Jiang wasn’t entirely sure what he was expecting the Cinder-backed Badger to look like – besides the obvious – but this wasn’t it.

  A normal badger was a compact, angry thing – low to the ground, dense, built for digging and tearing. This one had taken that basic shape and scaled it up to absurdity. Its body was long and heavy, shoulders rolling with each step, thick legs churning against the stone. It wasn’t quite horse-sized, but it was close enough that the distinction felt academic. Bigger than a calf. Certainly bigger than any badger he’d ever seen by a wide margin.

  “Can you even still call that a badger anymore? It’s more like a bear than a badger at this point.” Jiang murmured.

  Ren crouched beside him, peering over the rock with narrowed eyes. “The scroll said ‘unusually large,’ but that description does feel… understated,” he admitted. “Still, size alone doesn’t necessarily mean higher advancement. Some beasts simply grow larger as a result of prolonged exposure to Qi-rich environments.”

  Jiang hummed, unconvinced. He adjusted the strap of his bow and slowly eased it off his shoulder, careful not to let the wood knock against the stone. The badger hadn’t noticed them yet. It was busy scraping at the rock face with one claw, sending sparks skittering as heated stone fractured beneath the blow.

  “Alright,” Jiang whispered, grabbing three arrows from his quiver at once and slotting them between the fingers of his draw hand. It was a technique he’d practised as a boy to hunt rabbits – creatures that scattered quickly – but he would never have been able to do it with a heavy bow like this.

  Not as a mortal.

  But he wasn’t mortal anymore. He straightened, drawing the string smoothly to the three-quarter mark and aiming at the beast.

  “Wait!” Ren hissed from beside him.

  Jiang paused, ducking back behind the rock. “What?” he hissed back, scanning the forest around them. Had Ren seen something?

  “We need a plan!” Ren whispered.

  Jiang gave him a dry look. “I’m going to shoot it,” he said, pointedly slow. “And when it gets close enough, you’re going to hit it with your sword.”

  “That’s not a plan,” Ren hissed, looking frantic. “That’s barely an opening statement! What if it resists? What if it breathes fire? I need to know when to engage with the Water Blade to—”

  Jiang stood back up, drawing the heavy string to his ear and taking a fraction of a second to aim.

  Thwip.

  After having seen the power of the bow, Jiang expected a roar of pain, a stagger, maybe even a collapse if he’d managed to hit somewhere vital. Instead, the badger merely flinched, letting out a confused grunt. It turned, scanning the rocks, and Jiang saw a puff of dust kick up from the stone wall behind the beast.

  Too strong, Jiang realised instantly. It’s punching through like a needle, just like with the tree.

  The Cinder-Backed Badger spotted him and roared, the air around it shimmering with a sudden, intense heat. It launched itself forward, scrabbling claws tearing at the stone as it accelerated into a charge that defied its bulk.

  It covered ten paces in a heartbeat.

  Ren scrambled up beside him, sword raised, shouting something about honour, but Jiang tuned him out. The world seemed to sharpen, the edges of reality becoming crisp and distinct. He could see the individual hairs bristling on the badger’s spine; he could see the muscles bunching under the thick hide.

  He nocked the second arrow. Need less power.

  He drew halfway and loosed.

  Clack.

  The arrow bounced off the badger’s shoulder plate, spinning harmlessly away. The hide was tougher than he’d thought; without the kinetic force to punch through, the steel tip couldn’t find purchase.

  Too weak.

  The badger was thirty paces away. Twenty-five.

  Jiang didn’t panic. A cold calm settled over him like an old friend. By the Heavens, he’d missed this feeling. He adjusted his grip, his fingers moving with a speed that would have blurred to a mortal eye.

  He grabbed the remaining arrow in his hand, nocked it, and drew to a point just a few notches less than full draw, operating mostly on instinct.

  Thwip.

  The arrow took the badger in the chest. This time, there was a wet, meaty thud. The shaft buried itself to the fletching, the impact shuddering through the beast’s frame and knocking it slightly off-balance.

