Chương 49: B2 Interlude 2

"We're trapped." Hao Luoyang was getting tired of stating the obvious, but someone had to do it. Three times, they had left the abandoned village. Once by the path itself. Once by taking the path, then immediately pressing off it into the woods. And once simply choosing a direction, and forcing their way through the thick brush. Each time, their steps had lead them unfailingly back to the ruined courtyard, and the body of the Shadestalker Wolf. Disciple Ying nodded, his face emotionless.

"An illusory formation of some kind."

"Are you certain? What if it's bending space?" Disciple Hao asked. He knew very little about formations, but he didn't quite see how an illusion could continually bring them back around. Surely if they closed their eyes and ears, and simply walked straight ahead, they could walk out of any illusion. Or at least crash into a different tree. To his surprise, Disciple Ying chuckled darkly. He pulled his skinning knife from his belt, and twirled it idly.

"Junior brother, if this formation can manipulate spatial laws, we should just save ourselves trouble and slit our own throats. Not even the Azure Mountain's elders can do that. Maybe Asura's Chains, but not any of the others. That is the territory of Grand Elders and Patriarchs. Nascent Soul, at minimum." Disciple Hao shivered. That was a terrifying thought.

"But, how is it better for us, if it is an illusion?"

"Even if neither of us possess the arts to dispel an illusion, any formation has weaknesses. We just need to find them." That wasn't exactly an answer to Disciple Hao's question. But he wasn't going to press his senior brother if he didn't know.

"Come on," Disciple Ying continued.

"Let's search together. Even if there are no true formation flags here, there must be something placed to shape this much qi. Graven bones, the corpses of small birds, even just claw marks in the wood or places that are colder than they should be. Keep your senses sharp, and tell me if you see anything out of the ordinary."

"Of course, senior brother." Hao Luoyang silently berated himself for not reading more. He'd spent a year with access to all the texts of the Azure Mountain Sect, and what had he learned about formations? Nothing! There was always more to learn, and never enough time to learn it. As it was, he had barely met the sect's expectations of his cultivation.

He'd broken through to the third stage of Qi Condensation a mere month before the deadline of a year, securing an invitation from the Division of Internal Affairs to remain with the sect. And he still hadn't made the fourth stage, despite making it near his sole focus for a year. How was he to surmount the remaining six stages before he could seek the title of daoist at this rate? The plan had been good. Disciple Ying knew his business.

The spirit beast's victims had all been elderly mortals, and they'd run down every angle, every possibility, before they finally struck. Disciple Hao pressed his tongue against the top of his mouth, and breathed out through his nose. Found calm in the middle of his fury. This wasn't his first time riding out the complications of a plan that should have been foolproof. The only question was what did he do now? What was his angle? How did he survive?

"What if it's a ghost?" He needed to know more. And he didn't have the sect's resources here, only Disciple Ying.

"The matter would be much the same, except we'd at least know the originator of the illusion is in here with us. We would need to kill, or exorcise it. Without an exorcism art, we would either need to use overwhelming force to destroy whatever anchors its resentment here, or to resolve the grievance that created it."

"But who would set such a trap in the middle of nowhere, if not a ghost?" Disciple Ying shrugged, then bent down to examine a slightly discolored cobblestone.

"Demons." He said tersely, prying the stone from the earth with his knife to examine the underside.

"This close to the sect?" Disciple Hao couldn't believe it. But he wasn't sure if that was because it was truly implausible, or if he'd allowed himself to go soft, to feel safe.

"Why not?" Disciple Ying continued in an even tone, as if discussing the weather.

"There was a predatory spirit beast this close to the sect. To say nothing of that bear in the sect itself. We're off the Azure Mountain proper. Beyond the senses and quick reach of the elders. I do not think it beyond the bounds of the possible, for a demon to hunt this close to the sect. It probably won't be some ancient monster, but plenty of lesser cultivators practice dark arts."

"But why here? It doesn't make any sense, who would they seek to catch? Unless the whole thing was a trap, the wolf a tamed beast?" Disciple Ying shook his head.

