The man gave a soft laugh.
His voice was low and cool, unmistakeably male. Yet this male voice was hauntingly pleasant to the ear.
Yin Feixue’s pointed ears twitched despite himself.
The bamboo-hatted figure balanced on the blade, one hand cradling a lotus of Daoist light, a green feather hanging at his waist.
A sudden gust swept the forest.
He glanced towards the rising wind, tapped the blade-tip with his toe, and leapt. Snow and steel flashed coldly, then man was gone, leaving only a faint tremor in the knife.
“An expert!”
Yin Feixue’s eyes blazed. He wheeled about, recalling his weapon in one fluid twist. His molten-gold pupils narrowed, white fur lifting in the gale. With a crack like thunder, the tiger’s body surged forward, pounding across the snow and sending up waves of frozen spray.
Man and beast tore across the whitened plain together. His steps were swift and light, scattering snow as he closed on the sweep of those azure robes.
“Caught you.”
The cold hem brushed his claws, sharp as razors…… yet he grasped only air.
The man had already slipped free, alighting lightly upon the tip of a pine bough. A few flakes tumbled down to settle on his conical hat.
The wind rose again.
Snow fell thick, blanketing his shoulders.
He held the lotus lightly, breathed out mist into the night. His hair streamed in the gale, head tilted ever so slightly aside.
The great king twitched his ears. His tall form, his snow-white fur gleaming, his golden bestial eyes bright with intelligence and humour—all lent an unlikely harmony to his human garb and tiger’s head.
He bowed with quiet dignity, smiling faintly. “Friend, why not come down, and speak face to face?”
The man was silent.
Yin Feixue did not press, only clasped his hands behind his back, looking up. “Then let’s try this. If I manage to catch you, you’ll come to Tiandu City and share a cup of tea. What say you?”
The man remained still, neither fleeing nor replying, as though weighing the thought.
Then, suddenly, he shook the pine. Down came a torrent of snow, burying the tiger who had clambered, without the least martial grace, onto the higher branches.
Yin Feixue burst out again, shaking snow from his ears. The straw-hatted man was gone. A pang of regret touched him.
He flexed his wrist, curled his claws. The brush of those icy robes had slipped too quickly from his grip, just shy of capture.
He inhaled. A faint fragrance lingered in the forest air. It wasn’t like any rare incense he knew, but steady, calm, clear as mountain spring. A scent that seized the soul.
Solitary, mysterious.
Magnificent, aloof.
Such was the impression that man had left behind.
Yin Feixue’s gaze darkened as he studied the pines. In all the eleven cities of Fangzhou, he had never seen such cultivation.
“An immortal sect disciple?”
“Or… a Daoist preacher from the Yinshi Sect?”
If the former, it meant the sects’ reach had already extended into Fangzhou. Over the past decade, evil spirits had run rampant through the human realm, and though immortal disciples often descended to drive them out, their methods left much to despise.
Yin Feixue strode slowly through the frozen night.
But if it were a Daoist preacher of the Yinshi Sect, then he would have no choice but to kill. He loathed such cultivators who preached the Xianghuo Divine Dao.
The moon loomed large and bright.
Against a snowy slope lay the fall of an azure robe.
The figure turned, lifting the brim of his hat just enough to reveal a fair face. Under moonlight it was breathtaking; and the man himself no less so.
Twelve years had passed. The faceless child cast into the mortal realm was grown now.
Xue Cuo stood poised atop a pine, cheeks and nose tinged crimson by the frozen air.
Across the rolling hills the outline of a village could just be seen. Fixing on one slope, he swept his sleeve; snow dissolved away, revealing the twisted trunk of a Yinliu.
Xue Cuo frowned in thought. This must be Yinliu Village. But where was that thing hidden?
The snowy night was still.
Only the hollow wind whistled through the woods, sharp and unnatural. The ground lay buried in white, yet a stench of rot and chill seeped from beneath.
Xue Cuo studied the low-lying slope, deep in shadow, where pussy willow grew in a dense, sunless grove. The air was thick with ghostly vapour.
“Not the work of someone ignorant of the Dao,” he muttered.
The silence broke.
A child’s wailing pierced the dark.
Crunch, crunch—
Snow-buried houses lay muffled beneath drifts, the cry swelling nearer: begging for help, for food, pleading to be saved.
Xue Cuo held a green talisman between his fingers, its light glimmering faintly.
The voice rose, ragged and hoarse, each cry slicing like knives through the heart, filling it with fear, helplessness, despair.
An irresistible urge crept in telling him to run, to lift the child, to end its pain. Along with it, guilt and shame for even hesitating.
Why did you not save me?
Why did you not look?
Why did you not reach out your hand?
The world is cruel-eyed; I lie in the dust, never to glimpse the sky.
Why do you spurn me? Why do you ignore me?
All of a sudden, a child appeared in the snow. His body was rotted with sores, his hair matted like a beggar’s. One leg snapped in two, bone gleaming pink, sinew and flesh mangled. Still, with dogged will, he crawled, sobbing, towards Xue Cuo, a broken hand outstretched.
“Save me.”
“I don’t want to die. Can you take me away from here?”
“Please, I beg you. Wuah, ah, ah…”
Xue Cuo frowned. A new gust stirred, and he lowered his gaze.
Out of the snow trailed a sweep of black hem, light armour gleaming beneath, a long blade at the waist. White beast’s ears twitched faintly in the wind.
