Masonry rained down around me. I tried to run for the exit, but before I could get close, the floor shattered beneath my feet.

  I fell through noxious fumes so thick they choked away all the air in my lungs. Strangely, the fumes felt familiar, almost comforting. As a street rat, I’d fallen asleep amongst garbage plenty of times, and this almost brought back that drifting, rotten lullaby nostalgia.

  But before I could truly delve into those memories, there was a wet thud as Ghost Fang struck the ground, followed by the lighter — but still wet — thud of my own body landing. The shock was so great that I lost control of my body for a moment.

  I lay at the bottom of a dark pit. I could smell the fumes in the air, but couldn’t see their source or anything really. Above, I saw the pagoda as it crumbled inwards.

  “That can’t be good,” I said as I tried to move.

  The fall broke my back, essentially paralysing me. Even with my body flooded with energy and my flesh writhing, a snapped spine disabled me for a moment. Normally, that wasn't a problem, but with the impending collapse, I needed to move. After that wave of energy, willpower was completely wrung out, but I focused on my blood control and used one hand to start dragging myself away from under the pit and into the surrounding darkness. Chunks of rock and brick fell around me. I could barely make out smooth walls in the distance.

  “What is this place?” I asked myself as I crawled.

  In answer, the pagoda collapsed with the crushing weight of a landslide as masonry, dust, and rubble poured into the pit and buried me completely.

  ###

  Qian Ling stood on the edge of the treeline, leaning against an ancient pine, and gazed with utter disbelief. She dared not even breathe. Where the pagoda once stood around the central pine, now she saw only a mound of rubble covering the roots of the still swaying tree. Moonlight shone through dispersing clouds, and where the light touched the ground, it offered tranquil luminescence.

  The silver-haired cultivator spread her spirit sense tentatively, and peace brushed against her heart. For a moment, all her injuries, all her fear, and all her confusion felt far, far away.

  It took a few breaths for her to truly understand what happened. But, as always, it was Mu Min who spoke first.

  “He cleared away all the demonic qi,” Mu Min said with awe. “The Hidden Master purged this area.”

  It was undeniably true.

  There was no trace of the oppressive, crawling demonic qi. No trace of the monkeys. It was as though he had swept up all the demonic qi and destroyed it with a single technique.

  “I can’t imagine the power it took to do this,” Qian Ling said as excitement shook her voice. “Not just this area… Mu Min, he purged this entire forest! We must return to the sect. Not only will the elders be excited to know that Ghost Fang is dead, but also that we have a powerful ally in our region. No wonder he wanted us to hurry to our sect!”

  “Truly, we were blessed to meet him,” Mu Min said.

  They gazed out at the place where they had almost died. In less time than it took an incense stick to burn, a demonic-tainted ruin had been transformed into a site of regrowth.

  Qian Ling’s heart was light as she set off once more toward her sect. Her faith in the hidden master was not just restored, it was strengthened. Everything would be alright, because the heavens had seen fit to send someone to aid her sect in this trying time. Though she once set out on a path of revenge, she knew that it was the righteousness in her heart that led her to this moment, and she would not let down the trust granted by the Hidden Master and the heavens.

  She would hurry to inform her sect, and if the elders rewarded her for the role she played in this great adventure, then of course she wouldn't refuse.

  As she ran, she couldn't help but wonder: what came next in the Hidden Master's grand plan?

  ###

  Out of darkness, I awoke into darkness.

  It was confusing for a moment until I recalled that I lay crushed under the unknown tonnage of the collapsed pagoda. While I didn’t sleep, I did lose control and sometimes consciousness after taking a hard enough injury to my spine or brain. It seemed that being under a collapsed building counted as hard enough.

  Piles of masonry pinned my arms and legs and chest and groin and head and… you get the idea. I was little more than a smear of broken bone and muscle, yet I remained undying.

  It was hard to know how long I’d been unconscious, but the massive damage to my thinking parts could have stunned me for any period of time.

  At least I was awake now, and I felt great… relatively speaking… except for my hunger and the distinct feeling that if I focused on how I couldn’t move and was trapped in a confined space I would…

  Nope.

  Don’t go down that road.

  I tried to still my mind, but heat filled and radiated from me, as though I were metal left out in the sun all day. It poured out of my every fiber — again, it was reminiscent of the time I digested Ren Feilong, but this was deeper and more intrusive.

  Every scrap of my body pulsed with the remnant heat from that rush of energy that came from the forest.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened there, but this wasn’t the time to lie down and figure it out. This was the time to try and escape from being buried for the rest of eternity.

