I stood deep in the forest, surrounded by pines, monkeys, and an atmosphere of dread. The mixed blood of the dead monkey and myself trickled onto Cabbagy's leaves as I held his beaten form. A part of me thought of running...
Until the gigantic black monkey pointed his six-foot iron club at me as though it were a bamboo cane.
“You destroyed my brother, and so I shall destroy you.”
“Damn straight I destroyed your brother!” I shouted as I placed the Cabbagy down on the pine needles. “And I’ll destroy you as well!”
My trash talk aggravated the black monkey and caused him to recklessly charge.
He was faster than I expected.
I leaped over the swinging iron club, but it caught my shin. The heavy metal shattered my bone and ripped my foot off. I spun away from the impact and slammed into a pine tree.
“Dodge…” Cabbagy said before coughing.
“Thanks,” I mumbled as I stood, and tripped since I was missing a foot.
Falling over saved my head as the iron club whistled through the air and slammed into the tree trunk. Wooden splinters exploded out and bounced off me as the black monkey ripped his weapon free. He raised it over his head, and the iron club’s shadow fell over my face.
“Too weak,” he said with a fanged grin that reminded me of his brother. “Too slow.”
“Get his wrist,” Cabbagy said.
Blood swirled from the stump of my leg. I formed a crude foot and pushed off from the ground, launching myself at the black monkey’s arm.
I managed to grab his wrist and arrest the swing of the iron club. We stood there, contesting the weapon. His nine-foot bulk leaned down on me, sending me sliding back through the pine needles as I tried to stay upright.
My swirling blood foot gripped the earth and held me in place. I dug into the monkey’s wrist, but his dark fur-covered muscles felt hard as rocks. Blood oozed from where my fingers dug in, but this spirit beast was far more powerful than his brother.
Growling deeply, the black monkey leaned back and pulled me up off the ground. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed me up into the air.
I spun and looked down in horror as the black monkey pulled his iron club back behind his shoulder.
His burning yellow eyes locked with mine as he smiled and swung.
The club screamed through the air and smashed into my back.
My body went listless as my already broken spine shattered. Force rippled through me and disintegrated my organs. Blood exploded from my mouth as liquified insides pushed their way outside.
I flew through the air like a shooting star. The forest spun. Branches snapped as I crashed into them. I hit the ground, and dirt flew up to rain down on me.
I felt no pain, but I felt no body.
Movement was impossible. Even my blood manipulation didn’t respond to my will. I lay like a puddle in a hole in the ground as the black monkey slowly walked over.
“To think my brother fell to one as weak as you,” he said with a shake of his head.
He loomed over me, reached down, and dug his long nails into my chest, punching through muscle and bone until his grip closed around the remnants of my heart. Smiling, he pulled the lump of muscle free. Blood dripped onto my face as the black monkey sniffed his prize.
He let out a deep, disgusted growl.
“No qi at all.”
He tossed my heart into the dirt as the lesser, white monkeys appeared around my shattered body. They licked their lips and bared their fangs. The black monkey nodded as he wiped his bloody fingers on a white monkey.
“You may feed,” he said. “Then, return to the nest to prepare another assault.”
He slung his iron club over his shoulder and walked away into the pines.
The lesser monkeys crawled closer to me, drool dripping from their maws and avarice burning in their fiery red eyes. Their dexterous fingers ripped my muscles from my bones and scooped out my insides. They shrieked at each other as they pulled my limbs free and fought over the meal.
I didn’t scream as they reduced me to a bloody pile of bones. I tried to fight, but each mouthful taken from my flesh reduced my willpower. There were so many of them that I was quickly reduced to bones. As the monkeys scooped out my brains like pudding from a bowl, I fell into darkness.
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The forest grew darker as Qian Ling and Mu Min headed further away from the village. They went deep into the pines, and the afternoon advanced. Shadow swept in from the mountain as the sun retreated, and the trees themselves grew thicker and more primordial until no trace of the sky could be seen from the quiet forest floor.
The pair of cultivators moved in absolute silence. They kept their qi as close to their bodies as possible. Any communication was made through hand gestures. Not even a whisper escaped them as they stole from tree to tree toward the ancient temple hidden in the pines.
At first, they only followed rumors, but as they got closer, they could feel the warping of qi. The pressure that could only come from a powerful spirit beast making a nest in the wilds.
Though it wasn’t always wild here.
A cylindrical pagoda stood in a state of disrepair that must have taken centuries to accomplish. The buttery stone was crumbled and cracked with vines. Red tiles lined the eaves, though most lay shattered on the ground. The structure stood seven stories tall; how much taller it used to be was impossible to know since a pine tree grew up through the roof to form a natural evergreen spire.
Howling Spirit Monkeys lounged around the steps and the balconies, grooming, sleeping, picking fights, and noses. Qian Ling counted over fifty of the lesser monkeys and noted they were split into two groups, each gathered around a larger monkey: one black, and one yellow.
The two women hid in the branches of a pine. They dared not even conjure an obscuring mist, lest it give away their presence.
Mu Min leaned close to Qian Ling and whispered directly into her ear.
“Which one do you think is Ghost Fang?”
Qian Ling shook her head.
“None are tall enough.”
