Human Spirit 2

Tai Lung is in a new village. It is kinda small, but it has a place for him to stay, and with the help of Brutus he can stay there for several weeks. Brutus left him a note detailing what happened before he came to the village and what they would have to do from now on. The rules still apply, saying the phrase 'shift into maximum overdrive' will be the queue for Brutus to take over and do something amazing, or whenever his life is at risk. Tai Lung is not allowed to purposely get himself into dangerous situation except for organized fighting and monster slaying.

Tai Lung leaves the room he has been staying in. Brutus was the one who bought it the night before so this would be his first time walking through the inn. At the bar is a man who looks to be in his 40's. He is wiping a class with a cloth and has many more glasses to his right, while there are a few to the left. As he finishes cleaning the glass, he places it to the right. Tai Lung approaches the man.

"Hi, do you know where I can find work in this village?" The man looks at Tai Lung. "There are plenty of places to find work in this small village. If you have talent with alchemy, go to Alchemist to make some pills or other potions. If you are strong enough for it, we always need people to help out in the mine. If you can't do either of those things, there is a forest to the south of here with monsters up to 8 star rank. Just be careful to not get past a certain clearing. Past the clearing, the monsters jump up to a 43 star rank." "Thanks for all the information." "Sure thing, just tell me when you want to spent another week here."

Tai Lung walked away from the man and left the inn. Brutus was the one that paid for the room, but he must have paid a larger than normal amount for it. Tai Lung could check how many coins Brutus had, but Brutus liked to keep some things to himself, even though Tai Lung was the one carrying them. Tai Lung first went to the Alchemist shop. Here, spirit energy would be used to melt the condensed spirit energy bead from monsters into pills. It took having more spirit energy than contained in the bead to change decompress it though, so mostly only older people who had lost their fighting ability made pills. Tai Lung unfortunately had a power level of less than 400, first tier, so he was not sure how much he could do. Brutus entered the store and went to the counter. There was an old man there organizing hundreds of pills in glass jars.

"Hello, Is it true that I can find work here making pills?" Tai Lung asked. Though he would not be able to make the pills himself, Brutus would. "Yeah this is the place. Right now it is just me and my wife running the shop and we aren't able to make the same volume of pills like we used to." The old man is easily over 70 years old. "I would just like to test your power level first, then I can decide if you are enough." Tai Lung thought back to the note Brutus had left him. Don't let anyone test his power level with the crystal. The man could test him, but it would not provide an accurate reading, he would just need to show him first hand. "That is not so good, I am bad at maintaining a power level, but my spirit energy is strong. I can assure you that I can refine the highest ranking spirit bead you have." Tai Lung hoped the old man would believe him. "I didn't want to just come out and say it without testing for it, but there is no way a kid like you would be able to refine spirit beads into pills." The old man is looking scolding at Tai Lung, but Tai Lung knows he just needs a chance to show him what he can do. "Fine then, give me a glass jar and the highest ranking spirit bead I can get with this." Tai Lung poured Brutus' coins from his backpack onto the counter. Tai Lung knew Brutus would be angry, but he would be able to sell the pills for even more money. It was an investment. "Hmm, just wait a moment and I will get the tools you need." The old man scuffed at Tai Lung and then started walking to some stairs that lead downwards. He slowly disappeared underground and came back a few minutes later with a large glass jar and a red spirit bead. "Alright, show me what you can do." The old man looked at Tai Lung as he pushed the coins to the side and put the glass jar on the counter and dropped the bead inside it. "So I just put my hands on the jar, and then I push my spirit energy into the bead from the outside." Tai Lung is saying this so that Brutus will understand what to do. Thought Brutus can be many things, he does not know all the intricacies of this world. "If this is your first time trying to refine a spirit bead, you are going to be both out of coins and out of luck." The old main said this while taking the coins from the counter and placing them in a pot behind him. It was a small village so they must have not been as worried about thieves in the daytime. "That is okay, I just have to shift into maximum overdrive!" First stage spirit mutation activates and Brutus takes control of the human body. Brutus pushes his spirit energy into the bead inside the glass. While someone who has a huge amount of spirit power might break the glass instead of have their energy flow through it, Brutus is able to control his spirit energy to the most minute particle. The bead flashes for a second and the a red liquid flows from it. The red liquid slowly fills the jar and the man behind the counter looks in shock. Brutus stops his flow of spirit energy and the partially dissolved bead makes a clunk sound inside the liquid filled jar. "It looks like you did not bring a big enough jar." Brutus said to the old man, and he just stared at him. "I will bring a bigger jar right away." The old man hobbled away as he went to get a bigger jar from the bottom of the stairs. When he came back up, an old woman was following him. "Just watch." The old man whispered to the woman. "Here is a larger jar." "Thank you." The old man gave Brutus a jar at least 3 times larger than the last and Brutus poured what came from the first jar into the larger second jar and resumed pouring his spirit energy into it. The jar became mostly full and then stopped. Brutus stopped putting his spirit energy into the bead because it had vanished, and then he let Tai Lung take over again. "Well I suppose I will just make this into pills to sell myself." Tai Lung said as he put the stopper in the jar and picked it up. It was heavier than he thought it would be. "That is alright, you have proven yourself to us. Please allow us to give back the coins in exchange for this refined spirit bead, and you are welcome to take the job here." Tai Lung could not see what Brutus had done while he was not in control, but he knew Brutus must have done something special. "That is acceptable, but I require an additional 1,000 coins for this." Tai Lung knew the value of so much refined spirit bead from his time at the sect. This refined spirit bead would be condensed again into smaller beads called pills that had a fraction of the spirit energy from the original bead. These could be sold for 50 coins each for a low level pill, and this jar could make hundreds of pills, likely more. "That is fine. Please follow my wife to the alchemy station."

