Surprisingly Enough(NOT), Common Sense Is Overpowered in a Cliché Cultivation World

"So, what've you got? Tell me. We need every advantage we can scrape together," Ning said, turning to the protagonist.

"What do you mean?" Xiao Fan blinked, genuinely confused.

"You weren't planning on just charging headfirst into what's clearly going to be a brutal fight, were you? Regardless of what the senior tower spirit said." Ning ignored the spirit's indignant hey and sighed at the blank, how-did-you-know look on Xiao Fan's face.

He didn't even need Pure Eyes to cheat his way into reading people, when it was this obvious.

"Lei Shen might as well be crippled, unable to muster a shred of spiritual energy, but that doesn't mean he won't have a trump card tucked away somewhere. Everything about this reeks of preparation. Lei Shen, Lei Fu, whoever else is involved, they wouldn't leave themselves without some kind of failsafe, especially with Lei Shen this weak."

"Ugh. Much as I hate to say it, that does sound plausible." The tower spirit finally relented. He had his share of vanity, sure, but he wasn't about to let two young disciples pay for his pride by pretending otherwise. It was already humiliating enough having to send Qi Condensation disciples to handle something so far above their station.

"...Hm." Xiao Fan paused, mulling it over, then came up blank. "I don't think I've got anything like that."

Ning sighed. What did he expect from Mr. Punch-Any-Problems-I-Encounter-Away? "Here. These might actually be useful."

He pulled out a string of pills: blood-replenishing, healing, even a few explosive ones, scent-masking pills, detoxification pills, followed by a handful of talismans: agility, silverback bear strength, golden shield, and more besides.

The sheer breadth of it left Xiao Fan gaping.

"Why the hell do you carry around this much stuff?" he asked, watching Ning stuff item after item into his hands.

"The real question is why you don't. Last I checked, you're the one who ends up in situations like this on a weekly basis." Ning shot back.

He genuinely didn't understand why protagonists in these stories never bothered with useful things like this. Sure, he got it; the whole "special, fated, and blessed by gods and demons" thing was the genre's bread and butter for the protagonist's weapons and abilities. But it always baffled him that they never leaned on the mundane advantages that could've made every fight easier.

Faced with such a profound-not really that profound-question, Xiao Fan had no good answer.

"The Hundred Professions exist specifically to bridge the gap between the strong and the weak," Ning said, still distributing items, pulling more out of jade bottles and small boxes so everything would be within reach the instant he needed it. "You should try using them sometime."

Then Ning turned to the mini tower spirit. "What about senior?"

"Well, with my main body being so busy, I don't have many things I can help with, especially in combat, but I do have something that would give you the edge." The tower spirit abruptly slapped a seal onto both Ning and Xiao Fan. "This is a spiritual energy seal. It'll take you some time to refine this energy for your own techniques, but there's no such restriction if you're just using it to power talismans."

"Mind telling me how much spiritual energy is actually in this seal?" Ning asked, curious. There really was a seal for everything, huh?

"Enough for the two of you to use a fair number of second-rank spells." The tower spirit sounded rather pleased with himself. "For your current level, that's quite a lot."

"I see." Ning narrowed his eyes at the circular seal now resting in his palm.

"So that's everything, then? Let's go kick some ass," Xiao Fan said, already moving.

"Alright." Ning, at this point, accepted his fate.

He was never the type to dwell on things he couldn't control. His philosophy in life had settled into something simple: just roll with whatever came.

The staircase kept descending, the two disciples and the palm-sized spirit sinking deeper into the sect prison.

By this point, it no longer felt like a prison at all. It felt like a dungeon, or, well, this was clearly a dungeon.

The upper levels had at least felt like something built by people. There were broken doors, shattered talismans, empty cells, rusted chains, old blood dried into the stone, terrible, all of it, but still bearing the unmistakable mark of human hands.

That feeling faded the deeper they went.

The walls darkened, taking on an ominous cast, growing rougher and less even. The talisman lamps grew scarcer, most of them long dead, leaving only a faint grey light that seemed to come from nowhere in particular, just enough to make out the next few steps, never quite enough to see the whole of the path ahead.

It was obvious that almost no one came down this far anymore.

Ning held an arrow loose between two fingers, cold qi hidden beneath his skin, ready to snap to life the instant something demanded it. He was not going to get jump-scared.

Xiao Fan walked half a step behind him, the golden qi that usually clung to him pressed down so thoroughly that even Ning could barely sense it anymore. The blood-gold seal on his palm stayed hidden beneath his sleeve, though every so often it still pulsed faintly through the cloth.

"Been a while since I've come down this far," the tower spirit murmured.

"It's pretty creepy down here," Xiao Fan admitted, nodding along.

Neither of them spoke after that. All of them were focused on trying to scout and remain undetected.

Ning flicked Pure Eyes on just long enough to scout the path ahead, then shut it off almost immediately. He needed to hoard every scrap of spiritual qi he could.

Using investigative techniques was proving to be quite dangerous, too. Normally he liked knowing the shape of a battlefield before stepping into it: distance, blind spots, objects, movement, all of it mattered. But three corridors back, when he'd let his senses drift too wide, something behind a sealed door had stirred.

That something hadn't attacked, but that was enough for Ning to understand the way the dungeon worked.

Ning had shut off Pure Eyes instantly, but for several breaths afterward he'd felt something cold and patient pressing against the very edge of his perception, like a blind thing that had almost, almost remembered exactly where he was standing.

Yeah, anything that needed a sealed door was obviously bad news, and not on a normal level either.

It became increasingly clear the deeper they went. On the middle and upper floors, every prisoner had escaped, but the ones this far down remained. Maybe the suppression formation was still barely holding on this level, or maybe these prisoners simply didn't move.

The first cell they passed with someone still inside didn't look occupied at all, not at first glance. A man sat far too upright at the back of it, hands resting neatly on his knees, head bowed, hair grown long enough to curtain most of his face. Through the strands, though, Ning caught a glimpse of open eyes. The man's chest rose exactly once as they passed. A single breath after that, none at all.

Ning raised a finger and gave the smallest shake of his head. Don't stop.

Their goal was the deepest layer. It would be foolish to entangle themselves with these prisoners.

The man's eyes moved, only the eyes, sliding beneath the fall of hair to track them the entire length of the cell in a creepy, unblinking stare.

Neither of them so much as slowed.

Once they'd cleared the cell, the tower spirit's voice finally surfaced again, though it was barely above a whisper.

"Yan Shou. Former elder of Blood Crane Valley. Early Foundation Establishment when he was imprisoned. He once used a demonic ritual to raise a hell flames hound by sacrificing several Qi Condensation disciples. If that seal ever breaks, don't fight him. Run."

Ning kept his eyes forward. Foundation Establishment. The man behind them, who looked half-dead and drew breath once every dozen heartbeats, had been Foundation Establishment. He was really getting the sense of things now.

"The lower prison was never meant for ordinary criminals," the spirit went on, quieter now. "Most of what's sealed down here either reached Foundation Establishment or stood right at its threshold. Rogue cultivators. Traitorous elders. Disciples from clans that lost their wars. Political burdens too valuable to kill outright and too dangerous to ever let loose again."

Too valuable to kill. Ning turned the phrase over. He wasn't that surprised by it.

