Tiger Shadow Takes Shape

On the third day, Helian Yuan returned to the claw prints left by the Lightning-Patterned Leopard.

His left ribs still hurt, and he could not exert his full strength with his right arm. He had not brought his short spear, only a wooden stick shaved flat, which he used to measure the prints as he crouched beside the stone path.

The front paw prints were wider than half his face and two inches deep. The hind prints left before the leopard sprang were deeper still, showing that the level-four Lightning-Patterned Leopard first concentrated its strength in its hind legs when it pounced. Its landing prints, however, were shallow; its body had barely paused.

He had not been able to see all this during their fight.

Fear reduced everything to "fast" and "strong." Only by surviving and coming back could he see the difference in concrete terms.

A low rumble of thunder came from the forest.

Helian Yuan immediately retreated beside a drainage ditch, his fingers touching a hemp rope he had tied there beforehand. The Lightning-Patterned Leopard did not appear. Perhaps it had only made the sound while patrolling in the distance. He still waited half a quarter-hour before retracing his route to the old camp.

He had not come to challenge it.

He only wanted to confirm whether he could stand here again without that rumble of thunder robbing him of his judgment.

During the days he spent recovering, Tiger Shadow had remained dormant. Helian Yuan tried it only once each day, withdrawing it as soon as his right arm grew hot. On the fourth morning, the black shadow finally rose behind his shoulder, but instead of immediately wrapping around his arm as it had before, it behaved differently.

First, a length of spine took shape behind him.

Then came a lowered head, front paws, and a long, indistinct tail.

Helian Yuan did not move.

Tiger Shadow stood half a body taller than him, still connected to the shadow at his feet, but for the first time its outline was complete, like a crouching black tiger. It had no eyes or details of fur, only a black form that rose and fell slightly with his breathing.

He raised his short spear.

Tiger Shadow's shoulders and back rose with it.

The first breath: its outline held steady.

The second breath: it turned its attention to the eastern side of the camp.

Only on the third breath did Helian Yuan hear a rustling in the grass.

A level-two Green-Eared Fox poked its head out from beyond the collapsed wall. After catching the scent of medicine, it edged two steps forward. Tiger Shadow did not pounce of its own accord; it merely turned its head toward the fox. The fox's fur bristled all over, and it backed into the mist with its tail between its legs.

On the fourth breath, Helian Yuan's right arm began to ache.

On the fifth, he shouted, "Withdraw!"

The black tiger's outline began to dissolve from the tail, pressing back down into the ground.

The Green-Eared Fox did not return.

Helian Yuan sat down against the wall and checked his breathing, then his right arm. The wound had not reopened, and his head was clear. His shoulders and back simply felt heavy, as if he had carried several large stones in succession.

Five breaths.

Tiger Shadow had gone from covering his arm to taking shape behind him, and it had gained the ability to sense living creatures nearby. It still could not leave his shadow, much less pursue an enemy for him.

When Helian Yuan recorded it on a blank page of the secret manual, he did not write "Tiger Shadow takes shape." He drew a crude tiger beside five short strokes instead.

He did not want a temporary ability to become a rule he believed in. Next time it might last only four breaths, and if his injury flared up again, he might not be able to summon it at all.

That evening, he conducted another test.

Helian Yuan hung a piece of beast meat outside the collapsed shed and sat with his back to the entrance. Sure enough, the level-two Green-Eared Fox crept back. Without Tiger Shadow, he could only hear it crushing dry leaves underfoot; after summoning Tiger Shadow, he could tell from the turn of its head that the fox was approaching from the left.

But when the Green-Eared Fox stopped moving, Tiger Shadow lost track of its direction as well.

Its perception depended on a living creature's movements and presence; it could not see through walls.

Helian Yuan recorded those limitations as well.

That afternoon, Helian Yuan tried to make Tiger Shadow leave his feet.

