In the Eight Peaks Forest, just as its name said, eight black peaks were settled in place.
The eight peaks each occupied one of the eight directions and encircled the forest in a ring, and looking down on this from a high place, it could even look like a great spider lying dead on its back with its legs curled inside a ring of mountains.
In any case, this vast basin-shaped forest had been famous since ancient times for the density of its heaven-and-earth spiritual energy and the many cursed beasts that dwelt in it, so a person with any discernment would ordinarily not cross that mountain range carelessly.
Deep inside that gloomy forest.
There a pitch-black spider showed itself.
It was Black Spider.
Divine awareness stretches out from Black Spider's brain stem and searches the area. Then it suddenly senses something and heads that way.
Among the thick undergrowth.
A few sharp green-jade feathers lie strewn on the ground.
Having confirmed this, Black Spider's eyeballs roll round and round.
It seemed its judgment had hit the mark properly after all.
***
One absorbs spiritual energy through breathing and converts it into cursed energy.
Through this act cursed beasts can slowly recover the cursed energy they have expended.
Naturally, the thicker the spiritual energy of a place, the faster the recovery of cursed energy as well, and accordingly cursed beasts generally prefer to reside where the spiritual energy is thick.
And so, in terrain where such highs and lows of spiritual energy exist, cursed beasts are ordinarily distributed by grade according to the density of the spiritual energy.
In places where the spiritual energy is relatively thin, generally petty, weak cursed beasts.
In places of moderate concentration, ordinary cursed beasts.
From places of thick concentration on, cursed fiends equipped with cursed cores begin to appear.
And at the center of a spirit vein, where the concentration is densest, the most powerful cursed fiends of the region ordinarily divide the districts among themselves and take possession of them.
And so in the case of this Eight Peaks Forest, four powerful great cursed fiends each held their own territory with the thick-spirited center of the forest as the reference point, and of them the great cursed fiend that held the eastern district was none other than the jade-hued hawk.
But as befitted a winged flying creature, the jade-hued hawk would constantly leave her own territory and fly about here and there, and her range of activity was so wide that in practice she made nearly three-tenths of the whole Eight Peaks Forest her own front yard.
Keeping so wide a territory beneath her feet and eating whatever cursed beasts caught her eye as she pleased was the jade-hued hawk's daily life.
Up until last year, that is.
However much she had wings, because she kept trespassing on the other great cursed fiends' territories so often and so rudely, relations between the jade-hued hawk and the other great cursed fiends were not very good.
So whenever they ran into the jade-hued hawk the great cursed fiends were desperate to catch and kill her, but the jade-hued hawk for her part would simply flit about the sky each time, shooting feathers at the ground and taunting them.
That day too she had been playing about in that fashion.
She had been merrily tormenting the boar cursed fiend, the chief of the western district, a beast the size of a house, and had just returned to her nest.
She returned to find the state of the nest an utter ruin.
Her young chicks lay dead with blood streaming out of them, and on the ground below the nest a jade-hued hawk's egg that someone had dropped lay smashed and scattered.
The jade-hued hawk gave a monstrous shriek, filled with rage. Soon the jade-hued hawk realized who the culprit of this affair was. She had discovered blue fur left behind in the nest.
It was the fur of the blue weasel she had hunted and eaten some time before. Apparently its mother had come all the way here and taken revenge.
What came afterward was obvious. The jade-hued hawk found the hiding mother weasel after all and pursued her. The mother weasel crawled along the ground and hid beneath rocks and so on, desperately, holding out for a long time and fleeing quite well, but in the end she was caught by the jade-hued hawk and died grievously. At that time the jade-hued hawk also caught and killed a spider cursed fiend that happened to be nearby, partly to vent her fury.
But repaying revenge does not bring dead young back. Being by nature both male and female in one body, the jade-hued hawk could lay only a set number of eggs in her lifetime, and she had already laid all the eggs she could.
Because of that, the jade-hued hawk went mad.