"Execution is rarely simple for a sect," the tower spirit added, apparently reading exactly where Ning's thoughts had gone. "Kill the wrong person and their clan wants blood for it. Kill a captured elder and his hidden disciples scatter like seeds, only to sprout again as enemies somewhere in the dark. Kill a prisoner with real value, and you throw away techniques, secrets, ransom, leverage, bloodline research, interrogation potential. Sometimes imprisonment is cruelty. Sometimes it's mercy. Most of the time, though, it's just politics being politics."

Ning's mouth twitched despite himself.

Ah! Politics, even in another world altogether, they had not changed.

The corridor curved, doubled back, sank lower again. Stairs appeared where the slope had grown too steep for anything else, and elsewhere the descent was so gradual Ning only realized they'd gone lower once his ears popped and the pressure behind his eyes deepened another notch.

The sect prison ran deep into the ground, but considering the prisoners, Ning felt it made sense.

One cell held nothing but chains. There was no prisoner, nothing at all, just hundreds of chains hanging from every surface, crossing each other in dense layers until the whole cell resembled a web forged from black iron. Most of the runes etched into them had long since gone dark. As Ning passed, the chains swayed gently, with no wind to explain it, and somewhere within the tangle came a soft clink, followed by another, and then a third.

Xiao Fan's hand twitched toward a fist.

Ning caught his wrist and pointed forward instead.

Further down, a cell with its door still fully intact proved somehow more unsettling than any of the broken ones. Layered black iron, reinforced with strips of silver-white suppression ore, seven talismans pasted across it. The sheer amount of reinforcement was telling enough.

Inside, a woman sat neatly before a small stone table, hair combed with obvious care, a pair of rusted shackles resting at her wrists like decorative bracelets. Black and white stones sat arranged across a board in front of her.

She was playing Go against herself.

As they passed, she set down a black stone. The soft tap of it against the board made something in Ning's mind lurch sideways. For one splitting instant he saw a battlefield beneath a blood-red moon, white-robed disciples kneeling with their heads gone, a woman laughing with red on her lips. Pure Eyes flared on instinct, and the vision shattered as fast as it had come.

The woman's head turned, slow and deliberate, a smile blooming across her face.

"Little disciple," she said, her lips barely seeming to move at all, "would you care for a game?"

Ning didn't answer, focusing on holding his concentration together.

"Mo Lian," the tower spirit said, voice gone cold. "Don't engage her. She once unraveled three inner disciples' Dao hearts with nothing but a single conversation. Her cultivation's sealed, but her mind arts still work through sound, through gaze, through suggestion alone. It's only because she was once a concubine of a foreign Purple Mansion cultivator that she wasn't executed immediately."

The deeper they went, the stranger it got. A cell coated floor to ceiling in pale blue frost, an old man frozen solid at its center, his beard suspended around him like drifting smoke, the ice cracking faintly from within every few breaths only for the surrounding talismans to flare and seal it shut again. Another cell held nothing but a shadow standing upright against the back wall, shaped like a man, with no body anywhere to cast it, and when Xiao Fan passed, the shadow's head turned to follow him.

"Hm. Despite everything, it's going pretty well," Xiao Fan finally couldn't help but say. They'd been moving downward for what felt like several minutes with no end in sight, and the prisoners they had seen were straight-up nightmare fuel, but nothing really happened in the end.

Of course, the moment the protagonist said that, Ning wasn't surprised when a sudden scream sounded, briefly human at first, and then very much not. Xiao Fan's head snapped toward the sound.

"Ignore it. There's only one more descent left before we hit the deepest layer." The tower spirit stared into the dark ahead for a long moment.

Xiao Fan clenched his fist, but Ning just followed the tower spirit's words.

Whatever caused that scream wasn't their priority right now.

The final downward steps were barely wide enough for one person at a time, so Ning went first, Xiao Fan a step behind, the tower spirit hovering silently between them.

Halfway down, Ning felt his qi slow in circulation.

The Pure Qi Sutra inside him still circulated, but every turn became heavier, as if his meridians had been filled with cold sand. The Infinite Circle in his dantian trembled once, then shrank slightly, rotating in tighter silence.

Xiao Fan sucked in a quiet breath behind him. The pressure affected him too.

"The deepest suppression field," the tower spirit said. "Even broken, it still restrains spiritual energy. That's why the prisoners below remained contained longer than the ones above."

If he'd encountered this anywhere else, Ning would have considered it an excellent training ground. The sheer amount of spiritual energy control training in this environment would have been genuinely useful, under different circumstances.

But right now, he just wanted it over with. Especially after seeing the prisoners, he really didn't want any of them getting loose in the sect. There were too many unexplained horrors down here already.

At the bottom, three cells stood open, their doors long since torn free.

"Keep up your guard." The moment Ning saw the open doors, he assumed the worst and signaled Xiao Fan to get ready in case anything jumped them.

Xiao Fan's eyes flashed gold before he quickly settled. "That's not necessary. They appear to be dead."

Inside each cell, a prisoner sat slumped against the back wall. They weren't dead, not completely. Threads of something dark red, thinner than hair but far too numerous to count, ran from each prisoner's chest, wrist, and throat, disappearing into the floor itself, sinking through solid stone like water into sand.

Ning watched, for exactly as long as it took to understand, a faint pulse travel down one of the threads, a slow, visible ripple of spiritual energy being drawn out of a chest that barely rose anymore, dragged downward, deeper, toward wherever the stairs eventually ended.

Their qi was being absorbed and pulled downward.

"...Oh," the tower spirit said, very quietly. "That explains it."

"Explains what?" Ning asked, still watching the threads pulse.

"Why the deepest prisoners never fled with the others." The spirit's tiny voice had lost every trace of its usual pomposity. "I assumed they were simply too weak, too heavily suppressed to move even once the seals cracked. But they were never given the chance to flee at all. Something is drinking them dry before they can. The prisoners on the upper floors escaped because whatever's doing this hadn't reached them yet, or didn't need to. Down here, the ones already weakest, already drained down to a trickle by decades of suppression, were the easiest source to tap first."

Xiao Fan's jaw tightened. "So Lei Shen's using them. As fuel."

At the deepest layer sat Lei Shen, and the spiritual qi was moving downward. It wasn't hard to put together.

"Yes," the tower spirit muttered bitterly. "Someone down here has been planning this for longer than I'd like to think about."

A soft clicking noise interrupted them, coming from somewhere just past the next bend in the stairwell.

Ning went still. Xiao Fan mirrored him half a second later.

Around the corner, low against the wall, something crawled into the weak grey light, vaguely centipede-shaped, if a centipede had been built out of fused bone fragments and threaded through with the same dark red strands Ning had just watched drain a prisoner dry. Its body was the length of a forearm, dozens of jointed legs clicking against the stone as it moved, its front end split into no discernible face at all, only a cluster of those same red threads, questing forward like feelers.

It hadn't noticed them yet. It was too busy nosing at a seam in the wall, feeling for a weak point in whatever remained of the sealing scripts.

"Blood thread centipede," the tower spirit breathed, barely audible. "They're not a true living being. More of a construct made by a demonic method. At least now we know Lei Shen has truly turned to the dark side and embraced being a demonic cultivator."

"How strong is it?" Ning mouthed.

"Weak. They are weak individually." The spirit's voice tightened. "They were built to drain the helpless, not to fight. But there could be a dozen of them between here and the bottom, and enough of anything weak, thrown at you all at once, stops being weak."

Xiao Fan's fist curled slowly, gold light gathering at his knuckles, and he killed the demonic construct without a word.

