Quietly retracing her steps through the middle tier of Tinglu City, Jun Li quickly found herself back in the desolate neighborhood that surrounded the abandoned pagoda she had been warned about. By her side, Little Yun took advantage of the quiet surroundings to remain close.

  Looking up to catch sight of the pagoda, its upturned eaves clothed in spotless green tiles, Jun Li contemplated what she had been told about its origins. 'Left behind by some living martial god, was it?'

  The term he used was one Jun Li remembered hearing before from her master, 'Arihant.' The very pinnacle of martial and spiritual prowess, those who have cultivated a 'perfect body and mind,' and reached divinity in life.

  For most, the concept of a Cultivator of such stature was distant and vague in the extreme, to the point that many doubt the very existence of such beings. But for Jun Li, it was a different matter. '...Gods, huh? they're around the same level as an Immortal...'

  She wondered if she'd ever reach that sort of level. 'It's not like you need to be immortal to live a good life, but… the idea of being on a time limit makes me feel anxious…' She scoffed at the notion that being a normal person was a cause for anxiety. '...What a joke.'

  Rather than bypassing the pagoda for a more direct path back to the lower tier of the city, Jun Li decided to visit it. Not to go inside and throw her life away like so many apparently had, but to observe the pagoda's surface more closely, with the context of its alleged origins.

  Turning a corner on the path to the pagoda, Jun Li saw an unexpected splash of color near the base of the pagoda. 'Oh? Now that's interesting.' Figures in red could be seen in and around the square that sat in front of the pagoda's doors.

  Jun Li had seen them before; they were the same humanoid figures wrapped in red bindings that she had seen at the Murong Clan's estate just a dozen hours ago.

  Walking closer, Jun Li saw that a few of the humanoid puppets were standing guard outside the square, and although they had surely seen her, they made no move. 'Is it the same as last time? Are they silently signalling someone? Maybe they don't care until I get close enough.'

  As Jun Li approached the guarding puppets and looked past them, Little Yun slipped away into a neighboring building, out of sight but now close enough to assist if combat broke out.

  Past the duo of puppets that guarded the entrance to the square, Jun Li could see a figure in a conical hat, sitting atop the body of another puppet forced to its hands and knees, using them as a chair.

  Kneeling opposed to that figure, someone in a dull-shaded robe had their head bowed by force, two puppets behind holding them up by the arms and down by the neck.

  "Is that…? Yeah, that's someone from the Murong Clan…" Jun Li recognized the person as a servant, not as any specific person she remembered, but the robes were too identical a shade to what she had seen inside the Murong Clan's estate. The fact that they were juxtaposed with the same aggressors from last night helped speed that recognition.

  As Jun Li got closer, she saw the Cultivator seated atop a puppet turn her way, a smoking pipe poking out from under their obscuring hat. Although Jun Li wasn't too visually distinct at a distance, her long, disheveled hair should have been enough for this Cultivator to recognize her immediately, if they were the same person she had met last night.

  'Another person from this mysterious group?' Jun Li wondered. 'I suppose that's one advantage of having that kind of uniform…'

  "Aaahh, damn it!" The Cultivator in the conical hat sat up off the puppet, kicking its body out from under themselves before they turned to glare at the servant they had been interrogating. "You're so damn slow that people are wandering in!"

  Before the Cultivator could even turn to face Jun Li properly, a loud clattering rang out from the edge of the square as a window was thrown open. "Be quiet down there! People are trying to sleep!" A young man leaned out of a warped and damaged windowsill, looking down towards the many gathered figures with barely open eyes.

  Jun Li glanced towards the sudden disturbance. The young man, seemingly younger even than her, had a pockmarked face and ragged, curly hair. When Jun Li looked back at the Cultivator in red, she could tell they were unfamiliar with the young man and confused by his sudden interjection.

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  The young man crawled up and sat on the windowsill, sword in hand, looking down on the Cultivator with the conical hat. "I could put up with a minute or two of screaming, but you're really overstaying your welcome here!"

  "The hell…?" The Cultivator in the conical hat muttered to themself as they looked up at the complaining young man. For a moment, they considered interrogating him or even just telling him to leave, but after only a moment, they let out a sigh and turned to the nearby puppets. "Ah, whatever… Kill that idiot!"

