Despite the sameness of the long grass in the dark, I found Ran Cong’s corpse easily enough by following those same long-tongued rats. They clustered around his dismembered body parts, chewing and squeaking, but a few kicks scattered them easily enough. It was a shame that the demonic spawn’s attack prevented Ran Qin from retrieving her young master's body… a shame for her!

  Despite having sat in the open air for hours, the body remained relatively unspoiled. No trace of flies, maggots, beetles, or rot. Suspiciously, I looked around, and dug my fingers into the dirt, but saw no creatures — only the tracks of the long-tongued rats.

  “Where are all the animals?”

  The long grass whispered, but it didn’t answer. So, I unwrapped a piece of Ran Cong’s thigh from his blood-soaked robes and savored the delicately bitter smell wafting from his body. It reminded me of an alchemist's shelves, where you weren’t sure if you walked past salves or poisons; an overpoweringly chemical smell, harsh, abrasive, but as delicate as a dewdrop.

  How would it taste?

  I took a moment to offer up a funeral prayer for the fallen expedition member before I nibbled through his pale skin and sank my teeth into the flesh beneath. His flesh tasted richer than it smelled, and ten times as bitter. It was so foul, I almost vomited, but the sweet, sweet promise of qi kept me going.

  With the strength gained from absorbing the spawn’s demonic qi, my jaws made quick work of the young man’s flesh. Though he was in the Qi Condensing realm, my body now existed at an equivalent point, at least in the peak of Qi Condensing in terms of general toughness.

  I still remembered the power that the Foundation Establishment assassins possessed, and I knew I wasn’t close to them. Not yet, at least.

  Sometimes, a meal is so bad that you eat it even faster just to finish it sooner. You must reinterpret food as fuel and focus on nourishment rather than experience. In a roundabout way, this made me think of Special Inspector Deng and his enthusiasm for local cuisine. He’d voiced curiosity about eating people in a moment of panic, but would a gourmand such as him be willing to eat something as overbearing as Ran Cong?

  There would be no way to find out without jeopardizing my identity, so such hypotheticals would have to remain inside my head.

  At last, I got down to the bones. Usually, if I had time, I would crack them for the marrow, but the thought alone of whatever black sludge might dwell inside his bones almost made me vomit up everything I’d just stuffed down. In fact, I’d eaten so fast that most of the meat remained in my stomach, distending it out so much I needed to sit down and loosen my robes as I waited for my body to process it all.

  A human body is a lot less meat than you might think. Once you drain the blood and remove the bones, and throw out any organs that are literally just tubes of poop, you are left with only the muscle, and for a young man with a delicate aesthetic, that isn’t a lot of muscle. Cultivators gained strength from their qi, and not from bulking their bodies, which was probably my main complaint when it came to adding them to my diet.

  Since the Butcher Bird expanded my internal perception enough for me to see my flesh and bone reservoirs, I could see how the corpses I’d eaten expanded them. My blood reservoir was almost full, and my flesh and bones were filled to the brim. When they were that full, anything else I ate remained inside my stomach, but I could, through nauseating force of will, trickle more blood, flesh, or bone into the appropriate reservoir and slowly increase the storage capacity. It wasn’t a fast process, but it made me optimistic that my capabilities would expand.

  “Fascinating,” came the deep voice of the Butcher Bird.

  I looked around, not really expecting to see it, but saw it perched atop a long blade of grass that didn’t even bow beneath the fluffy bird’s weight.

  “What’s fascinating?” I asked.

  “You act so human, and yet I see you here devouring the corpse of your expedition member. Many animals eat their own young or scavenge carcasses of their own species, but humans like to set themselves apart from such behavior. It is fascinating that you do not.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  The Butcher Bird cocked its head.

  “I’m sure you do. I wonder if you have a reason for going back on our deal?”

  “I am not!”

  “You said you would move through the valley, but your expedition has already stopped.”

  “They’re camping for the night.”

  The Butcher Bird stared at me for a long time.

  “There is a path near your camp that leads to the north. If you follow that path, you will find a fork. The left fork is safer, but the right fork will provide you with more of what you seek.”

  “You don’t know what I seek.”

  The Butcher Bird twittered, and the amused sound sent a shiver down my spine.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “You unwrapped the sabers. I see and remember such things. Do not believe for a second that my isolation has made me anything but sharper.”

  Even though its strength was so great, I had no chance of fighting back; I felt especially vulnerable with my belly round and distended like a meat-filled boil.

  “I believe you… But that brings up a question: what is the source of demonic qi in the demonic spawn?”

  “You wish to swap questions once more… very well. Demonic spawn are demonic, and so they possess demonic qi, but that is not a satisfying answer to one as keen-minded as us. No, that is like saying the sun is hot and bright because it is the sun!”

  I was sorely tempted to ask about the sun, but I recognised it for the misdirect that it was. The glimpses I’d gained from the grey stone were too haunting for me to properly probe, and I needed some words, some explanation, to serve as a guiding light before I tried to understand what I saw.

  “What’s the explanation then?”

  “Of the sun?”

  “Of the demonic qi.”

  “Hmm, what do you know of qi? That doesn’t count as a question, but I need to know how to explain this to you.”

