casually onto the water's surface. Beneath his foot, lotus leaves and flowers burst from the pool, one broad leaf rising precisely to catch his step. He lifted his other foot, and a second lotus materialized to meet it. "Xu Ying, you've been cultivating demon arts. That power emboldened you to kill a village deity. But the god you slew was merely a Grass-Head Spirit."
Ding Quan walked across the water, lotuses blooming beneath each step and withering to black ash behind him. "Humanity has a true path of cultivation. Why resort to demon arts? At best, demon cultivation reaches Qi-Gathering. But the Six Hidden Gates of the Body—open even one, reach the first level, and you surpass any village god, any Demon King."
Xu Ying clenched his fists. "Dare I ask what these Six Hidden Gates are? And which gate have you opened, to what level?"
He suddenly realized the space beside him was empty. Yuan Qi had vanished. A pang of loneliness struck him, followed by relief. This was his battle alone. He would not drag the serpent into it.
Ding Quan stopped two arm-spans from Xu Ying, standing on water while the boy remained on shore. "The Six Hidden Gates are: the Crimson Palace, the Yellow Court, the Jade Capital, the Bubbling Spring, the Jade Pool, and the Mud Pill. You may unlock only one." He spoke with unhurried patience. "But the precise location of each gate differs from person to person. You need a Grand Nuo to perform dragon-seeking and orientation, pinpointing your gate's position before helping you open it. How would a commoner ever have such an opportunity? Only those born into great families, with Grand Nuo masters among their elders, can unlock a gate and become Nuo shamans." He sighed theatrically. "Becoming a Nuo shaman is exceptionally difficult. It is not something just anyone can achieve."
Xu Ying laughed. "I have heard of the Zhou family as a great lineage. But I have never heard of a great house named Ding. There is, I suppose, another path to becoming a Nuo shaman: serving as a great family's dog."
Ding Quan's expression twisted. "You court death!" Xu Ying had found his sorest wound. Beneath the boy's feet, the earth erupted. Thick green vines burst from the soil, coiling around Xu Ying's legs and binding him tight. The vines multiplied like living serpents, wrapping his entire body until he resembled a human chrysalis.
Ding Quan raised his hand. The vines lifted Xu Ying forty feet into the air with a rushing roar, then slammed him down with brutal force into the rocks beside the pool. Stone shattered. Ding Quan spread his fingers wide, and sharpened vines shot from all directions, piercing the dust cloud where Xu Ying had fallen. He closed his fist, and the vines constricted into a tight sphere nine feet across, crushing inward with enough force to grind stone to powder.
"Do not blame me," Ding Quan said, slowly relaxing his grip. "One should not strike the face or expose another's shame. You exposed mine, so you must die." As his hand opened, the vine sphere disintegrated into dust, its own material unable to withstand the forces it had generated.
But Xu Ying did not fall as a broken corpse. He landed on both feet, standing as steady as a mountain. Ding Quan froze. A man with every bone crushed should not land on his feet. He should not be standing at all. Yet Xu Ying stood perfectly stable—and this had been Nuo sorcery, the power drawn from a Hidden Gate, the force that had crushed an ancient willow to splinters. Even an iron god would have been pierced and pulverized.
"It seems the Zhou family has not taught you true Nuo sorcery after all," Xu Ying said. He drew a deep breath, his bones crackling as he straightened. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and smiled. "Had they taught you the real arts, I would be dead. Instead, you opened a Hidden Gate and still could not kill me."
Ding Quan's pupils contracted. He had thrown himself at the Zhou family's feet, and they had opened his Mud Pill Gate—but he was not Zhou blood. The techniques they granted him were the lowest tier, the Nuo arts the simplest. He could never reach the heights his talent deserved.
Xu Ying erupted with power. His blood and qi thundered through his body, the rolling peals merging into a resonant elephant cry. Behind him, a translucent phantom condensed from blood mist—a figure with an elephant's head on a human body. He locked his gaze on Ding Quan and exploded forward. His fist drove through the air, the Elephant God striking in unison. The water's surface detonated, wind and spray forming a wall that surged toward the Nuo shaman.
A shield of vines erupted from the pool, interweaving into a barrier. Xu Ying's punch shattered it. Ding Quan met him fist to fist, but vines now wrapped Ding Quan's arm like superhuman sinews, roots anchoring to the earth like bowstrings drawn taut. His second fist grew into a massive green club. His power matched Xu Ying's elephant strength blow for blow.
