Laughing River got a gleam in his eye that screamed mischief. Sen thrust a finger at him.

“No! Whatever you’re thinking, just no.”

“Oh, you should have given it a minute. You’d have enjoyed it,” said the fox, before shooting Li Yi Nuo a big smile. “She probably wouldn’t have. Did I mention that I’ve met Lai Dongmei?”

Sen felt an abrupt sense of relief that he’d put a stop to whatever the fox had planned.

“You’ve actually met Lai Dongmei?” Li Yi Nuo said in an awed voice.

“I have,” said Laughing River. “So has Sen.”

“You have?” demanded Li Yi Nuo whirling toward Sen.

“Yep,” said Sen without elaborating at all.

“You have to tell me everything.”

“Yes, Sen, you should tell her everything,” agreed Laughing River with amusement dancing in his eyes.

“I’m sure there will be plenty of time for that later,” said Sen through clenched teeth while he resisted glaring at the fox. “But I think we’ve all gotten distracted again. This conversation can’t really progress until I’ve confirmed that you’re dying.”

The fox grumbled something under his breath about ungrateful nephews and trust issues, but he nodded. While Sen’s spiritual sense would tell him general information about the fox, he also knew that the fox was powerful enough to restrict that information. Instead, he was going to have to use a combination of his spiritual sense and his qi to delve into the fox’s actual body. While he’d talked like it was no big deal, the idea made him very nervous. It was a big risk for him to do it and for the fox to allow it. In theory, Sen could do something pretty awful to Laughing River if the fox let Sen’s qi intrude into his body. On the flip side of that risk, the fox could also do terrible things to Sen’s cultivation with their qi in such close proximity. He probably wouldn’t have even considered doing it if the fox wasn’t so genuinely desperate beneath all the bantering.

Taking a breath, Sen walked over to Laughing River and put a hand on the fox’s shoulder. Up close, Sen could see that the fox was working very hard to control his expression, but there was a tightness around his eyes and mouth that betrayed just how uncomfortable he felt about what Sen was going to do. Before his nerves could get the better of him, Sen let his spiritual sense envelop the fox and pressed his qi into the fox’s body. He was glad that the fox had assumed a human form because it was at least nominally familiar, but Sen still found it confusing. The way the fox’s body was organized was different. His qi channels were organized a little differently. Organs weren’t quite in the places that Sen thought they should be and, he was pretty sure, the fox was simply missing some organs that Sen expected to find inside a human body.

Sen’s awareness just hovered for a moment in that confusion before he shook it off. While those structural differences might be interesting at some other time, like when the situation was far less drastic, they didn’t actually matter for Sen’s purpose. He wasn’t there to see if Laughing River had perfectly replicated a human body. Sen was there to confirm if the fox was dying the way he claimed he was. Figuring that out didn’t take long. The signs were all there, even if they were as strange as the fox’s strange body configuration. There was decay all over the place, but it wasn’t centralized. Instead, it seemed to Sen as if everything in the fox was breaking down, all at the same time, all at the same pace. Even the qi moving through the Laughing River’s channels felt off like it was old and hadn’t been cycled properly in a while.

Part of Sen wanted to keep looking around, but he decided not to push his luck. For all of the damage he saw, Sen was also simply overwhelmed by the raw power and what felt like endless vitality that the fox was harboring. Dying or not, Sen was feeling quite motivated not to pick a fight with the fox if he could avoid it. Sen withdrew his qi and his spiritual sense. He gave the fox an empathetic look and stepped back. No one said anything for a few seconds, and then Li Yi Nuo broke the silence.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

“Well?” she asked.

“I feel violated,” observed Laughing River, although Sen could see a shadow of mirth on the fox’s face.

“Well, I can’t tell if the story he was telling about why it’s happening was true, but he is dying. Probably not that soon, but it looks like it has been going on for a while.”

“That’s not very specific,” said Li Yi Nuo.