Though there were no longer any young to feed and raise, the mother hawk brought all sorts of cursed beasts and animals back to her nest in great numbers.
Even though the nest was full of such rotting corpses, the mother hawk would not clear them away.
She only wept mournfully amid those rotting lumps of flesh, and each time day broke she repeated nothing but setting out to hunt again.
Then one night, when the full moon was up.
She had been drifting off to sleep and waking again, over and over. Some bizarre sensation seemed to feel over the jade-hued hawk's body.
It was not that there was any physical substance to it, but in any case such a sensation was felt. The jade-hued hawk had felt this sort of sensation several times before as well.
It was divine awareness. The four great cursed fiends of the forest, the jade-hued hawk among them, were every one of them Grade 2 or higher cursed fiends that had awakened divine awareness, and they each knew the shape of one another's divine awareness.
But the divine awareness that had just brushed past the jade-hued hawk was of an entirely new shape. It was not the western boar's, nor the southern white serpent's, nor the northern monkey's.
At that, displeasure surged up at once, and her half-closed eyes snapped wide open.
So she goes out from the nest. She beats her wings lightly and rises, then sweeps her gaze in a circle over the area around the nest. Where the divine awareness had stretched out from, the jade-hued hawk's divine awareness sets out to search in turn.
Then, down there just above the ground, she discovers something bizarre.
CLUNK, CLUNK, CLUNK.
CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!
A bizarre form resembling a monkey, made of who knew what — stone or wood — was dancing a grotesque dance under the moonlight.
Its appearance seemed rather to resemble the northern monkey cursed fiend, but something about it was uncanny. How to put it? It did not seem to be alive, one might say? Its back was also stooped and bent.
But what did that matter?
Whether that thing was alive or dead, it had grated on her nerves, so as far as the jade-hued hawk was concerned she need only teach it a lesson.
SCREEEE—!
Shrieking that way, the jade-hued hawk swooped down toward the ground. Ordinary cursed beasts were bound to expire from this single blow. She thought that strange monkey would be the same.
The instant she built up speed and struck the thing with her sharp talons.
CLANG!
An unfamiliar sound rang out. At the same time a sharp pain shot up from the tip of her foot. She lowered her gaze and looked at her foot. One toe had been half severed and bent back. Blood was streaming from the wound.
And beyond it, the monkey form stood staring this way. Its hand was soaked in bright red blood. The jade-hued hawk realizes that it is blood she has shed.
The sharp pain she felt at her foot soon began to change into a burning agony, but rage came before pain.
SCREEEEEE—!
The cry of the jade-hued hawk, brimming with rage, rings out over the area. Sleeping animals wake and hurriedly leave their places.
Regardless of them, the jade-hued hawk flies up again and this time sends her sharp feathers flying at the monkey as though bombarding it.
At this the monkey too begins to unfold grotesque motions and strike the feathers down. CLANG, SHRRK! SHRRRK! Along with the noise of something hard being harshly scraped, the feathers the jade-hued hawk loosed strike the arms the monkey swings about, throwing off sparks and bouncing away in every direction.
Then, at times, when the feathers grazed past the monkey's surroundings, silver-glinting fine lines of some sort would suddenly be cut through and the monkey's movements would falter or slow, but before long it would be sound again.
It was a grotesque and bizarre enemy. Never once until now had she seen a cursed fiend block her feather attacks head-on like this.
Even the other three great cursed fiends had at best evaded the feather attacks; they had not been able to meet them head-on in that fashion.
So had it been as before, the jade-hued hawk would have felt fear at this alien situation and left the place.
But the problem was that the jade-hued hawk's mind was not as it had been. For a mother bird who had lost her young and gone mad, nothing remained now but hatred and rage.
And so the enraged jade-hued hawk was about to attempt another swooping attack. This time it was not a simple swoop but a killing blow combining all the cursed energy she had with the strength of her whole body. If struck by this attack, even the other great cursed fiends could not be certain of surviving.
