bluedragonauthor

VIP: The Blue Dragon: Chapter 15

Added 2024-05-10 15:00:10 +0000 UTC

-- CHAPTER 15: Difficult --

****

My first instinct was to get up and follow Ziyi, especially given that her walking was still stiff, and I felt obligated to help her get back down the mountain and return to the cave. But experience after years of dealing with a wide range of girls - regardless of the time period - told me to give her some space to calm down.

In the quiet that followed, the sounds of people to the south floated up to me. Ziyi told me that the largest grottoes were down there, featuring the greatest statues like the one built by that Chinese Empress Wu. So on a whim, I got up and started hiking down the mountain.

At the base of the mountain, I rejoined the well-traveled trail that followed alongside the river, heading further south than I’d previously gone before. As I went, the small niches and caves that featured a variety of Buddhist statues became more numerous, with steps carved into the limestone to access even more niches and caves higher up in elevation.

Looking up, I saw that some of the niches had been carved into the sheer cliffside, completely inaccessible by walking. I stopped to imagine what kind of construction had been necessary to carve them, with workers perched on temporary scaffolding or perhaps suspended on ropes from above in order to chisel into the mountain.

The further I went, the more I could hear groups of people talking up ahead. I continued walking, and after rounding a bend in the river, I had to stop and gawk in awe at the sight before me.

Ziyi had not exaggerated the size and scale of the larger grottoes. Soaring caverns had been carved into the cliffside, one of which was over a hundred feet above my head and only accessible by a massive, tiered staircase that climbed up the slope to the base of a broad plaza before a half-dozen gigantic Buddha statues, the centermost clearly the biggest of the group.

A wide variety of people were going up and down the stairs: rich people, poor people, Buddhist monks. I blended into the crowd as I ascended, my eyes fixed on those massive statues the whole way up.

When I reached the plaza, I looked around in awe, taking it all in. Ziyi had said this was a spiritual place, a sacred place, and I took a deep breath to calm myself and focus, hoping perhaps that some kind of divine intervention might help guide me how to proceed from here.

Nothing happened.

The crowd around me continued to murmur. Buddhist monks at the base of the statues helped pilgrims lighting sticks of incense and praying. I decided to wander over and join them, where a bald old man in yellow and red robes with a long chain of beads dangling from his neck kindly assisted me. I closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and let the smell of the incense fill my nostrils.

And still nothing happened.

What the fuck was I doing here? Divine intervention wasn’t meant for someone like me. I wasn’t Buddhist. I didn’t belong here in this place. I didn’t even belong in this time.

You were always meant to come here to this time and this place, Dong intoned solemnly, his voice possessing an ethereal, haunting tone that made me wonder whether I was remembering when he’d first told me that sentence back by the Moon Bridge only minutes after I’d first arrived, or whether he was saying them in my head right now.

Oh I’m in your head right now alright. I’m never NOT in your head.

‘Then why do you never seem to be available when I WANT to talk to you and get more information?’

Because there is a place and time for everything. And your place and time is here and now.

‘Will my place and time ever again be back in the modern world?’

I already told you that you WILL stay here until your task has been finished.

‘And then what? Will I automatically go back to my own time period? Will I open my eyes and find myself still buried inside Hannah Hampton in the middle of an epic nut?’

Is that what you truly want?

‘Well the epic nut, certainly.’

Is returning to your own time period what you truly want?

‘Does what I ‘want’ actually matter? You said that this is a closed loop. You said that the past has already been written, that the ink is dry. That means even the words you and I are… thinking… to each other… have already been scripted. So how does what I ‘want’ have any impact one way or another?’

You’re wondering whether or not you were always mean to have this momentary existential crisis.

‘Yes, I am.’

And you want my reassurance that you’ll break free of this momentary existential crisis, get your ass in gear, figure out how to recover the sword, save the day, and then return to your own time period where you can get back to fucking Jade, Hannah, Madi, and anyone else with a pair of tits that you can get your hands on.

‘YES.’

Then yes. If you want to feel reassured, feel reassured. You’ll save the day, get everything you want, and go back to banging beautiful babes as often as you can get it up, which is remarkably often.

‘Are you just saying that to make me feel better?’

Did it work?

‘Obviously not.’

Why not?

‘Because it totally sounds like you’re saying all that just to try and make me feel better, like someone in the World Trade Center saying, Everything will be alright right before the tower collapses.’

Fine. I’ll tell you the truth, although it won’t make you feel any better.

‘That’s cool with me, so long as it’s the truth.’

You’re going to die here.

‘What?!?’

I mean it. You’re going to die here. You’re going to fail in your quest to retrieve the sword, and you’re going to die. Feel better now?

‘Uhhh… not exactly.’

Did you like it better when I told you that you’d save the day, get everything you want, and go back to banging beautiful babes?

‘Well, yeah.’

Then why didn’t you quit while you were ahead?

‘Because I thought you were lying, and now I’m not sure whether or not you’re lying to me again.’

Does it matter?

‘Yes!’

