Jiang hit the ground hard, knees bending deep to absorb the impact. His boots skidded slightly on the churned snow, but he didn't fall. The third spirit beast was already on him, jaws wide, lips peeled back from yellowed teeth. It lunged, too fast to think. Jiang twisted, right hand snapping the sword up, the blade angled outward.

The wolf slammed into it full force.

The weight of the beast almost wrenched the sword from his hands. He staggered, boots sliding, the impact driving him half a step back. The blade tore through the wolf's shoulder, angling up through the neck, biting deep. Blood sprayed in a wide arc, steaming against the cold and painting the snow a bright crimson. It thrashed once, a heavy, uncoordinated spasm, then went limp.

Jiang didn't have time to process the kill, already adjusting his grip and shoving the body off the blade.

The other two were already coming.

They had broken through the line behind him. The guards were busy with their own threats – he didn't know how many. He'd seen one of them go down to the spirit beasts, and another had screamed in pain, which wasn't a good sign. The background was all movement now – mortal wolves weaving between wagons, guards firing arrows at point-blank range, guards shouting orders, oxen bellowing as they strained against their harnesses. The wagons were still moving, pushing forward to a more open area where they could form a proper defence, but the rear was starting to fall behind.

No one was coming to help him.

Jiang stepped clear of the corpse, adjusting his stance. The remaining spirit beasts slowed, eyes locked on him. They didn't rush. One moved to his left, the other to the right, circling, wary. They'd seen what happened to the third and were clearly intelligent enough to realise going for the quick kill wasn't a good idea.

He let them herd him, stepping back slowly, boots crunching in the snow, angle shifting to give himself more space. The wagon was twenty paces behind now and still moving. He had no cover or fallback, nothing to put his back to – but a wall at his back would box him in, and he simply wasn't skilled enough with his weapon to reliably fend off two spirit beasts. Space, at least, gave him options.

The wolves didn't press, not yet. They moved with the patience of practised hunters, heads low, weight balanced on their haunches. Jiang could feel their focus, not just as tension in the air, but in their Qi – a sort of predatory intent. They'd come at him together, pressure him from both sides, then go for the throat. He'd seen it enough times with mortal wolves while hunting.

Let them. He needed them to commit to an attack before he'd have a chance to counter. He wasn't fast enough to go after them, especially not with one at his back, but if he could wait until the last moment, dodge and strike from behind…

He might have a chance.

The wolf on the right moved first, just a shift in weight and a half-step closer, eyes fixed on his chest. The one to the left didn't mirror it immediately, but Jiang could feel it tightening the arc, inching forward, waiting for the opening.

When the lunge came, it wasn't aimed to kill. Just a test. A snap of jaws aimed at his knee, forcing a dodge, forcing him to move. And when he did, the second beast pushed forward, jaws open, low and fast, trying to take advantage of the gap.

Jiang twisted again, blade coming up, but the wolf was already veering off, its hind legs kicking up snow as it passed. The first had already slid back to flank again, and now the second was behind. Their rhythm never broke for more than a breath. One always pushed, the other constantly threatened. They moved like a single body, breathing in tandem.

He shifted his weight again, eyes locked on the nearest one. Trying to keep both of them in his field of vision wasn't going to work, not with one of the beasts always moving behind him. Operating primarily on instinct, he concentrated, pulling a thread of Qi up from his dantian to his ears. Qi was supposed to enhance the body, right? That was the whole reason cultivators lived longer and were stronger and faster. It might do nothing, but surely it couldn't hurt to try and focus on his hearing like this.

It wasn't until the closer wolf lunged that he realised trying to split his focus and use a poorly thought-out technique for the first time in the middle of a fight probably wasn't the best idea. He pivoted sharply, moving more on desperate instinct than any planned attack, blade sweeping across his body defensively – but again, the beast twisted mid-air and the steel caught nothing but air.

Disbelief flickered through his mind briefly – the beast had somehow dodged the attack when it shouldn't have been able to see it coming from behind. Behind him, the snow crunched. There was no growl, no snarl, but Jiang dropped to the side anyway.

The second set of jaws snapped shut right where the back of his neck had been a moment before.

He hit the ground hard and rolled desperately to the side, sword coming up in a wild arc more out of reflex than precision. Both wolves backed off, circling again, uninjured.

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He should be dead, but… he hadn't just heard the motion behind him; he'd felt the attack coming somehow. The shape of it in the air, the direction of the pressure—he'd moved without thought, not reacting to the sound or movement but to the thing's intent. His senses had picked it up somehow. His Qi.

The thought lodged itself in his mind as he rose again, breath catching. That was how they were dodging him so well, despite the fact that he should be faster than they were. They weren't looking with their eyes. They were sensing. Just like him.

He didn't know if that was a normal thing all spirit beasts did, how to stop them from doing it, or even how to reliably do it himself. What he did know was that this wasn't sustainable – he might be able to fend them off for a while, but it would only take a single mistake for him to lose. The longer the fight went on, the more likely that was to happen.

He had to take a risk.

