My foot hopped toward me out of the bushes, and I almost danced a jig with relief.

  A monkey must have found my foot, because all the meat had been chewed away, but at least the bones were intact. My foot hopped over to the stump of my leg, and when I placed my sheared bones together, they clicked into place. The repair wasn’t complete, but whatever force held my bones together continued to do the job.

  It seemed that while my willpower wasn’t enough to hold my bones together while I was fully fleshed and manipulating my blood, in the absence of anything wet, I could control my bones with much more ability. It must be the same ability, but it was spread thinner when I had more material to control.

  Still, I could tell that I was weaker when I was nothing but bones. Without my flesh and — more importantly — my blood, I lacked anything that pushed my abilities into the supernatural.

  Discounting the whole walking skeleton thing, I mean.

  “That’s better,” I said as I stood upright on my two feet. “Are you alright, Cabbagy? You look so dishevelled.”

  He let out a long, croaking sigh that sounded more like a death rattle.

  “I’m not long for this world, kid.”

  “No, Cabbagy…”

  "Bury me between a pair of tits,” he whispered. “Place me down with my beloved, Mu Min.”

  I shook my head.

  “One could argue that these mountains resemble a woman’s bosom,” I said. “How about I bury you right here?”

  He coughed.

  “How dare you say my beloved Mu Min’s breasts are like dirty rocks! I’ll have you know they are soft and heavenly and —”

  “Sounds like you’re not close to death at all.”

  “What? No! Cough. Wheeze. I’m dying, you bastard! Take me to Mu Min, or at least a whorehouse or —”

  I stuffed him into my tattered robes, but that only muffled his ceaseless complaining. If I had them, I would have rolled my eyes. I settled for surveying the forest with my empty sockets.

  “What to do, what to do…”

  At some point, I needed to go after the monkeys. I had a bone to pick — ha ha — with the black furred monkey. Really, I wanted to rip that club out of his hands and shove it up his ass.

  But first, I needed to check on Fallen Hen Village. There was no way I could actually enter the village while I was all bones, but I could at least scout out if it was intact.

  After that, I could set about getting Qian Ling and Mu Min to assist me in defeating the monkeys. Working with the cultivators and potentially getting exposed terrified me, but I would rather risk capture than let the monkeys eat the mortals like they did me.

  The bastard spirit beasts didn’t even kill me first, and I knew that would have been a living hell if I felt any pain. There was no way I would condemn someone else to that fate through my inaction.

  I had a pretty good idea of where the village was, so I set off.

  Running with just my bones was easier than expected. I lacked the explosive power of my muscles, but I was much lighter. It was a few miles until I reached the village, and I managed to build up enough speed that I was positively flying through the forest.

  Which helped me bend myself to the task when I heard the village bell tolling out a warning.

  I raced ahead at breakneck speed and skidded to a halt when I reached the treeline. The danger of being discovered prompted me to hide while I scouted out the area. Even though it was dark, the sky was clear and the moonlight shone down.

  Falling Hen Village lay under siege.

  Wisps of mist floated around the walls like silvery guardian serpents. Threads glinted inside the clouds, catching the moonlight with a suggestion of preternatural sharpness. The clear sky overhead confirmed that the mists were the work of the cultivators. Mu Min, if I had to guess. She must have conjured the mists that obscured my first interaction with the monkeys.

  “Those two cultivators must have been following me,” I said aloud with my hollow, creaking skeleton voice. “I wonder why?”

  “Some wankers have all the luck,” Cabbagy moaned from inside my robe.

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  I shook my head at his complaints.

  Arrows shot out of the misty cover. In the dark of night, they were no more than darts of shadow — often only revealed when they struck the cleared earth between the walls and the forest, or struck fur-covered flesh.

  A troop of monkeys over thirty strong swarmed outside the walls. They hid behind raised banks of earth that hadn’t been there before. The thick cover ate up any poorly aimed arrows and protected the red-eyed spirit beasts as they cowered.

  Some of the monkeys had attempted to storm the mists, and from the bisected bodies and missing limbs, it seemed that strategy had not worked.

  But even as I watched, the mists thinned.

  They couldn’t last much longer.

  An eight-foot-tall, yellow-furred monkey stood atop with a staff of gnarled wood that she tapped into the ground. The staff sank into the earth like a spoon into a pot of soup, and as the monkey moved the staff, ripples passed out along the ground, growing and folding until they were waves of rock and dirt that crashed toward the village’s walls.

  The bulging earth passed through the deadly mists, but though the suspended wires flashed and glinted, they only broke against the rock.

  Dirt flew up as the earthen wave smashed against the wooden walls. The buried pine tree timber shook and rattled. Guards cried out in fear, and their arrows faltered.

  The yellow monkey howled with laughter as she stirred the long crooked staff in the earth and conjured another wave.

