"Tsk."
Su Min watched with cold, detached amusement as the previously fierce and swaggering bandit now cowered on her floor, looking like a soaked, terrified rat caught in a trap. With a dismissive, almost lazy wave of her hand, she added, "Scram. Get out of my sight. You are stinking up my home."
"Y yes, Master! Right away!"
Not daring to utter another word, the men scrambled over each other to haul their trembling, urine-stained leader to his feet, moving with a frantic, clumsy energy as if fleeing a den of hungry demons. But just as they took their first stumbling step toward the door, her soft, yet piercingly clear voice drifted over them, freezing them in their tracks as effectively as a physical wall.
"Wait."
They stopped instantly, their bodies rigid with renewed fear, not even daring to breathe too loudly.
"Pay for my table," she said, her tone flat and final, leaving absolutely no room for negotiation or plea.
The bandits exchanged bewildered, panicked glances. The table was a simple, rustic thing she had cobbled together from local bamboo, something Su Min could easily rebuild in a matter of minutes by chopping a few stalks from the forest nearby. Yet the mournful, deeply wounded sigh she let out suggested the loss of an heirloom of immense sentimental value, a treasure beyond price.
"This table was passed down from my elders," she lamented, placing a delicate hand over her heart as if to soothe a profound grief. "It held years of precious memories. Oh, how my heart aches just looking at the splintered pieces. So much pain." She looked directly at the lead bandit, her eyes glinting with a dangerous light. "Enough pain that I might just grab someone, stab them a few times, heal them up nicely, and then stab them all over again, just to make myself feel better. What do you think? Sound therapeutic?"
"…"
The threat was anything but subtle. It was a promise, delivered with a chilling, clinical calm.
And they believed every word of it. They had heard the stories. The village chief and the local shaman had learned that exact, brutal lesson the hard way. Now, even whispering her name in private made them break out in a cold sweat. Frantically, the men emptied their pockets and leather pouches, producing a small, jumbled pile of scattered silver coins and bits of broken silver, about three taels in total, placing it on the stump she used as a stool.
"Tsk. Fine. A pittance, but it will have to do. Get lost," she said, sounding almost bored now, as if the entire confrontation had become tedious.
She pocketed the coins with a swift, practiced flick of her wrist, the silver disappearing into her sleeve.
"Mood ruined," she muttered to the empty, quiet room once they were gone. "Might as well plan for Qi Refining. No point in refining more basic pills today."
She sighed, watching the last of the retreating figures vanish into the dense tree line. She knew more troublesome "patients" like that were bound to appear sooner or later, an unavoidable side effect of her growing, and increasingly exaggerated, reputation. Slaughtering every single one of them was not a real, sustainable option, not when she had much bigger, long term concerns to focus her energy and attention on.
Like the Qi Inducing Pill, a crucial catalyst for breaking through to the Qi Refining stage.
It was not strictly necessary—a cultivator could theoretically break through through sheer force of will and accumulated energy—but with it, the dangerous and spiritually unstable process would be significantly faster, safer, and smoother. A single, well-made pill could save her years of arduous, uncertain work and protect her from a catastrophic failure that could cripple her meridians. And time was not a luxury she could afford to waste, not with the treasure gourd's ten-year maturation clock steadily ticking down in the back of her mind.
"I have already managed to find one of the three required herbs," she mused, checking her mental inventory of the contents of her spatial ring. "The Seven Leaf Spirit Grass. But I am still missing the other two main ingredients... the Sun-Scorched Ironvine and the Ghost-Faced Mushroom."
In this era of dormant spiritual energy, such rare, spirit-attuned ingredients were incredibly scarce, often growing only in specific, dangerous, or hidden locations. Her fingers drummed a thoughtful, quiet rhythm against the smooth surface of her newly acquired bamboo table.
"Maybe I can leverage my local fame to source them?" she wondered. These bandits and hunters ranged far and wide; they might stumble upon what she needed without even knowing its value.
There was no immediate, panicked rush. She figured she had a comfortable two or three years at most to gather what she needed before she would need to attempt the breakthrough. Still, those bandits had caught her attention. Their aura carried the coarseness of violence and desperation, but it lacked the deep, chilling stain of true, wanton bloodlust, the kind that clung to soul. They were not mindless marauders who killed for sport or pleasure.
"Potential herb hunters?" she considered, a pragmatic idea forming. They clearly knew the mountains, and they were motivated.