He first reached forward, then directed the tiger-shaped outline to pounce on the wooden stake outside the entrance. Tiger Shadow's front paws did cross half a step, but its hind legs seemed nailed to his shadow, and its entire outline twisted. The markings on his right arm rapidly grew hot, and a tearing sensation came from his shoulders and back.

Helian Yuan withdrew it at once.

There were no claw marks on the stake, and only dust stirred by the wind remained on the ground. For now, Tiger Shadow could channel its strength into his body and weapons, but it could not leave him and act independently. If he forced it to take on a form that looked stronger, five breaths would shrink to one, or he might even wear himself down before a real fight began.

He added a note beside the drawing: do not leave the body.

Then he crossed out "black tiger" and changed it to "Tiger Shadow." Its shape came from the Sacred Domain Black Tiger, but that did not mean it could be treated as the complete entity Old Mo had left behind. For several days running, no voice had appeared in his mind, nor had a second will interfered with his movements. The remnant soul fragment was as quiet as an old wound absorbed into the spaces between his bones, bringing only a brief flashback when the image of the cage was touched upon.

That quiet did not put Helian Yuan completely at ease, but it let him direct his vigilance toward things he could actually observe: duration, physical exertion, perception range, and delay in movement.

In the evening, he retrieved the bait the level-two Green-Eared Fox had not finished. Food was already running low; he could not throw away meat every day for experiments. Life had not become cheaper after Tiger Shadow grew. On the contrary, he needed more medicine and a steadier supply of provisions to sustain a five-breath burst.

That night, he packed his medicine chest and map, preparing to return to Greystone Town. The cave entrance in Blackwater Ravine was still there, and the people who gathered medicine might appear again, but his torches, hemostatic powder, and dry rations were nearly exhausted. Entering the cave while injured would not be bravery; it would only leave clues for whoever came later to collect his corpse.

Before setting out, Helian Yuan also restored the old camp to the appearance of a place where someone had stayed briefly, but which was not worth searching. He kept all the valuable pages and iron plaques on his person, left the empty medicine chest in a corner, and reduced the fire pit to last night's ashes. He deliberately left the collapsed wall unrepaired to keep anyone who came later from treating the place as a stable base.

He left the Green-Eared Fox's footprints untouched. If the gray-robed people or the medicine gatherers returned and saw signs of only low-level magical beasts around the camp, they would be more likely to believe no one had stayed there long recently.

Finally, he wedged a small piece of dried meat into a crack between the stones outside the entrance. If the meat was gone when he returned, it might only have been a wild animal; if it remained but things inside the entrance had been disturbed, it had been a person. A simple marker could answer only one question, making it less likely that he would misread it himself.

Before leaving, he visited the sharp bend between the two enormous boulders.

The level-four Lightning-Patterned Leopard was not there. But several new claw marks scored the bank, one of them directly over the spot where Helian Yuan had gone underwater. The leopard had not only remembered his scent; it had also checked how he had escaped.

Helian Yuan used his wooden stick to completely scratch out the old mark, "escape possible through the rapids."

That route was no longer viable.

He returned to the cave entrance beneath the cliff and peered in through the scattered rocks. Cold wind still blew from inside, and an extremely faint, cold light occasionally flickered deep within. It looked like neither fire nor sunlight.

Tiger Shadow gently raised its head at his feet.

Helian Yuan did not go in.

Five breaths were enough to let him survive the level-four Lightning-Patterned Leopard's claws once more, but not enough to answer what lay inside the cave.

He drove an iron nail into a crack in the rock to the right of the entrance, its head facing outward. Once he had enough medicine and torches, he would return. If someone pulled the nail out, he would know that someone had entered ahead of him in the meantime.

Half the oil for the door hinges of the old camp's northern shed had already been used, and three iron nails were gone as well. Helian Yuan recorded these supplies on the corner of the map. Extending Tiger Shadow by one breath was important, but without fire, rope, and medicine, one more breath could only delay death a little.

When Helian Yuan left Blackwater Ravine, he did not look back.

Tiger Shadow had already taken shape behind him.

But the road ahead was longer still.