Mountain God Huang Siping's remaining leg was stripped to the bone. Any excess force against it would snap the skeletal limb entirely. He had to end this fight just as quickly as Xu Ying. Light blazed along his hundred-refined steel blade as his true-yang blood-qi, scorching enough to melt copper, poured into the weapon. The blade met the swinging pillar in a collision of raw force and searing heat, cutting deep into the copper. Where the blade bit, the metal glowed cherry-red.
But the pillar's momentum carried the force of an elephant's charge through the sword and into the wolf god's arms. Huang Siping staggered backward to spare his fragile leg. Xu Ying pressed the advantage, twisting the pillar so that the blade and the god's wrists tangled together. Huang Siping howled and shed his human form, revealing his true body: a yellow wolf standing over ten feet tall, walking on hind legs, with silver fangs and claws of gleaming iron. His fur bristled like golden needles. True-yang blood-qi erupted from him as he tore his blade free.
But Xu Ying was already inside his guard. The boy's open palm struck the flat of the sword with the force of an elephant swinging its trunk. The blade warped under the blow. Huang Siping's scorching qi invaded Xu Ying's hand, racing up his arm with the heat of a forge—and was met by a wall of Xu Ying's own cultivated energy. In the instant of contact, the mountain god realized that the boy's qi, though less in quantity, was impossibly pure and refined. It stopped the true-yang invasion at the elbow and pushed it back out, leaving no residual damage.
"For one so young to possess such cultivation..." Huang Siping's arms went numb. His blade flew from his grip. "Worthy of a demon prodigy." Xu Ying's cultivation technique and martial art were both demon lineages. He might look human, but to Huang Siping, the boy was clearly something else, something wilder. He had never encountered a human so untamed.
Both combatants struck simultaneously. Claws tipped with true-yang fire raked across Xu Ying's chest. Xu Ying's fist, backed by the full manifestation of the Elephant God, slammed into Huang Siping's torso. Blood sprayed. Xu Ying was hurled backward into the main hall, clothing aflame from the true-yang energy embedded in his wounds. The hall caught fire around him. Huang Siping flew in the opposite direction. The impact against his chest detonated through his back, shredding his robes. When he landed, his skeletal left leg shattered beneath him.
The wolf god scrambled up on three legs, abandoning human form entirely to become a giant golden wolf. He fled into the forest without looking back. His voice drifted after him: "Xu Ying, we are both of demon kind. Since your demon nature remains unextinguished, I will spare your life."
His leg bone had been the fulcrum of his combat stance. With it gone, he could barely manage thirty percent of his full power. Retreat was the only option.
Xu Ying burst from the burning hall, slammed both palms against the ground, and the flames around him guttered and died. He vomited blood, and where it struck the earth, it ignited—Huang Siping's true-yang qi, still burning in his lungs. The claw wounds across his chest gaped open, exposing the white line of his ribs. Without the Elephant God Manifestation to absorb part of the blow, those claws would have cut straight through to his heart. He forced his own qi to suppress the invading heat and deliberately left a sliver of true-yang fire in his wounds just long enough to cauterize them before expelling it.
He turned to check on Yuan Qi and stopped. In the courtyard, Warden Wei Chu's leg twitched.
Xu Ying's eyes narrowed. He grabbed Huang Siping's discarded, warped blade and hurled it. Wei Chu rolled aside with viper speed and rose to his feet, laughing. "The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. Deicide Xu Ying—you truly have the power to kill gods. But you and the wolf have exhausted each other. Can you still face me?"
Flesh was visibly regenerating along Wei Chu's skeletal right leg. The Mud Pill Gate's regenerative power was knitting him back together.
Xu Ying smiled. "Warden Wei is a Nuo shaman who has opened the Mud Pill Gate. Your power is formidable. Yet you played dead, waiting for us to wound each other. That can only mean your injuries are beyond even the Mud Pill Gate's ability to heal quickly."
Wei Chu's expression hardened. His sham death had not been a tactic—it had been necessity. The roar from the well had struck him at the closest range. Though his Mud Pill Gate granted him a form of immortality, it was not absolute. The internal damage from that roar would take far longer to repair than he had pretended. "At the time, I could not defeat either of you. But now..." He advanced on Xu Ying. "I can kill you with ease."
