Immortality Starts With Generosity

The roar of nature filled his head and drowned out whatever other sounds there were to be heard on his way back to camp.

That was why he saw the hunt before he heard it.

The band of sloths he had first found when he entered the cavern had come to the ground for some reason. The crickets had of course wasted no time in punishing them for that decision. Eight sloths were fighting three times that number in crickets. It was a vicious fight. Though the sloths were enhanced with the power of qi that did not change the fact they were sloths and were thus much slower than the insects.

Chen Haoran couldn’t hear the horrible chirping or angry squealing over the sound of the rain but he could imagine it seeing the bloody scene before him. Each sloth was beset upon by multiple crickets and though their sharp claws left lethal wounds whenever they connected they received twice as many in return from their more nimble foes. The frost-covered stones ran slick with blood. A particularly angry sloth, fighting above a frozen pool, shattered the ice beneath it and dragged three crickets down with it, looking more like sharks as they thrashed in the water.

Some sloths floated into the air to escape. The limitations of their ability were revealed however when the crickets jumped into the air after them with their powerful legs. The sloths had no mobility in the air and were easy targets for the crickets who snatched them with their forelimbs. They tussled for a brief moment before, inevitably, the sloths were dragged screaming down to the ground.

He found Phelps. Chen Haoran flexed his qi and broke into a run.

Phelps had placed himself at the edge of the violence right in front of the boulder Chen Haoran used to block his camp. A cricket leaped forward and disemboweled itself on Phelps’s claws. Another cricket lunged while he was distracted but Phelps had moved before it did. His claws swiped across the cricket’s bulbous eyes and blinded it. Phelps floated into the air rather than finish it off, avoiding a third cricket that barreled in and slammed against the boulder. He cut short his floating before he rose too high and fell like a stone on both crickets, skewering them with his claws.

Then the fourth cricket landed on him and sunk its mandibles into his back leg. Phelps squealed in pain and rolled to throw off the insect, his desperate move only opened him up for a fifth and sixth cricket to close in for the kill. Phelps had fought well but in the end, he was simply not fast enough in the face of more numerous, quicker crickets. He would die fighting alone.

It was good that he wasn’t.

Chen Haoran cleaved through the two crickets that thought to take advantage of Phelps’s predicament and then beheaded the cricket atop him. Phelps weakly squealed at him.

“Your lucky that I’m a sucker for the Sunk Cost fallacy,” Chen Haoran said.

He turned to the other crickets. Sixteen left. The rest of the sloths had already been slaughtered. One scimitar glowed blue.

Canyon Carving Sword

There was a stutter in the uniform sound of rain. Where his sword light flowed no water fell and the rain could only wait for it to pass. The stones split as the energy river annihilated every cricket in its way before ending at a frozen pool and bursting it in a shower of ice and water.

Eight crickets left.

The Crouching Tiger earrings blinked and the crickets froze. Chen Haoran crossed the Swiftwind scimitars together and slew four more before the rest had the presence of mind to flee.

He let them go. He had a patient to tend to.

Chen Haoran watched the rain from the shelter of his camp. A fire crackled, glowing blue from using moss as fuel, and provided blessed warmth. Phelps napped next to him on the bedding, his injured leg cleansed and bandaged up. How it would heal was up to luck at this point. Chen Haoran had done his best but he was no veterinarian, nor did he have any kind of medical training, so he couldn’t properly diagnose the injuries of a super sloth in another world. He could only hope the medicine and Phelps’s qi were enough.

Connection: Negative

“No dice huh.”

Outside a few crickets rifled among the corpses though they were wise enough to steer clear from him. Chen Haoran watched two crickets squabble over the corpse of a sloth. They wrestled around it before the victor kicked away his opponent and dragged the body away. It was easy enough to guess why the sloths were on the ground. He doubted they could stay on the roof with how dense the cloud cover was, which made them easy pickings for the predators below. An entire ecosystem adapted to the insane environment they lived in.