But why? I told you before that this was a closed loop, that you were always meant to come here, to complete your task, and to set in motion the events that would later shape the future. Maybe you will accomplish all that by defeating grand armies, recovering the sword, getting the girl, and saving the day. Maybe you’ll accomplish the same but through sacrificing yourself, and not directly recovering the sword but through being the catalyst for later events. The words I say to you and whether or not you believe them have pretty much the exact same impact as what you ‘want’, that is to say… no impact at all, right? Why bother? It’s all futile anyways. You’re trapped into a destiny you can’t escape.

‘So I might as well sit here on this log and wait for the Emperor’s men to come kill me right here.’

Might as well. You have no control. You’re locked into a script. And if you sit here on this log waiting to die, it will have meant that you were scripted to do so. It has already been written. I will say, though, that it would be a very boring way to spend the next several days. But, according to you, you have no choice. You have no free will. You’re locked into a script. So might as well just stay here.

‘Or I could head back into the city, meet up with Lianhua, Guiying, and the girls, and have a grand old orgy.’

That option definitely sounds like more fun.

‘Would also heal my wounded shoulder. Maybe get Guiying to write palace entrance passes for me to visit Princess Puning and Juhua and have a REALLY out of control orgy.’

NOW you’re thinking.

‘Or I could get up, go find Ziyi, and try to talk to her.’

Ehhh… really? Can we get back to the nine-girl orgy?

‘No. Because I WANT to go talk to Ziyi right now.’

You sure? Because didn’t we just establish that what you ‘want’ doesn’t really matter? You’re locked into a script.

‘I don’t care anymore. You’ve successfully talked me into not giving a shit. I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I want to do, whether it’s scripted or not.’

Finally.

****

“I’m sorry, Chezhou,” Ziyi told me as soon as I entered our cave. She was seated by the fire, chopping vegetables and cooking rice. “I overreacted. I said things to you in anger that you didn’t deserve.”

“No need to apologize,” I told her kindly as I went to join her. She still looked cold, so I grabbed one of the blankets and wrapped it around her shoulders, letting my hands linger on her upper arms when she smiled at me. “Nothing you said wasn’t true. I’m not Liu Kang. I AM a stranger. And I don’t belong here.”

“One thing I said wasn’t true,” she insisted, raising her hand to cover mine against her upper arm, keeping it there. “The life of a serpent may be a solitary one, but I’m glad I’m not alone. I’m glad you’re here. You ARE my friend, perhaps my ONLY friend. You didn’t abandon me in the Imperial Palace; you saved me. And while I cannot know how long you will stay here, and I’m pretty sure you are meant to disappear and return to your own time once the quest is complete, I WILL miss you once you are gone. I will.”

I smiled and rubbed her arm. “I’m not gone yet, and for that I’m glad. I’m happy to be here with you, Ziyi.”

“I’m happy you’re here as well,” she replied with a brave smile.

I nodded and then raised the edge of the blanket. “How’s the wound healing?”

“Slowly,” she said with a sigh. “I know it’s healing much faster than if I wasn’t here at Longmen, but it’s still much slower than I would like.”

“万事开头难,子仪” I told her simply. Everything is difficult at the beginning, Ziyi.

She smiled and nodded, expressing her understanding. The words themselves were simple enough, but I could tell they held greater meaning for her. And she took a deep breath before continuing, “Still, the sword remains with Zhu Wen, and the longer possesses it, the worse things will be.”

“Well, it’s only really bad if he uses it, right? Right now, it’s locked up in the Tian Tang tower, not doing much of anything. I mean, I saw how heavily guarded that place is, so I agree with your initial assessment that it’s impossible to get the sword out of there without being killed. But as long as it stays there, we don’t have to do anything just yet.”

“Just yet. Zhu Wen WILL use the sword again. Perhaps it will be to defend his conquered territory. Perhaps it will be to subjugate the people. We may not be able to invade the palace and assault the Tian Tang, but another opportunity will come when the sword gets moved. I don’t know when that will be, but when that time comes, we WILL have to act.”

“That was Liu Kang’s plan, right? To wait until Zhu Wen’s army was weakened and weary and then try to sneak aboard the carriage and steal it.”

“It was a good plan.”

“But what went wrong?”

Ziyi paled and got a haunted look on her face. She shook her head slowly before taking a deep breath and looking up at me. “He wasn’t you.”

I arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Ziyi reached out and took hold of both my wrists. “I SAW the things you did at the palace, wielding powers Liu Kang never possessed.”

“Never possessed?” I frowned. “Didn’t Liu Kang have water and ice powers?”

“Not like you, he didn’t. He could create ice shields and blades, yes. And he was a pretty good fisherman, too. But I saw some of the things you were able to do at the eastern gate. You created a giant, spinning ball of water strong enough to break stone. You made a sword of ice that broke the blade of a guard’s iron sword. You leapt off the top of a forty-foot wall--”

“And promptly fell into the river from forty feet up,” I chided myself with a sheepish shrug.

But Ziyi’s impressed expression didn’t waver. “You didn’t fall straight into the river. You created steps of ice that floated in midair to stop your fall.”