  That thought sent my claustrophobic mind into a frenzy. I spent a few fruitless minutes flailing against the weight of the rock. Unfortunately, there was no room for me to move, and the best I could achieve was a vague rippling in place. I tried to scream my frustration and fear, but all that came was a strange bubbling from my lungs.

  Oh, I suppose the brick lodged inside my neck would probably make it hard for me to speak or scream.

  Calm down, I told myself. You can get out of this; you just need to be smart.

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  “Hey,” said a brick beside my ear. “You’re finally awake. Are you ok?”

  I tried to answer, but, unable to speak around the rocks filling my mouth, I settled for a slight shake of my head.

  “Oh, no!” said the brick in a far too cheerful tone. “You know, I hated it when they first set me in the wall. I was like, ‘Who do you think you are telling me where I have to go?’ But then, after a couple of centuries, I found that by focusing on the small day-to-day pleasures, I actually found a lot of fulfillment in my life! Just wait, you might hate this now, but in a few centuries, we’ll be singing buddies you and I and the rest of us.”

  A few centuries…

  I flailed, and screamed, and — of course — achieved nothing.

  “Ha, ha, ha. Try all you want, but you won’t escape choir practise like that, will he, boys?”

  The bricks around me spoke up one by one.

  “Nope!”

  “He sure won’t!”

  “I doubt he’ll escape no matter what he tries!”

  “I hope he’s not a baritone; we have enough of those already.”

  “You can never have enough bass! Tra la la!”

  My eyes widened in the dark as the countless bricks sounded off.

  If I didn’t get out of here right now, I might actually — truly, for real — go insane.

  Tuning out the melodic masonry, I pulled at my body.

  My consciousness could feel all the bent and broken pieces of myself, but fortunately, there was no pain. My — brief? — nap restored my willpower, and so I traced my mind through my tendons and veins and shattered bones to where my fingers still twitched. If I had to judge, I’d say that one hand was crushed and twisted underneath my body, while the other lay at least a room’s length away from me.

  That knowledge came as a pop of surprise capable of bursting my inflating terror. Usually, if my body parts were separated, I coudln’t feel them. But now, I felt that same strange heat radiating from the bones, muscles, and veins in my severed hand as I did in my crushed body. Whatever energy had rushed through my body had truly warped and annealed my substance into something else. My willpower flowed through me more easily, as though the channels by which it moved were unblocked. This reminded me of my vague understanding of cultivation — but I knew I wasn’t a cultivator with the same certainty that told me I was still human and that I was still sane.

  At least the ease with which my willpower flowed proved a pleasant distraction from the singing bricks.

  I couldn’t understand how they were all off-key. Surely centuries of practice would make them decent, if not at least competent, singers? Alas, it seemed practice did not always make perfect.

  My severed hand had space to move, and I twitched and spasmed until I could flip my hand so it stood on my fingers. Feeling out the space it was in, I set it crawling like a spider through gaps and cracks and crevices in the masonry until it reached my face. My fingers probed until I could outline the shape of the bricks crushing my face and throat. It was a wonder I could even breathe, but then I remembered I didn’t really need to breathe, and so I stopped wondering.

  The bricks crushing my face and throat weren’t individually heavy, but enough fell to turn my head into lumpy paste.

  Using blood control, I expanded my skull like a wineskin and pushed until the bricks tumbled away to the side.

  My eyes popped back into existence one by one, and I looked around at the darkness. A moment later, my nose regrew and my nostrils reopened, and I could smell the dust mixed in with the noxious fumes that originated in this crevice.

  “Tra la la!” sang the bricks. “Don’t you want to join us, new guy?”

  As my windpipe and tongue stitched themselves back together, I used my detached hand to scoop the gravel from my mouth.

  “Sorry,” I said as I spat out rocks. “I don’t think I’m good enough to join.”

  “No, don’t be so hard on yourself!” said the bricks.

  “Believe it or not, I also sucked at first,” sang a brick in a terribly warbling voice. “But everyone starts somewhere!”

  “Enthusiasm and practice will always beat natural talent!”

  “Yeah!”

  The bricks continued singing various snatches of song and encouraging phrases as my detached hand set about clearing away the rubble pinning down the arm it belonged to.

  “Cabbagy!” I called out. “Can you hear me?”

  The bricks sang louder, and though I called out, I heard nothing. Even when the bricks drew breath and were blessedly silent, I heard nothing from Cabbagy.

  The fall had been so quick, and the darkness so absolute, that I didn’t know what happened to that cantankerous vegetable.

  I hoped he was alright, but first I needed to take care of myself.

