A golden firebird gave a piercing cry, reckless of its life, and in the space of a breath burned itself away.
A talisman cultivator?
How interesting. Wasn’t the talisman path long since fallen into obscurity?
Yin Feixue stroked his chin. His gaze lifted from the snow-white boots. Their cuffs were drawn snug, showing the man’s calves to striking advantage.
Looking closer, he saw a cold silver chain wound about the man’s waist. Interlaced with patterns that formed a cipher, the faint characters “loch” and “water” gleamed amidst the weave. The chain was slim, binding that lean waist with immaculate precision.
The face beneath the bamboo hat could not be clearly seen, yet even a fleeting glance revealed features of extraordinary beauty.
Yin Feixue’s mind leapt at once to a certain figure.
The rising star of the Immortal Gate: Young Master Qiushui. It was said his appearance was unrivalled, his Daoist arts unmatched, his movement peerless. The so-called Three Perfections. Of late he had been roaming the land hunting demons, drawing ever closer to Tiandu City.
He was hardly a chance passer-by. Most likely, his true target was this monster city itself.
A crow spirit at the mountain’s foot had once glimpsed him, was so terrified it fled half-plucked, leaving a trail of black feathers behind.
“The pretty ones he captures whole, I know not where he sends them. The ugly ones he slaughters on the spot, lights a fire, and roasts them.”
“My good friend, Zhu Youde was clean eaten through: heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys. Not even the head was left.”
“In his hand he carries some terrible artefact, they call it the Merit Ledger. Kill or spare, it all depends on that little book.”
“But, King of Tiandu, we of Greenhill are weak spirits. We’ve never done evil. That day we went down the mountain, it was only to settle a wine debt owed by our king to a farmer. Who could have guessed…”
At that, the crow spirit self-detonated, taking with him two mortals and a demon, leaving the ground spattered with flesh.
Plainly his spirit platform had been tampered with, and he was deliberately released.
To what end?
The lord of Tiandu City was a tiger demon of long renown, no easy prey. Thus Qiushui sought to provoke Yin Feixue, drive him into rashness.
But Yin Feixue was no fool. His supposed months of seclusion had in fact been spent scouring the land for this Young Master Qiushui, but alas, without success.
Now, testing him, he murmured a word of warning and struck backhanded.
The man reacted instantly, toes tapping light as a feather, and in a blink was upon high ground, looking down on him.
A chill sleeve brushed across Yin Feixue’s fingertips. His heart lurched. He clasped his hands behind his back, claws curling unconsciously, as if still clinging to that smooth, cool sensation… and the faint cold fragrance that lingered.
Why is this man so fragrant?
Humans and their peculiar tastes…
Once again, he had slipped away.
His movement was indeed dazzling.
And all the more suspicious.
Before Yin Feixue could speak, the little ghost in his arms thrashed to leap free, his face twisted with terror.
“I suddenly remembered, I’ve business at home. I’ll be off.”
Yin Feixue blinked. “But your leg is still broken.”
The little ghost’s face blanched to paper-white. He glared with a look that said you truly don’t understand a thing. Then, with a brutal wrench, he hoisted up his broken limb, forcing a ghastly smile. “I can go back and tie it up myself.”
He writhed pitifully, his ragged body on the verge of falling apart. Had Yin Feixue tightened his hold but a little, the ghost boy would have shattered.
So the king was obliged to release him. The ghost had barely touched the ground before scrambling to flee. Yin Feixue hooked him by the collar, plucked him up like a kitten, and said coldly, “This king never said you could go.”
With a slip the ghost wriggled out of his tattered clothes, leapt bare-bottomed into a snow-drift, and vanished quicker than Yin Feixue could react.
“Don’t go forward!” he cried out and was gone.
Yin Feixue flicked the child’s clothes aside, leaving them in a hollow for him to recover later.
He looked up. The man stood poised atop a tree, arms folded, robes streaming in the wind, as though surveying the array around them.
Yin Feixue folded his own arms, tiger’s paw rubbing at his furry chin, the ruff of his chest stirred into a soft halo by the breeze.
With the snow thawed, the formation was laid bare. In a few agile bounds he mounted the rooftop. Below stretched a vile pool of rotting flesh, thick with blood and spirit. Even a cultivator would be flayed alive stepping here unprepared.
Curious. The first time he had seen the Vampire King, this village had been wholly ordinary.
Hands clasped behind him, Yin Feixue said, “Friend, what brings you here?”
After a pause, a low voice drifted through the air. “Searching for someone.”
The tiger’s ears pricked, his pupils molten gold, gleaming. “Searching for someone? You’ll find only the dead here.”
Suddenly he lashed out, claws striking for the legs. The blow was swift, merciless, meant to maim or kill.
But the man’s reaction was just as quick. He trod upon Yin Feixue’s claws and slipped aside.
Yin Feixue twisted with him, giving no room to breathe, though his tone remained hearty and amused. “Friend, that footwork of yours is not of the human race. It belongs to my demon clan. Where did you learn it?”
Like an old cat pouncing at a butterfly. Seemingly careless, yet not a single wasted move.
These past years, Immortal sect disciples had slain countless demons, stealing their arts. The origin of this bamboo-hatted man remained a mystery. Clean or tainted, who could say?
The silver chain at his waist swayed faintly as he brushed past Yin Feixue, who had been pressing in close.
