Rain struck the ground, churning mud and scattering water like a stampede of Green-Horned Bulls. The landscape didn’t change; the mountains, the elevations, and the trees maintained their shape. They could withstand the ice to come; the rain and lightning were little to the World.

  Hao ran under the thunder, chasing lightning strikes. Each step took him towards the Mountain, each bolt of light breaking on his skin, shattering into World Energy before reaching his semi-formed core.

  He didn’t look back. He couldn’t trust himself to. With Mo Bangcai’s arrival in the camp, he had a reason to stay if they stayed one night. He could pick one off at a time. But just looking at them for a moment made it hard to think. In his heart, for just a moment, he could smile at his death if they all came with him.

  Towards the mountain, to the polarity flower, the Amethysts. There is plenty of time. Hao’s teeth gnashed, grinding down until they felt brittle, the sound drowning out the thunder and waving grass. The feeling went away when he saw a streak in the sky. He chased the gray flash of lightning striking the ground; it rolled through the grass, arcing up towards him. The vibration of the energy splitting apart helped him think.

  Hao had just as much reason to leave, perhaps more than he did to stay. He wouldn’t be the spark of violence. The last thing he wanted to do was drag Dong Lingli into a battle that was not his. The same with the woman Bai Ling, they only spoke a few words, but she didn’t spit in his face upon seeing him, even tried to warn him, an act of kindness, Hao guessed. Until she saw his lust to kill on his face, something he had been working on since old Senior Yi warned him. How long ago was that? Before I first touched World Energy?

  There was more reason than that, he didn’t need to die. Not if he was smart about it. There was still so much time in the Secret Realm, but that was hard to remember; summer had yet to pass. Everyone was trapped together until winter.

  Worse than anything, someone could find his artistry, the missing person Mo Bangcai was looking for.

  Hao used Seven Colored Steps, he reached a calm as he picked up speed. World Energy, Yin, Yang, Lightning spun through his Qi Channels, getting faster by the second. The face of each person in Mo Bangcai’s group became nothing but a sketch in his mind; they would greet Grandpa He, with their heads bowed in the Nether realm. For now, he had many things to do and many months to do them.

  *

  There were groups of people he passed, less prepared than the parasol group; they ran forward towards the mountain, covering their heads with whatever they had. Like a herd, there was one ahead leading the charge. “Don’t use anything metal,” he shouted. He was smarter than he looked, holding the side of a broken ceramic jar like a visor to keep his face from getting struck by the raindrops.

  Hao avoided the group this time. Instead of helping them, he got closer to the Orange-leafed Yang forest, keeping as much distance as he could as he passed them. Is this the group that left in the morning? Hao didn’t know the faces of anyone there or of the people who had left. But his instincts were right. Seven Colored Steps caught him up to a group that had been moving for hours.

  The mountain referred to as Sorrow, the Yin mountain, was not far away now. It was shorter than the Center mountain, which was nameless as far as he knew. Unless he used the terms Sword-Face labeled them. Its base was wide and side cragged; Hao could see caverns from a distance under the flashes. Both man-made for mining and natural erosion.

  Hao stood and waited, letting the group go ahead of him and approach the mountain. They were quick to join with groups around the mountain’s base, blending in seamlessly with the encampment. He sat and cultivated, not for long, until introductions were done, and the new people joining split apart into smaller groups.

  He joined on their tail end, double the distance of the last person, the rain washed his hair, so he kept it covered. Most people who glanced at him thought he was nothing more than another fool who got delayed in the weather. Just another straggler.

  Hao sat down around one of the smaller groups of people in blue robes. A fair number of people were gathered, self-organized by their clothing. The encampment was not larger than the one around the center mountain, but their purpose was different. There, they were resting; here, they were mining, looting, looking for wealth. Why would anyone share wealth with someone who didn’t even wear the same colors as them? How stupid, Hao thought, looking at the group that was traveling together splintering apart.

  It made him feel less self-conscious of his half-blood. They found any reason to make the other person an enemy. Stop caring about anything but yourself. You all know that’s what you’re here for. Everything else is just self-protection, ego…

  No one spoke to Hao. They didn’t speak to him either, it was better that way. He didn’t plan to stay long, he wanted to be invisible, get some information, and get out. There was still lightning falling. The more time he spent here, listening to grumbling and groaning about how hard mining was, alongside the plot to kill friends and neighbors, the less he had to cultivate.

  Hao scanned the groups, and the most interaction he got was a fake smile and a head nod. It seemed to be a welcome, but it just felt like sheathed daggers were looking for a soft spot on his back. One or two grins seemed genuine. Hao felt pity for them and a little jealous of their optimism and camaraderie.

  He wandered the encampment. People were waiting at the edge of the mountain at a cave mouth, people who had to mine all morning, now they had to wait out the rain. Hao had to check. Sword-face never arrived at the center mountain camp, nor did the Drifting Stream group that knew about the Polarity Flower. If he was going to have to fight for it. He needed to know who his opponents were, who he had to race to escape that sort of escalation.

  The only thing he didn’t do while checking was pull down people’s hoods or push their hair aside to get a better look. Every few minutes in the rain, Hao reapplied the gray dust to his hair.

