They didn't get the chance to try again.
Hunters came at midday, about three of them with blazing Qi signatures. Mei sensed them first, her body getting tense mid sentence.
"We have Company," she said. "Three cultivators. Foundation Establishment... all of them, and they're coming from the east."
Longwei moved to the window, there were three figures in the distance moving fast across the terrain. Dark robes with silver lining.
"Jade Phoenix Palace?"
"No, those colors belong to the SILVER TALON SECT. Bounty hunters." Mei was already dressing, pulling on her outer robe with urgency. "Lin Heifeng must have registered a contract before he came after me and when he didn't return..."
"They sent more." Longwei grabbed his own clothes. "How did they find us so fast?"
"Tracking talisman, probably. Lin Heifeng touched me during the fight, he could have planted one." She finished tying her robes and moved toward the door. "We need to move. Now."
They fled.
The terrain north of Willowrest was rough with rocky hills, dense patches of forest and streams that cut through the landscape without warning. Good for losing pursuit, bad for a man with recently broken ribs and a woman whose cultivation was eating her alive.
Longwei pushed through the pain. I mean, what choice did he have?
They ran for hours but the Silver Talon hunters were faster. Cultivators versus a cripple and a dying ice phoenix but Mei knew tricks, she laid false trails with blast of Yin energy, froze streams to mask their passage even created ice constructs that mimicked human Qi signatures.
By dusk, they'd gained enough distance to risk stopping.
"Here." Mei pointed to a rocky overhang, it would help hide them from aerial observation. "We rest until it gets full dark, then move again."
Longwei collapsed against the stone, breathing hard. His ribs were screaming again and his body was failing him at the worst possible time.
"You're hurt." Mei crouched beside him. "Worse than before."
"The running didn't help." He managed a smile. "I'll live."
"Will you?" Her hand pressed against his side and he moaned at the pain. "These ribs need to be bound properly, and you u need rest. Real rest, not running through wilderness."
"What I need is irrelevant, because what I have is three bounty hunters and a partner who's more important than my comfort."
Her cheeks started turning red.
"Partner?"
"Isn't that what we are?"
She settled beside him with their shoulders touching.
"Yes," she said softly. "I suppose we are."
DARKNESS CAME SLOWLY.
They sat in silence for most of it, conserving energy and also listening for pursuit, the hunters hadn't found them yet but that didn't mean they'd given up. Silver Talon Sect were known to be persistent.
"Tell me something," Mei said eventually. Her voice was low, barely above a whisper. "About your life before, your sect..."
Longwei didn't know what to say, because his life before felt like someone else's story, a tale he'd heard rather than lived.
"What do you want to know?"
"Anything... everything?" She shifted, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. "I told you about Lee Ping, about the palace. It seems only fair."
FAIR. An interesting concept.
"I was a prodigy," Longwei began. "Or everyone thought I was, youngest to reach Core Formation in three centuries. The elders called me The Rising Dragon, destined for greatness." Bitter amusement in his tone. "I believed them, why wouldn't I? The evidence was right there, I was advancing faster than anyone, mastering techniques others struggled with for decades."
"But it wasn't real."
"Noo... My mother..." He paused, searching for words. "She was a Core Formation cultivator herself, not remarkable but solid."
" I was born with no spiritual roots, no talent, no nothing. And... she couldn't accept it, couldn't accept that Her only child was destined to be mortal."
"So she gave you cultivation?"
"Her cultivation, her life force, her existence." Longwei stared into the darkness. "There's a forbidden technique, I didn't know this until... Zhou Chen told me, it allows a cultivator to burn their own base to temporarily inflate another's. It's supposed to be used in emergencies or giving a dying cultivator a final surge of power, things like that but she used it... differently. Stretched it over years and fed me piece by piece."
"That must have been agonizing for her."
"I wouldn't know I was too young and too oblivious." He laughed, hollow and sharp. "I remember her growing weaker and thinner, I would ask if she was sick and she would tell me she was fine, just tired. 'Being a mother is exhausting,' she said. 'But worth every moment.'"
Mei's hand found his in the darkness.
"She died when I was twelve," Longwei continued. "The servants found her in her chambers. They said she looked peaceful, I didn't understand, she wasn't that old, wasn't injured, wasn't even ill as far as I knew but she was Just... gone."
"And you kept advancing."
"Momentum... her sacrifice had seeded my cultivation with years of growth that even after she died the effects continued, I thought I was blessed. CHOSEN." Another bitter laugh.
"But I was just eating a corpse."
They sat in silence.
"We're quite the pair," Mei said finally. "You killed your mother without knowing and I killed my friend while watching, we should start a club."
"The Guilt Ridden Cultivators?"
"Terrible name, we'd never get members." But she was almost smiling, he could hear it in her voice. "What about your engagement? The woman who betrayed you?"
"Yating?" The name brought back memories. "She was the sect leader's daughter. The engagement was arranged when we were fifteen, political alliance, bloodline optimization, the usual cultivation nonsense. I thought we'd grow to love each other, maybe we could have if I'd been a different person."
"What kind of person were you?"
Longwei thought about it honestly. "Cold. Focused. Obsessive about advancement, I treated the engagement as another cultivation resource, something that would benefit my future and not something to cherish in the present." He shook his head. "She probably started hating me years ago, and Zhou Chen just gave her an alternative."
"That doesn't excuse betrayal."
"No, but it kinda explains it." He squeezed her hand. "I'm not innocent in my own downfall, Mei. The sect was rotten, yes. Zhou Chen was a snake and Yating was faithless, but I was the one who made myself easy to discard. I gave them no reason to value me beyond my cultivation."
"And when your cultivation was revealed as borrowed..."
"I became a worthless fraud, an embarrassment that could be quietly removed."
Mei went silent again.
"You're not worthless," she said.
"I'm a fucking cripple who can't even run properly."
"I mean, you're a cripple who threw a rock at a Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator to save a stranger." Her chuckled. "You're the person who held me while I cried about another man, who didn't take advantage when you woke up with me half-naked, who keeps promising to try again even though I've given you nothing but..."
"Mei..."
"I mean, I guess but those are not really.."
"You're not worthless, Shen Longwei." She interrupted him. "You're the first person in years who's made me feel like I might be worth something too."
The held eye contact.
"We should move," Mei said, breaking the moment. "It's fully dark now and the hunters will have regrouped."
She was right, they had to move.
But as they rose, Longwei caught her arm.
"For what it's worth,"
"You're not damaged goods either, I mean maybe a little..." He chuckled.
"But seriously, you're a survivor and that's not the same thing as broken."
Her eyes gleamed in the starlight.
"Partners," she said, punching him in the stomach.
"Partners."
They began to move again into the night.