The battle raged across the pool and into the forest. Xu Ying's attacks grew fiercer with each exchange, his qi blazing like a sun rising from his dantian. But Ding Quan turned the entire woodland into his weapon—trees lashed at Xu Ying from every angle, roots surged from the ground, branches became spears. Each of Xu Ying's devastating strikes was deflected at the last moment, drained of its killing force.
Ding Quan was also growing desperate. Every punch he blocked felt like being trampled by an elephant weighing ten thousand pounds. His arms and legs ached and trembled with accumulated impact, and Xu Ying's strength only continued to grow. But this forest was his domain, and he could wear the boy down through attrition.
Then one of the vines wrapping toward Ding Quan's fist proved far too nimble. Instead of joining the strike, it wound around his neck. Before Ding Quan could react, the "vine" opened its jaws and drove inch-long fangs into his throat.
"Xu Ying, I finally got him!" Yuan Qi cried in delight as he slithered free. "My venom is the fifth deadliest in the world—you're finished!"
Ding Quan's consciousness reeled. The world darkened at the edges. He desperately marshaled the power of his Mud Pill Gate, fighting the poison's spread. Flesh on his neck blackened and rotted, threatening to sever his head from his body, but the Hidden Gate's regenerative power surged in response—dead flesh sloughed away, new tissue growing in its place. Yet the venom returned just as fast. The struggle between poison and regeneration raged across his throat.
Xu Ying smashed through the remaining vines and drove a devastating punch into Ding Quan's chest. Bones cracked. Blood sprayed from the Nuo shaman's mouth. Xu Ying's fingers danced across Ding Quan's body—the snake catcher's signature technique—dislocating every joint in a blur of precise strikes. Ding Quan collapsed, utterly immobilized. Vines erupted around him, tunneling underground to drag him away from death.
Xu Ying hammered the earth with fist after fist, creating a hundred craters in the forest floor, but the vines had already carried Ding Quan beyond his reach. Yuan Qi called out urgently: distant voices were approaching—other Nuo shamans tracking the sounds of combat.
"They're coming. Get on my back—I leave no tracks," the serpent urged. Xu Ying vaulted onto Yuan Qi's scaled body, and they vanished into the wilderness.
"I'm human, not a demon," Xu Ying said quietly as they fled.
"Don't be so certain," Yuan Qi replied. "I've never heard of a human mastering demon arts so quickly."
For the first time, Xu Ying felt a seed of doubt. Was he truly human? He pushed the thought away. *I am from Xujiaping. My parents were from Xujiaping. I am human.*
Elsewhere in the forest, Ding Quan's fellow officers found him buried in a nest of shattered vines. His limbs were ruined, his ribs broken beyond counting, his internal organs catastrophically damaged. His neck was a mass of black rot, the poison still eating away at living tissue. Yet he clung to life through sheer force of the Mud Pill Gate, which supplied boundless vitality—though even that reservoir was nearly exhausted. The three Nuo shamans worked quickly, channeling their own Mud Pill Gate vitality into him, suppressing the venom, knitting bones. They reset his dislocated joints with professional efficiency.
"What happened?" the senior officer asked.
Ding Quan, voice weak with shame, recounted his ambush by the snake demon and his defeat at Xu Ying's hands. His colleagues exchanged glances of poorly concealed amusement. With Ding Quan incapacitated, the credit for capturing Xu Ying would fall to them. They excused themselves and departed, leaving Ding Quan to recover alone.
Ding Quan settled into meditation to heal—and his hand flew to his robes. His face turned ashen. Sweat beaded on his forehead as icy terror gripped his heart. The handwritten copy of the *Mud Pill Hidden Landscape Qi Refining Method*—the Zhou family's secret cultivation technique—was gone. The penalty for copying such scripture was extermination of one's entire clan, the destruction of one's three ethereal souls and seven corporeal spirits. Anyone who so much as glimpsed it would have their eyes gouged out and their mind erased.
His mind raced back to the moment Xu Ying's fingers had danced across his body, dislocating every joint. *He took it. While he was making me helpless, he stole it from my robes.* Darkness swam before Ding Quan's eyes. If the Zhou family learned that their scripture had been leaked, his fate would be worse than death. *I must find Xu Ying. I must retrieve that scripture before it is too late.*