Yin Feixue only managed to catch hold of a wisp of light cloth.
The two ended back to back, a shred of azure fabric caught in the tiger’s claw. The man adjusted his bamboo hat, paused in silence, then explained: “The technique was a gift from a friend.”
Yin Feixue’s eyes fell upon the feathers at his waist. It was clearly those of a fledgling. His tiger eyes widened. “Then your luck is not small. A peacock has but sixteen feathers in its lifetime that may be sacrificed and refined into a magic weapon.”
The implication was still disbelief.
Xue Cuo frowned, folding his arms. His figure swayed lightly with the wind, as though he were a feather himself.
The movement art he cultivated was Xiao Yun-gege’s Extreme Ease Technique.
Her Ladyship had once said that Xiao Yun’s Extreme Ease Technique was not the first scroll, yet it was formidable all the same. After all, the original was the secret untransmitable skill of the Southern Peacock King. Without the King’s own lineage, one could hardly hope to learn it.
Even so, to grasp even half of this derivative art was enough to leave one unrivalled in movement.
As he was thinking this, Xue Cuo’s position suddenly shifted.
A great tiger in soft black armour shook the snow casually from his shoulders, perfectly composed.
His claws had all but brushed Xue Cuo’s hem. Yet instead of striking, he merely scratched his furry ears and stood up as though nothing had happened, entirely unembarrassed.
Xue Cuo’s chest tightened in irritation. Refuse the offered wine and you’ll drink the penalty. With a casual shake of his hand, the tree above loosed a crashing waterfall of snow, burying the tiger whole.
“Again?” Yin Feixue swore, unable to hold back.
The beast burst free in a spray of powder. The tiger shook his mane, scattering snowflakes, and sneezed in a most indecorous fashion.
From that brief exchange, Xue Cuo had already tested him: this tiger was at least in the Spirit Void Stage.
But the Spirit Void of demonkind was not the same as that of cultivators. At equal realms, demons were invariably stronger, with the exception of sword cultivators, of course. Those darlings of the Dao.
Xue Cuo had returned to the path of cultivation for twelve years now, advancing step by step from Foundation through Spirit Platform, Spirit Void, and Origin Void. His speed was already remarkable, yet this tiger still stood a full realm above him.
Was it innate genius?
And yet compared with Jun Wuwei, who had stepped into Spirit Void at the age of six, both he and the beast remained common and unremarkable.
Xue Cuo still had business to attend to. Stifling the unworthy urge to “pluck the hair from a tiger’s mouth,” he folded his arms and appeared to be standing upon the treetops—though in truth he floated in the air—gazing down at the village beneath the snowlit night.
The thaw revealed the dark-brown earth below, steeped in the cool stench of decay and rotting flesh.
Doors gaped wide in tumbledown houses, their ruins scarred with the marks of dragging and tearing. Some malignant thing had broken free, run rampant, slaughtered an entire village, and churned it into a pit of carrion.
A corpse-breeding ground.
And more than just that.
Pussy willow for the formation, petty child-spirits for the eyes. This was a ghost domain, one that trapped mortals within and raised evil shades to maturity. To purge such a place, once it had gained momentum, was no simple matter.
How to deal with it, then?
Xue Cuo twirled a talisman between his fingers.
To his shame, he had only learnt from Her Ladyship that the foul spirits of the mortal world still lay under the reporting of local mountain gods and earth deities.
But Xianghuo Divine Dao had fallen silent ten thousand years ago. The new gods ruled now, under rules unknown.
His heart stirred with curiosity and the urge to test them. Following the lay of the mountains, he sought the lines of fengshui.
Temples and ancestral halls were usually built upon such veins. With that thought, Xue Cuo turned and flew into the forest, leaving the tiger behind.
Yin Feixue twitched his ears. Why did he run?
Was it guilt? A retreat for lack of face?
But no, it didn’t seem so. After turning the matter over and over, he simply let it drop. Facing the carrion pit that blocked the path, the tiger poked his head in, tested it once, then, losing patience, stepped in as if it were no more than a hot spring pool.
The carrion pit shivered with joy. To encounter such pure blood… and such a fool as to leap in himself!
It squeezed, twisted, sought to swallow. And was shattered with a single punch from a great fluffy paw.
The Tiger King flexed his fist, eyes molten gold, and strode in with both feet.
Carrion Pit: …
Meanwhile, Xue Cuo landed in a grove, toes barely brushing branches as he slipped within.
A gust of yin wind stirred the trees.
There, unexpectedly, he saw a familiar shadow. He gave a soft “oh,” marvelling at the coincidence, and drifted silently after the little ghost.
Its clothing gone, the creature was half-corpse, half-ghost, unable to form garments from its qi. It had gathered only dry grass to cover its form.
Dragging half a severed leg, it clambered deeper into the woods. At last it reached a small mudbrick shrine, housing a pot-bellied deity.
The ghost produced a few chipped bowls, filled them with millet and half a cup of tea, lit a single stick of incense, and then knelt, knocking its head earnestly upon the ground, muttering prayers.
Xue Cuo looked on, puzzled. How could such an evil being dare worship the upright gods of heaven and earth?
Time passed. The deity statue stirred, seeming to wake. The little ghost gasped with joy, kowtowing furiously. “My lord, at last you have come!”
The clay eyes lowered coldly. The deity’s expression was indifferent. “What is it? Do not trouble this immortal without cause.”
