I walked away from the long grass and picked a piece of meat from between my teeth with the broken-off tip of a blade. As I crossed the quartz, my willpower reached ghostly tendrils into my mind and brushed against my reservoirs. They sat like four deep, perfectly circular silos sunk into the earth and filled with swirling blood, churning flesh, quiet bone, and shadowy qi. Large seals capped the reservoirs, woven from some translucent energy that almost felt willpower, as though my own thoughts kept my blood and flesh from draining or overflowing, and likewise locked away my bone and now shielded my qi. When my willpower touched the qi cylinder’s seal -- a sword striking a sword, hands grappling for control, rain dripping into a lake. I could still draw the Plum Blossom for the technique, but I couldn’t feed Ran Cong’s qi into the reservoir, no matter how hard I pushed.

  As a merchant, we sold a toy to affluent northern children: brightly painted metal tiles that clicked onto other metal as though glued, but resisted each other with a slippery, invisible force.

  I wished Cabbagy was here, I’m sure he would have had something equally crude and insightful to share. For a moment, I considered abandoning my current task and heading back to the start of the Howling Blossom Valley, where Cabbagy was no doubt protecting the entrance point in case the portal reopened before the ninth day.

  He was probably fine, since the Valley’s monsters were focused on our expedition, and because I knew the skill he could employ. I still remember how he moved my body with speed and precision against the howling spirit monkeys. The fluid, deadly grace haunted me. I ached to recreate that feeling and the impact he’d had on the battlefield, but even after chasing him in every fight since, his skill lay far beyond mine.

  As my attention drifted, Ran Cong’s qi slipped from my willpower’s grasp. The bright emerald packet unraveled like smoke from an open hand, and I almost screamed as I forced myself to focus. Only wisps of the poison qi escaped, but each one was like a lash across my heart. I stood on a pillar in the middle of the river, ignored the cold droplets splashing through my stealth technique, and concentrated.

  What was the problem?

  I reached inside the reservoir for a wisp of shadowy qi. Once outside my reservoir, it folded into petals, but before it could assimilate into the stealth technique, I pressed it against the bundle of poison qi.

  Pain flared through me as the qis reacted -- like I’d swallowed a hot wire -- and I pulled the qis apart. When I viewed the shadow and poison individually, I thought they’d match. Now I was aware of how infinitely different they were. I couldn’t mix them, so my reservoir was responding out of a protective reflex. I needed to make a new reservoir, but there was no way I could weave something as large and complicated as that. I didn’t even know what it was made of…

  I thought about the Butcher Bird’s lesson.

  Qi is the bridge between the soul and the material world, but since I have no soul, I can hold no qi. I absorb demonic qi, but I emit nothing. I probed at the reservoir walls. They were clear as glass and hard as steel, but that was only my mind trying to make sense of things. It must be the demonic qi I’d absorbed. It was serving as my bridge between my thoughts and the material world. If that was the case, then I could hopefully use demonic qi to shape the reservoir.

  My willpower reflected off the reservoir walls like sunlight off crystal. It was far too difficult to shape. I needed fresh demonic qi, which I could guide from the beginning, but I couldn’t afford to go hunting in the surrounding forest for something demonic. It was becoming too difficult to hold Ran Cong’s poisonous qi together. Every second strained my willpower in addition to managing qi flow into my stealth routine.

  Which left only one option.

  With a shudder, I reached inside my robe and pulled out Ran Cong’s tibia. With shame, I cracked it over my knee and sucked on the end for the marrow. I’d known, when I put it in my robe, that I would end up doing this.

  Even though it tasted like sucking sewerage out of a toilet.

  I almost puked, but the flashing heat of demonic qi swept through me. I quickly grasped it with my willpower. It wriggled and writhed against me as I steered it into my qi reservoir. It tried to drift towards the walls, but when I held it back, the walls groaned hungrily, and the shadows sloshed. Despite the pressure to follow the normal path, I forced the demonic qi to stretch out like a balloon, and I stitched a new pocket into my qi reservoir. Once complete, I opened the seal and pulled in the poison packet.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  To my relief, it flowed inside my reservoir and filled the small pocket I’d just made. The strain on my willpower eased up, and my whole body grew lighter as a result.

  A smile grew on my face.

