Devourer of Immortals, Part 3

Pei Ye stood rigid for a while, but no supposed "immortal" appeared. Clearly, this was not the proper place for his "enlightenment."

Thinking back to how the two men had attacked, they had shown no hesitation about seriously injuring him, yet neither had struck at his neck, heart, or any other spot where a single blow could kill.

Where had they meant to take him, and what awaited him at the end?

The wind hurled sheets of rain against his body, and the old wounds in his chest and abdomen began to stir again. If another enemy appeared while the pain flared, he would be nothing but fish on a chopping block.

He ought to report this to the county office immediately.

But after just two steps, Pei Ye stopped again. On a rainy night like this, only the county magistrate, Chang Zhiyuan, would be staying in the rear courtyard. And Chang Zhiyuan was merely an ordinary man in his sixties; he would have to summon the other officials before anything could be done.

Fenghuai was a remote little county of fewer than forty thousand people, and the forces at its disposal were pitifully scant. Only County Commandant Lin Lin and Shen Yanping, the Immortal Platform's resident inspector, could likely deal with something so sinister and uncanny. Whether he wished to report the incident or seek protection, going straight to either of them would be better.

Just then, heaven bestowed a thick bolt of lightning, lighting everything almost as brightly as day.

Though it lasted only an instant, Pei Ye made out his location: he was at the city's north gate. Master Shen lived in the east of the city, while Master Lin lived beyond its western outskirts.

Their homes were roughly the same distance away. Pei Ye wiped the rain from his face and headed west toward the Lin residence.

His choice came down to whom he knew better.

Lin Lin was in his fifties, an upright man with a cold exterior and a warm heart. He had served as county commandant for thirteen years, one year longer than Chang Zhiyuan's tenure.

It was easy to imagine how leisurely a county commandant's duties were in peaceful little Fenghuai. Lin Lin often visited the Martial Arts Hall to instruct the youngsters, and it was this stern yet kindly elder who had first taught Pei Ye to fight.

"Coil like a snake, strike like a savage tiger"; "put seven parts into the punch, hold three in reserve." Before he took up the sword, these plain maxims had accompanied almost every moment of Pei Ye's martial training.

And after Pei Ye's dantian seed was damaged, Lin Lin had spent his own true qi every day for two straight months nourishing the meridians around his heart, keeping his injuries within bearable limits.

They were neither kin nor relatives, yet Pei Ye owed him a profound debt. He was an elder Pei Ye cherished from the bottom of his heart.

With that bond between them, asking for help would naturally be easier. He had no such advantage with Master Shen.

Braving the downpour and wading through water above his insteps, Pei Ye hurried west, stumbling through deep and shallow patches alike. By the time the familiar house came into sight, the deepest darkness had passed, the rain had eased a little, and a faint light was seeping into the sky.

Chapter 4: An Empty House

At the door, Pei Ye gently tapped the beast-shaped knocker. Only then did he think to look down at himself, and he could not help chuckling. Still, he had looked far more bedraggled during his old boxing lessons. It would do no harm to let Uncle Lin have a laugh at his expense.

His laughter faded, and he raised his head to wait quietly. But the moments ticked by, and no one came to answer.

Uncle Lin preferred to do everything himself, so his household had no servants such as a gatekeeper or groom. Still, with senses as keen as his, he should have heard the knocking.

Pei Ye knocked several more times. When there was still no answer, he simply sprang up and vaulted lightly over the courtyard wall. Reaching Lin Lin's bedroom, he saw a glimmer of candlelight shining through the heavy curtain of rain.

Uncle Lin was awake? Then why hadn't he answered the door?

Frowning, Pei Ye approached. The bedroom door stood open outward. He tapped lightly on the frame. "Uncle Lin?"

No one answered. Pei Ye peered inside and found the room empty.

His brow furrowed deeper. He entered and saw the covers thrown back and a candle burning beside the bed. Looking down, he found that the shoes beside the bed had not been put on either.