"Warden Wei seems to have forgotten my good brother Yuan Qi," Xu Ying said calmly. "He waits above us on the temple roof, ready to deliver a fatal strike the moment you attack."
Wei Chu's confidence flickered. He remembered Ding Quan's neck—the black, rotting flesh where the snake's fangs had struck.
Xu Ying's voice was absolutely level. "Judicial Officer Ding Quan, I believe you know him. My brother Yuan Qi's venom is the second deadliest in the world. He bit Ding Quan once. Even your healing arts could not save him. The Mud Pill Gate cannot counter such poison."
A laugh rang from outside the temple. Ding Quan stepped through the ruined gate, his neck still a patchwork of black corruption and raw tissue. "The snake demon said his venom was the fifth deadliest. Now this peasant claims it is second. Which lie should I believe?"
Xu Ying's face tightened. Wei Chu roared with laughter. "Peasant! What defense have you left?"
Ding Quan approached Wei Chu and bowed deeply from the waist, hands clasped. "Brother Wei, thank you for purging my poison. Without your aid, I would be a ghost on the Yellow Springs Road."
Wei Chu waved dismissively. "We are colleagues. Helping you cost me nothing. Do not speak of it."
"To you, a trifle," Ding Quan said with perfect sincerity. "To me, the saving of my life. I was raised on the classics. I understand propriety, righteousness, honor, and shame. I will never forget this debt."
Xu Ying's composure returned. In a low, steady voice, he began to recite: "The heavenly soul births the white tiger. The earthly soul births the azure dragon. The treasure is stored within the Mud Pill. Essence is transported into the upper palace. He who understands this method retains a youthful visage for ten thousand years."
Ding Quan's body went rigid. Wei Chu's face lost all color.
"What did you say?" Wei Chu demanded, stepping forward. "Where did you learn the *Mud Pill Hidden Landscape Qi Refining Method*? That is the Zhou family's secret—" He never finished. Beneath his feet, countless fine roots had been writhing through the soil, finding the raw, regenerating flesh of his leg, threading into his blood vessels, worming toward his heart. Wei Chu stiffened. He turned his head with agonizing slowness and stared at Ding Quan, disbelief etched into every line of his face.
Ding Quan's eyes brimmed with tears. "Brother Wei, he forced me. Please do not blame me. The moment he recited the *Mud Pill Hidden Landscape*, I had no choice but to silence you. The Zhou family would exterminate my entire clan. I have a wife at home, three concubines to support—I am a pitiable man, you know this..."
Wei Chu's face purpled. Blood welled from his mouth. His final words came out in a wet rasp: "I saved your life."
Ding Quan wept openly. "I know. I will live well, I promise you. I will not waste the life you saved. So please... go in peace. Once you are gone, no one will know my secret." Wei Chu's body erupted. Skin, cloth, flesh—everything dissolved into a mass of writhing root-tendrils. Even his brain, when it spilled from his skull, was nothing but roots woven into the shape of a man.
"The Zhou family must never know I copied their scripture. They must never know I lost it." Ding Quan's expression twisted into something feral. He placed his hand on the root-mass and channeled his Nuo sorcery. The roots surged upward, thickening, hardening, until a great willow tree grew from Warden Wei's remains. Near its base, the bark shaped itself into a face that faintly resembled the dead man, his dying shock frozen in wood. "It was Xu Ying who killed you—not me," Ding Quan said to the tree. "I will avenge you now, Brother Wei. I will send this peasant to join you."
He turned his tear-streaked, hateful gaze on Xu Ying. "Peasant Xu Ying, you murdered my savior. Today, in Wei Chu's name, I execute justice."
From the temple roof, a wheezing laugh broke the tension. Yuan Qi had awakened and poked his head over the eaves. "You killed your own benefactor and now blame someone else? You claimed to be a scholar—but your learning must have gone into a dog's belly."
Ding Quan's face contorted. Willow branches lashed toward the serpent. "What would a demon understand? Xu Ying killed Brother Wei. You, the venomous snake, were his accomplice. I merely avenge my sworn brother—a deed of towering righteousness!"
Yuan Qi twisted his thirty-foot body through the forms of the Elephant-Force Ox-Demon Fist, his serpentine body serving as both fist and foot, forcing the willow branches back. "They call me a venomous snake, a demon—but you, Ding Quan, are the real monster. There's not a drop of humanity left in you."
