Ruan Ye was having a frustrating fight.  It wasn't that his opponent was particularly difficult.  Were he on his own, able to release the full breadth of his strength, the fight would have been over practically before it started.  Don't even mention a half-dead bear demon locked in his human form, everything they'd encountered that evening coming at him all at once would have been no trouble.

But Ruan Ye wasn't on his own, and the full scope of the powers granted by the Heavenly Court to their chosen Keepers was not something that could be used with mortals present, if you wanted those mortals to live.  

Lao'er, in spite of his haggard condition, was proving to be quite troublesome.  He had learned a number of ghost practitioner's tricks from Jiang, and was using them with abandon.  Though his demonic qi had been sealed by Ruan Ye, the spells and talismans he was using drew on corrupted yin and resentment.  The resentment of the dead was the strongest source of power for ghost practitioners, but in a pinch the resentment of the living could be used as well.

Lao'er felt a great deal of resentment.

Ruan Ye dodged yet another petty spirit, ducking beneath its slashing claws as he spun to slice through another.  Though the sword was formed from his own essential qi, it was only somewhat effective against the dozens of fragments of resentful energy given form.  The fight was like an elaborate sword dance, as he turned first one direction and then another, crouched low, leapt high, thrust his saber in all directions.  For all his skill, the sheer number of the things was enough that Ruan Ye's pale skin was riddled with tiny, stinging scratches.  He felt as though he'd tumbled through a particularly annoying patch of thorns.

'Never did I expect to find myself envying the qi of a Mortal Agent,' Ruan Ye thought.  From the corner of his eye, he could see Ma Qianle firing powerful blasts of qi at the bound ghost of a bear.  'Ma Qianle's qi would be far more effective against these than mine is, at this level.'

Ruan Ye understood what Lao'er was doing, of course.  The man wanted him too distracted to focus on breaking the barrier spell he'd cast to protect himself, too distracted to guard Ma Qianle's back while the Mortal Agent dealt with the two bears.  The most irritating part was that it was working.

Finally, there was an opening.  Ruan Ye darted through the gap, readying a counter to the barrier, when from the other side of the room there came another scream.  He turned, and saw Ma Qianle tumble up against the base of a rock spire.  Blood poured from his mangled right shoulder and the wounds on his leg, only weakly sealed by the elixir and not truly healed, had broken open again.  Ruan Ye tried to run to his aid, but the spirits all around him grabbed ahold of his clothes and hair, blocking his path and preventing him from leaving.

"Oh no you don't!" Lao'er rasped.  "I don't expect to survive tonight, but I'll be taking that boy to the yellow springs with me!"  He hadn't simply been sitting idle as Ruan Ye fought to get through the ghosts.  A second barrier appeared, this one forming a ring around the first, trapping Ruan Ye and the spirits within.

Ruan Ye cast one last glance at Ma Qianle as he struggled to his feet and poured another elixir over his shoulder.  He turned back to Lao'er, with a look in his eyes that could freeze a bonfire at midsummer.