“Well, well. What a pitiful child.”
The Tiger King laughed aloud, striding forward without hesitation. His towering figure loomed, splendid and commanding. Scooping the filthy child into his arms, he spoke with warm concern:
“What’s there to fear? Your king has come to save you.”
The child lifted his eyes and froze, seeing the vast tiger’s head. His sobbing stopped at once.
“Careful.”
Xue Cuo started slightly, tapped his toes, and the talisman at his fingertips flickered as he flew forward.
The man twitched his ears, glanced sidelong at Xue Cuo standing atop the snow-pine, and said with a smile, “Friend, we meet again.”
Xue Cuo lowered his gaze, his eyes black as pitch, glinting with spite and grief, and fixed them upon him.
Those eyes had no whites at all, so uncanny they scarcely resembled anything human. The child’s broken leg dangled limply upon the tiger’s furry arm, while the ulcers mottling his body writhed as though alive, pulsating flesh and blood. Each twitch deepened the pain and rancour upon his little face.
Whatever this was, it could hardly be called human.
A vampire, and yet not quite one.
Xue Cuo looked upward. The tiger’s furry claws were long and slender as a man’s hand, covered in white fur patterned with silver stripes. The muscles of his arm swelled like rolling hills, while from his chest sprouted a ruff of snowy, downy hair so clean and lustrous, delicate as moonlight that one could not help but look twice.
Was staring at a tiger’s furry chest considered indecent?
The thought struck Xue Cuo unbidden.
The tiger smiled with a broad, benevolent air, a gleaming white blade in his grasp, its edge resting lightly against the child’s thin neck.
One glance was enough to see the weapon was no common iron, but a true divine weapon.
“What’s the matter? Whatever grievance you bear, tell me, and this king shall see you righted.”
It was almost pitiable… the way a mere vampire could be so shaken by such overwhelming kindness that cold sweat broke over its skin.
Those pupil-less eyes darted between beast and man, caught between bolting and biting, yet daring neither. He nearly wanted to cry out I’m not human! if only it might scare away the monster clasping him tight.
“You, you…” The little hand trembled as he pointed at the man in the bamboo hat. “I don’t want you. I want him to hold me. Otherwise, I’ll say nothing.”
Yin Feixue looked to the bamboo-hatted figure and said to the child, “That’s no problem at all. Only, he’s rather high up. What if I toss you up there?”
The child’s expression froze. In such rags, were he thrown and not caught, he would surely smash to pieces. After a long pause, he lowered his head. “I… you hold me.”
Then suddenly—
A breeze brushed past, bearing a faint, chilling fragrance. Yin Feixue’s nose twitched instinctively.
An edge of azure cloth fluttered down, and a long-fingered hand stretched out before him. The man, face hidden by his bamboo hat.
“Come.”
The child blinked, looked at the tiger, then at the man.
Such a plain reply, yet one he had never once received in all his life.
As a human, others had shunned him. As a ghost, no living soul had answered him. Yet tonight, two voices had reached him at once.
Overwhelmed, a strange new feeling welled in his heart, for a fleeting moment outweighing hunger, agony, and hate.
The child suddenly shook his head and nestled meekly into the tiger’s arms. “Forget it. I don’t want you to hold me.”
Yin Feixue chuckled, one ear standing erect while the other swivelled, alert to the night’s sounds.
He strode steadily on, his tone easy, skirting a human skull on the ground. Xue Cuo lowered his gaze to it, then stepped directly upon it.
A crack. The skull split, spilling a wisp of black vapour. Yet nothing touched the bamboo-hatted man.
“What might I call you, friend?”
“Xue Yinbing.”
Yin Feixue gave a soft “Oh,” twitched his ears, and smiled. “Like water drunk, its warmth or chill known only to the drinker. To take such a name, my friend, you must have a tale of your own. My Tiandu City lies in the southern reaches, blessed with heat from the earth and a temperate clime. I feel as though we were old acquaintances, Xue-xiong. Why not come to my manor, share a cup of tea, soak in a hot spring, and speak of friendship?”
A deep, pleasant laugh drifted from beneath the hat.
The tips of Yin Feixue’s ears quivered. Inwardly he hissed. Had this cultivator somehow cultivated the Dao of sound and resonance? Yet at a glance, he did not seem so.
Puzzled, he pricked up his ears again, tiger’s eyes lowered as he said to the little ghost in his arms, “Naturally, you’ll come too. We’ll see to your leg, and all the sickness in your body besides.”
The little ghost’s face went blank, then gradually, a trace of white bled into his blackened pupils. All at once he clutched Yin Feixue’s sleeve, stiffly muttering, “Don’t take the path ahead. Take another path.”
“Oh?” Yin Feixue said.
Xue Cuo faltered a step, made a sign, and Yin Feixue halted at once.
Xue Cuo lifted his hand. The green talisman at his fingertips shot skyward with a whoosh, burst into ash, and from it wove a lattice of translucent golden threads.
Buzz—
The cold wind thickened.
A surge of heat erupted, instantly evaporating the snow all around, laying bare a ground matted with raw flesh and blood.
One step further, and the pair would have sunk into a quagmire of rotting meat.
The little ghost stared at the snow melting away, his face going rigid and grey. His neck creaked as he twisted it, eyes turning toward that seemingly unremarkable bamboo hat.
