Beating a “Drowning Dog
“Form up.”
Lu Zhuobai reacted almost in the same instant, his voice low and hard.
They were disciples of the Hidden Snow Sect after all; though still not used to their surroundings, after a brief panic they quickly set a sword formation where they stood, just as they had been taught.
Zheng Nanlou’s cultivation was low and he understood little of this. He could only draw the iron sword at his waist along with the rest and stand behind the formation.
After a dead stillness so long it grew unbearable, several green leaves came drifting slowly down from a tree not far off.
As though they were an omen, before the leaves could reach the ground the whole wood began to shudder violently.
The layered tree shadows twisted and swayed in the drifting mist, and among the crossing branches there seemed to be countless beasts of every shape, baring teeth and claws at the newcomers in a view that grew blurrier by the moment.
The ground shook hugely along with it, and a rumble like muffled thunder came up; dead leaves and dust churned like a tide, as though something down there were slowly waking.
In the space of a few breaths they all saw a vast, blurred shadow rise slowly out of the disordered dust and fog ahead.
“Boom……”
“Boom……”
The heavy footfalls were like a beaten drum, each one seeming to come down on every heart there.
No one spoke and no one moved; they only watched that shadow with all their attention, their breathing slowing without their meaning it to.
As the sound grew louder and louder, they finally saw it clearly.
The thing in front of them could not truly be called a “beast” at all.
Rotting lumps of flesh and stark white bone had been lashed together any which way with iron chains, barely assembled into the shape of an animal that crawled on four limbs.
Where the head should have been by its position, two eyeballs of unequal size sat crookedly. Below the left one, half the skin of the face had vanished, as though something had torn it away by force, threads of rotten flesh still trailing at the edges, the gums bare, and a long crimson tongue that seemed to be writhing slowly.
“What…… in all hells is that thing?”
Someone spoke shakily, terror plain in the voice.
Every demonic beast and strange species under heaven, even one a man had never laid eyes on, could at least be found recorded somewhere in the old texts.
But not a single person present could name this monster or say where it came from. It looked more like some twisted creation crawled out of the worst of nightmares, a thing that should never have existed in this world.
The moment the monster saw their party it let out a piercing, shrill howl, its rotting body surging up all at once, and charged straight at them.
“Hold the formation.”
Lu Zhuobai’s order came sharp, the long sword clearing his scabbard along with it, its biting cold light lending his brows and eyes a sterner cast.
But the party he had brought this time was in the end made up of youths with shallow experience; even the eldest had been in the Hidden Snow Sect only six or seven years, and most were poor at fighting without spiritual energy. Even counting him, they barely turned aside two of the creature’s charges.
On the third, several in the front rank were knocked flying outright, and the formation, hard enough to hold as it was, fell apart in that instant.
At the back, Zheng Nanlou was not much caught up in it; he was only knocked over by the blast of air and fell to one side.
The injury to his chest from the night before began to hurt again. He turned his head and spat out a mouthful of bloody foam, careless of it, while his eyes moved quietly through the crowd in its chaos and fixed with precision on that figure in black.
Xie Heng had been standing at the very front of the sword formation and had taken the creature’s charge head-on, so his injuries were rather serious.
His right arm hung at his side at an unnatural angle, and the silver sword clenched in his hand was mottled with blood, no small part of which was presumably his own.
The party had been scattered, and apart from the few who could still just about lift a sword, everyone was running for their lives. He knew he was no match for it either, and could only stumble away toward somewhere.
Zheng Nanlou followed without a flicker of expression.
Xie Heng most likely meant to see to his wounds. He kept his head down and pressed forward the whole way, moving fast, though his steps were unsteady; the blood on his hand ran onto the sword and down the blade, dragging a broken red trail behind him.
After he pushed through a few clumps of low shrubs, a cave opened up before him. The mouth was not large, and was covered over by several bunches of half-withered vines, which made it rather well hidden.
He looked over the ground around the cave, found no sign of danger, and slipped inside.
Zheng Nanlou was in no hurry to follow. He found a patch of tree shade further back and stood there, and once he saw that no one was behind him, he took a black cloak from the storage pouch at his waist.
It was a cheap thing he had picked up last year at the foot of the Hidden Snow Sect’s mountain from a mortal peddler. The peddler had not seen that he was a cultivator and swore to him that it was some kind of “immortal’s garment” that warded off water and fire. When he took it back and tried it, it could not withstand even the lowest-grade spell.
Then again, he had never expected the two coppers he paid to get him any treasure. He had bought the thing only because it was large enough.
Zheng Nanlou put the cloak on and it wrapped him up completely, not so much as a hem of his clothes showing; with the hood up, his face disappeared into shadow, and only the blurred line of a chin could be made out.
That way, short of using spiritual energy, there was no telling at all who he was.