Mu Min nodded in agreement, but her expression said she was terrified of Qian Ling’s assessment.
Those two monkeys radiated spiritual pressure that put them firmly into peak Qi Condensation. Since spirit beasts cultivated differently from humans, the monkeys would be stronger, faster, and tougher than any human of the same level. Not to mention the qi techniques they could certainly utilize.
It was easy to imagine how much damage the iron club wielded by the black furred monkey could do to a human.
They’d thought they only had to deal with Ghost Fang. That he alone would outrank them, but that they could win through teamwork. Now they saw two other powerhouses — not to mention the veritable horde of lesser monkeys.
Mu Min signalled Qian Ling that they should retreat.
Qian Ling shook her head.
“The Hidden Master is counting on us,” she said.
Mu Min shook her head desperately, but Qian Ling had already started climbing the pine.
The silver-haired cultivator used threads of qi to quickly pull herself up the pine. She balanced at the top of the gigantic tree and waited for Mu Min to join her. The two of them adjusted their weight as the tree swayed in the growing evening wind.
The only tree taller than the one they stood on was the ancient pine sprouting through the pagoda’s roof.
Beyond the temple, nestled in the mountains, lay Sleeping Ruin Pass. The only way to reach the Great Northern Mountain. With nightfall, the distant mountains formed a wall of shadow that blocked out all stars but those directly overhead.
Those stars watched like glittering shards of ice.
This high, the wind swept away any scent or sense of the monkeys and their qi. For a moment, the two cultivators were undiscoverable. They waited and were rewarded as the tall yellow-furred monkey led a procession of the lesser, pale monkeys away into the forest.
“They’re heading toward the village,” Mu Min whispered.
“Our defences will hold,” Qian Ling said. “This is the perfect chance for us to sneak in and take out Ghost Fang.”
“You’re insane.”
“Cultivators have to be,” Qian Ling said as she wrapped her arm around Mu Min’s waist. “How else could we challenge the heavens?”
Drawing on her overflowing dantian, she launched a long, almost invisible wire of qi toward the evergreen spire thrusting up from the ruined pagoda. The wire looped around a branch, and Qian Ling pulled it tight. Taking a deep breath, she waited for the swaying tree to lean her closer to the pagoda before she leaped. With a yank on her technique, she reeled her and Mu Min toward the tree and the temple and the lair of Ghost Fang.
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I woke to the sound of my skull clicking together like go stones placed down on a board. The night sky hung overhead. Pines stood silently. Stars watched. I sighed, and tried to blink — which was when I realised I had no eyelids.
With a groan, I sat up to inspect my condition.
Once more, I was nothing but a skeleton.
The monkeys had picked me clean with their indelicate touch, and toothmarks still marred my bones. My shin bones remained sheared in half with my foot still missing. At least the rest of me was still held together. My knuckles and fingers moved with ease, bone quietly clicking on bone as I flexed. I was actually pretty impressed that most of my bones were intact. There were still countless cracks and fractures, but after having a gigantic monkey toss me about, and an even bigger monkey wail on me with an iron club, I really shouldn’t be anything more than a pile of bone-flavored dust.
Still, I was happy to be intact, but there was no trace of flesh regrowing like I’d experienced in the facility after the kiss of the Cleansing Fire Formations.
I had no doubt I would regenerate — confidence is key — but it seemed that the ordeal of being eaten wasn’t something I’d recover from straight away.
My mind flashed back to the snapping jaws and the scent of rotten breath, and I suppressed it with everything I could. Three sets of broken memories aren’t good for much, but at least they make dealing with waking nightmares somewhat possible.
It was awkward to stand with only one foot, but I managed to pull myself upright. How long would it take my foot to regrow? I still wasn’t sure about the timeline for completely regrowing bones. Even just having them form back together had taken hours — around half a day, if I guessed by the night sky.
At least the regeneration was a seemingly subconscious process. There was no way I would have the presence of mind to put something as complicated as my own skeleton back together.
I glanced around the pines, searching for enemies. A night bird broke the silence, but I heard no monkeys, and — thankfully — no distant bell tolling the village’s danger.
Unless the bell already tolled, and the village already fell…
Even though I only wanted to go north and collect the flower so I could leave this region and revisit my past, I’d told the people of Falling Hen Village that I would help them. There was no going back on a promise like that.
And, besides, it was the right thing to do.
With the powerful grimace of a skull, I dressed myself in the tattered remains of my robes and started hopping toward where I’d left Cabbagy behind.
Hopefully, the monkeys hadn’t found him...
A moonbeam fell like a silver shower onto Cabbagy’s battered leaves. The same light almost glowed on my bones as I bent down to pick up the vegetable.
“Are you still with me, Cabbagy?”
“Ah!” he groaned. “A ghost! It’s going to eat me!”
“Ha. ha.”
“Oh, it’s you.”
“It’s me.”
“How are you moving your bones like that?”
“It’s uncomfortable,” I said. “Especially with my foot missing…”
I trailed off as I heard a rustling in the shadows.
“What’s that?” I said as I hopped toward the sound.
A bush rustled nearby, and as I bent down to see what it might be, the grin on my skull became truly genuine.
lil button? Together, we might just bust through to the top ten and spread the chaos!
advanced chapters are waiting to be read on my .