Brutus follows the old woman into the basement. There is an alchemy station in the corner of the room and the walls have many jars with refined spirit bead in them. "Do you know how to make the pills from the refined spirit bead?" The old woman asked Tai Lung. In Truth, Tai Lung had only partially done is studies at the sect before he was kicked out by the other students because of his low power level so he did not know how to actually make the pill. "I am a little fuzzy on that part." "That is fine, it is an easy process." The old woman seemed like she smiled at Tai Lung and sat down at a chair next to the alchemy station, motioning at Tai Lung to sit down in the other chair. They must have been placed their for her and her husband to sit together while one of them made pills or refined the bead. "Use this knob to turn on the flame and pour the refined spirit bead into the mold while also pushing spirit energy into it. You need to keep the pushing spirit energy into it for a few minutes and it should be finished." "Alright, I will see what I can make." Tai Lung turned a knob to activate the fire and started to pour the refined spirit bead into the molds. "I will come back in 20 minutes to see where you are at." Then the woman left. 7 pills could be made at a time, and there was plenty of oil to keep the fire going with. Tai Lung whispered under his breath. "Shift into maximum overdrive." and Brutus took over. Brutus was able to use more spirit energy than Tai Lung and the pills were made quickly. Brutus did some experimenting with the refined spirit bead and came to the conclusion that the spirit bean was almost indestructible, except for spirit energy which would cause it to melt and expand. The resulting refined spirit bead would harden if heated, but it would shrink in size, resulting in complete reversal of the refining process. Using spirit energy on the refined spirit bead while heating though, this would keep the bead the same size and let it harden. It seemed like the more spirit energy that was used, the more pills that could be made. These must be the 50 coin pills because of how many he was able to make. Brutus finished making 7 pills and dumped them into a small bucket of water. The pills hit the bottom of it sizzled before becoming quite. "I see that you have already completed the first batch of pills. Continue this until the whole refined bead had been made into pills." The old woman came back into the basement and saw Tai Lung drop the beads into the bucket.

