silver_sun (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silver_sun) wrote2023-07-11 07:40 am
silver_sun) wrote2023-07-11 07:40 am
Fic: New Horizons 1/6 (Songxiao - Untamed)
Title: New Horizons
Chapters: 6/6
Word Count: 36K
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén
Characters: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn, Xiǎo Xīngchén, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Night Hunts (Módào Zǔshī), Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, canon character deaths Wei Changze and Cangse sanren, Child Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Summary: The decision to help a small village threatened by a vicious yaoguai brings with it danger and upsetting news that Xiao Xingchen never expected to receive. With the news comes a choice, one that will change the course of both Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan’s lives in ways that neither of them expect.
They are travelling to the north of Yiling when they hear of it, a small mountain village that is suffering the preditations of a dangerous, unknown creature. It is not an unusual tale, a small insignificant place that is too far from any of the major sects for them to notice and too poor to be able to buy the help they needed.
What makes this one different from others that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen have heard of before is that this village had already received assistance. Two other travelling rogue cultivators had gone there, and now both were missing, presumed killed or devoured by the creature as well.
Despite not having a great deal of information about what had actually happened, the proprietor of the roadside tea stand seems proficient in spinning the story out long enough that her customers stay for perhaps a little longer than intended.
Song Lan listens, seemingly impassively, to what the woman has to say, while Xiao Xingchen can’t seem to stop himself from asking question after question. Where had it happened? How long had it been going on for? Had anyone seen the creature and lived to tell the tale? Did anyone know how many people it might have killed? Did anyone know who the rogue cultivators had been? Were any of the sects in the area going to take a look?
The details such as they are, are sparse. The creature had been attacking people in an area of woodland not far outside the mountain village of Fuling. The first attack had been at least six months ago, but if it had taken anyone who hadn’t been missed before that date it could have been far longer.
Several other patrons of the stall were listening now, adding their thoughts and what they had heard.
Whether it was of any use Song Lan was doubtful, but Xiao Xingchen seemed interested, so he was happy to remain and let him listen. Despite the fact that they have only been travelling together for about a year and a half he can’t imagine living his life in any other way.
Despite the paucity of information they are provided with a description of a creature that is large and fast, that might fly or maybe hides in the tree branches, is either very hairy or feathery, and might have claws or teeth or horns or a beak. The discussion about it gets rather heated at one point, but there is the general consensus that it has something sharp and pointy with which to hunt with. The only other thing that they all agree on is that it drags the unwary into its forest lair when the light is fading, either at dawn or dusk, where they are never seen again, not even their bones.
No one has any useful information on the cultivators that tried to help, only that they weren’t affiliated to any sect, that it was a man and a woman and that their presumed deaths occurred two or three months ago.
“Perhaps they defeated it and moved on,” Xiao Xingchen suggests.
“Everyone hoped that might be true, Daozhang, they truly did. Then two weeks ago,” the woman who runs the tea stall says. “Lao Fu, he lives…lived at the edge of the village with his family, he disappeared one morning collecting firewood. The whole village went out searching. Nothing.” She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t have just left, he’d lived there his whole life. I’ve heard it said his first great grandchild is due to be born next month or so. He had no reason to leave at all.”
As more customers arrive at the stall she has to leave the conversation to serve them. Turning back to Song Lan, Xiao Xingchen says, “What do you think? Shall we go and see if we can help?”
Song Lan considers it for a moment. They hadn’t been on their way to anywhere in particular, although there had been rumours of a haunting at a quarry in Jinsha that Xingchen had seemed interested in. The quarry owners were wealthy and their location was relatively close to land that was under the protection of one of Qishan Wen’s subsidiary sects. Perhaps the biggest difference though was the fact that no one there had gone missing or had been killed there.
There is an eagerness in Xiao Xingchen to go and look at cases like this, to do something to make the world better and safer for everyone, and not just those with the money to afford paid protection. Xingchen’s willingness to listen, help and try to see the best in everyone and everything, is something that Song Lan can’t help but find endearing. There is something so innocent and pure about him, something untouched by harsh realities of the world, that it makes him want to stay by his side and protect him from it at all costs, to not let life dirty or tarnish him.
Finishing his tea, Song Lan replies with a simple, “Yes.”
++++
They arrive in Fuling a day later. Barely large enough to even be considered a village there are little more than a dozen houses widely spread out along a narrow road, built wherever the ground is flat enough to support them. All around it the steeply wooded hills provide shelter from the worst of the winter weather that would soon be upon them, as well as firewood for warmth and game animals to eat. Those woods also contain, unfortunately for the people of Fuling, a creature that threatened their lives.
Their appearance in the village soon attracts the interest of the people who live there, and Song Lan suspects that they rarely have visitors apart from those travelling through Fuling on their way to somewhere else.
The first to greet them is a woman, one young child clutching at his mother’s skirts, the other squirming where she’s held in her arms. Tired and pale, she reaches out to them, “Daozhangs, please help us.”
