The road to Yǒngshèng Jīng wound through foothills that should have been lush and vibrant. Instead, the trees were skeletal, their leaves a sickly grey. The very air carried the metallic tang of decay. The Blight was a festering wound on the land, growing stronger as they neared the capital city.
They rode with grim purpose. Li Wei was a silent vanguard, his senses extended like frost over the corrupted soil. Qianyi dismounted, walking with a divine awareness. She felt the land's pain as a dull ache in her own spirits.
Xuán Chè, guided by Wù Fēng, tried to listen to the "memory" of the blight, his brow furrowed. Zhōu Línglóng stayed close and quiet, her earlier bravado subdued by the oppressive atmosphere.
It was Li Wei who halted them, raising a closed fist. He pointed towards a dip in the road ahead. There, the remnants of a merchant caravan lay scattered and looted. A group of a dozen dark cultivators in crimson and black robes rummaged through the spoils.
"Petty thieves," Línglóng whispered.
"Shǎ yātou," Wù Fēng murmured. "Look again."
Línglóng looked closer and realized these men were no mere thieves. Their movements were too disciplined, their auras too sharp with malevolent energy. "Ò," she mumbled, properly chastised.
Qianyi analyzed the scene with a strategist's cool eye. "There are twelve of them that we can see. Who knows how many more are in the shadows."
"We have three gods and a demon," Línglóng quipped, throwing a playful jab at her rival. "And Xuán Chè."
Xuán Chè turned his head to look at her. He squinted his eyes in annoyance, sucked his teeth, then rolled them. "Xiǎo māo," he muttered under his breath.
He returned his gaze to the dark cultivators in the road ahead.
Yisha dismounted from her horse. "I'm going to go say 'hello'."
"Shāshā," Li Wei whispered loudly. He gave Yisha a look of pure caution. "Don't."
Wù Fēng smirked nervously, a blend of pride and concern in his eyes. "Do you think you can handle them?"
Yisha winked at Wù Fēng, her confidence radiating through her sparkling eyes. "Dāngrán!"
Yisha walked quietly up the road toward the dark cultivators. Her footsteps made no sound, though she was not sneaking, but walking with a confident stride. One cultivator noticed her approaching.
"Hello. Looks like your caravan has broken down. Would you like some help," Yisha said playfully.
"Xiǎo Gūniang, are you lost" the dark cultivator taunted.
"No. I think I am headed in the right direction. This road leads to Yǒngshèng Jīng, duì ma?"
"Yǒngshèng Jīng is on lockdown. No one in or out," he warned, smirking as if he's looking at a piece of meat. The other dark cultivators began their attempt to slowly encircle her.
"O," she said, eyeing the men with the same hungry intent. She took one step forward, golden, translucent energy reverberated beneath her feet, extending in all directions outward, shaking the very ground.
The dark cultivators stumbled, their smirks wiped away. "Nǐ dàodǐ shì shéi?!" ne demanded, his voice laced with shock and fear.
"Who am I," Yisha laughed. She took another step forward, sending an illuminated shock to them.
The dark cultivators scrambled to regain their footing to begin setting up a formation to entrap the girl. It did not hold for long.
Yisha extended her hand to her side as she took another, thunderous footstep, and from her hand a white sword of glowing luminescence materialized from hilt to tip in her grasp.
She took another step, this time breaking the formation as she swung her sword horizontally in front of her, knocking the dark cultivators down onto their backs.
As she took another step, a figure wearing a crimson and black hooded robe and a black and silver face mask, quickly descended from the sky, landing on one knee, sending a thunderous wave ahead of him, knocking Yisha back.
Wù Fēng was a blur. His arm was around Yisha's waist in an instant, spinning her to break her fall and balance her. Their eyes met in a nervous, electric instant of shared breath and something unspoken.
Xuán Chè was a step behind, his arm extended uselessly to catch the air where Yisha had been. His lips settled into a deep frown of disappointment in his lack of ability to be Yisha's savior. He quickly readjusted into a defensive stance, his expression fierce.
Li Wei's frost-amber eyes, however, missed nothing. He saw Xuán Chè's desperate lunge, the frustrated frown, the protective stance and mumbled to himself, "Hm."
Wù Fēng stepped forward as the moon rose behind him, painting the scene in silver and shadow. His arms moved in a fluid, yin-yang motion. When his palms met, a dozen luminous, divine swords materialized and shot toward the masked figure.
The man slid backward with unnatural speed, a crimson mist billowing beneath his feet like a wave of blood. He did not stop until the struggling dark cultivators formed a living shield between them. The divine swords pierced through each man without slowing, turning them into a grisly, unwilling barricade.
