Fu’s cave was not far, and so he waited.

None of the marauders below would catch sight of him from here, not pressed flat against the ravine’s edge as he was. The loose pebbles and harsh, stone edges that he rested on dug awfully into his enflamed and ravaged cuts, but a cycle of four sunrises had him accustomed to such pain and discomfort by now.

Still, he was mortal, and could not deny a sharp intake of air.

Below, a group of three had a Spirit Beast cornered, a foliage coated boar of maroon skin that squealed and grunted as it tried to snap free the bamboo spears that had its body pinned to the ground.

Undue suffering, as with all of their captures.

The leader of this group of hunters readied bindings of vine, thick cords that glittered with the presence of Qi, and moved to secure the beast.

Those on either side of it lodged more spears both into the ground to constrict its thrashing, and into several places in its back.

There was no tact in their process, and the resilience of the beast’s hide worked against it here, causing more injury as the weapons inflicted wounding scrapes and terrible gouges rather than hamper its movement as a lesser creature’s might.

Conversation carried upwards from the ravine, pockets of words that Fu could only just hear over the din below. He caught laughter, cruel and malicious, and in their body language he saw that none were invested in keeping the creature’s life intact. To them, a Spirit Core was a Spirit Core, and the method of collection did not matter.

Fu thumbed the core in his hand then, the second he had managed to source. An iridescent marble of shifting greens and yellows, one taken from a rather volatile pheasant that had unwittingly crossed his path.

The sting of its Qi could still be felt on his neck, droplets of a caustic substance that it had sent at him like a sudden, if minor rain. Yet another injury to add to his growing list of ailments.

Below, the boar finally fell, performing one last, desperate charge before squealing lifelessly where it was pinned.

The three mortals laughed, and one went so far as to drive his foot into its side just for good measure. He cursed upon doing so, clutching his leg with a howl. “A tough one,” he grumbled. “I should think it a fitting match for me.”

“Oh, is that so?” said the woman to his right. “That will be decided upon return to our camp, this you know.”

A grunt sounded from the leader, and he stamped down the butt of his spear. “Even so, this is the fourth core we shall return with. Beyond our quota, I should think. Boss Zhan said nothing on what we gather after our debt is squared.”

Though many vertical paces separated Fu and the hunters, he could see the shift in their posture at these words. An eagerness flashed across the faces he could see, and despite the third’s back being turned to him, he knew it would show the same.

Whatever they do, I wish they would do so soon. To have a Core within my hands, and here, out in the open…

Fu edged back, removing his sight of the ravine’s base. His travels had taken him far from the river where he had escaped the apes, and further yet from the shoreline where he had first spied these marauders.

A sunrise within the Mystic Realm was not a guarantee of east, nor was any phenomena of the world outside it a guarantee, but to use it as a direction, his trek had taken him some distance south.

Three and a half li, by his imprecise count.

Now he was surrounded by a tall, grainy marshland, fed by a section of the same river that spread across all of the realm, so far as he had gleaned. Fu trained his gaze on the grains that swallowed half of his body, searching for any sign of movement beyond that of the swaying brought forth by wind’s gentle touch.

Finding none, he sighed in relief.

He had left the pheasant’s corpse further along the ravine, quite happy to sacrifice a potential meal if it meant that he could have a moment’s notice should anything be tracking him. The killing had been a messy affair, and he would not be surprised if something had the scent of its mangled corpse.

The three hunter’s voices were growing more distant, and they had begun the climb up the softer section of the ravine’s ‘path’, with the boar slung between two of them.

Fu pressed lower into the ground, pulling his douli lower to mask his face against the grasslands.

His eyes widened when the leader suddenly skewered his closest, male companion through the neck, thrusting a length of bamboo clean through to the other side.

Gurgling, the assailed clutched at his throat, dropped the boar in a heap and jerked the woman backwards as she unexpectedly caught the full brunt of its weight. She toppled flat on the beast as her leader yanked his spear free to approach her next.

Fu had… Fu had grown numb to such occurrences. The first show of such violence had wracked him with guilt for many hours, owed perhaps to the shock.

But for the time being, he had realised, this was his new reality. Of the hundreds of mortals within this Mystic Realm, many had reverted to this new, primitive violence. So while he did not look away, neither did he itch to intervene and stop such tragedy from occurring.

He simply watched.

The woman leapt. Mad dashes and throws of her body took her further down into the ravine. Her foe was in close pursuit, stabbing out with the blood-tipped spear in the hopes that he might catch her. But the struggle did not last long.

