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Since the tentative agreement made between the major sects at the Annual Sword Conference, the Baihua caravans had cautiously resumed their activity. This decision hadn’t been without pushback, all the way from the top brass—who, frankly, didn’t have a single person all there in the head anymore—to the beleaguered expedition leaders who’ve had to deal with the brunt of the bandit harassment.
The top brass hadn’t liked the idea of halting their beast hunting in the first place. On one hand, it was a major source of income and a key link in their alchemists’ production chain. On the other more important hand, it would look as if they were backing down. Them, the famed Baihua sect, one of the disputably superior sects of the land, ceding to a motley crew of bandits? Laughable!
They weren’t the only ones who felt that way. Most of the established sects paid no heed to their dissatisfied underlings. Surely their outer disciples, no matter how pathetic, could make light work of a bunch of rogues from who-knows-where, so they had all tacitly agreed to just treat them as if they were mosquito bites—a statement that, if nothing else, indicated the upper realm dwellers’ utter lack of experience with mosquitoes. And indeed, just like mosquito bites, the bandit problem would soon prove itself utterly aggravating for just about everyone involved except the bandits. Perhaps emboldened by the lack of higher-up action taken against them, they had gone from just tussling for kills and resources in the wilderness to waiting around for poorly guarded merchant caravans transporting sect goods to pass by and robbing them blind.
Worse still, those crooks had somehow managed to convince a whole host of fringe sects into playing into all of this nonsense, calling themselves an alliance of some sort. And when questioned about this absurdity, they’d said that they were “just abiding by the law of the land” and “the martial world has always been governed by strength” and “if we won the fight fair and square it’s only right that we get the spoils”. This, of course, infuriated everyone else present. Sure, those were the rules, but that’s not how they were supposed to work! Who could’ve known there’d be such influential bandits one day? The unavoidable disruption of the status quo threw the entire cultivation world into far more chaos than any of them would like to admit, and it was only broken when one of the Lanyu inner disciples who had descended to the lower realm to manage the mortals and recruit promising seedlings shakily admitted his method for dealing with them.
At first, people were outraged at the notion. Their sects, tens of thousands strong, with some of the best martial techniques in the world, contract hiring a gang of rogue cultivators for tasks they used to do just fine before? Paying these brigands to resolve the problems they themselves started? It would be an utter loss, materially and spiritually.
But when the leader of the rogues disappeared from the public view, no doubt concocting his next nefarious plan with rumored connections to sect Tyranny, it would be a lie to say that everyone else didn’t breathe a sigh of relief.
Midnight Wind, deputy leader of the Baihua Gardenia caravan and frequent night shift victim because of his unfortunate name, had no such qualms with the bandits. Their squad had recently spiked in performance, managing to snatch a Yagg from the jaws of one of Weicao’s exploration teams and nearly doubling their efficiency in collecting low quality materials. In fact, he was secretly grateful for them. The Peony caravan had lost nearly all of their spoils in one particularly unfortunate skirmish—half of it in the bandits’ hands and the other half ending up off a cliff (and given the eyewitness accounts of a tightly wrapped individual performing a series of hand seals and disappearing into the ground, likely still in the bandits’ hands)—which meant Gardenia was now number three in performance rankings.
A member of the investigation squad had reported overhearing something about a Lang Rui sighting from Exterminate The Heavens, whose overbearing name was only tolerated because of their affiliation to the overbearing Tyranny, and the caravan had already been on the lookout for two days for it.
Midnight Wind yawned, taking a swig from the flask at his waist. Nothing like some aged Baihua flower wine to calm the nerves and take the edge off—and a nice, long sleep out of the fucking cold, that would be ideal.
A nice… long…
A glint of light in the brush was all the warning he got before he was sent flying.
“Reinforcements! Reinforcements!” Midnight Wind clutched at the new wound on his clawed-open chest in an ineffective attempt to staunch the blood. “Lang Rui’s—”
Torches in the carriages lit in a hurry, one after the next, and Baihua’s half-asleep cultivators poured out in varying states of undress.
Metal clashed with a screech as Lingering Fragrance, Gardenia caravan’s leader whose name was a great aesthetic contrast to her enormous broadsword, parried Lang Rui’s next attack.
She coughed twice, blood staining the bottom of her face. “Someone get him to a medic! Everyone else help!”
One of the nearby cultivators grabbed Midnight Wind’s body on the ground and dragged him to the carriages. In the corner of her eye, she could just barely make out a throwing knife on the ground nearby—most likely what knocked Lang Rui’s attack off-course and prevented fatal damage. Since when was Midnight Wind a hidden weapons user?
Lang Rui swiped at the Baihua cultivators once again, only to find its arms peppered with arrows and knives. Roaring in anger, it slashed its blade-like claws at the wall of greatsword users in front of it when a cloud of leaves, caught by a mysterious swirling air current, surrounded its form. The serrated, qi-imbued edges of the leaves drew bloody lines across its vision, and its next attacks veered off course.