  It wasn’t hard to locate a few of the people he was on the lookout for. Not that he found everyone he wanted to keep an eye on. But standing in the center of the Drifting Stream group was a disciple who took part in the three-way standoff for the Polarity Flower. The confrontation Hao listened to days ago, to get the information.

  The young girl who was part of the group was there too, her face was pale with a frown. Her eyes went to the floor, and her fist clenched every time the man spoke in her ear. It was hard to forget their faces, Hao held his incompetence in high regard. He was able to walk above their group, listen to them talk, and, if he wanted, sleep and cultivate without the group ever noticing. Hao could have walked around their camp and done whatever he wanted that night.

  I knew delaying a day was a mistake. Hao was not wrong in his thinking. But the groups got the information together and shared it. He didn’t know the circumstances or how much they considered it a direct competition. They had their pride on the line and their greed leading their hearts. They wouldn’t let anyone else have an advantage over what they considered their treasure.

  Hao knew the Two Rivers Fort group that was involved was in the camp around the central mountain. Maybe they lost interest. He saw just a part of Sword-faces’ group back there too. He decided to leave and search now. If he acted early, found the hollow, and looted the flower, he could leave without trouble. He could worry about Amethyst afterwards. There was a whole other mountain he could go to, they may be more worth checking before committing.

  The rains became harder, and the lightning calmed. Temperatures dropped, and ice took the ground; the people, cowardly afraid of the cold, were quick to hide. Hao walked out of the camp, taking his hands off his head, letting his hair fall to his shoulders. He went fast around the mountainside, disappearing. He had one thing to look for and one to find. A place where the sun and rain would fall on the mountain’s side.

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  One whole day and many hours of cultivation passed until it was raining tomorrow as it was today. Lightning gave the mountain more curves than it deserved. Each strike of light lit the mountain, except for crevices and holes.

  Hao found a few checked each to his disappointment, but he was starting to impress himself with his rapidly improving climbing skills. He was ready to call it another day; it would be night again soon, and trying to find a dark cave in the dark is something only a madman would do. Some of my mind is still whole. How much of it? I think I would need someone with a bit more skill than Meiqi and more care than Li Tuzai to find out.

  When another series of gray serpents streamed across the sky. Ribbons of light gave him a few more minutes to search. The mountainside became bright, a spectacle, except for a few spots where light fell through. Hao had checked most already, but two side by side, they seemed too small for his attention. But it was not two holes, rather, it was one, split by a bridge of mountain stone.

  A few more flashes of light hit his back as he approached. He peeked his head down, presumably finding what he was looking for.

  Shallow, simple, relatively round. The cave was larger than the top-down entrance suggested. It wasn’t deep but wide, the cave’s sides dug out. In the center, something that convinced Hao he was in the right place. Grass, growing green, spread out from the center on the little dirt in the cave. In the grass, framed by the green, two groups of flowers grew side by side, twisting around each other.

  Hao dropped down, letting out a small sigh, bored with his search and anything else that came to mind. He started a fire as quickly as he could. Not shy about removing his clothing either, letting them sit on the stone near the flame. Being wet was fine; being dry for the rest of the day sounded a little better.

  He checked the wound on his shoulder, removing the tent material Lingli gave him, putting it inside the space of the Spirit-Holding bag, which, of course, he kept strapped to his chest; he didn’t dare remove it. Real bandages replaced it after a quick wash. He wrapped it as tightly as he could without obstructing his movement. It took no more than five minutes.

  Hao was bare as he approached the flower. One half was easily mistaken for any other flower, its petals yellow and white, but the other half, the Yin half, was the opposite; Green stemmed but purple-black leafed. Its smell was underwhelming; he was expecting it to overwhelm him, but there was close to no smell at all. He had to lean down to notice it. There was a certain grace to it. Is it the balance? Hao tried to sound smart in his own mind, admiring the bright yellow and dark purple petals binding each other.

  It was mature, but he could wait a little longer. That was all plants, it seemed, they could stretch their vitality to points that were easy to underestimate.

  “Are you as strong as people say you are, but I don’t know your value…” Hao spoke to the plant. Half expecting it to respond.

  He reached out and touched the dirt on the cave floor. It was deeper than he expected, as the place the plant grew was a bridge like the stone above him. Erosion missed the spot above, and so below.

  The energy from the flower was more subtle than the other—Noon-Bright Grass—but when he rubbed his hand along the stem, brushing its petals, both purple and gold, he felt a flush on his face. A vast vitality passed up through his fingers.

  Pollen shook off, floating up to his face, he didn’t notice it, he took out some golden dust, made from vitality crystals, and spread it on the dirt. Hao threw down some water on the dust, helping it soak into the shallow roots of the flower.

  He noticed the pollen once it touched his face flying up his nose. His flushed complexion spread through his whole body. His skin turned a bright red, bare except for the bag on his chest. His heart picked up pace. His ears felt hot, and one or two places became engorged.