“What aid do you need?” Xiao Xingchen asks her. “We will help however we can.”
The child who is clinging to her skirts, is a boy of about four years old. He looks at their swords, then up at them. “Do you fight monsters?”
“Cheng-er, don’t bother them,” the woman says, sounding afraid that her son’s question might drive them away.
“It’s alright, he can ask,” Xiao Xingchen reassures her. “We do,” he says to Cheng-er. “We heard there might be one near here, so that’s why we came.”
“There is. There is a monster,” the boy says, his lip starting to wobble. “It hurt A-Die.”
“We’ll stop it from hurting anyone else.” Xiao Xingchen looks back up from the child to his mother. “Furen, what assistance do you need?”
“Are you healers or have any medicine with you?” she asks, seeming close to tears. “I do not have much, but I will pay what I can.”
“There is no need,” Song Lan says, seeing the woman’s much mended clothes and simple wooden hair pin. Being able to speak with a living witness could prove useful, vital perhaps, in knowing what the creature is and perhaps how it might be defeated. “We came here after hearing of the creature. We will not ask for payment for a decision we have already made.”
The women’s husband, who’s name is He Zhou, had been out in the forest gathering mushrooms, the fuling, that their village was named for when he had been attacked. Despite the danger, he had gone, knowing that the mushrooms would fetch a good price if he dried them and took them to Yiling, selling them to doctors or other traders who would take them to bigger towns or cities to sell on. They had needed the money, food prices were high and the creature seemed to have scared away much of the game from the forest around them, leaving hunting increasingly unsuccessful.
They follow the woman to the small house she shares with her husband, their two children, and his widowed mother.
The elderly woman takes one look at them and then starts to apologise for the fact they have nothing to offer them for their assistance. He Zhou is her only son and she is sure that they will all perish this coming winter if he dies.
While Xiao Xingchen tries to reassure her, Song Lan sees what can be done for He Zhou. The answer he decides, looking at him, is very little. Grey pale, his breathing ragged and wheezing, he is unconscious rather than asleep, he is likely beyond any help that they can give or anyone else. Even if a miracle were to occur the chances of him being able to provide for his family while lacking his right hand was unfortunately slight.
There are lingering traces of resentful energy clinging to He Zhou from his near fatal encounter with whatever it was that was stalking the forests above Fuling, but it doesn’t tell them more than they already know. Perhaps if the man had been a cultivator, even a relatively unskilled one, there might have been a chance. For an ordinary person there was little that could be done, apart from trying to prevent the wounds from festering and making sure that they ate and drank.
Song Lan can clear the lingering traces of resentful energy easily. It isn’t much, but perhaps it might give He Zhou a little more strength to recover if he is not suffering the ill effects of it as well as his wounds. They don’t have much in the way of medicine with them, but he gives some of what they have to He Zhou’s mother,
He wishes that they had more to give, but they do not. Although both he and Xiao Xingchen are cultivators, they don’t have the same wealth and backing as those from the great sects or even some of the lesser ones. Perhaps in time, once they become more established, they might, but for now live a rather frugal existence.
Xiao Xingchen’s decision to leave the mountain retreat of his teacher, the immortal cultivator Baoshan Sanren, means that he has nothing more than what he carries with him. For himself, Song Lan has little more, although has the knowledge that the people at the Baixue temple who raised him would welcome him back, whether he was visiting or if he ever tires of the life of a rogue cultivator.
With Xiao Xingchen at his side Song Lan doesn’t think that there could possibly be a day when he’d grow bored of roaming the world with him. Even when they are old, very many years from now, they have to stop their travels, they will settle into a peaceful life, just the two of them living in harmony with the world around them. Possibly it is a lofty and rather ambitious dream for a pair of youths of just nineteen. Yet they have so many dreams that they have found they share, so many ideas and ideals where their ways of thinking are the same, that Song Lan cannot help but think that he has met his soulmate.
So they travel, help where they can, take payment from those who can afford it, but more often than not they sleep under the pale stars and moon, what money they have being better spent on food than a bed in an inn. It is something that suits Song Lan, the rooms they can afford are often far from his own ideas of cleanliness and frequently were shared between many other travellers. No, sitting in the flickering light of a campfire, Xingchen at his side, is his preferred way to spend each night.
By the time they leave the He family’s house there are a number of other people watching and waiting in the street. Seemingly having been nominated as spokesman for the rest of the village, a middle aged man, Fu Rongxi, who proves to be the missing Lao Fu’s eldest son, invites them to his house to explain what has been happening in Fuling.
A larger house than the one belonging to the He’s, and seemingly the largest in the whole village, the Fu residence also has a workshop and a yard full of timber, that is being cut and shaped into decorative pieces for manors and temples.
The disappearance of Lao Fu, who they now learn is called Fu Zhiling, isn’t exactly as the tea stall proprietor had described. Rather than collecting firewood he had been out looking for specific trees in the forests that he would mark out for felling and bringing back to the workshop.
