Once the business with Li Yi Nuo was settled, Sen returned the chairs and a handful of other items that he'd taken out for basic comfort to his storage ring. Li Yi Nuo watched all of this with a mixture of curiosity and bafflement on her face. Sen looked at her.

“Are you leaving or staying?” he asked.

“Leaving,” she answered with a frown.

Nodding, Sen extinguished the fire and the self-contained balls of fire qi he used to light the interior of the galehouse. He walked over to the door with Li Yi Nuo trailing closely behind. He latched it behind him and started toward the road.

“Wait. You’re just going to leave that there?”

He glanced back at the stone structure and shrugged. “Why not? I may come back this way one day. Why make something twice?”

Li Yi Nuo seemed to want to say something but also seemed to be struggling to put her exact thoughts into words. Sen gave her a few moments before he simply continued walking toward the road. Now that he no longer felt like she was his problem, he’d largely relegated her to the background of his thoughts. Soon, he’d be well away from her and could stop thinking about her entirely. As he stepped out onto the road, he peered in each direction. He’d vaguely hoped there might be a farmer passing by with some fresh produce. He still had plenty, but buying some would give him an excuse to have a conversation that didn’t involve anything deep or life-altering. He could use a bit of that at the moment. Instead, Li Yi Nuo appeared in front of him. He nodded at her, turned in the general direction he needed to go, and started to walk. After a moment, she was walking next to him. He stopped and gave her a long look.

“I’m pretty sure this is where we part ways,” said Sen.

She looked a little nonplussed. “Well, that’s fine, but my sect is that direction. At the very least, I have to go back and report what happened. And it’s safer to travel together, even for cultivators.”

Sen gave her a narrow-eyed, suspicious glare before huffing out a breath. She really wanted to go learn from Uncle Kho. That much was obvious. A fact that Sen suspected had dramatically reduced the odds of an unexpected betrayal. He supposed, in a roundabout, wholly unintentional way, he might have solved his problem with the Vermilion Blade Sect simply by saying the name Kho Jaw-Long. He doubted the sect elders were in any way aching to find out how The Living Spear would react to them trying to kill his student. For that matter, Sen wasn’t in any particular hurry to find out the results of that either. He had worked very hard not to lean on the reputations of his teachers, but this might be one time when it really would be for the best.

“Fine,” said Sen, “but we’re splitting up once we get within fifty miles of that place.”

Li Yi Nuo just nodded her acceptance. Grunting something unintelligible, Sen activated his qinggong technique and took off down the road. She could either keep up with him or get left behind. He’d thought they were done with each other, and he’d been very much looking forward to some fresh solitude, even if it did come with the occasional spirit beast attack. The knowledge that she was just going to be there for the next few weeks did not fill him with happiness. If nothing else, it meant that he’d have to constantly watch what he said and which of his skills he put on display. He was certain that the elders back at her sect were going to drag every detail of her experiences with him out of her, even if they decided not to pursue vengeance against him. The very thought of having to monitor himself all the time was fatiguing, but he’d already agreed. Whining about it to himself wasn’t going to change anything.

It only took until the early afternoon for the first problem to show up. He felt an odd sort of flickering sensation from Li Yi Nuo’s qi. He glanced back at her and it was obvious that she’d been pushing herself too hard just to keep pace with him. He slowed to a stop and had to snag her arm to keep her from collapsing to the ground. She was breathing hard and had a dazed look in her eye. He took her off the road and summoned a chair from his storage ring. She dropped into it and looked like she was ready to fall asleep on the spot. Shaking his head, he took the opportunity to eat an apple and some dried meat. He was sipping on a cup of tea when she finally spoke.

“How do you keep going like that? Your qi reserves must be like an ocean.”

“Your qinggong technique is inefficient,” said Sen as he watched a small red bird chase an insect through the undergrowth. “It wastes almost a third of the qi you put into it. It’s probably worth the time and effort to look for a new one.”The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Maybe so, but it still doesn’t explain how you just keep going,” said Li Yi Nuo, walking over to stand next to Sen. “It’s like you never run out of qi.”

