Even with the lingering, unnatural warmth of the corruption in his veins, Jiang felt a measure of tension bleed out of his shoulders as he moved through the forest. The ground here was uneven, carpeted in a thick layer of decaying leaves, dead sticks, and frost-hardened mud, but his feet found purchase with the ease of long experience.

  It had taken a little effort to calibrate his movements, admittedly. The last time he had hunted properly, he had been a mortal pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion just to keep up with a deer. Now, he felt like a coiled spring. He had to consciously hold back, checking the force of his steps lest he snap a root or leave a footprint deep enough to hold water. It was a good problem to have, he supposed, but it required focus.

  Focus that was being systematically dismantled, one snapped twig at a time.

  CRACK.

  Jiang didn’t flinch, but his jaw tightened.

  Five paces behind him, Ren Li was moving through the woods with all the stealth of a landslide. The youth in the blue robes seemed determined to find every piece of dry deadfall in the province and crush it beneath his expensive boots.

  “This is quite pleasant, actually,” Ren remarked brightly as another low branch snapped against his shoulder. “Fresh air, clear paths, a straightforward threat – far better than the chaos in Birigawa. And the village head seemed relieved to see us working together. Cooperation always strengthens morale, don’t you think?”

  Jiang kept his eyes on the ground, scanning for any signs of tracks. “We’re hunting. That means we need to stay quiet.”

  And as much as he hated to admit it, the hunt wasn’t going well. They had found where the three sheep had been taken easily enough – the confusing mess of tracks indicated that the sheep had at least tried to run – but barely a few meters into the treeline, the tracks just… vanished. Years of experience meant he was able to make a fairly good guess which direction the beasts would have headed in, but to his irritation, it was just that – a guess.

  Honestly, if it weren’t for his pride not wanting Ren to know that he was basically making this up as he went, he would have spent the next few hours making increasingly large sweeps through the forest, centred on where the sheep were taken. Instead, he had picked his best guess at a direction and was moving in a roughly straight line. Fortunately, Ren clearly had no idea what he was doing and thus didn’t question anything.

  “Right, right. Quiet. Stealth,” Ren whispered, the volume of his voice dropping but the intensity remaining exactly the same. He stepped over a log and landed heavily on a patch of brittle bracken. Crunch. “I’m just saying, it’s nice to get away from the smell of the cities, right?”

  Jiang sighed silently.

  They had covered the distance to the area Chen had indicated in less than twenty minutes, a journey that would have taken a mortal hour. Jiang was grateful for the speed, mostly because he wasn’t sure he could have endured a full hour of Ren’s one-sided conversation without punching another tree.

  To give the man credit, Ren was… polite.

  He seemed to have realised early on that Jiang wasn’t going to answer questions about his background, his cultivation technique, or his family, and had pivoted seamlessly to topics that were entirely neutral. And boring. He had talked about the weather, the quality of the soil, the architectural differences between village fences and city walls. It was like the man wasn’t comfortable unless he was talking.

  Despite that, Jiang couldn’t entirely bring himself to hate the other cultivator – at least, not on a personal level. If Ren had been arrogant or prying, Jiang could have told him to get lost or drawn steel. But Ren was just… too friendly. He was a puppy in human form, happily trotting along, completely oblivious to the fact that he was annoying.

  Jiang paused as the wind shifted, carrying a faint scent on the wind.

  Copper. Blood.

  “Brother Jiang?” Ren whispered loudly, nearly walking into Jiang’s back. “Did you spot something?”

  Jiang ignored him, adjusting his course and veering off the imaginary line he’d been following and heading toward a dense thicket of holly bushes to the east. He pushed through and stepped into a small clearing.

  “Oh,” Ren said, his voice losing its cheerful bounce. “Oh, that’s… unpleasant.”

  The remains of the three sheep were scattered across the frozen earth. There wasn’t much left of the animals themselves – a few cracked ribs, a severed hoof, a skull picked clean of flesh – but the ground was soaked with blood.

  Jiang knelt by a tuft of bloody wool, his eyes narrowing.

  On one hand, he felt a grim sense of satisfaction. His guess had been right. He had tracked the beasts, or at least anticipated them, without relying on actual signs. On the other hand, the scene didn’t make sense.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He had originally assumed that the sheep had been eaten on the spot – it had rained in the past couple of days, so it was entirely possible that the majority of the signs would have been washed away, and there hadn’t been any real point in looking for the remains. But if the sheep had been taken and eaten here, then there should have been signs.

  Jiang refused to believe that he was so out of practice that he would miss the signs of three whole sheep being dragged through a forest.

  He frowned, moving in a slow circle around the clearing, eyes scanning the forest floor. There was a collection of print marks around the bodies of the sheep, but they were… odd. The shape was elongated, with five distinct toes ending in sharp claw marks that had gouged deep into the frozen mud. They looked like the prints of a squirrel, if the squirrel had been the size of a large dog and heavy enough to crack the frost-crust.

  “What are we looking at?” Ren asked from where he was standing, noticeably outside the clearing.

  The young man was looking a little ill at the remains of the sheep, and Jiang mentally raised an eyebrow. If this was enough to turn his stomach, how did he expect to handle killing a spirit beast?

