"Huf… huf… hopefully... huf... I lost her."
Yue Rin braced her hands on her knees and dragged air into her lungs like it was being rationed. Her heart still hadn't gotten the message that she was still alive.
"That… shadow thing scared the absolute shit out of me, and what was with her voice? My ears are still ringing from it."
She forced herself to straighten, eyes scanning the rolling hills behind her, and saw nothing strange.
Still, she didn't relax. Not even a little.
The girl, the ghost, whatever it was, hadn't seemed hostile. But Yue Rin wasn't trusting 'seemed' when her life was involved.
And why had it been hiding in her shadow in the first place?
What kind of technique was that?
The memory of it peeling off her own feet made her skin crawl. Yue Rin tightened her grip on her sword, then, with a grimace at her own paranoia, slashed down at her shadow a second time.
The blade hit dirt. Normal dirt.
She let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.
"…Good. I'm not completely losing it yet."
"Still, that ability is really unfair. If she had wanted to attack me for real, I'd probably be dead by now." Yue Rin glanced toward the treeline in the distance, then looked away, "And why is someone like her even in this poor secret realm? Was she… sleeping inside my shadow or something?"
Yue Rin shook her head. Thinking about it only made her imagination spiral. Right now, the only smart move was to keep moving, put distance between herself and… that.
And if she was unlucky, she had just made an enemy by slashing at it.
Remembering that sword strike, Yue Rin groaned. "I didn't even see an injury. And what's up with those clothes? She looked more like a beggar than a cultivator… and I didn't see a weapon either." Her lips pressed thin. "Unless shadows are the weapon."
That thought made her shoulders tense again.
She was too tired to run more, so she walked, keeping her pace steady and her senses stretched thin. The sun had started to sink, turning the world hazy and gold. Dusk was coming fast.
"I should find a place to sleep…" she murmured, then immediately scowled. "On second thought, no."
Not after last night. Not after a thing crawled out of her shadow in open ground.
She would walk until her legs threatened to fold. Then she'd deal with sleep.
She turned back toward the path she remembered, the one that would lead her toward the swamp forest and that broken church.
And then the leaves beside her exploded.
A dark shape launched out of a nearby patch of brush, so fast Yue Rin only had a breath to react. She twisted aside on instinct, and the thing slammed into the tree behind her with a heavy thud.
It let out a harsh snort, scraping the ground.
Yue Rin's eyes narrowed.
A boar.
Not a normal one.
It was big, shoulders thick, bristling dark fur standing like needles along its spine. Its tusks curled out like iron hooks, catching the last light and flashing pale. Its hide looked tougher than leather, dotted with old scars from fights it had survived.
An Ironhide Boar at the mid Qi Foundation, if she judged by the pressure and the way the brush had shaken from its charge.
Yue Rin felt a ridiculous wave of relief.
At least it wasn't that.
The boar lowered its head and charged again.
Yue Rin dodged, light on her feet, not wasting more strength than she had to. She'd done missions involving Ironhide Boars before. Annoying. Hard to kill. Stubborn as rocks.
But they didn't crawl out of your shadow and hum at you like paper tearing.
The boar missed again, skidded, and snarled like it had been insulted.
This time it didn't charge immediately.
It pawed at the ground, snout digging and scooping, and then tossed a spray of dirt and debris into the air.
Mud Spray.
The cloud burst right into Yue Rin's face.
For a heartbeat, the world turned into grit and darkness.
Yue Rin didn't panic.
She kept her eyes half-lidded, listening instead of seeing. The boar's steps shifted. Slow. Circling. Searching for the angle.
Then came the tell.
A hard scrape of hooves on dirt.
Right after, the rapid pounding of a charge.
Yue Rin moved at the moment the sound hit its peak, stepping aside and letting the boar blast past where she'd been.
For an instant, she felt like one of those people on earth, waving a red cloth in front of a bull. She still never understood why it was always a red one.
The thought almost made her laugh.
She flicked dirt from her lashes and watched the boar wheel around again, snorting, clearly offended that she was still standing.
Her gaze swept the ground around it.
Ironhide Boars didn't usually ambush like this unless they were guarding something. A mate. A nest.
Or…
Yue Rin's eyes sharpened.
A spirit herb.
Something precious enough that it had decided this patch of land belonged to it and no one else.
The boar charged again.
Yue Rin dodged once more, then stopped playing nice.
"I have only been eating biscuits since I came in, I haven't seen a single deer. So I'd like to eat boar meat today."
A tiny bit of drool betrayed her. She wiped it away with her sleeve like nothing happened.
Then she jumped up into a nearby tree, landing on a thick branch and settling her weight with practiced balance.
The boar slammed into the trunk with a heavy ram, shaking the bark. The branch trembled under her.
It circled, ramming again, then again, trying to shake her loose.
Yue Rin watched it from above, expression calm.
Inside, she was already calculating.
Problem one: Ironhide. Even at mid Qi Foundation, that hide would turn shallow cuts into jokes.
Problem two: her sword technique was made for slicing clean. Needle Draw was sharp and fast, but it wasn't designed to pierce thick hide like a spear.
She could go for the eyes.
But blinding an Ironhide Boar usually meant it would go into a frenzy. And a frenzied Ironhide Boar didn't care about pain, fear, or logic. It only cared about smashing whatever was in front of it until it stopped moving.
Yue Rin exhaled slowly.
"Oh, how I wish I had spirit stones to throw at better techniques." The thought immediately dragged up an old memory. The time she got scammed by a beggar selling 'ancient manuals', and the guards trying not to laugh when she went to report it.
Yue Rin's face darkened.
"Enough of embarrassing memories."
The boar rammed the tree again.
Yue Rin clicked her tongue, then reached into her backpack and pulled out one of her smoke pearls.
She rolled it between her fingers, feeling its smooth weight.
Her gaze flicked to the side.
A vine hung from a nearby tree, long and tough, swaying slightly in the dusk breeze.
Yue Rin's eyes narrowed, and a plan slid into place.
She tucked the smoke pearl into her pocket and hopped down lightly, landing just out of its tusk range.
The Boar, seeing Yue Rin drop down, thought that its shaking worked to drop her, and so it charged without thinking.
Yue Rin smiled under her hood, the kind of smile that never meant anything good for the thing in front of her.
"I hope your meat is worth the effort."