Why had my flesh regrown in the facility after the Heavenly Cleansing Array, but not after the monkeys ate me? I didn’t believe that monkeys were more powerful than fire. What about me had been different?
Had my healing been used up on fixing my bones?
That didn’t explain why the new blood splashed off my skeleton, instead of turning into muscles and flesh.
Cabbagy darting between the monkeys. He lashed out with the hard edge of my hand. His movements were sharp and fluid like a pouncing snake. The guards shouted, but they were too busy with their own battles to notice me.
So far.
But I had to ignore all this and focus on the blood.
I tuned out the sound and the violence and focused. Even without eyes, my skull could see, but now I turned off my sight. The battle faded as I entered my mind.
In true darkness, I focused on the feelings woven through my experiences over the last few days. It was the emotional thread that linked the moment I woke up in the facility to the moment I collapsed under the ravenous jaws of fiery-eyed monkeys.
Joy.
The pure joy that came from freedom. That came from life. That came from existence.
But fear snapped that thread.
Not the fear of pain, but of falling into darkness and never waking up. In the dark of my mind, I fell. For a moment, I was so ensnarled in the cold fear of containment that all I could hear was the blood dripping from my skull.
“Drip.”
Without lungs, I breathed.
“Drip.”
I wasn’t dead yet.
“Drip.”
After everything that happened, I remained undying. Even in all this chaos, I knew that only one question truly mattered: what would Drippy do?
“Drip, drip, drip.”
My skull grinned as the blood wriggled and formed strands of muscle. Blood wove up around my skull and down my neck, across my shoulders, coating me as I rapidly took control.
Cabbagy stood surrounded by corpses and guards backing away from the blood-dripping skeleton.
They’d seen me, but they didn’t know who I was. I knew that after seeing my bones, reports of a walking skeleton would spread, which I wanted to avoid because sometimes — like, right now — I was a walking skeleton.
And I didn’t want people putting one and one together.
Since they hadn’t linked my bone face with my meat face, I might be able to get away from this situation without the worst possible scenario happening. If I was careful, that was.
My flesh was rapidly reforming, but if I put it off…
Except, Cabbagy stood on a monkey’s corpse. One heel was buried inside broken ribs, and blood flowed up the leg, wrapping around bones and forming muscles and veins and skin.
My metaphorical heart seized, and I knew my real heart would soon follow.
The monkeys were dead or defeated. Guards worked with their spears to stab the last of them.
“Ok, Cabbagy,” I whispered. “Time to get us out of here.”
“Aye, aye,” he said as he grabbed a dying monkey in one hand and my regrowing head in the other.
One guard charged with his spear, and I wasn’t sure who he wanted to attack, but Cabbagy had already leaped clear of the wall before the guard was even close.
“By the gods,” one guard muttered as Cabbagy raced down the side of the wall. “First evil monkeys, and now evil skeletons?”
“We’re not paid enough for this.”
Cabbagy landed at the base of the wall. The ground was uneven, and he stood on a mound as the few remaining lesser monkeys approached. He held the battered monkey close, and I drained it as fast as I could. It was a weaker monkey, and close to death already, so there wasn’t much qi to fight my manipulation. Blood swirled in rivers over my bones, forming muscles, guts, and skin.
Strength returned to me as the monkey withered.
The other monkeys backed away from me, the fire in their eyes flickering as the stone statue thundered closer, eyes of liquid glass burning with pale fire.
“Enough,” Ghost Face growled. “You’ve made your point, brother. I shall spare the town. Now, follow my soldiers to my palace; we have much to discuss, you and I.”
The statue turned away from the town, and the monkeys followed like a procession of ghoulish ducklings. Many of them bled from wounded eyes and fractured joints, but though they limped, they were silent. The fire in their eyes matched the flame in the statue. I wondered how much Ghost Fang had witnessed through that burning gaze all the monkeys shared.
All of a sudden, the battle was done.
Tired shouts came up from the guards on the wall behind me.
Cabbagy sat atop my mostly reformed body as he held my head with my fully formed hand. I even had fingernails and hair on the back of my palm.
“Give me back my body, Cabbagy
“What are you going to do, kid?” he asked me.
“What?”
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“The town is safe.”
“Yeah?”
“So, you’re going to go with the monkeys, right?”
“Yes, of course. I need to know what he knows.”
“What about Mu Min?”
“I’ll try to save her, obviously. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Hmmm…”
Cabbagy gazed toward the forest. The statue and monkeys were almost at the treeline.
“Cabbagy, what are you doing? Give me my… me… back.”
“Maybe we’re a better team like this. I can save Mu Min, and I’ll leave you alone with Ghost Fang.”
“Why do you even care so much about her safety all of a sudden?”
“You know why.”
I did.
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m a cabbage.”
When the monkeys vanished into the shadow of the trees, Cabbagy didn’t step forward.
I needed to follow now. My quest for the flower was a priority, but finding out what Ghost Fang knew was important.
That didn’t mean I’d let people die, but Cabbagy refused to believe me.
“You need to move, now!”
“Promise me that you’ll save the cultivators. Otherwise, I’ll take you straight up the mountain so you can get that flower for Tan Lu.”
My jaw dropped.
“You’re crazy,” I said. “Then Mu Min won’t be saved.”
“And you won’t get the information you want. Everyone loses.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You don’t know me, kid! You don’t know what I’m capable of!”
He started walking toward the north, where the Sleeping Ruin Pass waited.