Which meant that the sudden cold snap wasn’t a fluke but a regular occurrence in this place.

Chen Haoran grabbed another clump of moss and threw it onto the fire. Some of his questions were answered and more mysteries that needed answers revealed themselves in turn. It was a depressingly familiar cycle. One thing was clear, whatever the cause was, the cold snap came from one direction. That meant it had a source. Whether or not finding that source would lead to a way out was a matter of luck but it was the only option he had right now.

Phelps blinked open his eyes and yawned. He slowly turned his head to and fro and squealed when he saw Chen Haoran.

“Morning.” Not that he actually knew what time it was. He passed Phelps some moss and watched him eat. Slowly he stretched out his hand and placed a finger on the sloth’s head. Phelps stilled and for a moment Chen Haoran thought he would pull away. Instead, Phelps scarfed down the rest of the moss and pushed his head into Chen Haoran’s palm.

Chen Haoran smiled and scratched behind his ears. “You’re quite the genius aren’t you?” Out of all the sloths, Phelps had killed the most crickets. He closed off their avenues of attack and predicted their moves before they made them so that his claws were already in motion before the crickets even jumped. Even if Chen Haoran couldn’t connect with him, what he had seen today was more than enough to convince him to bring the sloth along.

Would Phelps want to come with him? It was an easy enough answer. The sloth would die if he left him here while injured. He couldn’t afford to wait for his leg to heal either. Chen Haoran had returned to camp to collect his thoughts but right now was the perfect opportunity to explore the cavern before steam filled it again. The real question then was whether or not he could trust Phelps to not attack him. At the end of the day, he was still a wild animal and Chen Haoran would have to carry him. While his defense was tough he didn’t want to risk those claws trying to rip open his neck.

Neck. The word stirred something within him. His eyes drifted down to Phelps’s neck.

“I did say I wanted you to be my pet didn’t I?”

Chen Haoran closed his eyes in thought. After a moment he opened them and a silver necklace appeared in his hand. Deeming it unsuitable he tossed it into his storage bag and summoned more jewelry. Eventually, he found a satisfactory one. A simple gold necklace with a flat, circular pendant on which a sun was carved. He flipped it over to its smooth back and pressed the tip of the Swiftwind Scimitar against it. With great concentration and supernatural steadiness that only qi could give him he carved the letter P into the pendant.

He blew out the breath he’d been holding once finished and admired his work. A bit rough but seeing as how he carved gold with a sword he considered it a good attempt. Carefully he brought the necklace to Phelps who curiously sniffed it. Chen Haoran wrapped the chain around his neck and held it there unclasped. Besides some snuffling, there wasn’t any distress one would expect an animal to have from something wrapped around its neck. He clasped the necklace and leaned back. Phelps squealed.

“A pet has to have a pet collar.”

Connection: Valid

The rain fell in heavy sheets. The air was biting cold. Chen Haoran bundled up in as many layers as he could, expensive silk and dyed cotton just waiting to be ruined in weather it was never meant for. It would have to suffice. He stepped to the entrance and stopped an inch away from the curtain of falling water. His breath hitched, and a shiver ran feather-light down his spine.

It was intimidating. He didn’t know what waited for him out there in the vast unknown. At the same time, however, he felt his heart beat in his chest. This was an adventure into a mysterious land. He didn’t know what awaited him.

He drew a sword and turned to the wall. Qi flowed through the Profound-rank weapon and it easily cut through the stone in curving slashes. Chen Haoran blinked away dust and stone chips and brushed clean the carved message.

‘Chen Haoran was here.’

There was no telling what would happen in the future after all.

Two strong furry arms tipped with long, black claws reached from behind him and wrapped around his chest.

“You comfortable?”

Phelps squealed in his ear, snugly bundled onto Chen Haoran’s back and secured with a repurposed robe. He handed the sloth a piece of glowing blue moss, Phelps’s happy chewing a welcome relief from the overwhelming din of rain and thunder.

Received Hundred-fold: Waterlight Spirit Moss

“Let’s go then.”