Weep (VII)
We ran until my lungs were numb and my legs felt chained by weights.
The sloped, rugged terrain of the mountain slowly shifted to the forested one, and it became even harder as I had to avoid stumbling and falling down against the endless jutting roots of the trees.
There were cuts and scrapes galore within just a few minutes of running and trying to navigate the maze of the tall, overgrown shrubberies full of thorns and sharp branches digging out.
Yet we ran.
Luckily, at least, all we had to do was run down and follow a 'path'--there was no way to get lost.
Though, I have to admit, besides the burning pain searing within every inch of my body, there is one thing that hurts above it all--the shame. What shame? Well, I am carrying a child, sure, but Long Tao is carrying someone twice the age of the child I'm carrying, and he barely looks like he's broken a sweat.
Xi Zhao, too, looks about as unbothered as when we started, and me? Well, I'm soaked.
I can all but taste the sweet toxins of apathetic laziness ooze out of me, though, in my defense, the vast majority of them were not my doing. I've actually been working out semi-regularly, you know? A few dozen push-ups here, some squats, a bit of cardio, but it didn't feel like much was changing.
Any time I got my body purified by the system, however, the change was massive--sort of like having worked out for six months straight and actually seeing the results of it.
I could think of a thousand things--
The light was blinding, so blinding in fact that I instinctively pulled my hand over Light's eyes and just barely closed mine in time for them to burn just a bit. The ground suddenly gave out under me, and I started falling, stumbling in the dark to find the girl and pull her tightly into my chest as I tried to angle my fall in the opposite direction.
Even through the darkness, bits of strobing lights broke through, like shattered shards of an hourglass aglow like a prism. Streaks blurred, and I found myself closing my eyes harder only to somehow exacerbate the entire damn thing.
I fell rather awkwardly, back first rather than butt first, though, luckily, I did bounce off the tree on my way down, which cushioned the fall slightly. It was when I landed that the actual tremors truly began--the ground quaked violently. Honestly, it felt as though there was something deeply dormant waking up, like a volcano was about to blow its top off and these were its warning calls.
Within a second, I found myself tossed back up and rumbling across the air; just in time, I managed to open my eyes and see the tree about four yards from me, pushing out with my feet and landing against it, springily managing to land on one of my feet after.
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Honestly? Probably the most athletic feat I've ever pulled off in my life.
Looking back up the mountain, I caught a brief glimpse of a truly monstrous pillar of greenish light. It pulsed like tiled noise for a moment before it dissolved, leaving behind a clear blue sky.
In my awe, however, the clean blue sky was overcome with ashen clouds within just a few moments. A breath later, rain as red as blood began to pour down.
"What the..." I mumbled, just now recognizing that I've bruised a few of my ribs in the fall and that they hurt. I swallowed the yelp, however. "Are you okay?" I asked the girl nestled within my arms.
"I'm fine," she replied.
"Everyone alright?" I called out, looking around.
Luckily, Long Tao and Dai Xiu were fine, if a bit rattled and dirty, while Xi Zhao was limping a bit, having sprained his ankle.
"What happened?" Xi Zhao asked as all of us looked up the mountain.
"... I don't know," I said. "We should keep going."
We continued descending, though having slowed down a bit. At some point, the steep terrain of the mountain leveled out, and we left the forested area, emerging on a rather graceful, grassy descent from which we could see the flats expanding into the misty horizon.
"Let's take a break here," I said, all but collapsing.
As soon as I set Light down, I practically fell down, heaving for breath.
It wasn't just tiredness, I don't think. Rather, I feel it's more that the weight of everything has just started truly sinking in. It just dawned on me that I'm on the run with the kids and that we're homeless. That all I've known now lies destroyed, and everyone besides the ones here... is dead. Or, at least, captured.
You know, it'd be so easy for me to lose my shit right about now.
I have a full barrel of excuses, don't I? Yet, as I lift my head and look at these kids, I realize... I can't. Long Tao, yeah, he's fine, if a bit winded. He's probably witnessed hundreds of battles just like that and participated in thrice as many.
But what about the others?
They hid it, the best they could at least. But I could see it in their eyes--there were no better off than me. No, they were worse off than even me. At least, I've got a few decades under my belt, for what it's worth.
Silence snuck in our midst as everyone sat down. I took out a few pills and distributed them, popping a few myself. The wounds were beginning to burn, and the infection is never a fun game to play.
That soul-anchoring feeling was back--anxiety. Like a root of a tree, it's dug itself deep, and it won't be easy to get rid of. But I do everything I can to swallow it down like a knot in my throat, standing up and facing them all.
For better or worse (mostly worse), I'm all these kids have. And there's no going back, not now, and likely not ever. It's unlikely that we'll plant our roots anywhere anytime soon, which means we'll become vagabonds for a little while. Do I have any experience surviving that way? Eh. I backpacked a bit in my youngblood days, and this was while I was kind of broke and had to do odd jobs to make ends meet.
This one time, while trying to figure out how the hell I was going to afford reaching the Alps for some of that sweet winter skiing (thinking I could afford it at all), I got stuck for almost a month in a small Slovenian village called Štanjel, where I got hired to do odd jobs around a vineyard. The entire village was nothing but stone and wind, and I laid bricks all-the-livelong-day, every day, for a half-built wine cellar, while sleeping in a barn that smelled of figs and concrete dust.
It wasn't the only time--rather, I found that I often had to park myself in the smaller hamlets where the work, while draining as all hell, was genuine. The locals were nice; they often shared their meals with me, and they paid on time.
That's probably what we'll have to do--start roaming, looking for odd jobs, and stay in smaller places while traveling eastward. Not immediately, as there's still a small horde of resources in my fair share of spatial rings (especially the one Elder Qin gave me just as the battle was breaking out), but it was an inevitability, and it's probably best I prepare them for it immediately.
"Your appearances," I said. "Have you decided on the new ones?"
Spiritwood Grove (I)
To catch you up really quickly, the appearances they chose to take up on are rather... well, I don't want to say predictable, but they're predictable.
Dai Xiu elected to remove the baby fat she had in her face, somehow elongate herself two inches, 'smush' her rounded eyes into a slanted variant, dye her brown hair fully black, and give her eyes a peculiar red sheen.
Xi Zhao, too, seems to have grown up a couple of inches; all of his 'baby' features are gone, too, replaced with a chiseled jaw and brows that did not belong with that childlike look in his eyes begging for praise.
Light, surprisingly, didn't change all that much--she mostly just 'normalized' herself, as it were, turning the strange hair and eye pair into black and brown, accordingly. She rounded out her face slightly so that it's not recognizable but hadn't changed her body at all.
Long Tao... well, he kind of looked like a horse breeder, to be honest. Look, I've been around horse breeders enough times to recognize when someone's business is breeding horses. And he looked like the guy breeding horses, trust me.
