Chương 30

The wild-eyed woman looked between Dae Han and Shin.

"Your friend is buried down there," she said.

"He is dead then," said Akiyama Shin. Dae Han rubbed his chin.

"With that one, I wouldn't be so sure." The woman scoffed at them and went back to hurling huge chunks of stone over their heads, in an attempt to excavate down into the collapsed hillside. How far down she intended to dig, Dae Han had no idea. But since the owner of the information he'd come here for appeared to be at the bottom of the rock pile, he shrugged his shoulders and gave her a hand. The work was brutal and graceless.

Dae Han pried stones loose and rolled them down the slope while the woman tore into the rubble above him, her bare hands closed around slabs of rock that should have required a cart and mule and a team of workers to shift. Dust caked her arms to the elbows. Sweat cut channels through the gray powder on her face and neck. She moved with a frantic, animal urgency that left no room for conversation. Dae Han tried anyway.

"You have a name?" She hurled a boulder twice the size of a man's torso over the lip of the crater. It crashed into the rubble below and split in two.

"Busy," she said. Dae Han glanced at the feathered cloak she had tossed aside. It had a mantle of black crow feathers. Perhaps it was no coincidence, then, that hundreds of crows perched in a silent ring on the remnants of the compound wall, their black eyes fixed on the woman below. None of them moved, or made any noises. Very normal crow behavior. He filed that away and kept digging.

After a few moments Akiyama Shin doffed his cloak, stored it in his storage ring, and joined in the excavation with some reluctance. He kept glancing at the woman while they worked, suspicion evident on his face. But he said nothing, so for a time they worked in silence. Then the ground shook. A deep pulse rolled through the hillside, shifted the rubble beneath their feet. Pebbles bounced and skittered downslope, and an alarmingly deep crack appeared in a slab of stone near Dae Han's left foot.

All three of them stopped. Dae Han looked at the woman. She looked at Shin. Shin looked at the ground. The crows on the wall ruffled their feathers and went still. The second impact drove Dae Han's heel two inches into the loose stone. The sound was louder, a sharp crack buried inside the bass rumble, and the rubble pile lurched as if something large within it had rolled over. A section of the compound's outer wall, the last piece still vertical, tilted and fell with a crash that sent fragments across the crater.

The third impact split the hill. Dae Han felt it in his spine before he heard it, a detonation that punched upward through hundreds of tons of stone and shook the ground so hard his vision blurred. Cracks raced across the rubble in every direction, jagged black lines that widened as he watched. The slope beneath his feet began to slide.

"Move!" he yelled. The three of them leapt backward, just in time to observe the entire hillside collapsing. The remains of the Shattered Summit Sect compound folded inward. The crater swallowed itself in a cascade of dust and debris that billowed down the hillside in a gray curtain. They landed at the treeline as the dust wall swept over them. Gray fog swallowed the hill, the slope, and the night sky. Dae Han pulled his cloak over his nose and squinted through it. For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then a silhouette moved in the haze. A tall one, with broad shoulders. It walked upright, in no special hurry. The shape drew closer and the dust thinned around it, and it was Lodin, his yellow hair caked gray, bare chest smeared with blood and grime. He stopped in front of the three of them. His jaw was set and his gaze was distant.

"I found him," he said.

"But he's gone again." - - - - If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Lodin and the others cleaned themselves off, sat down over a small campfire, and listened to him explain what happened down there. Sarin Jeida sat to his left, hugging her legs, her knees to her chest, feathered cloak draped over her shoulders. Her crows had settled in the trees around them, and were as quiet as all else in attendance.

Akiyama Shin sat cross-legged to his right, at a notable distance from Sarin Jeida, back straight, fists rested on his knees. His jaw was set, his posture rigidly upright. Kang Dae Han reclined across from the fire with his kasa tipped low and his legs stretched out in front of him. His one good eye gazed into the flame, and his fingers drummed a slow, absent rhythm against his knee. Of the three listeners, he alone looked at ease. For a short while it was quiet. The fire crackled.

Crows shook the dust from their wings.

"What you described, especially that statue, suggests they were training to do something in the lower levels of Tianlong Castle," Sarin Jeida said, without taking her eyes off the fire.

"It seems you were the last item on their preparedness checklist. You arrived here and they buried you and left. It wouldn't surprise me if we returned to the city now and found that the castle had come under attack."

"I have to separate Lorn from that thing," Lodin said. Dae Han reached into his cloak, produced a pipe and some tobacco. He smirked across the fire at Lodin as he began to pack the pipe's bowl.

"Soul surgery's a little more exacting than punching through a mountain."

"Then I'll find out how it's done. Or find a surgeon."