Tai Lung and Brutus continued this for several days. Brutus did most of the pill forming and came to several conclusions. The color of the refined spirit bead indicated the amount of spirit energy needed when making it into pills to prevent it from shrinking. It went from white to yellow, to orange, to red, to purple, to black. Black took the most to keep from shrinking while white was the easiest. Tai Lung could make pills from white refined spirit bead. There is also a multiplier for the amount of power levels gained from consuming a pill of different colors. White would give at least 1 power level. Not very much. Yellow would bring in 5 power levels. Still not a lot, but it was better than white. Orange was 20 power levels. These are the pills Tai Lung and his friends at the sect got when they brought back a good haul from the mountains. A red pill would be 100 power levels. It would be a huge amount for Tai Lung, but for someone who was in the higher tiers it would not help as much. There were no purple or black beads in the shop, so Brutus did not know what kind of power level gain they might have. Brutus was also wrong about the price of the red pills. They would be worth much more than 50 coins. A white pill would be worth 10 coins. A yellow pill would be worth 50 coins. An orange pill would be worth 500 coins. A red pill would be worth 10,000 coins. But what stopped someone from taking multiple lower color pills to substitute a higher color pill? Only one pill could be taken per 10 days. This made the values for higher color pills skyrocket at the purple and black level. Tai Lung and Brutus also learned where these rare colored beads came from. White through red came from the 1-1337 star range monsters, then the purple to black came from higher star monsters.

In the few days that Tai Lung worked at the Alchemist shop, the old man and his wife made deal with a trade caravan to sell their remaining stock so they could retire. Brutus was able to refine the rest of the spirit beads and the old woman occasionally switched with her husband to make them into pills. It would be a few more weeks until the caravan came to the village to pick up the pills. It did not take long for Tai Lung to build up a good amount of money, and 3 weeks later the alchemist closed the shop and officially retired. Tai Lung however did buy their alchemy materials from them. Tai Lung was able to use the money that Brutus had to buy a small house at the end of the village. but he could feel that Brutus now only had a few more coins. One month into arriving in the village, Tai Lung was at a power level of 689, and with it he would be able to fight 6 star monsters. Tai Lung went to the forest near the village and killed monsters and took their beads. Sometimes he would find a monster above 6 star, so he would let Brutus take control. Tai Lung was only able to get White and Yellow beads, and he was not sure what star the monster would have to be at to drop an orange bead. Tai Lung now had many hundreds of white pills and yellow pills, and every week he went to the general store to get more oil for the alchemy station. It was a few months after visiting the village that something disastrous happened.