As for me?
Well, I mostly just made myself younger. Not necessarily in the 'wrinkle' department so much as in the hairdo and black-circles-under-the-eyes departments. I'd dyed my hair black, removed those wretched circles, aged myself down to look as though I was in my early thirties, and changed the bone structure of my face just enough that it made me seem a bit 'sharper'.
Altogether, we looked like a strange yet ordinary band of travelers.
"Have you guys rested enough?" I asked, and they all nodded.
Thus, we continued the descent down the gentle slope and toward the plains. Our first destination was the town Elder Qin mentioned north of where we'd exit the mountains--which really meant just continuing in a straight direction as we emerged on the northern side of the mountain range.
I figured we'd stay there for a couple of days and see if there's any news or rumors about the sect and such, alongside figuring out our mode of transport.
Walking was out of the question, and I'm not just saying that for me. It's one thing to hike a couple of dozen miles, but I knew enough about this world to recognize the journey would be closer to a couple of thousand miles.
And ain't nobody hiking that shit.
I actually already had something in mind--I wanted to disguise us as merchants. It's a rather broad-strokes sort of cover that wouldn't make us seem suspicious no matter how long we stay in one place. We can always peddle some of the ordinary herbs that we've got in spades between all our spatial treasures, and it'd make the journey more comfortable, as the kids could rest in the wagon while I could take in the sights from the coach.
Issue?
Though I knew a bit about horseback riding, I knew nothing about, uh, wagon driving? Whatever it's called. And though I was tempted to hire a coach, it was only so for a moment.
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None of it would matter, however, if the town we were heading to was far too small so as to not even have horses for sale, let alone wagons. To the best of my knowledge, this small 'closed-in' partition they called Innominate Edge had two major cities--one was far up in the north, at the edge between two regions, called the Eternal City.
Lots of names with 'Eternal' and 'Heavenly' and 'Spiritual' in them, I recognized.
The other one was to the far south, south of the Fire Sun Sect even, but, regardless, neither really was within the scope of our destinations.
There are a lot of smaller towns and villages littering the terrain between the two edges, hundreds of them, but most aren't even marked on the couple of maps that I managed to stash from the library. Including the one we were heading toward.
"... do you think they all died, Master?" Xi Zhao asked abruptly, breaking a rather lengthy silence just as we reached the flats.
"I don't know," I replied honestly. "Elders of our Sect are really strong."
"Even if they were a thousand times stronger, nothing was surviving that pillar," Long Tao chimed in from the side. "The good news is that there's nobody left alive who may know we've escaped, which means nobody will be looking for us."
"You don't know that!" Dai Xiu protested. "Brother Hua is very strong, and he went back to help!"
"..." Long Tao merely glanced at her and shrugged.
I have a teensy bit of a feeling that her dear brother Hua was the cause of that massive pillar.
"Is he not, Master?" She turned toward me and asked; it was a bit awkward, getting used to their new faces, especially now that her pleading expression wasn't so much 'cutesy adorable girl' and was more akin to 'teenager trying to wring ten bucks out of you through pity'.
I know that expression 'cause I used to be the master of it.
"Yes, he's very strong. Nobody knows what happened in there; for now, we'll proceed with the notion that we are being hunted. Once we reach the town, we'll settle down and listen in for any news about the sect."
About four hours later, we all rushed toward the singular tree and sat in its shade, heaving and sweating bullets.
It was a serious hell, and the flat terrain was just knee-high grass with constant bug bites and no freakin' tree in sight. There wasn't even a river; hell, not even a slightly oversized shrub. Just an endless field that nobody has walked through in decades, clearly.
So, when we spotted a tree about a mile away from us, we all ran over like mad and quickly cleared the grass around it, sitting in its shade.
"... my family will probably be annihilated, won't they?" It wasn't thirty seconds later that I heard the words that sent a chill down my spine.
Glancing to the side, I saw Xi Zhao, his head trapped between his knees, with the latter pressing hard into his chest.
"They are known affiliates, and... and they proudly publicized when I got accepted..." His voice was cracking.
I'd found it odd, to be honest, how... repressed Xi Zhao had been when we went to his hometown. In the chaos of it all, he'd even forgotten for a moment about his family. It led me to believe that he wasn't particularly close with them, but maybe it was just a kid trying to be strong. Not an unknown form, either.
I had no words of comfort because he was probably right--in the war of extermination, only those of supremely high status were ever taken as prisoners. Auxiliary families supplying disciple robes?
No. They were executed brutally as to send a message.
It could be that they got wind of it and ran, though it's doubtful. Most people in Xi Zhao's family were mortals, and even if they had a month of a head start, they wouldn't get far before being caught.
"It's okay," Light, of all of us, stood up and walked over, patting his head. "My mother and father will look out for them, I promise."
He tried to stifle his sniffling, and the rest of us pretended he succeeded.
It's always in moments like these that I realize just how ill-equipped I am for this whole damned thing. I mean, there's a child in pain right there, and I'm sitting here awkwardly as though I got a stick up my ass rather than offering anything--even just some empty words of comfort.
"We'll pay this debt," I eventually managed to finally open my mouth and speak. "No matter how long it takes."
How comforting, if at all, those words were, I don't know. I just... felt I had to say them, even as an empty gesture.
Grove (II)
Looking at my Creation Points, I've got 360. No scope!
Ugh.
I'm still limited to just 100 points per art, which means that the limit is increased only when I achieve a major breakthrough rather than just a minor one. It's... kind of hard, honestly, to figure out a clever way to make something useful within 100 points when I've made arts costing five and ten times as much.
It was a lot of fun, not having to skip over every goddamned option just because they are too expensive. Alas, it's my burden to bear.
... speaking of burdens.
I am one. No, seriously. It turns out, all the kids have thrice my stamina--even Light, a six-year-old girl, can outmatch me. You know, everyone back on Earth claimed that the reason humans dominated early pre-civilization days was because we were the greatest persistence hunters ever, but this body is a clear example that not all of them were.
In my defense, I've got boots that weren't made for walking, and the temperatures here are somehow rising. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if the humidity didn't rise with it. I thought that humidity increased with elevation, but clearly I was dead wrong, so what the hell do I know?
"No, no, you're stepping into it too quickly." While I was catching my breath, Long Tao was doing the unthinkable--interacting with the kids. Well, "interacting" was overselling it--he was sparring with them and helping them chisel the flaws from their arts in the process.
Right now, he was instructing Xi Zhao; just a moment ago, he easily sidestepped the 'staggered' attack and simply hit the young boy in the back of his knees, immediately downing him. It was all so effortless that it made Xi Zhao temporarily believe he'd forgotten how to fight.
Now, Long Tao always won the spars--but he usually held back a bit, never completely trouncing any of the kids. Ever since they started sparring in the shade of the scant few trees that we came upon while I rested, however, he became a bit more stern.