"I think you'll have more success with the second approach," said Dae Han, as he put away the tobacco pouch and lit his pipe. He took a long pull from it, exhaled a plume of smoke and leaned back to look up at the moon.

"Not that it'll be easy either way."

"Doesn't matter," Lodin said. Sarin Jeida smiled at those words. She leaned in closer to Lodin, and the firelight lit her face.

"The creature your brother is bonded to has been here since the city was founded," she said.

"Huihun is old. Older than any sect in Dragon's Rest, older than the governor's seat." She pulled her knees up and rested her chin on them.

"For centuries it's guided demonic cultivators in this city. Taught them. Accepted their worship. It built a network of people it could act through, hands and eyes in the physical world. The group isn't exactly a sect, but it has a name nonetheless. The Burning Lotus." The fire popped. A crow shifted on its branch overhead.

"All those pawns were essential for Huihun, until your brother came along." Her voice dropped.

"For the first time ever, the dragon doesn't need them. It can act through Lorn as if his body were its own." Lodin's fists tightened. Across the fire, Akiyama Shin glared at her.

"You reek of demon blood," he said. His voice was level, but the muscles in his arms and neck stood taut as wire.

"I do not even have to ask how you know this. You are the enemy. You are a demonic cultivator yourself." Sarin grinned at him, and the reflection of the fire flickered in her eyes.

"You're right," she said. She reached into her cloak and produced a small badge of lacquered wood. Gold leaf stamped its face in the shape of an open eye beneath a crown. She held it up between two fingers and let them inspect it.

"I'm also Eyes of Heaven. Sarin Jeida, Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations and Persons, pleased to meet you." Shin's face went white. Dae Han chuckled. Lodin's eyebrows rose.

"You told me you came to help," Lodin said.

"Was that you talking, or your bosses? Why would the Eyes of Heaven give a shit about me?" She leaned back a little, gave him a subtle, inviting smile.

"To your first question, a little of both," she said.

"As for the second… You're now officially a person of interest in the Huihun case. It was only a matter of time before they sent someone after you. Luckily you got me." Lodin held her gaze, and something swelled in his chest. His pulse ticked up a notch, but he kept his face still.

"Lucky me," he said. Then he looked over at Dae Han and Shin.

"You were following me around because you wanted to know how my build works," he said to Dae Han.

"Now you know. So why are you still here." Dae Han puffed his pipe.

"For whatever other opportunities to profit arise in your wake," he said.

"A wake which, I imagine, is about to get a lot more turbulent." His tone was cavalier, but there was something warm in it. As if he were trying to say he just wanted to help, without actually saying it. He turned his attention to Akiyama Shin.

"And you're following me around because you want to make sure we finish our fight." Shin met Lodin's steely gaze with one of his own.

"That can wait. You are engaged now in a battle with malefactors who poison and degrade the Jianghu. Through me, the Steel Serpent Sect will see your task done." Lodin looked at the fire. The flames had burned low, and the coals beneath them pulsed orange and white. He watched them for a moment, his jaw set, his hands loose on his knees.

"Alright," he said.

"If you're all in, then what are your thoughts on what to do next."

"Huihun won't let go of your brother without a fight," Sarin said.

"This is the only time in the history of Dragon's Rest he's had the ability to take direct action in the physical world. It will have to be a forcible separation. But if Huihun refuses to let go, even if his destruction is certain, he may take Lorn with him." Lodin's gaze hardened.

"Seems like the logical thing to do would be to consult an expert in soul cultivation," said Dae Han. Shin stared into the fire, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Elder Wa." Lodin looked at Shin.

"Know anything about him?"

"Only that he is the master of the Beast Court of Huidao, and that he prefers to be left alone." Dae Han made a face.

"Not ideal. It might also be worth looking into the technique that created Huihun in the first place, the God-Slaying Threefold Cut." Lodin nodded.

"That might be the best way to sever Lorn from Huihun."

"If it's executed properly," said Sarin.

"This entire situation came about because the technique wasn't done right the first time. There's also the issue of finding someone who actually knows the technique, beside the dearly departed Jin Shenlei." The way she said, 'dearly departed' made Lodin raise an eyebrow.

"Well, all the same, learning about the technique might be useful, even if we can't find anyone who knows how to do it." Sarin Jeida leaned back against the tree behind her, looked up at the night sky.

"Both of those seem like threads worth pursuing. But after those comes the task of locating your brother again. Whatever happens with their caper in the city, he's likely to go to ground afterward."

"We can go back to my list, if needed," said Lodin. Sarin's eyebrow rose.

"List?" Dae Han smirked.

"He has a list of all the demonic cultivators in Dragon's Rest. He said his mom made it for him."

"What?!" She yelled it loud enough to startle a few of her own crows, who fluttered off as Dae Han laughed.