Chen Ai stood in disbelief and stared at the blood-smeared branch that once spiked her senior brother. She couldn’t explain it, only that she felt a deep sense of grief. Both he and the Butcher Bird vanished faster than she could blink. Now, she stood alone with the seven other members of the expedition, and all their goals, all their planning, were completely derailed.
Should she go after him?
Could she even go after him?
He was her senior brother, and she owed him a life debt, but to challenge a Nascent Soul spirit beast…
Her mind balked at such a proposition, and no matter how loudly her honor clamored for her action, there was a difference between throwing herself into uncertain death vs certain suicide.
The Shen and Ran clan were, by unspoken agreement, probing the cliff wall behind them with various techniques in an endeavour to reopen the portal back to the slopes of the Great Northern Mountain.
“I wonder if they know it’s futile?” Song Shuai asked her as he leaned on his spear. “I mean, surely they know it’s futile, but do they really know? You know what I mean?”
Chen Ai blinked as his chattering broke through the fear that kept her frozen in place. Slowly, she turned to face him.
“How can you remain so irritating while we are stuck in this nightmare?”
He let out a bark of laughter and grinned at her in a way that was strangely — annoyingly — endearing.
Nightmaree, you call it? I’m starting to think that I’m the only person who actually did any research before this expedition.”
His words were louder than they needed to be, and they succeeded in pulling Ran Qin’s attention away from the craggy stone.
“You dare suggest that an uneducated barbarian from a worthless sect knows more about Howling Blossom Valley than the young master of the fabled Ran Clan? You should kowtow ten times in shame!”
Ran Cong followed her over, and they both glared at Song Shuai’s bright grin.
“Tell you the truth?” he said. “I didn’t do a lick of research. What would be the fun in knowing about a battle before it came? Preparation is the refuge of the weak, and planning is the strategem of the dull. We all entered an Imperial Forbidden Zone, and if any one of you thought that you would escape with your life, then you are as stupid as you are weak.”
The Ran were momentarily speechless, but Chen Ai was intrigued by his bluster.
“So you think we’ll all die?”
“More than likely.”
“Why come then?”
“Bah! We are cultiavtors chasing immortality! What better proof do you need for that than to face certain death and walk away unscathed!”
“Your logic is flawless,” she said drily.
“I’m glad you noticed,” he said with a sincere grin. “I hope I am one step closer to wooing you.”
“You were, but mentioning it so plainly has made you take three steps back.”
“Alas,” he said with a grin. “Then allow me to suggest we take three steps forward. Shall we begin the trail towards the temple?”
“You dare put yourself in charge?” shouted Shen Tongtong. “In the absence of the expedition leader, it is clear that the Shen should lead this expedition.”
“You’re right,” said Song Shuai. “You should lead.”
Shen Tongtong narrowed her eyes, but with a quick gesture toward Shen Botao and the older Shen swordsman, she started down a trail that led into the jungle. One by one, the other members of the expedition followed, with Song Shuai bringing up the rear.
Chen Ai looked around the clearing, the bloody weights, and the fallen cabbage, and took a deep breath before she strode after the expedition.
The jungle quickly closed around them, and the dampness of overgrowth, and the smell of decaying litter filled the humid air. Despite the growing shadows and the uneasy silence spreading between the trees, Chen Ai chuckled to herself.
She could understand what Song Shuia did, even if the angered Ran and Shen could not. He made himself a target to distract them and so prompt them into action. Starting down the trail now was better than wasting time on trying to find an exit that wasn’t there. After all, they only had three days to reach the temple, and anyone who thought it would be simple was stupider than her senior brother.
She let out a sigh… she hoped he was alright.
But, as she adjusted the pack on her shoulders, she told herself that he would be fine. She would find him, and she would rescue him. If the Butcher Bird wanted them to go to the temple, then it only made sense that her senior brother was already there. Where else would that terrifying creature take him?
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
No matter how much her fingers shook, she had the weight of her club to remind her of her senior brother’s devotion, and she would repay every ounce. What else was a life debt for, if not to face certain suicide?
###
“But that won’t satisfy your curiosity,” I said. ”Will it?”
The Butcher Bird stared, becoming impossibly still. Even the wind dropped as the entire world held its breath in a silence that permeated the very bricks of the temple beneath me. I felt excluded from this silence, as though I were a bug trapped on my back in water tension, and this only heightened the discomfort brought on by my pain and powerlessness.
I’d thought I was at the whim of the Matriarch of the Stone Forest Pavilion, and I was, but this was on a whole other level. Though barely a foot tall, the grey-feathered bird felt taller than the Great Northern Mountain.
Finally, the Butcher Bird moved, and the world breathed once more.
“Very well,” it said. “Ask your question. I will answer, and then you shall show me your healing.”
Relief flooded my body. I’d hoped that this would happen, but I really hadn’t expected it. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I could only pick one. It would help more if I knew what exactly the Butcher Bird knew and where it fit into this demonic cultivator facility.
