“Drip.”
The four young cultivators all jumped at the sudden arrival of a Core Formation Elder in their midst. They turned and bowed to him as his station befitted him, and all did their best to keep any discomfort from showing on their face.
“We greet the honored elder!” they said in unison.
Elder Guo Zimo was renowned in the Shining Mountain Sect for spearheading their righteous battle against the demonic enemies of the empire… but that didn’t change his unsettling habits and appearance. Reclusive and self-isolating even by the standards of an elder, he spent more time in closed-door cultivation than he did in the sect. His entire body was wrapped in paper talismans so that his body appeared a loosely defined mass of ink scrawled leaves, and he went so far as to wrap gloves out of talismans, and a large single sheet covered his face from where it peered out from under his bamboo hat.
More than his appearance or his habits, a strange, haunting feeling seemed to permeate from his body, one that Qian Ling didn’t know how to define, only that it felt as though she were trying to recall a nightmare that had long faded away. Of course, whenever she tried to talk about such a feeling with her fellow disciples, she realized how silly they were and said no more.
After all, such misgivings were unbecoming of a recently promoted core disciple, which was another reason she was thankful to the mysterious cultivator.
“Drip.”
“How can we help you?” she asked the elder, daring to speak first since she was the most senior disciple.
Elder Guo took a moment before answering.
“I am sure you must have heard of the upcoming auctions in Mountain Root City?”
The disciples were surprised to hear them mentioned.
“We have,” Qian Ling said.
“Who hasn’t?” added Ren Feilong with a touch of bitterness. “They’re the talk of the entire province.”
Elder Guo turned to look at Ren Feilong just long enough for the young man to bow and stammer out a quick honorific.
“Drip.”
“I understand,” said Elder Guo. “I, too, was once young, and I know how the righteous and orthodox ways of the Shining Mountain Sect can chafe at rebellious hearts and minds. Believe me when I say that it is a good thing that our sect does not involve itself in the world of merchants and money. We may be small, but we are pure, and there is a power in that which greed and gold could only tarnish. But I did not call you down here for a lecture.”
“Why did you call us down here, elder?”
He looked at her, and something in his posture, or in the rustling of paper, made her think that he smiled.
“To send you to the auction.”
Qian Ling’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected that!
“Really?”
“Yes… Though more precisely, our sect has a mission that must be undertaken in the area surrounding Mountain Root City. You four are top candidates for such a task, and — should you succeed in your task — I have persuaded my fellow elders to provide you with a free week and a line of credit to attend the auctions as representatives of our sect.”
The four young cultivators were speechless. They looked at each other as though they waited for the straightlaced elder to announce that it was all a joke… but no announcement came.
“This is a great honor, elder!” Qian Ling said with a deep bow, which the other three copied.
She could only think of how jealous Mu Min would be on hearing this, and how it was such a shame that her friend and companion couldn’t accompany her on such a mission. Alas, Mu Min was still in the Medical Pavilion recovering from the demonic injuries she received fighting Ghost Fang.
Once more, there came that crinkle of paper that almost sounded like a gentle smile.
“While I’m sure that doing the righteous thing is incentive enough, I think there is no harm in offering an extra reward for honorable and hard-working disciples. Now, on to the details of the mission.”
If they had been unsettled or nervous before, now they stood at rapt attention. Qian Ling was all ears, her qi aquiver, as she listened to Elder Guo.
“You know that we recently uncovered some roots of the Hidden Lotus,” he said the demonic sect’s name with such venom that Qian Ling shivered. “However, what we have kept secret is that something escaped.
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A gasp escaped the young cultivators.
“Elder, I am sorry!” Ren Feilong shouted. “I led the expedition to confront the demonic outbreak, and if it wasn’t for my failings, then —”
“No, disciple Ren, it is not your fault. I mean no disrespect when I say that the monster was far too slippery for uninformed Qi Condensing cultivators to capture.”
“As you say, Elder.”
But Qian Ling could see from her junior brother’s posture that he still blamed himself, and that the Elder’s words, while not meant to show disrespect, only further deepened the wounds in the young man’s self-esteem. He would do anything to redeem himself, and from the looks exchanged by his tall and ugly companions, Qian Ling knew that they saw this too.
She would need to keep a careful leash on her junior brother during this mission.
“I believe that the demonic creature that escaped from this facility is the same one that attacked Ren Feilong,” said Elder Guo.
Qian Ling’s eyes widened.
“But, Elder…” she quickly silenced herself as she realized she’d interrupted rudely.
“It’s alright, Core Disciple Qian. I wish to hear your thoughts.”
“The man who attacked my junior brother, Mu Min, and me followed him, and he proved himself to be most righteous.”
“Ah,” said Elder Guo with a nod of his head. “You are correct, but I believe that the demonic entity is one that possesses people. It possessed that man while attacking Ren Feilong, before fleeing to a new host by the time you encountered him. That explains why you both had different experiences meeting him.”