  “No…” he muttered, not entirely sure what was happening to him; he knew it was natural, but somewhat unnatural for him. On the island, he didn’t complete his trial of manhood, the Breakwave. So he spent most of his life with his ‘human urges’ sealed. His fate on the Island was to spend his peaceful life as a eunuch—intact but desireless. Cultivation changed that. He still wasn’t fully used to desire. The flower forced such a state upon him.

  Hao ran over to the fire, sat, and cultivated, letting the vital crystal do its job. He had to cultivate to calm his mind. A tough task, to say the least. He found it hard to believe that the flower was this valuable because of this effect, but his mind became a muddy mess soon after. Every woman he knew passed through his mind, he knew so little of them. Not all of them made his heart race. The women he spent most of his life around were the old fishermen’s wives who cleaned the day’s catch on the Island shore or the Island Elders who whipped him to teach him a lesson.

  Yet, since coming to land, he met women like the Second Elder, why is she the first that comes to mind? Hao tried to drown the picture of her out of his mind with any bad thought he could think of. Torturing himself with bad memories. Once he tried to do that, and bad memories were the ones washed away instead, cherry lips replacing them in his head, he understood the appeal of the flower, whatever drug it was. It was as close to drunk as he had ever gotten. His head was floating.

  No stop, he tried again. Random servant women in their gray robes, washing their hair at the well, an old memory, an awakening of sorts. When the Taliff fish toxin was first expelled from his body. Other places it shouldn’t have gone appeared as well, even the vile Jingshe with her viper eyes and forked tongue. Bai Ling, who was willing to grab his hand before she saw his desire to kill. Worse places, far worse in Hao’s mind, Zhengqi washing, and Meiqi dancing in her white robe.

  No, no…What’s wrong with you? The more Hao fought the thoughts, the more aggressive they became. Never before had he hoped for night and the Yin energy of night to come.

  He bolstered the fire, throwing soft, wet wood and dry twigs together. The black smoke caught on the cave side and ceiling, crawling up the stone canopy to the outside. Hao covered himself, pushing his back against the stone wall, he and the flame far from any light in the sky. He didn’t feel any embarrassment, not really, but there was heat stuck on his face. More wood on the fire, Hao sank into the Cultivation, imagining a flame in his chest. He smothered it with the cold that grew with the coming night. A blast of wind refused to be ignored. Streams of icy, scattered air reached into the cave.

  The heat in him was crushed, then grew back. He spent the night teetering back and forth in that state until midnight. An ice snap so sudden, his eyelids started to seal. The fire itself froze. Hao started doing the reverse now, his mind no longer a concern. Meditation had taken him. He was in a state he loved to be in, there were no worries, no goals, nothing to do in his meditations. Just him and the void.

  Hao almost forgot what happened last night by morning, he tried to forget more. He started the fire again. Made a meal, a quick one with little taste. Got a good wash, the stone dust on his scalp was driving him mad. He reapplied the dust in a thinner paste again. Eat, clean, stretch…

  “By the waters, what is taking so long…” Hao’s patience reached its end. The flower had changed little, despite his interference. Perhaps it simply couldn’t reach a stronger state. Or the amount of vitality crystal was insufficient for such a plant. He would give a little more, but not wait any longer than noon. He was no longer racing just time, but people, too.

  He took a sizable crystal, no larger than his thumb, but larger than any other he used all at once. The source was a mystery, perhaps a person he didn’t know the name of. He crushed it with some effort, sprinkling it on the flowers directly.

  The plants began to move, twisting tighter, making more pollen. New leaves sprouted from stems, curling down and tucking. It looked like an animal in a sprint, an odd sight for a flower, growing ten percent bigger, which was significant considering it was an immortal plant. A normal berry bush would go from seed to making fruit from a single grain of the same powder.

  Hao was preparing to harvest what he could. He wasn’t bad at dealing with herbs, but this was a new plant he had no reference or experience with. He reached down, his hands paused on the dirt, when he heard a foot slip on the stone above him.

  “I knew someone was sneaking around, but to think you had such methods. Not that this method will stay yours for long, only until I get a hand on you.” A voice echoed down, calm and deep. The confidence would make you think the speaker had the world under control. “Or would you try to stop me?”

  Sword-face was there, looking across the hole in the mountain, not at Hao.

  Hao’s eyes followed where he was looking. He made eye contact with a young girl who was thoroughly blush and embarrassed, though she had pity on her face too. There was a man next to her, he was next to speak.

  “I brought this Junior sister here for experience. I think she has a good future, but I didn’t think there would be a junior brother with such skill.” The man Hao thought many times was incompetent broke eye contact with Sword-face to peer at Hao. “I will thank and help this Junior Brother once he hands over the flower.”

  The situation at the words of another fell out of Hao’s control. It took only an instant, and he didn’t know how. It seemed he was the real fool. Not only did the one person he feared and thought might have spotted him appear behind him. He exposed a treasure. Worse, on his other side, a person he underestimated and in his mind mocked, one too many times.

  Hao underestimated his greed and the greed of others. He thought himself clever, not that clever, but sharper than others.

  Now, he was stuck between them. The only bright side was that it could have been worse; neither side brought their full group.

  Still, Hao felt like he was a piece of corn sitting in the corner of a chicken coup, waiting for a break to find him.