A heavy stomping came again.
The boar spirit hurried over, the folds of fat on its belly rolling like waves, each footstep sending a rumble through the ground, like a black iron tower barreling straight at them.
Had they been found out?
Fengxue silently tightened her grip on her sword hilt.
“Yellow Thirteen, Yellow Fourteen!” The boar spirit planted its hooves and stopped in front of the furnace, awkwardly bending its fat-layered waist, chewing on a slender finger clenched between its teeth.
The finger had been gnawed down to bare bone, held in its mouth like a toothpick.
“Why’d you two leave so quickly? I figured you’d sneak a few bites of the meat first.”
Ye Pengzhou pitched his voice up, mimicking the yellow weasel’s tone. “We’ve got to keep an eye on the mountain lord’s furnace, don’t we?”
The boar spirit said, “Elixir’s about ready, isn’t it?”
“Almost, almost.”
The boar spirit looked at the golden elixir gradually taking shape and let out a booming laugh. “Head back to the feast already, I’ll keep watch here. The mountain lord’s calling you over for some meat.”
“We’re fine watching the furnace here.”
The boar spirit plopped itself down. “Go on, go on. To be honest, I’m jealous you two have a great-grandmother backing you up. With so many great monsters around, you still get a share of the meat. Not like me, all on my own, ah…”
It stuck out its thick, fat tongue and licked carefully at that thin sliver of human bone, drool dripping onto its chest and the ground.
Fengxue frowned in disgust, but listening to it complain, she couldn’t help a small flicker of dark amusement, so even monsters had their own social pecking order… their own monstrous worldliness. The yellow weasels had some spirit backing them, so they got a share of human flesh, the boar, just a wild pig of the mountains and forests with no one behind it, was left with nothing but a scrap of bone, even as one of Lord Manshan’s own generals.
Ye Pengzhou, clearly well-versed in this sort of thing, said with a smile, “Well, that’s rough on you then, Brother Piggy. I’ll sneak you a couple pieces of meat when I can.”
The boar spirit’s drool dripped even faster, oozing thick and sticky off its tusks. “Now that’s a decent fellow. Off you go, I’ll bring the elixir over in a bit.”
…
Not having to watch the furnace was actually a stroke of luck.
It gave Fengxue time to work her way around the feast courtyard, sticking up a ring of talismans, cobbling together a crude “sealing formation.”
She pasted a demon-suppressing talisman into a hidden corner, and suddenly found herself thinking of Ten-Li Street, where she and her fellow disciples had once laid a similar formation, sealing in thousands upon thousands of monsters.
Back then, it had been Shen Yujing who set the formation, with the help of fellow disciples and several talismans and treasures, that was the only reason they’d managed to contain the monsters for even a short time.
Now, with too few talismans and too little manpower, and no Shen Yujing to be found.
If Shen Yujing were here, this would all be so much easier.
Fengxue pressed her lips together.
However unwilling she was to admit it, she had to acknowledge that Shen Yujing’s talent far outstripped her own, and his mastery of techniques was extraordinarily refined. But what she envied most about him wasn’t his technique, it was his gift for invoking the gods.
Mortals imagined the art of invoking deities to be some deeply mysterious thing, but really, it wasn’t. A practitioner would set up an altar, perform the ritual steps, form hand seals, burn a written petition, sending their request up to be heard by heaven, calling down various heavenly gods to lend aid.
Following the prescribed ritual to the letter was called proper ceremonial rite.
In her own shallow understanding, it was rather like children fighting as kids, shouting, “I’ve got people behind me!” and then calling out names, one, two, three, four, summoning various grown-ups to back them up.
But it wasn’t as though performing the whole ceremony and burning the petition guaranteed heaven would hear the request. For those heaven truly favored, a single stirring thought was enough to reach the ears of the divine, the gods responded, and every prayer was answered.
She was not the kind of person heaven favored.
The gods of the Thunder Department were the most effective at suppressing evil spirits, under heavenly thunder, a monster’s very soul scattered to nothing. If she could call down a bolt of heavenly lightning right now, the way Shen Yujing could, why would she need to burn through so many talismans?
