Calvin approached the farmstead cautiously, his partially recovered qi reserves held at the ready. Whatever formation the cultists had used to camouflage their base of operations had failed with its maker’s death—either a sign of shoddy design or an intentional ploy to destroy secrets hidden within the working, Calvin wasn’t certain which—and he’d felt the malign cloud of death and resentment now radiating from the desecrated home from miles away.

  The forest was eerily quiet. No birds sang, no animals scurried, and even the odd whispering rustle of the pine needles he’d just begun to grow used to seemed oddly muted. Even animals could feel the wrongness of it, the desecration of life and innocence, and had fled from it as best they could or now hid themselves, aware on a fundamental level that something cruel and dangerous lurked nearby. The house would have to be burned, and he could only hope the earth around it had not been overly tainted. There was only so much he could do.

  As grim a thought as it was, Calvin was silently glad that there was likely no one left to come back here now that the cult was gone. It was a terrible thing to see the only home one knew as little more than ashes and blackened stone, and he was glad to not be inflicting such a fate on anyone.

  Not that getting tortured to death by demonic cultivators was better, exactly.

  As he got closer, the hushed rustle of the trees was joined by a new sound, one Calvin was quite familiar with. An irregular mix of thwacks, thuds, and cracks rang out from the direction of the former cult base, the song of logs hewn into firewood by an unpracticed hand with far more strength than technique. Not long after, Calvin felt a new aura beneath the fog of oily qi, weak and wild. That of a cultivator in the very earliest stages of the Gathering realm with minimal awareness and even less control over their freshly ignited qi.

  Calvin found his pace quickening, dry needles crunching softly beneath his feet. He didn’t like this odd forest here in Nine-Pine Gulch, with its dully colored vegetation and carpet of dead needles. It felt wrong. He wanted to blame his discomfort on the demonic cultivators, but he’d been faintly uncomfortable from practically the moment they entered the region a few days earlier. How long had it been since he’d been so noisy just traipsing through some light undergrowth? A decade? Longer? Even as a mortal child it had been easy enough, but here it was as though every inch of ground was covered in dry, brittle twigs that snapped like alarm talismans at the lightest of touches.

  Before long, the trees began to thin and Calvin caught his first glimpse of the farmstead. The sound of chopping wood had stopped some time earlier, though it was hard to say if that was because someone had detected his approach or if they had just finished their work and moved onto something else. From this angle, everything looked just as it had before. The same painted walls, the same crooked gate, and the same empty pens. The shattered shutters of a second floor window lay where they’d fallen when Lulu had bodily hurtled her Foundation realm target through them, a splash of dry blood visible as an ugly stain against the yellow paint beneath it.

  Calvin took a deep breath, wrinkling his nose against the stench and tasting for what lay beneath the all-too-familiar smells of death and bodily fluids he’d become intimately familiar with in the past few days. He could smell a hint of smoke. The barest traces of food cooking that was a little too fresh to belong to the building’s former inhabitants. The acrid burn of vomit mixed with an undercurrent of medicinal herbs. And of course there was still the faint aura, so comparably weak that it barely even stood out from the general cloud of negativity, but just a hint too pure to be a leftover from the atrocities committed on this land.

  Calvin circled the farmstead, the scraggly grass growing between the tree line and the buildings themselves muffling his footsteps in a way that pine needles did not. He moved slowly, cautiously, though he wasn’t quite certain why. He wasn’t worried, per se. With the demonic beast dead and the cult exterminated, he did not think there was anything here that could seriously threaten him, but neither did he want to just rush in. He was starting to suspect he knew what had happened here after he’d left, and it both surprised and worried him.

  It wasn’t long before he found the source of the aura. A figure sat hunched on a stump, wood piled up into a crude heap not far from them and a wood axe driven into the ground beside them so deeply that only a tiny segment of the axe head stuck up above the soil. Despite the summer heat, they wore a mismatch of fine mortal clothing in a half-dozen colors, layer upon layer until they were bundled up more thoroughly than a leper. They sat with their back to Calvin, head in their hands, and he couldn’t see so much as an inch of exposed skin or even a lock of hair.