"The best way to fight with the temporal aspect isn't to be on the offense," he said, taking the sword out of Xi Zhao's scabbard and actually illustrating the same attack. However... it was different. "See? If you go in first, it doesn't matter how well you stagger. It gives the opponent a chance to react, regardless."
"H-how did you do that?! Do you know how to use a temporal sword, too?"
"Huh? No. I just manually imitated yours."
"..." Oi, isn't that even more insane?!
"Don't think stray thoughts." He flicked the boy's forehead, pointing at the sword. "Remember--your best chance of winning, especially against those of higher cultivation, is to lure them in. Don't immediately resort to it. Your sword arts are already on a fairly high level, so use those to set a baseline. Once you lure them in within two feet of yourself, wait for an upward slash." All while he was talking, he kept illustrating all the moves--the attacking and the defending ones. "While in an upward motion, the body's center of gravity is condensed, and swordsmen will find it difficult, and mostly outright impossible, to alter it meaningfully. It means they have committed to the attack. Come on, attack me."
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"A-ah, yes!" Xi Zhao took the sword back and started attacking, and Long Tao did exactly what he just described--waited for an upward swing and immediately went for the wrist. "Ugh," the sword flew out as the boy cried out in pain.
"Again."
"Ugh!"
"Again!"
"Ugh."
"Again!"
And thus, it went on for about an hour.
Xi Zhao lay down on the ground, breathing heavily, his wrists bruised like plums and swollen like balloons. I hurried over and handed him a couple of pills, glancing over at Long Tao inquisitively. He just shrugged and then turned toward Dai Xiu.
"Senior Brother, please!" Rather than wincing or trying to get out of it, she instead got into the fighting stance and attacked.
As with Xi Zhao, he easily dispersed the mean-looking right hook and took the heel of his right foot into the right side of her ribcage. She yelped and dashed sideways against her will, rolling in the dirt for a moment before slowly standing up, holding onto the hurt end, grimacing in pain.
"Why are you in so much pain? I didn't even put any Qi into my attack."
"Uhm..."
"You're a body cultivator," he said. "Your body is your weapon, yes, but it's also your shield. You focused yourself too much on the attack, both literally and through the use of your Qi. In a fight, you cannot do that unless your opponent is vastly weaker than you. Again."
"Y-yes!" Though he seemingly taught her how to avoid getting absolutely smacked, the exact same thing happened the next go-around... except he heeled her in the left shoulder, and she ragdolled diagonally rather than straight sideways.
"You need to get in closer before starting to attack," he said. "You're not a swordsman, so why are you fighting like one? Forget everything you were taught at the sect. While the swordsmen are supposed to maintain the perfect distance so that the extended tip of their swords matches the extended halfway point of the opponent's arm, again, you are not a swordsman. You attack too early, and to compensate for the lack of reach, you overextend, which leaves you practically defenseless. Hold your attacks half a breath longer before going in. Again."
"Yes!"
"Again!"
"Yes!"
"Again!"
"Y-yes!"
About two hours later, Dai Xiu lay sprawled, not unlike Xi Zhao did two hours earlier, bloodied and bruised. I walked up to her, too, and handed over a few pills. Just as I was about to hold a sweet speech to encourage two kids, I looked over and saw something that stopped my soul--Long Tao's knee burying itself into Light's left thigh.
The girl collapsed like a house of cards in place, yelping slightly as I hurried over and stood between the two of them.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Teaching her."
"... then teach," I grunted. "Beating the hell out of someone isn't the only way to teach."
"But it's the best way to learn how to fight."
"And I imagine that the best way to teach someone how to swim, to you, is to just toss them into deep water and watch them squirm?"
"Of course. Body instincts take over and guide your every move."
"Yeah. I--"
"--it's fine," the girl's voice came from my side as her fingers clutched at my robes. "I want to become stronger."
"..."
Alright.
So, all my kids are officially insane.
And I'm insane for thinking I can reel them in whatsoever. I can already see my future, to be honest--they'll be raising hell everywhere we go, and I'll be running behind them, putting out fires. I won't be a Master so much as I'll be a babysitter that occasionally tosses martial arts at them.
"I'll just take a nap..." I may as well, honestly. That way I can at least not witness a six-year-old girl being beaten until she's bleeding.
Are my sensibilities going away?! Why the hell am I indulging a kid?!
Grove (III)
We actually stayed in the shade of the tree for three days total while Long Tao, essentially, beat the basics into them.
I had to admit... he was kind of right. Not in the 'yes, let's beat kids until they act the way we want them to', but in that they did get much better. Even I could see it. There were fewer useless movements while they executed the martial arts, they didn't get as winded as quickly as they used to, they were far more patient, and they were very clear on their strengths and weaknesses.
I mean, none of it mattered--they still got their shit kicked in the exact same manner as three days ago, but it was clear that Long Tao was now putting in, like, 1.3% effort as opposed to the 0.7% that it used to be.
Two interesting bits happened--in that two status windows popped up. One for fixing Xi Zhao's art--the one he learned from the sect, the one I already improved once. I did spend the 60 points (wasn't it cheaper?!) to fully fix it, and it turned into low-Sky tier art, actually. I haven't taught him yet, but I will as soon as he stops wincing any time he moves more than two fingers.
The other time it popped up was actually just a moment ago--Long Tao demonstrated a sword technique (one of his own, actually) for Xi Zhao as a means of showcasing what a 'distracted sword' can do. And, surprisingly, a window popped up.
[--unknown Martial Art Analyzed]
[...]
[Do you wish to spend 100 Creation Points to view all 13 faults that could be remedied?]
Now, 100 points was a lot. I mean, it was a whole-ass-art. But... my curiosity got the best of me. I mean, I'd still be left with 200, and as long as I had some banked, it should be... fine.
[Art Analyzed]
[Name: Voidcleaver Blade, First Mantra]
[Type: Weapon Art]
[Rank: ???]
[???]
[Flaws Found: 13]
[Destructive Flaws: 1]
[Critical Flaws: 0]
[Major Flaws: 3]
[Minor Flaws: 9]
[...]
[Minor Flaw 1: art requires imbuement of Void Qi for most optimal use]
[Minor Flaw 2: swapping the sixth and seventh movements would be more optimal]
[...]
[Major Flaw 1: art was primarily created for severing the void and forging pathways through it; it has been altered and adjusted to be used as a killing art, but a lot of the original strength of the art has been lost in conversion, dropping its rank]
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[...]
[Destructive Flaw: art was made for '?????'. Humans can only draw up to 0.5% of its total capability]
[...]
[Does the host wish to reconstruct the 'Voidcleaver Blade' martial art?]
[Partial Reconstruction Cost: 1,000,000 (art evolves into '???')]
[Complete Reconstruction (making it wholly useable by humans): 500,000,000 CP (art breaks just barely into '???' rank)]
Yeah.
