The foot came off my head.
I pushed myself up from the dirt slowly, one hand braced on the ground, and found Shan Pei standing twenty feet away in the gap between the trees with the grey cat on his shoulder and the spirit stone in his hand.
Then her eyes moved to Shu Shu.
The spirit beast had grown to twice the size she'd been on the gatepost. Her head sat level with Shan Pei's ear, the ambient field drawing inward around her in the same compressed signature as the woman’s had.
I could see the enormous channels in the visualization. I watched her read her brother's beast the way I had been reading her.
She released it.
The field pressure dropped in a wave I felt through my chest. The claws shortened. The teeth receded. She straightened and cracked her neck once to the left and once to the right.
The silence held for one long breath.
Then Zhu Rong let out a sound that started in her chest and came out somewhere between a bark and a laugh, loud enough that it disturbed the branches above us.
"Little brother!" She crossed the distance between them in what seemed like an instance and placed her arm around his neck. "You’ve finally done it!"
Shan Pei endured this without comment.
"How long have you been doing this? When I last saw you, you were still letting Shu Shu maul you in wrestling matches, hah!"
Shan Pei grimaced. "Recently," he said. "Pei Hao showed me a way to do it."
She let go of his neck and turned meet Hao’s gaze with her own amber eyes. She looked him over from top to bottom, her face scrunched up as she began to gauge him in the same manner that I had gauged her. Hao had one hand pressed against his lower back but his face was composed.
"You," she said. "Loud One. You draw deeper than most two-legged things I have met. Where did you learn?"
"I listened to my body, that’s all," Hao said simply.
She stared at him and made a grunt of approval and pointed at his core region. "That vessel did not come from a teacher. That came from blood." She turned back to her brother. "Your pack has a strong one."
"Yes, it does," Shan Pei nodded.
She looked at all of us, me still getting my breath back, Suyin with her staff somewhere in the brush, and Hao now carefully rising to his feet before the woman turned her attention back to Shan Pei.
"You did well," she complimented him with a pat on his back.
Shu Shu butted her head once against Zhu Rong's jaw, then stepped back to Shan Pei's shoulder and stayed.
She snorted at the sight of it, clearly amused by her creature’s choice. "See, look at that, she even picks you now."
Shan Pei petted Shu Shu who leaned against him even more and slowly began to return back to it’s normal size. Once it did so it jumped on Shan Pei’s shoulder and remained perched there.
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She stepped back and looked at her brother for one more beat. Then she sat down in the dirt of the track, crossed her legs, and looked up at the rest of us.
We all exchanged glances before we opted to mimic her and we sat down and crossed our legs in the same manner as she had. Shan Pei remained standing with Shu Shu asleep across his shoulders.
The woman drew in a breath and gave us a hospitable smile. “The name’s Zhu Rong, I am what you call the Chief of my tribe. I see you know my adorable little brother Shan.”
"Now, tribesmen of my brother, what are your names?”
"Pei Liang," I said.
She mouthed the words and then turned her attention to Hao.
"Pei Hao,” He gave her a courteous bow of his head.
Zhu Rong then looked towards Suyin.
"Wei Suyin,” She bowed her head as well.
Zhu Rong leaned forward and gave a deep inhale through her nostrils. She seemed caught off guard by something, perhaps the scent of one of us, and her gaze went back and forth from Wei Suyin and myself.
"Same smell,” She pointed at Suyin, then at me. "Are you mates?"
“Uhm-”
"Yes," Hao said plainly.
"Mhm," Shan Pei nodded as if it was obvious.
"Yes, I am," Suyin said, with complete composure.
I sighed and nodded my head, I could feel my face burn beet red.
She turned to Shan Pei. "When do you find yours?"
"That is none of your concern," Shan Pei said.
"You live in the north and you are thin-blooded. It is my concern."
"It is not your concern,” Shan Pei pressed.
"I will find you one, let your strong big sister handle this,” Zhu Rong put her hand to her chest.
"You will make things worse!” He exclaimed.
Suyin and Hao had their hands over their mouths to suppress their laughter.
Zhu Rong let it rest, apparently satisfied to have established the argument. She looked at me again.
"A man of my clan trades with a merchant called Wang Su who moves through your northern roads. Wang Su sent word that there were people here worth seeing." She reached into the fold of her cloth and turned the spirit stone over in one hand. "He told me what this was. I wanted to see one so I sent Shu Shu north to look."
"Shu Shu led a group of our family through the ridge country," I said.
"They carried my brother's tribe-smell, so I wanted to check on him too. That way, we all get what we want.”
The gears in my mind began to turn. Something about what she said bothered me, and I was just beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together. "Did Shu Shu guide anyone else? Perhaps a middle-aged woman that had been traveling alone?"
Zhu Rong looked at me. "Shu Shu guided one group as agreed, there was no lone woman."
Huh?
She came through the ridge country alone. No group. No spirit beast pulling the creatures back. No cleared path.
How.
"Liang." Suyin's voice was even. She had been watching my face. "What is it?"
"We'll talk about it later," I said.
She held the question for a breath, then let it go.
Zhu Rong stood to leave. She was still turning the spirit stone in her hand with its azure light glowing in her palm.
She was half-turned to go when she stopped.
"One more thing." She did not look back fully. "In the Maw, a tribe carries the same scent. I can read a family in one breath." A pause. "Some of yours does not match.” She turned her head just enough. "That is something you should know."
She hurried off through the hill country and disappeared in the brush.
Suyin looked at me to speak and I already knew what she was going to ask, so I held up my hand and shook my head.
Later.
As we all began to approach the gate, I ran what Zhu Rong said back to my mind once again.
Shu Shu guided one group but Pei Yan arrived separately. She must be what Zhu Rong referred to as the different scent.
Regardless, I didn't have enough information. A wrong scent could any number of things.
We approached the training ground and the cohort’s class had began to wind down. Liu Jun was spearheading the clinical portion of the class.
That brought my mind back to the fight.
She had moved from stillness to my face and I never saw the in-between. Hao, the strongest cultivator I had known, was thrown to the ground as if he was nothing more than a sack of grain, and she clipped Suyin’s wings while she was attacking from the air, all due to a technique that I had not known, but it was definitely developed by her tribe.
We have to work harder.
Suyin appeared at my shoulder with a cup of warm water. She did not ask what I was thinking about. We stood at the gate until the kitchen fire went low, then went inside.