“That makes sense…” Ren Feilong said with a slow nod. “No wonder he defeated me, he was a demonic puppet!”
“Exactly,” said Elder Guo. “While I can’t confirm the identity of the righteous cultivator Core Disciple Qian met, I do believe that anybody of an orthodox nature would endeavour to root out any demonic activity after they themselves were a victim of it.”
“But why wouldn’t he have told me about this?” Qian Ling asked, in part to the elder, and in part to himself.
“Drip.”
“You are still young,” said Elder Guo with that gentle, paper crinkling smile. “You have not yet seen how pride and shame can warp even the most honorable cultivator into deception. I am sure he meant no ill will; in fact, that he hid such a thing from you only confirms how highly he thought of you.”
Qian Ling’s heart fluttered at such words. She’d secretly hoped that the righteous cultivator thought well of Mu Min and her, but to have such suspicions confirmed by Elder Guo was deeply comforting.
After such talks, despite the topic of demonic cultivation, the grey stone room felt quite warm and comfortable, even though the tap continued leaking.
“Drip.”
“Now, onto the mission itself.”
He opened his hand, and a small paper butterfly fluttered up from his palm. It twisted in the air and unravelled, revealing a few suspended droplets of bright red blood.
“This blood is from the demonic parasite in question,” he said. “I have fashioned masks that shall allow you to track down the creature. Though they may be uncomfortable, I ask that you trust the effort I put into their creation.”
From within his robes, he produced four paper masks comprised of overlapping talismans glued together into the shape of a dog’s snout. The characters scrawled into the talismans had a wild, almost frenetic energy, and as Qian Ling took her mask and placed it over her face, she thought of everything that Elder Guo had said to her today, and she decided to trust him.
After all, despite his eccentricities, he was the most well-respected Elder in the Shining Mountain Sect. As trust flowed from her heart and into her veins, the mask settled over her face without straps, as though the paper were glued to her skin, and she felt it tug on her dantian and draw qi up from her meridians and into the talismans.
Though the eyeholes cut out some of her vision, she felt that she could see far more, feel far more, and the world of scent expanded, revealing the winding dusty corridors and echoes of blood that marked the facility. She smelled the warmth of the fellow cultivators in this room, and an overpowering smell of paper and ink from Elder Guo, such that it drowned out any hint of the man hiding beneath his layered talismans.
“How do you feel?” asked Elder Guo with genuine concern.
“I feel powerful,” Ren Feilong said, with his discarded mask in his hand and the dog-shaped mask fixed in its place. “More powerful than I was even before my injury.”
“Then you have noticed,” Elder Guo said with an affirming nod. “I know you must have wondered why I would pick four Qi Condensing cultivators to tackle something so dangerous. You must have wondered if you had the power… but through these masks you shall!”
He raised his hands and made a gesture so intricate that Qian Ling doubted she could have replicated it even after watching it a hundred times.
“Drip.”
As he finished the gesture, her qi rushed into the mask, flowing through the talismans as though the ink were meridians and veins, and as the qi flowed back into her body, she felt a shock race through her dantian. Her qi activated on its own, and gossamer threads unspooled from her body and floated toward Ren Feilong and his two companions.
She almost rejected the process, but… no… she trusted Elder Guo… and he said this would make her powerful.
“You three young men all practise the Radiant Fist style of the Shining Mountain Sect,” he said. “And this power is wonderfully suited to destroying demonic corruption, but it is your martial sister, Core Disciple Qian Ling, whose qi is the most important for this plan to work.”
Her threads latched onto the other cultivators, and at once that shock in her dantian tripled. Pink strands wrapped around her qi threads, and in the back of her mind, she recognized that they were strands of flesh, of skin, and veins, and they were encasing her qi threads to create umbilical cords…
Power flowed through these fleshy tubes like meltwater down a dry riverbed, and Qian Ling gasped as her cultivation level surged.
This didn’t feel wrong…
Power like this couldn’t feel wrong!
Ren Feilong growled as his body shook, and he hunched over, his shadow distending as drool slid out from his paper dog mask. His companions were likewise contorting their bodies on all fours and barking like dogs. Their power grew as Qian Ling’s grew. All of them were becoming so much more together than they ever could be apart.
She didn’t look down as her flesh changed, or look inward as her dantian shifted into something else; she only looked at the hidden face of Elder Guo Zimo, the fabled Talisman Master, whom she trusted with all her heart, with tears welling up behind her mask.
“Thank you, Elder,” she said with a deep bow. “We shall not fail you.”
She heard bones snapping in the distance, but didn’t recognise that they were hers, for she felt no pain, only rising power, and she wondered, absently, if the righteous cultivator would also be proud of her, for the rewards she received after helping his mission. Hopefully, they would cross paths again.
“Drip.”
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