The shack was silent as the monkeys watched me, waiting for me to react. Glancing over at the huddled corpses, I offered a silent prayer. I wanted to bury those poor unfortunates, or burn them, or some form of funeral, but I wasn’t sure I could believably delay that long without provoking Ghost Fang.

  I didn’t fear his monkeys, but with Ghost Fang’s knowledge and power, he might be someone who could truly incapacitate me.

  I walked over to a broken wardrobe and found a well-worn, but mostly intact, robe. It only took a minute for me to get changed, and as I did, I saw the cold rice left out on the table beside the candle. The stick of wax was but a guttering stub.

  Soon, it would go out.

  I reached out to snuff the flame, and let the darkness claim these people, but my hand twitched — whether it was my blood or my bones, I couldn’t really say, but something moved me and I tipped the flame over.

  Liquid wax pooled out and set the wooden table on fire.

  The flames grew as I walked out of the shack.

  Monkeys hooted and slammed their fists against the ground as the statue turned to me.

  “You must extinguish the flame!” Ghost Fang said. “A fire could destroy the entire forest!”

  Of course, I would put out the flames if I could, but I had no means of doing that.

  I looked at the shifting mass of rock and earth.

  “Use your body to extinguish the flames,” I said.

  The statue stared at me, eyes flickering, as Ghost Fang — wherever he sat — tried to take my measure.

  ###

  “Would he truly do that?” Ghost Fang murmured. “Does he care so little about life that he will destroy an entire forest and everyone in it?”

  He remained in the lotus position, doing his best to focus his technique on riding the statue that contained his daughter’s corpse. The blend of her blood and qi allowed him to possess the earth and observe the demonic cultivator whose agenda remained a mystery.

  Ever since the wave of demonic qi passed over a few days ago, he’d felt a burning desire to kill and consume all humans, but that didn’t mean he wanted his forest to burn. He had spent long enough inside the ape that some part of him — however disgusted — identified with the creature.

  The forest was his home.

  There was no way that this stranger would really let the fire rage. Doing that would result in his own death!

  Through the statue, he tried to stare down the human, but it was as though the demonic cultivator were the one made of stone. Ever since Ghost Fang first felt that tug in his mind, he knew someone was close, and he'd been trying to understand that person ever since.

  But who was this man?

  “Damn it all…” Ghost Fang murmured to himself. “This monster is calling my bluff!”

  ###

  I stared at the statue as the flames grew behind me. Heat licked my back through the robe I’d taken from the dead family. The walls collapsed inwards as the shack became a funeral pyre.

  The statue tried to stare at me with its burning gaze, but I felt nothing from those eyes. If the whole forest burned… so what? I doubted even that inferno could crack the icy grip of my anger.

  “Kid?” Cabbagy asked me.

  I answered him with a raised eyebrow.

  Cabbagy shook his leaves as a wind came along and blew greater life into the fire behind me.

  “I think you’ve become truly unhinged,” Cabbagy said.

  “So?”

  “Alright!” Ghost Fang’s statue roared. “I’ll take care of the fire.”

  The statue marched toward the flaming shack. Rock sloshed and bubbled as the qi forming the technique collapsed and then exploded. Gravel swept through the shack, collapsing the structure and suffocating the embers.

  In moments, the fire was gone, and a dark silence rushed in from the trees above.

  I walked a circle around the mound covering the shack and stamped out a few errant coals. They hissed against the soles of my feet, but I felt no pain from the mortal fire.

  The monkeys watched me with their silent red eyes. Was the fire in those stares diminished? Hard to say, but Ghost Fang’s presence felt diminished without the statue to serve as a focal point.

  I ignored them as I bowed to the mound that would serve as a barrow for the unfortunate couple. Under my breath, I uttered the funeral prayers.

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  After making the monkeys wait, I turned to the closest one.

  I’m not sure if it was the creature’s reaction or Ghost Fang’s, but whatever it saw in my eyes made it flinch back.

  “Lead on,” I said.

  The monkeys bent down to the ground.

  “Yes, brother,” their inhuman tongues whispered.

  I wished they wouldn’t call me that. I was no brother to them.

  As one, they scrambled away into the pines. Their pale shapes strobed, glowing in the soft moonlight that pierced the canopy, and going dark as they made their way through the shadows.

  I followed.

  ###

  Qian Ling finished weaving the last qi bandage she could create for a while and placed it over Mu Min’s scalded cheek. When some of the tension left her friend’s body, Qian Ling called out to Ghost Fang.

  “Who do you believe our hidden master to be?” she said.

  Ghost Fang no longer sat in the lotus position, but was bent forward in deep thought — or deep anxiety.

  He flinched as her question broke through his thoughts, and he glared at her.

  The air pressed around Qian Ling as he focused his killing intent on her. With no qi of her own to fight, she had only her willpower, which was shaky enough. After a moment’s resistance, she collapsed under the weight of the demonic ape’s presence.

  After she lay at the top of the stairs beside Mu Min, Ghost Fang relented.

  Qian Ling gasped for air.

  “Why?” she said.

  “Why?” he asked distractedly

  “Why keep us alive?”

  There was a look of fear in his eyes.

  “At first, I thought to use you as a bargaining chip,” Ghost Fang said. “I thought this man was my brother. I thought he was like me.”

  “Bargaining chip?” Qian Ling said with growing outrage. As a cultivator herself, she understood the cold logic of using lives as resources, but it didn’t change the sting of feeling it applied to herself. “What would he use us for?”

  Ghost Fang shrugged.