Fu Rongxi pours them tea and explains how it was something that his father had always done. The heavy work in the yard itself had become too much for him as he’d aged, but his eye for good timber was still second to none. So he often went out early, rising at dawn and taking food with him for the day, so it was not until it reached the later part of the afternoon that they began to be concerned that hadn’t returned.
He cannot give them any information on the cultivators who had tried to help two months before. He had been away from the village transporting a cargo of carving to Yiling, town three days' travel away. It had been his father who had spoken with them. There had been the hope that the cultivators had dealt with the creature, which was why his father had been confident enough to go up into the wood above the village, rather than sticking to the ones below, which had remained safe.
What Fu Rongxi does know is when the creature first started to be a problem. Early in the Spring, when the road through the forest leading to a mountain pass was free of snow once more, a trader had arrived in the village, scared half out of his mind, having lost all his wares and his two ponies who had been carrying them. All he could tell them was that something had descended from the sky, shrieking and scratching and he’d fled, barely escaping with his life.
A few weeks later another traveller arrived in the village with the tale of having been chased by something in the treetops, and it was only because he was on a fast horse did he get away.
Then just as summer was arriving a woman from the village had gone missing. There had been some talk at the time whether she had eloped. She’d been almost thirty and still unmarried, having spent many years looking after her unwell mother and younger sister. When the mother had passed away the previous winter it had just left the two Zhao sisters with just each other and with the younger one engaged to be married perhaps the elder had taken the chance to seek out a life somewhere else before she got too old. The younger sister refused to believe it, staying that it must be the creature in the forest.
By then the story had been spread by travellers and traders, which had in turn brought the two cultivators to Fuling. “It was a man and a woman,” Fu Rongxi says, “A couple perhaps or maybe brother and sister. I don’t think my father would have asked, he never sought to know anything that wasn’t needed. He said he had met them briefly on the road as they went up into the forest.”
After that there had been no reports of the creature at all, travellers had used the path through the woods and while they said it had an eerie feel to it none of them were attacked. Then two weeks ago his father had disappeared and the fear that the creature had returned surfaced. With the recent attack on He Zhou that fear had proved to be true.
Song Lan listens attentively to all that their host has to say, while Xiao Xingchen asks any questions that come to mind.
Finally, they thank Fu Rongxi for his time and patience in explaining what has happened, and tell him that they intend to stop the creature and that once it is done they will return to the village and confirm it, so no one will have to live with the uncertainty of it.
With the suggestion, based on what the trader who had been chased had said and the timing of the attack on He Zhou, that the creature only makes its presence known at dawn or dusk, they make the decision to search the woods that afternoon, before it becomes active. If the lingering traces of resentful energy on He Zhou were any indication the creature and its lair, if it has one, should be easy to trace.
No one from the village is willing to accompany them past the edge of the forest. Fu Rongxi alone walks with them to the start of the trail that leads up into the steeply wooded hills, telling them that it was only a few minutes walk up the path that they had found He Zhou, collapsed and bleeding.
They thank him for his help and then walk on together into the dim greenness. The woodland is eerily silent around them, the usual sounds of small scurrying creatures, birds and even insects are absent. It feels like everything is paused in a breathless hush, trying to avoid the notice of whatever had made its home in the woods.
The point at which He Zhou had been found is clear even without the lingering presence of resentful energy that clings to the place, like how the scent of smoke remains long after a fire is gone. The leaves and pine needles that litter the forest floor are disturbed, while traces of blood remain as rusty droplets and smears on lower branches.
Crouching down, Xiao Xingchen looks at the boot churned earth. “I don’t think he was attacked here. He ran here trying to escape, trying to get home.” He looks round at the dark and tangled trees. “Why didn’t it follow him? It wouldn’t have just let him go.”
“Perhaps it could not,” Song Lan answers. “It never hunts within the village, could it be that it is somehow trapped within this place. Bound to a location.”
Xiao Xingchen stands again, a faint frown on his face. “Why here though? What could hold it here?”
There is no good answer to that, nothing that wouldn’t be a total guess with little basis in fact, so Song Lan doesn’t attempt it. Instead he replies, “We should continue our search, then the truth will reveal itself.”
The further the path climbs the denser the woodland becomes. The autumnal trees with leaves turning to red and gold fall back, replaced by pines, their branches gnarled and twisted with age. Although the afternoon sun still shines somewhere above them, the amount that reaches the forest floor grows less and less, the space below the thick canopy trapped in a perpetual twilight.
It is not a place for people to be after dark, Song Lan can feel it. The path narrows preventing them from walking side by side, and he wishes that somehow he could walk both in front of Xiao Xingchen to protect him and also walk behind, so that he remained in his sight. The need to see that he is safe wins out, and Song Lan walks close behind.
