"Mother... cold..."
The little boy murmured deliriously, burning with fever.
The woman pulled her child tighter into her arms. With her head bowed and her cheek pressed against his scorching forehead, she tearfully hummed an unknown folk song in a hoarse voice.
Her choked singing drifted fitfully over the silent river.
The child's father watched, his heart twisting as though cut by a knife, then turned his gaze toward the little boy at the stern, who wore straw sandals and a longsword at his waist.
"Immortal..."
"Please, have mercy and save Hu'er. You're an immortal, you know magic...
"Please, save my child..."
Black Snake sniffled.
"I can't. I learned to read, learned arithmetic, and learned to study feng shui and terrain, but I never learned medicine. Make it through tonight. A physician will be waiting at the ferry landing tomorrow morning."
The child's father's lips trembled at those words, but in the end he said nothing more. Silently, he turned and gathered the dry grass he had cut earlier, piling it more thickly around his wife and child, then took off his own clothes and wrapped them tightly around the two.
River Ash said nothing. Silently gritting his teeth, he increased the boat's speed without so much as looking at the lurking ghostly shadows.
Black Snake watched the couple, trying hard to understand their actions.
There seemed to be something special between them.
Yet after searching his memories, he found he could not comprehend it at all. Having never experienced it, he would never truly understand.
He sensed his surroundings, keeping a firm lock on the drifting currents of sinister yin energy.
The cultivators and monsters were waiting for an opportunity. First, they would use these Ghost Creatures they had raised to probe and wear him down. Only when he