“What is in there?” I asked the Butcher Bird.
“It is a surprise,” said the Butcher Bird with a mocking twitter.
With every word, I couldn’t be sure if the creature was acting like a child or an insane scientist. Whatever rhyme or reason existed inside that small feathered head was beyond my understanding.
I wanted to ask the stone and bricks inside the temple about the Butcher Bird, but I dared not do so in its presence. Whenever something spoke, the Butcher Bird reacted with instinctive rage. I wasn’t even sure that the Butcher Bird knew it was responding like that, which was particularly troubling.
How could I negotiate with someone who wasn’t human or even sane?
If I couldn’t negotiate, then I needed to figure out a way to work around the powerful Nascent Soul spirit beast. My goals had been simple when I arrived.
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Harvest a Howling
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Survive nine days
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Investigate the supposed demonic facility
Meeting the Bird had added:
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Find out if I have a soul.
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Learn what the Butcher Bird knows about the people who created me.
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Survive the Butcher Bird for nine days.
An argument could be made that 2 and 6 were the same, but I felt the added threat was enough to warrant two separate goals. The Nascent Soul spirit beast was far too powerful for me to treat it lightly.
At a glance, the Butcher Bird discerned my bone and flesh reservoirs. I’d touched on bone manipulation before during my battles, but never true bone regeneration. The new reservoirs remained sealed, and I didn’t understand why.
This creature made me understand how truly powerless I’d been this whole time, and it simultaneously gave me hope for becoming stronger.
So I held my tongue as the Butcher Bird perched on my shoulder, its claws lightly sunk into my muscles. It watched the floating images with rapt attention, and I put my trust in Chen Ai that she would survive whatever mayhem to come.
She strode deeper into the grass, and the images looked down as though in the sky above the field, so we could see a large, irregular pattern of circles and spokes flattened into the grass.
Where was Cabbagy?
I hadn’t seen him in anybody’s arms, or a cabbage-shaped bulge in anyone’s robes, except Chen Ai’s, but she had the normal amount. Chen Ai wouldn’t leave Cabbagy behind, and she knew he didn’t like to be enclosed in a dark space, so she wouldn’t have shoved him into a pack. The only rational explanation was that he split from the expedition between my abduction and when watched now.
I could feel the formation controls humming through the wires, and I fed more plum blossom qi into the chair. The images in the air grew sharper, and some of them shifted, showing different patches of the grassland and bringing several images closer to Chen Ai and the other expedition members. They all moved stealthily along the path folded into the grass.
“You’re a natural at this,” the Butcher Bird said as the chair’s wires slid over my skin.
The images shifted as I felt out how to search through whatever series of formations allowed us to view the valley from within this room. Even completely on edge, I marveled at the extraordinary experience of looking wherever I pleased.
One of the viewports flashed through a series of images as I attempted a rapid search for Cabbagy, hoping that the Butcher Bird wouldn’t think anything of me glancing at a Cabbage.
“Don’t disrupt the image,” said the Butcher Bird.
I panicked and tried to disengage, but it only caused the other viewports to flash and scroll through images. After a couple of seconds, the Butcher Bird stabbed its beak into my forehead. I slumped back in the chair.
“Can you heal your brain?” the Butcher Bird asked me.
After a moment, my brain healed enough that I could move, but I deliberated with just faking everything. Slowly, I sat back up.
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“Yes, I can.”
“Fascinating.”
The Butcher Bird had remained perched on my shoulder the entire time and kept its focused attention on the floating viewports.
“Watch,” it commanded.
And I did, focusing only on Chen Ai, the expedition members, and the surrounding grasslands. While I did, I watched, and I probed at the rest of the controls. The Butcher Bird let out an encouraging chirping as the wires slid into my flesh, and my willpower flowed down onto the blood-soaked floor.
###
The path moved without meaning through the tall grass, and Chen Ai followed. Her spiritual senses reached out into the grass, and she could feel each blade resonating with her qi. The grass didn’t whisper in the wind; it sang.
Yet she didn’t understand.
She followed a straight line into a wide circle. Everyone was on edge, and weapons were drawn as they fanned out in the wide circle flattened into the grass.
“What is the meaning of this battleground?” Shen Tongtong asked Chen Ai.
“I’m not making the path,” Chen Ai said as she hefted her club. “I’m just following.”
“What?”
“Something else made the path.”
“And you just led us in without warning?” Ran Qin spat at her.
“That’s pretty exciting,” Song Shuai said with a grin.
“Exciting? She’ll get us all killed!”
The Ran Clan grouped up together unspokenly and drifted away from Chen Ai, but the others remained.
“I’ve seen patterns like this before,” Chen Ai said. “The clan I served owned a village whose fields were flattened with strange circles like this. It’s abnormal, but if we work together, we’ll be fine.”