"Go to the mines! Monster migration imminent!" Someone was yelling this late at night and was banging on the door to Tai Lung's home. "Monster migration?" Tai Lung said, but nobody answered him. Tai Lung put on his clothes and his sword and left the house. There were people in the road going two directions. One towards the forest and one towards the mine in the opposite direction. Tai Lung was not so much a good fighter as Brutus and he didn't know if heading to fight the monster migration would be against the rules, so he went to the mines. "Why were we told so late?" "I don't know, normally we should have heard about the migration a few days before it happened." Two people were talking ahead of Tai Lung. "Does this kind of thing happen often?" Tai Lung asked the people in front of him as he walked with them to the mines. "Every few months there might be a migration of monsters from the denser forest, but we usually hear about it a few days before it happens. It looks like this time the monsters got close without us knowing." "Are you going to protect us Tai Lung?" This was Shun Min, she was the only daughter of a miner in the village. When he was young, her father was a guard and met her mother when she traveled with a trade caravan. After a passionate night, she stayed in the village and died after giving birth to Shun Min. Shun Min's father then quit being a guard and got a job in the mine so he would not be in so much risk. Shun Min was with a friend of hers this night. "I brought my sword just in case." Tai Lung smiled and put his hand on the pommel of his sword. "Shun Min tells me that you make pills in your free time, does that mean you are too weak to fight monsters?" Shun Min's friend said this, looking at Tai Lung as if he lied to her. "I kill the monsters first and then make the pills from them, do you want a yellow pill I made myself?" Tai Lung reached into his bag and pulled out a handful of yellow pills. Tai Lung carried a few things on his whenever he left the house. His coins, a notepad and pencil, and a few hundred pills of each color. "Wow, that is a lot of yellow pills." Shun Min was looking at the pills as her friend reached out her hand. Neither of them had spirit animals, but they still knew the value of a yellow pill. Shun Min's friend took a pill and held it in front of Tai Lung's face. "I don't have a spirit animal, so what would I do with a spirit pill?" She was angry and threw the pill on the ground. "You could trade it for something." Brutus put the pills back into his bag and continued walking. In the distance they could all hear a roar from the forest. "We better hurry up." Shun Min said this and they all walked a little bit faster. They walked in silence for a few minutes with Shun Min's friend in the lead. "Why does your friend not like me?" Tai Lung asked Shun Min. He had never seen that person before and they already disliked him. "I think she had a bad run in with a spirit host and doesn't like them anymore." "Yeah, I've had similar experiences." Tai Lung remembered his time at the sect when he was ridiculed for having a weak spirit animal and how people with strong ones felt it was there right to attack people without them. "Tai Lung, what is your spirit animal?" Shun Min just asked Tai Lung. He had not told anyone in the village what his spirit animal was, but almost everyone knew he was a spirit host. There were only 2 other spirit host in the village not counting the alchemist, and they were both guards. Tai Lung knew that Shun Min knew he had a human spirit, she would not change her opinion of him very much, but others, especially other spirit host, would. This was probably a safe person though, so he told her. "I have a human spirit". Both Shun Min and her friend look at Tai Lung. "Isn't that like the worst one?" the friend asked. "Yeah, some people seem to think so." Shun Min looks at Tai Lung. "Don't human spirits take over the body?" "You can here pretty suddenly a few months back, are you the human spirit?" Both Shun Min and her friend shot accusing gazes at Tai Lung. "That's just the thing, I must have the laziest human spirit in the world, because he doesn't want to come out." They were still walking to the mines and Tai Lung wanted to make everything better before they got there. "So your spirit animal is impotent? That's too bad." The friend was looking at Tai Lung with a smug look now. She was happy that Tai Lung could not use his human spirit, because she did not like spirit animals. "But I heard that human spirits are really weak, how can you kill monsters and make pills if you have a weak spirit animal?" Shun Min was looking worried now. "I have no problem killing monsters when I shift into maximum overdrive!" Tai Lung laughed and Brutus came forth. Brutus punched the the air and a shock wave was felt by Shun Min and her friend. "Wow that is so strong Tai Lung!" Shun Min was exited with all the power she thought Tai Lung had, while her friend was cowering behind her. "That's not Tai Lung, that's the human spirit, a monster!" "That's right. I'm not Tai Lung. I am Human Spirit. I don't feel like staying long, so be quick." Shun Min was slightly flustered, but was able to get a question out. "Are you going to protect us human spirit?" Brutus looked at the girl and said with a straight face. "No. I am only going to protect Tai Lung's body." With that, Brutus went back inside the body and Tai Lung came forth. "And that was the human spirit... did he say something?" Shun Min was looking a little upset and her friend was still behind her. "Well we are almost at the mine, you should find your father Shun Min." "Uh, yeah." Shun Min and her friend ran off, occasionally looking back at Tai Lung.

Tai Lung stood inside the mine and could hear crashing on the outside. Dust came from the ceiling, but nobody thought it was going to collapse. A few more crashes outside and some rocks fell from the ceiling. It was going to collapse. Support beams started to break and people ran from the mine. Before Tai Lung got out though the whole thing collapsed. Brutus forcibly took over and used his ground enhancing to make a tunnel out of the mine for himself. He would touch rocks and they would melt and reform above him. Brutus made a one person wide tunnel to the exit and when he saw more people he went into Second Stage Spirit Mutation. Brutus put his hands in front of him pointing towards the mine and the fallen rocks turned to dust, then a fierce wind blew the dust into the sky and over the village. There were about 60 people outside the mine when it collapsed, and may more inside it. A few people had died from the rocks falling, but some survived. The villagers started running inside the mine to find survivors and Brutus turned to the outside. The area around them was swarming with monsters. A ring of 30 people was trying to hold them off, but the monsters were all over 30 star rank. Brutus went to Third Stage Spirit Mutation and took out his huge sword. While in Stage 3, all the equipment Tai Lung had would be stored inside the soul and Brutus would not need to worry about loosing it. Brutus walked through the crowd of villagers and then the line of guards and he pointed his sword at a monster. The monster jumped at Brutus but with a single slash the monster was cut in two. Brutus walked from monster to monster cutting them down with a single strike.