“Please don’t walk me, Cabbagy,” I said.
“You got the honorable choice staring you in the face, kid, but you aren’t brave enough to make it. Swear you’ll save my sweet, sweet, sweet Mu Min.”
“I was always going to do that!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Fine,” I said. “I promise I’ll save Mu Min, but you have to give me control.”
“And her friend.”
“What?”
“Save both hotties from the damned ape before you have whatever creepy conversation you two want to have.”
“I’m not creepy.”
“You’re fucking terrifying, kid! I curse the day you knocked over my cabbage stand.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Whatever, Cabbagy. I promise to save them both.”
“Good.”
Cabbagy lifted his head off my shoulders and placed my head back where it belonged.
“Thank you, Cabbagy,” I said as I tucked him under my arm and dashed after the monkeys. “I’m glad we worked that out.”
“Whatever, kid. I’m just keeping you honest.”
More like driving me crazy, but I didn’t bother saying that out loud.
###
Ghost Fang remained in the lotus position as he opened his burning eyes. The pale flames flickered low as he frowned.
“Have you realised your doom?” Qian Ling taunted from the stairs. “Let us go, and we might persuade our World Severing elder not to annihilate you and your entire family tree.”
Ghost Fang shook his head.
“He is not that powerful,” Ghost Fang said dismissively. “Why would he handicap himself like this? A true warrior uses all the strength at their disposal.”
“Yet you are afraid.”
Ghost Fang climbed to his feet. Even though Qian Ling lay on the balcony of the second floor, he towered above her. His qi was diminished from his extended use of the astral technique, but that just meant the force he radiated down on her was like being crushed under a wall of brick rather than a wall of stone.
Though her spirit sense told her that he was in the 1st stage of Foundation Establishment, she knew he was far more powerful than that. There was no way she and Mu Min could have succeeded, even if they had another two cultivators supporting them.
“You should be the one who is afraid,” Ghost Fang said. “Because your so-called hidden master is coming here for me, and not for you.”
###
Hours passed as they always did, and the flow of time splashed against the pagoda like waves against a cliff.
Despite standing long enough for a pine to grow hundreds of feet tall, the pagoda had seen little battle since the higher floors were destroyed in the last days of the Violet Griffin Empire. Since then, seasonal rain wormed cracks into the mortar, preparing nests for windswept seeds to spread their roots. The structure held with the longevity of sound engineering, but with every gust of wind, it faded.
The destruction from the fight between Qian Ling, Mu Min, and Ghost Fang was greater than it first appeared. Though none of the qi techniques used were particularly explosive, the shock of impacts, and of Ghost Fang’s masonry lobbing barrage, had sent the slowly growing stress fractures into a frenzy.
A breeze blew against the structure, and it swung, this way and that, shaking crumbs of brick loose from the upper levels.
Time flowed on, splashing against the pagoda and wearing it away.
###
Dust landed on Qian Ling’s shoulder, but she ignored it as she tended to Mu Min. Her friend was passing in and out of consciousness. The scalding wounds on her body glowed with heat and curdling demonic qi.
Ghost Fang had taken their storage rings, and so she couldn’t access her healing pills or the spirit fruit. She’d been too afraid to risk using it, and now that chance was taken from her.
What happened to the bold cultivator who would defy the heavens?
She used the dregs of her dantian to wrap bandages out of her qi strands. Her qi’s aspect was so far removed from typical healing techniques that her bandages worked at lower efficiency. With such little qi, her bandages did little more than provide a sense of relief and hold the body together until she could get more powerful medicine.
It was better than nothing, but it might not be enough.
Already, the residual demonic aura in the wound was blackening the edges of her bandages. After blackening, they soon burned away into spiritual smoke.
Maybe if she had more qi, she could stabilize her friend, but as it was, there was too much demonic qi in the air.
If they didn’t escape soon, Mu Min’s wounds would kill her — or possibly worse.
Ghost Fang resumed the lotus position, nestled in a depression in the massive pine tree’s roots. An aura of danger radiated from the demonic ape.
Half of the fear that washed against Qian Ling came from the true strength he displayed in battle and the hidden power of the qi he hadn’t even brought to bear — Qian Ling still felt bitter humiliation knowing Ghost Fang hadn’t even used techniques against her and Mu Min’s combined efforts — but a large part of the aura she felt was simply fear.
Primal.
Animal.
Fear dragged up from her own body’s instincts to flee in the face of a predator.
She knew about killing intent and how a cultivator could direct it at someone to stop them in their tracks, but she’d never experienced something that clung to her so fervently.
Unless, of course, she counted the terrible understanding she felt in Fallen Hen Village when she discovered the true power of the Hidden Master. But that memory sat on a razor’s edge.
Was it even true?
Ghost Fang’s eyes burned brighter as he released a pulse of qi into the air. Qian Ling tensed herself, but the ape’s technique bypassed her completely. A few minutes later, a nine foot black furred monkey with an iron club over his shoulder ducked through the pagoda doors.
For a moment, Qian Ling had the ridiculous question of how Ghost Fang fit through the pagoda’s entrance. She couldn’t see the gigantic spirit beast fitting through that narrow space.
The black monkey crouched at the foot of the mound formed by the pine tree’s roots. In the pale moonlight streaking down from the branches above, the black monkey seemed like a lord kneeling before his king.
Qian Ling’s enhanced hearing picked up their hushed, rumbling whispers as though she sat beside their conversation.