But when he turned his head, he saw that the saber hanging by the headboard was now only an empty sheath.

His heart tightened. Pei Ye surveyed the room gravely and noticed that the flint lay far away. Clearly, Lin Lin had lit the bedside candle with true qi.

Pei Ye could almost picture him jolting awake, lighting the candle with a flick of his fingers, then drawing his saber and rushing out.

What could have been so urgent?

The question had barely surfaced when an answer that made his heart skip a beat burst from his lips. "Lin Jue!"

Lin Lin had lost his wife early in life and had only one daughter, whom he treasured dearly. Her name was Lin Jue, and she was about Pei Ye's age, gentle and lively. But her left arm had been malformed from birth, with only a lump of flesh where her hand should have been, a sight that tugged painfully at the heart.

He still remembered Lin Lin saying that, without that disability, Lin Jue would have been an excellent prospect for the Martial Dao.

At the thought of this possibility, Pei Ye forgot the proprieties between men and women and raced to Lin Jue's room. His heart sank-her door, too, stood wide open outward, but no candle burned inside.

Pei Ye lit the candle in her room. No one was there. The girl's covers had been thrown back, and her shoes still sat beside the bed.

Lin Lin might have heard some dreadful sound in the night and grabbed his saber to investigate. But would a frail seventeen-year-old girl, startled awake by a terrifying noise, throw off her covers and go looking for it?

Then it had begun with Lin Jue. For some unknown reason, she had gone outside, and Lin Lin's keen senses had caught something amiss, prompting him to rise and rescue his daughter.

But why would Lin Jue have pushed open her door and stepped out barefoot, wearing only her underclothes?

A sense of familiarity surged into Pei Ye's mind. He lowered his head. Wasn't this exactly like... what had happened to me?

Terror climbed from the base of his spine to the crown of his head, and Pei Ye shuddered.

What on earth was happening?

Pei Ye wanted to find Old Xiangzi and question him closely, to investigate the origin of the fiery talisman on his forehead. But the fate of Lin Lin and his daughter hung in the balance, and there was no time for anything else. He ran back to Lin Lin's room and found a sword. Its solid weight in his hand steadied him a little, and he strained to distinguish the blurred traces as he searched for their trail.

Lin Jue's footprints extended only a short distance beyond her door before giving way to a man's boot prints. Clearly, she had been abducted. The courtyard wall was still forty or fifty feet away, but carrying Lin Jue, the man had leaped from level ground and cleared it in a single bound. Lin Lin's footprints followed.

Pei Ye also climbed over the wall, but beyond it lay farmland. Water rushed through it, the soil was soft and sunken, and crops obscured his view. Following the trail was terribly difficult.

Though frantic, Pei Ye forced himself to calm down and think carefully. Since Lin Jue had sleepwalked outside just as he had, might their destinations have been the same? He had just passed through the north gate when he woke; perhaps Lin Jue had been heading north too.

Searching inch by inch in that general direction, he finally found a northbound trail after a long time. Pei Ye followed it out of the fields and onto a riverbank, where the footprints became much clearer. The tracks showed that both men had leaped across the river. Lacking such skill, Pei Ye plunged in and swam across.

Beyond the river lay open country, and the tracks grew clearer still. But something else emerged that filled Pei Ye with unease: despite carrying someone, the abductor maintained an even stride, seemingly with strength to spare. Lin Lin's footprints showed the urgency of a father desperate for his beloved daughter, yet even at his utmost speed, he had fallen farther and farther behind.

With no true qi, Pei Ye could only rely on the strength of his legs to race through the rain-soaked wilderness. He was slower than either man by an unknowable margin.

Finally, as the hour of dawn approached, the rain weakened further and roosters began to crow. Pei Ye reached a grove where the tracks disappeared among the trees.