For once, Ning agreed and chose violence over patience. If Lei Shen needed spiritual energy and blood energy, it would be foolish to let him have any more of it than he already did.

A single arrow, cold qi punched into another centipede. Unlike the terrifying look of it, the threads unraveled almost instantly and turned to grey dust.

It had taken exactly one hit, and one hit had been enough.

"...Huh," Xiao Fan whispered, surprised despite himself.

"Told you," the tower spirit said, some of his usual smugness creeping back in despite everything. "Weak. Individually."

They kept moving, and the further down they went, the more of the constructs they found, some clustered three and four together around a single drained prisoner, siphoning what little remained; others wandering alone along the walls.

Ning killed what he could from a distance, one clean shot apiece, never letting more than a handful cluster in one place before thinning them out. Twice, a cluster noticed them coming and surged forward all at once, a scrabbling wave of clicking bone-legs and grasping red threads, and both times Xiao Fan simply waded in and ended it before it became a real fight, one heavy punch scattering three or four of them into dust with a single motion.

Individually, they crumbled like dry leaves. It was only in numbers that they'd have been worth worrying about, and neither Ning nor Xiao Fan let them gather that many.

Past a dozen more drained prisoners, most too far gone to so much as lift their heads, past the pale threads running endlessly downward through cracked stone, the stairwell finally leveled out.

And finally, they reached the end.

Unlike the narrow roads before, this was a large space surrounded by walls, and at the far end stood a heavy door.

Before the door sat a man.

He was cross-legged on the stone floor, his back straight, his hands resting on his knees. His prison robes were old and torn, but they had been kept strangely neat. A head of gray hair fell down his back, and a long scar crossed one side of his face from brow to chin.

"Hoho. I did not expect the old man to be right. There really are intruders." The man spoke cheerfully.

His pale yellow eyes swept over Ning and Xiao Fan, unhurried, sizing them up.

"But I did not expect them to be mere children." His lips curled slowly. "Truly, I did not expect the Pure Qi Sect to have fallen so low that it now sends children to fight."

The moment the final word left his mouth, he moved.

There was no gathering of qi, no build-up at all. One instant he was sitting before the door. The next, the space between them had already been crossed.

Ning's pupils shrank. Pure Eyes activated on instinct, blue light flaring in his gaze, splitting the world into pieces he could actually use, the man's shoulder dropping, his toes leaving the stone, a pale hand cutting toward the gap between Ning and Xiao Fan.

Ning threw himself sideways. Xiao Fan moved in the same heartbeat, stepping back and twisting his shoulder out of line.

The hand passed between them. The fingers were thin, the nails yellowed, the motion almost gentle. That gentleness lasted right up until they saw what the attack had actually done.

The wall behind them nearly split open. Five claw marks tore through the black stone, deep enough to expose the sealing scripts hidden beneath. The damaged runes flashed once, then died with a faint hiss.

Ning landed in a crouch, one hand pressed flat against the damp floor. Xiao Fan slid back three steps, golden qi already rising around his fist.

The broken wall let out a sudden cold wind that swept across the corridor and chilled everything it touched, carrying the stale smell of blood and rot that had been building for decades.

The man was standing exactly where they had been a heartbeat earlier, his hand still raised.

"Oh?" He turned his head. His pale yellow eyes brightened, and a smile spread across his thin face. "You dodged that?"

His gaze slid from Xiao Fan to Ning and lingered there.

"Good senses. Very good senses. I was wondering whether they were simply sending you to your deaths, but it seems the tower still has some judgment."

"He's a tough one," Xiao Fan muttered, his expression going grim.

Ning didn't answer. He only narrowed his eyes.

They had slipped past most of the more terrifying prisoners by suppressing their qi. They had put down demonic constructs by striking their weak points first. The maze-like prison itself had been survived through caution and their senses.

For a moment Xiao Fan had almost believed the real danger was Lei Shen alone. But he understood now that the door itself had a monster guarding it.

Ning straightened slowly. His fingers closed around an arrow, and his thoughts were already outrunning his breathing.

The man's attack had been casual. That was the part that mattered. No technique, barely any qi circulated, and he had still nearly opened both of them from throat to waist.

The tower spirit flickered into view beside them, its expression curdling further.

"Mei Long," it said. "Foundation Establishment realm. Forty-three years ago, he was sentenced for slaughtering three mortal villages while chasing a breakthrough. He was a disciple of the Blood Fang Sect at the time, which is the only reason the sect settled for sealing him instead of executing him outright."

Mei Long blinked, then rubbed the back of his head with a bashful smile.

"Ah, thank you for the flattery. It has been a long time since someone introduced me properly."

"That was not flattery," the tower spirit said flatly.

"Was it not?" Mei Long tilted his head. "For a man who has been rotting under the earth for forty years, that is already quite a grand introduction."

His smile widened, showing teeth that were still human in shape, sharpened at the edges.

"Though I should correct one small detail. My cultivation has regressed. I am more of a former Foundation Establishment cultivator now. This prison has been drinking my spiritual energy for decades. My foundation cracked long ago. My sea of qi dried up, and my meridians shrank along with it."

He spread his hands. The dull silver chains at his wrists clinked softly.

"Now I am only a late Qi Condensation cultivator."

It took a certain kind of man to have half his cultivation ruined and still be so at ease.

Ning did not relax, and neither did Xiao Fan.

Late Qi Condensation should have been good news. But the pressure rolling off Mei Long didn't feel like ordinary late Qi Condensation. It was not as fearsome as Foundation Establishment, but it had once stood at that height, and the shadow it cast hadn't shrunk to match.

Mei Long seemed to enjoy the way they were looking at him.

"Do you know why I agreed to guard this door?"

He asked the question while already dodging.

Xiao Fan had moved the instant the sentence started. Golden qi burst beneath his feet, and his fist tore through the air toward Mei Long's chest.

Mei Long leaned aside, letting the fist graze past his ribs.

"First one," he said lightly, and his knee came up.

Xiao Fan crossed his arms and took the kick head-on. The impact shoved him back a step. Before Mei Long could press the advantage, an arrow screamed toward his eye.

His hand flashed up and caught it between two fingers.

Purple-white lightning exploded along the shaft. His fingers trembled once before he crushed the arrow with a soft crack.

Ning's second arrow was already behind the first. Mei Long tilted his head and let it graze his cheek, opening a thin line of blood.

For a breath, all three of them went still.

Then Mei Long touched the wound, looked at the blood on his fingertip, and put it on his tongue.

"You two," he said softly, "are making me excited."

"Tsk. Why do you always end up facing perverts like this?" Xiao Fan muttered, watching the man's expression with open disgust.

Normally Ning would have had something to say back, but he was too busy gathering power for a stronger Lightning Cry Arrow.

Mei Long chuckled.

"I guarded this gate not merely because I was promised freedom. Not merely because Lei Shen promised to restore my cultivation." His pale yellow eyes gleamed. "The real reason was that he said someone might come."

"Do you know how long forty years is without screams? Without fresh blood? Without prey that still believes struggling will change anything?"

Xiao Fan's jaw tightened, hearing him describe his own cruelty with such glee. "Well, that's about to be forty more years, you sick bastard."

Mei Long laughed outright. "Ah, that face. Good. I like that face. Anger makes blood move faster."

Xiao Fan stepped forward. Ning's hand shifted, ready to fire.