“He’s not a human being. I have nothing similar to compare this to. I’m trying to take what I know about mortals and cultivators and apply that to the condition of someone who was never human. On top of that, he was also technically immortal and then sort of made mortal again. If you know of a treatise that covers this situation, I’d love to get a look at it,” Sen paused for a second. “Huh. I’m not even being sarcastic. If you know of something like that, I’d really, genuinely love to read it. That would be fascinating.”

Li Yi Nuo shook her head. “I think the fox is being a bad influence on you.”

Laughing River, who had still been moping a little, stood up straight and smiled at Li Yi Nuo.

“Thank you. What a nice thing to say.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

Laughing River gave her a big, obvious wink. “Right. Not a compliment. I meant to say, oh no, you’ve caught on to my plan to corrupt him.”

Li Yi Nuo tilted her head to one side, looked like she was going to say something, and then turned to Sen instead.

“So, what now?”

Sen gave her a thoughtful look. “Now, I have to figure out what to do with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m going to try to figure out a way to help him that doesn’t involve me charging headlong into that sea of evil for a fight. Who knows how long that will take? But he’s getting his way, which means that he doesn’t need you anymore. The problem is that I can’t just send you back to the way we came by yourself.”

“I’ll be fine if I-” she started to say.

“Really?” asked Sen incredulously. “You want to try to get back to the road by yourself?”

Li Yi Nuo sighed. “No. Not really.”

“Good. I was about to question your survival instincts.”

“Says the man who is willingly getting involved with a scheme cooked up by a nine-tailed fox that involves robbing a sacred ruin. Oh, and that pesky army of evil and corruption surrounding it.”

“That is… That is a very valid point. Since we’re not talking about me at the moment, though, I’m going to choose to ignore that and focus on you for right now. This was never your problem, and I don’t see a good reason to drag you any deeper into it.”

“Despite the two of you men thinking I’m useless, I might be able to help.”

“You don’t want to help with this,” said Sen and Laughing River at the same time.

Li Yi Nuo looked taken aback by both the united front and the seriousness of Sen and Laughing River’s faces.

“I don’t understand. Why?”

Sen and the fox traded a look. Laughing River spoke and all the playfulness had gone out of him.

“It’s because Sen knows as well as I do that even if we come up with a plan to get him into the ruins without a fight, the odds are that this going to get bloody.”

“I’m not afraid to fight.”

“I don’t think you are, but I also don’t think you’ve ever been in a real battle before.”

“What does that even mean?” demanded Li Yi Nuo.

Sen piped up then. “You’ve fought duels and killed spirit beasts, right?”

“Yes. Every cultivator does that.”

Sen nodded. “Okay. Have you ever been on an actual battlefield? Been surrounded by people who were all trying their very hardest to kill you?”

Li Yi Nuo was thoughtful when she answered. “No.”

“That’s what this will be, only worse,” said Sen. “When you’re fighting with other people, other cultivators, you expect them to act like people. These things won’t act like people. They won’t get scared or lose morale. They’ll just keep coming. Plus, there are spirits down there, which means they might try to possess you or curse you. At the very least, we have to plan around everything going wrong and it turning into that. He’s willing to risk it because there aren’t any other options.”

“How do you know that?” asked Li Yi Nuo.

“If there were another viable option that didn’t involve these kinds of risks, we’d be doing that right now.”

Li Yi Nuo glanced over at Laughing River who gave her a nod. “And you?”

“Me?” asked Sen. “I’m stupid. I owe him a favor. And I’ve been where he’s at, which makes me more sympathetic than is good for my long-term health. None of which applies to you. This brings us back around to my original point, which is that I need to figure out what to do with you. Taking you back would cost a week and a half of travel time, which isn’t impossible but a long way from ideal. Having you fight is off the table for a lot of reasons. That leaves having you sit around and do nothing while we go do something stupid, except that isn’t practical either. Because, if we die, you’re stuck trying to get back to civilization by yourself.”

“Don’t I get an opinion in this?” asked an exasperated Li Yi Nuo.

“No,” said Laughing River and Sen in unison.