The grove was utterly silent, with no sounds of fighting left. A faint smell of blood drifted into his nostrils.

Pei Ye held his sword hilt and walked slowly inside.

The grove was small, leaving Pei Ye no more time to prepare before a mangled corpse struck his eyes.

It was Lin Lin.

There was no one else at the scene.

Pei Ye approached the body. An unsheathed steel saber lay nearby, the one Lin Lin always wore. There was no blood on its blade.

That face, once commanding even without anger, was now deathly pale and twisted almost beyond recognition. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging, with two tear tracks down his cheeks. The expression that lingered seemed anxious, furious, disbelieving-but above all, agonized.

Pei Ye stared silently at that face for several breaths, then pressed his lips together and looked down.

Lin Lin wore white sleeping clothes, now dyed red with blood. There were nine claw wounds across his arms, chest, abdomen, and legs, some slashes and others punctures. The fatal wounds were at his neck, where two enormous bloody holes remained.

Pei Ye slowly crouched to examine the wounds.

Wolves and leopards had neither claws nor fangs this sharp or this long. A tiger's teeth could have left those bite marks, but tigers did not fight with their claws like this either. Such beasts pinned their prey and killed with a bite; they would not leave so many claw wounds. Nor was there any fur left behind.

More importantly, even five tigers would have been no match for Uncle Lin.

Perhaps there had been no beast at all. Some strange weapons in this world were shaped like sharp claws and could be worn on the hands.

But Pei Ye soon rejected that guess, not merely because of the unmistakable bite marks on the neck, but also because of the strangely shaped claw prints on the ground.

With a grave expression, Pei Ye pulled aside Lin Lin's clothes, exposing a palm print on his torso that had already turned black. Claw wounds had sliced through half of it.

Pei Ye's expression changed. He pressed gently against the palm print. The bone and flesh beneath were as soft as watery mud.

Uncle Lin had taken this palm strike before encountering the beast. It had broken four of his ribs and all but shattered his internal organs. In that state, he might indeed have lacked the strength to fight a tiger.

It had been an immensely powerful and vicious palm strike.

But what truly made Pei Ye's heart sink was where it had landed-squarely in the center of the torso, without the slightest deviation. Apart from that, the entire corpse bore no other wounds inflicted by a person.

Chapter 5: Torn Clothes

Pei Ye remembered a conversation with Lin Lin during his boxing lessons.

"But when you actually face an enemy, it isn't like that." The man and the boy sat beneath a tree. Lin Lin used true qi to chill a jar of plums soaking in well water, while fragments of midsummer sunlight fell through the leaves onto his face. "No one will stand still and let you strike their vital points. If you always aim to kill in one blow, you'll often fail. In a real fight to the death, you must seize every chance to hurt your opponent. Strike wherever you can reach, and build your advantage little by little."

"Even if your martial arts are better than theirs?"

"Hmm... you would have to be much, much better." Lin Lin said, "Take the two of us, for instance. My martial arts are better than yours, but even I couldn't settle things with a single strike to your heart or lungs. You react quickly, so you would certainly block it. Then I'd have to break one of your arms first before I could get through your defenses. All told... it would take at least three moves."

"Oh... so all those stories about defeating an enemy in one move are made up?"

"Not necessarily. There are many people in this world... whose strength is beyond imagining." Lin Lin gazed at the sky, a note of yearning in his voice. Then he turned, pointed at the wooden training dummy, and smiled at Pei Ye. "But think about it. If you could slit someone's throat with one clean sword stroke, or crush their heart with one palm strike, wouldn't that mean your enemy was no different from this wooden dummy in your eyes?"

Now that conversation had cast its light into reality. The elder who had once seemed so overwhelmingly powerful had truly become a wooden dummy in someone else's eyes.

A chill, fury, and a suffocating sense of pressure surged into his heart at once. Yet some of his regret faded, because now he understood: even if he had arrived in time, he could not have changed the outcome. There would merely have been one more corpse here.