  Despite that, there was only one person it could realistically be. The height seemed about right, and, though it was hard to judge someone’s build beneath enough fabric to dress three generations, that lined up about right too. Plus, he could smell the pills on her breath. He suspected she’d taken significantly more than the three per day he’d advised. Probably vomited a few up and then took several more, even.

  He watched her for several long moments, the silent shaking of her hunched shoulders and the cloying emotions that rippled through her messy aura. He was not what she needed, he could say that with certainty, but he was here now. And he certainly wasn’t just going to leave her.

  “I’m glad to see you pulled through,” he called out, doing his best to pitch his voice to be as gentle and nonthreatening as he could. “Your information saved a lot of lives. Thank you.”

  She reacted violently, as he’d feared she would. Not out of fear for himself, but for her. In some ways, freshly ignited cultivators were even more fragile than mortals. So much new strength they didn’t know how to use and a raw spirit they lacked the knowledge or instincts to protect. All too many such individuals crippled themselves before they even truly understood what it meant to be a cultivator, and she had already been through so much.

  One moment, she was practically curled into a ball, a pitiful image of sorrow and loss. The next, she was on her feet and there was an axe hurtling at him, several clods of dirt flying in its wake.

  Her face was nearly as wrapped up as the rest of her, with only a scant triangle around her left eye left uncovered, but even that tiny patch of exposed flesh told a story. She’d clearly been crying, but her sclera was as white as freshly fallen snow and shot through with inky-black veins. Her iris and pupil looked normal enough––a pale green that reminded him vaguely of malachite that he’d seen on dozens of faces in the past few days––but the skin around her eye was a mottled mix of corpse-white and glossy black like wet ink. It was hard to say for sure––he hadn’t taken any great pains to remember the exact details of her wounds, those memories would stay with him well enough as it was––but he thought that perhaps the black was where she’d been injured, scabs and fresh cuts healing over with living shadow.

  There was a sharp clang as Calvin caught the axe by the blade, the impact insufficient to so much as buckle his outstretched hand. The shrouded woman’s eye widened and she drew in a sharp breath, clapping her hands over her covered mouth as though unable to believe what she’d done. For a moment they both stood motionless, staring silently at one another. Pity filled Calvin’s heart, coiling with a lingering fragment of self loathing that remained even though he knew he’d made the right decision to leave her, that she’d told him to leave her. The woman’s nascent aura bubbled and churned, chaotic thoughts and emotions swirling within her so strongly that they leaked out with her qi.

  Then the moment passed, and she bolted, fleeing in a stumbling flurry of uncoordinated limbs that could not be fully restrained by the layers of fabric she’d wrapped herself in. Cloth tore as she tried to run and nearly fell, barely catching herself with alien reflexes that reacted faster than she could consciously control. Her big, chunky boots slapped against the ground like off-tempo drumbeats, clearly far too large for her dainty feet even with layers of fabric to cushion them.

  Calvin was in front of her before she’d made a dozen strides, catching her gently in his arms as she stumbled again and nearly crashed face-first into one of the small buildings that surrounded the main farmhouse—a woodshed if he was unmistaken. She flailed briefly, crying out in a hoarse, broken voice as her mind struggled to catch up with her body’s actions, then went limp. “Please…” she breathed, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I didn't mean it. P-p-please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—“

  Calvin shushed her softly. “It’s okay,” he tried to reassure her, “you’re safe now. The men who hurt you are gone. They won’t touch you ever again.”

  Calvin wasn’t sure if she understood him, or had even heard what he’d said. She just kept speaking in her scratchy, pained whisper, begging and pleading and apologizing in a barely coherent flood of words intermixed with ragged sobs. Despite the hot summer sun beating down on both of them and all her many layers, she was shivering like a sheared sheep in a snowstorm, and he could feel her racing heart pounding out a mile a minute in her chest.

  “You’re safe,” he reiterated, doing his best to project stillness and comfort into the surrounding qi. “The cultists are dead. Each and every one of them.” He shifted his grip slightly, trying to support her dead weight without putting too much pressure on her. “You made it. You’re safe now. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re okay. You’re strong. You’re going to get through this.”