But in that moment the jade-hued hawk suddenly realized that something had gone wrong. The burning agony that had begun at the tip of her foot had by now churned through her entire body and was obstructing her from drawing up her cursed energy.
At the fierce pain the jade-hued hawk momentarily loses her balance and flaps. She barely avoids falling, but she feels that something has gone badly wrong.
When she turned her gaze and looked at her foot again, the wound that until a moment ago had merely been severed was stained purple and swollen.
Poison. Belatedly the jade-hued hawk grasps the situation. That bizarre monkey's hand-blade had been coated with a powerful potent venom.
Judging by its potency, it could well be compared with the potent venom of the white serpent, the chief of the south.
Just then.
FSST!
Out of the darkness something abruptly came flying swiftly and fell upon the jade-hued hawk's back. It was an attack the jade-hued hawk had not anticipated in the least.
The cause was that not only her sight but even her divine awareness had been directed toward the monkey down below, so she had left her back entirely exposed.
The thing of unknown identity that came flying that way was none other than thick spider silk. Not only was it tough and firm from being steeped in cursed energy, but powerful potent venom had soaked into it, so that even a slight touch to the skin beneath her feathers made it sizzle and cook.
But the greatest problem was that the silk did not stop at once but came flying several times in succession. On being struck again and again by such sticky bundles of silk, the jade-hued hawk could no longer beat her wings.
And so she falls. As she fell, the jade-hued hawk's divine awareness searched behind her, in the direction the silk had come flying from.
There a small spider hung from a tree, its rear extended this way. What was more, she could also see that transparent, silver-glinting threads of some sort, dozens of strands of them, ran between that spider and the monkey down below.
Only then does the jade-hued hawk understand the fact that the monkey and the spider had attacked her in concert.
It was a belated understanding, and even had she known beforehand, there is no telling whether there would have been any means of responding.
Had she fled far away the moment she first discovered the monkey it might have been otherwise; her losing move was attacking the thing and being poisoned herself instead.
Being struck by the spider silk afterward was merely the finishing blow that decisively toppled a board already tipped.
THUD!
The enormous hawk is driven into the ground that way. The feathers that had shone beautifully in green jade are fouled with dirt and dust.
The jade-hued hawk looks up at her opponent with eyes mixing rage, hatred, and dread.
Seen this close, right before her, the monkey's form was truly bizarre beyond compare, nothing but a faceless puppet without eyes, nose, or mouth.
CRUNCH!
The puppet that had come up to the jade-hued hawk raises its sharp hand-blade and drives it at the hawk. CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRRUNCH!
The jade-hued hawk's once beautiful body is slashed to ribbons by the sharp blade. The jade-hued hawk thrashes desperately, but she is outmatched.
The puppet's blade-work was merely repeated mechanically, while conversely the jade-hued hawk's resistance only grew steadily weaker.
Around the time her whole body had been slashed to ribbons so that she no longer had the strength to move, the jade-hued hawk suddenly realizes that the spider which had been looking down at her from the tree is nowhere to be seen.
CRRUNCH.
Abruptly something sharp bored into the back of the jade-hued hawk's neck. It seemed to pierce through skin and muscle and drive all the way to her blood vessels, and then she felt a thick liquid being injected into her body with a gurgling.
And with that it was over. Slashed to ribbons over her whole body and injected with the venom of three potent poison sacs, the jade-hued hawk soon stopped breathing.
At last Black Spider had brought down with its own hands the jade-hued hawk it had feared all its life.
Of course, Black Spider bore no ill feeling toward the jade-hued hawk. It had nearly been killed by the hawk once, but burning with vengefulness in that fashion was somewhat far from Black Spider's disposition.
It was merely that Black Spider had needed to verify the marionette's power, and had chosen the jade-hued hawk as the opponent for that.
Since the result was quite satisfying, everything else could be as it may.
Black Spider wrapped the fallen jade-hued hawk's body in a cocoon and then dragged it off somewhere dark within the forest.
Probably, if it found a suitable cave somewhere, it would make its nest there and gorge itself to its heart's content once again.