“Hahaha!” Lingering Fragrance cackled, shifting from a defensive stance into an offensive one. “It seems like our team’s getting better at the hidden blossoms technique!”
Lang Rui’s attacks were knocked askew by one weapon or another, the winds blowing fallen leaves into the air just right to hide their existence. Baihua’s vanguard pressed forward, ignoring the damage of its roars, and a slash to a tendon in one of its legs sent Lang Rui’s massive form off-kilter.
Black-clad cultivators silently descended from the sky as Gardenia caravan rejoiced, paying no mind to their injuries. The leaves that had abandoned Lang Rui and disrupted their formation were sliced in half in a single draw of the blade.
By the time some of their cultivators hit the ground, knocked out of the air by hidden projectiles, the rest had already engaged the battered Baihua forces.
Midnight Wind, wounds just barely treated by the medics, grabbed his whip and jumped out of the carriage and made a beeline for Lingering Fragrance’s team, who were being forced back step after step by the mysterious leader of the ambushing squad.
He paused by an injured enemy cultivator healing the arrow wounds in her chest. “Clove?”
Clove flinched, possibly at being recognized. Midnight Wind’s eyes darted back and forth as he tried to put together the pieces. Clove from Exterminate the Heavens was one of the go-betweens with sect Tyranny so they might have some additional backup, but the leader of this expedition was probably still that idiot Crispy Bean, whose parents probably didn’t love him if they gave him a name like that.
“Hmph,” Midnight Wind snorted, darting ahead. “You might have caught us by surprise this time, but a mere smattering of Tyranny disciples and Crispy Bean won’t be enough to fell us.”
Behind his back, Clove’s laugh disappeared into the wind.
When he made it to Lingering Fragrance’s side, though, he instantly regretted wasting so much time making small talk with an enemy healer. Their forces had been scattered, the injuries sustained from fighting Lang Rui only exacerbating their situation against the fresh-faced Exterminate the Heavens guys. Midnight Wind’s whip cracked through the air towards the enemy, only to be redirected by a casual flick of his blade.
The backlash sent painful shockwaves up his arm, and he coughed up a mouthful of blood.
“Hmm,” the opponent mused, bashing a shield into the face of a Baihua cultivator attempting a sneak attack. “This axe really is too trash. Under normal conditions, your whip would have turned into three by now.”
“Woohoo!! That’s Unrivalled Super Hottie for you,” one of the enemy cultivators hollered from somewhere in the direction of Lang Rui.
“Truly unrivalled!”
“What a hottie!”
Midnight Wind stared, comeback about the structural integrity of his (qi-infused!) whip forgotten. “Your name is Unrivalled Super Hottie?”
Crispy Bean’s parents didn’t love him enough, but this guy’s parents clearly loved him too much!
Before Midnight Wind could formulate more outraged thoughts, a shield hurtling towards his face turned his world to black—and the axe in Unrivalled Super Hottie’s other hand went tumbling to the ground.
His eyes traced the glass bead that had hit his wrist, lips tilting up. “No offense to the rest of you, but I think I have something more important to manage here.”
He picked up his axe, dodging the seven arrows aimed for him, and knocked out the rest of the Baihua cultivators with its pommel.
Lang Rui, who was already dying by the time they had come, was quickly finished off—most of the injuries sustained by Exterminate the Heavens had nothing to do with it at all, felled by the weapons embedded in their vitals and the harassment of leaves.
“Haha,” Unrivalled Super Hottie murmured to himself. “You’ve done me a great favor.”
He whistled a low note, and a handful of cultivators slipped out of the shadows. If any of the conscious Exterminate the Heavens members had gotten a few more seconds to process what they were seeing before getting knocked out cold, they would’ve recognized the newcomers as the infamous bandit crew that have plagued the cultivation world for the past year and a half.
“The rest of you deal with Lang Rui,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll go and check what good things Baihua has left for me.”
Unrivalled Super Hottie clicked his tongue, inviting himself into the ninth of twenty-four carriages. There were certainly a lot of handy materials—beast horns (nearly all intact), precious herbs, mounds of spirit cores. He could go through it all later, though. The focus for now was elsewhere.
The tightly wrapped individual tucked defensively in the corner slashed a fan at him, the qi embedded in the attack sharp enough to slice through the carriage’s walls and fell a few trees in the distance. Unrivalled Super Hottie, anticipating the attack, ducked under and closed the distance, weapons clattering against the carriage floor and one strong hand pinning both fan-holding wrists in place.
“This truly is a treasure caravan.” He lifted off the other’s mask and hood to reveal the stunningly beautiful face glaring at him. “Who would’ve thought I’d catch Baihua’s runaway immortal leader, hm?”
Unrivalled Super Hottie grinned.
“Dazzling Hundred Blossoms.”
“Don’t untie him under any circumstances,” Unrivalled Super Hottie said over his shoulder to his subordinates. “I can handle him but you guys definitely can’t.”
Dazzling Spring rolled his eyes, tugging at his restraints. “Who said you can handle me?”
“Well, I already did, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
Dazzling Spring bristled. “If I didn’t have to worry about staying low-key it would’ve been a completely different story, okay?”
