“Wait a moment.”
The old god turned its gaze upon him.
It too wished to see what this mortal intended. Was he also seeking to reap the devotee-power of these captive souls?
Surely so. The god watched with cold detachment.
The young man crouched low, painting talismans one by one upon the silkworm women. To them he said:
“It’s far too dark here. Once we’ve slain the villains, we’ll take you outside.”
Shen Qingsang seemed about to speak, but instead her lips curved into a light, cheerful smile.
She had dreamt a dream both endless and bitter, all darkness and chill, with no path back, no end ahead.
Now, at last, that long nightmare was over.
Xue Cuo said nothing further. When the final rune was drawn, he rose to his feet. “Miss Shen, let’s go.”
In the house, the god draped in red cloth watched them depart. The youth had not left a name for worship.
Why not? It could not fathom.
At the gate, Xue Cuo pressed a talisman to the lintel. Shen Qingsang gave him a smile. “Sir truly is a careful one.”
He asked, “Miss, is your home on Taolin Island?”
Shen Qingsang nodded. He handed her a talisman. “This will save your life once, should danger come. When all here is settled, I shall see you safely back to Taolin Island.”
“Very well.”
She looked up, smiled again, and before he could answer, continued: “There is a formation in Xishi Village, suppressing the murderous aura of the living. If it is disturbed, Bo Jinling will sense it at once and hasten here.
“He seeks to refine qi into baleful force, devour the flesh of mortals, and awaken the old gods. I will see he fails.”
Xue Cuo arched a brow. “Shall we cause a stir?”
Shen Qingsang nodded briskly. “A grand one.”
He passed her a bundle of talismans, explained their use, and the two parted ways.
Meanwhile, in the village.
A knot of Rakshasas lolled atop heaps of human bone, drinking, gambling, making merry.
One drawled, “Oi, the hour’s near, isn’t it? Fetch that brat, cut out his heart and liver, and offer them to the Lord God.”
The loser of the game groaned, rose reluctantly.
Bang!
The courtyard door crashed flat.
The fiends started, staring through the smoke as a woman strode in, face inscribed with talismans, sword in hand, fierce as a demon. “Your grandmother’s here! Come out and die!”
Roaring with fury, the Rakshasas seized their bone-stained weapons.
The greatest of them, pipe clamped in his teeth, swung a colossal club, forcing Shen Qingsang back with a blast of murderous wind. “How did you escape?”
Shen Qingsang sneered. “You’ll know once you’re dead.”
The pipe-bearer’s expression shifted. “Could it be that boy who delivered himself? No good! Form ranks! Kill her quickly!”
Several Rakshasas, half-man half-ghost, iron-skinned, impervious to blade or spear, rushed her at once. She was outmatched, forced into desperate straits.
Hatred burned her through. She had not forgotten their torments, their beatings, her long imprisonment.
Old hatred with new enmity flared… enough to pit one against many.
She fought savagely, though wounded, then remembered Xue Cuo’s charge. Snatching a talisman from her sleeve, she flung it skyward with a shout: “Golden Pool Rebirth, Deliverance Boy!”
The divine title stirred response. The talisman froze in mid-air, then whirled like a storm about her body.
She jolted as strength surged through her, light as a swallow, mighty as a giant, her spirit welling without end. Her robes swelled, energy blazing, as if she had swallowed a hundred great tonics in one breath.
“Hahahahahaha! Good!”
Her eyes gleamed; murderous qi pierced the heavens. One stroke felled a Rakshasa.
The pipe-bearer paled, stepped back. “Fear not! Form up, surround her! ’Tis only her sword that’s fierce!”
But Shen Qingsang seemed possessed, terrifying beyond belief. Even bereft of her sword, she tore Rakshasas apart with bare hands. Their strongest brutes scattered in panic.
The pipe-bearer went ashen. “Summon the High God!”
The shrewdest of the fiends slipped from the melee and darted toward the altar.
The High God… Yes, only call upon the High God…!
Yet the further he ran, the more wrong it felt. Why was the blood-mist thinning? Could the envoy’s formation be broken?
He hesitated, recalling the envoy’s warning: should the formation fail, flee at once. Do not call the High God, or else…
The thought alone made his hair rise. And yet, after so long, were they still witless whelps? Had Bo Jinling truly borne divine will, or only sought to hoard favour and ascend alone?
The Rakshasa grit his teeth. The god has fed here a hundred times over. He will not be as weak as at first waking. I’ll wager it.
