"Zhen."

"Yes."

"What is the fastest method?"

Her tail moved. She was still looking at the ground like it had personally offended her.

"A soul resonance kiss. It establishes a direct link between cultivation bases. Three seconds. Permanent."

"Permanent meaning."

"The bond does not dissolve. I can channel cultivation through you in combat. I can protect you directly rather than adjacent." She looked up.

"If something attempts to sever the bond it has to go through me first."

"The other methods."

"Blood contract. Seven days minimum. Spiritual resonance meditation. Three to five days, requires uninterrupted quiet."

I looked at the direction the Phoenix Clan cultivators were coming from.

"We have twenty minutes."

"Yes."

Her ears went flat immediately.

"I dislike this," she said.

"I know. Come here."

"I do not believe in love."

"This is a cultivation bond."

"They feel adjacent."

"Zhen.We don’t have time."

She crossed the distance without announcing it, the way she did most things. Her ears were still flat. Her tail had gone completely still.

She looked at me for one moment with those gold-centered eyes that had seen three hundred years of cave waiting for someone who never came back.

"You can still choose another method," she said quietly.

"We don’t have another method."

Then she looked at me.

"Do not die," she said.

Then she kissed me.

Three seconds.

Something opened that had no physical location and no visible component,

And through it came warmth and old and enormous three hundred years of cultivation, a divine beast’s full spiritual presence, making contact with my two-day-old Foundation Core.

An ocean finding a glass of water.

The glass held.

That surprised me more than anything else had in a very long time.

She pulled back. The faintest color in her cheeks. She turned away and looked at the trees immediately.

"Done," she said.

"Done," I agreed.

[Bond Established: Divine Beast Contract.]

[Zhen — Divine Beast, Unclassified Grade. Full soul resonance active.]

[Foundation Core structure reinforced.]

I checked the core. Still mine, still what I had built but the walls of it had something behind them now.

Like steel placed behind glass without changing its shape.

"Thank you," I said.

"Meow," she said, to the trees.

****

Nineteen minutes became twelve.

Two came first, moving through the western undergrowth with the controlled precision of people who trained together.

Phoenix Clan robes. Gold trim at the collar. Not scouts actual combat cultivators, their spiritual pressure pressing outward as they moved.

They stopped when they saw Zhen.

Something in her had changed since the bond.

The girl with cat ears was not visible anymore in the way she was standing. What was visible was energy that had existed for three hundred years.

"The girl comes with us," the left one said. "We have no interest in..."

Zhen moved.

She was already inside his guard before the sentence finished. Her hand found his raised wrist, and whatever she did to it made him fold immediately not a technique I recognized,

Not something from any framework I had studied. Just the application of understanding exactly how a human joint worked and choosing to use that understanding.

He went down with a scream.

The second one did not hesitate.

He brought both hands forward and the air in front of him compressed into a visible pressure wave Clan-level technique, the kind that would have put a Foundation Core cultivator through a tree.

It hit Zhen in the chest.

She took one step back.

Then she looked at him with the expression of murderous intent.

"Hehehe. Keep trying."

He called his mana into his palms two spheres of dense golden energy appeared, Phoenix Clan fire affinity, the kind of output that should have been overwhelming for anything at this range.

He pushed both forward simultaneously, a technique designed to leave no gap in either direction.

Zhen caught one in each hand.

The golden fire tried to expand. She closed her fingers and it didn’t.

She looked at her hands, then at him, with the expression of someone who had been mildly interested and had now finished being interested.

She set him against a tree root with the careful placement of someone who had decided not to damage him more than necessary.

"Not dead," she said.

"Good. Let’s play more."

More sounds from the west. Many footsteps.

"Ten," she said, before I could ask. "More food."

"That seems excessive."

"A pure fire root establishing Foundation Core in the correct method does not read as one coreless disciple." She turned toward the sound.

"Stay behind me."

I stayed behind her.

The ten spread as they emerged from the trees, taking formation positions.