“Yeah, and I’ve got trash and garbage for equipment, we all have our struggles.” Unrivalled Super Hottie paused. “Are you finally admitting you’re Dazzling Hundred Blossoms?”
“I can’t admit something I’m not! How many times do I have to say it?!”
“Hey Unri… Unriva…” The stern looking woman on standby pinched her nose, knocking on the doorframe. “Hey you, One Inch Ash just got back from recon. We can’t find that Little Hands person you were talking about earlier.”
“A-ha! I knew your real name wasn’t Unrivalled Super Hottie! Not even your subordinates can stand to call you that. How’d you even think of a name like that?”
“I can’t take the credit for that, I simply borrowed his identity for a bit.” Not-Unrivalled Super Hottie smirked. “So, what’s my name, then?”
Dazzling Spring subconsciously tried to bring his hand to his chin, only for the ropes to get in the way again. “If I had to guess, you’re definitely Lord Grim. Your method of fighting reminds me a little bit of One Autumn Leaf, but One Autumn Leaf is accounted for and doesn’t have the time to be running around robbing other sects in the middle realm. While it’s not too clear what you were doing messing around with Exterminate the Heavens, I assume it must have to do with this Little Hands.”
Probably-Lord Grim adjusted himself into an even sloppier sitting position. “Not bad, as expected of you. But you’re the reason we lost track of Little Cold Hands you know, so you’re quite lucky I don’t hold grudges. We badly need a medic.”
Perfect, Dazzling Spring hissed under his breath. Sooner or later the lot of them would drop dead and he could get out of here.
“Lao Da, Lao Da!” A large blond hooligan-looking guy bounded in, nearly tripping over Dazzling Spring. “I think I found Cold Feet!”
“You mean Little Cold Hands?”
He nodded vigorously. “Yeah, that one! Purple hair, Capricorn…”
“Is she even actually a Capricorn?” some kid buried in books in the corner muttered.
Lord Grim cleared his throat. It seemed that zodiac discourse was a controversial subject among the bandits. “Alright, guys, let’s go fetch our medic.”
Buff blondie cheered, lifting bookworm out of his makeshift study by the scruff of his neck. Nobody else seemed fazed, so Dazzling Spring could only assume this was commonplace. The woman had already gone on ahead.
Dazzling Spring watched them all file out, slightly incredulous. This was a bit too careless, wasn’t it? After waiting a few minutes in silence, he grazed his left thumbnail against his forefinger, the tiny droplet of blood rolling across the ring materializing on his finger. Another flick, and the secret mechanism flared to life.
The fire-starting ring was a trinket he’d picked up from the mortal realm, made to only appear when coming in contact with his blood with some clever talismanic inscriptions engraved on the inside of it. He didn’t rely too heavily on the specific nature of his tools to fight—martial arts was mainly a matter of internal energy for just about everyone in the cultivation world, after all—but as a hidden weapons master, how could he not have a few aces in the hole just in case?
The immortal-binding ropes, while useful, were far from infallible. They burned easily, and a few hard lessons from his past had motivated him to leave himself failsafes in any environment where he had no access to his cultivation.
He was already feeling rather warm in the wrists by the time the ropes keeping his hands bound fell to the ground. Fiddling with the knots he could pry open and burning through the ones he couldn’t, he removed the rest of the restraints. He shook out the pins and needles from the qi blockage in his body, rising unsteadily to his feet.
Disgraceful! How dare Lord Grim and his cronies tie him up like that? How shameful of him to get caught like that. If it were the him of two years ago—no, ten years ago…
Well, whatever. Dazzling Spring huffed, retrieved his weapons (and one of their mithril blades lying around for good measure!) and stormed out of their shitty bandit enclosure.
Their camp, a barebones imitation of a standard cultivation sect with the words “Sect Happy” scrawled in rather poor handwriting across a large boulder, was surprisingly modest for a bandit den. The dwellings were practical above all else, some even devoid of proper bedframes. He wondered incredulously where all the materials they quibbled, negotiated, and stole from everyone else went, because it certainly didn’t go to the decor.
Dazzling Spring didn’t have time for this. He shouldn’t be taking a stroll through the place, let alone appraising their furnishing decisions. Brushing all wayward thoughts aside, he leapt into the air—blossoms made of his qi cushioning his feet. He had no idea which mountain this Sect Happy had claimed and no idea where he should go. He’d thought of going elsewhere and starting anew, but if even some bandit upstart could trace his past then there would be no possibility of living in peace.
Spotting a clearing, Dazzling Spring let himself float to the ground. It was far from ideal, but he could sense a lake nearby with a good amount of spiritual energy and even if he had to bathe outside like an animal, it would still be preferable than letting the residual qi stasis from those damned ropes get any worse. He made his way over to the water’s edge, removing his shoes, and gingerly dipped a foot in.
A wave of spiritual energy coursed up his leg, forcing his meridians open. What a lucky find! Dazzling Spring relaxed his shoulders, making to loosen his belt and—
“Hm? Weren’t you supposed to be tied up?”