I ain't reconstructing shit.
Though, logically, the 100 points was a total waste, it... honestly wasn't. Just the fact that Long Tao knows something like this tells me I've been severely underestimating him. The question is... does he know that the art wasn't made for humans? And, far more importantly, who was it made for?
I decided to ask. Well, not ask ask, but more like... skirt around it. Dance like we do with oh-so-many things.
"I've never seen that art before," I said. The three kids were resting, eating, and nursing both bruised bones and egos, while Long Tao sat down to meditate against the tree.
"There are billions of arts neither one of us has seen before."
"Hm. Few as complex-seeming as that one."
"... oh?" He opened his eyes and looked at me, smiling. "This might be interesting."
"What?"
"If you can guess what the art is, even broadly," he said. "I'll grant you an answer to any question you have. An honest one. If you can't, you'll do the same for me. What say you?" Hey, did my gambling habits rub off on all of them?! But it's not a bad bet. The question is... will he admit to it?
"Fine," I said, deciding to go for the bombshell and live with however it implodes. "Broadly?"
"Broadly."
"... I got the sense that the art... wasn't made for you."
"Hm?"
"No, not you, but more... not for humans."
"..." He fell silent, his gaze abruptly tearing through my soul, as though wanting to peek into the depths of my mind.
Honestly... it chilled me more than that pillar that tore open the sky. It felt as though I was being looked at by something decidedly inhuman, and I immediately regretted it. Goddammit! Me and my damned mouth! It really will get me killed!
"The more I learn about you, Master," he said, his demeanor calming completely, lips curling into a smile as he chuckled. "The less certain I get of my own instincts. You're right. The art wasn't made for humans. Rather, it wasn't made at all. An old sword that gained sentience developed it for its own use. My father merely glanced at it once and managed to mimic a small portion of it."
"One day, you'll have to let me meet that father of yours. Sounds like I'd be better off adventuring with him."
"One day," he chuckled yet again. "Ask, then. What do you want to know?" What did I want to know? Oh, I don't know, about a billion things, to be honest. Like, how did you die? Who are you? How come I couldn't find any mention of 'Divine Blade', a supposed legendary figure from just ten thousand years ago, when I found records of some random snakes from 2 million years ago? Why did you reincarnate here and now? And many, many more.
But at the moment... I didn't really care about any of them. I knew that he didn't seem to mean me or the kids any harm. And as for who he was... I mean, aren't I holding just as big of a secret to my identity?
"Why are you suddenly helping them?" My question seemingly surprised him as his closed eyes jostled open once again, an incredulous, though rather brief, look adorning them.
"That... is your question?"
"That's my question."
"..." He paused for a moment before replying. "Because we're not in a sect anymore."
"E-eh?"
"This isn't a sheltered form of training, where they get to spar within limits and where old people can interfere to stop them from dying. A singular mistake does mean death, not just having your ego bruised for losing a spar. I can't protect y--I can't protect myself and them at the same time," he was just about to say 'you', wasn't he?! Wow. I know he's actually an old monster, but being told that I needed protection by someone who looks like he's fifteen... sheesh. Talk about a bruised ego.
"I don't want us to fight frequently, not until they are much stronger."
"It doesn't matter," he said. "You have a... peculiar group, Master. The likes of which the heavens love testing. Whether we reside in a sect or somewhere in some cave in a random mountain range, fights will come, one way or another. It's best you embrace them early and recognize that, once your stamina improves, you'll be joining us."
"Ah."
"You should rest," he said. "I get a strange feeling tomorrow... it won't be as calm."
... ah, goddammit.
IV)
Ever since Long Tao's not-so-subtle 'foreshadowing', as it were, I've grown a bit... paranoid. I jumped at every shadow--not that there were many of them as we wandered the grassy fields under the burning scorch of the evening sun--and jostled at every sound, always expecting for something to go wrong.
And, as it often happens in life, just as I started relaxing and thinking it may be that old-monster paranoia at work, it happened.
We came upon a river--finally--as well as a bridge, indicating that we were likely fairly close to at least some civilization. On the other end of the river, the trees grew far more plentiful. It wasn't a forest yet, no, but it was thick enough, as it turned out, to hide people.
We first paused a bit by the riverbank and freshened up before finally crossing the wooden construct. Just as we reached the other side, five shadows coalesced into figures that surrounded us, all armed with blades or axes or daggers, cloaked and masked.
Despite my propensity for panic attacks, I remained 'steady' enough to use my Creator's Eyes (which just so happen to now hold 5 charges) on all of them and breathed a sigh of relief.
They were all weak.
Like, barely mid to late stages Qi Condensation weak. Their leader was actually only at the tenth stage.
"Surrender your goods and live; resist and die!" Hey, at least they had a semi-cool opening line. It'd be a lot scarier if they themselves were, you know, actually scary.
"Light, you go." It wasn't me that ordered a six-year-old girl to go out and fight a bunch of grown-ass men (and one woman), but Long Tao. I didn't even get a chance to protest before the young girl emerged from the ranks, knuckles cracking, a strange smile on her face as she drew out a sword.
... hey.
When and where'd you get a sword from?!
She didn't say anything and attacked immediately, reaching the leftmost figure so quickly it left me genuinely shocked. Not nearly as shocked as the cloaked guy, however, as he barely seemed to recognize what happened before a sword dug into his heart.
None of the other four came to while she continued her crusade, going clockwise and killing as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
Her realm has always been a point of... uh, let's say confusion for me.
Technically, according to the system, she was 'only' in the third stage of the Qi Condensation Realm. I mean, she was six--it was already monstrous. But, her strength was about the peak of the Qi Condensation Realm thanks to her unique physique and bloodline.
Especially so after her 'rebirth' when the Bane became the Boon.
I'd actually hazard a guess that, if she had just a bit more combat experience, she'd potentially be stronger than Xi Zhao.
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Alas, for the bandits... it was enough.
Though... I'm a bit worried. I mean, if the average bandits and hoodlums were already broaching the peak of the Qi Condensation Realm, what about the more organized ones? Is the standard really that high for thieves that they can almost match sect disciples?
... something stinks here.
"Keep him alive!" I barely called out before she stabbed the last of the bandits, the strongest of the bunch. She held back and just knocked the axe from his hand, though there wasn't much protest. The guy's eyes were ostensibly shellshocked, and he was likely regretting every decision ever made.
"You three, bury the bodies," I said. "Long Tao, come with me."
While I offloaded the gnarly task of burying the corpses to kids (I... something's really wrong with me that I just go with the flow these days), I took the old monster with me alongside the captured bandit to the line of trees and into the shade. I took a rope out of the spatial ring and tied him to one of the trunks, though it was probably overkill, as he seemed entirely incapable of even conjuring the thought of escaping.