Sen tossed her an apple and put the chair she’d been using back into his storage ring. He walked back out to the road with an unhappy Li Yi Nuo following him. He gestured to a spot next to him and she warily walked over to stand there. Sen didn’t usually go in for the flashier ways that some cultivators used to travel, but he wanted to cover a lot more ground before nightfall. With that in mind, he summoned a qi platform beneath the two of them. It lifted them about a foot off the ground. Li Yi Nuo let out a surprised yelp and grabbed his arm. Sen barely glanced at her before he had the platform carry them forward over the road. At first, Li Yi Nuo seemed to find the experience a kind of novelty. As the minutes turned into hours, she gave him increasingly incredulous looks, as though she thought he was showing off to impress her. Carrying two people took more effort and qi than he expected, but he found a balance between what he was spending and the environmental qi he could gather. It took a kind of semi-active cultivation, but he discovered that was only marginally more difficult than the passive cultivation techniques he usually relied on.

When he simply made a platform the next morning and carried them both all day, it seemed to strain something in Li Yi Nuo’s mind to the breaking point. When they stopped outside a modest village, she whirled on him.

“That isn’t possible.”

“Clearly, it is,” said Sen, before he went in search of an inn.

They fell into a kind of routine after that. Sen would carry them down the road on a qi platform and Li Yi Nuo would try to dig information out of him. Rather than verbally spar with her, he mostly elected to ignore the questions or reply with non-answers. This tactic did not endear him to her, but he’d never promised to divulge his secrets. As it was, he assumed that she was doing everything she could to observe how his qi was moving and trying to figure out how to replicate the feats for herself. He supposed if she managed to work it out on her own after he’d shown her that such things were possible, she’d earned the knowledge. This routine held for the better part of a week and a half. Then, something Sen had not expected happened. He’d felt the presence ahead and nearly crashed himself and Li Yi Nuo into a tree in his shock. He dropped them to the ground and stared up the road, looking for what he’d felt. He didn’t see anything, but that wasn’t much of a surprise.

“You should stay here,” he told Li Yi Nuo.

“What? Why?”

“There’s something ahead that you’re probably better off avoiding.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to restore my qi. I’ll be fine in a fight.”

“Suit yourself,” said Sen as he started walking forward.

They walked for several minutes without seeing anything. Then, there was a flicker of light and a fox with several tails appeared in the road. Li Yi Nuo summoned her spear and leveled it at the fox with a snarl. Sen shook his head.

“Put that away before he decides to do something about it,” said Sen.

“It’s a spirit fox. They’re dangerous.”

Somehow, the fox managed to look amused at the exchange, although Sen couldn’t put his finger on exactly what changed in the fox’s face to give that impression.

“She’s right, you know,” said the fox. “We foxes are tricky and dangerous.”

Sen gave Li Yi Nuo a meaningful look. She didn’t look happy about it, but she put the spear away. Sen turned back to the fox and gave it a respectful bow.

“Senior brother,” said Sen. “How unexpected to see you here.”

“You know that thing,” whispered Li Yi Nuo.

“We’ve met before,” said Sen.

He didn’t bother whispering. There was no point in trying to hide things from a fox.

“I’m glad you remember,” said the fox. “Are you going to introduce me?”

“Don’t!” yelled Li Yi Nuo in obvious terror.

Sen shook his head. “It’s too late for that now.”

The fox gave Li Yi Nuo a pitying look. “He’s right. You really should have listened when he told you to stay back there.”

“Li Yi Nuo of the Vermilion Blade Sect, this is Laughing River. Laughing River, meet Li Yi Nuo of the Vermilion Blade Sect.”

The fox nodded at the pale-faced Li Yi Nuo before turning his attention back to Sen. “You owe me a favor, junior brother. I’ve come to collect.”

Sen had worried that was the reason the fox had appeared. He wanted to say no but was also aware that would be a catastrophic mistake. One doesn’t lightly renege on a favor owed to a fox. Even the gods tread lightly where foxes and favors were concerned. On the other hand, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

“I don’t suppose that this favor could wait for a short while. A few years perhaps?”

The fox gave him a bland look that made Sen feel very, very nervous.

“I expect you’d be more eager if I looked like her,” said Laughing River.

There was a surge of qi, but it felt odd to Sen. It was like something else had been mixed into that most fundamental energy of creation. That line of thinking was dragged to a halt when a mirror image of Li Yi Nuo appeared where the fox had sat. The transformed fox gave Sen a coquettish smile that he doubted had ever appeared on the real Li Yi Nuo’s face.

“Are you more interested now?” the fox asked.

The whole situation was jarring and not just for him.

“Oh, that is creepy,” said the real Li Yi Nuo in a hushed whisper.

Sen never looked away from the fox when he answered with a sigh. “A simple no would have sufficed.”