  I thought I’d never have any, but even if they weren’t in a dantian, two types of qi sat inside me. I’d thought I’d never have any, but now I had two!

  I almost leaped from foot to foot as I drew on the poison qi chamber inside, but my grin drooped as I once more felt the resistance like oil between my fingers, and this time it was backed by a healthy sense of dread. I knew exactly what it would feel like if those two qis touched, and I had no intention of feeling that again anytime soon.

  So I withdrew.

  The poisonous qi settled back once more into its chamber, and my shadowy qi continued flowing into the Plum Blossom stealth technique.

  I couldn’t draw on both qi’s at once.

  Now, I was torn. I wanted to experiment with Ran Cong’s qi so badly that my skin itched, but I didn’t want anyone to have a chance to observe me. Going back to my tent was the worst possible idea, since one of the expedition members might recognize Ran Cong’s qi signature -- something I had no idea how to know.

  No, my best bet was to finish the job I started.

  Clever thinking got me where I was, but brute force would get me where I needed to be.

  With a deep breath, I closed out the world and focused on the reservoir seal. My goal this time wasn’t to break or rip free the entire seal, but simply to drill a small hole through the seal directly into the poison qi chamber so it could flow independently of the other qi.

  It shouldn’t be too hard.

  I corkscrewed willpower into the slippery barrier. Resistance shuddered my thoughts like an earthquake. My jaw clenched, and I stopped breathing or pumping my heart. All unnecessary bodily functions ceased as I poured everything into creating a pathway for the poison qi to flow.

  Rapid pulsing filled my skull as I grew close…

  My eyes squirted out of my sockets as I liquified my brain from the psychic effort. I collapsed like a cut puppet into the river, not even gasping for air or trying to swim.

  ###

  No doubt the river was carrying me far away from the pillars and the path back to the camp, but I’d lost connection to my body after exploding my brain out my eye holes, so I simply relaxed and waited for control to return.

  I floated in darkness that flowed around me like midnight water viewed through glass. My past selves stood behind me, their breath warm on my shoulders as we watched the cold river rushing beyond my body.

  “I wonder if we can truly die,” said the farmer.

  “Butcher Bird could do it,” said the street rat. “That thing isn’t normal.”

  “Nascent Soul beasts are like gods.”

  “Maybe there’s something else,” I said. “Something about what we are.”

  “Stop saying we!” said the merchant. “We’re all already dead.”

  “You’re not dead if you’re talking to me.”

  “...”

  I smiled as the silence grew warm behind me. My past selves were completely out of view, but I heard them shuffling behind me. It wouldn’t be long now until my body was restored. Not that there was any feedback, but it was an instinct I started gaining after taking so many paralysing or lethal brain and spine injuries. No more than a few minutes could have passed since I fell into the rapidly moving river.

  “You all sound so clear here; it makes me sorry I ever doubted you were real.”

  “You thought we were lying?” asked the farmer.

  “Never.”

  I felt his rough hand on my shoulder.

  “Good luck keeping everyone alive.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I turned around. “All of you --”

  My weaponized self rushed past me like a dark current and filled my body. I pushed my willpower against my body, but my weaponized self pushed back. I’d thought his thoughts would be sharp, but they were like mud. I sank into him, slowing, and I pushed and fought, but he kept trying to swallow me. I scooped at him, flinging him from my body, forcing myself back into control.

  My past selves watched us fighting, but none interfered. Beneath me, inside me, around me, my eyes opened on a muddy riverbank. The shallow water was warm despite the cool night air, and mussells sat in the silt opening and closing. My weaponized self recoiled from the sight, having never truly looked through eyes -- it wasn’t horror, but overstimulation -- and I seized that moment to wrest control back for myself.

  My weaponized self sank back into the darkness beyond my thoughts, but it was still there. Watching, waiting, and it was not as distant as my past lives. It had a foothold in my flesh now, and I knew instinctively that the moment I let my guard down, my weaponized self would take over.

  And I knew exactly what it would do.

  My willpower flexed with preparation, and I kept my mental guard up as I stood on the riverbank and surveyed the tall, pale forest surrounding me. There was no sign of a path, but the undergrowth was sparse, and the moonlight shone cleanly through the cloudless sky. I stepped into the trees, my pace even and my body moving as I directed it, lungs breathing, heart pumping, legs stepping, all under my control.

  For now.

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