Even with all of their advantages, traveling through the wilds was slow going. They had moved beyond the semi-tame portions into the true wilds. By Sen’s estimation, they were spending the same amount of time to move half the distance or less each day. Despite Sen’s deep and abiding worry that they’d be attacked at every turn on their journey, though, the next three weeks passed by largely without incident save for two exceptions. The first incident happened four days out from the battle. Sen had taken the lead position, but the lack of violence had briefly lulled him out of the hypervigilant state he usually maintained. He’d gotten distracted by an idea he had for building a new cultivation method. So, he all but missed it when another of those bear-cat spirit beasts exploded from the heavy undergrowth. As fast and as strong as he was, as well trained as he was, Sen was as capable of being surprised as anyone else. He’d jerked back from the attack, earning himself a series of deep gashes that ran vertically down his chest and stomach. If not for that last-second move, though, he’d have probably been split open like a ripe melon. The bear-cat hadn’t been discouraged by its lack of success. It lunged for his throat.
Sen’s thinking had finally started to catch up with the situation when the lunge happened. He didn’t have time to cycle anything up. He didn’t even have time to draw a weapon. He did the only thing he could do. He shoved his left arm in the way. The spirit beast’s jaws closed on his arm like a vise filled with razors. The explosion of pain from his arm threatened to obliterate all rational thought. Roaring with fury, Sen did the first thing that came to his mind. It was the most brutal, primal response available to a person. He punched the bear-cat in the side of the head. That loosened the spirit beast’s jaw, so he punched it again. The bear-cat stumbled away, while Sen lurched backward from the stunned creature. A hot, red anger swelled in Sen’s chest, and with it came an unfamiliar feeling. He wanted to hurt this thing. Sen seized the hilt of his jian, determined to make the beast suffer. He took one step toward it when something blurred past him. There was a spray of blood as Lo Meifeng opened the beast’s throat with her own jian. The woman executed a smooth twist and drove her blade into the bear-cat’s body.
For a second or two, Sen’s anger was transferred to Lo Meifeng. How dare she steal his kill? That thought was short-lived as fresh surges of pain burned through the haze of his anger. The wounds on his chest burned, but that was nothing compared to the stabbing, jangling pain that raced from his wounded arm into his head. He winced and hissed a little as he sheathed his jian. He was sure of it now. The bear-cats were all holding a grudge. He looked over at Lo Meifeng.
“Sure. We should probably find somewhere to settle in for the rest of the day. You heal fast, but that thing’s bite might have carried some kind of poison, or venom, or infection. Best not to linger about treating those wounds.”
Lo Meifeng’s words turned out to be a bit prophetic. There had been something in that bite that hit Sen hard. Unfortunately, because he was the one with the alchemy expertise, he had to mix elixirs for himself. That proved much, much harder to do while feverish and shaking uncontrollably. It took him nearly two days to finally find something that worked. It might have gone faster, but he had to keep making things to treat the symptoms. It was only then that he could be functional enough to look for the cause of the symptoms. Lifen and Lo Meifeng were both as helpful as they could be, but it mostly amounted to fetching plants in the immediate area that Sen found with his spiritual sense. Still, he was grateful to them. The thought of having to get those plants himself had been almost overwhelming in his state. In the end, it had been an infection. Once that was purged, his recovery progressed very quickly. Getting wounded had given him the opportunity to get a good look at his blood. It was still red, technically, but it had a silvery sheen to it that, frankly, made him uncomfortable every time he saw it. He added that to a growing list of questions he needed to pose to his teachers.
