Chapter 7 - The Dance of Death

  ***

  The room pulsed with a light not of moss but of something deeper, something unseen. Huànxiàng flipped open The Way of the Slaughterer. The first page stared back at him—blank. No letters, no symbols. Yet the book glowed.

  His brow furrowed.

  Why?

  He set it down, turning to leave, but a whisper of movement stopped him. Smoke. A thin wisp curled from the book’s spine. His breath caught.

  Then, panic.

  He stumbled back, limbs flailing, tearing through the cramped space. Mushrooms split, their caps torn like fragile paper. The enclosures around the moss lamps cracked under his strength.

  He scrambled up the wall, fingers digging into stone, breath heaving. Then—nothing. The smoke vanished, as if it had never been.

  Slowly, cautiously, he climbed down. The book lay still, unburned. He inched closer, muscles tight, half-expecting it to lunge at him. A dull throb ghosted through his arm.

  Like him.

  He slapped the tome off the table. A slip of paper fluttered free, catching the dim glow as it drifted to the floor.

  The paper wavered in the air, a pendulum swinging between knowing and ignorance, never truly landing until it could fall no more. It fluttered down, twisting, fighting against fate—until it surrendered.

  He hesitated. Which to pick up? His fingers twitched toward the book.

  Why did it smoke? Didn’t that mean that it was in pain?

  Flipping it open, his eyes locked onto a single line, scorched black into the page:

  An art of death twofold, a way of life anew.

  Smoke curled again. He dropped the book. This time, he did not flee. It did not harm him.

  He reached for the paper. The ink shimmered under the mosslight, its script rigid, measured—too precise.

  You are undead—a modified jiāngshī capable of growth, free movement, and limited regeneration.

  A large portion of the text was manically scratched out in a glowing dark ink. He read on, the words pressing into him like a vice.

  Humans look like you, but they are not dead like you. If they know what you are, they will try to destroy you. Pretend to be human.

  Another cutoff. His pulse beat faster. The words shifted, harder to read in the dim glow.

  To practice martial arts, you must harness Qì, an invisible energy force.

  A diagram scrawled along the margin, half-smudged. Three points of energy. External—drawn from the world, strengthening the body. Internal—pooled deep within something called a Dàntiàn, near the solar plexus. And Life Qì—

  His hands stiffened.

  Life Qì is the wildest. It does not return. To use it is to resign yourself to death.

  A sharp inhale. Then, the final line:

  You must use it.

  Huànxiàng’s leg bounced. His head sank into his hands. Why? Why did his master leave him this?

  When he looked back to the paper, he noticed that a few words had revealed themselves, scrawled in jagged, frantic strokes. The ink gleamed with the same cursed glow as the book’s scratches.

  He whispered it aloud.

  “There is a delicate clash of Yīn and Yáng in your Dàntiān. Release them in equal measure, or you will die. Do not cultivate either. Ever.”

  His throat tightened.

  Be happy, my son.

  He froze. The ink blurred. The world dimmed.

  He swallowed hard. His mother?

  Fingers trembling, he turned the page of the book. More ink. More movement. Diagrams of a man—a lean figure flowing between postures. And beside him, a creature. Small, chitinous. A cave cricket, perhaps, but its form was wrong. Elongated limbs, two strange, almost transparent protrusions jutting from its back.

  His eyes flicked to the text, scanning between the scratches and ink-stains.

  Do not mistake this for a martial art, lest death conquer you. This is sorcery.

  His breath slowed. The words twisted together, revealing glimpses of a forbidden knowledge, fragmented yet undeniable.

  The younger twin sister of martial arts. Forgotten for centuries, until—

  The sentence ended in a series of scribbles, once more from the pen of his mother. He exhaled sharply, pinching the bridge of his nose beneath his mask. So much hidden. So much lost to ink and ruin.

  His hand slid away, frustration melting into something else. He turned the page again, pressing forward, deeper into the unknown.

  He copied a stance, shifting his weight from one foot to another, mimicking the fluid sweep of the illustrated figure’s arm. Awkward. Unnatural. He tried again. His foot dragged against the uneven floor, kicking up dust. His balance wavered, but he forced himself to hold steady.

  The book’s diagrams pulsed under the dim glow, almost alive. He followed another motion—a twist, a sharp strike with the wrist. The movement felt foreign, but something inside him stirred, as if it had once been a part of him in some distant past.