“But did I? We still ended up wet.”

“We still ended up safe, and the point is: Liu Kang couldn’t do any of those things. You were amazing. How did you do it?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. Ice shields and blades I knew I could make, much like Liu Kang. But other stuff? The spinning ball, the floating discs, I’d never done any of that before.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “Really. First time.”

“Well, it seems like you’re experiencing a lot of ‘firsts’. Your first time traveling back to Imperial China inhabiting the reincarnated body of one of your ancestors, right?”

I chuckled. “Right.”

Ziyi took on that really impressed expression again. “Now I truly KNOW that it IS your destiny to recover the sword and complete the quest. Liu Kang was not strong enough, so now you have come - even stronger.”

“Maybe,” I conceded. “Maybe.”

Ziyi looked ashamed for a moment. “Were it not for the need to rescue me, perhaps you could have assaulted the Tian Tang and recaptured the sword last night.”

“No I couldn’t have. Spinning balls of water and ice swords are nice, but there were hundreds of guards blocking me from the tower, and my flesh isn’t made out of ice. I got shot with an arrow easily enough.”

“You what?” Ziyi sat up straight, shrugging off the blanket and using her grip on my wrists to twist me to the left and then the right. “Where?!”

“Back of my shoulder. It’s fine. It’s fine.”

Ziyi roughly spun me around, actually grabbing the shoulder in question to do so, and I abruptly yelped in surprise when her fingers dug into the wound. My girlish cry made her glare at me as if to say, Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?! And she quickly yanked down the edge of my loose shirt collar to expose the wound.

“Chezhou! You didn’t even clean it!” she exclaimed.

“I told you: it’s fine. Doesn’t hurt at all.”

“You still need to clean it.”

“I… uhhh… fell in the river, right? It got wet.”

“That’s not cleaning an arrow wound. Did you walk into town with blood all over the back of your shirt?”

“Like I said: I got wet. Any blood stains must’ve blended into fabric and dried so that I looked like any other dirty peasant. You didn’t notice anything before I left, right?”

“Well now you’re getting dried blood onto your new clothing. Iyah, take off your shirt,” she instructed, but rather than wait to let me actually do so, she started yanking up the hem of my shirt herself. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner that you were wounded?”

“We’ve been busy.”

“No we haven’t. Or at least, I haven’t. I’ve done nothing but sit around this cave all day waiting to heal.”

“You made rice, cut vegetables, and have cooked and cleaned three fish today alone. You’ve done plenty.”

By now Ziyi had my shirt off and she clucked her tongue while examining the arrow wound. I couldn’t really see it myself, so I had no idea how bad it looked. But she definitely took her time inspecting it while holding my upper arms to keep me still.

At least, I think she was holding my upper arms to keep me still. Or was she squeezing my biceps?

She’s checking you out, dude. Your physique in this body is amazing.

‘Umm… thanks.’

Looking back at her over my shoulder, I asked, “How bad is it?”

Ziyi startled as if she’d zoned out for a moment, blinking and then looking up at my face. “It’s not that bad,” she conceded. “Let me get some water.”

I nodded silently and exhaled slowly, willing to wait and let her do her thing. But then something happened that made me shiver just a bit, and even smile. And when I looked back at her, Ziyi blushed and turned away with an expression that said she wasn’t sure why she’d done it either.

She’d kissed my shoulder.

Doo bow-bow. Chick, chicka-chi--

‘Dude, shut up.’

****

The morning air was cold, quite cold. I snuggled a little closer to the warm body tucked against my chest, only my shirt separating her skin from mine. My left arm snaked beneath the folded blanket we used for a communal pillow, with the hand dangling over the edge of the shelf. As my senses came alive, the fingers of my right hand automatically squeezed the large, bare breast I was currently palming. Reflexively, I ground my morning wood into the cleft of her bare-naked ass. And breathing deeply, I let my head roll forward to push my nose into her jet-black hair, smelling her natural musky fragrance.

I remained like that for a good several minutes, just enjoying the feel of Ziyi’s naked body spooned up against mine. I was quite comfortable, all things considered. The soft matting we had added to the bed niche carved into the sidewall cushioned my left hip comfortably. We cuddled together with shared body heat beneath three layers of thick blankets, more than enough to keep warm without needing to run a fire all night. And given how frosty crisp the air felt against my cheek, a part of me wanted to remain just like this beneath the blankets forever.

I knew we’d have to get up eventually, but I was happy to stay cuddled up with Ziyi until she woke up. I left my hand cupping her bare breast, feeling its weight against my palm. This was our seventh morning in a row spent in the cave together, and every morning had turned out the same. I was too used to spooning up behind my bed partners to NOT subconsciously do so, too used to cupping their breasts in my hands, and every single morning I’d woken up with Ziyi’s boob in my palm. She hadn’t slapped me over it, or even really reacted much upon waking other than to hold my arm against her chest. It was as if there was an unspoken agreement between us by now to just sort of let it happen, although I would immediately let go when she decided to get up and slip out of bed.

