Sen took one brief moment to cycle water qi and drag enough moisture out of the air to douse the still-burning hair of the bisected ape. Then, he was running. He found Falling Leaf almost thirty feet away, half-buried beneath a pile of leaves, grass, moss, and sticks. He could see where she landed and how far she slid. Sen kept reminding himself that she wasn’t dead for sure until he actually checked for himself. He dropped down onto the ground beside her and started shoveling away the detritus that obscured her body. When he managed to get her mostly uncovered, he just stared down at the big cat. She was so utterly still that Sen was sure that the damnable ape must have killed her. He couldn’t believe that there had even been an ape up on the mountain. He’d never heard of apes this far north. They were supposed to dislike the cold. While those thoughts careened around inside his head, Sen watched Falling Leaf.

When he saw her breathe, he felt a lump in his throat so big that Sen thought he might stop breathing. He reached out and brushed away the last of the plant matter around her head. He didn’t like what he saw at all. Half of the big cat’s face was swollen so badly that it made her look deformed. When she breathed, there was a wheezing, almost wet sound to it. Sen knew little about medicine and even less about spirit beasts, but it didn’t take an expert to know that those sounds didn’t bode well. He felt a moment of panic because he did not know what to do. The idea that he’d lose his only real friend in the world overwhelmed everything else. He had to help her. He had to. How, though? He didn’t dare leave her there. In her condition, some other spirit animal would come along and kill her. Sen knew he was a lot stronger than he had been, but he didn’t think he could carry her all the way back to Ma Caihong.

Sen felt like lighting had erupted inside his brain. Despite his almost daily injuries, Sen had managed to avoid anything life-threatening. He still had the small box of pills that Ma Caihong had given him to take in an emergency. As far as Sen was concerned, this was an emergency. He pulled the box and a water skin out of his storage ring. He pulled one of the pills out. While the qi in the other medicines she’d given him had only been noticeable if he looked for it, he could feel the qi radiating off this pill. With a plan in mind, Sen confronted the next problem. How to get the unconscious Falling Leaf to take the pill? For one brief moment, Sen entertained the mad idea of simply putting the pill in her mouth. Then, sense reasserted itself. He imagined her coming around with his hand in her mouth and biting down. Instead, Sen cautiously reached out and touched her side.

“Can you hear me?” He asked.

It took forever to Sen’s frantic perception, but the spirit beast eventually cracked open an eye wide enough to give him a bleary look. He quickly explained what the pill was and that she needed to swallow it. She closed her eye when he finished. Sen worried that she either hadn’t understood or had fallen unconscious again. After a very long moment, though, she looked at him again and opened her mouth a little. Sen winced at the sight because it looked like it hurt her. He very carefully put the pill on her tongue and offered her some water. Her mouth closed for a moment and then opened again. The pill was gone, but he managed to get a bit of water into her mouth. That small bit of activity seemed to drain the big cat and she went still again, except for her breathing.

They spent three days in that spot, with Sen feeding her one of those pills each day. When he wasn’t tending to the cat, Sen was standing guard over her. Spirit beasts came to the area, drawn by the smell of blood or death, only to flee when Sen unleashed his killing intent on them. He learned a lot about how to use it in those three days. At first, it was just a blanket that covered the entire area. Bit by bit, though, he learned how to focus it into an arrow of pure menace that he launched at anything stupid enough to get close. For the handful of beasts that didn’t take Sen’s very potent invitation to leave, the end came fast. Sen was done hesitating. He was done with that forest. Most of all, he was done with the vile, murderous spirit animals that haunted that damned mountain. The only good news was that the new kills meant that Falling Leaf always had fresh meat to eat.

Well, fresh meat and spirit beast cores. He’d left one sitting near her and turned around to see it disappear into her mouth. He’d been dumbfounded, but quickly dumped a pile of them onto the ground from his spirit ring. He never did figure out what made a core good or bad for her, but she carefully separated three that she ate over the course of her recovery. On the afternoon of that third day, the pair of them set off again. Sen didn’t plan to cover much ground. He just wanted to get far enough away from all those dead spirit beasts that he could set up a relatively safe camp. While the ghost panther had wandered far and wide before, she kept close to Sen on that first walk. There was a gingerness to how the big cat moved, at least when Sen could keep her in sight. She often faded from view if he took his eyes off her for long.

Once he found a place that he considered good enough, Sen set up his tent. He’d kept himself awake for days by cycling qi through his channels, but the limit of that approach had become more apparent to him with every passing hour. He needed actual rest. He gave Falling Leaf a stern look.

“If anything comes around, make a noise or do something to wake me up.”

When he got what he thought was agreement from the cat, Sen slipped into the tent and was all but dead to the world until morning. The next day, Sen let the cat sleep all morning. When they set out in the afternoon, she seemed fully recovered. Sen wasn’t sure what those pills were that Ma Caihong had given him, but he made a mental note to ask her. With Falling Leaf moving fast again and seemingly as done with the adventure as Sen, they set a brutal pace. Sen’s newly forged killing intent kept the path mostly clear. When that didn’t work, he practiced qi techniques on them, or Falling Leaf dispatched them with merciless tooth and claw. It took them two more days to reach the far side of the mountain and find the cave. Feng was waiting at the cave mouth for them. He took one look at Sen’s face, grimaced, and then nodded.

“It worked, I take it,” said Master Feng.

Sen’s first response was to send the arrow of killing intent he’d perfected on the path. He took a little satisfaction from the fact that Master Feng actually blinked when it struck home.

“Yes, master. It worked,” said Sen.

“Well, do come into my cave.”

Sen and Falling Leaf trailed the old cultivator in the cave, which turned out to be surprisingly warm and dry. Feng had a small fire burning in a neatly made firepit. A pot of something that smelled positively heavenly to Sen was held over the fire by an iron tripod. Sen ate three bowls of the stew and half a loaf of bread before he even started to feel human again. Master Feng even dished up some of the stew for the ghost panther, who also ate her fill. It was only when the meal was truly over that Master Feng asked Sen to tell him what happened. Master Feng listened with a calm expression as Sen spoke for nearly two hours. Sen laid out the sequence of events, the various injuries suffered, and how he treated them, then culminated with the forming of his killing intent. Sen glossed over a lot of what happened after that, ready to put the events and their retelling behind him.

Master Feng sat in thoughtful silence for most of five minutes before he spoke again. “What you’re describing is very strange. It was inevitable that you would come under attack at some point, but it shouldn’t have been anything like what you saw. Half the beasts you described aren’t aggressive by nature. I’ll have to look into this. See if I can find out why they behaved so oddly. Honestly, if I’d thought it was going to be that bad, I wouldn’t have sent you.”

Sen didn’t quite know what to do with that last comment. He decided he’d deal with it some other day. Instead, he focused on what he cared about.

“Well, it’s done now. Can we go back?”

“Tomorrow, Sen. For tonight, the two of you should rest. I’ll keep watch.”

With the stress of the last two weeks finally wearing off, the true depth of Sen’s fatigue was hitting him. Without another word, he set up his bedroll and went to sleep.