"Want me to torture him?" Long Tao asked, seeming rather... keen on it.
"Just once, I'd like you to consider your thoughts before saying them out loud," I fired back with a long sigh, crouching down and unmasking the man.
He looked to be in his mid-thirties, though the Eyes confirmed his age to actually be 32. A rare scenario in which the person looked older than they were in the cultivation world.
He had short, black hair and a pair of twilight eyes. Appearance-wise, he was fairly... average. I mean, neither here nor there. If anything stood out, it was a strange scar on the left temple in the shape of a cross, with one line being half the length of the other.
It seemed too... deliberate to have been random.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"..." the man's eyes merely veered from the nothing and toward me, fear still deeply rooted in them.
"You can call me Mr. Charmer," Long Tao snickered as he snarled briefly at him. "This here is a disciple of mine, Mr. Unibrow."
"I don't have a unibrow—"
"--nobody asked," I interrupted. "So, tell me, why is someone as talented as you robbing random stragglers on an innocent journey?" I actually do mean talented--the system revealed that his talent was actually peak-Mortal, which would have been enough to enter a sect like the Spirit Sword Sect.
"W-w-who... who are you, you people?" He stuttered, his lips quivering.
"I just said. Random stragglers--no, we are actually merchants. Is that why you attacked us? Because we looked like proper merchants? Hey, I thought we'd have to buy horses and wagons to truly sell it." I turned to Long Tao.
"You do have the face of a greedy merchant who'd sell his own mother for profit."
"..." I eyed him for a moment before turning my attention over to the captive. Oh boy, that old monster did not like to lose, whether in combat or quips.
"This scar, or branding," I said, pressing into the 'X' shape with my finger. "What is it of? What group do you belong to? Why are you attacking people in the middle of nowhere?"
"I... I..."
"Are you thirsty?" I pulled out a waterskin from the ring and uncapped it, putting it against the man's lips as he took a few sips, seeming to relax slightly.
"Will you kill me?"
"..." I mean... probably. Even if I wanted to, there's no way Long Tao is letting me keep this man alive.
"You shouldn't be asking 'will'," Long Tao said from the side. "But how? And that depends entirely on you." Hm.
You know, Long Tao has some nice villain qualities. Maybe he wasn't a protagonist in his previous life but a true villain? Maybe that's why there are no records of him? Because he plundered and thieved and killed and grabbed any woman he could, and the world just wanted to erase him from existence and forget him?
... hm. Why do I suddenly have chills?
No. Okay, I may not be the best judge of character, but everything I distilled of Long Tao so far suggested a more tragic rather than evil figure. I mean, yes, he has some oddities, but heck, I just saw a six-year-old girl stab four people in cold blood. I welcome oddities.
Anyway, the warning seemed to work, and the man finally loosened his lips.
"We aren't bandits," he said. "We... we are disciples of a sect from the east. This all started when the news reached us about the treasure in the Eternal Spiritwood Grove..."
The bandit's story was... well, "lengthy" would be one word to use. In part because there truly was a lot that happened, but also in part because the dude loved the sound of his voice just a tad bit too much. Or it could be that he was desperately trying to delay his death for as long as possible.
Probably the latter.
Anyway, his story begins north of here--far north, if the words are to be believed, actually. Supposedly, at the northern edge of, well, Innominate Edge was the Eternal Range--and beyond it was a massive city called Silvercrest City. Surrounding it were two important landmarks--Sunless Forest and Eternal River—and the trio, in concert, housed some eight sects (all of which sounded vastly stronger than either Spirit Sword Sect or Fire Sun Sect).
However, nobody dared venture any further north than the Sunless Forest precisely because of its name--it was Sunless. As in, at a certain point, there was literally no light. It was like walking blind.
Westward was something he called 'Heralds of Light,' and, apparently, they weren't to be messed with either, and east was the massive Moon Lake.
For the most part, they ignored anything south of the Eternal Range, as it was considered a 'primitive wasteland'--his words, not mine--until four months ago, when rumors suddenly started spanning the entire triangle.
Supposedly, somebody discovered an ancient ruin somewhere in the Eternal Spiritwood Grove, and one that had a trace of 'artifact' imprinted on it.
Thus, all major powers--sects included--dispatched some of their disciples to search for it. After a few months of nothing being discovered, they started believing the rumors were false until about ten days ago or so, when they did actually stumble upon it--the entrance to the ruins.
However, it was closed... and there was no way in.
Supposedly, even an Elder at the Void Transformation Realm showed up and couldn't do anything but huddle his tail between his knees and leave in shame. As it usually happens with these places, fights broke out soon enough, and a few were even killed... which was when the change started.
The barrier to the entrance loosened.
After a few more 'experiments', they confirmed that the way to get in was to sacrifice enough Life Qi, but only from humans. Rather than killing each other, everyone north of the Eternal Range made a pact to hunt down the Innominate Edge natives, capture them, and carry them over to the entrance, where they were to be sacrificed.
That was precisely what he and his four buddies were doing out here, in the middle of nowhere, intercepting us.
It was a ghoulish thing, if you ask me--both that the ruin necessitated human sacrifices to just even open, but also that they were so quick to condemn the entire region of people to death just because they were--well, we were--perceived as lesser.
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Whatever little sympathy I had was quickly snuffed, though he did weave the classic old 'I was just following orders'.
"What kind of a ruin was it? Describe it," Long Tao was the first to ask a question, seeming a bit puzzled... which puzzled me, too.
"W-what do you mean?"
"Its appearance. What's the entrance like?"
"It's, uh, it's like... any other ruin? Partly embedded into the ground, an arched entrance arrayed with ancient runes, black obsidian stone..."
"Describe the shape of the runes."
"Uhm, what?"
"Are they flat? Angular? Wobbly? Curved? Connecting, independent, webbed, chained, stacked?"
"Aah, they were a bit curved, connected one to another at the edges... why do you keep asking about the ruin?" I asked the exact same question with my eyes as Long Tao's puzzled expression hardened somewhat for a moment.
"Hm," he crouched and started tracing something with his finger. "Something like this?" He drew rather strange 'letters', you could say, somewhat reminiscent of English cursive, except they went downwards rather than sideways.
"Yes! Almost exactly like that! H-have you been there before...?!"
Yeah.
He probably has.
Not anytime recently, no, but long before any one of us here was born. Long, long, long before.
That's when it happened--he flashed the edge of the blade for a moment, the head was dissevered, and blood sprayed out so strongly that I just barely had enough time to toss myself backwards and dodge it.
The poor bandit still had the expression of surprise and awe at Long Tao's ability to draw the runes, likely never even realizing he was killed.
"We need to go there."
"... and you decided to kill the guy who can take us there because...?"
"..." Oh, wow. He actually missed it. Ha ha ha! Look at his face! "I, I can take us there."
"Want to bet?"
"..."
