The ground grew dark, smooth and hardened as Li Meirong travelled further away from the scene of the blast. Vegetation gradually replaced itself with obsidian rocks, scattered across the barren earth. Ashes drizzled from high above, shrouding the surface in a dusty grey haze.
Li Meirong feared for her little plant, knowing he was vulnerable to extreme heat and flames above all things. She hid Chou in her sleeve, having lost her pouch as well as the rest of her belongings, as she ran for her life from the Fire Drake's attack.
Her progress was halted by a spine chilling sight. She had reached the edge of the volcano.
A wall of blackness, dry and stiff molten rock, stretched upwards almost perfectly vertical. Squinting up at the top of the smoking mountain, Li Meirong spotted something white and limp hanging off the volcano's mouth. That had to be the fox cub's tail!
Even dirtied grey with ash, his brilliant fur still stood out like a flicker of light in the dark. She concluded from the tail's motionlessness that he must be unconscious, the poor thing. And so she had no choice but to climb up to him, despite her exhaustion, as well as her better judgement against climbing volcanic walls.
Throwing caution to the wind, she reached for a protrusion in the wall. It was hard to get a good grip, the rock was warm and crumbly. She hoisted herself up as quickly and carefully as she dared, groping around for the next bump in the surface she could grab hold of.
'Master, please let's go back. That crazy guy from the jungle is waiting for Master to get up there, and there is very little Chou can do to help Master here! How about we find Master a new fox instead? One that would not think of eating Master or killing Chou. How about that?'
The plant was right, of course. This was definitely a trap, her seniors had told her as much. She could only assume that while the explosion occurred, that vile Jiangshi Master had nabbed her little Snowball, somehow incapacitated him and then placed him up there as bait for her, knowing she wouldn't be able to leave him to die.
'I can't just leave him here!' she thought determinedly.
'Even after five years together, Chou finds Master impossible to understand. Sometimes Master acts like the most cowardly person Chou has ever met, and then Master suddenly decides it is fine to jump into molten fiery lava! Chou can't handle all this stress!'
"Chou, it's very -unh!- simple," Li Meirong grunted as she tried to place her foot on a rock that crumbled away, nearly causing her to fall, "when you can avoid trouble, avoid trouble. But if you accept responsibility for someone," she found a good foothold and pushed herself up, grabbing for the next sturdy surface, "you must follow through at all costs!"
The wall was beginning to burn her hands, heating up to scalding temperatures the higher she climbed. She could feel blisters beginning to form on her palms, beads of sweat rolling down her forehead and back. Her voice cracked from the dry hot air she breathed.
Chou could think of nothing to respond to that. He still didn't understand, and was left to conclude that his master had suicidal tendencies.
What Chou didn't know was it was Li Meirong's previous life that had shaped this particular philosophy. She knew what it was like to be discarded by her nearest and dearest, left to fend for herself at a very young age. Her parents may have always provided her with a roof over her head and enough money to get by, but their jobs always seemed to be more important to them than actually raising her. She hardly even knew them at all. She had no one to wipe her tears when she got hurt, no one to take her to her first day of school. No warm meals were waiting for her when she got back home.
Only her grandmother, with whom she had a precious few years as a child before she passed away, was something of a maternal figure to her. Grandmother had taught her how to be self sufficient, for she too knew well what it was like to live life alone.
Her failed relationships in later years were a further reflection of her abandonment. After falling in love with a person who ended up cheating on her, she was never able to fully invest herself in another person again. Distrust and emotional detachment were the themes of every relationship since, as her means of protecting herself from giving too much of herself and having her heart broken yet again. Naturally, none of those connections lasted for very long.
She took comfort in her house pets, the fluffy cats she'd adopted keeping her loneliness at bay. Animals seemed to have a sense of loyalty and gratitude that was so often missing from most humans she'd ever encountered. Those were clear and simple relationships, and the only kind she knew how to handle.
And so now, when the wounded, bloodied and unconscious little Snowball needed her help, would she turn her back on him, as the rest of both worlds had done repeatedly to her?
'No way!'
She was so close. She could almost reach out and touch his tail, but not quite. Ignoring the pain in her hands, she felt around for one last hold to hoist herself up to the top, but sadly, the rest of the wall was nothing but a smooth, burning surface. Then an idea popped into her head.
"Chou, see if you can grab Snowball with your vines, then I can jump down and we'll get out of here."
'Alright! Anything to get Master to leave this place.' Chou replied, instantly stretching out his vines to encircle the vile fox that had somehow latched onto his stupid master's heart. However, just as he touched the creature's fur, a sharp and excruciating pain caused the plant to scream. One of his vines had been sliced clean off.
"Chou! Fall back, now!!" Li Meirong yelled, having witnessed what had happened.
Chou's agonized cries echoed in her mind. The pain of the pitcher plant losing one of its vines was equal to that of a human losing an arm or a leg. He did as he was told and retracted what was left of his vines back into her sleeve. Li Meirong felt terrible for him, all of her confidence suddenly shaken. It hadn't occurred to her, that the fact that she herself was willing to suffer through any hardship to help the poor creature might end up harming another one of her dear pets, and that was the last thing she wanted.
"I'm so sorry, Chou. Let me handle this and I'll take care of you as soon as we're home." She said, her voice suffering from a slight tremble.
'Chou will rest now and try to regrow the lost vine…' The plant spirit's voice seemed to become softer and softer, until finally, Li Meirong felt his consciousness disconnect from hers.
Still hanging off the side of the volcano's mouth, unable to pull herself up that small remaining stretch of hot rock, she found herself at quite a loss for what to do next. She didn't have long to think about it, however, before she witnessed a mass of swirling smoke condensed into the shape of a tall, frightening yet handsome man. He stood right behind Snowball, eyeing her with a triumphant, toothy grin stretched across his deathly pale features.
"I knew you would come."