Ninth Young Master

Muffled thunder rolled through the clouds, crushing every last trace of moisture from them. From the first raindrop to the downpour, only two breaths passed.

In that brief instant, Li Yunxin caught sight of a distant upturned eave by lightning flash. A dark bluish-black chiwen crouched atop it, glancing at him through the heavy curtain of rain. Clutching the finger-wide sword wound on his arm, he staggered toward it.

If someone was inside, perhaps they could save his life. If no one was there, making it his burial ground tonight would still be better than dying in the wilderness.

After his clothes had been torn into strips by the grass and trees, Li Yunxin stumbled through the door.

Even on such a damp, dark rainy night, a cloud of dust still rose from the ground. The great hall was dim and murky, filled with the moldy stench of long decay and the smell of blood on him.

No voices. No lights.

Before he fell inside, he had already known this was a ruined temple.

Li Yunxin panted on the ground like a wild beast for a while, then struggled to crawl up. Using both hands and feet, he dragged himself before the long-abandoned altar table and turned to sit against it, facing the doorway.

He felt that he probably would not escape pursuit tonight.

But dying while seated like this was better than being killed from behind.

Lightning flashed again. Gasping hoarsely, Li Yunxin laboriously raised his head and looked toward the altar.

The temple enshrined an unknown idol. Its paint had peeled away, more than half its body was missing, and who knew what deity it had once been. He sighed, reached out to pat the statue's leg, and gave a bitter smile. "No incense offerings in this wilderness. You must be quite miserable too."

The moment his words fell, he heard the sound of cloth shoes soaked through with water stepping onto the ground.

Two Taoists charged in from the rain, each holding a narrow sword two fingers wide. Rainwater streamed down the blades to their tips, pattering in a string of sounds against the blue stone tiles.

"Hand it over," one Taoist said. "And we'll spare your life."

Lightning slashed across the sky once more, and Li Yunxin saw their faces clearly. They were only eighteen or nineteen, their brows still carrying traces of youthfulness.

Li Yunxin sighed inwardly. His fate was far too brutally realistic—shouldn't some wandering master have seen his talent, taken a liking to him, and launched him soaring into the heavens?

Now that things had come to this, shouldn't some god or monster within this temple's clay idol reveal its divine might and save him?

He gritted his teeth and let out a low sigh. "Why go this far? Aren't cultivators supposed to practice Supreme Forgetting of Emotions—can't you spare me?"

The Taoist's brows eased slightly, and he lowered his voice. "That is not impossible. So long as you tell me where you hid that thing."

Only a ghost would believe him.

Li Yunxin merely wanted to stall for time and recover a little strength. He was bound to die tonight anyway. If he could take one of them with him, it would not be a loss.

But the other man saw through his thoughts. He extended his slender sword, the point only a hair's breadth from Li Yunxin's throat. "Tell us, and we'll leave you alive. Refuse, and this poor Taoist has a hundred methods to make you speak. If you know what's good for you—"

He paused slightly there, because he noticed Li Yunxin's gaze go blank, as though he had spotted something astonishing behind them. The Taoist immediately sneered. "Trying such a cheap trick before this poor Taoist, you truly are—"

This time, he did not finish either.

But it was not because he meant to pause.

His head suddenly rolled from his neck with a gurgling tumble, splashing blood across the floor. The other Taoist hesitated at the sight—he could hardly believe it was real.

Only when he saw an enormous palm armored in blue-gray scales reaching in from behind and gripping his companion's body did his eyes fly wide open. He spun around and thrust his sword backward!

Another flash of lightning accompanied his strike, and he saw the thing behind him.

Or rather, he saw one of its eyeballs. A gigantic blood-red eye, as tall as half his body. A long, narrow black pupil lay at its center, staring into the temple and reflecting his terrified, crazed face in the lightning.

The Taoist's refined steel sword had pierced that eye.

Yet it could not advance even a fraction.

The monster outside casually swept its claw, and his sword shattered into fragments. The Taoist tried to abandon his weapon and flee, but another claw reached inside and seized him as well. He began screaming and struggled to break free from the enormous paw. The motion seemed to anger the owner of that eye. The claw clenched, and the Taoist's head exploded with a bang like a watermelon.

He stopped screaming too.

Once the screams ceased, nothing remained but the rain pouring down from all directions and the roar of thunder.

Li Yunxin stared wide-eyed at everything before him, forcing himself not to make a sound.

The enormous eye blinked, then moved away. Its claws clutched the two headless corpses and withdrew into the curtain of rain.

Li Yunxin saw a huge presence moving before the temple. The night and torrential rain coated its hide in blue-black, but he could not even make out its shape—it was simply too enormous!

At this moment, he could not even claim to be glimpsing a leopard through a tube.

Two or three breaths later, the thing vanished from before the doorway.

Li Yunxin waited a little longer, still not daring to rise. He feared that any sound he made would draw the monster back. But the next moment, he realized how foolish that decision was.

A black shadow, draped in watery light, stepped through the door.

The shadow dragged two things in its hands. They scraped over the blue stone floor with a hoarse rustling sound. But the rustling quickly turned into a wetter, muddier noise, and Li Yunxin smelled a suffocating stench of blood.

He knew what those two things were—the headless corpses of the two Taoists.

The newcomer dragged a corpse to stand before him, looked him over, and let out a deep laugh cold enough to freeze one to the bone. "You could make a midnight snack."