  His eyes flicked to the next step. Draw energy from the freshly dead.

  He looked up to find a cricket chirping near the mosslight.

  Huànxiàng cupped the bug in his hands, feeling its tiny legs brush against his palm. It didn’t struggle much—just a slow, aimless crawl, as if it didn’t even know to be afraid. His breath slowed.

  Why did it have to die?

  He tightened his fingers but didn’t squeeze. He didn’t want to kill. Death had chased him, clung to him, made him what he was. If he feared it so much, how could he force it on something else? The cricket hadn’t done anything. It only wanted to keep crawling, to keep living.

  His arms trembled. His Master told him to live well. But did that mean taking life from another? Would that make him like the violent phantoms that he saw at City 1?

  The cricket stopped moving, resting in the curve of his palm, as if it trusted him. It didn’t even try to escape. Huànxiàng swallowed hard. He had no fangs, no claws. He wasn’t brave like Yǚchén. But what if a phantom came and hurt his friend when he was still weak?

  No.

  Yǚchén was brave, and Huànxiàng needed to be strong to protect him from himself. His eyes furrowed as he bit his lip and closed his eyes, facing the ground. But he couldn’t stay there.

  He looked back up at the creature, determined to watch the consequence of his actions, and began the form. It was clumsy, but each movement had everything he had behind it. The wind coming off his fist blew the book shut, and the note up into the air.

  As he completed the form, he closed his fingers. A quick, firm press.

  The little body stilled.

  He had no choice. If he had to kill to live, then the death he wrought had to be for something. He would take only what he needed. Never more.

  The cricket’s life faded away, and something stirred in its place. A shiver ran through his hands, an energy not his own pooling in his fingers. He exhaled, carefully pushing it along his skin, away from his core. He would not let it reach his Dàntiān. He had to make this work. He had to learn, so he wouldn’t have to kill another.

  A soft blue glow flickered along his fingertips.

  This was his choice.

  He would live.

  Something shifted inside him.

  A current. A wild surge, erratic, untamed. He inhaled sharply. The book’s words echoed in his mind—Do not let it pool.

  Too late.

  He felt it course through him, unraveling and contracting around his torso. It burned. It raged with the gravity of death, making him feel as if his entire body were smoking as his arm once had. He began to scream, and clutched his hips, keeling over in pain. But, he could not give into that, when he had already taken the life. This was the cost he should pay.

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  He extended his right hand upward, and focused on the tip of his index finger. The energy followed it, as if it were a raging river beating against its conduit, though following its direction.

  He clenched his jaw.

  A blast. A force tore from his finger, slamming into the cavern wall with a thunderous crack that sent him flying backward into the wall of the household. Stone fragments scattered as many of the smaller things in the room flew up in the air.

  The dust began to settle, revealing the wreckage.

  A fresh, shallow hole gaped before him, jagged-edged and fractured all over. It was about as deep as a quarter of the length of his smallest finger, and as large as he was tall. He tried to listen, but couldn’t hear anything beside a faint ringing.

  Then, he looked down at his finger.

  Pain. Searing, unbearable pain. He screamed, clutching his hand. His bandages loosened, slipping away. The tip of his finger had popped, blood spilling out. The bone had shattered into nothingness. Skin peeled back, revealing the peeled blue flesh beneath, opening outward.

  His breath shuddered as he stared at it.

  The wound twisted, twitched and smoked as the blood rushed up his side, back into his finger. It was as if nothing happened.

  There was a strange moment of stillness following that, the only sound filling his ears being his breaths.

  A voice tore through that in an instant. It was sharp. Wary.

  “What are you doing?”

  Huànxiàng whirled around. A figure stood at the entrance, eyes flicking from him to the crater in the wall. Zhéguī. His stance, tense. His gaze, calculating.

  He’d seen the regeneration. The truth was laid bare.

  ***

  Zhéguī looked around the wrecked room in the wake of the huge blast he had heard from the alley where he was eating dinner. The room looked almost as bad as Mó’s, though that was clearly impossible, but the force of the explosion was undeniable. A huge, circular crater marred the wall, its edges blackened and cracked like something had torn through it from the inside out.

  The moss lamps had been shaken from their holsters, spilling across the floor in a broken, blue mess. Shadows flickered against the uneven stone, their movements jagged and unnatural.