Having pinned her against the stony walls, the leader thrust again, catching his weapon in the craggy joins and allowing the woman to pounce, smashing him in the temple with what Fu assumed to be a rock.

A curse escaped under his breath as an Intent rolled out from the marshy grains behind Fu, forcing him to move. Awkwardly, he stood, and the woman beneath found him. “Do you too wish to ambush me?” she challenged. “Come, and you shall fall to the same fate.”

Fu did not blame her hostility, yet moved without explanation. Leaving the pheasant on the ravine’s edge, he slowly lowered himself down.

The woman retraced her steps, guarding the Spirit Boar with the same bloodied stick that had felled her companion. “I warn you, to approach is to court death!”

“Beasts behind,” he said, more a whimper between each hyper extension of his arms and legs.

The tender flesh on his chest tore, the scabbed sections that had healed, bolstered by the modest regenerative properties of what few spirit grasses he could gather, ripped.

This fresh pain caused Fu to misplace a hand, and he crashed down upon the ravine’s floor from a height at least twice as great as his own.

All the air within him fled from his lungs, and as his arms flailed to fruitlessly recapture the breath that had left, the woman cast her shadow upon him.

The spear hovered between his eyes, and her look poured malice atop him as though it were a force of Qi itself.

“Fool,” she spat, her eyes wandering over him.

Yet as they did, her grip grew less sure. As Fu heaved and roiled, wheezing to recover his breath, she peeled back, aghast.

“These wounds. You are an aberration! Or a Demon sent to plague us! The others spoke of sightings of such things,” she gasped. “You have not the blackness of vein they are said to have, nor the horns or teeth. But… how do you live?”

Having recovered a single draw, Fu wheezed out with a hand stretched to the Heavens, one digit poised at the ravine’s edge. “Beas…”

The woman’s already widened eyes darted, and she stole backwards with her head tilted above. “By the Heavens.”

Fu dragged himself up, put the woman to his rear, and staggered off without so much as a final look.

Violent, rippling Intent emanated from the ravine’s top, and it added a hue of crimson to the soggy marsh he moved through. His refuge was ahead, obscured by leaves and rock, and he pressed on with a firmed jaw.

Muddied water cascaded down a section of the rocks nearby, and he fell against it with another wheeze, grasping at the trailing, serpentine roots that swayed within it.

Fu scraped his hand forward, rushing them like a bead curtain, finding it hard.

And hard again.

And-

Stolen from NovelBin, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Closing footsteps sounded several paces behind, and suddenly his hand plunged through, haste causing his body to follow. Rock met his face in a crash as he fell, yet not a thing he had time to process.

The rock curved, a wall at first with a cragged route wherein a body might fit poorly.

He sidled and stooped, now entering the rock itself and immersing himself in the water that spilled through cracks above.

Then the woman clattered into his back.

“Faster you fool,” she screeched. Her frame was narrow, and pressed against him with searching, urgent hands.

Fu winced, going only as fast as he was able, scraping more against the rock with every desperate push. “Cease your pushing. If I fall then you will be caught by the blockage.” His voice sent low, inflected with all the warning he could muster.

Falling on deaf ears.

Sprays of muddied water suddenly flew over them, with fragments of rock alongside. This struck only Fu’s top, as the woman was cushion for most that came.

A great grinding filled the space behind him. Something hard that tore against the stone, over and over, and he guessed it to be the reach of the Spirit Beast that hounded them.

“Move, mo-” The woman’s voice ended in a reverberating wail as the beast’s claws snared some part of her.

She fell then, knocking into Fu and slapping hard to the soggy floor.

“Help me,” she wailed again, desperation turning her shrill. “Help me!”

Fu silenced the noise and burst through to the other side. In a second of regretful reflection, he made to turn. The Core in his clutches drowned out that notion, resting in the hand closest to whatever fresh horror occurred to his rear.

“I-” He moved on before finishing, saving the breath such platitudes would waste.

When I escape this realm, I- I will not speak on this. On any of this.

The other side of the narrow path opened into a low cave, where beds of dimly glowing moss ringed one edge of a murky pool.

To walk here forced Fu to sway his head, a slow weave necessary to avoid the protruding stone and trailing roots that broke in from above. A final ordeal before he reached the furthest corner, a cleared section of moss where he had taken roost, and where he could add the second Core to his collection tucked behind stone.

A task that he hoped, coupled with both hands clamped around his ears, might obscure the persistent screams of which he had become so accustomed.