The same as there was an unspoken agreement between us that she didn’t really need to wear pajamas to sleep. I mean, I’d never asked her to go naked beneath the blankets; she just sort of kept doing that on her own. I did theorize that perhaps she merely went naked naturally whenever she fell asleep since she couldn’t actively think about keeping her shapeshifted clothing on, although that theory didn’t hold much water. The first night we’d spent together she’d remained fully clothed, and of course I’d seen her knocked unconscious while keeping her body armor up. Honestly, I liked to think it was Ziyi’s subtle way of flirting with me, to let herself be daring without being super obvious about it, to let me keep spooning her naked body and dry-hump her butt cheeks in my sleep.

Once Ziyi stirred awake, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and stayed right where she was. She still cuddled my arm across her chest but then slid her palm over the back of my hand, molding her fingers behind mine as if helping me cup her bare breast. And she sighed rather dreamily, simply enjoying the moment.

So like I said: this was our seventh morning in a row spent in the cave together, and once she removed her hand from the back of mine, I did the same thing I’d done for the previous six mornings: I let go of her boob. She slid herself out from beneath the blankets, off the bed shelf, and onto the floor. She was still completely naked as she stretched, extending her lithe arms upwards together as she went up on her tiptoes, clenching her glutes and thrusting her bare breasts away from me in slight profile, and I went ahead to let myself ogle her spectacular backside form. And perhaps feeling the heat of my gaze, she gave me a coy look over her shoulder with a mysteriously mischievous smile.

But then she shapeshifted some clothes on.

Ziyi wore her typical peasant shanku, nothing particularly sexy. I fondly remembered the way Jade could attire herself in the sexiest lingerie Victoria’s Secret or any of the other high-fashion labels could design whenever the mood struck her (which was quite often). I did ask Ziyi that first day in the cave when it was so cold why she didn’t just shapeshift herself a thick parka with yak fur or something, and she told me there were limits to her abilities and that a thick yak-fur parka would simply require more material than she could make.

But that was okay. I’d gone and bought her a thicker jacket to wear inside when it was cold, and she went to start the fire to help heat the place up. We’d fashioned a wooden door to block the cave entrance, which helped to trap the fire’s warmth inside. And then she went to sit down on a small stool at the table we’d built and start making breakfast.

The cave was still far less comfortable than a cottage in the city would have been, but we were doing our best to thrive in our present situation. I’d discovered (quite by accident) that I had the ability to simply conjure up water out of the air to fill up our buckets and the waterskin rather than hike back and forth down to the river. Tilapia and carp had been plentiful in the waterways nearby, but Ziyi’s serpent instincts had proven quite adept at capturing rabbits, pika, and even a few rats.

I left the rat-eating to her, though. Yuck.

In any case, I stayed wonderfully cocooned beneath the warmth of the blankets for a while longer until Ziyi finished preparing breakfast. By then, the fire had significantly warmed the cave, plus I’d bought a jacket for myself as well, and I got up to thank her and to eat. After that, I went through my usual routine of magically filling up our water buckets before heading out to chop and collect more firewood. Then, I would either head into town to buy more supplies or, if we didn’t need anything right away, I might just walk down to the Longmen Grottoes to hang out with the pilgrims, casually eavesdrop on their conversation, and listen for any news of the empire to figure out where Zhu Wen might be taking the sword next, before grabbing some fish from the river on my way home.

But when I dropped off my firewood and prepared to head out for the day, Ziyi got up and said, “I’d like to come with you today.”

I arched an eyebrow and asked cautiously, “Are you sure you’re up for that now?” Ordinary third-degree burns typically took at least a month to heal, if not years depending on the size, and the Huodou had done enough damage to kill an ordinary woman. Thus far for the past week, Ziyi hadn’t walked much further than the immediate area around our cave.

She stood up, stretched her arms above her head, and leaned first to the left and then to the right. She winced as her still-healing skin stretched, and I must have given her a sour look, because she immediately held up her hand and said, “It’s fine. It’s fine. The skin is tight, but everything on the inside feels much, much better.”

“It’s only been a week,” I reasoned. “Even with the metal energy of these caves, you said it might take two.”

“Two weeks to fully heal to the point of ‘good as new’, but I have full range of motion and there is only minor discomfort.”

I sighed and gestured with one hand. “Let me see the skin.”

Ziyi shrugged and lifted a forearm across her chest for modesty as the shirt shapeshifted away. Her forearm was pretty thin though, and her boobs were pretty big, so my eyes automatically went to the exposed curvature of her spectacular breasts before I managed to redirect their focus onto her burn marks. And from the way the corners of Ziyi’s lips quirked, I knew she hadn’t missed my reaction.

Still, neither of us commented on it while I stepped forward to examine her wound. I’d taken great care not to touch the area while we were sleeping, but I extended two fingers and brushed them lightly against her soft, pink skin now. She shivered, which made her skin pucker with goosebumps, and I could see the tension in her jaw at the touch. Still, she didn’t cry out or take on an expression of anguish, which was a marked improvement compared to the last time I’d accidentally brushed her wound.