Ding Quan's fury mounted, and Yuan Qi's situation grew desperate. But Xu Ying was walking forward, limping, his Elephant God Manifestation limping in perfect synchronization behind him. "Ding Quan, I spent some time studying the *Mud Pill Hidden Landscape Qi Refining Method*. I found that its Nuo sorcery contains significant flaws." He spoke as if delivering a lecture. "Your techniques and your supposed immortality are not as impregnable as they appear. Find the correct point—and killing you becomes effortless."
Ding Quan's confidence wavered despite himself. "You're bluffing. I have studied the *Hidden Landscape* for eight years. You have possessed it for barely half a day. How could you find a flaw I never noticed?"
Xu Ying continued his limping advance. "The *Hidden Landscape* has its merits, but it is a crude, rudimentary Nuo art. I have analyzed over fifty demon cultivation texts. Yours is the most elementary among them—which tells me the Zhou family never intended to teach you anything of real value."
"Demon cultivation is Qi-Gathering trash!" Ding Quan snarled. "It is not fit to lace the boots of Nuo sorcery, and you dare call my art crude?" He summoned his ultimate technique—the Nuo Willow Brushing Sword Art. Hundreds of willow branches transformed into swords, each executing independent sword patterns, while others coiled like serpents to constrict and kill.
Yet Xu Ying walked through the storm of blades as if strolling through a garden. A slight shift here, a sideways step there—always at the precise moment, always by the narrowest margin. Ding Quan's certainty crumbled. *He really sees the flaws. But how? I trained for eight years and never noticed them.*
Panicked, he switched tactics, summoning willow roots to wrap around his body as artificial muscle and sinew. Xu Ying's fist flew toward him. *The same move as before—I know this—* But the fist opened at the last instant. Five fingers danced across Ding Quan's root-wrapped arm in a blur of precise strikes. With each tap, Ding Quan felt another section of his body disconnect from his will, going numb and dead. Xu Ying flowed past him, fingers working their way across his entire frame. The willow roots fell away like dead snakes. The branches attacking Yuan Qi went limp.
Ding Quan stood frozen, his body utterly beyond his control. A terror greater than any he had known seized him.
"Ding Quan, I told you—killing you is simple." Xu Ying pointed at the paralyzed shaman's skull. A single finger touched the back of his head. "See? No deception." There was no wound at the point of contact. But Ding Quan's forehead exploded outward, and his body crumbled to the ground.
Xu Ying turned to the corpse. "The *Hidden Landscape* never specified the Mud Pill Gate's exact location, but the qi circulation paths gave it away. Once I understood how your art worked and knew your techniques, ending you was trivial. You should not have killed Wei Chu. His technique was unfamiliar—I couldn't have broken it so quickly."
Yuan Qi slithered down from the roof. "Why are you explaining this to a corpse?"
"I was told that those who die with unresolved questions become vengeful ghosts," Xu Ying said.
"You believe that? It's a nursery tale."
They stepped through the temple gate and found Huang Siping waiting just outside. Xu Ying and Yuan Qi tensed. Both were wounded. If the wolf god delayed them, the other pursuers would arrive and there would be no escape. But Huang Siping did not attack. He did not even look at them.
"Do not travel northwest," the mountain god said into the air. "I received word yesterday that many of the mountain gods and Grass-Head Spirits have gathered there, waiting to ambush you. Go southwest, along Anzi Ridge and Jian Mountain. The gods in that direction have already gone northwest."
He began limping downhill in his three-legged wolf form. "When you reach Jian Mountain, wash yourself thoroughly. The blood on your body has a strong scent. The gods can track you by it."
Xu Ying called after him: "Mountain God Huang. Why are you letting us go?"
Huang Siping paused. For a long moment, he was silent. Then he said, "Perhaps because your demon nature remains untamed, yet your humanity is not yet lost. I once possessed those things. After I submitted to the Yin Court and became Stone Mountain's god, I lost them." He limped into the trees. "If you are human, you are an aberration among humans. If you are a demon, you are a marvel among demons. I am curious to see what you become."
Xu Ying smiled. "I am definitely human. Not a demon."
The wolf vanished into the forest, his voice trailing behind him like the last note of a fading song. "Do not be so certain. The wildness in you burns brighter than mine. One day, you may reveal your true form—and the sight might startle even yourself."