Dazzling Spring whirled around, qi blossoms spawning out of nowhere and spiraling in the air. “You!”
He paused, blinking at the man with golden eyes, windswept chestnut-brown hair, and a garish monstrosity of an outfit in front of him—a far cry from the rugged face and cheap armor he’d donned their first meeting. “Lord Grim? So you’ve finally stopped pretending?”
Lord Grim chuckled. “Not using leaves this time? Seems like you’ve stopped pretending too.”
What an unlucky find! Despite his successful escape, he managed to stumble along the exact same route as this guy?
“Well, I’ll be leaving now,” Dazzling Spring blustered out, fumbling for his shoes. “Anyway, you guys took all the goods. I’ve got nothing left on me.”
With a flick of his fans, Dazzling Spring shot off the ground in a gust of wind, a cloud of blossoms obscuring Lord Grim’s figure. Each wave of his fans only propelled him away faster, until a sharp force near his nape jerked him backwards.
“Sorry, I haven't finished talking yet.”
Dazzling Spring squinted his eyes open to meet Lord Grim’s smug bastard face. The hand not tangled in his clothes clung to a strange-looking umbrella, held open and catching the wind. He slashed at the hand on him with a fan and Lord Grim somersaulted out of the way, righting himself and parrying with the butt end of the umbrella before he could get another good attack in. Not ready to give up, Dazzling Spring tucked one of his fans away, tossing a rain of blossoms and a handful of darts out of his sleeve only for the umbrella to lengthen and sharpen into a spear before his eyes, knocking the projectiles aside.
“Your weapon—?!”
The spearhead transformed again into a grappling hook, snagging Dazzling Spring’s belt and dragging him out of the air as Lord Grim shot towards the ground, far faster and more dextrous than he had been when he was pretending to be a heavy armor fighter. Angry red blossoms swarmed the two of them, slashing at Lord Grim’s body and clouding his vision, but the grasp on Dazzling Spring never loosened—sometimes from the mysterious transforming weapon and sometimes from Lord Grim’s firm, searing hands.
Lord Grim’s grip finally relaxed around Dazzling Spring’s ankle after a heavy onslaught of fan attacks and cursing. He vaulted off his umbrella stuck point-first into the ground, landing just as Dazzling Spring’s flowers floated him back to earth, weapon melting back into a sleek, menacing spear.
Dazzling Spring adjusted his stance, tightening his grip on his fans. This Lord Grim figure was much more capable than he expected. As much as it pained him to admit it, if the both of them were at their prime condition, it would be hard to say who would win.
…Wait, why did Lord Grim’s condition look so good?
“Who would win? Obviously I would,” Lord Grim said, matter-of-fact. “Good job, Little Cold Hands! Perfect timing.”
Dazzling Spring whirled around. Behind him, a stoic-looking girl stepped out from behind a tree, brushing her purple hair out of her face.
“Thank you for your praise,” her voice was uncharacteristically deep.
“You! You you you you—!” Dazzling Spring sputtered. “You had a medic heal you mid duel? Have you no honor?”
“Never said it was a duel.”
“Any normal person would assume that given the circumstances, it would be a one on one fight!”
“It’s not like this is a professionally run tournament, though? Why bother with all the rules?”
“You’re so—!” Dazzling Spring was furious. “Whatever. Clearly you want something from me here.”
Lord Grim smiled. “How perceptive!”
“What do you want? When are you gonna let me go?”
That smile twisted somewhat. “At first, I really did plan on letting you go, actually. Maybe get Baihua to put up a nice ransom or something to sweeten the deal—don’t look at me like that, I’m sure you know we’re poor—and send you on your way. The thing is, we’re really quite short of people for the Sunrise Tournament.”
Dazzling Spring blinked. The Sunrise Tournament was the only pathway for new sects to ascend to the upper realm, but it had been a long time since it’d been used as such. Since almost as far back as Baihua’s founding, it had been more or less repurposed as a way for lower-ranked and less powerful sects to prove their mettle. A completely new entity joining the upper realm ranks was nigh impossible, or at the very least unheard of.
“You guys want to become a sect?”
“Surely on your way out you saw our tablet.”
“You guys want to name your sect Happy?”
Lord Grim shrugged. “What’s wrong with Happy? Isn’t it auspicious sounding?”
Dazzling Spring just stared at him.
“Alright, alright, it wasn’t my idea either. Hey, I’ll tell you what, you can learn all the ins and outs of how we came to be if you join us!”
“No one in their right mind would take you up on that offer!”
Dazzling Spring, who clearly wasn’t in his right mind, was marched over to his living quarters after a tour around the (pitifully small) sect-in-training. He didn’t exactly have high hopes, but was still taken aback by the stench radiating from the room.
“Just how much incense do you burn at a time?!”
“There’s no such thing as too much incense.”
Dazzling Spring, tears in his eyes from his coughing fit, glowered at Lord Grim and his entourage, all of whom seemed unfazed about this. “And none of the rest you take issue with this?”
