While her Connected Ones moved to surround Ash Forest, Tianlan was busy repairing her Dragon Veins. Tianlan’s connection to Ash Forest had been tenuous at best since Bi De visited, and the pressure put on it at the solstice had all but obliterated that line, along the primary pathway in the formation; it would take years to go through that area. So they just went around it. It did take a bit of finagling, worming her way through smaller offshoots of her system that had survived, and circling around further west to patch herself through. The connection was… rough. Tianlan choked back a groan of pain—it was like suddenly becoming aware of an extra limb. And that limb had about fifty knives stabbed into it. Her Connected Ones took some of the burden for her, Jin’s and Meiling’s steps stuttering as they felt it. The damage was far more extensive than she had been expecting; there were pools of her blood everywhere. Most felt like pools run dry, the remaining energy gone and the veins deflated. But enough were still pumping out her Qi. She spread out and took stock of the damage, when she noticed one of the pools near the center of Ash Forest draining. Normally she wouldn’t have noticed, her senses still not one hundred percent, but it was like something directed her attention towards the drain. That was where the hornets had driven the Blaze Bears from… and that meant it was drinking her blood. It was something she couldn't really do anything about directly. She couldn’t just (...)