Fengxue bit her lip and squeezed the talisman pouch, now barely half full, stuffing it back into her sleeve with some irritation. She’d once fantasized that once her Master ascended and became a Golden Immortal in the heavens, with a god watching over her personally, maybe her own petitions really would reach the ears of heaven, when facing monsters no other god would answer for, perhaps she could call on her own Master instead?
But after she’d fallen to demonhood, she’d stopped entertaining such unrealistic hopes. If she really could summon down a bolt of heavenly lightning, it would probably strike her first, of anyone.
Having fallen to demonhood… she had no face left to show any true immortal, anyway.
“Little Immortal Maiden,” Ye Pengzhou said, walking over, clearly excited. “I tossed a few exorcism pellets into the wine jars. Shall we go join the feast? Might even get a cup of wine out of it!”
The feast had, at that moment, descended into a cannibal banquet. The murdered woman had been cooked and laid out on the table, the monsters chewing away at her in great mouthfuls.
Unable to bear watching, Fengxue shook her head. “Staying inside is too dangerous. Once the monsters’ wine takes effect and Lord Manshan swallows that ‘golden elixir,’ we’ll slip back in and stir up suspicion and conflict among them. Best if we’re not exposed at all, let them tear each other apart instead.”
Ye Pengzhou clapped his hands together and laughed. “Wonderful! Who needs a sword to kill monsters, after all?”
Fengxue stacked a few stones to stand on, watching secretly with Ye Pengzhou from behind the wall.
Once the exorcism pellets dissolved into the wine, many of the lesser spirits collapsed to the ground, reverting partly to their true beastly forms. But they didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, assuming only that the wine was unusually strong, and kept right on drinking and celebrating without restraint.
The “roast suckling human” had been merely the opening course of this horrifying feast, the table was now piled with severed limbs. Fengxue swept her gaze across it once, gripping her sword tight, a wave of fury rising in her chest.
“The mountain lord’s killed quite a few people, hasn’t he?” the spider spirit asked. “Making such a show of it, aren’t you worried Qingming Mountain will come knocking?”
Lord Manshan stroked his beard and laughed. “Tonight I take up my new post. Any little Daoist from Qingming Mountain who runs into me from now on will have to bow respectfully and call me a divine lord.”
“Then when we meet again in the future, we’ll be counting on the mountain lord’s protection,” the other spirits said, laughing merrily. “We’ve got connections in high places now too.”
Fengxue spat inwardly: ‘Ptooey. I don’t have anyone in high places at all.’
A pack of monsters, with no idea how high the sky truly was, or how deep the earth [1]utterly ignorant of what they were truly up against jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3024841_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3024841_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });!
“How disgusting!” Ye Pengzhou muttered, lowering his voice, watching a spirit gnawing on a thick arm, chunks of flesh flying, blood streaming everywhere. “A pack of monsters and ghosts, truly… truly deserving of death.”
Fengxue made a small sound of agreement, brows tightly knit. She’d seen plenty of mortal suffering before, and every time, it left her seething with an anger she couldn’t quite settle.
“You don’t like killing people?” she asked, suddenly curious about Ye Pengzhou.
Ye Pengzhou said, without thinking, “Of course not, who would like killing people?”
Even as he said it, though, he found himself recalling the girl sitting calmly in a pool of blood, peeling the hide off a human-faced dog without so much as a flinch. Something shivered through him, and he turned his head to look at the girl beside him.
Just then, Fengxue happened to be looking at him too.
Their eyes met, both carrying a note of quiet scrutiny.
Fengxue said softly, “I don’t like killing people either.”
Ye Pengzhou studied her for a moment, then laughed, his eyes bright and full of life, his long, narrow double eyelids drawn in lines as sharp and graceful as a blade. “But the little Immortal Maiden’s right, heretical demons and outside evils can’t be counted as people. Worse than beasts, even. Look at this Lord Mantou, he was human in life, and yet he never did a single decent human thing. He’s more savage than the beasts sitting at his own table.”
Fengxue nodded in agreement.
Ye Pengzhou leaned in close to her ear and said with a smile, “So, tell me, what should be done with heretical cultivators-turned-beasts like Lord Mantou?”
Fengxue said, “They should die.”
