Sitting in the bottom of the little pond, buried beneath several meters of thick grimy muck, plant roots, and decaying invertebrates, Scoria Scorn suffered the crawling, creeping intentions of worms, moles, and a dangerously overly curious beaver who had earned a quick death after daring to try and gnaw on her right hand. Seated there, devoid of most functional stimuli, she reflected on her ability to sense qi. It was, in that environment, the only activity left to her, and the only thing she could do while waiting.

The concealment formation, wrapped about her body prior to immersion, was active. Hiding her presence, it would prevent discovery as long as the qi powering it lasted. Motion of any kind would significantly increase the rate of depletion, a reality that forced her to remain motionless and breathless in the muck until the scout arrived.

Everything depended on that veil sustaining concealment until the critical moment came.

A terrible gamble.

She believed she'd calculated the scout's arrival to within a range of a few hours; half a day at the most. The formation could hold out that long, but the odds were little better than even that she would be proven correct. Worse, the enemy would themselves be cloaked by a similar obscuration, one she would need to pierce during the few short moments when they paused upon the water above. Not knowing when that event would come to pass forced her to stretch her qi sense outward constantly, hunting for the flicker that would betray the moment of arrival.

There was also the need to strike hard and true. Despite the limitations of her present spirit tempering realm strength, defeating any cultivator of a lower realm would be trivial. Preventing any and all attempts to escape, especially when he had surely been provisioned with protections and talismans to enable just such a rapid retreat, would be far more difficult. Speed and cunning must be unleashed in tandem, ending everything in a single overwhelming assault. Her submerged position, with her hands ready to drop into the wretched, demonic-qi-melting gloves, was merely one part of this.

Those gloves, and the strange gap they created in the otherwise omnipresent coating that was the plague, prompted this curious moment of reflection. Though the overall strength of her ability to detect qi might be meager compared to her previous existence, Scoria Scorn had discovered that death, and her subsequent bodiless decade, had done something that powerfully augmented her sensitivity. Imposing the experience and memory of an immortal atop the weakened filtration capability of a mere elder produced a similar sharpening when it came to her capacity to identify qi traits. A skill she'd long been considered masterful at in her prior existence.

She had always known, for one, that the concept of 'earth qi' was a lie, a simplification that referred to different forms of common qi found in mixed combination. Soil possessed countless creatures living within it. The pores between each grain were filled with water, air, and dead plant parts. Those were simple observations, but she had gone further.

The particles of soil themselves, tiny things like grains of sand, each possessed their own character combined from different forms of fundamental qi. Many of these were the familiar forms that filled the air and water and formed the bodies of living creatures. Obvious, especially when stuffed down at the bottom of a pond and surrounded by a vast mass of recently deceased and heavily compressed existences.

Metals too, were found within the soil. Iron, deeply familiar, once the primary source of her cultivation qi, was common. She had learned to recognize that distinct signature as a child, but now, with her refined sensitivity, she gained a greater understanding of the other metals lost beneath that notable tang. There was copper, shiny and clear, a power she'd channeled in the old world.

Stranger things lay beneath even that. Metals rare and bizarre, generally known only to alchemists and kept as powders with strange names. They felt gray, like silver without any luster. Lying in the dark, she reached out and encompassed their qi, their nature, as never before, bound up in the earth. Magnesium, hot and fiery; zinc, spark-edged and choppy; even molybdenum, strange and alien, hard and pulsing, a secret of the greatest smiths.

Secrets that she, having chosen the demonic path to overcome the bottleneck that blocked her from immortality, had never been allowed to learn.

All this was known to Scoria Scorn, but on this day, she discovered something else, something red and radiant. The gloves were the catalyst, the void they created in the presence of the plague served to prime her senses. It awakened her mind to the existence of other, similar, tiny gaps.

The plague, the red blanket she'd long thought covered everything, was instead fragmentary and patchy. It covered all surfaces, but it did not penetrate all substances. There were countless spaces, inside rocks, in the heart of dead trees, and in the center of bones, where it did not reach. Even within the muck and grit there were cavities, tiny spaces where something, some possibility and process her mind failed to grasp, blocked its spread.

Reaching out with her qi sense, she discovered she could layer her awareness atop it, linked to the plague as she was, and follow along that pattern. It wove and whipped across the world, above and below, according to a brilliant layout. The very act of touching it flooded her mind with a storm of vermillion power and information. She drew back from it instantly, overwhelmed, only to plunge back in again and again, driven by fascination. Something, some unknown lure, drew her on; a link whose potency teased her mind and sparked a long-banked ambition to flame once more.

The power of the plague remained, waiting, throughout. Wrapped about the whole world, its potential was vast, far beyond the abilities of even the mightiest cultivator, beyond anything she'd ever considered possible. The essence of a sage, but without any mind. If it could be controlled, influenced, the might it promised, the potential of it, was absolutely limitless.

A project for the future. In that moment, beneath that little blob of liquid, her focus could not be allowed to waver. The prey was coming. There would be one chance, she dared not miss it.

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Qi-concealing formations cloaked both bodies, leaving the cultivators blind to each other in the most important way. Other senses existed, a trick Scoria Scorn knew well, and the flow of water offered her a chance. Buried as she was, her skin tingled with ever shift in pressure, every alteration in the still flows of the pond. Fish, frog, duck, and even insect larvae all created perturbations her enhanced sense of touch could follow and track. Small motions suited to small creatures.

Humans were large; a lesson tied to the core of living principles. A cultivator might stand upon the surface of a pond as a water strider did, but not without considerable expenditure of qi. That impact, that spike of power pressed against the liquid medium, that was the clue upon which her scheme depended. Even as she remained hidden and obscured in the mud, it was a signal she lay ready to read.