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  He flared his qi as lightly as he could—for once aided by his still recovering reserves—wrapping the weight of his Foundation around her shoulders like a warm blanket. He carefully smothered her aura with his own, pressing it back into the confines of her spirit where the turbulent emotions within could no longer surround her quite so strongly, and filtered the oily tang of death from the ambient qi before it could reach her.

  “It’s alright. You’re alive. You made it. The worst is behind you. You saved so many lives. It’ll be alright.” He continued to speak as her words turned first to sobs, then simple tears, and finally silence. Her heartbeat slowed and her ragged breathing eased.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again hollowly, but this time her voice sounded present, like she was really speaking to him rather than just projecting into empty air. She looked up at him, the dark veins in her eye covering nearly the whole white as though bloodshot.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” he told her.

  She squeezed her eye shut, ducking her head as though hiding from his gaze. “I’m a monster. I…killed them.”

  Calvin swallowed heavily. In truth, he hadn’t expected to find anyone alive here when he returned. Not after the Scroll had marked the objective to eradicate the cult as complete. And before that, he would have guessed that if anyone was still alive, it would be the unconscious cultist surrounded by the cold corpses of his victims. Even with the pills he’d left behind, it was a minor miracle that the girl in his arms had survived long enough to ignite, and a major one that she’d managed to do so. Now was not the time, but he was intensely curious what exactly had happened in his absence.

  Right now though, she needed comfort, not questions. “Some people deserve to die for what they’ve done,” he told her gently. “That is justice. And for others…sometimes death is the only comfort we can offer the living.” She sniffed loudly and he carefully tightened his grip around her, unsure of just how healed she was beneath her layers. “I’m certain you did everything you could for them.”

  He hoped that was true. If so, he might even be able to bury them rather than consigning their flesh to the fire with the rest of this charnel house. He’d heard that in some provinces, it was traditional to burn all their dead, not just the sick and murdered. That seemed wrong though. Disrespectful. Unfair.

  There was no risk of dangerous spirits rising from the peaceful dead, so why would one treat them as one and the same? It was like putting down a beloved pet because a dog of the same breed in a neighboring town had bit a child.

  She buried her face in his shoulder. “They’re all dead?” she checked, a hint of hope inching into her voice.

  “Every last one,” he confirmed. “I killed the leader myself and my companions helped deal with the rest of them.”

  “That’s good. And…Amber Crossing?”

  Calvin closed his eyes. “Thirty-three dead, ninety-one injured,” he listed off. “If we’d been even an hour later, it would have been ten times that or more. Your information saved a lot of lives. That’s something to be proud of.”

  “But it wasn’t enough,” she spat, voice shaking.

  Calvin sighed heavily and leaned back against the side of the woodshed. “Perfection,” he told her, “is a beautiful goal to aspire to, but no one, be they mortal or cultivator, is truly perfect. All we can do is the best we can with the life we’re given.” He took a deep breath, looking over her shoulder and off into the distance. “You did more than anyone could have possibly asked of you. You survived. You paid attention. And when opportunity came, you risked your own life to save the lives of many hundreds of strangers. It would have taken hours to interrogate the men they left behind, and there’s no guarantee they would have told us where the rest of them had gone before it was too late. Whether they know it or not, every man, woman, and child in Amber Crossing owes you their lives.”

  “…not strangers. My sister lives in Amber Crossing. And her husband. And her children. They’re…they deserve to know what happened. They’re all I have left. Did they…” she trailed off, unable to bring herself to ask the question that had clearly been plaguing her.

  Calvin shrugged helplessly. There had been five women and two children among the dead, but he hadn’t asked for or been told their names. And it wasn’t like she’d ever introduced herself to him either. “I don’t know. I don’t even know your name.”

  “Oh.” She seemed genuinely stumped, like the thought of him not immediately recognizing her or her family had just never occurred to her. “I’m Carrie of Wide Hill.” She paused for a moment, turning her head until she could once again peer up at him through her one remaining eye. “I always thought cultivators were supposed to know everything.”

  Calvin smiled tightly. “You’re a cultivator now too. Do you feel like you know everything?”

  She blinked. “Powerful cultivators. Like in all the stories. Like you.”