"Then come," Xiao Fan said coldly. "See if you can draw mine."

"That courage is good too," Mei Long said, and vanished again.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on NovelPhoenix. Report any occurrences.

This time both of them were braced for it, barely.

Ning's arrow left the string almost the same instant Mei Long moved, aimed at the space he'd have to pass through to reach Xiao Fan's blind side.

Xiao Fan stepped forward instead of back, gathering golden qi around his arm.

[Heaven-Shattering Fist]

The technique erupted with a dull, oppressive boom. Rather than chase Mei Long's speed, the punch cut off the path he wanted to take.

Mei Long's blurred shape passed the arrow by a hair. His shoulder dipped beneath Xiao Fan's first punch, and his palm snapped toward Xiao Fan's ribs.

Xiao Fan hadn't fully committed to the punch. He drew his elbow in and took the blow on his forearm instead. He shook from the impact and slid back half a step, but nothing got through.

Ning's second arrow arrived. Mei Long leaned away and let it brush past his ear.

Xiao Fan's fist came again, tighter this time, the timing sharper. The air in front of it folded inward.

Mei Long raised his palm to meet it.

Fist and palm collided with a boom that rolled down the corridor. Dust fell from the ceiling. Xiao Fan ground his feet into the stone and refused to give up the position.

Two more arrows came from different angles, one at Mei Long's knee, one at his throat.

His expression shifted, just slightly. His wrist twisted to redirect Xiao Fan's fist. His head tilted clear of the throat shot. His foot shifted late enough that the knee arrow still opened a bloody line through his robe.

His smile grew wider. "Good."

Ning's eyes narrowed. It was getting increasingly clear that the old monster was a battle maniac.

Xiao Fan attacked again, and this time Ning moved with him.

Hidden Ice Mist spilled from his sleeve and crawled low across the stone, blurring the lower half of Mei Long's body without blocking Xiao Fan's view.

Small Cloud Rain followed, fine droplets falling almost invisibly in the dim grey light. Each time Mei Long moved through it, the rain shifted around his shape and gave Ning a clearer outline to aim at.

"Oh? Using rain to see my movement?" Mei Long asked. "That's new."

Ning loosed arrow after arrow. Facing the volley, Mei Long dodged some and simply blocked the others.

Xiao Fan crashed in from the side at the same time.

[Heaven-Shattering Fist]

This time aimed not at Mei Long's body but at the ground in front of his feet. The stone exploded upward, and his step paused for a fraction of a second.

Ning's hand struck the talisman pouch at his waist. A dark red talisman came out, thick as thin jade, the character for flame burning at its center.

[Falling Flame Seal Talisman]

"You can't hit me with something so obvious-" was as far as Mei Long got before the crimson formation above him finished gathering.

He crushed it without ceremony.

Overhead, a crimson formation seal spread wide enough to cover half the corridor.

Fire came down as a pillar dropped from the sky. It melted the stone beneath his feet, turned the chains along the walls red, and curled the old talismans nearby into sparks.

Xiao Fan had already fallen back. Even from a distance, the heat pushed him several steps further.

Ning pulled his sleeve up to shield his face, the robe's cooling weave taking the worst of the heat, while the flame roared, then thinned, leaving the corridor scorched and smoking.

"Did we get him?" Xiao Fan asked, exhaling.

Ning released a few more arrows where his senses detected presence and answered. "Dunno. Don't want to find out. Let's move quickly."

Xiao Fan opened his mouth to answer, but the black iron door at the far end trembled.

The tower spirit spun toward it. "Yes. Whatever Lei Shen is doing is already in its final stage. I can feel the formation around the sect gradually losing its power. We need to move quickly."

That was all they needed to hear. The two ran to the door.

Xiao Fan slapped his palm against it. The blood-gold seal beneath his sleeve flared, and the talismans pasted across the black iron trembled. Old chains of light spread across the surface, loosening.

They were almost through when Ning's Pure Eyes burned with warning.

His body moved before his thoughts caught up. He grabbed Xiao Fan by the back of his robe and shoved him toward the door, using the same motion to throw himself backward.

A grey shadow tore through the space where both their necks had been.

The wind that followed cut a shallow line across Ning's cheek.

Xiao Fan slammed one hand flat against the door and spun around. Ning hit the scorched ground hard and skidded across it.

When the smoke parted, Mei Long was standing where they had just been.

No, it wasn't quite Mei Long anymore.

His burned robes hung off a body that had already started to change. Grey fur burst from his skin. His fingers lengthened into black claws. His shoulders widened with a series of wet cracks. His jaw pushed forward into something with fangs in it.

The charred wounds across his body were steaming and slowly closing.

He rolled his neck, and his bones cracked one after another.

Ning narrowed his eyes. This was bullshit. Whatever let the man shrug off a hit like that clearly did more than just toughen his skin.

"You truly do not go slowly at all, little archer. Who starts the battle using such a strong attack? That's no fun, you know." He looked at the melted stone, then licked a line of blood from the corner of his mouth.

The tower spirit had gone pale. "His supernatural ability."

Ning kept his eyes on Mei Long. "Explanation. Fast."

"[Wolf Devouring the Moon]," the spirit said in a rush. "A supernatural ability that lets the user transform into half wolf, half man. In this form, his body would take on all the advantages of a Moon Devouring Wolf. His speed will rise sharply. His claws will tear through defensive artifacts. As long as he drinks blood, his wounds will regenerate faster than you can inflict them. He'll gain resistance to poison as well, and his hide alone should be enough to shrug off anything but a serious hit."

Ning's eyelid twitched. "Wonderful."

This was just a straight-up werewolf at this point. And if he remembered correctly, while this particular ability wasn't top-tier, it still ranked well above his own Know Thyself.

Truly, the novels and games hadn't lied to him: boss fights always had a second stage to them.

The ground trembled. The tower spirit's voice spiked in urgency. "We need to hurry. Now."

Mei Long glanced back at the door, then smiled. "You are a little late. Even if you beat me, Lei Shen should already be in the final stages of his plan."

Xiao Fan's face worsened hearing that.

Ning's thoughts moved swiftly.

A direct fight with Mei Long would waste time. Fighting together might win, eventually, but eventually was exactly what they did not have.

"Xiao Fan." Ning closed his eyes and opened them. "You go on ahead."

Xiao Fan stared at him as if checking he was serious.

"Say what now?"

"We can't let them succeed." Ning kept his bow raised, eyes never leaving Mei Long. "If both of us stay here, he wins just by delaying us."

Mei Long's smile widened. He looked entertained.

Xiao Fan was silent for a heartbeat, processing, and then he nodded. "I leave it to you."

He just had to trust Ning to hold until then.

Xiao Fan moved using his movement art, the tower spirit trailing close behind.

Mei Long's eyes sharpened. "Ah! You are not going to get past me that easily."

Ning's arrow was already waiting.

The Lightning Cry Arrow screamed through the passage and struck the space between Mei Long and Xiao Fan. Thunder exploded outward, not enough to harm Mei Long deeply since it hadn't gathered much power, but enough to force his hand aside for a single breath.

Mei Long's claw cut through the lightning.

But one breath was all Xiao Fan needed, as the vertical seam opened.

Xiao Fan slipped through with the tower spirit close behind him.

He looked back at Ning one last time as the door began to close.