  “Food? Resources? Pleasure? I’m sure I don’t know, but I underestimated him.”

  “Resources… you think he is a demonic cultivator?”

  Ghost Fang nodded.

  “He must be here to investigate the opening of the Hidden Lotus facility.”

  “How do you know about that?” Qian Ling said.

  Ghost Fang shrugged.

  “There are a lot of secrets out in the world,” he said with a grin. “And not all of them belong to humans. This man you call a Hidden Master, I think he knows far more about the Hidden Lotus and demonic cultivation than even me.”

  “You lie.”

  Ghost Fang shook his head sadly.

  “Believe me or don’t, I fear it doesn’t matter. He may very well kill all of us when he arrives.”

  Qian Ling tried to fight the icy fear gripping her heart.

  “That makes no sense. He had plenty of opportunities to harm us, but never took one.”

  “He sent you after me,” Ghost Fang said. “Why would he do that if not to kill you?”

  Qian Ling hesitated. He had sent them here… but had he sent them to die?

  Was all this the Hidden Master’s fault?

  She frowned as she puzzled out the implications.

  Was she just a pawn in a demonic cultivator’s ritual?

  “If he’s all that you say he is,” Qian Ling said. “Why are you staying?”

  “Because he’s here for me,” Ghost Fang said sadly. “I’d hoped he would be my brother, but no… there’s only one reason someone like him would come to these pines. Even if I ran, he would find me. There’s nowhere in the world I could go.”

  ###

  I wished the monkeys would just point the way and leave me alone. The rage that grew at the sight of the dead bodies — at the memory of being trapped in walls as spirit beasts raged beyond the flimsy barriers of safety — remained, but it no longer sparked me to action.

  Ghost Fang had answers, and if he didn’t, I would just head on towards the mountain pass. After saving the cultivators, of course. Then I could finally resume my quest.

  A sigh escaped my lips.

  “What’s the matter, kid?”

  “I’m sick of all these monkeys,” I said.

  One monkey flinched at my words, but none of them responded. They hurried, almost running through the undergrowth. I was relieved, and cycled blood through my muscles to keep the pace.

  We soon entered a deeper, denser part of the pine forest. Even the taste of the air told me that this primordial space had been undisturbed by humans for countless years.

  The pines gave way to a five-story pagoda that stood pale and bright in the moonlight. A massive pine grew out of the top. The entire structure looked as though it might collapse if the breeze went from gentle to stiff.

  There were signs of monkeys nesting in the vines and trees that grew along the dilapidated exterior, but the only monkeys were the few that escorted me.

  These pale creatures quickly dispersed into the shadowy crevices of the pagoda. One remained long enough to point at the open doorway before it vanished with the others.

  “What’s your plan, kid?” Cabbagy asked.

  “Get answers, get revenge, and get the cultivators to safety.”

  “Those are more like goals than plans.”

  “They’ll have to be enough.”

  I entered the pagoda’s open doors with my back straight and Cabbagy tucked under my arm.

  A strange smell filled my nostrils as I entered, something like a cross between a forge and rotten meat, but it carried an eerie quality I hadn’t felt since I escaped the facility. The smell came from the odorous vapors seeping from the cracks in the tiled floor.

  Ghost Fang — who else could it be? — sat hunched over on a massive pile of ancient roots. The gigantic silver ape looked uncomfortable on his throne, more like a caged animal wary of the open door than the regal figure who threatened me through the possessed throats of his subjects.

  Had he always been like this? A domineering presence until someone confronted him? Or was this all an act?

  He straightened when I entered, and no matter his demeanor, his size shocked me. I’d never seen a living creature that tall. Moonlight glittered on his coat like it was made of silver. Ghostly fire burned so bright in his eyes I couldn’t look directly at them.

  He opened his massive arms wide.

  “Welcome, brother —”

  “I’m not your brother,” I said in a voice that was barely more than a growl.

  My voice filled the chamber of the pagoda. Maybe I wasn’t as over my rage as I suspected, but with three sets of memories rattling around, it was easy to lose track of how I felt.

  The large ape flinched, and I noticed more movement out of the corner of my eye. Glancing over, I saw Qian Ling and Mu Min crouched on the second level of the pagoda. The shattered masonry they lay beside looked as precarious as the rest of the structure. While Qian Ling looked exhausted, Mu Min looked barely alive, let alone conscious.

  I pointed at them.

  “Let them go,” I said.

  “But I thought we could share —”

  “Nope.”

  I honestly had no idea what he wanted to do with them, but every possible answer was horrendous. What’s more, any information he might share in front of them could make its way back to the Shining Mountain Sect.

  I couldn’t afford for that to happen.

  Ghost Fang seemed to take my demand seriously because he gestured at the two women, and they floated down the stairs to the ground.

  I set Cabbagy down and approached the injured cultivators.

  “Can you stand?” I asked Qian Ling.

  She nodded and tried, but her leg gave out, and I caught her. Her body felt like iron through her robe, but she leaned against me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought we could defeat him.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why did you even come here?” I asked.

  She looked down at the ground, color rising on her cheeks, but she didn’t answer me.

  I sighed.

  “Why not defend the village, Qian Ling?”

  “We left techniques in place…”

  “The monkeys broke through the techniques. The village almost fell.”

  “I knew it wouldn’t.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  She looked up at me, her eyes wide in the moonlight.

  “Because you were there.”

  I was stunned. Just what exactly did she think I was capable of?

  “This is the part where you kiss her,” Cabbagy called out.

  If he had a neck, I would have strangled him.