Unfazed, the masked man clenched his fists. He conjured a sword of jagged, sharpened stone, its blade ridged and cruel. An eerie, black glow with a crimson hue pulsed from it, staining the air with malevolence. He became a blur, his body twisting like a drill as he shot toward Wù Fēng and Yisha.
In a flash of motion, Li Wei intercepted him. The frost fox was a shard of living ice, a sharp, impenetrable arrow aimed true. Their auras collided mid-air with a concussive thump. The masked man blocked the assault with his stone sword, forced back a step by the raw impact.
Li Wei produced his black ironwood fan, snapping it open with a sound like cracking ice. He hurled it, and as it swirled, it blossomed into a blizzard of innumerable ice daggers. They screamed through the air, a hailstorm aimed at the man's heart.
The masked man merely held up a hand. His dark aura flared, halting the daggers in mid-flight. The ice shards darkened, absorbing his crimson energy. With a contemptuous wave of his hand, he sent the now-glowing, corrupted daggers screaming back at their creator.
Li Wei's fan returned to his hand. He deflected the onslaught of his own poisoned weapons, the clatter of ice-on-wood a frantic staccato. He snapped the fan shut, drawing his hand over it to produce a long, frosted sword that gleamed with pale luminescence.
He lunged. The masked man met the charge. When their blades connected, the impact was not a clang, but a deafening boom. A shockwave of pure force erupted from them, shaking the decayed trees and whipping the corrupted soil into a frenzy.
They swung their swords again, their auras creating an even bigger clash. While colliding with Li Wei's sword aura, the masked man took his other hand behind his back to conjure pure malevolent energy in the form of a snake. It slithered down his leg, onto the ground and over to Li Wei's unsuspecting body.
Undetected by the masked man, Qianyi had quietly made her way behind him in the thick of the dead trees. She slammed her hand to the ground, the impact producing a golden spark that shot forth, and several thick, vengeful vines erupted from the soil.
The vines took aim at his ankles, yanking the man, forcing him to fall face forward. The vines, as if they were vengeance itself, raised the man, hanging him upside down and wrapping around him, binding his body completely. Qianyi darted forward, her hand conjuring a whip of pure light. She landed behind the hanging man, and with a sharp flick of her wrist, the luminous coil wrapped around his neck.
After a few quick moments, the masked man's body glowed with malevolent energy, sending a wave of energy outward, knocking Li Wei and Qianyi back. Li Wei quickly grabbed Qianyi to break her fall. Wù Fēng shielded Yisha with his divine aura. The vines around the masked man disintegrated.
Two additional figures appeared. One of them threw a misting powder at Li Wei and Qianyi, completely obscuring their vision. And when the mist cleared, all three were gone.
Wù Fēng and Yisha went to help Li Wei and Qianyi up.
"Are you okay," Yisha asked them, inspecting them like the concerned younger sibling she was. "I'm fine," Qianyi answered. Li Wei nodded.
His gaze then fell to the ground a few feet away.
"Xuán Chè!"
Wù Fēng went to inspect, kneeling beside him, his fingers hovering over a small, dark pinprick on Xuán Chè's neck.
"He was knocked out," Wù Fēng analyzed aloud. He waved his hand over Xuan Che's body. "It's Mèngshī Sǎn – 'Dream Corpse Powder'. It's not fatal, but he'll be out for a day or two."
Qianyi looked around. "Where's Linglong?!"
A horrifying realization dawned on Yisha. "They took her," she whispered, her voice cracking with fury and guilt. "Those bastards took the kid! We have to find her!"
As the panic crested, Qianyi turned back to the group, her mind racing for a plan. And that's when she saw it.
Coiled just below Li Wei's hairline, against the pale skin of his neck, was the serpent of malevolent energy. It had slithered undetected and unfelt, and now it poised to strike.
"A'WEI!" she screamed, her voice raw with terror.
But it was too late. The serpent sank its fangs of condensed corruption into his neck and immediately disintegrated into a faint, crimson mist. Li Wei's eyes flew wide, a choked gasp escaping his lips as a web of black veins instantly spiderwebbed out from the wound, spreading like cracks in ice across his skin before he crumpled to the ground.
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© 2025 Kiesha Richardson, writing as QiXia. All rights reserved.
Death Blooms for You is an original work of fiction by QiXia. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation of this story in any form is prohibited. All characters, events, and settings are created for entertainment purposes and bear no intentional resemblance to real persons or situations.