🀧

Many hours, and a fitful sleep later, Fu tended to his plethora of wounds.

Once wrung dry, he had found the Qi-infused moss to be highly effective in scrubbing clean his many puss-filled, inflamed gouges.

The internal injuries, the throbbing pain in his head, and the weariness of bone and muscle, it did nothing for. Though Fu was of a mind that any relief was something to be thankful for.

Casting the moss aside, he plucked a fresh section to wring, using this as his water in favour of the pool beside him. Such murky supply was unlikely to be of benefit to his health, to say nothing for the shadows that swirled further down.

The second time he had ventured from his cave he had left another basket wedged, albeit hopefully, at the pool’s edge. Only to find floating reeds across the water’s surface, shredded as though the city guard had descended upon it with blade in hand.

Danger was everywhere in the Mystic Realm, and this was a point he had returned to plentifully in these solitary hours.

Once his thirst was slaked, and enough of the scratchy herb had been swallowed to partially fill his stomach, he stood, still ponderous of this. His attention now on the fallen Spirit Boar outside.

A split attention, truthfully, but there all the same.

For the hundredth time that day, Fu ignored the grievous state of his body. Cries to stop and rest, protests of his flesh that he knew to be good reason. He sighed through them all, finding what that demonic Nu Wa had said to be quite insightful.

No destination may ever be reached should one stay upon the shore.

Fu suspected that whatever had pursued both he and this woman would have made off with Spirit Core by now, yet to sit idly within the cave would return no rewards to him.

He had to try, for the alternative was unbearable to think on.

Tatters of bloody fabric collected at his feet as he shuffled through the passage again, scraps of the woman’s shredded clothes. His pace was slow now, unharried, more so given that night had cast its impenetrable gloom across the Mystic Realm.

Another step brought his foot down on something harder, and its shape brought a grimace to his face.

A part of her, though which I cannot tell.

Having it known to him as a hand or a foot granted no benefit, so he brushed it aside before emerging back into the ravine.

Prowling forward only a pace, he waited.

Shrouds of gathered shadow lingered around the fallen beast. Fu could not amplify his vision, such was a cultivator’s domain. But waiting he could do with ease.

The shapes ahead were not stagnant, bobbing rhythmically in such a fashion that he had to be sure it was not some trick of the dark. Nor some effect of his poor health.

If they are creatures then they are quite silent, and if they are mortals they would carry a torch.

Of all his experiences, Fu could only think of birds, though he had never come across any of this size or form. In this darkened ravine their plumage, if his guess was correct, caused them to appear like hooded figures, bowing sequentially to the boar’s corpse.

A warble of Qi disrupted the scene after long minutes of waiting, and he saw light form in the middle of these figures. The shrouds were banished with an orange flame, dissipating to leave only one atop the shoulders of a muscular, half-naked man.

Indeed, it was a bird, and a foul one at that.

An onyx, slender head stemmed from its shadow-wrapped feathers, ending in a sharp beak that hooked longer than that of the hawks that were sometimes brazen enough to steal from Fu’s traps in early Spring. It was a mean counterpart to its Bonded cultivator, and a fitting image to his demeanour as some form of brigand.

Of the four gathered, the four revealed by the dispersal of some Qi technique, only he had begun the path of challenging the Heavens. No other Spirit Beasts could be seen, even under their crude torch’s glow.

Is this a fateful encounter? Or were they led here?

Unsure of their allegiance, or their propensity for violence, Fu slunk back into the passage. They would move on once their bounty was claimed, or if it was found to be missing. All he had to do was wait.

Yet a tickle scratched in his chest.

Innocuous and harmless in most cases. To be wedged between rock near potential enemies was not of this nature. The need to cough surfaced like massing clouds, primed for thunder. It rose within him, and Fu clamped shut his mouth, blowing out his nose to try and suppress it.

What came was not muted though, and after the first a bout began in earnest, even as he moved.

The pain drawn was excruciating, an unwelcome reminder of how broken his body had become. Only amplified within his narrow confines. Panicked, he rushed himself through the rock, hoping and willing for a chance that none had heard his noise.

“A beast does not make that sound,” bellowed one beyond the rock, and Fu gave up all pretence of stealth. “Find where it comes from, I will not have eyes upon us.”

Coughing overcame him as he stumbled flat into the cave, landing on a springy bed of moss. He pushed his face into it, hoping that it might muffle much of the noise, bowing as though any deference of respect to the stone might somehow save him.

Splutters followed, a heat in his chest that had him rolling and doubling over in many positions.