A few hours later everyone was outside the mine and looking at the piles of monster corpses that Brutus had made. Nobody had seen Brutus before, but they knew he came from inside the mine so he must have been a villager. Shun Min was in a deep part of the mine with her father when it collapsed so she was fine, but she was worried when she could not find Tai Lung anywhere. When she went outside the mine, she saw someone in magnificent armor and with a huge sword cutting down the hoard of monsters. It looked effortless, and when she remembered Tai Lung's human spirit, she though it might be him, but she did not know were the armor could have come from. When all the monsters had been killed some of them got as high as a 70 star monster. Brutus went into Second Stage Spirit Mutation and pulled his bag off his shoulder. He yelled to the villagers. "If you want to repay me for killing these, get the beads from inside the corpses and give them to me!" Brutus leaned over a monster corpse and thrust his hand into it, and then pulled out an orange bead. He put the bead into his bag and then went to another corpse and did the same. Slowly the other villagers came to help him, but they all needed to use blades to open the monsters up. Shun Min was looking at Brutus the whole time. She had seen that bag before, and although the clothes were a little torn, most likely from the cave in, it was Tai Lung's. Brutus finished picking up most of the yellow and orange beads and then went to his home.

Brutus was putting some extra things in his bag like the alchemy materials. He did not take the oil, but he took the equipment used for it. Then someone came into the house. "Is that you Tai Lung?" It was Shun Min. She was leaning inside the door and looking at Brutus. "I have to leave." Brutus said, not looking at Shun Min. "But we need you! I need you Tai Lung!" Shun Min was crying in the doorway and took a step inside and closed the door. "I am not Tai Lung anymore." "It doesn't matter if you are a human spirit, you are strong, so stay here." It is because I am strong that I must leave. Do not tell anyone that it was Tai Lung who was strong. If you or anyone else does, people will come for his life, and that is what I must prevent." Brutus finished putting stuff in his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "What would make you stay Human Spirit?" Shun Min said as she stepped further into the room. It had not been the first time someone did this kind of thing for his power, but she was doing it for his power and and another person. "I have nothing attaching me to this place, and when I take Tai Lung far away, he will lack the capabilities to get back. Say what ever you want to him now." Brutus went back inside and Tai Lung came forth. "Oh, hey Shun Min, talking to the human spirit?" Tai Lung had been out of his body for over 6 hours and only knew that whatever problem was facing the village was solved by Brutus. He was suddenly not in a mine, but in his house with all his things on his back, or at least all that would fit in his bag. "Don't leave Tai Lung, tell the human spirit to let you stay!" Shun Min was crying and ran forward to embrace Tai Lung. "I can try telling him, but he might not listen..." Tai Lung reached into his bag and felt more things than usual, so he took it off and started looking for the paper and pencil. "Just don't let him come out again. The human spirit cannot take over if you don't let it, so that is all you have to do." Tai Lung pulled out his paper. "I need to go to the table to write the note to the human spirit." Tai Lung said and pulled away from Shun Min. She looked at Tai Lung as he put the paper down and started writing. "My human spirit is not like others. He is the one with control, not me." "What?" Tai Lung was still writing and Shun Min stopped crying. She didn't know what to think about that. Human Spirits always try to take control and then not give it back, but they can only take control if the spirit host allows it or the spirit host goes unconscious. This does not include normal, planned sleep. "It's true, sometimes I feel like I am the human spirit, and he is the real me. If not for him addressing himself as a human spirit I would not know what to think." Tai Lung finished with the note and held it to his eyes. "Come forth, human spirit." Brutus took over, even though this was not the normal command, he knew something emotional was going on, and maximum overdrive did not have a place here. "Tai Lung..." Shun Min was worried about Tai Lung, and though she heard stories of spirit host and human spirits, she did not fully understand how they worked. "It's me, the human spirit. Quite while I read this." Brutus held out a hand while he read the note Tai Lung had left him. Shortly after starting to read, he finished and put it down. Shun Min was pouting in the center of the house as Brutus turned to her. "I will let Tai Lung stay-" Shun Min jumped forward and hugged Tai Lung's body. "-but, once the assassins come I am gone." It was a one sided hug as Brutus let Tai Lung take over again. "So what did he say?" Tai Lung asked as he looked at Shun Min, who was a little shorter than him. "He said you can stay." Shun Min smiled for the first time all morning.