  Got you.

  His hand dropped to the quiver, pulling another three arrows free, slotting them between his fingers by feel alone.

  The badger was still coming, roaring its defiance, but it was slowing.

  Jiang fell into a rhythm. Nock. Draw. Loose. Nock. Draw. Loose.

  Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.

  Leg. Shoulder. Neck.

  The arrows weren’t just piercing; they were tearing. As the beast moved, the shafts levered against the muscle, widening the wounds and bleeding momentum from the charge. The badger stumbled, its roar turning into a gurgling shriek, but the beast’s instincts drove it forward through the pain, determined to kill the threat.

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  Ten paces.

  Jiang could feel the heat radiating from it now, a wave of dry, oven-like air. Ren was stepping forward, sword glowing with blue light, ready to intercept.

  Couldn’t fault the man’s courage.

  In this case, though, it wasn’t necessary. Jiang pulled a final arrow from his quiver, drawing the string back to just shy of full extension. From this distance, there was no chance of missing.

  The badger lunged, jaws gaping wide to reveal teeth glowing like molten iron.

  Thwip.

  The steel-tipped shaft took the beast through the top of its jaw, drilling straight through its brain and exiting out the back of its head, disappearing into the sky.

  The badger’s legs folded instantly as it face-planted, its momentum carrying it forward in a boneless, tumbling heap until it came to rest barely a yard from the tips of Ren’s boots.

  The heat haze around its spine flickered and died.

  Silence descended on the rocky slope, broken only by the faint sizzling of blood on hot stone.

  Jiang lowered the bow, exhaling a long breath. His fingers tingled slightly, and when he looked down he noticed specks of blood on his fingertips. Ah. That was a little irritating – he’d lost his calluses after going months without using a bow.

  “…Well,” Ren said after a long moment, his voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat. “That was… efficient.”

  “I had to adjust the power,” Jiang said, stepping forward to inspect his kill. He nudged the badger’s head with his boot. “Should have realised after seeing what happened to the tree, but the first shot over-penetrated. A beast this big would barely notice a couple of tiny holes being poked in it, so I needed to figure out the sweet spot where I’d be hitting it hard enough to get past its skin, but not so hard the arrows went straight through.”

  He grunted, crouching as he began to tug at some of the arrows still stuck in the beast. Unfortunately, he suspected that they were all going to be damaged beyond repair. The bow was exceptionally tough, but the arrows themselves were not.

  “You hit it… eight times,” Ren murmured, counting the arrows as he sheathed his sword with a click. “I suppose that answers the question of whether we can handle Second Realm beasts. If you can put that much steel downrange before they reach us, I’m just here for moral support.”

  “Don’t get comfortable,” Jiang warned, gripping the shaft of an arrow buried in the badger’s shoulder and working it free with a grimace. The head was ruined, bent almost double against the bone. “If there had been two of them, or if I’d missed that last shot for whatever reason, you would have had to step in. I can’t shoot that fast forever.”

  Jiang gave up on pulling the rest of the arrows out. He might be able to retrieve the arrow from the second shot he’d made, the one that had bounced off, but the rest?

  He sighed.

  Having to purchase new arrows every time he used one could get very expensive very quickly – not to mention he’d need to look into carrying a spare quiver or two to make sure he didn’t run out mid-way through a fight.

  Maybe it was finally time to look into buying himself a spatial ring. However expensive they were, he had to imagine they would be making enough money over the next couple of weeks to afford one, and the utility was simply unmatched.

  He straightened, brushing his hands off.

  “Well, considering I killed it, I think it’s only fair you do the harvesting,” he said brightly.

  Ren paused, looking down at the carcass and then back up to Jiang.

  “I… suppose I can’t argue with that,” he agreed with a weak smile.

  — — —

  The sun was beginning to dip below the jagged peaks of the western ridge, casting long, bruised shadows across the valley floor.