  I took hours to clear away my arms and torso with just my hand. Even when using blood manipulation to summon strength beyond what it could gain from size and leverage it was slow going.

  Eventually, I managed to snap my wrist back onto my arm.

  Now I could finally breathe easy, even though I didn’t need to breathe. It felt good to be able to move my arm like the heavens intended. At least, I assumed the heavens intended for me to move. I’d heard that the heavens struck down cultivators with lightning if they did something wrong.

  I flinched at that thought, waiting, but nothing happened.

  Without rocks crushing my torso, the bone and muscle reinflated. Ribs crackled as they set. I could definitely feel that my reserves of blood were being strained. It felt like a growing hunger, or, more like an awareness of hunger.

  Those reserves had fallen when I was just a skeleton running around the forest, then they’d been restored by the Howling Spirit Monkeys that Cabbagy and I killed. Now, once more, those reserves were depleting.

  The first thing I would do once my body was free would be to eat.

  Using blood manipulation on my muscles — again, a process made easier by the burning energy fading into my body — I managed to extract my other arm from the rubble pressing onto me.

  Doing this caused a shift in the rubble above me, and the bricks sang out in a chorus as they crashed down onto me.

  “Down comes the mountain snow as the spring rains fall!” they sang as I was positively drowned in dust and rock. “New flowers buried by winter’s cold!”

  With both my arms intact, it was a lot easier to extract myself this time, but it still took hours due to the sheer volume of loose rubble.

  Eventually, I had enough space cleared that I could sit upright.

  This confronted me with my next problem: there was an intact block of wall that weighed probably ten tonnes or more, that was balanced not so precariously on top of my groin.

  To be honest, saying I had a groin was a bit of a misnomer. I had a smear of once delicate — and appropriately sized — meat crushed under the rock.

  I freaked out for a good moment before remembering I once saw a monkey eat my meat before my eyes, and then I calmed down. I still felt sick, but panic wouldn’t help.

  My legs kicked on the other side, but they, too, were pinned completely.

  Though I’d mostly freed myself, I remained trapped.

  Blood swelled my arms, and I pushed at the huge block of stone and mortar, but it didn’t budge. I pumped more blood into my muscles, formed my swirling gloves, and pushed until jets of blood squirted out of my torn skin, but I couldn’t budge the massive weight.

  “I think I need another approach,” I muttered to myself as my skin slowly healed.

  “No, you don’t!” shouted the bricks. “You just need motivation. A one, a two, a three —”

  They started a wordless cacophony of groaning, wailing, and moaning that sounded like a tooth trying to crunch through glass — but if it was singing, it certainly wasn’t motivating.

  Whatever I did next, it had to be quick for me to preserve my sanity.

  If I had to keep listening to the bricks, I would use one to smash my brain in — though with the bleak humor of the heavens, I knew that wouldn’t save me from the song.

  So, I needed to remove my legs.

  I pulled my swirling blood gloves into formation and gripped at my waist. The bloody fingers dug into the flesh, and I closed my eyes. I wasn’t afraid of the pain, but I didn’t exactly want to watch self-mutilation.

  Gripping my waist with my bloody gloves, I ripped my flesh apart.

  Immediately, I fell backwards and my head clunked against a brick.

  “Hey!” said the brick. “If you don’t like my singing, you could just say so!”

  “I don’t like your singing,” I said.

  “Are you talking to me?” said one of the bricks.

  “I thought he was talking to me,” said another brick.

  “I’m talking to all of you,” I said as I dragged myself toward an opening. “You all sound terrible.”

  “You hear that, everyone?” said the first brick that had started this cascading audio nightmare. “He thinks we’re terrible, but you know what that means?”

  “It means we’re not singing loud enough!” shouted the bricks.

  I groaned as the bricks — somehow — increased the volume of their discordant screeching.

  “Oh, the rain is gorgeous!” they shouted. “The winter brings the cold, but still I’m travelling home!”

  I didn’t know the song, and it sounded more like whoever was loudest and first got to figure out what the next lyrics were.

  “Smell the wind as it takes you to the answers of your true love!”

  I dragged my legless body toward one of the openings in the rubble I’d found with my free-roaming hand. Unfortunately, a space that was large enough for my head wasn’t large enough for my entire body.

  “Never give up when you’re a duck on a pond!” the bricks hollered. “Tomorrow will bring more crawling worms!”

  I bashed my head against a rock until my face was bloodied. Eventually, the vibrations drowned out the horrible song and, in that moment of blessed quiet, I reached an understanding: if I didn't fit intact, I had to come apart.

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