The entire sect was buzzing with energy as disciples ran about on errands for the suddenly active elders. The demonic facility had been breached, and everyone’s help was needed to determine the depth of the threat to the sect.
Qian Ling lay in bed for hours, cultivating the medical pills she’d been fed, and resisting the temptation to scratch at the cleansing talismans placed on her skin. Mu Min and Ren Feilong both slept in beds by her, their recovery taking longer than hers.
Too restless to remain in the Medical Pavilion, she dressed herself and left. Disciples greeted her with reverence as she marched through the sect and made her way up the mountain trail to the outer peak where the facility was located. Qian Ling was not so incapacitated that she couldn’t help, and so she would help.
The cliffside that housed the facility was completely stripped of anything save the ugly rock. A deep shaft led into the mountain, and disciples hurried up and down the steps carrying crates filled with files and reagents. Every one of the disciples wore talismans to ward off the demonic qi.
“Someone with your injuries should be recovering,” said a quiet voice behind her.
Startled, Qian Ling turned and bowed.
“Apologies, Elder Guo Zimo,” she said. “My desire to help the sect would not let me rest.”
“I see.”
The talisman-covered elder studied her. His body was as still and quiet as a closed book. A large, square talisman marked by a single character concealed his face. Qian Ling didn’t know the meaning of the character, though she thought it might be related to eyes and observation. She certainly didn’t know what expression the elder wore behind the talisman.
Her heart pounded. Was she in trouble?
“Your name is Qian Ling?” he asked. “You were the one who met the Hidden Master responsible for uprooting the demonic presence in our lands?”
She felt a surge of pride that he recognized her.
“That’s correct, Elder.”
He nodded.
“Then perhaps it is good that you are here. There is a particular matter that I must attend to in this ruin. Would you join me?”
Qian Ling wasn’t sure that it was possible to feel any more pride, but she kept her face calm as she bowed politely.
“It would be my honor, Elder.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh, and with a gesture floated both of them over to the shaft. They sank into the depths wordlessly on a platform of qi-controlled air. The other disciples watched with reverence, and no little jealousy.
They stopped halfway and entered an iron door set into the sides of the shaft. A passageway meandered through the mountain, and the natural rock soon gave way to smooth, featureless grey walls.
“What was your impression of the Hidden Master?” Elder Guo Zimo asked her.
“He was… strange, Elder. Perhaps the strangest cultivator I’ve ever met.”
“Please, elaborate.”
The silver-haired cultivator took a moment to assemble her thoughts. They passed doors set into the stone, but Elder Guo Zimo continued walking and ignored every room.
“He cared about the mortals in the village in a way that surpassed the protective duty of a sect,” Qian Ling said. “Whatever Mu Min — my fellow inner disciple who was injured battling Ghost Fang — and I did, he seemed to ignore, as though we were utterly beneath him. Yet, he took the time to display his actions so that we could study. I feel that perhaps…”
“Yes?”
Her pride took a little hit as she spoke her thoughts aloud.
“I think we were just caught up in the little game he was playing with Ghost Fang. He toyed with that creature like a cat with a mouse, and it entertained him to have us be a part of that.”
“Yet you emerged stronger than before.”
“That’s true.”
They stopped at a dead end.
“Did you happen to glimpse the nature of his cultivation?”
Qian Ling shook her head.
“I wasn’t present when he destroyed Ghost Fang, but he completely obliterated a pagoda that must have stood for centuries. What’s more, the demonic qi…”
“Yes?”
“He cleansed it from the area! There were no traces left at all when we returned to the site.”
“That is most interesting,” Elder Guo Zimo said.
“Also…”
“Yes?”
“There was one technique I saw, where he coated his fist in red qi. I don’t know the nature of it, though, for it was outside my spirit sense.”
“Iron? Fire?”
“Perhaps, Elder.”
“Blood?”
“I could not say, though he didn’t strike me as the type to use an element as macabre as blood.”
