Crimson Qi, Exiled Beautiful Lady Falls in Love with a Shy Demon

True Colors

Zijun creased her brows studying Minh's dive and progress. She was sane enough to realize that she was running out of time for her misguided rescue attempt.

"You'll snap out of it, Xi," she promised softly, smoothed the hair away out of his bulging eyes, and ran towards the main pipe, a hammer in hand.

Another blow shook the rig, but Minh grabbed at the quivering structure, pulling himself up like his old namesake, the viper.

Xi did not have a chance to cry out a warning.

Minh screamed and tumbled back into the lake burned by the metal hot with magic. His head bobbed up to the surface, and he climbed again, his full lips sealed into a thin dark line like a strike through his face. His mouth did not remain closed for long. As soon as he hopped onto the platform, it fell open in a frantic yell. "Back off!"

He crashed into Zijun.

Alerted by the scream she dodged just enough to not be catapulted into the lake but lost her footing. She kicked Minh with a cold, resentful fury, trying to free herself, trying to free the hand squeezing the hammer-handle from Minh's gripping fingers.

"Don't hurt my sister!" Xi squealed rewarded by the almost identical shouts from both fighters in response. He took his cue, and relaxed.

Or, rather, he relaxed as much as he could, for he was pinned to the Forge in a thousand places by steel. With his hsin directing it, the circulation of the magical currents resumed despite the leaking pipe. Some seeped away, twisting the ritual, escaping his control.

Minh roared, tore the struggling Zijun from the platform's floor like a sack of rice.

"They are killing him!" she sobbed, trying to bite his shoulder. "Killing him!"

The muscles contracted under Minh's skin as he tumbled Zijun over the edge. She smashed into water, and went under, sending a spray up at her opponent. He tossed the hammer in after her. For a moment Minh looked like he might fall in next, but instead, he went to all fours and crawled like that towards Xi.

"Was she telling the truth?"

"No." Xi willed Minh to believe, as he had no energy left to shout. There was no time to explain Zijun's motivation either. "I swear."

Rubbing water and blood away from his eyes with a back of one hand, Minh studied him for a moment. Xi sighed in relief when he saw trust win over love. Minh turned towards the mangled pipe.

"It's broken, Xi." He cradled his other hand, red with burns. Both shoulders slumped in surrender. "The crazy bitch broke your stupid Forge."

In a voice that sounded ethereal even to his own ears, Xi compelled his lover. "Hold it together and I will mend it."

Minh took one pained glance at his hand, nearly crippled by grabbing the heated metal, breaking Xi's resolve.

"We can wait. The workers can fix it, we'll restart—"

"No, you can't wait. You are held together by sinew and determination." Minh jutted his chin forward, breathed out hard to brace himself, then forced together the pitted ends of the pipe. He held them against the pressure of the steam and searing heat.

Xi felt the flow of magic intensify, and turned his hsin to mending the metal his lover held together with his bare hands.

"Fenghuang will carry you to the faeries, won't need to swim..." Xi mumbled and guessed rather than made out the words in Minh's slurred reply.

"One thing at a time. Magic or talk..."

Squeezing the eyelids shut through the pooling tears, Xi forced Minh out of his mind. The farther away Xi could push him, the faster it would be over, the lesser would be his suffering.

He barely perceived the pounding of Zijun's wet feet on the wooden platform, the whip whistling through the air. Where did she get a whip? Why?

Minh screamed.

One last clap of thunder, the voice of the Gracious Judgment.

They all went down.

Zijun, thrown back by the force of the kill-shot.

Minh, letting go of the pipe and consciousness.

Fenghuang, to catch the drowning man before he was boiled alive in the roiling water.

Xi, carried to the bottom of the lake by the fully functioning forge.

Heat no longer affected him. Once water closed over his head, the forge broke apart, releasing him. The muck sucked his body into the black depths just before his every bone shattered, every ligament snapped, his skin sloughed off...

Broken and shapeless, Xi writhed in the muck mixing water, air, rock, metal, blood, qi and magic in the overheating mess. He was growing, growing, and growing until he could grow no more.

No more! He coiled, drew everything into himself, then un-coiled into the azure sky on the twister of water and mud clinging to his surging body.

Make sure your scales are scarlet, it will uphold the morale, the reedy human voice echoed in his mind, the memory making him snort a whiff of smoke over his golden moustache.

Wingless, he soared above the clumsy humans, bringing all thirty feet of himself into the air.

The water rolled off his scales, raining down on them, and they sang praises as behooved them... Alas, the muddy lake would not reflect him in his glory. He needed a glacier for that or the entire Jade Sea.

"How do I look?"

"Like an emerald torrent, Beloved."

Another distant memory. Amused eyes, a quivering full lip... "Minh?"

"Safe and sound, Beloved."

"Ah, good."

He dashed after the golden temptress, the winged enigma he chased for so long through the labyrinths of slumber. No more. He was now awake.