It’s a feeling that he had had more and more the longer that they have been travelling together. It had been easy to explain at first, it was just the fact that he wanted his friend, his only friend outside of the Baixue temple where he’d grown up, to be safe. Yet as time passes it feels more than that. He likes to watch him, even if he isn’t doing anything that could be considered interesting, likes to listen to him speak even if it’s about nothing important, even just sitting in silence in his presence feels pleasant in ways that he cannot put into words.
Yet why wouldn’t he? Xiao Xingchen is beautiful, noble and kind. Perhaps because of his upbringing on the immortal Baoshan Sanren’s mountain there seems to be an otherworldly air of innocence about him that makes Song Lan want to protect him from the dirt and mundanity of the world.
Perhaps he is placing him on a pedestal, viewing him as if he is some pristine, celestial being who has no faults, that in doing so he is courting disappointment when he proves all too human after after all. Because the truth is Xiao Xingchen, who is eager to help and to explore, and who takes kindness and compassion towards all he meets as seriously as any night hunt, is as young as he is, not yet out of his teenage years. So even though it isn’t fair or even sensible to view him as if he is some celestial being who had come down to the mortal world, Song Lan still feels blessed by every moment that he gets to be in his presence.
The path ahead of them suddenly opens out, the trees that had once clustered closely around them are shattered and splintered, the ruins of a fierce battle. The traces of resentful energy are much stronger here, the deepening shadows of late afternoon seems to swarm with it. It reminds Song Lan of insects, wriggling, writhing creatures hiding in the damp and dark. It makes his skin crawl.
“It’s close,” Xiao Xingchen says, stopping at the edge of the clearing and taking Shuanghua from its scabbard. The slim blade glitters in the weak light, it and its wielder the only bright points in the encroaching gloom.
Song Lan nods. Moving to stand at his side, he draws Fuxue, ready for any attack that may come. They have fought together side by side many times since the previous spring when they had first met, but the thrill of it, of knowing that he will see Xingchen’s fast and elegant swordwork, will never grow old.
The pines around them are dark and silent. Mist rises up from the forest floor, the damp earth and the scent of decay mixing with the rank, crawling feeling of resentful energy. He tightens his grips on Fuxue and waits.
There is a faint rush of wind across the treetops overhead and then it is upon them.
A yaoguai, Song Lan decides. Once it had been a bird of some kind, but now it is a creature of nightmares. Half against as tall as himself, it’s fast and strong, it’s beak and claws viciously sharp where it snaps and slashes at them.
They leap back and away from each other, barely avoiding its initial attack, their choice forcing it to decide which one of them to pursue. It whirls round shrieking, the long flight feathers on its wings are razor-sharp, they slice into the surrounding vegetation, sending leaves and small twigs shredded on the ground.
It’s incredibly fast, but perhaps not as fast as it once had been. One wing seems weaker than the other, the way it beats the air halting and stuttering. Amidst the gloom, Song Lan thinks can see something bright, metallic, amidst the feathers on its back just behind the wing joint.
It screeches and lunges at them again, beak snapping and taloned feet lashing out as it flaps and flutters just off the ground.
Xiao Xingchen whirls away from it, Shuanghua effortlessly blocking a razor sharp wing tip that comes too close, his movements as light as flakes of snow caught on the wind, Song Lan’s thinks. Yet there is little time to admire his fast and graceful fighting style. The yaoguai, although already injured, possibly from its previous encounter with the other rogue cultivators, is still dangerously fast.
For a moment Song Lan thinks that it is driving Xiao Xingchen back, as he sees him leap backwards beneath the tangled pine boughs, then he nods to him, an indication for him to drive the creature towards him. Xingchen was pretending to be forced back, luring the yaoguai to where its wings and speed would mean nothing, trapping it in a place where it could be killed.
There is a sadness that comes when elimination is the only option that is open to them. It has always felt rather like failure to Song Lan when liberation, to allow it to move on, or suppression, so that perhaps one day its angry spirit has calmed enough that liberation can be tried again, is unsuccessful or impossible. Elimination is final, a spirit obliterated from the world and denied reincarnation.
The yaoguai however gives them little choice as its relentless flurry of attacks continues unabated.
Xiao Xingchen’s choice to force it back to where the thick tangle of branches work against, to where its wings catch and drag on the trees, is working. It screeches in fury as its attacks are blocked, its ability to fly up and attack from above lost as its wings beat futilely against the sturdy boughs. The branches shudder and shake, pine needles and cones falling like a strange rain around them, but they hold.
There is a recklessness to Xiao Xingchen that worries Song Lan sometimes, how he rushes in fearless, heedless of any danger to himself. It makes him worry that if he were not there what situations his friend might get himself in.
Despite the yaoguai’s existing injury and Xiao Xingchen’s trap it continues to fight viciously, and Song Lan is certain that if they were facing it at the peak of its powers and on open ground they would have found themself out matched, possibly fatally so.
As if to emphasise the fragility of their advantage the creature suddenly swerves, seemingly not caring how its already lame wing collides with one of the shattered pine trunks. A moment shrieks in triumph as the tip of one of its talons rakes across the back of Xiao Xingchen’s arm.
