Chương 21

They reached the edge of the village of Miaoling at dusk. The trees thinned and the trail opened onto a dirt road that led between the first buildings. The sun hung low behind them, stretched their shadows long across the packed earth, painted the sky in shades of copper and ash. It was silent as a graveyard. Homes lined the road, simple structures of wood and plaster with gray tile roofs. Doors stood open. Shutters hung crooked on rusted hinges.

Weeds had pushed through the gaps between paving stones and climbed the walls. Lodin stopped at the threshold of the nearest house and looked inside. A table stood in the center of the room, set for a meal. There were four bowls, four cups, and four pairs of chopsticks. The bowls held something black and crusted, the remains of food that had rotted where it sat. Flies had come and gone. Dust had settled over everything. A pot hung above a cold hearth, its bottom scorched dry.

No one had cleared this table or washed these dishes. Their dinner had been interrupted by something. Lodin stepped back from the threshold and moved down the road, and Dae Han and Shin followed a few paces behind. The next house was worse. Its door hung from a single hinge, the frame splintered where something had forced it inward. Through the gap Lodin saw a room in ruins: table overturned, chairs smashed to kindling, shards of pottery scattered across the floor.

Brown stains marked the wood beneath the debris, old blood dried to the color of rust. The road bore witness to what had happened here. A broken hoe lay in the dirt, its wooden handle snapped clean. Claw marks gouged the posts of a fence, four parallel lines deep enough to expose pale wood beneath the weathered surface. A single sandal sat in the middle of the path, small enough for a child's foot. Lodin stopped. His gaze fixed on that sandal. Cold spread through his chest.

He thought of the family at the first house, the meal still set on their table. Whoever had worn this sandal had been taken somewhere, and had never returned. He forced his eyes up and scanned the rest of the scene. Handprints marked the plaster wall of a nearby house, fingers splayed, pointed away from the village center as if someone had braced against that surface while unseen hands hauled them toward the square. The prints had dried brown and crusted.

"Interesting plague," Dae Han said.

"I've never seen a sickness that kicks in doors, have you?" Shin said nothing, but his jaw clenched. Above them, crows circled. Dozens of black shapes traced lazy arcs against the copper sky, silent, their eyes on the three men below. There were more of them now than had followed on the road, more than had watched from the shrine at the fork. Lodin's hands curled into fists at his sides.

"Let's go," he said, and walked toward the village center.

"The qi here is corrupted." Shin said.

"Demonic taint. It has seeped into the land itself." Lodin felt it now that Shin had named it. The air pressed heavy and cold against his skin despite the season. Insects and birds had fled this place. Nothing stirred. The weeds that choked the road had grown yellowed and twisted, their stems bent at angles that made no natural sense. Even the earth looked sick. Drag marks scored the dirt beneath their feet. More of them here, and all led the same direction. Toward the center. The road opened onto a village square.

And a pit. It dominated the center of the square, thirty feet across, its depths lost in shadow. Stone tablets ringed its circumference, carved with formation script that Lodin could not read. Copper braziers stood at eight cardinal points around the pit, cold and black with old stains. Posts had been driven into the earth at regular intervals, and rusted nails jutted from the wood where paper talismans hung in tatters. Lodin approached the edge and looked down. His stomach lurched.

The pit held human remains, piled atop one another in a tangle of bones and burnt flesh. All charred black, cloth and skin fused to the skeleton beneath. The bodies were not whole. Limbs had been separated from torsos. Skulls lay detached from spines. Hundreds of people, reduced to a jumble of blackened parts. Dae Han crouched at the pit's edge. His one good eye traced the formation lines, moved from symbol to symbol on the stone tablets.

"Ritual array," he said. His voice was flat.

"The villagers were rounded up and sacrificed." Shin stood rigid at Lodin's shoulder. His hands had clenched into fists, and the skin of his knuckles had taken on a metallic sheen. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Lodin stared down at the charred remains. He thought of the first house, the meal still set on the table. He thought of the child's sandal in the road. These were those people. The families, the children, everyone who had lived here.

The lotus mark on the opium vial surfaced in his memory. The same symbol Elder Dian had shown him. The same people who had taken Lorn. Lodin glanced up, noticed the crows that had circled since the village edge were gone. A cold prickle crawled up the back of his neck. There was a crack in the distance. Rooftiles shattered somewhere behind them. The crash echoed across the square, followed by another, closer. Something heavy had landed on the rooftops. His head snapped toward the sound.

Dae Han and Shin had already moved, spread apart to either side of the pit, their stances low and ready. There was another crash and cascade of broken tiles. Whatever it was moved fast, bounded from roof to roof, closed on the square with each leap. Lodin tracked the sound and settled deeper into his stance. It cleared the last rooftop and dropped into the square. The ground shook from that landing, and dust billowed outward from the huge figure in a grey cloud.

Thick curved horns crowned a leonine head, its mane dark and shaggy. White fire burned in its eyes, and ghost-flame curled between fangs the length of daggers. That head belonged to a burly, apelike body, fifteen feet of muscle clad in deep blue fur that paled across the chest and belly. Arms as thick as tree trunks ended in two huge hands with claws like the talons of a dragon. A long tail lashed behind it, its tip covered in barbs and wreathed in white flame.