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“Thank you for your insight, Core Disciple Qian Ling.
Qian Ling gasped and bowed so low her head almost touched the floor.
“Thank you, Elder!”
“You’re very welcome, though you should know that a core disciple doesn’t bow that low to an elder.”
Qian Ling straightened with a blush.
“As you say, Elder,” she said before looking at the grey wall they stood before. “What are we doing at this wall?”
Elder Guo Zimo plucked a long talisman from his waist and handed it to her.
“Attach this to the wall with a drop of your blood, Core Disciple Qian Ling.”
Frowning slightly at the mystery of it all, Qian Ling did as her elder asked. She felt the thrum of qi in the parchment, and a brief spike of discomfort as her own liquid qi fused with the talisman after touching it with her blood. Setting the talisman on the wall, she stood back and gasped.
The grey stone was as translucent as a mountain stream.
“Incredible,” Qian Ling said. “Truly, the Elder is known as a Talisman Master for a reason.”
“Thank you, Core Disciple Qian Ling. Please, attach this warding talisman to your chest and follow me.”
She took the proffered talisman and secured it to her robe. Immediately, she felt a warmth emanating from the talisman. Elder Guo Zimo stepped through the wall, and after a moment of wonder, Qian Ling followed.
Through the transparent wall, they entered a dusty room that would have been large if not for the stacks of boxes.
“What is this room?” Qian Ling asked.
“This is where the Hidden Lotus kept the records of their human experiments.”
Qian Ling felt a shudder of righteous revulsion.
“Disgusting. Will it be burned?”
“Alas, this information is too useful,” said Elder Guo Zimo. “The Heavenly Phoenix Empire requires all data about the Hidden Lotus to be sent to an Imperial Bureau so that it can be processed and turned into a weapon against the demonic cultivators that still lurk in the world.”
“I understand, Elder,” Qian Ling said. “So, what are we doing here?”
“You are doing nothing,” Elder Guo Zimo said. “I merely required your blood to enter the room.”
As he said this, he removed his hat. Qian Ling was surprised to see that talismans even covered his scalp. Truly, this was a man prepared for anything… so what were they doing now?
He pulled a talisman from inside his hat. This small slip of paper was so filled with characters that it appeared almost black.
“Another drop of your blood, please, Core Disciple Qian Ling.”
He held the paper towards her.
Though slightly reluctant as she remembered the discomfort she felt earlier, the warmth emanating from the talisman on her chest dissuaded any fear. Pricking her finger, she let a single drop of blood fall onto the talisman.
Immediately, the characters writhed and churned. With a flick of his hand, Elder Guo Zimo cast the talisman toward the boxes of files. The black paper stopped in midair, but the characters continued. They swam in streams of information into the boxes, vanishing like worms into mud.
“What was that?”
“Simply a means of altering what information reaches the Emperor.”
Qian Ling nodded along with her elder before her eyes widened.
“Elder…” she said with a gasp. “You’re talking about treason!
Elder Guo Zimo turned to look at her, the talisman over his face hiding any expression.
“No, I’m not talking about anything. In a moment, the talisman on your chest will erase your memories, and you will collapse: another enthusiastic disciple who pushed herself too far. Don’t worry, after a few days' rest, you will be fine: none the wiser, and promoted to Core Disciple. Congratulations on being so useful.”
Qian Ling glanced toward the transparent wall. Could she even hope to outrun the Core Formation Elder? Already, the warmth from the talisman was building to a scalding heat. She tried to pluck it from her robe, but her fingers didn’t move.
“Just a moment,” the traitorous Elder said. “Try not to panic, it will give you nightmares… oh? What’s this?”
He pulled a talisman from his sleeve that was slowly curling up into grey, noxious smoke. Qian Ling knew that smell.
“Ghost Fang…” she said.
“You are an insightful one,” said the traitorous Elder. “Yes, it seems that Ghost Fang has died. A pity. That Hidden Master of yours truly is a nuisance.”
