Tsi Yi just managed to evade the sabre at the last second, bending over backwards as it sliced off a bit of his hair.

Without any Qi or even his spiritual sword (which could not be found after his ‘death’) Tsi Yi could only avoid and evade as his masked attacker hacked away at him, traversing across the wide expansive planes beneath the Lan Xiu Sect.

Fog, all of a sudden, appeared around them at one point, making it even harder to evade that fast sabre’s movements.

Damn. How much longer could he keep this up?

Tsi Yi could not recognize this person’s attack style from any of the known righteous sects’ sword plays and yet it somehow seemed…familiar…like he’d seen the movements somewhere before…

His attacker was dressed in a gender concealing all black attire that obscured all of their head except for a pair of scarlet red eyes.

Tsi Yi shivered from the strange coldness within those orbs, filled with neither hatred nor love and yet still looking like he wanted nothing more than eviscerate and boil him alive.

This person was most likely a ‘he’, judging by their impressive height and wide build, Tsi Yi noted as he continued dodging, backflipping every which way, heading through Lan Xiu’s dry terrain-

-or so he thought.

To Tsi Yi’s surprise, his foot sank into sludge.

Tsi Yi blinked; he was in a marshland.

The Lan Xiu Mountains and surrounding territories had, for a while now, been experiencing an unprecedented drought that shrank all neighboring lakes, tributaries and rivers to a fraction of their past self.

As such, it was completely impossible for him to be in a marshland right now, since they were still inside the Lan Xiu territory…right? How could they possibly have travelled that far that fast without using any travel array?

Tsi Yi’s thoughts were interrupted as that sabre once again came crashing down. He tried leaping away again but the viscous terrain slowed his movements and the blade slashed viciously into his shoulder.

The severe pain made Tsi Yi crash to the floor of the deep deluge, getting completely submerged; water flooded his senses from all sides, bubbles flew out of his lips in his shock, blinding his vision; he could not see anything but pure instinct told him to turn onto his side- a second before that sabre stabbed into the spot of where he’d just been.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Where the hell was he?!

There’s no way he was still in the Lan Xiu territories but he hadn’t felt any distance shortening or teleportation arrays while he’d been dodging -plus those kinds of arrays took a bit of time to draw and required the attacker to know ahead of time precisely where he was going to step beforehand.

Tsi Yi continued evading inside the deeply inundated marsh that very abruptly changed into a deep clear lagoon. The sound of a loud waterfall sounded above his head.

Wait.

An unknown attack style using a sabre.

Progressively increasing water centric travel…

Completely underwater, Tsi Yi frantically turned back facing towards his attacker. As he expected, the black garbed man moved through the water with the agility and speed of a fish.

Mu Lian Hueye Sect!

It took a while to remember the sect because he’d only read about them once vaguely in a history scroll. Though he’d been incompetent in all martial and Qi cultivation, Tsi Yi actually showed deep aptness in history and literature.

A history fanatic himself, his Shifu Xuanren Mei had found deep kinship with Tsi Yi here, granting him at a young age special access to the vast library inside the Lan Xiu Sect’s archives. He'd spent a great portion of his childhood just burying his nose into the engraved scrolls, immersing himself in the history of their cultivation world.

The Mu Lian Hueye was an extinct subsidiary of the Lian Su Sect, one of the Five Greats; assimilated many years ago in ‘benevolence’ after Mu Lian Hueye’s cultivation techniques were revealed to be heretical and dangerous to a cultivator’s lifespan/core formation.

Or so was the official explanation, as Shifu Xuanren Mei had informed him wistfully one night while sitting under the stars together.

Whether or not Mu Lian Hueye Sect’s techniques actually were dangerous was beside the point because once one of the Five Greats determined a sect had to be eliminated (crossed out) assimilated they would never see the dawn of next year.

A little Tsi Yi had asked in response that night on why his Shifu, the most righteous man in his eyes, stayed in one of the Five Sects if he knew they were all corrupt.

And Xuanren Mei had answered with:

“If you find something corrupt what options do you have? Run from the subject or try to change it, correct? If you chose the prior when will noticeable change actually begin?” He patted Tsi Yi’s head. “I was lucky to be able to ascend the ranks of Lan Xiu and implement policy rectification but I also persevered to get where I am. No situation is beyond salvation unless you personally choose inaction, Tsi Yi.”

Though Tsi Yi had stayed in Lan Xiu, wanting to follow in his Shifu's footsteps, he'd never really truly embraced that principle in life...

....

While technically still a cultivation sect, Mu Lian Hueye had earned most of their income not from exorcising demons but via logistical transport. They specialized in instantly moving from one environment to the next so long as there was a progressive enough change in average water content for the location. For example, they could not jump directly from a desert to a lake but they could move from the desert to a savannah to a tundra to a forest to a lake, all occurring in the matter of seconds but requiring steep increases of Qi expenditure, per jump.

Because of the high Qi costs for transport, the transport usually required teams of 10 or more disciples and periods of rest in between each jump but it was still, on average, much faster than any other logistical sect at the time.

Which is why they’d fallen under target from the Lian Su, who was the world’s leading logistical transport sect until Mu Lian Hueye showed up.

The fact that this current black dressed assailant was able to make so many successive jumps so quickly, all on his own, proved to Tsi Yi that he was dealing with an incredibly powerful foe.

Tsi Yi swam desperately, his movements slow and awkward, allowing his attacker to slash at him again and again; the water around him was stained a vivid red as chunks of his own flesh floated before his darkening vision…

…

…

…

Lots of voices floated across his subconscious state:

“We agreed not to kill him!”

“Is he dead? What are you complaining about?”

“He wouldn’t be if it was only up to you.”

“Stop blaming me! You know how hard it is to control that oaf! Just be glad I got him here!”

Three male voices…he’d heard none of them before but they all sounded quite youthful, the oldest probably no more than 16.

They seemed to be moving him somewhere…were those the wheels of a carriage? Whoever these people were clearly did not want to risk being seen by flying on their swords.

Tsi Yi was about to completely lose consciousness again when he suddenly heard one of the boys scream: “WHAT THE FUCK?!”

A second before the sound of crashing wood.

And then nothing.

…

…

…