He stumbled into a silkworm farmer’s house.
Inside was spotless. At the centre, a shrine fashioned like a bronze hall. Within, a statue swathed in red cloth, face hidden, yet the village’s baleful essence all streamed into it.
The Rakshasa bowed thrice and crawled forward. But when he raised his head, he froze.
Before him shimmered azure robes. White boots. Eyes deep and still as a lake.
“At last, I’ve found you.”
The youth smiled, flicked a finger to the Rakshasa’s brow.
The fiend went rigid, eyes crossing to glimpse a green talisman stuck fast to his forehead.
High God!
He mouthed soundlessly.
The youth in blue drew out an incense stick, and with maddening leisure approached the shrine. And that shrine… before which the Rakshasa had never dared raise his eyes, the solemn idol of the True God… it suddenly sprouted two thin, black legs… and bolted.
It ran.
The Rakshasa gaped, stupefied.
Xue Cuo’s face darkened, eyes fierce as he gave chase. “Run? Where will you run to? Receive my bow!”
The shrine’s red cloth billowed, scuttling faster still.
Xue Cuo would not squander his chance. He hurled talismans: [Wind-Control] [Wind-Riding] [Supreme Freedom Technique]
In an instant he was all speed and smoke, legs a blur.
But the shrine’s legs stretched absurdly long, matching him stride for stride. The red cloth swelled into vast hands, clutching tight the idol within, denying all approach.
Xue Cuo snarled. His talismans were useless. He raised a lotus, tried to bar its path, but the soul-treasure could not bind a god’s shrine.
“Useless!” he spat.
The lotus seemed to have a will of its own. It quivered, then angrily slapped Xue Cuo with a petal… like an old father spurned by an ignorant child. Spinning furiously, it shot several petals that forced the shrine back, then dimmed, dissolved into light, and vanished into Xue Cuo’s brow.
His expression changed at once. “As expected of Her Ladyship’s beloved treasure!” he exclaimed with glowing praise.
He drew talismans to seal the four directions, dropped from the air, and advanced in steady, square steps upon the retreating shrine.
“Run,” he murmured.
Then he smiled, sinister and cold, and flicked the burning incense stick. “Can’t run any longer?”
The shrine was no true god. It blundered left and right, but the sealed space left no escape.
Its red cloth stirred without wind, wrath surging. Yet under the rising smoke of incense, it faltered and leaned weakly against the wall.
Suddenly, the statue within hurled itself out, crashing to the floor.
Xue Cuo’s face darkened; he sprang forward. “Trying to kill yourself?”
The statue rolled with a clatter, staggered upright, and lunged for the wall again. But Xue Cuo’s Supreme Freedom Technique, which was a half-transmission of the Southern Peacock Lord’s art, was lightning fast, agile beyond measure!
One hook of his hand, and he had the statue in his grip. Without hesitation he prepared to set the incense.
The red cloth whipped up of its own accord, transforming into two vast hands that clutched his wrist, struggling to keep him from planting it.
Just then, a low dragon’s roar rolled across the heavens.
Blood-rain spattered down.
The shrine in Xue Cuo’s grip seemed to deflate, then crumbled into drifting dust.
“Fellow Daoist, spare when sparing is due.”
Bitterly disappointed, Xue Cuo shook out his sleeves and looked skyward.
A black dragon had appeared, winding through the blood-mist, its body half-concealed. Atop its head sat a youth shrouded in white gauze, ringing a bell and gazing coldly down at Xue Cuo.
The inborn oppression of dragon-kind weighed heavy; the sky darkened, the faint drumming of dragon-roar thundered in heart and ear alike, filling men with dread.
Xue Cuo strode up the tiles to the rooftop. “Bo Jinling?”
The figure in gauze lifted his veil slightly, revealing a copper-coin mask and a pair of brilliant, soul-stirring eyes, icy-pure in their splendour. “And you are?”
The youth’s azure robe remained untouched by blood-rain, rippling like blue water. His smile was half there, half gone.
“My humble name is Xue.”
Bo Jinling frowned.
Xue? He had never heard of such a Divine Dao master in the mortal realm. Yet today, when the formation trembled and the statue of his Lord issued repeated warnings, he had rushed out only to find this man, incense in hand, contending with the god’s image.
He had served the deity for years, yet he had never seen it so humiliated. Had he arrived a moment later, he would surely have been slain for his failure.