"Unlikely. Too many disparate arts for one young demon, and they are not known for cooperation. Either way, it does not change what we need to do." Disciple Hao fell silent, and joined him in searching in earnest. Hao Luoyang had once heard of places described as having a desolate aura. He'd never really understood the idea. In Huangshi, there were some abandoned homes and warehouses in the districts outside the city's walls. But even they had a sort of life to them.

Nobody lived there, or kept things of value there, but a dozen different groups might make use of the facility for one reason or another. A wealthy merchant would stop by with an official occasionally, claiming some nonsensical hardship as a reason his tax obligations ought to be lower. Teenagers would claim the building for a night to drink and revel, and beggars would seek warmth there in the depths of winter.

Sometimes, street gangs or black societies would evict the current inhabitants, and make use of the facilities for grimmer purposes. This dead place had none of that life beneath the surface. Every stone was a monument to a time long passed. Tools, weathered by disuse, but still theoretically serviceable with a little care, littered the grounds. In a city, they would have been snatched up immediately, no matter how cursed the grounds seemed.

Disciple Hao's eyes alighted on a wooden doll, a crack stretching across it's length. The part of him that had never left the streets of Huangshi immediately began to tally up its resale value. A little straw to replace its hair, and it'd easily fetch three or four coppers. The tools were a better value. More work to repair, but new dolls fetched far more than old. Anyone who could waste money on dolls had enough coin to want new ones.

Unfortunately, none of the objects he examined showed any sign of writing, dried blood, or strange qi fluctuations.

"The very ground feels cursed." Disciple Ying muttered, shivering.

"How does a place come to be like this?" It was Disciple Hao's turn to offer his senior brother a darkly amused smile.

"It happens more in cities." He said, lifting up a stone to check if there was a talisman underneath.

"Sometimes there's a reason. Dark deeds birthing dark places. But usually it isn't. The place is just a little wrong from the beginning. It gets worse, the longer men live there. By the time it's really bad, the people often refuse to leave. The dark worms its way into them, before it begins to poison the air."

"You have experience, with cursed places?" His senior brother asked.

"No. I had the good sense not to mess with those sorts of things. I've seen too many brave people try to fight back against such evils, only to discover that fighting back only made the situation worse."

"We're cultivators, Junior Brother Luoyang. We're not helpless anymore." Disciple Hao did not answer. He could not help but think, that there were still so very many things they were helpless against. He only hoped whatever evil dwelled here was not one of them.

They had hardly a quarter of an hour to search before the fog rolled in. The thick mist was as black as coal smoke and thicker than day old congee. It smelled of death, wet and putrid. Like a corpse left to rot in stagnant water. Disciple Hao did not ask if it was natural. Disciple Ying did not ask if it was cursed. Hao Luoyang could feel it eat at his qi with every breath. An unclean, malevolent, power that sought to extinguish the fire in his dantian.

"It's clearer inside." He called out, barely able to see Disciple Ying, though only half a dozen feet separated them.

"Someone needs to finish searching outside. Check the buildings. I can endure it." Hao Luoyang's heart beat fast. Their time was limited. Whatever demon had set this trap must have been powerful, he didn't think he could bear the putrid cold for long. They needed an exit. He tore up the rooms of the building the Shadestalker had laired in, heedless of the dust that rose up with every step he took. There was nothing. No flags, no writing, no blood. No bodies. He paused. There was too much left behind.

The people who lived here wouldn't have left so many valuable tools, not if they fled of their own choice. Where were the bodies? They hadn't seen a family shrine, or signs of graves. If they didn't leave, and weren't buried, where would they be? During his time in Huangshi he'd done his fair share of squirreling away, and ferreting out, valuables. He knew where he would hide something here. Slowly, his gaze drifted downward. The house had been built for heavy rains, raised up above the earth.

Disciple Hao slammed the blade of his rope dart into a crack between the floorboards. He pushed, twisted, and wrenched one up. Empty eye sockets stared back up at him. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"In here!" He shouted, hoping Disciple Ying knew what to do with these poor souls. Nobody buried their own dead in a city. There was no answer. He shouted again, louder. Planks shattered into splinters as he steadily ripped apart the floor.