The demon roared and the sound hit him like a wall, shook dust from the ruins around the square. Lodin raised his fists. But Akiyama Shin moved first. His cloak swept from his shoulders in a single motion and his body shifted into its soulsteel form as it fell. Silver-grey crept across his flesh, spread from his fingertips inward, across his forearms, up to his shoulders. Within a heartbeat he stood transformed, every inch of exposed skin turned to living metal.

"Demon!" The word tore from his throat. The demon's eyes fixed on him. Its head reared back and ghost-fire gathered in its throat, white and cold, pale light shining out in rays from its mouth, eyes, and ears, as if its head were a lantern. Then it breathed. The flame poured forth in a torrent. It moved almost like water, a cascade of white qi that flowed and rippled and curled upon itself. The edges rolled like waves against a shore, but where they touched, stone burnt and blackened and wood burst into flame.

The torrent swept across the square and swallowed Shin whole, washed over him like a burning wave. Shin stood his ground. His soulsteel body glowed orange, cherry-red in places, the color of metal fresh from a forge. Steam rose from his skin. He was untouched. And just as Lodin had seen before, the glow covering Shin's body began to move. It flowed inward from his limbs, gathered in his chest, climbed his throat. His jaw dropped open and a beam of concentrated fire-qi erupted from his mouth.

The beam punched through the demon's torso and out the other side, leaving a hole the size of a barrel gaped in its chest, wide enough to see the ruined buildings beyond. Black ichor sprayed across the flagstones. The demon staggered. For a moment there was silence. Then the flesh began to knit. Strands of muscle and sinew reached across the gap. The wound closed from the edges inward, black tissue over black tissue, until nothing remained but unmarked fur. The demon grinned at them, fangs wet with drool.

Maybe it had some resistance to fire qi. Only one way to find out. Lodin crossed the distance in a flash and brought down an overhand right that caved the demon's rib cage inward. Bone shattered beneath his knuckles, and the force of the blow lifted the creature off its feet. The demon struck the flagstones fifteen feet back, and cracks raced outward from the point of impact like veins through marble. The demon lay on its side, its torso sunken where the ribs had collapsed. Then the flesh moved.

Ribs snapped back into place one at a time, each one a wet crack that echoed across the square. The dent in its torso filled outward, muscle and fur and skin sealed over in a ripple that started at the edges and raced toward the center. Ghost-flame flickered along the seams. In the space of two heartbeats the demon's side looked as if Lodin had never touched it. The demon rose again, rolled its shoulders and bounded at Lodin with a swipe of its dao-sized claws.

Lodin ducked and the claws passed over his head, close enough to stir his hair. He came up with a left hook that crashed into the demon's flank, followed by a right cross to the same spot. The demon's other hand came around in a backhand swipe and Lodin slipped left. Its tail lashed at his legs and he hopped the sweep and answered with an uppercut that snapped the demon's head back. He fell into a rhythm.

The demon threw claws and bites and tail swipes, and Lodin wove between them, slipped and ducked and sidestepped, his feet never still. Each opening he found, he punished. His fists hammered the demon's body in flurries of three and four and five, cracked ribs, left fist-sized welts, rattled its skull with head shots whenever the opportunity presented itself. Shin fought on the demon's other side, with an altogether different strategy. Where Lodin flowed, Shin planted.

He stood his ground and met the demon's attacks head-on, took claws on his soulsteel forearms with a ring like struck iron. Each impact made him glow brighter. Each counter he threw landed harder than the last. Between them they battered the demon from both sides. But the damage never seemed to amount to anything. Dae Han circled at the edge of the fight, his presence faint, his movements quiet. When the demon's back turned to him, his jian flashed out. The blade opened a cut across the demon's shoulder.

Black ichor welled up in the wound, but the cut sealed shut before Dae Han could strike again. As the fight ground on, it became clearer to Lodin that they were not getting anywhere. Cracked bones reset themselves. Lacerations knit themselves together. Every wound they opened on this demon's body closed within seconds, sealed by sizzles of ghost-flame. A claw raked toward Lodin's skull. He ducked but the follow-up came faster, a backhand swipe that caught him mid-weave.

The claws scraped across his forearm and skipped off the skin with a screech like metal on stone. The demon's jaws gaped wide, right in front of him. Ghost-flame gathered in its throat. Then a throwing knife buried itself in the demon's left eye. The socket burst in a spray of white fire and black ichor. The demon's head wrenched to the side and the blast of ghost-flame went wide, scorched a line across the flagstones ten feet from where Lodin stood.

Kang Dae Han stood at the edge of the square, arm still extended from the throw. The demon's tail lashed out and its barbed tip caught Dae Han across the chest and launched him backward. He flew twenty feet, struck the rim of the pit, and crumpled against the stone. His jian clattered from his grip. He did not rise. The demon bounded toward him on all fours, ghost-flame still leaking from its ruined socket as the flesh began to knit.

It reached Dae Han in three strides, reared up on its hind legs, jaws wide, fangs poised above his throat. Lodin bolted for Dae Han with all the power his legs could muster.