“Interesting words, but the Ran Clan will not… did anyone else hear that?”
Chen Ai heard it as a stutter in the song of the grass.
“What was it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Song Shuai said. “It moved so fast I only saw the traces of its movement.”
They all moved into a ring, each looking out and scanning the grass surrounding them. There was another path leading away, and at an acute angle was the path that led them here.
“This isn’t enough to make me go back,” Chen Ai said.
“I agree,” Song Shuai said. “Things are only just getting interesting.”
Something rustled in the grass, swimming through the blades, and twanging like a plucked string against Chen Ai’s resonating qi.
“It’s over there!” someone shouted.
A moment later, a flaming arrow exploded into the grass. The flames were compact and blasted the grass apart, but left only a few smouldering blades that quickly extinguished themselves. Shen Tongtong had evidently considered the hazards of setting the grassland on fire.
Another twang came from behind them.
On one side.
Then another.
Arrows flew out, punching holes into the grass and expanding the flattened circle, but hitting nothing.
“Allow me,” said Ran Cong as he produced a white fan decorated with violets and the symbol for the Ran Clan.
Shen Tongtong hissed at the sight of the fan.
“You dare bring out a weapon that has murdered countless Shen?”
“This fan shall save three Shen if they’re lucky enough.”
With deft movements of the fan, Ran Cong spread a circle of dull powder out into the grass. The poison drifted in motes, clinging to the grass and to the floor. A bead of sweat fell from Ran Cong’s forehead as he put the fan away. Not a speck of poison landed on the path or the circular arena, and it was an impressive display of coordination.
The grass stilled.
“That took care of that,” Ran Cong said.
“Well done, young master,” Ran Qin said with polite applause. “Don’t send a Shen to do a Ran’s job.”
A glaring Shen Tongtong prepared to stow her bow, but paused after a cough from Song Shuai.
“Unless it’s just hiding. Are you planning on spreading poison everywhere we go?”
Ran Qin gripped her pipa, her fingers dangerously close to the strings.
“You dare?” she whispered.
Song Shuai twirled his spear.
“I’m game,” he said. “Is your music faster than thunder?”
“Enough!” Chen Ai shouted.
She raised her foot high and stomped the ground. Strength and grass qi thundered into the ground and sent out a ripple through the folded blades. The song died as silence fell in the wake of the ripple.
Chen Ai’s qi brushed over the expedition members as it raced out into the surrounding grass. She frowned as she tried to understand what she felt.
There was nothing out there.
There was something out there.
It was nowhere.
It was everywhere.
There was nothing out there.
There was something in here.
Her eyes widened.
“It’s the grass!”
The folded grass beneath their feet twisted and writhed like a nest of sleepy eels. Light glinted off the green blades like polished metal.
“They’re sharp,” announced Shen Botao as a shifting blade sliced his shin.
“What are we waiting for!” Ran Cong shouted.
He leaped towards the path that had led them there. The second his feet left the grass, the patch where he’d been standing thrust itself up. His eyes widened in mid-air as he realized that motion set them off. He frantically drew a pouch from within his robe and tossed it towards where he would land.
The pouch burst and spread a fine yellow powder that clung to the grass and foamed. When Rn Cong struck the yellow foam, he was stuck there, and the blades underneath him writhed and thrashed, but couldn’t escape the glue trap he’d thrown.
“Young master!”
Ran Qin produced her pipa and plucked a tune, her hands steady and her notes pure despite her panicked demeanour.
The grass writhed at the sound, and the blade lashed at everyone, whipping ankles and shins and watering the ground with blood. Ran Cong screamed as the blades beneath him bucked through his flesh.
“Stop!” he shouted.
Ran Qin dropped her instrument, her hands over her mouth in horror at what she had done. As her music died and their blood soaked into the ground, the grass stopped writhing. Before anyone could breathe a sigh of relief, the blades of grass on the outside of the circle slowly stood. Each one appeared like a green spike standing nine feet tall. They swayed in the breeze, with sparks flying as they struck each other. More grass slowly straightened in a concentric spiralling pattern. It was a trap to find them and slice them to pieces.
“We need to rescue the young master!” Ran Qin shouted.
“I’ll save him!”
Ran Yaliu moved with the wind and appeared beside Ran Cong. Her dagger hacked at the foam, but only got stuck. She pulled on the wind as the blades rose around her. She barely twisted through the air and retreated. A long gash led up her sides, blood flowing from beneath her robes.
The grass that she’d triggered remained standing. A small patch of red blades swaying together with the impaled and dismembered body of Ran Cong spread amongst them.
Ran Qin wailed.
Chen Ai circulated her qi carefully as the first death of the expedition settled around her heart. The blades drew closer.
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