Mei Long took one more step, but Ning's second arrow landed at his feet. Hidden Ice Mist erupted from the arrowhead, freezing the stone in a pale ring and forcing him to pause.

The black iron door shut. Only Ning and Mei Long remained in the passage.

"If this were a novel, it would probably fade to black now," Ning mumbled.

"You go on ahead, I'll hold them off" was a pretty common trope. There were two ways it usually went.

The first was a redemption arc: the villain sacrifices himself so the protagonist can go deal with the real threat. The second was simpler: it was just the sidekick's moment to shine, and in that version he usually didn't die.

Ning didn't think of himself as the villain. He'd never antagonized Xiao Fan a day in his life. Which meant, if the universe had any sense of narrative structure at all, this was supposed to go the second way.

He even wondered if this was the whole reason he'd ended up here in the first place: hold the door while Xiao Fan went and did protagonist things somewhere more important.

A few months ago, this thought would have sent him spiraling about fate and plot armor and whether he was a background character in someone else's story. Now, he would still panic about it, just later, once this whole affair was over.

At this point he'd accepted that shit just be happening, and that there was no getting off the protagonist escalation train once it left the station.

"Well," Mei Long said, rolling his shoulders as if loosening old joints, "it does not matter that one went ahead. Lei Shen can handle one boy."

His pale yellow eyes settled on Ning. The hunger in them brightened.

"So I will play with you first."

Ning moved while the man was busy delivering one-liners. With Xiao Fan beside him, there had still been room to coordinate. Now there was no one left to cover his mistakes, which meant no reason to save anything for later.

If the cliché held true, this was supposed to be the part where he dug deep and struggled valiantly against a monster two stages above his weight class.

Ning was not going to do that. He was going to be as unfair as possible for as long as possible, and only fight fair once he ran out of ways not to.

Ning activated the inscriptions woven into the cloud-patterned robe beneath his outer clothes. Senior Sister's gift. Rated to shrug off anything below late Qi Condensation outright, and blunt a good portion of whatever came above that. He was going to need every inscription in it today. Similarly, he activated the inscriptions in the boots. Wind Cloud Boots, gifted by Sun Jing as thanks for saving him. This would help him keep up with this beast of a cultivator.

Then he pulled out two pills and swallowed them.

[Blood Ignition Pill]

[Clarity Needle Pill]

One spiked his qi circulation for a handful of breaths. The other sharpened his reaction time to match.

He didn't stop there. He ran the Alchemy Qi from the Medicine King technique through his meridians, forcing both pills to digest faster while improving their effects. Normally, stacking pills like this was asking for qi deviation, but Alchemy Qi handled the conflict before it could take root. There was a reason this technique was considered one of the finest alchemy arts in circulation.

Ning drew his bow instead of his spear, for now. Spear work meant closing distance, and closing distance meant giving Mei Long's claws and speed something to work with. Better to bleed him from range first and save the spear for when it counted.

"Well, make it enjoyable, will you?"

Ning didn't answer. His first arrow was already in the air.

[Lightning Cry Arrow]

It struck the space in front of Mei Long's chest and exploded into thunder, forcing him to veer half a step off his line. That half-step was the only opening Ning needed to put distance back between them.

Mei Long laughed. "Little archer, you loose arrows like they cost nothing."

He closed the gap anyway. Ning's second arrow caught him in the shoulder before he pulled the third from his quiver, but Mei Long was already inside striking range, claws raking for his ribs.

Ning planted his spear.

[Cold River Spear Art: Still Water Guards the Bank]

The shaft angled across his body, guiding the claw strike wide instead of meeting it head-on. The force still dragged him back a full step, his boots skidding across the scorched stone, and one claw caught the edge of his robe rather than his skin. The cloud-pattern inscriptions flared pale blue where it grazed, and the fabric held.

Ning didn't have time to feel relieved about it. Mei Long's second hand was already coming from the other side.

He twisted his spear into a tight arc.

[Returning Current]

The motion caught the second claw at the wrist and spun it wide, redirecting the momentum instead of absorbing it. His shoulder wrenched from the sudden torque, but the robe took the graze along his forearm this time, the inscription cooling instantly against the shallow burn where a claw tip had nicked through.

"Oh?" Mei Long's eyes narrowed, catching the flicker of light along Ning's sleeve. "You're keeping up with me. Those pills of yours must be good; you're reacting to me even as I get stronger."

Ning fell back three steps and loosed another arrow.

Mei Long batted it aside without looking.

Even with the robe absorbing what it could, every exchange still cost Ning something. There was no one else here to force Mei Long to split his attention, no second angle of attack to make him hesitate. The only advantages Ning had were range, preparation, resources, and the fact that Mei Long liked to talk.

So he used all of it, mercilessly.

His right hand struck the talisman pouch. A red talisman came free, cinnabar characters burning even before qi entered them.

[Falling Flame Seal Talisman]

There was a reason Ning had bought two of these particular second-tier talismans. First, they hit harder than almost anything else in his arsenal short of feeding qi from the Infinite Circle directly into a shot. Second, they released faster than most talismans of the same tier.

They were also expensive enough that he only had one left after tonight. Each had cost a small fortune in spirit stones, and he'd meant to save this last one as a trump card.

At this point, he didn't hesitate to spend it anyway. He could always earn more spirit stones later. He wasn't about to die frugal.

"Fall," Ning said, and crushed the talisman.

Overhead, a crimson formation circle bloomed wide enough to swallow half the corridor.

Heat poured down. Moisture vanished from the walls. Black iron chains along the passage turned red. Fire came down once again, melting the stone beneath it.

A shadow burst free from the side of the flame. Fast, too fast.

"Not gonna get me twice the same move, little archer." Despite saying that, Mei Long was undoubtedly feeling the wear and tear. Even if there was no direct hit, just the effect of them made him cough up blood.

While he spoke, Ning's hand dipped into a jade bottle Ling Xin had pressed into his hands a while ago. He shook two pills into his palm without looking.

[Vigor Restoration Pill]

He swallowed both, and warmth spread through his exhausted meridians almost immediately, nowhere near a full recovery, but enough to keep his qi circulating properly instead of stalling out from overuse.

Then three talismans, stuck to his body in quick succession.

[Golden Bell Guard Talisman] dissolved into the fabric over his chest.

[Frost Veil Protection Talisman] wrapped around his left sleeve.

[Lightstep Escape Talisman] settled near his waist, its characters glowing faintly.

Cold qi spread beneath his skin as he ran Jade Skin and Icy Meridians together.

Mei Long noticed. "You sure like to use external objects. But I won't hold it against you; you have no friend to hide behind this time, so struggle as much as you can. Wealthy little archer."

Ning's jaw tightened, just slightly. "We use what we have, don't we?"

He'd already mapped out his opponent. Mei Long was arrogant, and clearly fond of the sound of his own voice. He kept indulging himself, playing with his prey instead of pressing his advantage, seemingly unbothered by how many wounds he was racking up along the way.

I can use that, Ning thought, narrowing his eyes and drawing a slow breath to gather what strength he had left.

"Good," Mei Long said. "I like honest children."

Then he moved.

His beast-like transformation enhanced far more than just his strength. Despite his towering frame, his movements were explosively fast, closing the distance in the blink of an eye.

Ning fired at the ground near his left foot, forcing a flinch, then planted his spear as the man closed the last of the distance.