It isn’t the one that holds Shuanghua, and he doesn’t acknowledge the wound at all. Instead he uses the opportunity to strike at the yaoguai, his blade slicing through the flight feathers on its uninjured wing, grounding it.
“Zichen!” he calls out. “Don’t let it turn.”
Although Song Lan doesn’t know the exact nature of his plan he does as he is asked. With all of its attention focused on Song Lan and avoiding Fuxue’s deadly blade, the yaoguai has no time to react as Xiao Xingchen leaps high into the branches above it, before bringing Shuanghua down onto the back of the creature’s neck.
The yaoguai’s neck is almost completely cut through in a single blow. It thrashes for a moment, the body seemingly still able to act without its connection to the head, then it.goes still and falls to the ground. As it does so its body seems to fold in on itself, its appearance returning to something closer to what it had once been in life, its size diminishing now that the rage and malevolence was draining away. The bright flash of metal at its shoulder is revealed as the remains of a sword, the blade snapped clean through about a third of the way down its length.
With the yaoguai no longer a threat, Song Lan turns his attention fully to his friend.
Xiao Xingchen looks ghost-pale in the gathering gloom of evening, the autumn night drawing in fast now that the sun has dipped down behind the densely wooded hills. The only splash of colour is the growing patch of red staining his sleeve.
“Don’t look so worried, It doesn’t feel too bad,” Xiao Xingchen replies, unbothered by the injury. Taking a spare ribbon from his sleeve, he starts to wrap it awkwardly around the wound.
“Let me do that, it will be easier,” Song Lan says, relieved to have something to do that might be of practical help. Easy conversation has never come easy to him, and while it has been easier with Xingchen than almost anyone else, he still often feels like he is several minutes behind where he should be whenever they speak. There is an utter frustration in only finding the right words once the conversation has already moved on.
“Do you have another?”
“Why? It’s really not that bad, is it?” Xiao Xingchen says, trying to turn and look at the back of his own arm. “Is it still bleeding?”
“”No,” he replies, feeling almost foolish now. “For a sling, it would be more comfortable.”
“A sling?” Xiao Xingchen shakes his head. “Zichen, it’s barely more than a scratch. You don’t need to make such a fuss.”
“If you are certain.” Reluctantly, Song Lan steps back, wishing he could find another reason to stay close, another reason to touch him.
“Yes.” He pats Song Lan’s hand as if he is somehow the one who is hurt and in need of reassurance. “If it does get sore I’ll tell you.”
“You should.” He regrets how it sounds almost immediately, certain that it comes across as too demanding, too much like an order rather than a request from a friend.
Xiao Xingchen however doesn’t seem to notice, his attention already turned to the remains of the yaoguai. He kneels down next to it, and runs a hand over its patchy, dark feathers, its remains now resembling nothing more than a very large crow. “I wonder what made you like that? Why were you so angry?”
There are no answers to be had or anything else can be done for it. So as the darkness draws in they burn the creature’s remains. Shrunken now, the body half dessicated already, it doesn’t take much for the flames to reduce it still further. The lingering resentful energy within it is cleared as the body burns away to ash, yet the deep, lingering sadness that haunts the air still seems to remain.
Xiao Xingchen looks out into the dark forest, his outline barely lit by the fading embers of the fire. “The bodies of those it killed are still out there. They should not remain unburied.”
“We will find them,” Song Lan replies. The last thing the people of Fuling needed was the spirits of those who had been killed to start haunting the forest. “They will not go unburied and unable to rest.”
“Shall we split up to search?” he asks, turning to look at him. “It would be faster.”
“Not tonight. We will return when it is light,” he says, as he places the broken piece of sword in a qiankun pouch. Perhaps when they look at it more closely it might give some indication who had once wielded it, that perhaps the rogue cultivators that had lost their lives could at least be buried with their names remembered. “The people of Fuling need to know they are safe.”
That he needs to be reassured that Xingchen is safe, to make sure that the cut on his arm gets cleaned and bandaged properly, isn’t something that Song Lan finds he can speak aloud. He wonders if he appears heartless because of it or if it is a relief that he isn’t making a fuss about it.
“Oh right, yes. They probably are wondering where we are,” Xiao Xingchen replies, “We don’t want them worrying that the yaoguai got us as well, do we?”
“No.” Moving aside so that there is enough room on the path for them both, Song Lan waits for him to join him, then side by side they walk on together into the dark.
Part 2 = https://silver-sun.dreamwidth.org/269828.html
Chapters: 6/6
Word Count: 36K
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén
Characters: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn, Xiǎo Xīngchén, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Night Hunts (Módào Zǔshī), Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, canon character deaths Wei Changze and Cangse sanren, Child Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Summary: The decision to help a small village threatened by a vicious yaoguai brings with it danger and upsetting news that Xiao Xingchen never expected to receive. With the news comes a choice, one that will change the course of both Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan’s lives in ways that neither of them expect.