“Okay,” I conceded. “If you think you’re ready, you can come along.”

She nodded with a bright smile and shapeshifted her shirt back on.

Aww…

‘Shut it.’

Ziyi’s lips quirked again. “Dong again? I know he likes my boobs.”

The little blue gecko materialized on my shoulder. “Amazing titties, babe.”

Ziyi giggled and shook her head as he promptly disappeared again. He had been making more and more brief appearances like that over the past week, usually to say something uncouth and then vanish once more. At least she seemed to be getting used to his presence, and since most of his uncouth comments tended to be compliments about her physical beauty, she’d started to blush rather prettily whenever he did so.

Like now. Ziyi got a little smile on her face while blushing, and then she promptly made her shirt disappear again. This time, however, she wasn’t using her forearm to cover her breasts, and I (and by extension, Dong) got a really great up-close-and-personal look at her ‘amazing titties’ for a few seconds before she shapeshifted her shirt back on.

Seriously, bro. Amazing titties.

‘I know.’

****

The journey to my favorite town marketplace typically took me thirty minutes, but I moved a little slower with Ziyi so as not to overtax her, so it was closer to forty-five. Still, we arrived at a good time for lunch and wound up eating mapo tofu in a spicy sauce from a street vendor and taking in the afternoon ambiance.

I wore a sling bag and we both donned wide-brimmed bamboo peasant hats, blending into the crowd. People were everywhere, rushing from one place to another, shouting for customers to buy their goods, and generally making a lot of noise. On the one hand, I really enjoyed the peace and quiet of our secluded cave in the mountains. On the other hand, I missed being around people and hearing the noise of the city. Over the past week, I’d started to get to know some of the vendors and they’d started to get to know me, and it felt nice to feel like I was part of a wider community.

One of those vendors, an older man named Huang with graying hair and missing both of his top two front teeth, came out to tease me when I passed by his clothing store with Ziyi.

“Chezhou! Chezhou! My best customer!” he exclaimed, immediately coming over to pat me on the back.

“Best customer?” I teased, patting the old man’s back in return. “I have only bought three shanku from you. Business must be very poor indeed to think of me as your best customer.”

“Three in one week, which makes you my favorite customer,” he insisted with a toothy grin, that big gap at the top of his smile quite obvious before he turned to look at Ziyi. Then Huang pulled me close, close enough to smell his toxic bad breath, but he kept his gaze on Ziyi while he whispered rather loudly, “I changed my mind. She is my new favorite customer.”

I snorted, but Huang was already stepping up to Ziyi.

“And who might you be, precious flower?” he asked with syrupy sweetness.

“I am Chezhou’s wife,” she replied demurely, bowing her head so that the top of her wide-brimmed hat covered her face.

“Wife!? Chezhou! You did not tell me you were married!” Huang elbowed me in the ribs. Twice. “I have so many more outfits that I could have sold you!”

“Oh begone, foul demon!” I mocked with a laugh. “You have taken too much of my money already!”

“Speaking of demons, what deal did you make with one to capture her? She is too beautiful for you, I think.” Huang dramatically looked me up and down with an overly exaggerated frown that made clear he thought my level of attractiveness was akin to that of cow dung. “Perhaps I should take her off of your hands.”

I placed my hand against Huang’s shoulder and gave him a healthy shove. The old clothing seller stumbled three steps to the side, guffawing so much that there were tears in his eyes.

“Or perhaps instead of keeping her,” Huang offered as he returned, grinning like an idiot, “I would settle for merely selling the beautiful young lady a nice dress. Something for a special occasion?”

“She doesn’t need any new dresses,” I explained with smirk, although of course I couldn’t tell Huang precisely why Ziyi didn’t need any.

“Oh, I don’t know about that…” Ziyi replied coyly. “I think my husband might be interested in buying me one nice dress, don’t you think?”

“I heartily agree,” Huang said grandly, gesturing towards the entrance to his shop. And he went ahead of us, backing into the store while gesturing for us to follow him with both hands.

I shot Ziyi a skeptical look.

“What?” She winked at me again. “All that sales effort deserves something, don’t you think?”

I rolled my eyes and followed her in.

****

Almost an hour later, Ziyi and I finally walked out of Huang’s shop with a very nice (and very unnecessary) red shanzi, which was a long-sleeved crop top, and a flowing, pale- green qunzi high-waisted skirt. I still had no idea when she might have cause to wear such an outfit, especially given her ability to shapeshift whatever clothing she needed, but Huang seemed happy, which actually made both me and Ziyi happy as well.

What actually made me and Ziyi even happier was the news Huang provided us over some tea post-purchase. He was a very talkative man (if you couldn’t tell) and was up-to-date with all the latest gossip. And while we knew the man was subject to hyperbole, so we’d have to take his information with a grain of salt, his talk of recent troop movements across the divided Chinese empire definitely piqued our interest.

The man who sold me pots and pans confirmed he’d heard about the Yang Wu empire sending troops to the Liang Dynasty’s southern border. And the man who sold me blankets and bags sold us one more sling bag while assuring me he’d heard on good authority that Emperor Taizu had already begun mobilization efforts to counter the Yang Wu, with the Liang Army scheduled to start marching in four days.