First, of course, she would need to carefully, discreetly look into their background. As a wanted fugitive from a powerful, vengeful empire, she could never afford to let her guard down, to trust too easily. The deep wilderness shielded her, and her appearance had changed enough with her cultivation and natural growth—her features sharper, her bearing more confident—that even the brothel madam might not recognize her now if they stood face to face.
But caution, honed by survival, demanded she use indirect approaches, intermediaries, and careful observation. Drawing the wrong kind of attention, attracting the gaze of another, more powerful cultivator or an imperial spy, could cost her the gourd, her hard-won peace, and send her right back into a desperate life of constant, exhausting flight.
Meanwhile, in the Village
Hearty, knowing laughter erupted from a small group of villagers who had watched the whole scene from a safe distance as they watched the bandits flee, their earlier swagger completely gone, replaced by a comical, trembling panic. Su Min's prowess was the stuff of local legend, growing with each retelling. A young woman living completely alone in the demon-haunted wilderness, untouched by the dangers that felled strong men? Everyone knew, with a superstitious certainty, that only someone truly, terrifyingly dangerous—a spirit, a demon, or an immortal in disguise—could manage that.
And since she never socialized, never came down to the village to drink or gossip, none of the whispers, fears, or fantastical stories ever reached her ears, allowing the legend to grow unchecked.
The Village Chief's House
"Master Zhao, I told you before," the village chief said, wringing his hands nervously as he looked at the man on the pallet. "That woman is no ordinary healer. She is a fox spirit in human form, I am sure of it. You cannot command her; you can only petition her."
The chief eyed the pale-faced, sweating man lying on the sickbed. He vividly remembered Su Min's casual, offhand remark from months ago, delivered with that same serene smile, "Kill all your enemies, and no one gets hurt," and he shuddered. Even the local shaman, whose authority and "magic" she had completely undercut with a single dose of a real healing pill, now dared not speak a word against her, treating her name with a reverent fear.
"Cough… cough…" the sick man, Master Zhao, tried to speak, but was wracked by another fit of wet, painful coughing that shook his entire frame.
Before he could get a word out, the bedraggled group of bandits stumbled into the dim hut, one of them still reeking strongly of urine, their faces ashen.
"Sect Leader, that woman, she is a demon! A witch!" one of them blurted out, his voice trembling.
"I know," the man on the bed winced, both from the pain in his body and the frustration of the situation. "Just… stop talking. Prepare a stretcher. We will go to her properly, with respect. And bring the bamboo token. The one we got for that strange, glowing rock we found last season."
"The token?!" the men exclaimed in unison, a mix of surprise and relief in their voices.
A wave of understanding washed over them. They all knew Su Min's ironclad rules by heart, rules that were now the law of the land for anyone seeking her help.
Rule one, no house calls. You bring the patient to her. No exceptions.
Rule two, no token, no treatment. Unless, of course, she happened to be in a particularly good mood, which was rare.
They had foolishly, arrogantly thought a "helpless girl" could simply be dragged over by force, a notion that now seemed suicidally stupid. Instead, they had met a living typhoon in human form, calm on the surface but capable of utter devastation. Now, they would have to carefully carry their ailing leader up the treacherous, winding mountain path, just like every other desperate soul who sought her favor.
The Bamboo Hut
Su Min paused while arranging her alchemy tools on the new, slightly crooked bamboo table she had built to replace the ruined one.
She tilted her head, her enhanced senses reaching out beyond the walls of her hut, focusing on the approaching group. "A cultivator?" she murmured to herself.
The faint spiritual aura she sensed from the man on the stretcher was weak and unstable, flickering like a dying candle in the wind, clearly belonging to the patient the bandits served. But genuine cultivators, once they stepped onto the path, did not usually linger in such a fragile, near-mortal state unless something was terribly wrong.
She pursed her lips in thought, her mind working through the implications. "If a cultivator is in this bad a shape, then whatever is ailing them—a poison, a curse, a corrupted technique—would have killed an ordinary mortal outright." This was no simple belly wound.
A slow, knowing smile touched her lips. It was not a smile of joy, but of recognition.
"So it begins," she whispered to the quiet, watching forest. "The winds of change are blowing faster than I thought."
In just a year or two, the dormant world was already beginning to stir. She knew, with a cold certainty, that many more cultivators would soon be making their presence known.