“He will uncover you,” Qian Ling said through clenched teeth. “He will destroy you!”
“I doubt that, but, in any case, it is no longer your concern.”
Though she fought it valiantly, heat spread through her body and seized her mind. A moment later, Qian Ling collapsed to the floor, dead to the world.
###
There was enough of Ghost Fang’s slimy, grey flesh on my skin that it created a layer between the grey stone. Even as I watched, Ghost Fang’s flesh steamed and shriveled, and the stone touched against me.
There was a brief stab of heat as the stone’s information flowed into my body, and then I fell to the ground.
###
The stone that fell from the heavens shattered once on impact and then ten thousand times under hammer and chisel. A shard pressed against the nape of a bound man’s neck, his screams silenced by his gag, and the pressure of another world ruptured his body from within. Again and again, flesh exploded and left only the shard of stone sitting quietly in a room.
Cultivators with cold faces and colder eyes carried the stone from shelf to man and back to shelf. Each rupture, each scream, was recorded in neat handwriting and secured inside vaults.
Time passed unchanging in a room of paperwork, until one day the clerk found himself inside a cell, with a stone sewn inside his skin. He wailed and protested, but his colleagues, the cultivators, watched with cold eyes.
He waited for the explosion, for the pain, but there was no bite of death, only the ghost of those fangs sinking into his body, pumping a poison from another world as his flesh slowly changed…
###
I woke some time later in the abandoned laboratory.
In a timeless space like this, it was impossible to tell how long I’d been out reliving the memories of the stone. At least the air in the room smelled clean, though maybe I just got used to the odor while I slept.
My palm had healed over since the grey stone cut its way into my flesh. Memories settled into my skull like sand in an hourglass; some were Ghost Fang’s, and some were the stone’s, and I looked around the bland stone room with the broken tube and felt a sad nostalgia that wasn’t my own.
After Ghost Fang was placed in that tube, he never left. His abilities let him explore beyond this space, but it was a shame he never knew true freedom. Even if he was a monster.
With the knowledge from his stone inside me, I thought I understood why he might have called me brother. Even if he was wrong.
There was nothing for me here, and so I left the room. I walked through the facility and found the room where the files had been held. It was stripped bare. Even the dust covered everything evenly. However long ago this place was abandoned, it had been done much more thoroughly than the facility in which I awoke.
I wandered again, relying on the half-impression of the stone-gifted memories. This facility was small, and I quickly explored all the remaining rooms. They were empty and stripped bare. A shame, I’d hoped for more clues.
Though now I knew where to get more.
If this facility had a storage room with files and paperwork, it only stood to reason that the facility I woke in had one as well. If I could get back inside, I could find the documents about my past lives. Hopefully, that could fill in the gaps in my memories: like give me my names.
I even thought I recalled a memory from Ghost Fang’s stone… handling a file with a face like mine…
Still, that facility was sealed, and I wasn’t sure how to go about opening up a mountain.
For now, I had another, more pressing plan, and the steps were clear:
-
Find Cabbagy.
-
Escape the facility before my claustrophobia drove me insane.
-
Get the flower.
The facility must have been built in a ring surrounding a central room that led up to the pagoda above. I wondered which structure was built first, but I had no way of telling.
The central room was quite large, but it was full of a pile of rubble that blocked any hint of light or air coming from above.
I wasn’t sure how I would get out.
But after exploring the edges of the rubble, I found the corpse of Ghost Fang’s puppet — the silver ape — lying with crushed legs after it tried to drag itself toward the room with the cracked tube. Not knowing what else to do, I sat down for a while and ate the body. The flesh tasted fine, if unpleasantly boiled, but the fur was terrible. I don’t think I’d ever get used to eating fur; it was too much like biting into a melon blindfolded and tasting the rind, but also like carpet.
At least it satisfied my growing hunger, but after cracking open his bones for the marrow and slurping them dry, I could no longer ignore my looming claustrophobia.
Because I didn't know how I was going to get out of here.
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