Chen Ai’s deep iron club shone blacker than black against the starry sky as she swung with all her might. The demonic spawn strained against the stone roots binding it in place. Her club struck it between the eyes and crushed the demonic spawn’s head like a rotten melon. Boiling blood sloshed up from the wound, and the demonic spawn spasmed, but it did not drop the sabers. Bulges grew and swam through its flesh, and it shattered the stone wood shackles with rippling muscles.

  Headless save for a tongue wriggling up from a hole in the throat, the demonic spawn spun at random. The cultivators fell back quickly as the three heavy sabers swung through the air like a tornado. It spun towards them, and Song Shuai sent out a strike of electricity from his spear.

  It struck the blades and coursed through the demonic spawn’s body. Smoke rose, but the blood continued spurting, and the demonic spawn swung its blades in a mindless frenzy.

  The cultivators moved out of the way, and it continued to spin about the quartz shore at random.

  Droplets of steaming blood shot out, and they hissed on the quartz or burned through clothes.

  The cultivators kept their wits about them, defending with qi techniques as they fell back. I didn’t want to reveal the qi I stole from the plum blossoms, so I utilized Cabbagy’s footwork techniques and relied on my regeneration.

  A fat droplet of blood struck my throat and sizzled through my flesh like hot lead. My eyes shuddered as the heat flowed into me, and I tasted the demonic qi literally pouring from the spawn.

  Rich.

  Metallic.

  Savory.

  It should be ours.

  It should be mine!

  “Is it dead?” Song Shuai asked.

  “There’s a piece of the brain left,” the old Shen swordsman said. “That’s why it’s still moving.”

  “So we still need to kill it.”

  “Or we could walk away,” said Ran Yailu. “It’s not attacking us, and we need to find somewhere to camp.”

  Shen Tongtong scoffed.

  “Just admit you’re too much of a coward.”

  “There are no cowards in this valley,” I said. “As to the enemy…”

  I wasn't worried about whether it was going to die; I was more concerned about whether it was going to heal. My experience with demonic experiments still felt fairly limited, but this felt like me. There was an emptiness to its presence, even as demonic qi radiated like heat from a stove.

  “We have to kill it, but the demonic qi is too potent. As the expedition leader, I shall take on this danger alone.”

  The cultivators gasped. They might think I was crazy, but at least this way nobody else would get hurt… and I could have my alone time with the corpse.

  “The rest of you go ahead and find a place to set up camp.”

  The cultivators looked between themselves.

  “You don’t have to do that, senior brother. I will stay and help.”

  “It’s alright, Chen Ai. This is something I need to do.”

  “No, she’s right,” said Shen Tongtong. “We should fight this beast together.”

  “I’m not one to turn down a fight,” said Song Shuai.

  “That thing cut me!” said Shen Botao with bloodshot eyes. “We have to kill it!”

  “The Ran won’t be found wanting!” said Ran Qin, and Ran Yaliu nodded in resignation.

  The old Shen warrior simply readied his sword.

  Damn! I’d meant to come off a little heroic, but I didn’t want to be inspiring! Now they were all going to fight alongside me, and I’d have no chance to absorb the demonic qi or eat the monster’s flesh.

  “No, no, it’s fine. I brought us into this danger, so it should be my responsibility.”

  Chen Ai raised an eyebrow. She said nothing, but I could tell she knew that I was up to something.

  “You feel that responsible?” she asked.

  “On my honor as a cultivator,” I said with as much conviction as possible. “It is something I must do!”

  “Alright, senior brother.”

  Song Shuai poked his spear toward the spinning demonic spawn.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “You sure you don’t want some help?”

  It was funny how quickly we stopped treating it as a threat, despite how we were fighting for our lives a moment before.

  Well, most of us…

  “Not a single one of us could face that thing alone!” Ran Yaliu said. “Now you want to take it on by yourself? You must be crazy! There’s honor, and then there’s suicide.”

  “Suicide?” Song Shuia scoffed. “That man was a head, and now he’s walking around! How could you possibly worry about him?”

  “You’re forgetting about the demonic qi!”

  I smiled at her.

  “I’ll be fine”.

  “You’ll be crazy!” she said. “Maybe you already are. How do we even know that head was him? How do we know that he’s the expedition leader and not another monster!”

  I couldn’t let that kind of talk spread, so I laughed and, fortunately, everyone else joined in.

  “That would be a nightmare,” I said as I wiped away a tear. “But believe me when I say there are enough terrifying things here without us fearing each other. This might convince you though, if I don’t make it back tonight, Ran Yaliu is in charge of the expedition.”

  Her face paled.

  “No! I don’t want that!”

  “It’s decided,” Ran Qin said quickly. “You all heard him. Now, go, noble expedition leader. We shall make our way to a proper campsite due north.”

  She moved towards the river, and, reluctantly the other cultivators followed. Still, I could see the obvious looks of relief on their faces as they realized they woudln’t have to entangle with the evil thing again.

  My senior sisted gave me a nod as she followed them, her pack on her back and her club over her shoulder, but she said nothing.

  Shen Tongtong lingered.