The next day, or more exactly the same day after a sleeping a few hours, Tai Lung was approached by some people in the village. He was not found in the mine after the collapse, and the mysterious man collecting the beads had his bag. They put two and two together and reasoned that the mysterious man was Tai Lung's Second Stage Spirit Mutation. The first person that came to visit Tai Lung was the village elder. He was not a spirit host, but he still knew about the human spirit curse. "Tai Lung, you have been a member of this village for almost half a year, and you have already done a great service for us." Tai Lung had gotten two chairs for himself and the elder to sit in inside his house after putting all the things Brutus had collected back in their respective places. "It was all the human spirit, I just happened to be in the village when the migration happened." Tai Lung waved his hand at the village elder. "We all know the particulars of the human spirit, so we can only hope that you choose to stay in the village until we can get better guards." "Yes elder, I plan to stay for a while longer. For now, I have many beads that need to be made into pills, the revenue from which could help rebuild the village." Some houses and buildings were destroyed during the migration, but the orange pills could be sold in a city for a large amount of money, the pills from a single bead would go a long way in repairing a house. "I will let you continue your work them, Tai Lung." And then the village elder left Tai Lung's home. Brutus was the one that made the pills, but there was no stop to people coming by to thank him that day. Tai Lung left his home to get something to eat, and it was all on the house. Tai Lung ate a huge amount and then went home. It was going to be night soon, and Tai Lung hoped he could turn some of the beads into pills. Brutus made close to 300 orange pills and 800 yellow pills, and was at the end of his bead supply from the morning killing the monsters. It was a huge amount of monsters in the 30-70 star rank group that would take weeks of searching the forest to find the same number of. As he finished cleaning everything up and replacing the white beads in his bag with the orange ones, Tai Lung was interrupted by a knock at the door. Tai Lung opened it to see Shun Min standing there.

"Please, come in." Tai Lung said as he backed away from the door and pointed to some chairs he had in the corner of the room. People were visiting him all day so they were ready to receive a quest. "Alright." Shun Min walked inside but did not go to the chairs. "I'm here to give my thanks once more for helping the village and not leaving." Shun Min thanked Tai Lung many times that night and left sometime in the late morning. Tai Lung did almost the same thing every week for 2 months. He would make more pills, then kill monsters for their beads, then make more pills. Every few days though Shun Min would come by and they would spend time together. The spirit pills were the only thing Tai Lung was doing for money now, and still large amount of money was being given to the village elder to rebuild. Tai Lung did not know, however, that some people in the village did not like him. They were people who had family die before Brutus did anything to stop the monsters. In their eyes, he was responsible. It took 2 months from the time of the monster migration for the disgruntled villagers to do something. Tai Lung was walking with Shun Min in the evening and holding hands when he felt something inside his heart he had not felt ever before. It was ~~love~~ an arrow. Tai Lung fell down as Shun Min looked shocked. She knew Tai Lung was strong, but this was a surprise attack from behind. There was no defense for this. Shun Min screamed and grabbed a hold of Tai Lung, but he pushed her away. Brutus had taken over now. Brutus looked behind him and saw someone on the roof of a house. Brutus held out his hand and a huge stone spike erupted. The man on the roof with a bow was cut in half and each half was sent into the sky before coming down. Brutus pulled the arrow out from his chest and massaged the hole it left. Tai Lung would die from such a wound, but Brutus would be able to regenerate, so he waited until it healed so that he would live and let Tai Lung take over.