  If that boy was still alive, Zhéguī would have to either have him join his cause or kill him.

  The jig was up about the moss.

  He sighed and glanced at Huànxiàng, who lay stunned against the wall, his limbs sprawled like a broken doll. His bandages had unfurled from his hand, revealing pale blue skin, smoke curling from his fingertip, his bones twisted every which way. Blood and shredded flesh dotted the walls, but they didn’t stay there for long—Zhéguī watched, barely suppressing a shudder, as the scattered bits of flesh and blood twitched and crawled back toward the boy, reattaching themselves in an eerie reconstruction. His limbs moved themselves back into place, making crunching noises as they moved. Huànxiàng screamed as smoke billowed out from his healing wounds, and bandages rewrapped his reconstructing finger.

  Zhéguī could only think he had seen a—

  Monster.

  Zhéguī’s hand twitched toward his heels, clicking into place and priming the hammers of iron mechanisms hidden in his boots. A shift of weight, a flick of his ankle, and he could blow the gunpowder, sending his kicks rocketing forward fast enough to cave in a skull. If Huànxiàng turned on him, he wouldn’t hesitate.

  But he didn’t move.

  Huànxiàng was staring at his hand, shivering in a fetal position. He wasn’t reacting like someone used to power. Not like a warrior. Not like any of the Supreme Elder’s men.

  Zhéguī hesitated.

  He had lost too many already. The others in his cohort—fighters, schemers, believers—had vanished, one by one, all marked as victims of that stupid “moss plague.” Yet they had never gone near the moss. He knew better. There was something deeper at work, a slow and deliberate culling of those who sought the truth. And now, he was alone. Too weak to make a difference, too aware to simply disappear.

  But this monster… it had power.

  Raw, unstable, terrifying power.

  The kind that could tear holes in walls with a flick of the hand. The kind that could mend wounds that should have been fatal in mere moments. The kind that, if guided properly, could do far more than simply destroy a room.

  Zhéguī exhaled slowly. He was in no position to be picky about his allies. Huànxiàng was na?ve—his wide eyes and stunned expression proved as much—but na?veté could be shaped. Directed.

  And more than anything, Zhéguī needed something stronger than fear to stand against the Supreme Elder.

  He shifted his weight, deactivating the mechanism in his boots.

  If there was any hope left of overthrowing the Supreme Elder, he had to bet everything, and hope this phantom could be a fantasy.

  ***

  The clash of swords echoed in the chamber as Liángsēn fought, his movements artful and precise. His sword danced through the air, instinct guiding him with an unspoken rhythm, as though the steps were woven into his very soul. His body was weak—starved, beaten down by years of neglect—but his sword dance was a small flicker of talent that refused to die.

  Liángsēn slashed downward, his sword moving in a winding pattern that dodged every attempt to parry. His instincts carried him, his eyes and mind clouded with the air of despondence. A part of him wondered what he was even doing, helping someone he just met in the face of certain death. It was all so stupid.

  As he took down another guard, he tried to pass the sword from the fallen man to Méi, but he was too late.

  She had already slit the throat of one of the guards, blood spilling onto the stone floor, and had seized his sword without hesitation. There was no pause, no second thought; she simply continued not only holding her ground but marching forward. She swung her sword with a fury that seemed to defy her weak and small frame, her hands trembling but never yielding. She had no sword dance to guide her, so she used everything at her disposal, biting, bashing, kicking, punching—anything she could think of.

  For a fleeting moment, Liángsēn felt a surge of something like hope. They were doing it—they were actually holding their ground. He couldn’t afford to lose out to her, so he began to attack with some vigor as well.

  They began pushing the remaining guards back toward the doors, and the tide of battle seemed to shift. The guards, no longer eager to risk their lives against such fierce resistance, started to waver.

  But just as they began to gain ground, the room shook with a violent crash. A heavy copper mace slammed through Méi’s wooden pot lid, the force so great that her body was sent flying backward. Her shield splintered under the blow, and Liángsēn’s heart stopped as he saw her crumple to the ground, her ribs and arm broken from the brutal impact.