[River Gate Holds]

The shaft locked across his body, meeting the incoming claw dead-on rather than deflecting it. It was the wrong choice against something this strong, and Ning knew it the instant the impact landed, the force driving straight through the guard. The robe's defensive weave lit up bright blue along his chest, absorbing most of what should have caved his ribs in, but he was still thrown backward, skidding hard across the scorched floor, breath knocked clean out of him.

Without the robe, that hit alone would have ended things. He knew it, and so, from the look on his face, did Mei Long.

Mei Long clicked his tongue. "That should have broken something."

"It nearly did," Ning admitted, forcing himself back up. He pressed another defensive ward against his chest without slowing down, layering protection on top of protection.

His plan was to indulge the small talk and use every breath that Mei Long wasted.

So, once again, he fired.

[Seven-Step Numbing Powder]

This time, the arrow had a special something in it. It was one of those special arrows that he commissioned to be made by Sun Jing's sister.

The arrow broke apart near Mei Long's face in a pale cloud. He held his breath at once, exactly as Ning had expected.

Small Cloud Rain pulled the powder downward instead, settling it into the open wound on his arm.

His eyes brightened. "Ah. You did not need me to breathe it in. How much stuff do you even have in there? Aren't you a little too over-prepared?"

"No," Ning said. "You've just shown me I need to bring even more trump cards next time."

The poison touched blood. Dark threads spread beneath his skin, and his movements slowed by a fraction, small enough that it barely mattered against how much ground he was closing regardless.

Ning's sleeve flashed.

[Frost Net Talisman]

Blue-white threads spread like spider silk toward Mei Long's limbs. Hidden Ice Mist thickened the air around them.

He tore through the first layer, then the second, then simply ripped the third apart with brute force and kept coming.

Ning drew his bowstring to its limit and let a thin thread of Infinite Circle bleed into the arrow. It wasn't much, but even a thin thread changed the weight of the shot.

Mei Long looked at him, and the smile faded a little.

Ning released.

Mei Long twisted at the last instant, avoiding the killing angle, but the arrow still punched through his side and exploded against the wall behind him.

For the first time, he staggered, one hand going to the wound. It was deep. Deeper than anything before.

Ning didn't stop to admire it. The moment Mei Long staggered, his next arrow was already leaving the string.

Mei Long ducked. The arrow only cut through a few strands of grey hair, and he closed the gap in the same breath, claws already swinging low for Ning's legs.

[Parting Current]

Ning split the spear diagonally through the strike, dividing its force to either side instead of taking it whole. The claws still tore a shallow line across his hip where the robe's protection thinned at the seam, and pain flared bright and immediate.

He staggered back a step, breathing hard, and his hand found another jade bottle without conscious thought.

[Minor Wound-Sealing Pill]

He crushed it between his teeth rather than swallow it whole- no time for that- and pressed the paste directly against the gash at his hip. It stung viciously, then went numb, the bleeding slowing to a trickle instead of a stream.

But he didn't stop. His next arrow flew for Mei Long's throat.

Mei Long caught it in his teeth. Lightning burst inside his mouth, smoke leaking from between his lips before he crushed it and spat the pieces aside.

"You use every breath," he said. "Every opening. Even your own words serve a purpose. You're the exact opposite of me."

Ning's face stayed calm, though his heart hammered hard enough that he could feel it in his throat, and blood was still seeping slowly through the sealed wound at his hip.

He had thrown poison, talismans, arrows, pills, and a thread of Infinite Circle at this man, and traded blows with his own body wherever the robe couldn't fully cover him.

But even with that, he was just barely holding the edge.

Mei Long wiped the blood from his lips. "Little archer, despite everything, I think you're a monster in the making. Shameless enough that even I would blush. There's not a fair fight left in you at all." His eyes narrowed with amusement. "We're more alike than you'd care to admit."

Ning didn't want to sit through a we're-not-so-different speech. "You really do talk too much."

He fired another arrow. Mei Long avoided it, but the movement pulled at the wound in his side, and his breath caught, just slightly.

Ning saw it anyway. Pure Eyes flared brighter, even as his vision swam faintly at the edges from blood loss and spent qi. His mind went cold and quiet. He stopped trying to win the whole fight and picked one point instead.

He let his stance drop, just slightly, just enough to look like exhaustion had finally caught up to him.

It wasn't entirely a lie.

Bloodthirsty as he was, Mei Long took the bait without a second's hesitation, lunging in low and fast, claws aimed to end it in one motion.

Ning's foot came down on the exact spot he'd hidden a talisman under the scorch marks earlier.

[Earth Binding Talisman]

It activated beneath Mei Long's own foot as he closed the distance, his weight already committed, his stride sinking half an inch into softened stone.

Half an inch was enough.

Ning's spear came up from below.

[Cold River Spear Art: Still Water Pierces Stone]

Just a calm thrust hidden inside mist and silence. The spearhead entered through the wound already open beneath his ribs and drove deep.

There was nothing else holding Mei Long in place this time. Only the spear, and only Ning's own grip keeping it there as Mei Long thrashed against it.

That grip nearly cost him his arm.

Mei Long's claw came down across Ning's forearm even as the spear tore toward his heart. Even with the robe's inscriptions flaring bright along the sleeve, even as he forced one last surge of power through the Golden Bell Guard Talisman still clinging to his chest, Ning didn't let go, whatever the pain cost him.

For one cold instant, Ning felt the whole calculation align. Three more inches and the old monster would be finished.

Mei Long's smile disappeared. A low growl rose from somewhere deep in his throat.

"You are getting too close for comfort."

Mei Long grabbed the shaft in his good hand and simply tore himself backward off it, ripping the spearhead free through his own flesh rather than let it finish the job. Blood sprayed across the stone in a wide arc, and Ning was thrown off balance by the sudden release, stumbling forward onto one knee.

Then his hand moved. Not toward Ning this time.

His hand moved towards his own mouth.

Ning's pupils shrank as a blood-red pill appeared between Mei Long's fingers, small as a thumb joint. The moment it appeared, the corridor filled with a thick metallic stench.

Mei Long laughed, blood running from between his teeth. "Good thing Lei Shen was generous. You're not the only one who plays unfair."

Ning tried to scramble back, his injured wrist screaming, but there was nowhere fast enough to go. Mei Long bit down on the pill first.

The crunch was soft. What followed it was not.

A wave of blood qi tore out of his body, and the shockwave alone knocked Ning flat onto his back despite the robe absorbing the worst of the raw force, his skull cracking against the stone hard enough to blur his vision.

"This pill was refined from the blood essence of Foundation Establishment cultivators and above. It won't restore me to my peak..." A savage grin spread across his face. "...but it's more than enough."

His eyes blazed with exhilaration.

"Forty years." He laughed, the sound hoarse and almost delirious. "Forty years of weakness. Forty years of having my blood, my qi, my very life siphoned away by that damned tower." He slowly clenched his hand into a fist, veins bulging beneath his skin. "Do you have any idea what it feels like to finally breathe again?"

Ning forced himself upright through sheer stubbornness, blood running freely from a cut above his eyebrow now, and his hand found a third jade bottle almost without thinking, the last kind he had any real use for now.

[Berserk Pill]

Heat flooded his chest, sharp and unnatural, burning away the fog of exhaustion and blood loss all at once. His pulse spiked hard enough to hurt. For the next several minutes, at least, his body would stop telling him the truth about how badly it was damaged.

He triggered the escape talisman at his waist in the same breath.