The second incident had, thankfully, not resulted in any injuries. It had just scared the three of them nearly to death. For most of a day, a nascent soul-level beast had stalked them. It never attacked. They never even caught sight of it during that day. They just felt it observing them, no doubt because it wanted them to feel it. Sen’s recent advancement, to say nothing of Lo Meifeng’s and Lifen’s advancements, meant exactly nothing in the face of that kind of power. If that beast decided to kill them, they would die. While Sen might be able to get away by hiding, he wasn’t going to leave the other two as sacrifices to let him escape. In the end, the nascent soul beast seemed to grow bored with its game. That was when a small – if anything nearly forty feet long could be called small – dragon flew up into the sky. The most frightening thing about the whole event was that it had risen from the forest less than a hundred feet from where they stood staring up at it in mute awe and fear. It did one lazy circle above them, then flew off to do whatever dragons did to amuse themselves when not terrifying lowly humans.
As terrifying as that close encounter with the dragon had been, the general lack of spirit beast interest in them reinforced Sen’s belief that someone or something was intervening on their behalf. He suspected it was Boulder’s Shadow. If it was Boulder’s Shadow, Sen was unclear about the evolved spirit beast’s motivation. It might be nothing more than trying to curry favor with Feng Ming, but that only worked if Sen knew it was Boulder’s Shadow. There were several clues, but clues weren’t proof. Then again, it might just be some kind of residual guilt for participating, however indirectly, in the deaths of all of those innocents back in that town. If the panther-man was trying to pay down some kind of karmic debt by indirectly aiding some humans, that might explain why he hadn’t made himself known. The other possibility was that someone else was intervening. The problem with that idea was that Sen couldn’t imagine who would be acting on their behalf or why.
Through all of it, though, Sen had been following that tugging in his soul. Much as it had on the way to Tide’s Rest, it grew stronger and more insistent the closer they got. He had been leading them on a slightly southwestern path, but he hadn’t wanted to stray so far from the road that they could get back to it if dire need arose. Of course, close was relative. It’d probably take them a day to reach it if they made a straight line for the road. So, it was with some confusion that Sen abruptly stopped walking. The tugging in his soul was pulling him almost directly south, which meant it was time to turn that direction and head deeper into the wilds. Yet, he couldn’t make sense of what he felt beneath his feet. He stamped his foot down a couple of times. Then, he turned to Lifen and Lo Meifeng.
“Do you feel that?” he asked, stamping his foot again.
The two women traded a look and followed his lead. Each of them stamping a foot down hard. Lo Meifeng frowned. Lifen stared down at the ground like it was telling her lies. Crouching down, the young woman started pulling at the grass and soil. After a minute or two of work, she stood up looking proud of herself. She pointed at what her work had exposed.
“What do you make of that?” she asked.
Sen and Lo Meifeng walked over to take a look. Buried beneath what must have been decades, if not centuries, of slowly encroaching soil and grass were the remains of a road. The three of them spent the next half hour slowly testing the ground in the area to see what direction the road took. In the end, Sen was both surprised and not surprised to discover that it led from north to south. He shook his head a little.
“We need to go that way?” said Sen, gesturing south. “So, you know, it’s not at all suspicious that there’s an abandoned road heading that way.”
Lifen gave Sen a look. “Don’t abandoned roads always lead somewhere terrible, or haunted, or haunted and terrible in the stories?”
“And treasure,” said Sen with a grin, even if he didn’t really believe it.
Lifen brightened up at that. “You know I love treasures.”
“I do,” said Sen. “My dearest Lady Sun Lifen, would you care to join me on a historic quest to find the lost treasure of the creepy abandoned road?”
He offered her his hand. For the first time in what seemed like a year, Lifen beamed at him and took his hand.
“How could I resist an offer like that from such a handsome, mysterious,” Lifen got a mischievous gleam in her eye, “legendary hero?”
Lo Meifeng rolled her eyes. “I think there might be something wrong with you two.”
“My venerable Lo Meifeng, there’s always room for another adventurer on our grand quest.”
“Venerable?” asked Lo Meifeng.
Lo Meifeng walked over to Lifen and Sen, who were both failing to keep straight faces. Then, she kicked Sen in the shin hard enough that it would have shattered a brick wall. Sen let out a cry of shock and hopped around on one foot while Lifen pointed and laughed.
“How’s that for venerable? You ass,” said Lo Meifeng with a deeply self-satisfied look on her face.