Immortal Connections - Chapter 14 preview

Chapter 14 - Tou He

The Heavenly Purifying Flame of the Middle Kingdom stared at the remains of the remote village and felt a stir of anger deep within him. His aura flickered, air warming around him and rising in the air in a heat mirage as the purifying flame within him reacted to the sight below.

The residences were not built above ground like most other settlements but dug into the earth, reaching twelve, even twenty feet below the clay soil. Tou He knew that such soil was highly prized, extremely fertile and easy to work, which was why the residents had built their homes downwards, simplifying their lives. Each residence hosted a central courtyard with vertical rooms to the sides. A single external staircase dug into an underground tunnel allowed entrance to the courtyard, connected via an outer corridor. Such residences were both temperature controlled and extremely safe – if one was not dealing with enemy cultivators who could fly or leap or fall great distances.

In such cases, the open air courtyard allowed ones enemies to enter through the center, take on all those who exited their residences and control the flow of battle. Or just unleash unspeakable horrors into the pits, allowing their demonic beasts and poisonous creatures to deal with the residents.

Even floating high above, staring at the numerous closely built cave residences, Tou He could smell the charnal house stink of unburied bodies left to rot, hear the buzz of flies and insects that had taken advantage of the free meal and note the lingering presence of numerous scavengers, drawn to this locale. Even from this height, he could hear the crawling, chittering mass below creeping back to resume their meals, the initial fright of his entrance fading.

Even here, he could see the darkened splashes of blood on walls and floors, read the impressions of screaming mortals impressed into the very fabric of this world as they faded away slowly, leaving only a disturbance in the Dao and a few, final ghosts, clinging to this realm and unwilling to let go.

"Too late. Again," Tou He said, softly and regretfully. This village had been hit a week ago at most, perhaps a little longer though not by much. Sadly, over the decades, he had gained a practical understanding of dead bodies and their decomposition, whether as a former acolyte training to lay bodies to rest before they rotted or as a cultivator, called to aid those who could not help themselves.

"We're closing in on them though." His companion was not his preferred one, though there was little wrong with him. Big, muscular, dressed in robes whose shirt sleeves had been stripped away and trouser legs that had been shortened and dirtied, Hao Feng had a flattened nose from brawling and carried a pair of studded metal bats on his back tied off via simple strings as his weapon of choice. 

"Too slow. This has taken all too long," Tou He said. "Every week we waste, more lives are lost."

"At least it's still holding to the pattern," Hao Feng said. "Once a week, one village. Remote, moving to the west as a group, individual hunting parties coming off the main. And this was a small village, only six families. Maybe fifty or sixty only."

"Only." Tou He's voice shook a touch with the grief that he felt, the loss of so many lives. Bright or dark, twisted or true, young or old, the lives were not for others to snuff out like so many candles. The demons that had come here were sowing chaos in their wake, leaving residual traces of their corruption behind and staining the Middle Kingdom by their very presence.

It did, however, make it easy to track them. If one had the right kind of dao, the right techniques to follow the trail they left behind. Though a month ago, they had finally recognized they were being followed and taken precautions and now, the main group was no longer so simple to find.

“Why west though?” Hao Feng asked, a map drawn out and unrolled in mid-air. A small effort of will formed a solid wall of chi behind it such that the scroll would not flap and tear, as he withdrew a charcoal nub to mark the latest attack. Tracing his finger to the left, following the terrain. “Nothing out that way but the start of the desert.”

“Maybe that’s the point.” His emotions still roiling, fingers clenched into a fist that hurt his hand, Tou He still had a job to do. He let his aura expand, encompassing the town, the deaths and the remains, both human and animal. The air trembled a little, the world dancing and flickering under the aura as he called forth the flame that lived under his breast, in his dantians and his body itself. 

The purifying flame of the heavens swept forth, catching upon the tinder of demonic presence, burning bright and hungrily. He controlled the flames, guiding them through the process, allowing them to consume anything that had been mangled or stained, that was now corrupted and mixed. The flame did not care, like all fires it was hungry and though it might have preference for one kind of fuel, it would consume everything in its path. 

“You still think this is just a breakaway group that escaped one of the dimensions?” Dark eyes watched the flames below, casting his own face in shadows.

The answer came slow, as Tou He controlled the flames and kept them from spreading by force of will. They were part of his dao, part of who he was the same way the wind had once been part of his friend, Wu Ying. Controlling them was no more difficult than moving a toe while it was stretched behind you – though he had over a hundred such toes to manage. “They have given no other indication as yet.”

“Then why the killings?”

“We talked about this.” A large group, escaped from the demonic realm needed sustenance too, just like a human group might. Unlike humans who could have traded with other villages, who could have partaken in commerce or even had a land to return to, these demons were strangers and outcasts. “Sustenance.”

“Barbaric cannibals.”

“Barbarians, perhaps.” Though Tou He knew there were demonic cultures just as sophisticated and complex as their own.  Even visited a dimension or two, speaking with other demons about their shared beliefs in Buddha and ascension. “But they are not they same race. Cannibalism is, as such, not a fair accusation.”

“Not fair.” Hao Feng watched the flames die, guttering out as they finished consuming the corruption and the bodies, leaving behind earthen residences dug deep into the ground, hidden but for the fields of uncared for rice and vegetation all around. “And what they did here?”

“Wrong too, but one should be careful and correct when applying judgment.”

Hao Feng grunted. “You do that. I’m just here to do the killing when we finally find them.” 

“A week, maybe sooner.” And what kind of encounter that would be, when the pair of them found the outcasts, Tou He was uncertain. Though the memory of tiny feet walking beside the larger, cloven hoofs of their targets reared up in his mind.

Sometimes, judgment and the needs of heaven and the Middle Kingdom and morality all conflicted, leaving one with nothing but questions of ethics behind.