All of it was more information than I’d ever gotten from the men before, but from the way both of them kept smiling at a wide-eyed Ziyi who looked at them with an expression of deeply awed innocence, it was no wonder they wanted to keep talking as long as possible in order to keep such a pretty girl nearby. It seemed to me that Ziyi rather liked the attention as well. For a self-proclaimed “solitary creature”, she definitely enjoyed the company of admiring men.

“I should have brought you along much sooner,” I told Ziyi on our way back to the mountains once we were on the trail and out of earshot from anyone else.

“Yes, you should have,” she agreed merrily, quite pleased with herself. “Although in truth, I would not have been able to make this journey before today.”

“Well let me at least say I am very glad you were able to make this journey with me today. I had a great time.”

“I did too!” she enthused with a giggle, wrapping herself around my arm and squeezing it momentarily. But it was just a moment before she remembered that we were still out in public, and it was not proper for a woman to hold herself around my arm, ‘married’ or not. Still, she shot me a warm and sunny smile, and gave her an equally warm and sunny smile in return.

A short time after we got to the river, Ziyi pointed into the water and stopped, saying, “Oh! I’ve never actually seen you catch fish.”

“Huh. I hadn’t thought about that,” I replied with a nod, only now remembering that Ziyi had pretty much been confined to the cave area all this time. “What kind of fish would you like for dinner tonight?”

“Mmm, I think a nice, fat catfish would be delicious tonight. We haven’t had one of those since our first day.”

“Whatever my princess desires, she shall receive,” I stated theatrically with a dramatic bow, which made Ziyi giggle. “The problem is: I have to find one first.”

Tilapia and carp had been readily available for the past week. The fish swam in schools and the calm waters of the Yi River made them fairly easy to spot. And while most fisherman would need to bait hooks and lures to catch them, all I needed was a clear line of sight to change the direction the water flowed and more or less funnel the fish straight to me.

Catfish, on the other hand, liked to remain fairly dormant in muddy, cloudy waters, impossible to see. Finding the first one had been more dumb luck than anything else. With a baited fishing hook, I might be able to get one to bite the hook even if I couldn’t see it. But I didn’t have such a hook (or bait) with me right now.

Still, I had an idea of where catfish might be (well, Liu Kang’s body and its inherent knowledge had an idea of where catfish might be), and I led Ziyi further upriver until we came to a small creek that fed into the larger river. I spotted a cut bank off to the side where an eddy had formed, with omnipresent foam built up on the surface. Further, the area was well shaded by a tree on the riverbank, and I felt certain there would be a nice, juicy catfish tucked away beneath the muddy waters.

I first scanned the trail in both directions to make sure nobody was nearby. It helped that we’d moved a little bit up the creek away from the larger trail alongside the Yi River. And once I felt secure, I extended my hand with two fingers pointed and my thumb tucked in, swirling it around in a counterclockwise motion.

Ziyi audibly gasped when the whirlpool started forming, covering her mouth with one hand in surprise. I accelerated the pace of my swirling and grinned as the whirlpool likewise sped up. The diameter of the gaping maw grew wider and wider, and soon the muddy bottom was exposed, revealing a massive catfish at the bottom that must’ve been fifty pounds.

“It’s so much bigger than I was expecting!” Ziyi exclaimed.

That’s what SHE said, Dong snarked.

I choked and nearly lost the whirlpool, but I coughed and quickly regained my composure, resuming my swirling motions. Then, I fashioned a three-tined trident of ice in my left hand, readying it to stab the creature.

But just before I could, Ziyi exclaimed, “No! Don’t!” And then she grabbed my left arm to prevent me from stabbing down with the trident.

I stopped swirling my fingertips in surprise and looked down at her. “Wait, what?”

Shaking her head, Ziyi insisted, “It’s too big. There’s too much meat there for us to eat, and the rest would just go to waste.”

I waggled my head, minorly disappointed at not landing such an impressive catch. “Well… okay you’re probably right,” I conceded.

“A smaller one would be just fine, or even a few tilapias.”

I made a face. “We had tilapia last night. I can find another catfish. A smaller one.”

“Okay,” Ziyi agreed with a smile.

I sighed and decided to move further up the creek.

Unfortunately, finding another catfish proved to me somewhat harder than my first two attempts. Like I said: I couldn’t actually see into the muddy water to be able to tell whether or not a catfish was beneath, and my first two successful discoveries had been more dumb luck than anything else. And my next three tries all came up empty.

“万事开头难,车轴” Ziyi told me with a warm smile. Everything is difficult at the beginning, Chezhou.

I nodded and took a deep breath, tried to stay calm, and moved further up the creek to try again.

And again.

No catfish.

After nearly an hour of failed attempt after failed attempt, I saw a small school of tilapia and rather impulsively reached out to alter the current of the creek, bringing the entire school to the edge of the riverbank and then up and over the bank entirely. The water splashed onto the ground right in front of us, leaving six fish flopping in the dirt at our feet.