  “Those gates won’t last much longer,” Cabbagy said as he peeked out from my robe. “Once they fall, the Howling Spirit Monkeys will storm the town. It will be a slaughter.”

  Another wave of earth crashed against the gates, and even at this distance, I heard the structure shudder and groan. Dirt was piling up against the walls. Each earthen attack diminished the misty barrier — eventually, the mists would fall.

  “What do you think, kid?” Cabbagy asked. “Should we make a run for it? I know there’s got to be another town around here somewhere. Maybe they have a brothel? We can ask around for my wife?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not running.”

  “You going to make an honorable sacrifice to save a bunch of strangers?”

  I laughed, and the echo in my skull made it a terrible sound.

  “There’ll be no sacrifice, and there’ll be nothing honorable about it, but I’ll save those townsfolk. Can I count on your help?”

  “Cough. Wheeze…”

  I stared at him.

  He stared at me.

  The earth rumbled in the distance. Someone screamed. The monkeys hooted and laughed.

  “Fine,” Cabbagy said with a sigh. “I’ll help.”

  “Great,” I said with the wide grin of a skeleton. “Let’s go do something horrific.”

  ###

  It was the perfect time for them to descend. Qian Ling and Mu Min waited at the top of the ruin and watched as the troops of monkeys vanished into the forest. No doubt they were off to throw themselves against the Hidden Master — a fate Qian Ling couldn’t help but smile about.

  If only they knew the death and horror they marched towards.

  When only a few monkeys remained as sentries, the women entered the pagoda to complete the Hidden Master’s test.

  Qian Ling stole down through the interior of the temple, with Mu Min only a few paces behind her. Both women moved through the shadows, their qi suppressed, their every footstep hushed to the point of non-existence.

  The interior of the building was filled with the creaking of the pine growing up through the hollow center of the pagoda. But that sound was drowned out by the deep breathing coming from down below.

  A snoring like an avalanche down the slopes of the Shining Mountain. Down below, resting amongst the roots of the pagoda pine, lay a gigantic ape with silver fur.

  Ghost Fang.

  Qian Ling couldn’t help but stare. She felt Mu Min stand beside her. The two of them leaned over the ancient vine-wrapped balustrade as they beheld the monster below them. The seventeen-foot-tall silver ape lay amongst the roots, snoring, scratching at itself idly, but the sheer pressure of qi and violence that radiated made Qian Ling physically ill.

  She’d never seen such a large spirit beast. It looked like it could eat a mortal family for lunch and still have room for dinner. Judging from the bones scattered amongst the roots, there was a chance it had done so before.

  Cracks twisted the ancient tiles on the pagoda floor, and foul vapors flowed up out of the depths of the earth. The silver-furred ape breathed them in with every gasping snore. Those same vapors filled the lower chamber of the pagoda, and even at the heights where Qian Ling stood, she could smell the cloying sickness they carried.

  Her qi twisted as she felt the touch of the demonic, and it took all her effort to keep herself suppressed. She closed off her cultivation, doing everything she could to maintain her purity.

  She’d hoped that the moniker ‘Demonic Ape’ was just a name to inspire fear, but unfortunately, it was the truth. This truly was a spirit beast that had turned away from the heavens and embraced the hells.

  Beyond the demonic qi suffusing its body, the beast radiated a cultivation that could be 1st stage Foundation Establishment. Of course, even without qi and cultivation, a single glance at the gigantic muscles confirmed that the beast was powerful.

  She had to admit she’d hoped the rumors of Ghost Fang’s strength were just that: rumors.

  Facing the radiating menace, she knew it was all true.

  But if there was a monster this powerful attacking mortals, the core disciples of her sect should have been dispatched…

  Unless the elders didn’t know.

  After all, maybe the beast had just broken through into Foundation Establishment and started a rampage… and it would take the death of two promising Qi Condensing cultivators to ensure the Shining Mountain Sect took proper action.

  Her heart pounded with fear as the thoughts took hold. Sweat beaded on her brow. Mu Min gripped her arm and pulled her back from the edge.

  Without the beast in sight, the fear receded — not enough to be gone, but enough for her to start breathing again.

  “This is too much, Qian Ling,” Mu Min said. “It’s too powerful, and we’ve taken too long. We should return to the village.”

  Qian Ling shook her head, even though she agreed.

  She wanted to run. Every fiber of her being screamed for her to escape. Even her cultivation protested at being in the same building as the demonic monster sleeping down below.

  But…

  The Hidden Master sent them here to do this — if not directly, then implicitly — and so she had no choice. She had to prove herself worthy of his attention. For her sect, and for herself.

  “We can do this,” she said with conviction. “We can kill Ghost Fang.”

  Double-checking her qi reserves, Qian Ling prepared for the fight of her life.

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