"Why do we need to go there?" Anyway, what's done was done; I wasn't going to push it too far with a guy that just beheaded someone in cold blood.
... yeah. Why are all people around me so quick to kill, and with such grand apathy?!
"My father once told me about runes like these."
"Oh, your father?"
"Yes. He's seen them once or twice back when he was adventuring."
"Aha."
"They're runes of the Chaos Spirits." What are those?
"What are those?"
"Unnatural things, for the most part," he shrugged. "Dao's rejects, some often called them. They're not evil or good or anything specific, really. They just... don't belong. That's why they are largely extinct, but their remnants can still be found occasionally, especially within the Ancient Ruins. Their favorite nourishment was human blood, and they'd set up special arrays that'd be slowly 'scalped' bit by bit as a means of tricking people. Usually, once the barrier was broken and the humans excitedly went inside to seek treasures, the Spirits would slowly torture them and drive them mad.
"But we're in luck."
"Why?"
"Because of the method your father stumbled upon a long time ago," he replied with a faint grin. "While changing appearances is the primary function, the anti-illusion bit should be enough to keep us sane."
"Should?"
"Well, unless there are actual Chaos Spirits in there." He just jinxed us, didn't he?!
There's no freakin' way that something like that exists--no way!
"And we need to make it there before the damn fools actually do break the barrier." he added.
"Why? We'll just be isolated and attacked by everyone."
"Usually, whatever is sucking up the human blood is feeding on it. The barrier dropping means that it's fed. If we wait for them to complete the condition, who knows what they'll wake up? Though it could be just some ancient, half-baked array that's already barely functional after eons of no maintenance, it could just as well be a slumbering, dormant ancient beast that has just fed on a lot of human blood and has probably developed a deep craving for it."
"... yeah, we should go there immediately. I imagine your father taught you a way to break through the barrier without killing a horde of people?"
"No."
"E-eh?"
"My mother did."
"..."
One day, I swear, one day I'll kick him in the back of his knees and use my secret, amazing, world-hopping movement art to immediately run away. Otherwise my frustration will boil into a bomb that will detonate in my stuffed chest...
We didn't change our direction even after getting the news of the Spiritwood Grove; rather than aimlessly heading northeast, where the region's largest forest was located, we continued north and came to the town of our destination within a day and a half.
I'd expected a relatively smaller town, perhaps two or three thousand strong, but it turned out to be closer to an actual city than that. It had tall walls, at least ten feet at the lowest point, a rather long line of people going in and out, some jutting rooftops of buildings and towers peeking from behind the walls, and even an active array that seemed to 'ground' anyone who tried flying.
Or, well, that's so at least according to Long Tao's casual remark.
Not wanting to draw any attention to ourselves, we found the line for the entry and waited. I prepped a few Spirit Stones as a bribe, as it's not like we could show our identification tokens from the Spirit Sword Sect, which means that we couldn't prove our identity either way, so I could only hope that the good ol' Spirit Stones would get us in.
Luckily, the day was fairly cloudy and far cooler than the few days prior, with temps peaking out at eighty, tops. Because of that, despite waiting in line for over an hour, it wasn't too bad. I mean, it was bad, but not even the worst of the times I've stood in line.
Not even close.
Like the one time in Prague during my travels when I needed a document from a local bureau, and I accidentally didn't come at the crack of dawn but instead at the ungodly late hour of 9 in the morning. Stood there like a sheep with the rest of 'em 'till 3 before finally getting to the counter and getting my piece of paper.
I still rage occasionally just thinking about it.
Anyway, within an hour, it was our turn. As we reached closer, we could see more of the town beyond the gates; immediately past them, a street split what looked to be your standard 'commercial' area in two--left side looked to be full of inns and restaurants and such, while the right side was your blacksmiths and jewelers and so on.
The gates were guarded by six people, though only three seemed to be in charge of greeting the people either way: one for those leaving and two for those coming.
"Purpose of your visit and number of people in your party?" I've already drawn up a story (with the kids' blessings) and quickly put on my pitiful face.
"My children and I are merchants," I said. "But on our way to the town, some bandits intercepted us. We thought we were done for when another group of bandits showed up! While they started to fight, we just barely managed to sneak out and run away... the five of us have come here with the hope of restocking our supplies in the long run, but primarily for safe haven."
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"Bandits, again?" The man grumbled, frowning under the iron helmet. From the sounds of it, we weren't the first.
It made sense.
Some were bound to escape and run here, especially if they were close by.
"Fine, come in." He handed me a single token. "You will be responsible for all of them. Abide by the three main rules: no fighting, no stealing, and no being out on the streets past the ringing of the bell. Anyone caught breaking these rules will either be jailed or expelled from the city. Due to the recent influx, most inns on the main streets are full; you'll have to settle for low-sink housing in the western part of the city."
"Ah, thank you so much!" I skillfully handed the ten low-tier Spirit Stones I prepared as I grabbed to shake his hand. I'd done it countless times before in the restaurants, and he seemed a bit surprised for a moment as he palmed them all.
"No problem. Be on the lookout for the children asking favors. Ah, and do not interfere with local businesses. They are all led by fairly strong cultivators."
"I won't forget the favor," I smiled as I ushered the kids in, following right after them.
Finally making it in caused me to sigh in relief. You never knew with these places, and especially so when it came to me. This is my first time travelling in this world, so I don't know the customs, the notions, the principles, or anything of the sort. Kind of a blind leading the blind scenario over here.
Even Long Tao, our most experienced adventurer, is about ten thousand years out of date on his information. Even in a world of magic, I imagine, ten thousand years ought to cause some change, no?
We didn't meander about the main street for too long.
Since we were wearing rather ordinary robes and had hidden our cultivation completely, nobody paid us much attention. A few curious eyes did glance over the kids in varying expressions, but all it did was make me push them to go faster.
We followed the guard's instructions and moved west; the further west we got, the less... impressive, let's say, the town got. All the gilded beauty of it on the front slowly began to wane, sort of like how most things were. Underneath the bejeweled surface was a rot, and it sure did stink.
There were fewer and fewer people out on the streets, too, and the buildings turned from two- or three-story pavilions with properly made eaves and terraced balconies into rundown shacks with literal holes in the walls.
I'd wondered for a moment if the damned guard tricked us for some reason, but we did eventually come upon a line of slightly better homes. A few of them even had courtyards, believe it or not.
And yet... what the hell was I supposed to do now?! As though answering my inner prayer, an older, hunchbacked woman suddenly exited one of the homes, walking with a cane in hand, and approached us.
"Travelers, I presume?" she asked, smiling and revealing two rows of largely yellow and black teeth.
"In search of a place to stay," I nodded, smiling back.
"You can call me Madame Lu," Hey, that's my name, too. Maybe it's a stroke of fortune? Or... its opposite? "I'm in charge of housing guests here. Most of my finer buildings are already taken, unfortunately, but I cannot in good conscience set a father of four into a bad home, now can I? Ho ho. Follow me."