  Jiang watched from his perch on a lichen-dusted boulder, a fresh arrow nocked loosely on the string. Below him, in a small depression filled with some kind of mist that smelled like rotten eggs, the sixth target and final of the day – a Razor-Scale Lizard roughly the size of a wagon – was currently sitting on top of a huge boulder, enjoying the heat emanating from the ground.

  Jiang had no idea why this random clearing in the forest was so hot – or why it had no vegetation in it – but he didn’t much care either.

  It had been a good day. A very good day.

  Actually, Jiang corrected himself, feeling a warm glow of satisfaction that had nothing to do with the lingering heat of the vents, it had been a perfect day. Five beasts down. Five clean kills. Not a single scratch on either of them.

  He flexed his fingers, enjoying the dull ache in his forearms. It was good to be back in the rhythm of it. The draw, the release, the satisfying thud of steel punching through magical hide. He honestly couldn’t understand why more cultivators didn’t use bows. Everyone seemed obsessed with swords or spears or flashy elemental arts, but from where he was standing, being able to turn a Second Realm predator into a corpse from fifty paces away seemed infinitely superior to trying to wrestle it with a sharp metal stick.

  Maybe it was an ego thing. Swords were heroic, while bows were a ‘peasants’ weapon.

  Then again, there was probably a better reason for it than that. He doubted thousands of years of cultivators had deliberately avoided a perfectly useful weapon. His mind flickered back to the bear he’d fought outside Shanmei, the way the stone had completely covered it. His new bow could probably punch straight through that, but Jiang knew that Qi could make materials tougher than normal. And that was a beast in the first realm, at that – who knew how much stronger it would be in the second realm?

  Actually, now that he thought about it, that bear had been more powerful than… pretty much all of the beasts they’d fought today. Was it a more powerful variant or something? Ren had mentioned that some beasts absorbed natural treasures or possessed ancient bloodlines.

  Thinking about how much he could have gotten for the beast’s core threatened to sour his mood, so he pushed the thought aside and focused on his target.

  He sighted down the shaft, lining up the shot on the lizard’s neck, just behind the frill where the scales were thinnest.

  Thwip.

  The arrow flew true. The lizard didn’t even have time to look up. The shaft took it in the neck, severing the spine instantly. It convulsed once, thrashing its tail against the rocks, and then went still.

  “Clear,” Jiang called out, lowering the bow.

  Down below, Ren emerged from behind a cluster of stalagmites. He didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t even look particularly tense. He just sighed, his shoulders slumping as he trudged towards the carcass.

  Jiang watched him go, feeling a twinge of sympathy.

  It had been a boring day for Ren. The other cultivator hadn’t drawn his sword once. Every time they spotted a beast, Jiang dropped it before it could reach them, and as the day had worn on he’d only gotten more accurate and comfortable with picking the right amount of force to put behind his shots.

  To his credit, Ren hadn’t complained – he had thrown himself into the harvesting with a grim efficiency despite his obvious dislike of the task, filling his storage ring with gallbladders, venom sacs, and pristine pelts – but the lack of action was clearly weighing on him. Jiang got the very strong impression that Ren wanted to prove himself somehow, but he wasn’t about to let that get in the way of results. Letting Ren chase “glory” with his sword would only increase the chances that something went wrong.

  For a moment, as Jiang stood there with his bow in hand and the late afternoon light slanting through bare branches, he felt that fragile optimism again. The day had gone well. Better than well, really. He’d gotten word from his mother. They had killed what they set out to kill. They had harvested enough that, even with damaged stock and amateur cuts, they would still walk away with real profit.

  It was smooth. Almost too smooth.

  And then, almost as if the world had heard that thought and taken offence, movement caught his eye from the ridge above the depression. Three figures stepped out from the treeline, silhouetted against the dying sun. They were wearing spotless white robes that billowed in the wind, looking exactly like the noble, heroic cultivators from every story ever told.

  Jiang disliked them on principle.

  A moment later, his feelings were vindicated as the one in the centre pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at the dead lizard. “You dare steal my prey?!”