  “Qi? I guess…”

  Huh, I’d never really thought about qi before, just taken it for granted like the air or the rain or… the sun. When I was a mortal, qi wasn’t an important part of my life, and since becoming… whatever I was… I hadn’t had the time or reason to think too hard about the nature of things.

  “Qi is a part of everything,” I ventured. “It’s the thingness of things, like a fire has fire qi, and a river has water qi, and so on.”

  The Butcher Bird cocked its head.

  “You are not wrong, but you are merely scratching at the surface. Qi flows through the world and is impacted by what it passes through, becoming fire, or water, or whatever essential element comprises whatever object. That much, a child can udnerstand. WHat is deeper, and was uncovered by my masters, was the nature of qi’s relationship with the soul. It is through qi that a soul can interact with the world, and it is through qi that a soul can animate a body. For a soul exists purely in the spiritual plane, and the world, including the body, exists purely in the material plane. Qi exists in a constant cycle between the two, and it is linking mind and material that life and movement can occur.”

  “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  The Butcher Bird fluffed its feathers, but it seemed excited rather than agitated.

  “Given what I told you, how would you animate a body that doesn’t have a soul?”

  “Qi?”

  “Yes, almost, but while qi would flow through the body, it would have no soul to touch upon, and so it would simply continue flowing as it does in a rock or a river, but, sometimes, such a rock or a river gains sapience. Is this because a rock or a river already has part of a soul? A fascinating question I don’t know the answer to, but, if qi carries the essential nature of what it passes through, then why not use a qi that carries the essential nature of intelligent movement?”

  I didn’t exactly want to call the demonic spawn intelligent, but I felt that I was being pedantic, because I could certainly see his point.

  “So demonic qi has that essential nature.”

  “Amongst other things,” said the Butcher Bird with a long twitter. “Amongst other things! But, yes, the demonic qi has such a nature, and, as you must have realized, there is nothing in our world which qi could flow through to gain that nature.”

  “The demonic qi comes from another world… what does that even mean?”

  “That is the question my masters tried to answer. It drove them mad one by one, and then it drove them deeper and deeper into the question until they vanished, one by one.”

  I leaned back, feeling sick, and not just from what I’d eaten. The Butcher Bird’s obvious insanity made me doubt some things it said, but I believed what it told me just now. Other worlds…

  And a qi that had a mind of its own. That must be why cultivators reacted so adversely to demonic qi, it was of a nature separate to our world. But why didn’t it affect me? Was I also animated by demonic qi? I still rejected the Butcher Bird’s earlier statement, but I was coming closer and closer to accepting that I didn’t have a soul.

  The Butcher Bird fluttered over and landed on top of my distended belly.

  It pecked me and punctured a small hole from which blood geysered.

  “Tell me, where does all the meat go?”

  Even as it asked, my stomach slowly deflated as my willpower squeezed it into my reservoirs.

  “Two days ago, I would have told you that it goes into my soul, but now I am not sure.”

  “Fascinating. Are you sure I can’t cut you open?”

  “I am sure.”

  “I could just do it, though.”

  “But then you won’t get my ritual.”

  The Butcher Bird stared into my eyes for a long time.

  “Break camp at dawn and take the right fork.”

  It vanished with such speed that the air cracked like thunder and the long grass whipped around me. After the wind of the Butcher Bird’s departure died down, I rose to my feet and patted my stomach. It was almost back to normal, and if I paced myself, I would look fine by the time I reached the camp.

  I had more to think about than I’d expected, and my past selves were oddly silent as all this new information filled my mind. For a terrible, lonely moment, I thought that all I’d just been imagining them, and that finding out I had no soul was the wakeup call I needed for them to vanish forever.

  That’s dumb.

  Even a donkey knows better.

  If you were a customer, I would swindle you.

  Kill another cultivator and eat them.

  A smile crept across my face as I jogged through the long grass. The glimpses I’d gained from the middle saber’s grey rock had shown me an ominous glowing purple portal from which demonic qi poured, but it also showed me snippets of fragments of dreams, and I knew those dreams came from beyond the portal, or, at least, were a yearning to return.

  I still dared not think too closely about that, and I shunned the memory from my mind. Call me a coward, but when someone sets broken glass on fire, tell me why I should swallow it whole. Speaking of, after a long, almost painful fart, my stomach settled down enough that I could see my abs if I flexed. My blood reservoir was almost full, and my flesh and bone reservoirs were packed to the brim.

  My qi reservoir was around two-thirds full, and dwindling with my use of the Plum Blossom stealth technique. If I hadn’t eaten so many Foundation Establishment cultiavtors, my qi certainly would have run out earlier, but the higher cultivation realm provided denser qi that lasted longer.

  It was a little disturbing that the Butcher Bird saw through my stealth without any issue, but there was something more concerning.

  Ran Cong’s qi sat like a glistening emerald packet outside my shadow-filled reservoir. I’d expected his qi to top up the reservoir like normal. After all, no matter whose body I ate, the blood, flesh, and bone all went to the appropriate place. Still, qi wasn’t the same as meat, and this was the first time I’d had one type of qi in my reservoir while consuming another.

  I focused on the qi with my willpower as I jogged out of the long grass and across the quartz-studded riverbank. Ran Cong’s qi was potent and pure poison, and I wanted to make it mine before I returned to camp.

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