Ye Pengzhou said, “The little Immortal Maiden’s sword is extremely fast, and my blade’s no slouch either!” He leaned against the courtyard wall, tilting his head to look up at the girl perched atop it. “Shall we have a little contest, then, see who cuts down more monsters?”
Fengxue let out a soft snort. “Fine, let’s do it. And the loser—” She pressed her lips together, thinking it over. “The loser has to go treat Zhang Xingzhi to a drink.”
The corner of Ye Pengzhou’s mouth curled up, if not for fear of alerting the monsters, he might have slapped the wall and laughed out loud.
The spider spirit suddenly said, “Huh, why do I smell a living human?”
Fengxue and Ye Pengzhou exchanged a glance.
“Have we been found out?”
They leaned in close to each other, sniffing at their own clothes, still that same overpowering yellow weasel stench, so foul that both of them kept fanning at their noses, pulling away from each other with a shared, unspoken revulsion.
“Is it Zhang Xingzhi?” Fengxue whispered, a flicker of worry crossing her.
But she quickly realized it wasn’t.
“Miss Spider has such a sharp nose. I’ve prepared a special dish for everyone,” Lord Manshan said.
A pregnant woman was hauled up onto the table.
Heavy with child, her hand resting on her swollen belly, her face utterly drained of color, she stared in terror at the surrounding monsters and ghosts. She had already fainted several times, only to be roughly shaken awake again, swaying unsteadily as paper figures propped her up, despair written across her face, tears sliding down her cheeks.
The monsters pounded the table, laughing with excitement, crying out, “So fragrant, so fragrant!”
The woman’s legs gave out from fright, and she fainted again, her ghost-pale head hanging limp, even shaken repeatedly by the paper figures, she wouldn’t wake.
The scent of a living human was too tempting to resist any longer, the monsters could barely hold themselves back.
Snow-white spider silk and a jet-black snake tail lashed out toward the woman at the same instant.
Fengxue drew her sword and leapt over the courtyard wall, her movements light and utterly silent. Just as she was about to strike, both the silk thread and the snake tail froze mid-motion and withdrew.
Lord Manshan said, pleasantly, to the two great spirits, “My friends, no need to rush, no need to rush. Since it’s such a fine dish, it deserves proper preparation. There’s a dish among mortals called milk-braised lamb, you split open the mother ewe’s belly and take the lamb out alive, then braise it in fresh milk. That’s the only way to get the most tender meat.”
The snake spirit smacked its lips, tongue flicking, and said, “Mountain Lord, I’d say it’s nearly mid-month, shouldn’t you be taking your elixir and ascending soon? No need for such fuss. Just let us eat her already! Raw is perfectly fine too.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” the other spirits said, practically drooling. “Raw would be lovely too!”
“I want her belly!”
…
Lord Manshan ignored them, saying with a smile, “The trouble with this dish is that it requires an extremely fast blade, splitting the belly open, taking the infant out alive. Taken out this way, the infant’s breath hasn’t quite left it yet, and it can stay alive for quite some time still. I wonder, is there anyone here with such skill with a blade?”
The monsters snickered, drool nearly dripping to the floor.
“Mountain Lord,” the snake spirit said, pounding the table impatiently, “let me do it!”
Lord Manshan shook his head. “You, a giant python? Give you one step closer, and you’ll swallow the good meat whole for yourself.”
The other spirits laughed even harder.
The spider spirit volunteered eagerly as well.
Lord Manshan declined again. “Lady Spider, I’m afraid your venom might spoil the meat.”
The clamor rose louder, the spirits growing more and more impatient, a rising chorus of table-pounding.
Lord Manshan shook his head and picked out a wolf spirit with a broadsword at its waist. “Why don’t you do it, then. Just be careful with the cut, don’t slice her clean in half.”
The wolf spirit rose at once, drooling, and walked toward the woman, drawing its long blade.
Just then, a clear, ringing voice cut through the air. “I’ll do it.”
The spirits turned to look. From the dim shadows by the courtyard wall, a veiled woman in a Daoist robe walked forward at an unhurried pace, sword in hand, its edge gleaming like snow. “Why use a blade? My sword is sharper still.”
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