Three in the front line, four supporting, three in flanking positions that cut off the retreat angles.

Their spiritual pressure merged as they aligned not individual outputs anymore but a coordinated field, the way clan cultivators trained to operate, each one amplifying the ones beside them.

The front line’s lead cultivator raised his hand.

A formation seal activated overhead precise, Phoenix Clan suppression array, the kind designed to restrict movement and dampen spiritual output.

It pressed down across the clearing like a second sky, heavy and deliberate.

Under it, my Foundation Core felt like it was breathing through cloth.

Zhen did not appear to notice.

She walked forward into the suppression field the way you walked into a room.

The lead cultivator released his first technique, a Phoenix Strike, the flagship combat form of the Phoenix Clan lineage.

A column of fire shaped into the form of a diving bird, the kind of strike that left craters in stone.

It was beautiful, technically. I had read about it. Seeing it in a forest at close range was different from reading.

It hit Zhen.

The flame expanded around her on contact and then contracted, pulling back the way fire pulled back from something it could not sustain against.

She walked out of it and kept walking toward them without changing her pace.

The four supporting cultivators activated simultaneously earth suppression from the left flank, wind binding from the right, pressure compression from above, heat extraction from below.

Four-element cage technique. The kind that required years of coordination to execute cleanly and could contain Spirit Core cultivators.

Zhen stood inside it.

She looked up at the pressure compression.

I looked down at the heat extraction.

Then she exhaled slowly, and the cage came apart. Completely broken.

What happened after that was difficult to watch as a sequence. She moved through the formation the way the formation was designed to prevent things from moving,

Finding gaps that should not have existed in a ten-person coordinated array and existing in them anyway.

Each cultivator she reached went down quickly, not from a single dramatic technique but from the precise removal of their ability to continue being a problem.

The last one standing was the lead cultivator with the Phoenix Strike.

He had his hands raised for a second attempt.

Full output, everything he had, the fire gathering between his palms into something that was visibly pulling heat from the surrounding air.

Zhen stopped in front of him.

He released it.

She put one hand forward.

The fire stopped.

Not deflected. Not absorbed. Stopped, mid-release, held in place between his hands and her palm like she had found the technique’s intention and disagreed with it.

She looked at him over the contained fire.

He let it go.

She let it dissipate.

He sat down on the forest floor.

"Done," she said.

All ten of them were still breathing. Most of them would be having extremely significant thoughts about their career choices when they woke up.

"We need to move," she said. "The formation failing will trigger a response. But before..."

"What now?"

"You see I’m hungry, can I eat them?"

Huh. I looked at them.

"Can I eat them?"

"No."

"One?"

"No."

"Half?"

"Do whatever you want."

"Thanks Rin."

We ran north, through the harder terrain, along the ridge where the ground was rocky.

I was breathing hard by the time the road appeared.

I had stopped having feelings about that.

[Quest Complete: Survive and Escape.]

[Reward: 400 Power Stones.]

[Current Power Stones: 1443.]

[Bonus note: The Phoenix Clan is now aware of you. Congratulations on that.]

"The Phoenix Clan is now aware of me."

"Not today’s problem," she said. "Today we escaped."

The town was ahead. It was a lowkey place.

We walked into a tavern and sat down.

Zhen’s tail curled around her feet. Her ears were back in their normal position. She was watching the road behind us.

"The bond," I said. "How does it feel?"

She was quiet for a moment.

"Different," she said. "Three hundred years in a cave is a long time to be the only thing in your own awareness."

"Yes," I said. "It is."

"It is not unpleasant," she said. "The difference."

"No," I said. "It is not."

We sat until the afternoon became evening.

***

Three months later.

Swords call us on my right hand.

[New Quest: The Tianlong Tournament.]

[Description: Annual tournament. Tang Clan, Phoenix Clan, Xiao Clan, and seven others sending representatives. Regional influence determined by results.]

[Objective: Enter and compete.]

[Reward: Unknown.]

[Failure: Nothing. But you will regret not going.]