  “Something small but strong,” Jiang said, tracing the outline of a print without touching it. “Strong enough to carry the weight of the sheep, but small enough to not leave obvious tracks.”

  Or any tracks, he didn’t say.

  Jiang checked the perimeter again, widening his circle. Still nothing. It was like the beasts had appeared in this clearing, eaten the sheep, then vanished. And if they hadn’t left any signs of passage while dragging the sheep, there was no chance he could track them now that they weren’t burdened.

  “Can you tell where they went from here?” Ren asked after a moment.

  He obviously didn’t mean to be insulting, but Jiang couldn’t help the flash of irritation that went through him. “They didn’t leave any tracks I can find,” he bit out with a scowl.

  Ren didn’t take offence at his sharp tone. “Maybe they didn’t walk away?” he suggested.

  Jiang looked at him. “Well, how else would they leave? Flying away? These spirit beasts clearly aren’t birds – birds would leave claw marks, now paw prints.”

  “I didn’t mean fly,” Ren said, pointing upward. “I meant climb.”

  Jiang paused. He looked down at the tracks, then slowly tilted his head back to look at the canopy.

  The forest here was old, dominated by massive oaks and pines with interlocking branches that created a highway twenty feet above the ground. Directly above the site of the kill, a thick branch stretched out, its bark scarred by fresh, pale scratches.

  Jiang stared at the scratches, feeling a flush of irritation at his own oversight.

  He was used to hunting deer, boar, and rabbits – creatures that stayed on the ground. Hell, he’d even thought that the paw prints looked like a squirrel’s – creatures that climbed trees. He had just still been thinking like a mortal hunter, hunting mortal beasts – and a mortal squirrel could never bring down a sheep, let alone carry it in the trees. But spirit beasts didn’t play by those rules. A creature with the strength to crack frozen earth could easily leap into the trees carrying a sheep.

  “Right,” Jiang said, keeping his voice neutral to mask his annoyance. “Trees. Obviously.”

  He looked at Ren, who was beaming at having contributed.

  “Good catch,” Jiang admitted grudgingly.

  Ren’s smile widened, blindingly bright. “Teamwork, friend Jiang! I told you two sets of eyes were better than one. Now, if it’s up there, do we climb after it, or do we try to track it from the ground?”

  “Stand back,” Jiang said.

  Ren blinked. “What are you—”

  Jiang bent his knees and jumped, aiming for a sturdy branch on an oak tree bordering the clearing. In his mortal days, he would have had to shimmy up the trunk, finding handholds in the bark.

  Now?

  The top layer of the frozen mud beneath him cracked as he launched upwards with an explosive force that startled even him. The air rushed past his ears, and for a second, he felt weightless. The branch he’d aimed for rushed up to meet him far faster than he’d expected, and he twisted instinctively, catching it with one hand and swinging himself up with a smooth, economical motion.

  He landed in a low crouch on the branch, freezing for a moment and wondering if that had looked as cool as it had felt. As much as becoming a cultivator had introduced new complications in his life, he had to admit that there were some pretty significant upsides to it as well. In the first realm, he would have had to reinforce himself pretty heavily to try something similar, and even then he probably wouldn’t have made it this high up in a straight leap.

  “Impressive!” Ren called from below, craning his neck. “A bit excessive for tree climbing, but very dynamic!”

  Jiang sighed, the moment passing. The worst thing was that Ren didn’t even sound sarcastic in the least – though he had to wonder why the man had commented at all. Surely he would have seen other cultivators do similar things?

  He turned his attention to the tree itself, noting the dozens of fresh gouges in the bark. He walked along the branch, absently noting his perfect balance as he looked out across the canopy. The canopy of the trees was dense enough that it was difficult to see, but he could make out some more marks leading deeper west.

  Below him, Ren craned his neck, shading his eyes. “Brother Jiang? Do you see something?”

  Jiang didn’t answer immediately, bending to trace a deeper mark with his fingers. Judging by the prints on the ground, he would guess they were dealing with the spirit beast equivalent to squirrels, which… admittedly, didn’t sound very threatening. But he’d already jumped to conclusions once today, and if it weren’t for Ren, likely wouldn’t have found these tracks, so he didn’t want to make that same mistake already.

  Ren called up again, louder this time, “Brother Jiang?”

  Jiang exhaled through his nose. “Tracks,” he called down. “Lots of them.”

  “Oh! Splendid! If there are many, our chances of finding a group increase substantially. Have you—”

  Jiang stopped paying attention to him as he heard a soft rustle. Not from below, but from a nearby tree. Slowly, he looked up.

  Perched on the branches around him, subtle enough that he hadn’t seen them at first glance, were a dozen sets of gleaming, beady eyes. He hadn’t sensed them at all – still couldn’t, even now that he knew they were there. Jiang turned his head slowly, checking the other trees, searching for more sets of eyes.

  A moment later he gave up on counting them.

  “Ren,” he called, voice perfectly calm. “Draw your sword.”

  To the man’s credit, he put the situation together quickly. “How many?” he asked, voice edged with caution.

  “Too many,” Jiang replied grimly, not taking his eyes off the largest of them as muscles tensed under its pelt. His hand drifted slowly towards the hilt of his sword.

  Before his fingers could close around the grip, the canopy exploded into motion as the horde lunged.