No-

The coughing grew in intensity, and he saw that crimson fell upon the dim glow of moss. Rivulets of blood streaked from his chin to fall upon his hands, his chest, and the stone upon which he curled. No more would his body obey.

Fu’s limbs were as lead, or fixtures of stone themselves, heavy and immovable.

No. No-

A dreaded orange glow overtook the cave, maliciously bright in his bleary eyes.

The others were here, heralded by flickering shadows as they passed before the torch. He did not know where he had fallen, or how close he was to either the entrance or the pool’s edge, only that there would be no further movement towards any.

“A corpse,” said one.

“Corpses do not cough, you fool,” said another, before calling out. “Boss. We’ve found something.”

The Boss’ voice did not meet Fu’s ears from the same place as the others, marking him as still outside. “Deal with it, and move on. Such a passage is one I cannot well fit through.”

Fu felt a misplaced sense of hope then, that they might leave him for dead. He had nothing to offer them, not that they could see, and he did not think their cruelty would extend to ending his life just for the sake of discovery.

Shrouded wings darkened the torch for a beat, and Fu cringed beneath the passage of the Spirit Beast as it whipped overhead.

Hissing, it drew the attention of those in the cave, and one stepped over him with obvious disregard to see what the bird had discovered.

“A stash,” came the walker’s exclamation, and Fu’s heart sank. “This corpse was hoarding two Spirit Cores. What a find this is.”

Another hiss sounded, a loud turning of wings.

“Calm, beast,” ordered the man beside it. “Calm.”

The beast did not follow such orders, and a chilling Qi surfaced around it.

Soaking, the energy clamped down on Fu’s back despite being several paces back. He felt it pass as it flapped in the low-ceilinged space, and then a slurried splash as multiple impacts struck the pool.

Still, Fu remained in his crumpled heap, a warmth returning to him. It was so exhausting, lying here like this. Or so he reasoned.

At least it grows comfortable.

Indeed, his pain was shedding, moving back from the forefront of his mind as his limbs buzzed with a pleasant numbness, and the cold evaporated away.

“Something lurks beneath the water, and I cannot say if Boss Zhan’s beast has ended the threat. Let us move before this cave becomes our tomb.”

The figure at the passage confirmed this with a nod, waiting until his second had stepped over Fu before retracting the torch.

Fu felt that he would enjoy the coming silence, for these people were noisy. So much so, that a smile graced his lips, seeing that they moved on.

Until they ruined his peace by speaking. “Are we to leave him here?”

“Have him cover our retreat, a better use of his pitiful life than bleeding out, ” said the other, wavering at the passage’s mouth.

Distantly, hands seemed to press against Fu’s side, jerking free some small lucidity. His dimming eyes cracked open a mite, peeled back from rest, showing a man’s close body as it shoved him to the side.

Frigid waters encased his body with such a speed that Fu wouldn’t have been able to react were he in peak form, which he was not.

Useless, and limp, he descended into the water with only a half gasp in his lungs.

Sinking lower.

And lower.

Here the water shrouded him in gloom, the light of the moss above so dim and distant it may as well have been the Heavens themselves.

Bubbles trailed from his mouth, explosions that floated to touch the divine and leave him well behind.

Fu knew this was it.

His failed final moments.

The pool’s depths stopped on something hard, and he could do nothing but succumb.

Succumb and lament.

He cast aside the rising panic of his immovable body, the longing of his mind to thrash and escape this watery hell. Replacing it with fonder images.

Of childish smiles, and of crying babes. Of a familiar laugh, and a touch that he selfishly longed for each night that he lay down his head.

A vision of Mei, three bundles pressed around her, swaddled in the finest cotton blankets he could provide, and the pride and triumph in her eyes as she presented their treasures to him.

To think on how he had sealed their fates now caused his foot to twitch, yet nothing beyond that.

No further inner reserves could fuel him, nor return the air to his lungs. So he did what was natural and closed his eyes, holding there a scene of his children’s faces in perfect clarity.

In it, Feng smiled, and Yuling and Yuqi scowled amicably at one another, their arms separated by Grandmother Hua’s cane, that aged display showing a look of somewhat joyful admonishment.

If only… If only there was someone better than I.

Death disturbed the waters to come for him then.

Someone…

A silhouette of multiple arms and devilish appearance, a many-faceted reaper that dragged across his chest to herald his final moments.

The weight was not as he expected, and the emanating glow was almost of comfort to him as his airless lungs collapsed in totality.