"We shall see about that," he said, and began fighting with renewed ferocity.  'You have to hold on, Ma Qianle.'

~~~~~~~

Though she was no longer hindered by the misdirection of the ghost wall, that didn't mean navigating the way through the caverns was easy for Wei Yaling.

"Are you sure we haven't been past this intersection before?" one of the impermanents complained quietly. It was not the first time such a question had been voiced.

'I don't need this right now.'  Wei Yaling smiled poisonously.  "How about this?  At each passage we go down, you can cut off a finger and leave it as a marker.  When you run out of those, you can move on to your toes, and then your ears and nose, and then...well, there are only a couple of unnecessary bits left after that."  The complainer gulped, shrinking back and unconsciously covering himself.  Wei Yaling continued.  "Or, you can stop complaining and let me concentrate."

"Yes sir,"  The man said.

'When we get out of here I'm sending him back to catching ghosts!'  Wei Yaling thought viciously.  Not all of the impermanents assigned to work with the Mortal Realm Liaison Office were actually suited to the job, and this one had been causing her a headache the whole mission. She sighed, shaking her head.  'Back to work.'

She turned her concentration back to tracking Ma Qianle and Ruan Ye's qi signatures.  She was good at tracking, but she wasn't the best among the two squads under her command.  Unfortunately, the best was currently lying dead amidst the corpse soldiers they'd managed to beat into immobility before being forced to retreat.  As the commanding officer, the task now fell to her.

Wei Yaling could pick few tracking environments in the mortal realm that were worse than this one.  The whole cave system was suffused with resentment, even after the spells animating the corpse soldiers and keeping them trapped inside had been broken.  The resentment masked everything that passed through it, overwhelming the individual traces with repugnant force.  Most Keepers were in the habit of keeping their qi from spreading when in the Mortal Realm, so Ruan Ye was hard to track at the best of times.  Ma Qianle, as a Mortal Agent, had more of the underworld to his qi than most mortals, so it was easy to lose him amidst all of the yin qi permeating the cave.

For roughly the eight millionth time, Wei Yaling wished that the officials of the Courts of Hell were as immune to headaches as they were to inconvenient things like aging.

Down one of the corridors came a sudden shout, and then the sound of running feet.  Echoing from far off, she could hear someone shout "Catch him!"

"Let's move!" She said to her subordinates and ran towards the source of the noise.

The squad soon came upon another intersection where Da Wu was tying up a man of around 30.  He was tall and broad, with a flat face and a nose that looked like it had been molded from clay and then mashed into his face until it stuck.  The effect wasn't helped by the blood currently pouring from it, evidence of a clumsy fall in his attempted escape.  The rest of the second squad was arrayed around them, guarding the exits.

"Good work, Da Wu,"  Wei Yaling said.  "Who is this?"

The man looked around at the shadowy figures surrounding him.  Though his night vision as a bear demon was excellent, he couldn't see in complete darkness the way the impermanents could, and the flashlight on his cell phone he'd been using to see wasn't doing much to help at the moment.

"Who, who are you people?  You're all supposed to be dead!  Uncle's corpse soldiers should habe killed you by dow!"  The man was beginning to panic, and the bloody nose was affecting his speech.

Wei Yaling drew her sword and held it to his throat.  "Bad luck for you, I'm afraid.  They're gone, back where they ought to be.  Now, who are you, and what's this about your uncle?"

The man tried to lean back away from the blade, but Da Wu was behind him and didn't allow him to move far.  "Uncle is super powerful, you'll see!  Eben if dose ones are gone he'll just make more.  You'll never stop him!  Dis Xiong Yucheng won't allow it!"  The man flexed his shoulders, starting to strain against his ropes.

A pulse of hot qi passed through the cave, and Xiong Yucheng staggered back against Da Wu.  A moment later, he began to stammer.

"W-w-what?  No!  Why can't I?"

Wei Yaling pressed her sword closer against his neck, a single bead of blood rolling down to join what had already dripped on his shirt from the bloody nose. "You won't allow it?"

Sweat rolled down Xiong Yucheng's face despite the chilly air. "I...uhhh...let's talk about dis!"  His eyes darted frantically from side to side.  "You want by uncle, right?  I can show you where he is!"

"Better,"  Wei Yaling said with a smile.  She withdrew her sword and gestured with it.  "Lead the way.  And don't forget what will happen if you lead us astray.

~~~~~~~

Ma Qianle had never been so exhausted in his life.  For a moment, he simply sat, eyes closed, slumped back against the stalagmite.  'I have to get up,' he thought.  'Is Lao'er finished yet?'

He forced himself to open his eyes and sit up.  The second wound closing elixir had slowed the bleeding on his shoulder to an ooze, but his right arm was still mostly useless.  He leg was bleeding again too, though he wasn't sure quite when that had happened.  He pulled a small shining vial from his pouch with his left hand and downed it.  The liquid, which he'd had once before, had a numbing flavor reminiscent of the biting peppercorns used in southwestern food, but as soon as he drank it a gentle warmth seeped through his shoulder, erasing the burning chill of the yin contamination.

He looked around, assessing the situation.  Both bears were gone, one dissolved by his yang pill and the other in the soul jar that had gone flying from his hand when he was shaken.  'Thank goodness it didn't break,' he thought through the fog of weariness and pain.  He never would have thought such a thing if he were clear headed.  Soul jars were too sturdy to break simply by being thrown across a room.

Across the cavern, Lao'er stood within two barriers.  Even through the distortions they caused, Ma Qianle could see that he was looking pale and sickly beneath the tan he had from decades of working outdoors.  Ruan Ye was between the barriers, fighting what remained of the petty spirits.

'Like a carp on dry ground,' he thought.  Lao'er was clearly at the end of his rope.  'Not that I'm in much better shape.'  Ma Qianle's qi reserves had almost run dry.  He estimated he had one more spell left in him, if he were lucky and it didn't need to be strong.

'I'd better go help,' he thought with a deep sigh. He rolled over onto his knees, then used his left hand to drag himself to his feet with the help of the stalagmite.  He stumbled from support to support, barely able to keep himself standing.  It was an agonizing and slow journey.  By the time he reached the first barrier, Ruan Ye was finishing off the last of the spirits.  Ruan Ye quickly broke through the outer barrier and rushed over, his sword vanishing.

Ma Qianle didn't protest as the taller man pulled his left arm over his shoulder and then snaked an arm around his waist.  He was happy to be able to take the weight off of his injured leg.  Neither of them spoke but simply turned to look at Lao'er.

"Will you surrender or do I need to come over?"  Ma Qianle asked testily.  Behind them, Wei Yaling and the others, lead by Xiong Yucheng, poured into the cave and spread out to surround the barrier.

"I will never give myself up to you, Ruan Ye!"  Lao'er spat.  From this distance, Ma Qianle could see that in the space of no more than 20 minutes, the man's fatty bulk had melted away.  His eyes had a hollow look to them, and his skin was sagging on his frame.

Ruan Ye ignored him.  "Let him be,"  he said.  "He's already a dead man anyway."

Ma Qianle nodded wearily.  The fight was over, and he was still alive.  All of the adrenaline of the night finally ran out of him.  In its place, all that was left was exhaustion.