"Fuck." He swore, heart in his throat. The bodies were... Mismatched. The skull of a man, or woman, rested atop the ribcage of a child. There were at least three of them, grotesque parodies of proper skeletons. He heard steps behind him. Finally!

"Shun! We need to-" Hao Luoyang's voice fell silent, as he took in the figure that stood behind him. In another life, she might have been the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. She was paler than a ghost. Her skin was as white as fresh milk, but even it looked dull beside hair whiter than fresh snow. Her robes were simple, the sort of thing one might mistake for the garb of a peasant woman, were they not too a stark white.

They were not cut to be shapely, but even sackcloth could have done little to conceal the generous curves of her form. For a moment, Hao Luoyang let himself have hope. He knew he shouldn't, but she was too beautiful, too alive, to be a ghost. He couldn't feel any qi emanating from the woman, and for the most fleeting of moments, he let himself hope she was some immortal descended to rescue them. Then he saw the red. Rosy lips. Eyes of shining scarlet.

But her fingers, peeking out from the sleeves of her robe, were crusted with the unmistakable rust of dried blood. Disciple Hao scrambled back, tongue-tied, brandishing his dart.

"Get back, demon!" He shouted. She just smiled at him. Sad, and... Eager.

"Brother Hao!" Despite his better judgement, Hao Luoyang spun to face his friend's voice.

"I found the shrine!"

"Ying! She's here!"

"Who?" Disciple Ying's eyes bulged.

"Distant Heavens." He croaked, staring at the bodies Disciple Hao had unearthed.

"No, the woman!" He turned. She was gone.

Disciple Hao stared at the shrine. It was shaped like the main house in miniature, an empty incense burner resting before it. Baleful qi radiated from it like a furnace. Ten characters had been carved into it, gouged across the front of the shrine with a sharp object. They cannot leave. Neither can you.

"We just need to bury the bodies properly. If we put them to rest, we can leave." Disciple Ying's voice was not hopeful. But there was more hope in it than Disciple Hao could muster for himself.

"Finding them was a stroke of luck. I never would have thought to check beneath the floorboards." She won't let us. Disciple Hao didn't say the words aloud, but he knew it to be true. His qi was more than half gone. He was too weak to withstand the mist slowly sapping their life. Despite being suffering far more exposure, Disciple Ying seemed to be holding up better than him. Hao Luoyang hated this. The fear that defined him. It had kept him alive though those hard years in Huangshi.

But even then, he had hated that it was who he was. He'd thought he left it behind at the gates of the Azure Mountain, until the Sun-Swallowing Bear had proven him mistaken. He'd lost one sworn friend to his own weakness and cowardice. He wouldn't lose a second. A door slammed shut in the distance. This time Hao Luoyang did not allow himself to flinch. The wind was picking up now, howling as it tore through the gaps between the buildings.

The accursed fog did not dissipate in the slightest, it had given up any pretense of being a natural phenomena. He met Disciple Ying's eyes, and nodded. Together they ran out of the small shed that housed the shrine. Disciple Hao muttered half remembered prayers under his breath as he carried bones out from the space beneath the house. Disciple Ying dug four pits. They had no coffins of sandalwood. No incense to burn, or plaques to carve.

They did not even know the names of the dead, but any honor was better than being left in a pit, their bones intermingled with their slain relatives.

"If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in between neighbors." It was not a funeral prayer. But it was the only prayer Hao Luoyang knew.

"If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home." Had he missed a verse? Was this the leg of the father, or the mother? He couldn't stop, he had to keep moving.

"If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart." There was no peace in Disciple Hao's heart, so he began again, trying to remember the lines he'd forgotten. He kept moving until he heard Disciple Ying approaching with more bones. He looked up from his desperate sorting. The woman in white walked silently behind Disciple Ying, close enough to reach out and touch him.

"Behind you!" He shouted. Disciple Ying turned in an instant, dropping the bones in his arms. He stabbed out, an arrow clutched in his fist, but she leapt weightlessly back.