[Lightstep Escape Talisman]

Spiritual light wrapped around his feet, and Ning shot backward as fast as he could to regain distance to safely assess this new form through archery.

Mei Long's grin only widened at that. "Running?"

He lowered his stance, spine arching unnaturally as his wolf-like jaws stretched open far wider than any human mouth should allow. Behind him, the phantom wolf mirrored the motion exactly, and blood qi, beast qi, and spiritual energy surged together, spiraling inward toward his mouth instead of dispersing outward the way qi normally did.

[Heaven-Crushing Wolf Bite]

The corridor shook as Mei Long exploded forward, throwing his entire body into the attack as a single projectile, with the phantom wolf dragging him behind it like a leash pulled taut.

Ning's pupils contracted. Too fast to dodge cleanly, but he twisted sideways at the last possible instant anyway, and the enormous jaws snapped shut barely inches from his neck.

BOOM!

The compressed qi detonated the moment the jaws closed, and even without a direct bite, the shockwave alone slammed into him hard enough that his protective robe flared white before the light dimmed to almost nothing. He was thrown like a rag doll across the corridor, smashing through a black stone pillar before crashing into the far wall. Blood burst from his mouth, and every bone in his body rang from the impact.

But Ning wasn't looking at his injuries. His blue eyes stayed fixed on Mei Long on his mouth, specifically.

The beast qi had compressed entirely between Mei Long's upper and lower jaws before the attack ever erupted. It wasn't released through claw or fist. It needed the bite itself or more precisely, it needed those jaws to close completely before it could go off.

The realization flashed through Ning's mind, and he buried it beneath everything else before it could show on his face.

Despite coughing up blood, Ning pushed himself back to his feet, slowly but surely.

Mei Long laughed. "Still standing?"

Mei Long didn't follow right away after the attack. He stood in the middle of the corridor with his head tilted back, and his arms spread slightly.

The wound beneath his ribs closed itself. The cut on his calf tightened. The burned skin across his chest cracked and peeled away to reveal fresh grey fur beneath.

Even the poison Ning had worked so hard to seed into his blood was simply swallowed by the tide.

Mei Long breathed in, deep and greedy, then laughed. "Ah. Now this is a fight. Man against man. Blood against blood. But you're still a step too slow."

Ning stood too, his vision sharp and strange and slightly too bright at the edges, the berserk pill lying to his nerves about how much of him was still intact.

His left wrist hung wrong. His hip was still seeping under the sealing paste. There was a ringing in his skull from the impact that hadn't faded, and every breath pulled at something cracked in his ribs, even if the pain registered now as noise rather than agony.

He was, by any honest measure, in far worse shape than he had ever been in.

Ning spat blood to the side. "Senior Mei, you should know that relying on strange pills from suspicious old men rarely ends well."

What in the world was going on with this guy? This was already the third time Ning had watched something that should have ended him instead make him stronger. It felt like fighting something unbeatable.

Mei Long lowered his head, and his smile came back. "Says the boy who has swallowed so many different pills in front of me already."

"I never claimed to be better," Ning said. "Only better prepared."

He pressed his last two first-tier talismans onto his own body, his good hand shaking as he did it, the berserk pill making the tremor look almost casual.

[Stone Skin Guard Talisman]

[Three-Breath Spirit Shield]

At this point, it was only because Ning was cautious to the point of paranoia that he was still standing. No ordinary cultivator would have this many talismans as a precaution. It was only the spiritual energy seal the tower spirit had quietly pressed into his palm before it left with Xiao Fan that kept his reserves from bottoming out completely.

Ning picked his spear back up despite every part of his body screaming at him not to. So this was the kind of fight Xiao Fan threw himself into, over and over. The smell of death had never felt this close.

Mei Long's claws lengthened, and blood-red threads extended several feet past the actual claw tips.

"Good. Continue."

He vanished again. This time even Pure Eyes only caught a streak of grey and red.

Ning threw himself sideways, faster than his ruined body should have allowed, the berserk pill carrying him past what his actual condition would have permitted. The blood-red threads cut through the space he'd occupied a heartbeat earlier.

[Three-Breath Spirit Shield]

A transparent barrier snapped into place a moment too late to matter for that dodge, but it caught the follow-up strike, cracking under the first cut and failing outright on the second. The robe took what got past it, the inscriptions along his shoulder flaring and finally starting to dim, spent.

Ning tilted his head back on instinct. The threads passed close enough in front of his throat to open a thin line across his skin.

[Cold River Spear Art: Returning Current]

He caught one of the blood-red threads directly on the spear shaft and spun with it, redirecting its momentum past his shoulder instead of through it. His already-injured wrist screamed in protest at the motion, distant under the pill's haze, but the thread skidded off rather than opening him up further.

Mei Long grinned. "You are running out of things to trade with."

"I have one or two left," Ning said with gritted teeth.

Speed.

In the world of martial arts, there was one truth that held above all others: only speed was unbreakable. As long as you moved faster than your opponent, you could never truly be caught. Ning understood that principle with painful clarity now.

Mei Long lunged again. Ning threw himself into a hard roll rather than block, coming up on one knee, and fired the last arrow he could manage one-handed off the string, more instinct than aim.

[Lightning Cry Arrow]

It caught Mei Long's wrist. Lightning burst outward and made his fingers twitch, buying half a breath.

Ning used it to put distance back between them.

Mei Long froze for a moment, flexing the twitching hand, then started laughing again. "Little archer, you should have run the moment that door closed."

"I considered it," Ning admitted. "But since I chose this path, I will follow it to the end."

The answer only made Mei Long grin wider.

Ning had already pulled another talisman, his fingers slick with his own blood now, fumbling slightly where his grip had gone unsteady despite the pill.

[Reverse Wind Talisman]

He threw it at Mei Long's feet. It was meant to shift his balance out from under him for a moment.

Mei Long's foot landed half an inch wrong. Ning closed the distance himself, spear leading.

[Still Water Guards the Bank]

He guided the first claw wide, taking the graze along his already-injured forearm rather than risk a solid hit landing somewhere worse.

Mei Long's second claw came for his exposed side. Ning twisted at the last possible instant, and it caught his ribs instead of his gut, tearing through cloth and flesh in a line that dropped him hard onto one knee.

The berserk pill kept him from feeling the worst of it, but even a lie has limits, and his body was starting to catch up to the truth underneath it.

"Wonderful..." Mei Long's voice had dropped to something almost reverent, blood dripping from his fangs as his eyes widened with manic delight. "I thought you were merely struggling to survive."

Ning said nothing. He planted his spear and forced himself back to his feet.

Mei Long's laughter returned, softer this time, almost giddy. "No... no, no, no. I see it now." He pointed a claw at Ning like a man who'd just uncovered buried treasure. "You're trying to win. Against me. Against this gap between us."

He laughed again, nearly dancing in place. "Hahaha! That's it! That's the look!"

His crimson eyes gleamed with ecstatic madness.

"You already have the heart of a demon."

Ning didn't pay attention to the madman rambling. Instead, his hand moved to the last second-tier talisman he had.

[Ninefold Thunder Spear Talisman]

It all came down to this. Ning took a deep breath.

He pressed it against his palm instead of a bow this time, since his wrist could no longer draw one, and pulled the deepest thread he dared from the Infinite Circle. The circle in his dantian shuddered under the strain.

He ignored all of it. This was the attack to end it all.