A single moment. An expenditure confined to the handful of seconds needed to bend down and pick a flower. A thing all too easy to miss.

But the plague provided further warning.

That red energy ignored so many forms of life. Plants, birds, fish, and all the countless tiny creatures, these beings meant nothing to it. The unbearably tiny flakes that formed the base units of its body, a vast existence now recognizable as world-spanning, had no contact with these things. It possessed no need to interact with them. The plague survived on ambient qi sources, needing nothing from other life. Sunlight, the heat of the deep places, the slow rumbling movement of the earth, these powers sufficed to sustain it. It had no need to feed, ever.

But it hungered.

The plague did not think. It did not reason. It was barely even aware of all it surrounded and was in turn surrounded by. But that did not mean it lacked desire. Hunger, a most primal motivation, consumed it. It sought out the rich and vital qi of humans, the sublime and unique flavor tied to consciousness. That raw gluttony, matched to a qi sensitivity far beyond that of any individual cultivator, empowered an endless legion of unseen eyes and minute tendrils. No concealment could surpass its detection capabilities.

Just as it could, in time, find hidden lands and drive its creatures to open the doors to allow it within them, so too could it react to the presence of a treat unexpectedly dropped into its grasp. Alone, the plague lacked hands. Its infectious efforts, so perfect at enveloping and consuming mortals, were blocked by a trivial exertion of qi from any cultivator. It tried anyway, however, and the surge of activity triggered by the arrival of a potent cultivator provided an unmistakable signal.

A signal that Scoria Scorn read for the first time.

She shoved her fingers into the gloves half a heartbeat before the telltale footfall rolled the surface of the pond. Her ravaged digits, burning with terrible pain as the plague flecks embedded in her hands ignited beneath cleansing fire, wrapped about the hilt of her sword.

She gritted her teeth. Pain was manageable. Pain could be, would be, endured.

Distraction would not govern her. She would remain the master of her soul.

The attack must be now.

Qi surged through her limbs. It raced down into her sword as she bent forward and burst upwards from the deep within the grasp of the mud. A singular detonation of power poured out from her. One blow, one strike, betting everything.

Heartless Iron Sword, Fourth Form, Limitless Sundering.

Qi replicated her blade a thousand times over, iron shards cascaded out from the tip of the blade along dozens, hundreds of shifting cleavage pathways. The onslaught was directionless and blind. Crystallization properties, not intent, guided their motion. They sought nothing, moving forward undirected through means of pure momentum.

It made no difference. The razor shards were impossibly sharp, possessed of perfect qi-shaped edges that ripped through everything in their path.

The Celestial Origin Sect cultivator met that onslaught well. His sword cleaved into the first wave, already drawn. Sweeping motions, incredibly swift, washed away an entire rain of shards. Those passing beyond the edge of those shockingly rapid parries glanced away, deflected off armor or shattered against the glowing emanations of protective talismans. Depleted, these dimmed, and the thick lamellar sprouted a thousand cuts and scars, but it held. The few strikes to reach the body were weak and left only shallow cuts.

A truly impressive display, but the main force of the blow had come not from the front where the defense was strong, but from below, where it barely existed.

Shards slammed through soft sandals, shattered talismans, and ravaged the flesh of the feet. Tendons were severed, bones were broken, and qi projection failed. The cultivator, unable to push qi against the surface of the pond properly, began to sink below the surface.

One step forward and he stumbled, unstable, atop a lily pad. His sword, held ready in his right hand, dropped out of position just a fraction.

All the opening Scoria Scorn needed.

Her long and narrow blade swept across, and she fountained free of the pond. All her strength surged behind the stroke. One blow to bet it all and end it. Decision claimed through instability.

The brilliantly sharp alloyed edge passed beneath the guard only to angle up at the last moment. Blade touched skin at the center of the wrist and tore through flesh and bone alike.

Enemy defenses broken, Scoria Scorn pushed additional qi down her arms, continued her strike, and buried her blade deep in the neck of her enemy.

Blood poured over the blade's black surface as life came to an end. The spark of human qi vanished, snuffed out by this brutal act of destruction. Eyes closed as the body sank downward not the cold liquid embrace of the lily pond.

Unwilling to surrender her prize, Scoria Scorn reached out and grabbed the corpse by the belt with her left hand.

The cultivator had been a large man, nearly one hundred kilos of packed muscle, but she easily flexed this mass with one arm and draped the remains over her shoulder. Blood coated her in moments, but she moved only to free her sword.

Holding the blood-soaked blade bare, she ran.

She did not believe there was any chance the Twelve Sisters allowed their scouts to operate completely alone. There would be a partner nearby, one who would pursue her. She dared not fight, that would likely draw Rust Reaper's attention. She could only evade.

Qi drew her along pathways laid deep beneath the earth, veins of iron and copper, uranium and lead. She flowed along the route laid beneath her feet, drawn forward by the overwhelming pull of the mighty invisible forces those metallic lines conveyed.

Not far, just away from the river and then back towards its banks again. A simple zigzag evasion pattern. Far enough to elude any immediate pursuer and to drop the remains down a great gorge. Water would take care of the rest. It would draw the body, and the qi attached to it, east, to the region that once belonged to the Fuming Shade but was now part of the vast dominion of Snow Feast.

He would find it, there were enough artifacts left on the remains to insure that. When he did. We would learn of the prize that Rust Reaper had been dispatched to guard. In time, they would fight. That was enough.

Her work done; she plunged back beneath the ground to regain the concealment it provided. Beneath the earth once more, she began a long journey south to the great caverns that waited there.

It was time to complete the restoration of her strength.

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