They are travelling to the north of Yiling when they hear of it, a small mountain village that is suffering the preditations of a dangerous, unknown creature. It is not an unusual tale, a small insignificant place that is too far from any of the major sects for them to notice and too poor to be able to buy the help they needed.
What makes this one different from others that Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen have heard of before is that this village had already received assistance. Two other travelling rogue cultivators had gone there, and now both were missing, presumed killed or devoured by the creature as well.
Despite not having a great deal of information about what had actually happened, the proprietor of the roadside tea stand seems proficient in spinning the story out long enough that her customers stay for perhaps a little longer than intended.
Song Lan listens, seemingly impassively, to what the woman has to say, while Xiao Xingchen can’t seem to stop himself from asking question after question. Where had it happened? How long had it been going on for? Had anyone seen the creature and lived to tell the tale? Did anyone know how many people it might have killed? Did anyone know who the rogue cultivators had been? Were any of the sects in the area going to take a look?
The details such as they are, are sparse. The creature had been attacking people in an area of woodland not far outside the mountain village of Fuling. The first attack had been at least six months ago, but if it had taken anyone who hadn’t been missed before that date it could have been far longer.
Several other patrons of the stall were listening now, adding their thoughts and what they had heard.
Whether it was of any use Song Lan was doubtful, but Xiao Xingchen seemed interested, so he was happy to remain and let him listen. Despite the fact that they have only been travelling together for about a year and a half he can’t imagine living his life in any other way.
Despite the paucity of information they are provided with a description of a creature that is large and fast, that might fly or maybe hides in the tree branches, is either very hairy or feathery, and might have claws or teeth or horns or a beak. The discussion about it gets rather heated at one point, but there is the general consensus that it has something sharp and pointy with which to hunt with. The only other thing that they all agree on is that it drags the unwary into its forest lair when the light is fading, either at dawn or dusk, where they are never seen again, not even their bones.
No one has any useful information on the cultivators that tried to help, only that they weren’t affiliated to any sect, that it was a man and a woman and that their presumed deaths occurred two or three months ago.
“Perhaps they defeated it and moved on,” Xiao Xingchen suggests.
“Everyone hoped that might be true, Daozhang, they truly did. Then two weeks ago,” the woman who runs the tea stall says. “Lao Fu, he lives…lived at the edge of the village with his family, he disappeared one morning collecting firewood. The whole village went out searching. Nothing.” She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t have just left, he’d lived there his whole life. I’ve heard it said his first great grandchild is due to be born next month or so. He had no reason to leave at all.”
As more customers arrive at the stall she has to leave the conversation to serve them. Turning back to Song Lan, Xiao Xingchen says, “What do you think? Shall we go and see if we can help?”
Song Lan considers it for a moment. They hadn’t been on their way to anywhere in particular, although there had been rumours of a haunting at a quarry in Jinsha that Xingchen had seemed interested in. The quarry owners were wealthy and their location was relatively close to land that was under the protection of one of Qishan Wen’s subsidiary sects. Perhaps the biggest difference though was the fact that no one there had gone missing or had been killed there.
There is an eagerness in Xiao Xingchen to go and look at cases like this, to do something to make the world better and safer for everyone, and not just those with the money to afford paid protection. Xingchen’s willingness to listen, help and try to see the best in everyone and everything, is something that Song Lan can’t help but find endearing. There is something so innocent and pure about him, something untouched by harsh realities of the world, that it makes him want to stay by his side and protect him from it at all costs, to not let life dirty or tarnish him.
Finishing his tea, Song Lan replies with a simple, “Yes.”
++++
They arrive in Fuling a day later. Barely large enough to even be considered a village there are little more than a dozen houses widely spread out along a narrow road, built wherever the ground is flat enough to support them. All around it the steeply wooded hills provide shelter from the worst of the winter weather that would soon be upon them, as well as firewood for warmth and game animals to eat. Those woods also contain, unfortunately for the people of Fuling, a creature that threatened their lives.
Their appearance in the village soon attracts the interest of the people who live there, and Song Lan suspects that they rarely have visitors apart from those travelling through Fuling on their way to somewhere else.
The first to greet them is a woman, one young child clutching at his mother’s skirts, the other squirming where she’s held in her arms. Tired and pale, she reaches out to them, “Daozhangs, please help us.”
“What aid do you need?” Xiao Xingchen asks her. “We will help however we can.”
The child who is clinging to her skirts, is a boy of about four years old. He looks at their swords, then up at them. “Do you fight monsters?”
“Cheng-er, don’t bother them,” the woman says, sounding afraid that her son’s question might drive them away.
“It’s alright, he can ask,” Xiao Xingchen reassures her. “We do,” he says to Cheng-er. “We heard there might be one near here, so that’s why we came.”
“There is. There is a monster,” the boy says, his lip starting to wobble. “It hurt A-Die.”