Lightning gathered around the spearhead instead of an arrow this time. The weight of it made his already-damaged arms shake just holding the stance.

Mei Long felt the shift and stopped laughing for the first time since he'd taken the pill. He rushed forward instead of waiting, no longer bothering to test Ning's guard first.

Ning planted his back foot and drove the charged spear forward to meet him head-on.

The thunder spear met Mei Long's crossed claws dead center.

For an instant, the entire passage went white. Then the explosion arrived, thunder smashing into his arms fold after fold, each detonation triggering the next.

Mei Long howled, and this time there was no laughter in it.

The force drove him backward, carving two long trenches into the stone floor. It also drove straight back through the shaft into Ning's own arms, the recoil alone nearly dislocating his already-injured shoulder, throwing him off his feet and skidding across the scorched ground.

Mei Long's claws held through three folds of thunder. On the fourth, the right forearm broke. On the sixth, the left elbow shattered. On the ninth, both arms burst apart below the shoulder.

He crashed into the far wall, and the black stone cracked behind him.

Ning didn't get up right away this time. He lay where he'd landed, and felt, for the first time since swallowing the berserk pill, exactly how much of him was actually broken. The pill's effects were already thinning, the borrowed strength running out along with everything else.

His bow was somewhere behind him, useless with his ruined wrist. His dantian felt hollow, the Infinite Circle shrunk down to a thin, trembling thread. The robe hung heavy and mostly spent across his shoulders, its inscriptions dark now where they'd once glowed.

Keeping Pure Eyes open felt like holding up a mountain with his eyelids alone, and for a moment he let it close, just to breathe.

Across the corridor, Mei Long slid slowly down the wall, both arms gone, blood pouring from the stumps.

For a moment even his ability seemed unable to keep up with wounds that catastrophic.

Ning breathed hard, and for the first time since the fight had started, the corridor was actually quiet.

Then Mei Long began to laugh. Low at first, then louder, loud enough that the broken chains along the walls trembled with it.

"Fun."

Ning's blood ran cold at the sound of it. He forced his eyes back open.

Mei Long lifted his head, his face twisted somewhere between pain, madness, and genuine delight.

"Fun! Fun! Fun!"

The pill surged again inside him. The torn flesh at his shoulders writhed, pale wet bone pushing outward as threads of blood qi wound themselves around the stumps.

"You think," he growled, forcing himself upright without the use of a single hand, "you can stop me because my arms are gone? Alone, and out of tricks, and out of pills?"

Ning's eyes narrowed. The arms were regenerating, more slowly now, but regenerating all the same.

Even the Ninefold Thunder Spear had bought him nothing more than time, and he had spent nearly everything he had, robe and pills and talismans and technique alike, to buy that little.

Mei Long lowered his body. Without arms, he looked even more like the animal his ability drew from. His back arched, his jaws opened, and a dark wolf shadow rose behind him again, larger and less stable than before.

Ning tried to push himself up and found his arms wouldn't fully cooperate. He made it to one knee, and that would have to be enough.

Mei Long's fanged mouth split into a wide grin. "Then stop this."

[Heaven-Crushing Wolf Bite]

Blood qi, beast qi, and raw spiritual energy compressed between his jaws, the shadow behind him roaring as if to devour the moon.

Ning's blue eyes burned, his pupils narrowing to almost nothing.

Everything up to this point had been leading here. Mei Long's outer defenses were simply too strong to break through directly, and he was fast enough that Ning couldn't hope to out-position him anymore, not like this, not with half his body already broken.

Ning had spent everything in his arsenal to bring the fight to this single moment. He had one chance left, and only one, before this monster regrew even his arms and the entire nightmare started over from nothing.

This ability was bullshit. What did it even mean, regenerate as long as you drink blood? At some point that stopped being a gift and just became an unfair rewrite of the rules.

Ning's thinking was surprisingly clear despite everything. Maybe it was because he could feel the end getting close, one way or another.

Mei Long kept charging like something no longer entirely sane. Ning didn't try to dodge. Instead, he gripped his spear with both hands and braced for the final exchange.

"Die!" Mei Long howled, jaws snapping wide, coated in spiritual energy, ready to end him.

Ning planted his back foot into the scorched stone and drove the spearhead straight into the gap between Mei Long's open jaws, angling it the instant before impact so the shaft caught crosswise against both rows of teeth.

[Cold River Spear Art: River Gate Holds]

The spear groaned under the full weight of Mei Long's charge, bowing dangerously, and the impact nearly tore it out of Ning's ruined grip entirely, but the shaft held just long enough to do the one thing it needed to do.

It wedged his jaws apart.

Mei Long's bite, built to close clean and crush the gathered qi into a single point, found a bar of steel jammed sideways across its path instead. The compressed spiritual energy had nowhere left to seal into. It spilled outward through his open mouth instead of firing forward, hissing uselessly into the air.

Mei Long's eyes went wide with something close to panic, his jaws straining against the steel, unable to close, unable to bite down on the one thing keeping his own technique from finishing.

That instant was all Ning needed.

His tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, and two pills rolled free from where he'd kept them hidden, the very last thing left in his arsenal.

Both his hands were locked around the spear, bracing against Mei Long's weight, so he spat the pills instead, aiming past the wedged shaft and into the open throat behind it, pushing the last bit of his qi into the pill to trigger in a second.

Mei Long's whole body seized. His momentum carried him forward anyway, driving the spear from Ning's grip and slamming his weight down half a breath later, more falling than lunging now.

The impact drove pain through every bone Ning had left that wasn't already broken, the robe offering little more than a token cushion at this point, but he didn't look away even as he hit the ground for the second time.

Mei Long loomed over him, jaws still forced open around the splintering spear shaft, blood and drool running freely down his chin. For the first time in the entire fight, his expression held nothing amused in it at all.

"What did you-"

Mei Long looked down, and what he found unsettled even him.

A pair of pale, hollow eyes stared back at him.

Ning's voice came out barely above a whisper. "Explosion."

In his entire life, Mei Long had never felt a chill so strong from hearing a single word. But it was already too late to act on it.

The two pills bloomed at once. Scarlet-gold light tore out of his abdomen and chest together. The terrifying physique that had shrugged off blades and shattered spears became utterly meaningless. His hardened hide, reinforced bones, beast qi, and every defensive technique he had cultivated for decades were all designed to stop attacks from outside.

This explosion simply opened him from within.

Organs tore. Ribs shattered outward. Blood, bone, fur, and burning beast qi filled the corridor all at once.

The dark wolf shadow behind him let out one final howl before collapsing into smoke.

Mei Long came apart with a single wet, final sound, and then there was nothing left standing at all.

Blood rained down over Ning in the aftermath, coating him from head to foot. For a long moment he simply lay in the wreckage of it, staring at his own trembling, blood-slick hands.

"...Could've gone worse." He let his head fall back against the stone, too exhausted to feel anything else for his first personal kill.

...

Thanks for reading~

A/N: Being Ning is suffering. This was a fun fight to write, hopefully for you guys to read as well.

Also, this was the second draft. In the first draft I wrote, I thought Ning had been gifted puppets by Ling Yinran, not the robe, so I wrote the whole damn fight using the puppets and all. I don't know why I thought Ling Yinran gave Ning puppets even though I wrote she didn't. In hindsight, I should have absolutely checked the presents chapter, but I was too dumb to do so. So, yeah, this is the raw fight. With the puppets, this fight would go a bit differently.