Clutching his sword hilt, Pei Ye rose and looked around.

In the center of the grove lay a patch of stone paving, the remains of a small pavilion that had been dismantled.

A straight pole now stood at its center, topped by an eerie Dark Blue flame that provided light. It seemed close to burning out.

On the ground before the flame were seven sets of boot prints. The foremost belonged to the man Pei Ye had tracked all this way; the other six stood abreast behind him.

Looking farther ahead, he first saw four small bronze cups lying on the ground. Old Xiangzi's words about "immortal water" surfaced in his mind again.

Beside the cups lay four small, ragged, bloodstained garments, all torn by something like sharp claws. Their owners were nowhere to be found.

One was a long sleeping robe, apparently from some wealthy household in the county. Two were shorts like those Pei Ye wore, belonging to two young boys.

The last was the most painfully conspicuous: scattered scraps of blue-green silk, with a main section beside them torn beyond recognition. It was a ruined dudou.

The girl's name all but sprang to his lips.

Pei Ye and Lin Jue had been very close playmates as children. But as they grew older, Pei Ye took to roaming the mountains and waters, catching fish and hunting deer, while Lin Jue lacked the strength to go out and preferred reading poetry and storybooks indoors. Inevitably, they saw each other less and less.

Still, whenever Lin Jue came to the Martial Arts Hall to bring Lin Lin a meal, the two of them could chat for a while. Back then, she had been Pei Ye's faithful supporter. At every match, whether a casual sparring bout at the Martial Arts Hall or the Mid-Autumn martial tournament watched by the whole county, Lin Jue always cheered loudly for him, and Pei Ye always took victory as a matter of course.

Even half a year after his dantian seed was injured, when his other companions had almost stopped visiting, the girl still seized every chance to leave home and come see him, encouraging him. Handicrafts, pastries, calligraphy and paintings, sometimes even a little money-they had exchanged gifts over a hundred times, with Pei Ye receiving most of the benefit.

Pei Ye slowly picked up the little garment stained with mud and blood. The stitches of its embroidered orchid were clumsy and unpracticed. He could picture the girl working earnestly by candlelight, struggling to use her impaired hands, her little face taut with effort as she painstakingly traced it out, stitch by stitch.

County Magistrate Chang Zhiyuan remained hale and keen-minded past sixty. His face was as stern and upright as his character. Though his hair and beard were already half white, when he occasionally raised his eyes to stare at someone, it still felt like a sword's edge pressed toward their face.

Deputy Magistrate Feng Zhi was in his thirties, with a dark complexion, eyes like bronze bells, thick brows, and a long beard. He had a fiery temper, a rough, booming voice, and a barrel-like body. When he stood beside the fair-skinned Lin Lin, newcomers often mistook which held the civil post and which the military one. In fact, Feng Zhi did possess martial skills. If Fenghuai had anyone besides Shen Yanping and Lin Lin whose fighting strength was of use, it was Feng Zhi.

Shen Yanping, the Immortal Platform's resident inspector, wore blue-green robes and a jade hairpin, with a fair, handsome face and a well-groomed appearance. Though he did not look it, he was about Feng Zhi's age. The Immortal Platform stationed people in each county specifically to handle incidents like this. Although Shen Yanping was no spellcaster, but a martial practitioner like Lin Lin and Feng Zhi, his expertise in the relevant knowledge far exceeded an ordinary person's. After examining the fiery talisman on Pei Ye's forehead, he furrowed his slender brows and returned to the county office to consult his books.

It was fully light now, and constables hurried back and forth through the grove. Given Fenghuai's size, nearly all the county's constables had probably arrived.

This was indeed a horrifying case, and it appeared to be a continuation of yesterday's incident at the ruined temple north of the city. There were six victims in all, and the only body left behind belonged to County Commandant Lin Lin. The culprit had not left so much as a scrap of clothing.