For a second, as he raced towards the hunter, leaping from root to tree root and bounding across stumps and stones, he thought of fleeing. It called to him, he didn’t deny it— of every step he could take, with the talismans, and Lily distracting the hunter… he might just barely be able to manage it. It was the most logical choice of action, if he wanted to survive.

He considered it… but not even for a moment did his path take him any way but towards the hunter. If survival was all that mattered, then he’d have been long gone, but…

His parents had sacrificed themselves for him. How could he call himself a filial son if he did not even consider doing the same?

The battle raged above him.

It was almost comical, to call it a battle, as a Foundation Establishment cultivator and Lily, a mortal clashed with each other, but what else could it be? As bullets after bullet streaked through the air— each one a terrifying omen of death to Avyr, but almost ironically, something to look forward too— because another bullet meant that Lily yet lived, he bounded through the forest glens and snowy glades, and across scattered rocks that jutted out of the mountain-slope— onwards.

The shadow qi coiled oddly around him as he ran. It felt… prickling, strange, almost distasteful— a reaction, he assumed, to all the extreme yang energy he’d coiled in his body. He didn’t allow it to stop him, though, pulling back on the yang energy within him and compressing it, keeping it from his skin in the same breath as he pushed back against the shadow energy. It was a desperate balance between the two, where there was no balance, slipping through the dark places in the forest and leaping over the stream at the valley bottom— then, not even stopping, silently, leaping up the other side.

Almost there. The strain of the technique started to wear on him as the trees blurred past him, the full force of his internal cultivation pushing faster than any human could hope to run and granting him stamina far greater than that of any cat. Just a little further. It burned, his skin, as the yin energy fought against the yang energy, but all he had to do was get a little further, each activation of another talisman dwindling his supply and reintensifying the yin energy pressing down on him—

He gritted his teeth and pressed forward—

Except, that was never the way he’d done things, was it?

He forced himself to think, as he bounded up the slope, angling himself to the side so he could come down from above the hunter. There had to be— something, some step, anything that he could make use of. Even as he ran, a part of himself focused inwards, on the clashing energies— except they didn’t have to clash. Wrenching on the fullness of his cultivation, he—

Breathed.

Cycled his qi.

The relief was immediate. The golden core of himself, the burningly bright-white energy of extreme yang qi, spun into motion, and the yin qi that’d formerly been able to find purchase against it simply— slid right off. The last few bounding leaps were perhaps the easiest and hardest both, taking him past the hunter, so close that he could almost taste his presence on the world… but free of the burning contrast of almost-qi-deviation, he slipped by more silently than a wraith. Pressing himself down to the stone of an outcropping just above the hunter, a short man with a really, really big gun that almost shone with power in his qi sight.

As stealthy as a crouching tiger.

As powerful as a hidden dragon.

As he laid there, waiting for an opportunity, the last of his talismans steadily bleeding out, he lashed his tail and scattered drops of shadow, and felt his cultivation spin within him, and could not but think—

Stolen story; please report.

This.

This was what it meant to be a cat.

The hunter fired, the sharp retort shaking the ground beneath him and sending the trees shuddering back, and launching a lance of burning light out towards their campsite, the ambient-qi barrier barely even impeding its progress before it smashed into the mountainside and exploded into a blossom of shrapnel and stone and death. Avyr’s breath caught— how could Lily have survived that? How could she have kept surviving that?

Except…

He almost laughed in delight as he saw the surge in energy from the other side of the valley. Lily hadn’t just been surviving the bombardment, clearly— but creating within it, building some formation in rebuttal, some… some use of all the qi that the formation gathered, he didn’t know— but it was obvious that it was going to be big.

As a brilliant glow ignited over the formation, an enormous fireball flashing into existence and rocketing over their way— he couldn’t help but be impressed again. Somehow, again and again, no matter how many times he thought she’d reach the limit of possibility— Lily never failed to impress.

Taking the opportunity presented, before his talismans ran out— he burned the last of them, shadow qi engulfing him and utterly suppressing the burning-spark of his presence—

Like all his ancestors before him, cultivator or not, he crouched back and— leapt.

Just a single second.

One action. He only got one action. Despite being placed between a meteor of fire and a pouncing cat, the man showed the exact sort of admirable ability that any veteran Foundation Establishment cultivator should have had, whirling around as he dropped his gun, drawing a knife from a sheath on his belt in the split second before Avyr crashed into him—

One breath.

One second—

“Wait!” The hunter hesitated— and in that hesitation, where he might have been able to end the fight for sure… he took a leap of faith, and trusted Lily, and threw himself backwards, rolling across the ground and standing. “Please, wait. Neither of us actually want to hurt you.” As if to prove his words, Lily’s spell fizzled out in the air over the valley, dispersing into so much smoke and qi. He had to resist a laugh— distraction, indeed. “This is a misunderstanding.”

The hunter stood still for a long second before— carefully, purposefully— dropping his knife. A symbolic gesture at most, given he was a foundation establishment cultivator and no-doubt had at least some sort of technique to blast him off the face of the earth— but it was a gesture nonetheless. “You’re in Shedding.” He sighed, and picked up his gun, flicking the safety and leaning on it as he stared at him. “You’re not who I’m looking for.” Then— to Avyr’s shock— he bowed to him. “Please accept this one’s sincere apologies. I’ve committed a grave wrongdoing against you.”

He was a little too shocked by the suddenness of the whole thing to really… compute. It wasn’t like the desperate flight from the Empire of Nine Sunlights, which had been a thing of weeks and sleepless nights— no, from the moment he’d been broken out of his meditation to now had been… not even five minutes. Eventually, he just… chirped a laugh, the sudden relief at not dying taking precedence over everything else. “I… I’ll have to talk to Lily, first, but…” he giggled, and giggled, and laughed with relief— “I’m so glad that she was right about the sort of person you were.”

“Lily? That would be the girl you were with? I took her to be an illusion, which is why couldn’t get a strong shot on her—” ah! She must have made use of the illusion talismans to misdirect him! It was a pretty good strategy, actually. “If you want me to leave, I will leave, but if you might permit my presence for just a little while longer, I will offer you remuneration for my error.”

“I… let’s talk with Lily first, okay?”

“Very well.” The walk back to the hot springs was tense, but… surprisingly peaceful. The forest, after all, had not changed one bit over the course of the battle, and that snow-clad serenity was still there— untarnished, and returned once more to its beauty with the passing of sudden violence. Neither of them spoke, but…

He wondered if Lily would’ve been able to get over it as quickly as he had? Maybe it was a mark of how inured he was to the constant distrust— easy come, easy go. Or maybe it was the knowledge that for all the weight of his crime, he was noble in a way that the empire never had been. He probably didn’t even know about his kind, which meant he probably thought he was a spirit beast— and yet he would offer recompense regardless. Not many would treat a spirit beast like that, even an awakened one.

Given the way Lily glared acridly at him as they crested over the ridge to the thoroughly shattered wreck of their campsite, the two of them were going to get along swimmingly.