"Leave this place, wicked thing!" Disciple Ying cried, limbering his bow. The demon feigned a dodge, then leapt the other direction, but his aim was true. As the Black Arrow tore through her breast, her form evaporated like mist before the morning sun. Disciple Hao was too tired to hope. Therefore he was not disappointed, when she reformed from mist half a dozen chi away. Disciple Ying's next shot took that illusion in the head.

"Finish the work! I can hold her at bay!" Disciple Hao grabbed the bones Disciple Ying had dropped, desperately sorting. The burial would be good enough. It had to be. Disciple Ying was in the fifth stage, this mist would be nothing to him. His friend carried more than two dozen arrows, if he was careful, that should buy them at least the time it would take an incense stick to burn. He only had two or three more trips. He could do this. The demon's foul arts were nothing more than illusions.

The demon in white smiled, as of reading his mind. A delicate hand rose into the air, and flames of blue and green burst into being atop it.

"No!" Disciple Ying's shot tore her body apart, but it was too late. The cursed fire struck the side of the main house, and caught. True flames blazed in its wake, devouring the dry timber. In moments, the building had thoroughly ablaze. Disciple Hao ran in anyway. This time, he would not flee before the fire. Never again. His qi was near drained away, and he had no techniques for quelling flames. He could only work faster, but too much of the floor was still intact.

He grabbed as many bones as he could as the building burned. His robe caught. He kept moving. He could feel his face and fingers burning. He grabbed a few more. He staggered out, arms full, no longer even feeling disgust at using his chin to steady the load.

"Did you get them all?" Disciple Ying's robe was stained red. Something had torn open his calf. Disciple Hao kept moving. Threw down the bones and braces himself for another run. The fire was spreading too quickly, between the bone-dry wood and wild winds. Disciple Hao said nothing. This time he could not bring himself to give voice to what they both knew.

"I see. It was a good try. We almost did it."

"I can get them, one more-""No." Disciple Ying grabbed an arrow by its head. He held it tightly in his clenched fist, staining the shaft with his blood.

"Go. Leave me."

"What?" Disciple Ying set an arrow to his bow. The top of the arrow gleamed with a terrible light. Disciple Hao felt as if it would cut his eyes if he were watching in the moment that arrow was released. But he did not look away.

"I can't break the formation." Disciple Ying said calmly.

"She's stronger than me. Far stronger." He turned to the shrine. The baleful qi around it thickened, sensing a threat. The demon in white looked on dispassionately. Ying Shun let fly his greatest arrow. He staggered as the string snapped back, vomiting out a mouthful of blood. The shot tore through the shrine, and the building that housed it, as if both were made of paper. The baleful qi diminished. Disciple Hao thought for a moment, he could see the night sky.

It vanished a moment later, as the formation reasserted itself. Disciple Ying grabbed another arrow with a hand dripping blood. The technique took longer to manifest this time.

"But I can suppress it. Run. Bring an inner disciple. Or an elder. If I don't return, do not let me die unavenged."

"Elder Brother Shun, I-""Go. Now." Disciple Hao hated the fear. The cold logic that told him his brother was right. That it was better one die, than two. But hatred was not enough. The fear ruled him still. He opened his mouth, but words did not come. There was too much unsaid between them for him to say anything at all. He hated that even more than the fear. He felt like he would regret that silence until the day he died. He turned, and ran.

"We could have been such good friends, I think. We pair of cowards." Ying Shun said, firing once more. The formation shuddered. It was dying, he suspected. But its full collapse would be slow. Hours, if not days. He didn't think he had that long. He fell to his knees, blood dripping down his chin. He couldn't run with the injury to his calf. His qi was exhausted. He could hardly move without it, beneath the suppressive force of the mist.

He stared up at the night sky, as the demon in white silently walked over to stand above him. Hao Luoyang was a bit of a fool. But Ying Shun liked him. He hoped he'd done enough for him to escape. Ying Shun did not begrudge him his flight. This was a senior's duty. The one they all hoped never to be called to perform. Disciples forgot that sometimes. Why, exactly, they bowed and scraped before their elders. The demon stood over him. It was a pity, he thought. That something so beautiful would be so evil.