"Ah!" Tai Lung fell to the ground in pain. It was the pain of having a hole in his heart fixed just enough to stop blood from pouring out, but each beat hurt like nothing before. "Tai Lung!" Shun crouched next to Tai Lung and put her hands on him. Tai Lung was in a huge amount of pain and blacked out after a few seconds. Shun Min was yelling in the road for help as people gathered around. "What happened!" Someone asked who came from a house. "He was shot in the heart with an arrow!" Shun Min cried as she held onto the still Tai Lung. There was blood over Tai Lung's clothes and the ground, so something did hit him, but the arrow looked like it bounced off. "We need to get the healer, quick!" Someone else who had heard that ran away to get a healer. They carried Tai Lung to the village healer and people slowly gathered. Outside the healer's house, people were also gathering at the spike Brutus had made, and the two halves of the assassin's body which were cut by it. "Did he make this?" One of the people said. They touched the spike and it was solid stone, make on the top of a houses roof. "Human spirit can't have an elemental ability." One of the villagers shook their head. The stone spike was too dense to be broken by anyone, so for the next half week while the Tai Lung was asleep the spike stayed on the roof of the house. Many rumors started to go around the village about how Tai Lung was shot in the heart, and Shun Min's to blame. Some said he pulled the arrow from his heart and threw it back at the assassin so hard it cut him in half. Others said the arrow bounced off him and then he used a spirit energy attack to kill the assassin. Nobody believed that he made the spike, because Human Spirits just can't do that kind of thing.

Tai Lung woke up in the healers house and was instantly greeted by Shun Min. "How long was I asleep for?" Tai Lung asked Shun Min, who was the only one in the room. "Just 9 days." "Wow." Tai Lung grabbed his chest with his right hand, right over the spot he was hit with the arrow. "The human spirit can be a real jerk, coming out to deal with the immediate problem and then letting you deal with all the pain." "It's better than being dead..." Tai Lung dropped his arm and looked at the ceiling. "But we have a problem." "What is it?" Tai Lung looked at Shun Min. He did not know what the problem was that she was talking out, surely she was not worried about more assassins. "The human spirit said he would take you away after the first assassin." Tai Lung and Shun Min were silent for a few minutes looking at each other, then Tai Lung spoke. "I'm not gone yet." "But I will be soon." Brutus had forcibly taken over and was now speaking. "What?" Shun Min was shocked, she thought she was still speaking to Tai Lung. "It is clear you have an emotional attachment to Tai Lung, so I will allow you to come with us when we leave in 3 days." "Wait what?" Shun Min came closer to Tai Lung's body, but Brutus had already left. "wait what, what?" Tai Lung returned the question because he did not know what she was yelling about. "I think the human spirit just said he is leaving in 3 days, and I can come." "So that's how it is... I will have to leave in 3 days then, but do you want to come with me?" Tai Lung looked at the ceiling and then over at Shun Min. "i'll come with you." Shun Min said as she leaned over and kissed Tai Lung.

The next 3 days were spent with Tai Lung taking medicine every 12 hours to reduce the pain from his heart wound. Random people were apologizing to him and others were snaring. The village was split between people that wanted him to stay to protect them and people that wanted him to leave because his power was scary and untrusted. Tai Lung met with Shun Min's father a few times in the past, and he was exactly what he expected, a huge burly man with dirt all over him. Shun Min's father fondly remembered the days he spent with Shun Min's mother in the village, and though Shun Min would be doing the opposite of what her mother did, traveling instead of settling down, he accepted her decision. Shun Min and Tai Lung said goodbye to everyone in the village, sometimes together and sometimes separately, and then they both left with whatever Tai Lung could carry. There was another village just a few days walk away, and they might be able to buy horses there. "What kind of town do you want to live in Shun Min?" Tai Lung asked Shun Min after they had been on the road for a few minutes. "I have never left the village before, so I was thinking something out of a forest, maybe in some plains or on a mountain." Shun Min looked at the sky. Not many people left the village except to buy food from the neighboring village. In Shun Min's village, the produced wood and ore. In the neighboring village that had many farms for crops and live stock.