“How dare you question Lao Da?!” Buff blondie, who everyone seemed to just call Steamed Bun, huffed.
The spear-wielding lady, who introduced herself as Soft Mist, pursed her lips, clearly trying to hide a laugh. “Well, it’s not like I have to live with him.”
Further back, Little Cold Hands looked a little green. The kid next to her piped up, “I mean, it’s not that no one takes an issue. Sect Elder Chasing Haze gets upset about it all the time, but she can’t actually do much about it. It admittedly does eat up a good chunk of our budget.”
“A good chunk?” Dazzling Spring balked. “How much incense are you guys buying?”
“Anyway,” Lord Grim cut in, which Dazzling Spring interpreted as a bad omen for Sect Happy’s coffers. “Your Da-shixiong normally lives with me, but he’s on an extended sabotage—ahem, recon mission over at Samsara and won’t be back soon. You can make do here, and we’ll build another pavilion when we get a new recruit. As for you, Little Cold Hands, you’re alone for now but Dancing Rain will join you soon.”
“Wait, Dancing Rain is coming? From Jiashi?”
“Yup!”
“How did you get her to agree to that?”
Lord Grim tilted his head, expression inscrutable. “Guess?”
Dazzling Spring rolled his eyes. “Fine, be like that.”
He took another look at the room, waving the fumes out with his fans. There was a bedframe, at least, and a tea table. There were also discarded robes and tools littered all over the ground, a tipped-over pill refining furnace and loose papers with weapon blueprints scattered everywhere. He could recognize sketches of what must’ve been Lord Grim’s mysterious umbrella, as well as a staff of some sort that reminded him somewhat of Curse of Destruction, Lanyu’s sect leader’s signature weapon. Immortals above, were both of this room’s original residents total slobs?
It was only after tidying the entire room that he remembered what he’d originally meant to say.
“Lord Grim!” Dazzling Spring chased after him in a flurry of petals. “Hey, Lord Grim! Just so you know, I never said I’d join! I’m just going to stick around temporarily until I find a better option, remember?”
…
They’d eventually settled into a sort of rhythm.
Lord Grim made sure to take full advantage of this helper for everything from training up the younger members to tussling for resources in the wilderness. Dazzling Spring would grump and grouse about everything from his taste in incense (three hundred and fifty liang of silver per jin?! Is wasting money your hobby?) to their sect’s recruitment tactics (and here I thought kidnapping was an outlier in your methods, no wonder everyone calls you guys bandits) but worked more dutifully than even he himself realized.
Sometimes Lord Grim marvelled at his energy. He’d watched the great immortals of the upper realm through One Autumn Leaf’s eyes for almost a century and thus understood them at length—one thing that most of the sect leaders shared in common was stability; a sort of gravitas that came with age and battle-hardened experience. And while Dazzling Hundred Blossoms was a pillar of his sect in his own right, his core was made of something softer than most others. He acted half his age, laughing and shouting like a boy, and only when one looked into his eyes would it become clear that this was indeed the man who’d helmed one of the most renowned sects of the cultivation world since its inception.
“I’m leaving for real this time, I swear,” Dazzling Spring muttered as he made his way back into their shared room, fans fluttering in agitation. “Fuck, how do you get anything done with your room smoked up like this?”
“It’s calming incense,” Lord Grim dutifully nudged the burner further from the middle of the room. “Seems pretty ineffective for you, though.”
“Calming my ass! You’re getting scammed.”
Lord Grim just chuckled. He clearly had more to say than this.
Sure enough, after a pause and a deep breath, Dazzling Spring took a seat and spoke once more. “Hey, what do you think of this Happy business?”
“I think it’ll be a successful sect, naturally.”
There was a shuffling noise, then another deep breath. When Lord Grim looked back up, Dazzling Spring and drawn in on himself, arms around his knees in a posture that had nothing to do with an immortal. “What makes you so sure?”
“What makes you think it won’t be successful?”
Dazzling Spring worried at his bottom lip. Then, quietly, “I don’t.”
Lord Grim could barely keep his smile down. “What was that?”
“I said I don’t! I don’t think it won’t be successful. I’ve sparred with your seedlings, and I can see their potential. Soft Mist even reminds me a little of One Autumn Leaf back in the day, I just…” He fiddled with the invisible ring on his finger, the one that Lord Grim only found out about after interrogating how he escaped the immortal binding ropes. “Do you think I’ll actually be able to ascend to the celestial realm if I stay here? Or will I just be halfway to heaven for the rest of my life?”
Lord Grim had been expecting this conversation for a long time. In truth, it was why even after going to such great lengths to kidnap him he’d let him go —or, well, intended to let him go, anyway. He couldn’t promise anything.
“Maybe,” Lord Grim said, “or maybe not. I don’t know myself, but I can only try.”
Dazzling Spring looked up and met his eyes. “Somehow, you feel familiar.”
“Oh?”
“Especially your eyes. It’s funny, you look nothing like him everywhere else.” He clambered to his feet and crossed the room in a few quick strides, hands coming to Lord Grim’s cheeks and holding his face in place. “But your eyes look just like One Autumn Leaf’s. Just a lot more shameless. Could you be…?”