“We’ll stop it from hurting anyone else.” Xiao Xingchen looks back up from the child to his mother. “Furen, what assistance do you need?”
“Are you healers or have any medicine with you?” she asks, seeming close to tears. “I do not have much, but I will pay what I can.”
“There is no need,” Song Lan says, seeing the woman’s much mended clothes and simple wooden hair pin. Being able to speak with a living witness could prove useful, vital perhaps, in knowing what the creature is and perhaps how it might be defeated. “We came here after hearing of the creature. We will not ask for payment for a decision we have already made.”
The women’s husband, who’s name is He Zhou, had been out in the forest gathering mushrooms, the fuling, that their village was named for when he had been attacked. Despite the danger, he had gone, knowing that the mushrooms would fetch a good price if he dried them and took them to Yiling, selling them to doctors or other traders who would take them to bigger towns or cities to sell on. They had needed the money, food prices were high and the creature seemed to have scared away much of the game from the forest around them, leaving hunting increasingly unsuccessful.
They follow the woman to the small house she shares with her husband, their two children, and his widowed mother.
The elderly woman takes one look at them and then starts to apologise for the fact they have nothing to offer them for their assistance. He Zhou is her only son and she is sure that they will all perish this coming winter if he dies.
While Xiao Xingchen tries to reassure her, Song Lan sees what can be done for He Zhou. The answer he decides, looking at him, is very little. Grey pale, his breathing ragged and wheezing, he is unconscious rather than asleep, he is likely beyond any help that they can give or anyone else. Even if a miracle were to occur the chances of him being able to provide for his family while lacking his right hand was unfortunately slight.
There are lingering traces of resentful energy clinging to He Zhou from his near fatal encounter with whatever it was that was stalking the forests above Fuling, but it doesn’t tell them more than they already know. Perhaps if the man had been a cultivator, even a relatively unskilled one, there might have been a chance. For an ordinary person there was little that could be done, apart from trying to prevent the wounds from festering and making sure that they ate and drank.
Song Lan can clear the lingering traces of resentful energy easily. It isn’t much, but perhaps it might give He Zhou a little more strength to recover if he is not suffering the ill effects of it as well as his wounds. They don’t have much in the way of medicine with them, but he gives some of what they have to He Zhou’s mother,
He wishes that they had more to give, but they do not. Although both he and Xiao Xingchen are cultivators, they don’t have the same wealth and backing as those from the great sects or even some of the lesser ones. Perhaps in time, once they become more established, they might, but for now live a rather frugal existence.
Xiao Xingchen’s decision to leave the mountain retreat of his teacher, the immortal cultivator Baoshan Sanren, means that he has nothing more than what he carries with him. For himself, Song Lan has little more, although has the knowledge that the people at the Baixue temple who raised him would welcome him back, whether he was visiting or if he ever tires of the life of a rogue cultivator.
With Xiao Xingchen at his side Song Lan doesn’t think that there could possibly be a day when he’d grow bored of roaming the world with him. Even when they are old, very many years from now, they have to stop their travels, they will settle into a peaceful life, just the two of them living in harmony with the world around them. Possibly it is a lofty and rather ambitious dream for a pair of youths of just nineteen. Yet they have so many dreams that they have found they share, so many ideas and ideals where their ways of thinking are the same, that Song Lan cannot help but think that he has met his soulmate.
So they travel, help where they can, take payment from those who can afford it, but more often than not they sleep under the pale stars and moon, what money they have being better spent on food than a bed in an inn. It is something that suits Song Lan, the rooms they can afford are often far from his own ideas of cleanliness and frequently were shared between many other travellers. No, sitting in the flickering light of a campfire, Xingchen at his side, is his preferred way to spend each night.
By the time they leave the He family’s house there are a number of other people watching and waiting in the street. Seemingly having been nominated as spokesman for the rest of the village, a middle aged man, Fu Rongxi, who proves to be the missing Lao Fu’s eldest son, invites them to his house to explain what has been happening in Fuling.
A larger house than the one belonging to the He’s, and seemingly the largest in the whole village, the Fu residence also has a workshop and a yard full of timber, that is being cut and shaped into decorative pieces for manors and temples.
The disappearance of Lao Fu, who they now learn is called Fu Zhiling, isn’t exactly as the tea stall proprietor had described. Rather than collecting firewood he had been out looking for specific trees in the forests that he would mark out for felling and bringing back to the workshop.
Fu Rongxi pours them tea and explains how it was something that his father had always done. The heavy work in the yard itself had become too much for him as he’d aged, but his eye for good timber was still second to none. So he often went out early, rising at dawn and taking food with him for the day, so it was not until it reached the later part of the afternoon that they began to be concerned that hadn’t returned.
He cannot give them any information on the cultivators who had tried to help two months before. He had been away from the village transporting a cargo of carving to Yiling, town three days' travel away. It had been his father who had spoken with them. There had been the hope that the cultivators had dealt with the creature, which was why his father had been confident enough to go up into the wood above the village, rather than sticking to the ones below, which had remained safe.