... you know, I don't want to be prejudiced or ageist or anything of the sort, but Jesus Christ, this woman freaks me out! The tone of her voice, the cadence, the feeling in my gut... something's off about her.
But having already glanced at Long Tao, who just shrugged my gaze away, I figured it wasn't anything we couldn't handle.
She led us to the very end of the road, where it splintered into a somewhat... familiar, you could call it, scenery. A round clearing around which a set of homes were built was quite reminiscent of a certain car-thieving game from my early days of life.
"Here," she pointed at a relatively small but surprisingly well-kept house with a fenced-off courtyard. There was even an unlit oil lamp accosting the gate. "Would you like to take it?"
Fading Traces (I)
I already missed just having a certainty of a house on a peak where nobody asked me for any money to stay there, to be honest. But what was I to do? Reject her? No. We needed a place, even if for just a few days.
"Do you take Spirit Stones for payment?" I asked.
"Ho ho, of course. Madame Lu takes all forms of currency. How long do you plan on staying?"
"... we'll book it for two weeks, to start with." We'll probably be long gone before then, but we may as well overpay to be left alone.
"Very well. To rent the entire house for the day is eighty low-tier Spirit Stones. Your total is 1,120 stones. Just for you, however, it's 1,000."
I forced a grimace on my face, making it seem as though the steep price hurt.
Naturally, it really didn't. I had over 200,000 low-tier Stones scattered between the spatial treasures in my possession, and that was just low-tier Stones.
I didn't hide my spatial satchel--we already marked that we were merchants, and it wasn't all that impossible for one to have a spatial treasure like the satchel, especially as it appeared quite worn out and old.
Fetching out the 1,000 stones, I 'reluctantly' handed them over, prompting the woman to smile rather widely.
"Would you like me to arrange daily meals for you?" I almost instinctively wanted to say 'No,' since I wanted to limit all interactions with this woman to a minimum, but I held back.
"Hmm. Just the breakfast, if possible."
"Of course. Please, settle in. If you need anything, there's a small bell you'll find in the bedroom; just ring it, and one of my girls will immediately come. I hope you'll have a wonderful stay."
... was it really this easy?
I mean, she didn't even ask for my name, for crying out loud! Let alone a form of identification!
Haah. Look, I hate regulations back on Earth as much as any traveler--anyone who's crossed more than six borders in their lifetime knows just how mind-numbingly annoying the bureaucracy can get, especially when the country just doesn't have any, so you have to resort to bribing everyone and their mother just to figure your way around the place.
But at the very-damned-least, it provided a sense of comfort. It alleged that all people around me were identified and known, at least. Here? Who the hell knows who our neighbors were?
I smiled and nodded, and she departed right after, the sound of her cane hitting the ground the only one we could hear. The hubbub of the town had long since perished, and only the occasional cawing of the crows could be heard.
"Let's go inside." None of the kids, however, seemed particularly disturbed. Rather, they were curious--even Light.
This was their first time venturing out, so I couldn't blame them, but have some sense of self-perseverance, for crying out loud! Or were they just that confident in their strength?
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Or, worse yet, that confident in me?
Yikes.
The gates creaked slightly as I pulled them open, quickly crossing the courtyard and entering the house.
You know... it's not bad, honestly.
It was surprisingly roomy--two bedrooms, one smaller and one slightly larger, the common area, and even an outhouse in the back. No bath or kitchen or anything of the sort, but all things considered... it was overpriced as all hell, mind you, but I was expecting far worse.
In fact, it was probably far roomier than anything we could have gotten in any of the inns along the main road.
We settled inside the common area as I slowly lit up the three oil lamps hanging on the walls, giving some light to the place. There was a round table at the center and six cushions around it, so we all sat down as I took out some snacks and drinks from the rings.
"For the next two days," I said. "We'll roam the town and try and find someone who's been in the Spiritwood Grove before. Just blend in with the others and listen; don't actively approach or draw attention to yourself."
"The town seems nice," Xi Zhao said. "And much bigger than the Sunlight Town."
"Hm. I noticed quite a lot of cultivators," Dai Xiu nodded, slurping some water. "A few of them were quite strong!"
"Like that man with bushy eyebrows?" Xi Zhao said.
"Yes! You noticed him too, Junior Brother?"
"Of course. He tried to hide it, but I'd guess he'd already broken through to the Foundation Establishment."
"Hm. There was also that lady with a fan," Dai Xiu said. "She was soooo pretty, too! Master, do you like pretty girls like her?"
... what lady with a fan? What man with bushy eyebrows?! How come I haven't noticed any of these people?! I wanted to cry out but mostly just forced on the look of indifference.
"What matters is beauty within," I sputtered something half-heartedly, wanting to extricate myself from the convo.
"Oooh!" the two exclaimed as though I said the most enlightened thing in the world, and even Light seemed halfway impressed.
"The strongest, though, has to be that man that was delivering everyone drinks!" Xi Zhao said. "I actually felt a bit afraid when I looked at him."
"Hm, me too," Dai Xiu added in a rare case of restraint. "He gave me a similar feeling to Elder Qin... maybe not as powerful, but close to it."
Hm? What? There was a guy in town almost as strong as Elder Qin?!! And he was roleplaying as a freakin' bartender?!
"Brother Tao, did you spot anyone odd?" Xi Zhao asked.
"Just one," he said.
"Who?"
"That woman that brought us here."
"... "Aah, here we go. I couldn't even use my Creator's Eyes on her because I stupidly already used all five of my daily charges while bored in line...
"She... is strong? I... I didn't notice at all." Xi Zhao frowned, seeming surprised.
"No," Long Tao said. "She used to be strong. Right now, she's as feeble as she looked. Even a mortal child could probably kill her." Oi, old man, are you doing this on purpose? Just to play with our hearts?!
"She was a Demonic Cultivator," Light added from the side, startling the three of us while surprising Long Tao a bit.
"You felt it?"
"Hm. A bit. It was a familiar feeling... yet not, at the same time. Old Master, ever since you took me to that weird room, things have been... strange. What did you do to me?" she asked, seeming half-curious and half-aggrieved.
No, no, wait. Why?! Just why, o' dearest Heavens of mine?! I just escaped one nest of people hiding themselves and suspected demonic cultivators, and now you toss me right back into another one? Do I really deserve this? Ah, the old saying of 'God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.'
Yeah.
"Saved you," I said vaguely, as, honestly, even I didn't know quite what happened with her. "No wonder that woman gave me that weird feeling..."
That stupid trait of mine that supposedly identifies 'Demonic Qi' is so goddamn inconsistent! First off, it misidentified the Spirit Sage--though it could be that it reacted to remnant Demonic Qi he had on him--and even when it 'identifies' Demonic Qi, the way it lets me know... haah, I'd have to be a freakin' robot to notice the difference...