  Two puppets responded to the command so quickly that it was as if they had decided to act on their own, and it only coincided with the command's verbalization by coincidence.

  Watching as two puppets launched themselves towards the windowsill he sat on, the young man's expression drooped in annoyance. An instant later, the side of the building around him exploded in a burst of color, swallowing all three figures at once in a flowing storm of purple, pink, and red Qi.

  The young man fell from the storm and into the square near instantly. Above, the Qi began to disperse and reveal its nature as a sphere of ephemeral flower petals that floated down and around the young man, dense enough to almost obscure the shreds of flesh and bones from the puppets that fell with them.

  Now on the ground, the young man looked about the square with his sword drawn. It was neither long nor short, and its only distinguishing features were the loose white paper that was wrapped over the sheath, and the blade that remained spotless even after carving through two bodies.

  "Of course, you had to be difficult…" The Cultivator in the conical hat spoke as they drew a shortspear from a Spatial Ring, looking cautiously towards Jun Li, who remained observing, then back to the puppets. "All at once!"

  Eager to follow their simple command, each and every puppet rushed towards the young man, including the two that had been holding the Murong Clan's servant in place. The distant puppets clumped together as they approached, but the closest struck independently, too distant from their peers to coordinate more precisely.

  As the first and second puppets reached him, the young man swept his sword in sharp, mechanical motions of incredible speed, first cutting off a swordarm thrust his way, then a pair of legs and head were sent flying simultaneously.

  As his sword passed through the air, multicolored petals of Qi sheared off the surface of the blade, floating through the air and refusing to disperse until they touched the ground.

  As Jun Li observed this, she was confused. It was a considerable expenditure of Qi to release such dense and stable emissions with each stroke of a sword, for seemingly no benefit.

  Before Jun Li could be left wondering, the remainder of the puppets came rushing in as a small tide of bodies, flooding over the young man and, for an instant, shading him from the sun as their flying bodies thrust their blades towards him.

  Throwing his sword's sheath so high into the air that even Jun Li lost sight of it, the young man held his sword with both hands and exploded into motion. As with his initial strike against the two puppets that had leapt towards him on the windowsill, he was immediately obscured by a rushing cloud of petals.

  But unlike that moment, this cloud surged forward, boring through the tide of puppet bodies with such speed and ferocity that Jun Li was reminded, watching, that the petals she witnessed were born from the movements of the young man's sword.

  Jun Li watched as the swirling storm of petals, so dense that no sign of humanity could be seen within its silhouette, moved like a cloud across the square, striking down the puppets that surged towards it and leaving nothing but shattered blades and shredded flesh behind.

  Having been kneeling silently with head in hands, the servant of the Murong Clan vanished into the storm of petals, leaving behind no trace of their existence but scraps of flesh intermingled with that of the flesh puppets that once restrained them.

  The Cultivator in the conical hat had bided their time with frustration as the young man cut through the puppets and the servant alike, and shot forward the instant they perceived a shadow of his body within the cloud of petals, thrusting their short spear towards his torso.

  The horrible sound of metal shearing apart rang through the square as the force of the Cultivator's thrust blew the petals away, revealing the young man standing solidly, the tip of his sword thrust accurately into the spearhead, stopping its momentum and piercing into the metal, leaving it shorn open, the once sharp tip now parted like a blooming lily.

  "Consider this your repayment for interrupting my quiet." The young man spoke, pulling his sword from the destroyed spear and rushing forward in a colorful tide of petals. "And consider this your punishment."

  The Cultivator in the conical hat ceased all movement and slowly slumped down, his hat and the bindings that concealed his face falling away, as a line of red deeper even than his bindings surfaced from his crown to his chin.

  Letting out a soft sigh, the young man looked up to see his sword's sheath falling from above, and waited a half-second before throwing his sword with a flick of his arm, sending his blade colliding into its sheath with enough force to carry and embed both into the rotting wooden support column of a nearby building.

  Turning back to Jun Li, the young man tilted his head. "I don't suppose you were with them, were you?"