  It was inappropriate, but Calvin couldn’t help himself. He snorted in amusement. “Me? I’m not a powerful cultivator. Not yet. Maybe give it a few centuries.” He took a deep breath and picked the girl—Carrie—up, cradling her in his arms like a baby. She didn’t flinch from the touch, reassuring him that her body under all that fabric probably wasn’t still covered in horrible wounds. “Rest now,” he told her gently. “You’re safe with me. I need to take care of a few things here, and then I’ll take you back to Amber Crossing to find your family, okay?”

  “…okay.”

  Dealing with Stone Pine should have been bad. The people of Amber Crossing had confirmed that they hadn’t heard anything from the village in over a week, and Calvin dreaded to think what might have happened with the corpse ritual in Wide Hill if it had been left to sit and stew for so long. The days needed for the three of them to rest and recover felt like torture, the looming threat growing worse with each passing moment, and they set out towards the village just as soon as all three of them felt up for it, leaving again just hours after Calvin returned from dealing with the cultist’s farmstead hideout.

  But instead…

  “Nothing,” Wallis reported, a dark frown on his lips and shoulders tense.

  Calvin looked at Lulu, who shook her head. “Nothing to the north or west either.”

  Calvin closed his eyes and lowered his head. “And I didn’t find anything either. Not so much as a trace of a blood spirit or hungry ghost.”

  The three of them sat in contemplative silence, with only the sound of the wind blowing through the trees for company. Despite the warmth of the day, Calvin couldn’t quite suppress a shiver as it ran down his spine.

  Because the cult had been here. The village was a ruined husk devoid of people, and they’d found a corpse formation just like the one in Wide Hill. Just under eight-hundred people had died here, more than half that number ritually tortured to death and their bodies desecrated, and yet…

  The bodies were untouched by animals and carrion birds, but they had burned like logs. There had been no tortured screams, no spirits tearing themselves free of their burning vessels, and not a single body refusing to burn as mortal flesh should.

  More than that, it felt as though the whole circle had become…inert. It had been all too easy to wipe away all traces of death and blood from the ambient qi with [Sunlight Bathes the Peaks]. He hadn’t needed to take a single break to rest and recover, and only a few faint traces of the atrocity committed here clung to the field where the formation had been constructed.

  And even before that, the vile taint in the air had only a tiny fraction of the intensity Calvin remembered. It was as though they were standing in the place of a simple mortal massacre, and not the site of some incomprehensible demonic formation. Even standing at the very center of the formation where the altar’s imprint still remained, Calvin barely even felt uncomfortable. He could still feel the qi of the forest and the earth, feel the breeze in his hair and the sun’s warmth on his cheeks. The formation barely even seemed worth the effort for them to destroy, something that could be left to the local mortals when they got around to it.

  It was disturbing. Something so vile should not feel so benign.

  Of course they did destroy it, burning not just the bodies but also bathing the surface layer of earth with fire and spreading hot coals across the whole surface of the field the cultists had used. And then they’d scoured the surrounding forest for miles, searching for any trace of something, anything to explain what their senses were telling them.

  They found nothing. Nothing at all.

  Wallis took a deep breath, then let it out in an explosive sigh. He looked exhausted, weariness adding decades to his usually youthful features.

  “The demonic beast is dead.”

  Calvin nodded. “Yes.”

  “The demonic cultivators are dealt with and their base of operations destroyed.”

  “Yes,” Calvin agreed.

  “Every last one of them,” Lulu added with a bloodthirsty grin.

  “And we’ve dealt with every trace of demonic corruption we’ve been able to locate.”

  Calvin frowned, but nodded in agreement. The Scroll had confirmed as much for him several hours ago, and he had no reason to doubt it. “I think so.”

  “Then I say we’re done. We have done what the Sect asked of us and more beyond. Our duty is finished.”

  “Agreed,” Lulu said immediately.

  “Agreed,” Calvin echoed a moment later.

  Wallis collapsed back onto the grass they were sitting on, throwing his hands up in the air. “Then let’s get the fuck out of this heaven’s forsaken gulch. We’ll make our report and let someone else deal with this mess.”

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