"Long Tao, you'll look into her," I said. "If she's alone and simply living out her life here, leave her alone."
"Hm."
"You three will go together and visit the restaurants and shops along the main street," I said. "If anyone asks, I sent you out to look for things we could buy to resupply as merchants. But try to interact with people as little as possible. If anything happens, however, use everything I gave you to get out of town as quickly as possible, and go to the place where we buried the bandits."
"Yes, Master!"
"Alright. Rest for today and night," I smiled. "We've all earned it."
Traces (II)
You know, it only dawned on me when I found myself adrift in the masses, crowding the seeming central square of the town, that this was my first time being alone. Like, alone alone. At every other point, it felt, there was at least somebody nearby, or somebody to talk to if I wanted to force them, but now... I'm alone.
I mean, the kids are like three minutes away, but still. It's a new feeling, that's for sure. One that I'm not entirely comfortable with.
I know it actually makes no sense, but I feel much safer with them around. Not for nothing, those kids are freakin' monsters. And then there's Long Tao. With him around, I never feel like the world is falling apart. Even when it literally was falling apart back in the sect.
Speaking of the sect, I've been standing here for about 70 seconds and have heard no fewer than 100 people gossip about it. However, it's not the kind of gossip that I... expected.
It wasn't so much that the sect was attacked but more so about the pillar that killed EVERYONE--that's right, supposedly, the entire valley where the sect used to be is now a flattened plateau without a living soul in the vicinity.
That, as well as the rumors of the aftermath--supposedly, quite a few Holy Lands lost their marbles (as they sent some of their most talented disciples on a 'sightseeing' expedition) and are gunning around, looking for anyone to blame.
Thus, the 'poor' Fire Sun Sect became the prime target as they'd 'instigated' it.
Per the rumors, the sect was gone--but, shockingly, the Sect Master actually managed to escape and is now in hiding. Supposedly, there's quite a hefty bounty placed on his head--50,000 mid-grade Stones.
Even for me that's not a small amount, let alone for the majority of the world.
Eventually, I found a small tavern nestled between a pair of inns and found a small corner within that I could hide in while drinking. I just ordered the same thing I heard another guy order--'bael'--and I gotta say... it's not bad.
It's bitter to all hell and back, more so than even dark beer back on Earth, but I'm actually kind of digging the punch as well as the kick. It's certainly better than anything that the Sect had to offer in terms of alcohol, shockingly, so, as it goes, beggars can't be choosers.
I still perked my ear to listen in to the nearby conversations, but they were mostly mundane--outside of quite a few folk mentioning the bandit attacks.
Nobody knew why there was a sudden increase or even who the bandits were, so it seemed that the whole 'ancient ruin' spiel was yet to spread. Should make locating somebody aware of it relatively easy, at least... if they do exist to begin with.
Thus, I spent half a day just checking out the shops around the central square, listening to people yap, and occasionally using my Creator's Eyes, thinking I might stumble upon yet another monster. Alas, it seems that the circumstances in the sect were rather... special, as most of these people don't even have a talent.
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It made sense--this was actually a mortal town first. If there are cultivators, they will be a minority and probably won't be drinking in public and gossiping with their buds.
I decided to return a little before the evening, moving past quite a few street performers on my way to the 'silent' quarter of the city. I learned a bit about it today, namely that it's called 'Stoic's Hamlet' and that it's mostly where the poor, the sick, and the criminal element went. So, you know, the paradise.
The downtrodden nature, the bolted windows, the eyes peeking from between the gaps in the boards... it was a bit nostalgic, actually. Reminded me of Detroit in the mid-90s.
My parents decided to take me on a cross-country trip, and, somehow, we ended up driving through the East Side. It wasn't silent, not exactly, but more... empty. The homes were literally abandoned, possessions still inside; nobody was walking on the street; there was just... nothing but occasional curious eyes peeking from behind the cracks in the wood.
Hated it then, hate it still.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw all of them had returned even before me--they were sitting around the table, eating and talking about something when I stumbled into the room, prompting them to greet me. Even Long Tao greeted me! With a nod, but still...
"Welcome back, Master!"
"Hm. You all came back on time, too," I said, picking one of the cushions and sitting down. "Anyone give you any trouble?"
"A bit," Dai Xiu nodded. "But Junior Brother chased them all away, he he!" chased isn't a euphemism for kill, right?
"Mostly drunkards, Master, who were too blinded and expressed untoward words toward my Sisters," he smiled sheepishly and scratched his head.
Oh.
Right.
I'd actually forgotten about that. I don't really consider either Dai Xiu or Light 'girls', let alone 'women'. To me they're just really weird kids that can probably kill me with their spit, but, yeah... there are monsters here as everywhere, so we should probably be more careful going forward.
"Learned anything?"
"Ah, not much." Their spirits turned dim immediately as I asked. "Just a lot of rumors about... our sect. A few spoke about the bandits, but nobody even mentioned the Spiritwood Grove." Dai Xiu replied.
"There was this one man who mentioned spiritwood, but it turned out he meant a specific kind of wine..."
"That's alright. It's only the first day," I said with a smile. "What about you, Long Tao?"
"..."
"Uhm, I think I saw a really pretty butterfly outside," Dai Xiu said.
"Oh, yes! The black one with fiery wings?" Xi Zhao added.
"That's not a butterfly; that's a firefly," Light said as Dai Xiu picked her up and dragged her out.
... smooth.
Real freakin' smooth.
Even Long Tao was eyeing them with a faint smile.
"Quite sensible," he commented.
"What's so dour that you had to send them out?" Okay, I'm a bit worried right now. What's he going to say? That the woman is part of some doomsday cult and that there are basements under all of her properties that are, like, bomb vessels, and when they all detonate together, the entire world's going to end?
"I think we should recruit her," he said rather calmly.
... eh?
Wait, what?
"R-recruit... her?"
"Hm," he nodded. "She's bought up most of the western side of the city, and she's done so under six different identities so nobody knows about it. She has a small, personal army of spies that work in taverns, inns, and even administrative offices that report to her everything that happens, and she's fully aware of what's transpiring in the Spiritwood Grove."
"I thought she was a mortal woman," I frowned.
"She is," he shrugged. "At best, she has about five years left to live, and nothing short of Heaven itself intervening is going to change that. None of that matters, really, as she'd just be a temporary recruit. Or do you plan to live out the rest of your days in this town?" he asked with a certain chagrin in his gaze, taking a sip of water. It's like he really doubted I'd follow him wherever he'd go.
I didn't invest so much crap into you just to give you wings and watch you fly away, old man. I'll ride you 'till you croak! Ugh, I gotta stop it with the ride metaphors...
"Very well," I said. "Let's recruit her. Temporarily."