  Before he could even think to cry out or see the new assailant, Liángsēn felt a kick from behind, which sent him sprawling onto the cold floor. He looked up above Méi to find a man wielding a yellowed, unassuming blunt weapon about the size of his forearm. He cussed under his breath. He was the worst kind of opponent that Méi could have run into with her makeshift shield and instinct to guard herself with it. The encirclement around them closed in slowly, its constituents chuckling devilishly.

  There was no way out. He could feel it in his bones. His only choice was to die here, beside Méi, with nothing more than a blade in his hand. A strange desperation fueled him as he scrambled to his feet and positioned himself over Méi, clutching both his sword and hers, determined to protect her to the end.

  His thoughts turned inward. What was the point of this fight? He had nothing left to lose. But as the guards closed in, Liángsēn made a decision. If he was to die, he would die fighting. With a shaky breath, he began to move, his sword dancing in the air with the instinctual rhythm that he had learned long ago. His steps were clumsy, his body weak, but Méi’s sword in his hands found its mark, cutting down the nearest guard. However, the now-dulled sword had lodged itself into the neck of its fallen victim, leaving Liángsēn with only his own blade once more. He bit his lip, determined to put more strength in, even if it meant breaking his body in the attack.

  The dance continued. Step, slash, spin, cut. He repeated the movements over and over, driven by the frantic need to keep them at bay. He had no real strategy—just the instinct to survive for a little longer.

  A clear, calm speaking voice cut through the chaos.

  “Well, I had not expected allies from within.”

  The sound of clashing swords fell silent as if the world itself had stilled. Liángsēn blinked in confusion as the guards around him dropped to the floor, lifeless, all at once. His breath caught in his throat as he looked up, searching for the source of the voice.

  Behind him, a figure stood—a man draped in flowing purple robes. His presence was otherworldly, as if the very air around him bowed in reverence. His robes shimmered like twilight mist, moving with an almost ethereal quality, as though they were made not of fabric but of the very fabric of reality itself. His hair, silvered with age but rich in vitality, fell in waves around his sharp, regal features. His eyes, dark and endless, held the weight of countless years, yet they gleamed with a vitality that made him seem not of this world.

  His aura was one of power, grace, and calm—an unshakable stillness that commanded the room and rendered everything else insignificant. It was not the force of a warrior, but the quiet strength of a mountain whose head lay above the clouds.

  Liángsēn felt the weight of his gaze before the man uttered a single word. The beginnings of a question leaked from the boy’s lips by accident.

  “How…”

  The man cut him off with a slight chuckle.

  “I do not believe that you are in a position to ask.”

  Still in shock, Liángsēn tried to ask again,

  “But…”

  Liángsēn looked down at the fallen guards, his eyes widening as he realized that the wounds were clean, precise. Unlike Méi’s rough, desperate cuts, these were surgical, almost artful. His heart raced. What had just happened?

  The elderly man spoke, his voice thoughtful and sweet.

  “Even if they were conscripted bandits, you managed to defeat four men who were twice your age and stature.”

  He stroked his thin beard, looking at the cuts Liángsēn had inflicted.

  “There was no desperation in your blade. You fought as if you were born to.”

  Liángsēn didn’t know how to respond. His sword had moved instinctively, but he had never thought anyone would see it that way.

  The man’s gaze shifted to Méi, who had not moved since being struck.

  “And this one…”

  He smiled, his eyes warm with admiration.

  “Quite extraordinary, too.”

  He turned back to Liángsēn, his expression unreadable and his voice calm.

  “You two are fortunate. I am the First Elder of the Mount Huā Sect, the second strongest force in the Great Orthodox Alliance. I have been searching for talent like yours, and her tenacity… Yes, I see now.”

  Liángsēn could hardly believe what he was hearing. Mount Huā. The legendary sect.

  But before he could process it fully, the man muttered under his breath.

  “Follow me, to Mount Huā. I will have you both treated.”

  A thousand thoughts swirled in Liángsēn’s mind, but all he could do was nod numbly. It felt like a first step into a new world—one filled with uncertainty, but also with promise.

  As the First Elder turned to leave, he motioned for Liángsēn to follow. With a deep breath, Liángsēn gingerly lifted the unconscious Méi. She was alive, though barely.

  He didn’t know what he was doing or why, but he knew he had to walk forward, wherever that was.

  He walked behind the elder into the unknown, holding Méi in his arms.

  Whatever awaited them, he swore to himself that Méi would make it out alive.