Jiang let the breath settle in his chest, pulling the threads of his Qi tight into his chest the way he'd learned from watching the raven. A redirection. A lie, whispered through his Qi. His presence faltered, bent at an angle, like light through water.

But this wasn't something he'd ever tried in the middle of a fight. His technique was messy, sloppy. He felt the Qi bleeding from his meridians, leaking into muscle and bone, feeding into his body in uneven bursts. His limbs tingled, not with energy, but with strain. It felt like there was pressure building in his muscles, like if he didn't do anything, he would burst.

Fortunately, it seemed like his luck was holding. The wolf on the right stuttered for a moment as it attacked, its head twisting toward a spot half a step wide of Jiang's actual position.

That was enough.

He lunged.

The wolf tried to correct, but it was already mid-movement, caught in the rhythm of the feint. Jiang didn't bother trying to make the strike clean. He wielded his sword more like a sharp metal bat, smashing it into his target and roughly yanking it back towards himself. The blade, fortuitously angled, slid across the beast's jaw and into the throat.

The wolf, suddenly a dead weight still carried by momentum, slumped into him, almost twisting the blade out of his hands even as blood sprayed out in a sharp arc. He shoved it off with both hands, stumbling upright, vision swimming from the excess Qi that had leaked out of his pathways.

He wasn't injured, but that didn't mean he was in good shape. If the final beast took the opportunity to attack…

Jiang raised his blade, panting, stance wavering. Not like there was anything else he could do.

The remaining wolf stood still, low to the ground, tail held stiff. It didn't move to attack. It didn't back off, either. They stared at each other across the churned path. The scent of blood hung thick in the cold.

Then, finally, the wolf snarled—not the drawn-out growl of a hunting beast, but a short, frustrated bark—and turned. It loped back into the trees, vanishing into the brush without another sound.

Jiang stared after it for a long moment before the beast's actions sunk in. It made sense – animals, even spirit beasts, didn't think like humans did. It could have attacked him, maybe even won, but at what cost? Spirit beasts couldn't exactly go see a healer out in the wilds, and any injuries would weaken it enough that it may not survive the winter.

He just… hadn't expected it to feel so anticlimactic.

A shout of pain from behind him reminded Jiang he wasn't the only one in a fight.

He turned, still a little woozy from the rushed technique but recovering quickly, and ran.

The rear line had collapsed further. Two of the guards were still standing, one of them with a bloodied sword and his offhand pressed to his ribs, the other already moving to intercept a wolf that had darted between the wagons.

Of the remaining four who had been positioned on foot between the carts, at least one was down—Jiang could see the shape of the older spearman who had first taken the brunt of the spirit beast's charge crumpled in the snow, unmoving. The other guard, the one the spearman had taken the blow for, was now seated on the ground, half-propped against the wheel of a wagon.

A wolf had its teeth bared a few feet from him, pacing forward in slow, careful steps, clearly sensing weakness. The man's sword was still in his hand, blood on the blade and more across his chest, but he wasn't getting up. His good arm kept the point angled low, ready to jab if the thing came close, but his breathing was shallow, and he was fading fast.

Jiang didn't slow. The wolf never saw him coming.

He closed the distance in a few quick strides, raised his sword, and brought it down across the back of the beast's neck. The blade bit deep. Bone cracked. The wolf crumpled forward, collapsing without a sound.

Jiang didn't stop.

Another wolf was circling one of the archers near the front corner of the lead wagon. The man was reloading, fumbled it, and stumbled back against the cart as the wolf leapt. Compared to the spirit beasts, it may as well have been standing still.

He hit it from the side, not with finesse but with speed, driving his shoulder into its ribs and the blade up under its flank in a rough, angled thrust. The steel punched through, helped by the momentum, and the animal was already dead by the time they hit the ground.

Jiang pulled free, rolled to his feet, and turned—already looking for the next.

But there wasn't one.

The remaining wolves, six or seven of them scattered among the wagons and snow, had frozen at the sudden shift. Without the spirit beasts driving them forward, and with the defenders managing to hold the line, the risk was too high, their losses too great.

One by one, they turned and ran. High above, circling the caravan – circling him – the raven cawed victoriously.

Jiang stood still, sword raised, but none of them came back. A few loped into the woods. A couple of others veered wide and disappeared into the deeper brush along the edge of the path. Within seconds, the fight was over.

The cold air was suddenly quiet again.

Jiang lowered the blade slowly.

Ahead of them, he could faintly hear Han already shouting new orders, his voice cutting through the aftermath with brisk efficiency. Arrows were being retrieved, fallen guards checked. Some of the travellers were sobbing, others eyeing the trees with wariness. One of the oxen was dead, and the wagon it was attached to was blocking the ones behind it from moving. The front half of the caravan was a few hundred meters further along the track, dragged by panicking oxen despite the driver's best efforts to stay with the rest of the group.

Jiang swallowed as the weight of the situation caught up with him, the knowledge that people had just died a lump in his throat he couldn't swallow.

He took a deep breath, then another when the first proved insufficient.

This wasn't the time to mope. He wiped the blade clean on his sleeve, sheathed it without ceremony, and moved to help unhitch the dead ox.

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