Fear filling his heart, Li Yunxin realized that this thing—very likely transformed from the giant creature outside—did not intend to kill him just yet.

But he dared not run. Before that terrifying, unknown power, like that of Gods and Devils, he felt the wisest choice was to remain here and wait for an opportunity.

As for what opportunity... he did not dare think about it.

The shadow sat cross-legged in the center of the hall, gave another strange laugh, and said, "Move the table to the middle!"

Li Yunxin froze for a moment before realizing it meant the altar table against which he was leaning. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he hurriedly moved the dust-covered altar to the center, then quickly backed several steps away from the thing.

The shadow pointed at the altar, and a burst of fire sprang up.

By the firelight, Li Yunxin finally saw the man's face—and froze again.

Not because the other party was hideous and grotesque, but because he looked far too ordinary!

It was clearly the face of an utterly ordinary, handsome young man, not the melon-skinned demon he had imagined!

But what the man did next quickly made Li Yunxin realize this was merely a human skin worn by that terrifying thing.

The handsome man reached out and tore an arm from one of the corpses. Then he began roasting it over the fire burning atop the altar.

Soon, a fragrance that made Li Yunxin want to vomit spread throughout the great hall. The man smiled at him, brought the arm to his mouth, and opened wide—

The corners of his mouth split all the way to his ears, revealing two rows of razor-sharp teeth.

He swallowed half the arm in a single bite. Uncooked bloody juices and human grease ran between his lips and teeth. As he crunched the bones loudly, he said, "You're quite a bold boy."

"People with bold hearts have rich flesh and fine fat, so they cannot be eaten like this. They must be slowly steamed over a gentle fire, sliced thin, and air-dried. Then, on an overcast day, they make an excellent dish to go with wine."

Li Yunxin gritted his teeth, refusing to let himself shake too badly. Summoning his courage, he suddenly raised his head, stared into the other's eyes, and asked, "What... are you?"

The young man tore off another arm and roasted it, narrowing his long eyes with a smile. "You are not afraid?"

His eyes rolled slightly. "Call me Ninth Young Master."

Suppressing his wildly pounding heart, Li Yunxin said in a trembling voice, "Those two hunted me all the way here... many thanks to Ninth Young Master for saving my life."

Ninth Young Master split his blood-filled maw in a strange laugh. "No need to thank me. I'll eat you tomorrow anyway! Thank me with your flesh!"

Li Yunxin clenched his teeth, drew a deep breath, and said, "Ninth Young Master saved me tonight. That means you and I share a fate. If you eat me tomorrow, would that not be a pity for such a fate?"

The young man laughed strangely. "You fool, are you worthy of forming a bond with this young master? You are merely a—"

At that point, he suddenly stopped laughing. Not only did he stop laughing, he frowned instead, as though Li Yunxin had suddenly become the monster while he himself had become human.

Ninth Young Master stared at Li Yunxin for a while, then blinked. "Strange, truly strange. Your fate is rather interesting."

He shook his head, looked at Li Yunxin once more, and said lazily, "Then I'll spare your life for now."

A cold wind carrying damp vapor blew in from outside, letting out a mournful howl. The firelight flickered between bright and dim. Li Yunxin's heart also pounded fiercely along with the flames.

For the moment, he had survived.

But he knew that he had lived either because his "fate" truly interested the creature, or because the murderous, man-eating monster called Ninth Young Master found his attitude interesting.

The people it usually encountered were probably the sort who trembled like leaves and knelt on the ground begging for mercy.

Fearing that the dreadful demon might change its mind, he forced himself to stay alert and moved beside the fire. With a ripping sound, he tore a piece of clothing from one of the corpses.

Ninth Young Master looked at him in mild surprise but said nothing.

Li Yunxin wrapped the sword wound on his arm with his fingers and teeth. Then he searched the corpse and found several sorghum flour cakes in its waist pouch.

The cakes were wet and soft—not only from rainwater, but also from blood.

Ninth Young Master watched him with great interest through those long, dangerous eyes.

Li Yunxin picked up the slender sword the Taoist had dropped earlier, threaded the cakes onto it, and set them over the fire to roast like Ninth Young Master had done.

Once the cakes had browned slightly, Li Yunxin took one from the sword and bit into it.

A faint crunch sounded. The scorched fragrance and dough filled his mouth. But he tasted something else, something different—the taste of human blood.

Without changing expression, he chewed it carefully and swallowed.

Ninth Young Master suddenly clapped his hands and burst into laughter. "What a fascinating fellow! I once saw a human demon who loved eating the flesh and blood of his own kind, but none was as interesting as you!"

Li Yunxin felt he had begun to understand the creature's temperament, so he forced up his courage. "I have never heard of human demons. Ninth Young Master is so widely experienced, surely—"

Before he could finish, a thunderclap exploded overhead, and even the ground seemed to tremble.

The thunderclap appeared to startle Ninth Young Master badly. He dropped the human flesh in his hand and sprang to his feet, lifting his head to look above. After watching for a while, he suddenly frowned, then transformed into a dark, murky gust of yin wind and shot out the door.

The instant it left, Li Yunxin did not hesitate in the slightest this time. Gripping the slender sword in his hand, he charged into the curtain of rain for all he was worth, then fled desperately into the dense forest.