“Close, but not quite,” Lord Grim lowered one of Dazzling Spring’s hands from his cheek, playing with his slender and well-kept fingers. “But you can rest assured, I know you. Although I don’t understand why you don’t go by Dazzling Hundred Blossoms anymore, or why you stepped down from your position in such an abrupt way.”
“What do you mean not quite? What do you know about me?”
Lord Grim stroked a thumb over the meat of Dazzling Spring’s palm. He’d seen these palms many times before, brandishing a pair of battle fans much more exquisite than the ones he had now. “You could say that One Autumn Leaf and I are brothers? Or I guess, more accurately, I’m something like his inner demon. A remnant dream.”
Dazzling Spring frowned. “I’ve never heard of an inner demon cultivating a stable physical form.”
Lord Grim was helpless. “Well, as you see, I’m quite tangible. But stability is hard to say. At the very least, I don’t think I’ll disappear before I achieve what I came into existence to do. And as for what I know about you… is Blossoming Chaos too touchy a subject?”
“Haha, I guess if you’ve been part of One Autumn Leaf, you would definitely be familiar with me. As for Blossoming Chaos, it’s not like it’s a secret. Have you ever wondered how I became like this?”
Of course Lord Grim did. He wondered every day, if only because it could provide more leverage to keep him for Happy’s combat force.
“One Autumn Leaf and I didn’t interact much after Blossoming Chaos died—Jiashi internal politics was kind of a mess at the time, and I just had too much to do. But, well, you probably already know that our signature Blossoms and Blood martial technique was all around being a pair. Duo formations, dual cultivation, everything. So after he—afterward, the whole foundation of my cultivation path disappeared.”
Lord Grim tightened his grip on Dazzling Spring’s hand when he tried to pull away. “I didn’t give up at first. I’d looked everywhere for a partner, but for one reason or another, it just wasn’t suitable. In hindsight, it was silly of me to bet everything on a cultivation path that half-belongs to someone else, but at the time I thought we would have forever together. So, like an idiot, I tried to fuse both halves of Blossoms and Blood into one technique.”
“Two years ago, I went into seclusion to undergo my Heavenly Tribulation.” Dazzling Spring paused, expression strange. “I failed.”
“You—”
“I really thought I was going to die that day, to tell the truth. I’d almost made peace with it. I think I had a premonition I was going to fail, so I told Bright Blossoms to take my name if I didn’t come back. I’m still not quite sure how I survived—I was near sect Tyranny at the time, so maybe Immovable Rock had found me by chance and saved me. I thought about going to them and swearing my allegiance to repay the life-saving grace, but…it seems I’m still pretty useless on my own.”
Lord Grim wasn’t sure what kind of face he was making, but Dazzling Spring seemed to read something in his expression. “I’m not used to seeing you not smiling.”
“You can’t give up yet.” His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears. “It’s not your time yet, you’re not even as old as I am.”
“Hahaha!” Dazzling Spring laughed, eyes squinting and teeth showing, and Lord Grim was reminded once more how much his names—both of them—suited him. “I know, don’t worry. Since I made it out alive, I’ll cherish this chance. My cultivation is still pretty injured, though, so apologies for not meeting your expectations of Dazzling Hundred Blossoms.”
And maybe Dazzling Spring was right about the incense being a scam, because Lord Grim’s chest thrummed with more nervous energy than he’s felt in a long time. The moment to offer had clearly passed already, but he’d never bothered all that much with manners anyway, and inner demons ought to be forgiven for social faux pas, given everything. “Your cultivation, maybe you could do it with me.”
Dazzling Spring blinked. “Pardon?”
“Dual cultivation, I mean. My level isn’t far from yours, and other than Blossoming Chaos and Vaccaria, One Autumn Leaf and I are probably the people who understand your cultivation the best.”
“You? With me?”
Lord Grim reached up and twirled a lock of his blossom pink hair. “You don’t want to?”
“If we’re going to do this, you need to get naked faster.” Dazzling Spring, half undressed and sprawled all over Lord Grim’s bed, propped himself up on an elbow and threw one of his shoes at him. “You designed your crazy umbrella yourself, so can’t you use some of that talent to make some nicer looking clothes?”
“The clothes aren’t important,” Lord Grim said, but obediently slipped out of his three layers of clashing robes. “It’s the man inside that matters, no?”
Dazzling Spring stared at his physique—the blend of strength and speed and flexibility a reflection of his rare, all-encompassing cultivation path—unable to rip his eyes away even as he replied, “you’re so full of yourself.”
“Only the best for our princess.” Lord Grim barely dodged the kick flying at him, his hand closing around the ankle. “Careful, there.”
Dazzling Spring had half a mind to try kicking him again, or maybe exploding a qi blossom in his face. He settled for loosening his own robe instead. Lord Grim must’ve put a spell on him, making him go along with his nonsensical whims so readily—there was no other explanation. When he looked back up, Lord Grim’s face was up close, the pupils in his golden eyes blown wide.