It mentioned being raised in a facility, and since the legends of this bird went back over a hundred years, that gave me a sense of the timeline for this facility. There were also no truly substantive reports of the Butcher Bird actually leaving this valley, so if it was restricted here, then it was reasonable to assume that it was raised in this facility.
Only one question…
“What was the goal of the experiments in this facility?”
The bird cocked its head.
“You know about the experiments?” said the Butcher Bird. “You must be another experiment. Are you also awaiting our master's return from beyond the veil? No, you asked me a question, and so I must answer.”
I desperately wanted to ask about the master's it mentioned, but I waited with baited breath and pinched off my bleeding limbs as it spoke again.
“The Howling Blossom Valley facility had the goal of using the Abyssal Stone to pierce the veil. While there were some successes, no consistent method could be developed before the Heavenly Phoenix Empire enacted its purge.”
As always, the bird spoke with clipped and clear language, but these simple words left me reeling. I finally had a name for the shards of grey stone I’d been hunting. It didn’t need to point out that this was the name, because the second it said ‘Abyssal Stone’, the name slipped into the gaps in my memories like a missing puzzle piece.
What was this veil it spoke of? Was that what my first memory of the stone showed me? That vast stone descending from the heavens like a drill…
But before I could ask any follow-up questions, the bricks beneath me cracked with the Butcher Bird’s intensified curiosity.
“Show me.”
There was no room for argument.
I reached for my willpower and used it to coax blood out of my reservoir. My flesh wriggled and knitted itself back together as the pool in my soul drained. The wound in the center of my body, though egregious, was the easiest to fix. Since blood was the first of the powers that I realized, it was the fastest to respond to my intent. With the recent discovery of my flesh manipulation, I was quickly able to replicate the soft tissue of organs, muscles, veins, and blood. I worked slower than my full potential. Though I couldn’t hide my ability completely from the Butcher Bird, I wanted to keep some tricks up my sleeve.
After around half an hour, my torso appeared intact, with my pale, fresh skin spattered with dried blood. I let out a deep sigh as though I’d done some monumental effort, though, in truth, I felt more refreshed than ever.
The Butcher Bird had been silent the entire time, and still as a statue, but now it hopped closer to me.
“Fascinating,” it said. “This is not simply healing, but true generation of tissue. You ignore conservation of mass… where does your new flesh come from?”
Once more, I concealed a grin with the practised ease of a well-trained merchant. The key to making a sale is convincing the customer that they need what you have.
“I believe we can follow our earlier deal,” I said.
The Butcher Bird cocked its head.
“Deal?”
“A question for a question,” I clarified. “And out of my magnanimity, I won’t count your last statement as one that needs repayment.”
The air trembled.
“You are wily for a worm.”
“I am.”
“Good, for I have many questions to ask you, and, in my experience, the stupid experiments never survive. It is good to meet one more who can keep pace. A shame you are so weak.”
“I agree.”
The Butcher Bird’s hooked beak split in a soft chirping.
“Was that laughter?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes,” it said. “And out of my magnanimity, I won’t count your last statement as one that needs repayment.”
A chill ran through me as I realized how accidentally I let myself get comfortable. I couldn’t forget the power this bird had, and the utter dominion it possessed over the alley.
“To answer your actual question,” I said. “I store blood inside my soul and draw on the blood from there.”
A gash formed in my chest, and pain exploded through my body. I fell to the side, twitching, and, as I looked down, I saw that the training weights I’d stacked inside my torso had fallen out when the Butcher Bird ripped me free of the branch. It was proving a lot harder to do resistance training than I’d first expected, and if I wasn’t in such agony, I might have laughed.
I wanted to ask why the bird attacked me, but I was wary of asking any questions. Slowly, I forced blood against the pain to heal the wound.
“You lied to me,” explained the Butcher Bird.
“I don’t know how,” I said. “There is a reservoir inside my soul, and that is where I store the blood.”
That soft tweeting came again.
“Wrong,” it said. “But I see now you are without intelligence.”
“What are you talking about?” I said before biting my cheek with regret.
I hadn’t wanted to ask that question.
“You have no soul,” replied the Butcher Bird. “None of the experiments have a soul, except for myself and my fellow hatchlings, though, of course, they no longer have souls either.”
Frustratingly, the answer to a question I didn’t mean to ask only gave me more questions.
“You have not regrown your limbs,” said the Butcher Bird.
“I have not,” I said carefully.
The Butcher Bird chirped, and if its beak did not shine with my blood, it might be almost cute.
“Can you regrow your limbs?”
For a moment, I considered lying, but the air seethed around me like heat shimmering on a sunbaked horizon.
“Do not lie to me again,” said the Butcher Bird. “There are no limits to the agony I can inflict upon you.”
I looked into its eyes.
“You do not intimidate me.”
“Fascinating. I want to change my question.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
But for all my bravado, my heart sank at the words that followed.
“Which member of your expedition do you care for the most?”