“How did you DO that?!?” Ziyi exclaimed in astonishment.

“You look surprised. Did Liu Kang never do something like that?”

“No! And he never made a whirlpool, either!”

“But you said he was a good fisherman.”

“He WAS a good fisherman. At fishing.” She mimed holding a fishing rod and casting it over the creek. “He never did… whatever you can do.”

“Oh. Okay…”

Ziyi stooped to pick up the four smallest tilapias and quickly tossed them back into the creek. The largest two fish she put into her newly purchased sling bag and then looked up at me with her fists on her hips, stating, “Whatever your princess desires, she shall receive, correct? And Princess Ziyi still wants a catfish for dinner.”

I chuckled and nodded. “So she shall.”

Two attempts later, I finally got lucky again. The catfish I found in the mud was still pretty big, probably twenty pounds. Of that, I figured we’d get five pounds of meat, which was still more than enough for the two of us, especially since we had the two tilapias. But Ziyi didn’t try to stop me before I produced an ice spear and then stabbed the fish in the mud.”

I rinsed off the bleeding catfish as best I could before putting it into the bag with the tilapia. I then took the bag from Ziyi, insisting that it would be too heavy for her to carry, and traded her the bag that was holding her new outfit. But before we could set off to finally return back to our cave, I looked up to find Ziyi looking at me rather curiously.

“Do I have blood on my face or something?” I asked, wiping at the moisture on my cheeks. But my wet hand seemed mostly clear, just a bit of mud.

“Can you make a spinning water ball for me?”

I blinked at the non-sequitur, not expecting that question. “Huh?”

“The spinning water ball you made that blasted the guards on the stairs at the east gate.” Ziyi’s eyes had a faraway look, but after a moment, she focused her gaze on me. “Can you make another one?”

“Umm… I dunno. Maybe?” I took a deep breath and tried to think about what was going through my mind when I’d been in the fight, coming up blank at first. “Huh… I’m not sure…”

Ziyi frowned watching me cup my hands together a few inches apart, and then twirl my finger, and then push both palms out in front of me, all to no effect. “Do you… not remember how to do it?”

“Uhhh… not exactly…” I muttered. “There was kind of a lot going on at the time. You had been hurt and I was just trying to get away and then I looked up and saw all those guards in front of me and… Oh!”

The memory clicked into place as I crossed my arms over my chest, my thumb and two fingers of each hand extended while my fourth and fifth fingers were curled inward. I concentrated on a point in front of me and sure enough, a small spinning ball of water appeared in the air right where I’d been concentrating.

A very small ball of spinning water.

A small ball of spinning water that splattered water droplets in every direction, including into a squealing Ziyi’s face, before evaporating into nothingness.

She wiped her face and then frowned. “Either I hit my head harder than I thought, or I seem to remember the other ball being much, much larger.”

“Maybe both,” I suggested. “You did hit your head pretty hard, and the other ball really was much, much larger.”

“What about a floating ice platform? Can you make one of those?”

“Uhhh… well…” I fumbled. Once again, I had to wrack my brain to try and remember exactly what I’d done to create the ice platforms. The first time I’d done so, I’d created two steps in mid-air with which to launch myself out the window at the Huodou, so I actively thought about stepping onto a solid ice platform, raised my right foot, and concentrated as I stomped down.

My wrapped-straw peasant sandal smashed into the dirt beneath me. No ice platform.

“Um, lemme try that again.”

I stomped into the dirt again.

“Lemme try this.” I pointed in front of me, careful to use two fingers with my thumb tucked, and pretty much drew a horizontal line in front of me.

Nothing happened.

“Shit.”

“You can’t do it anymore?” Ziyi queried in confusion.

“Apparently not.”

“How were you able to do it back then?”

“Well to be fair,” I hedged, “I was quite juiced up on sex energy at the time.”

Ziyi blinked. “‘Sex’ energy?”

“Uhhh…” I blushed and waggled my head, feeling quite embarrassed and wishing I’d never said that. “Nevermind.”

She folded her arms across her chest, stating, “I think I’d like to mind.”

I made a face. “It’s nothing, really.”

Ziyi’s eyelids leveled off halfway down as her lips formed a frown. “The more you try to insist it’s nothing, the more I will want to know.”

“Fine, fine.” I took a deep breath and then sighed. “One thing you don’t know about my life in the future is that even before Dong showed up - even before I became the Chosen One of Qinglong - I always had a… a special ability.”

“What kind of… ‘special ability’?”

I gave her a sheepish smile. “My superpower is sex.”

She blinked twice. “What?”

“C’mon. You’ve seen me doing it multiple times by now, with Lianhua and the magistrate’s girls and then Princess Puning. Having sex charges me up; it gives me extra energy. I don’t get tired having sex, I get stronger. All those things you saw me do while fighting the palace guards? The spinning water balls and the floating ice platforms? It may be that I was only able to do them because I’d been fucking Puning and Juhua for over an hour right before the Huodou blasted you through the window. Which, come to think of it… Why WERE you outside the window?”

“Defending you, of course.”