“Can I kiss you?”
Dazzling Spring bit his lip, flushing red all the way to his chest.
One hand tipped his chin up, another hiking his captive leg over Lord Grim’s shoulder. “So? Can I kiss you?”
Dazzling Spring yanked his head down and crashed their lips together, all tongue, all mess, only pulling back to snipe at him. “Stop asking stupid questions!”
“Haha,” Lord Grim breathed into his mouth, thumb pressing gently on his chin and closing the distance once more. “Didn’t expect you to be such a bad kisser.”
Dazzling Spring couldn’t retort, not with the tongue drawing teasing circles against the roof of his mouth, and thus settled on pulling at Lord Grim’s belt. The moment his hand brushed against the growing bulge in his pants, a sudden surge of foreign qi burst in the air, sending electrifying shivers down Dazzling Spring’s spine and setting his dantian thrumming in response. His entire body was as raw as an open nerve—it had been so long since he’d last dual cultivated.
Lord Grim’s hand slipped away from his face, fingers tangling in his hair on its journey south. When he reached his chest, tweaking one pert nipple then the other, Dazzling Spring couldn’t help but mewl into his mouth. He’d had half a mind to hate Lord Grim when he’d learnt of his connection to One Autumn Leaf, who he’d—well, he couldn’t say in good conscience that he’d ever hated One Autumn Leaf, or any of them. Envied, yes. He’d envied them so much he tasted blood in his throat every time he thought of them. But Dazzling Spring didn’t have any space in his heart for hate. And it was this, the callouses on Lord Grim’s fingertips, the slight weariness behind his eyes, that gave him the (perhaps illusory) belief that they were, in many ways, mirrors of each other.
“Focus,” Lord Grim murmured, bringing Dazzling Spring back down to earth with a sharp pinch on his nipple. “You can think about whatever you’re thinking about later.”
“That stung.” Dazzling Spring broke the kiss, gnawing at his collarbone in vengeance. “How do you like getting surprise attacked, huh?”
“I don’t mind it as much as you’re probably thinking,” Lord Grim snickered, fumbling for his storage ring. “It’s not like anyone’s going to see. You know how many layers I wear every day.”
Unsatisfied, Dazzling Spring sucked hard over the bite he left, eyes darting across his body for some spot that even those awful clothes wouldn’t be able to cover. In the meantime, Lord Grim had shaken out a few tins of balm from his storage ring. “What, you just have those on hand?”
“You should be grateful I do.” Lord Grim patted his ass through his loosened robes. “Otherwise this here would hurt quite a bit.”
“Hurt from what?” Dazzling Spring pressed a foot against Lord Grim’s (quite large, but Dazzling Spring would never admit it) bulge. “This measly thing?”
“Heh.” Dazzling Spring felt himself unceremoniously flipped onto his stomach and his pants tugged off in one smooth motion. Clutching at his robes, the last of his modesty, he tried to turn and look at Lord Grim only to be pressed back into the bed. “Seems like I was too worried about you.”
The first press of lubed (camellia scented, at that) fingers against the furl of his hole forced a shocked little moan out of Dazzling Spring’s mouth. Lord Grim—probably sensing his surprise and unease—rubbed circles in his back, coaxing him to relax. The foreign sensation only lasted a moment before Lord Grim let out a trickle of his qi.
It made its way through Dazzling Spring’s meridians so quickly it almost hurt, nudging at his leaking dantian. His hands scrabbled uselessly at the sheets as the qi bounced around his core and the finger started working into him in earnest.
If Lord Grim was trying to be patient with the stagnant qi in his system, he didn’t show it, hands hot and heavy against his hips and in his ass, a second finger bullying its way in.
Dazzling Spring’s meridians came to life in earnest, heat singing through his body at the long-lost feeling. His hips ground back onto Lord Grim’s hand slowly, then faster, until he was all but riding his fingers, absorbing every last bit of qi he had to offer.
Lord Grim slipped a third finger in, amusedly cooperating with his movements. “Greedy, aren’t you? No wonder this wouldn’t have worked with your disciples. You’d suck them dry!”
Dazzling Spring clenched down on his fingers in what he hoped came across as a punishing gesture. “Can you not mention my disciples right now? And what’s taking you so long with the fingers? Can’t do it?”
Lord Grim’s fingers stretched apart at that, one of them pressed right up against Dazzling Spring’s prostate, dragging a gasp out between his teeth. “Don’t come crying to me later, okay?”
One of Dazzling Spring’s arms reached behind him, pushing at Lord Grim’s wrist. “If you don’t fuck me right now I’ll fuck you instead!”
“As you wish, princess,” was all the warning he got before the fingers slipped out of his ass. A thumb tugged against his rim, holding him open for the blunt tip of what could only be Lord Grim’s cock.
Before Dazzling Spring could even second-guess whether he’d actually been prepared enough or not—and whether he had perhaps been a little over-eager—the dick kissing his hole pressed inside in a slow, steady glide, not stopping until it was so impossibly deep he swore he could feel it in his throat.