"Greetings, senior." Ying Shun had always had a certain composure under pressure. Some of his peers thought it bravery, and found it odd that he eschewed danger so. It was not bravery. It was just easier to sound calm, when you were nigh frozen from fear. The demon raised an eyebrow, staring down at him.

"Oh, I'm your senior now? Not a 'wicked thing'?" Her voice was melodious, her tone almost teasing.

"You killed them all, did you not?" He shouldn't have said it. But his traitorous mouth moved first.

"What else should I have called you." The demon smiled coldly.

"I did not kill them. The wolf did. I simply made use of their circumstances. A mass burial is a kinder resting place than they would have given me." Ying Shun swallowed ineffectually. His mouth felt as dry as the inferno roaring in the distance.

"I ask you for mercy. Beg it from a junior, to a senior." The demon stared at him.

"Tell me." She said suddenly.

"Have you ever hunted fox?" Ying Shun blinked twice in surprise. Ah. A different sort of demon, than he'd expected. That explained the fire, and the illusions. He could lie. But he rather doubted she'd believe him.

"Yes. I've hunted many things. Foxes included. Never spiritual ones though. Never any that could speak." He answered honestly.

"But there was no malice in my heart. Only hunger in my stomach, and holes in my family's roof."

"I see."

"I ask that you forgive me, senior. Surely you too have partaken of flesh to satisfy your hunger." The fox with the face of a woman smiled cruelly. Ying Shun wished he had been able to spy her true body. He did not think she was strong enough, that one of his Lifehunt Arrows would not have done her in.

"I have. But I cannot. Surely you cannot blame me, for hunting men as you hunt foxes?"

"I cannot, senior." Ying Shun admitted. A strange peacefulness had descended upon him. He knew how this would end, and that freed his tongue to be bold.

"But I must shamelessly beg for mercy all the same. If you spare me, I will swear my brother to silence. Surely there is something I can offer you? You cannot need to subsist on the flesh of men to survive."

"I was not aware men were obligate carnivores. Did you need to subsist on the flesh of foxes to survive? You all but admitted, that were our places reversed, you would not have spared me."

"No." Disciple Ying said.

"But my sister might have. She was weak. She needed wholesome food. I do not think she would have survived that winter, if all she'd eaten was rice porridge and wilted greens." The woman in white knelt down before Ying Shun. He was all but prone now, forced from his knees by the fox's spiritual pressure. He had spent his qi too freely, and no longer had the strength to resist her at all. Her hand rose to his chest. He suspected it to be an illusion, but he almost felt like he could feel her fingers all the same.

"I shall give you one chance. Answer me honestly. Can you swear upon your cultivation, that you would never have been a threat to my own sickly sister?" Ying Shun could have said the words. But his qi would have betrayed him.

"If you spare me, I will never be a threat to any you care for. Fox or otherwise." The fox smiled at him. There was a sadness in her eyes. But there was something darker in the curve of her lips, and the way her breath hitched. Something deeper than mere hunger. If he did not know what she was, he might have called it lust. He knew it was not, but there was an intimacy to the moment all the same.

He saw his death reflected in her eyes, as her dainty, bloodstained, fingers glided across his chest, and he felt his flesh split. Hot blood stained the front of his robes. Funny. It didn't hurt as much as he'd expected it to. A mad thought struck him. He was dead anyway. He decided to give it voice.

"It is said, that some fox spirits kill men in other ways. Are you certain we cannot do that, instead?" Surprise flickered across the fox's face. Disgust followed, but did not linger as she burst into laughter. Ying Shun tried to join her, but the minor pain of the laceration flared white hot when his chest moved.

"You don't have to do this." He whispered.

"If you spare me, I will never threaten one of your kind." She leaned closer to him. Ah. It was indeed an illusion. There was no movement of air when she spoke. If only he could have seen through it.

"I wish I believed you." The illusion's lips descended upon his chest in a gentle kiss. Ying Shun screamed.