  “Why did you nominate the Ran girl?”

  I tried to figure out what exactly her angle was, before I just told her the truth.

  “I won’t die so it’s not a real nomination.”

  She smiled.

  “How humiliating! Well done, mas… expedition leader.”

  Her eyes widened at her slip up and she hurried away to join the others at the river banks.

  She shot a flaming arrow across the black water, and it flew slowly with a steady, yellow light, illuminating a series of stone pillars that sat inches above the flow. Even though they were hazardous, I didn’t like how much they looked like a path.

  But that was a problem for later.

  I charged towards the beast, and more blood spattered my face and chest. Smoke rose from the holes forming in my robes and the flesh below. The heat spreading through my veins almost made me stop right there, but all a fire ever wants is more. I conjured tentacles of blood from the wound in my flesh and wrapped them around my body and up to my arms where they formed a set of long gloves.

  The tendrils wrapped around my body served in place of my missing bones and I used them to launch myself with force at the spinning demonic spawn. It couldn’t see me, or even know where I was, but

  Since I still lacked most of my bones and was mostly just relying on flesh and blood manipulation to move, the tendrils allowed me to propel my body along faster with the tension and release. The sabers formed an impenetrable wall, but I had a secret weapon: being penetrable.

  I leaped into the blurred edge of the sword tornado and felt the blades sink into my flesh. Unlike with the Butcher Bird, there was no pain. My lack of bones made me incredibly soft, and the blades passed clean through my legs, my groin, and my shoulders. The severing of my spine left me stunned for a moment, and I flew forward in three pieces.

  If the demonic spawn was still conscious, it would have stepped aside or cut me again, but it was not.

  I smacked into the demonic spawn’s torso and pulled myself back together with my tendrils. In the same instant, I reached my arm into the creature's neck. Boiling blood surged up my arm and filled me with demonic fire. I felt so hot that I swore I was glowing.

  I opened the wounds in my palm with flesh manipulation. I still felt clumsy using my new ability, but this much was doable. I pushed my blood into the creature’s blood, and I felt it becoming mine, just a little, and so I pulled. The holes in my arm became mouths, and a combination of flesh and blood manipulation drained the beast until it staggered, and its arms drooped like a dying flower.

  The sabers fell from limp hands and stabbed deep into the ground with three separate thunks.

  The demonic spawn spun a couple more times, the pale toes of one leg digging into the grit between chunks of quartz rock, before it collapsed.

  I pulled myself away, vibrating with joy.

  The stolen blood made a dent in refilling my blood reservoir, but the true prize was the demonic qi.

  The heat flowed into me, and I pushed it toward the flesh reservoir until the seal cracked. It wasn’t fully open, maybe a third of the way, but I could feel the flesh waiting there, ready for use.

  The demonic spawn was truly dead, and the three sabers sat there like headstones.

  There was no head, and no sense that it was looking at me. The faint wiff of the facility remained, and I wondered if there were gray stone rooms hidden beneath the soil, that this poor creature might have crawled from.

  “Do you remember being human?” I asked. “I know you're just the body, but you don't need a soul to have memories. I wonder if you really wanted to talk. I'm going to tell myself that you did. Even if we had to kill you, it's more hopeful that way, don't you think?”

  Though it couldn’t answer, there was more I wanted to say.

  More I wanted to do.

  But I wasn’t entirely sure I was alone. I turned away from the corpse.

  “I know you’re out there,” I said to the tall grass and the rushing river and the distant trees. “You might as well come out.”

  I waited as long as it takes an incense stick to burn, but nobody revealed themselves. Obviously, I wouldn’t stay to eat the whole thing; that would take too long. Would the boiling blood make it self-cooking? Oh, I can’t tell you how excited I was about the size. So much meat! And this was the first fresh demonic thing I’d eaten. Ghost Fang was a possessed spirit ape, and the tube creatures were all pickled.

  It would probably just taste like human, I told myself, trying to temper expectations. Remember, most people-looking-things taste like people, even monkey tastes like people.

  There was only one way to be sure.

  I crouched down and spun blood around my fingers, using my gloves to tear a strip free from its hamstring. The muscle was bloody and loose, with the sections near the veins being the bland grey of boiled meat. The smell alone told me that the demonic spawn had a low salt diet. I know it sounds stupid for me to be complaining about things like that, but if you try anything enough times, you become discerning.

  I sighed.

  “You sure don’t look tasty.”

  “I agree.”

  I glanced at the nearest saber that was thrust into the ground.

  “Hello.”

  “Good evening. Are you upset that I slashed you?”

  “Not particularly. Are you upset that I killed your master?”

  The saber scoffed.

  “Frankly, my brothers and I were sick of being spun around like that.”

  “Brothers?”

  “I’m the eldest,” said the saber. “This is my middle brother and my youngest brother.”

  He indicated the other two sabers.

  “Greetings,” said the middle saber.

  “Aren’t you going to invite your friend to dinner?” asked the youngest saber with a higher-pitched voice.

  “What ‘friend’ are you talking about?”

  “The one who swam back through the river and is watching you from the water.”