The two of them let out twin moans, their qi flowing back and forth in a hurricane where they were joined together. The process was choppy at first—Dazzling Spring hadn’t dual cultivated in ages and Lord Grim hadn’t dual cultivated at all—but as the circulation of qi through them grew smoother and smoother, Dazzling Spring felt the knot in his core that he’d learnt to live with since Blossoming Chaos died tug and loosen ever so slightly.
Lord Grim’s breaths had long gone ragged and short, a new world opened for him. Dazzling Spring couldn’t see his expression, but the energy pouring into his meridians was potent enough to be certain about it.
“I—ah—know it feels good, but don’t forget that the point of sex is to move—!”
As if jolted out of a trance, Lord Grim’s hands loosened their grip on his ass then tightened once more, accompanied by a tentative roll of the hips. After the punched out moan in response, he ground into Dazzling Spring again and again, before starting to thrust in earnest.
Dazzling Spring’s eyes rolled back into his head, every attempt to manage their qi circulation thwarted by a new jab at his prostate. But perhaps, as Lord Grim said, their subconscious mutual understanding was enough—his cultivation soared.
All of a sudden, Lord Grim paused, reaching for something on the bed again.
“What could you possibly be doing now?”
“Wait,” Lord Grim said, to the distant sound of shuffling objects. “Windward Formation gave me a thing for safekeeping and I put it in my—aha! Here it is!”
A huge pane of something or other floated to the opposite wall, and Dazzling Spring took a grand total of one glance at it before going bright red and burying his head back in the sheets, kicking and punching in Lord Grim’s general direction even with his dick still wedged up his ass.
“Put the fucking mirror away!”
Lord Grim tucked his chin over Dazzling Spring’s shoulder, the pout in his voice audible. “But I want to see your face.”
“Shameless!”
“Please?”
Dazzling Spring bit his lip. But it was so embarrassing!
The cock inside began to stir once more, slow and deep. “If you won’t do it yourself, I guess I’ll just have to make you.”
Fingers caressed the pink hair loose and scattered across Dazzling Spring’s back, gathering a fistful of it and pulling.
“Ah!” Dazzling Spring let out a shout, the stinging pain in his scalp carrying with it a hint of twisted pleasure. Out of morbid curiosity, he peeked at the mirror once more, jaw slackening at the sight.
Lord Grim—naked, grinning, and ears flushed red—held him up by the hair, veins in his beautiful hands popping. Dazzling Spring’s robe was only covering him by a technicality, ridden up to nearly nothing on his upper back and framing his waist, hips, and ass. His own cock, untouched, was impossibly hard and an angry red, his face screwed up and shiny from tears and drool.
When he squeezed his eyes shut once more, Lord Grim yanked his hair once more, leaning down for a kiss. “Keep your eyes open, princess. Look at how pretty you are.”
When their lips locked, the qi between them combined once more, Dazzling Spring’s limbs going twingy and unresponsive. Lord Grim’s expression twisted, mouth falling open and eyes rolling back. When Dazzling Spring said he was close, Lord Grim no longer bothered with tormenting him any longer, lapping at his nape and tugging at his neglected dick while chasing his own orgasm, holding Dazzling Spring up by the hair the entire time.
When Lord Grim’s cum finally shot deep into him, Dazzling Spring lost himself to the skies. The dick and spend in him felt hot as a branding iron, Lord Grim’s qi setting all of his meridians alight.
Dazzling Spring, barely clinging to awareness, clung to something warm. Lord Grim’s torso, maybe, or his arm. The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was the feather-light touch of lips to his cheek.
Dazzling Spring woke up in a warm embrace.
The memories from last night came crashing over him like a tide, and he flushed in embarrassment. He shifted slightly in Lord Grim’s arms, finding that he’d at least had the decency to clean him up and dress him.
“Awake?” Lord Grim murmured.
Dazzling Spring didn’t answer.
“You know.” A finger brushed against his nape. “Your blush gave you away a while ago.”
Dazzling Spring flipped over, outraged. “Or you could have some tact and pretend you didn’t notice!”
“You can go.”
Dazzling Spring paused. “What? You’re kicking me out? You’re the lowest of the low!”
Lord Grim’s composure broke, the look of panic on his face quite refreshing. “That’s not what I meant! I meant, like, in general. I won’t force you to stay here with Happy if you don’t want to. If you want to go, you can go.”
“What brought upon this all of a sudden? If I remember correctly, you were the one who tied me up here.”
The arms around him squeezed once, then relaxed again, and Lord Grim’s voice rang out, uncharacteristically serious. “You’re not fit to be a leader, the kind that charges out in front. But you don’t need to be, either—the cultivation world doesn’t lack those types anyway. Your true value is something that any sect, large or small, should be able to see. You don’t need Happy for your cultivation. You don’t need me either. But…”
Lord Grim tilted his face up, looking straight at him with those eyes that had been watching him for so long. “If you want me, I’ll always be here.”
Dazzling Spring smiled.
(fin)