Only when all of this was done did he set off toward the cave.
The moment he stepped through the mouth, a piercing cold met him. Even with the cloak on, that damp chill went straight through the cloth without hindrance and bored into the seams of his bones, cold enough to set a man shivering.
By what thin light came in from outside, he saw Xie Heng sitting propped against the stone wall, his right hand resting limply on his knee, blood not yet dry congealing on the ground beside him.
And the long sword that had once been driven at his face now lay tossed carelessly by his feet. On the blade, blood was mixed with dust and dirt in a filthy smear, its old edge and gleam long gone.
Zheng Nanlou had never thought of himself as a good man, and so he did not mind in the least beating a “drowning dog.”
Injured though he was, Xie Heng was still alert enough; at the sound of footsteps his head snapped around:
“Who’s there!”
At any other time that challenge would have carried an overbearing force, but now his breath was ragged and his voice hoarse.
He tried instinctively to stand, but the moment his right hand moved his whole body shuddered; unable to hold himself up, he dropped back down heavily, and a muffled sound of pain escaped his throat before he could stop it.
The loose hair at his forehead was soaked through with cold sweat and clung to his ever-paler face, and even the outer corners of his eyes, which ought to have tilted up, seemed to have drooped along with the rest of him.
Zheng Nanlou did not come forward at once, but stopped where he was and explained, as though he wished to set the other’s mind at rest:
“There is no need for alarm, fellow daoist. I am only a rogue cultivator passing through. I heard some commotion in the wood just now and followed the sound over to look.”
He deliberately pitched his voice low, so that it sounded rather unlike his usual one, and worked exactly the right measure of concern into his tone.
Naturally Xie Heng did not believe him, and laughed coldly:
“I’ve been in this Sunken Sword Abyss nearly two days and haven’t seen so much as half a person. And now, just as I’m wounded, you turn up? Who exactly are you!”
Zheng Nanlou found the sight of him propping himself up funny, but still put on a helpless air and sighed:
“Fellow daoist, you have quite misunderstood me.”
“This Sunken Sword Abyss is a strange place, and every part of the wood looks the same. I came in three days ago and lost my way, wandering about like a headless fly, and I have not met a single living thing either. Finding you was no easy matter.”
As he said it he mixed a touch of grievance into his tone, for all the world an unlucky cultivator fallen on hard times.
At that Xie Heng frowned suddenly. “You say you’ve been in this wood three days and never ran into that monster?”
Zheng Nanlou asked back, “What monster?”
So Xie Heng gave him a brief account of what he had just seen.
When he had heard it out, Zheng Nanlou slapped his thigh:
“I will not hide it from you. I came here for that very monster. I never expected you would meet it first.”
“You know what that thing is?” Xie Heng asked at once.
But Zheng Nanlou shook his head slowly. “I do not know what the monster is, or what its name might be, but……”
He paused on purpose before going on with an air of mystery:
“Has it occurred to you, fellow daoist? In a place where everyone who enters loses his cultivation entirely, with no spiritual energy and no evil aura either, how is it that a monster like that alone could be bred here?”
Xie Heng’s breath caught as he listened. “You mean……”
“Just so,” said Zheng Nanlou. “I suspect someone is playing at ghosts and gods.”
With that last sentence, Xie Heng’s thoughts were plainly being led along by him.
He lowered his head without a shred of guard, seemingly deep in thought. “If that’s the case, then what is the man behind it after?”
Zheng Nanlou laughed low. “By your dress, fellow daoist, you must be the young master of some great and noble house who has not been about much in the world, so of course you would not know. This world is far more treacherous than you imagine.”
“Where people are concerned, there is nothing they will not do. There is only what you have failed to think of.”
Only when he had finished did Xie Heng feel there was something wrong with the voice, and when he raised his head he found that the man had at some point come to stand right in front of him, one foot planted on the sword lying by his feet.
He knew at once that this was bad, but had time for only a single word:
“You……”
A long hand shot out from beneath the cloak and struck his chest with the palm, forcing the rest of the sentence back down his throat.
The blow carried no spiritual energy, and yet the force behind it was enormous; Xie Heng was driven straight back into the rock wall, spat out a mouthful of blood, and after that could not move at all.
Zheng Nanlou looked down at him, in exactly the posture this man had taken the night before, standing on his chest and gazing down at him from above.
He had no taste for admiring another’s suffering, though, and had not stood there long before he crouched down.
When he spoke again, the softness he had feigned a moment ago was long gone from his voice, and only a bone-deep cold was left.
“Has anyone ever told you that you really are a……”
He raised a hand and caught Xie Heng’s calf just as the man had caught his that night, then felt his way downward.
“Idiot.”
Before the word was out he wrenched hard, and snapped the ankle.