“I mean… I didn’t notice you leave.” I winced. “Does watching me have sex make you uncomfortable? I mean, I know you didn’t seem to enjoy it that first time with Lianhua and the girls, and I seem to remember you’d slipped out of the room that time too.”

“I did. So?”

I gave her a serious look. “That night, you asked me about what sex with you was like. Well… what sex with Jade was like.”

“No I didn’t.”

I took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. “Is that how it’s gonna be? You just wanna deny it, even though we both know it’s true?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Ziyi spun around and started walking down the trail following the creek, heading back towards the cave.

“Fine, fine. If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to talk about it.” I followed after, having to walk quickly to catch up to her. She was quite tall for a Chinese woman, and our strides were pretty much the same length.

She let me catch her but didn’t look over at me. We walked side-by-side for a good length, and I realized we’d headed further up the creek than I would have thought. All those failed attempts to find a catfish had taken us pretty far away from the main trail by the Yi River. And we still had quite a way to go when Ziyi abruptly stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me.

“So let me get this straight,” she began. “In addition to your elemental water powers as bestowed upon you by Qinglong, the great Azure Dragon of the East, you also have sex superpowers that charge you up with additional energy whenever you have sex, so that when you go into battle, you’re able to wield magical abilities that you cannot perform when you’ve NOT had sex.”

I waggled my head. “Maybe. Probably. I’m not sure. Until recently, ‘going into battle’ wasn’t something I had to ever worry about.”

Ziyi held her hands up. “Wait-wait-wait. We NEED to go reclaim the Sword of Baihu. We WON’T succeed if you don’t have the kinds of special abilities I saw you do at the palace. Making whirlpools to catch catfish or changing the current to bring tilapia onto the riverbank is really amazing and something Liu Kang was never able to do, but those sorts of things won’t help us win a battle.”

“I unfortunately agree.”

“So what were you planning to do? How were you going to go charge yourself up with energy before our next great battle?”

Dong chose that time to magically pop into existence on my shoulder, wink dramatically while clucking his tongue, and jabbed both index fingers at Ziyi with his thumbs raised like a pair of pistols.

Ziyi’s eyes went WIDE, her nostrils flared, and if looks could kill, she’d have eviscerated Dong with a single glance.

“No! No! Not what I’d planned! Ignore the crazy gecko. Please!” I insisted immediately, raising both hands in defense. “I didn’t have any particular plan! I honestly wasn’t even thinking about whether or not I’d need to charge up before a fight. If I did, I’d have been perfectly happy to go visit Lianhua and the girls or… or to just head into town and find a pretty girl who might be interested in me, or… or… I mean… Imperial China had lots of brothels, right?”

“So you’re saying you NEVER thought about seducing ME and taking my virginity and charging yourself up by having sex with ME in order to gain access to your superpowers?”

“No, never. Not at all!” I insisted. “Never crossed my mind.”

If anything, Ziyi looked even MORE angry. Angry and… well… hurt.

She looked hurt.

As the tears started rolling own Ziyi’s cheeks, she threw her hands out and exclaimed, “So you’re saying you’d rather visit a dung-riddled BROTHEL and have sex with disease-infested WHORES over choosing to have sex with ME?!?”

Warning! Warning! Mayday! Mayday!

“I--! I didn’t--! I mean--!” I fumbled. “What I meant to say was that--”

“Arrrgh!” Ziyi stepped forward and shoved me in the chest hard enough to send me flying backwards ten feet or so, displaying the kind of superhuman strength she normally reserved for fighting Warlord Zhu Wen’s soldiers and guards. My feet hit the ground first, but I was so off-balance that I promptly fell flat on my ass, skidding another few feet in the dirt before coming to a painfully abrupt halt against a tree trunk.

Ouch.

“难以理解的侮辱我无法翻译成英语!” Ziyi thundered so fast and so strongly that her words blended together into some kind of incomprehensible insult I couldn’t actually translate into English. And then she spun on her heel and stalked off.

Dong materialized on my right shoulder. He reached up to pat my cheek, stating in a surprisingly sympathetic voice, “_万事开头难, Aksel.”

Everything is difficult at the beginning.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 16 will post on May 14. For anyone who can't wait, Beta Tier will be maintaining a 7-chapter lead from that date on until the story is complete.

Remember that all authors thrive on feedback, so let me know how you're enjoying the story! Leave a comment here or come chat with us on Discord! And be sure to connect your Discord account here on the Patreon website to get access to the Patron-Only channels! https://discord.gg/fg3m6MdfN9

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Prologue & Chapter 1: The Ax Effect: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99894240

Chapter 2: Santa Monica: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100614606

Chapter 3: The Zellij Fountain: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100887440

Chapter 4: Euhemerism: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101140816

Chapter 5: The Fremont Troll: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101373122

Chapter 6: Jade: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101713211

Chapter 7: The Blue Gecko: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101962728

Chapter 8: Yaoguai: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102225122

Chapter 9: Rome: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102437581

Chapter 10: Seeing Sights: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102690886

Chapter 11: Liu Kang: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102919633