Thus his vigilance against this Xue person was sharpened twelvefold, though he could not guess the man’s origin. He forced a smile. “At Broken Head Mountain I failed to recognise your greatness. Now that Divine Dao rises anew and myriad gods revive, it is our chance to display our worth. Since fate lets us meet again, why fight to the death? Better you join me at my residence, so we may discuss the Great Dao together.”
At that instant a figure came hurtling like an Asura reborn. “Bo Jinling!”
Bo Jinling’s face changed. He glanced down.
A familiar figure with her face scrawled with golden sigils, murderous qi seething. She roared abuse: “You dog! Murderer of father and mother, butcher of your own kin, foul deeds unnumbered! Today I’ll cleanse Tao Lin of your stain!”
Bo Jinling stared, disbelieving, then his eyes flared with fury. “You? Shen Qingsang? With one flick I could kill you a thousand times, leave you wishing for death!”
Shen Qingsang spat. “This grandmother is scared!”
She ripped the talismans from her face. Xue Cuo’s pupils contracted. “Shen Qingsang!”
In a split second, the world flipped.
Her eyes rolled white, her face cold as carved clay. Hair twisted into red cloth, her legs into pale, translucent insect limbs. In a breath she became a clay statue of a god.
The god stretched forth a hand like silken threads to ensnare Bo Jinling. He recoiled. Behind him in the blood-mist loomed a bronze temple, with the vague shape of a towering corpse within.
Buzz—
The two deities met for the first time.
Xue Cuo was flung aside, collateral to their clash.
The Red Silkworm God had been gnawed by the bronze temple for long, near death. Yet desperation lent it strength, and its outburst shook even the temple.
They struck in a flash.
Bo Jinling’s veil shredded, his eyes bloodshot. Astride the dragon, he shook his bell furiously. The dragon howled, and with claws brimming in Xianghuo-power lunged at the Silkworm God, knocking it askew.
The bronze temple seized its chance, pouncing to devour the weakened deity. But then it shuddered violently.
Bo Jinling looked down.
The shattered shrine had reshaped itself into a bronze temple. Beside it burned a single stick of incense. And there stood the blue-robed youth, pale, smiling faintly.
Bo Jinling’s vision swam. In that instant he was seen by an ancient existence beyond reckoning. Cold sweat drenched his back.
The temple acted at once. It abandoned its feast, flung away its own hall, and hurled its divine corpse outward, grafting its karmic power and temple upon the Red Silkworm God.
The Silkworm God stiffened. Its red cloth flew up, baring its ghastly true form, but it could only watch in helpless horror as its body dissolved into countless golden motes.
“Mountains and rivers will meet again! You surnamed Xue. Just you wait!”
Bo Jinling spat blood, eyes scarlet, teeth clenched. But knowing he could not linger, he vanished on the gale.
Xue Cuo was blown away. Shen Qingsang’s mutation broke, and she crashed to the ground with a tooth-rattling thud.
A golden lotus bloomed, shielding her soul.
Yin Feixue, warned by paper effigy, arrived at speed.
He saw blood-rain falling, a dragon’s roar fading into the clouds, and amid the crimson haze, Xue Cuo’s back straight as a sword… until suddenly he collapsed.
Yin Feixue’s tiger-eyes widened; he caught him mid-fall. “Xue Yinbing!”
Finding him not fatally harmed, he laid him beneath a tree, drew his blade, and transformed into a white tiger leaping skyward.
Dragon’s roar and tiger’s cry clashed above. A shred of white gauze, faintly bloodied, drifted down.
Bo Jinling, enraged, plunged into the Ghost Gate. “I had no quarrel with you!”
But Yin Feixue’s gaze blazed; he struck a claw upon the gate, as if to drag him out. Bo Jinling paled. How can a mere tiger demon be so fearsome?
He chanted an incantation while pinching his fingers, then vanished.
Thwarted in his pursuit, Yin Feixue shook his massive head, resumed human form, and descended from the clouds.
Xue Cuo, meanwhile, was rolling and thrashing in his mind. My Lady, are you there? Can you hear me? My Lady~!
Suddenly, gentle hands raised him. He blinked open his eyes. Golden, luminous eyes stared back. A great tiger head loomed close; soft paws gripped his chin, turning it left and right. A deep voice, resonant in its chest, made his scalp prickle.
“Yinbing-xiong, you are hurt.”
Xue Cuo tried to lean back in composure, only for his chin to be firmly pulled forward again.
Xue Cuo: ?