What Fu Rongxi does know is when the creature first started to be a problem. Early in the Spring, when the road through the forest leading to a mountain pass was free of snow once more, a trader had arrived in the village, scared half out of his mind, having lost all his wares and his two ponies who had been carrying them. All he could tell them was that something had descended from the sky, shrieking and scratching and he’d fled, barely escaping with his life.
A few weeks later another traveller arrived in the village with the tale of having been chased by something in the treetops, and it was only because he was on a fast horse did he get away.
Then just as summer was arriving a woman from the village had gone missing. There had been some talk at the time whether she had eloped. She’d been almost thirty and still unmarried, having spent many years looking after her unwell mother and younger sister. When the mother had passed away the previous winter it had just left the two Zhao sisters with just each other and with the younger one engaged to be married perhaps the elder had taken the chance to seek out a life somewhere else before she got too old. The younger sister refused to believe it, staying that it must be the creature in the forest.
By then the story had been spread by travellers and traders, which had in turn brought the two cultivators to Fuling. “It was a man and a woman,” Fu Rongxi says, “A couple perhaps or maybe brother and sister. I don’t think my father would have asked, he never sought to know anything that wasn’t needed. He said he had met them briefly on the road as they went up into the forest.”
After that there had been no reports of the creature at all, travellers had used the path through the woods and while they said it had an eerie feel to it none of them were attacked. Then two weeks ago his father had disappeared and the fear that the creature had returned surfaced. With the recent attack on He Zhou that fear had proved to be true.
Song Lan listens attentively to all that their host has to say, while Xiao Xingchen asks any questions that come to mind.
Finally, they thank Fu Rongxi for his time and patience in explaining what has happened, and tell him that they intend to stop the creature and that once it is done they will return to the village and confirm it, so no one will have to live with the uncertainty of it.
With the suggestion, based on what the trader who had been chased had said and the timing of the attack on He Zhou, that the creature only makes its presence known at dawn or dusk, they make the decision to search the woods that afternoon, before it becomes active. If the lingering traces of resentful energy on He Zhou were any indication the creature and its lair, if it has one, should be easy to trace.
No one from the village is willing to accompany them past the edge of the forest. Fu Rongxi alone walks with them to the start of the trail that leads up into the steeply wooded hills, telling them that it was only a few minutes walk up the path that they had found He Zhou, collapsed and bleeding.
They thank him for his help and then walk on together into the dim greenness. The woodland is eerily silent around them, the usual sounds of small scurrying creatures, birds and even insects are absent. It feels like everything is paused in a breathless hush, trying to avoid the notice of whatever had made its home in the woods.
The point at which He Zhou had been found is clear even without the lingering presence of resentful energy that clings to the place, like how the scent of smoke remains long after a fire is gone. The leaves and pine needles that litter the forest floor are disturbed, while traces of blood remain as rusty droplets and smears on lower branches.
Crouching down, Xiao Xingchen looks at the boot churned earth. “I don’t think he was attacked here. He ran here trying to escape, trying to get home.” He looks round at the dark and tangled trees. “Why didn’t it follow him? It wouldn’t have just let him go.”
“Perhaps it could not,” Song Lan answers. “It never hunts within the village, could it be that it is somehow trapped within this place. Bound to a location.”
Xiao Xingchen stands again, a faint frown on his face. “Why here though? What could hold it here?”
There is no good answer to that, nothing that wouldn’t be a total guess with little basis in fact, so Song Lan doesn’t attempt it. Instead he replies, “We should continue our search, then the truth will reveal itself.”
The further the path climbs the denser the woodland becomes. The autumnal trees with leaves turning to red and gold fall back, replaced by pines, their branches gnarled and twisted with age. Although the afternoon sun still shines somewhere above them, the amount that reaches the forest floor grows less and less, the space below the thick canopy trapped in a perpetual twilight.
It is not a place for people to be after dark, Song Lan can feel it. The path narrows preventing them from walking side by side, and he wishes that somehow he could walk both in front of Xiao Xingchen to protect him and also walk behind, so that he remained in his sight. The need to see that he is safe wins out, and Song Lan walks close behind.
It’s a feeling that he had had more and more the longer that they have been travelling together. It had been easy to explain at first, it was just the fact that he wanted his friend, his only friend outside of the Baixue temple where he’d grown up, to be safe. Yet as time passes it feels more than that. He likes to watch him, even if he isn’t doing anything that could be considered interesting, likes to listen to him speak even if it’s about nothing important, even just sitting in silence in his presence feels pleasant in ways that he cannot put into words.
Yet why wouldn’t he? Xiao Xingchen is beautiful, noble and kind. Perhaps because of his upbringing on the immortal Baoshan Sanren’s mountain there seems to be an otherworldly air of innocence about him that makes Song Lan want to protect him from the dirt and mundanity of the world.
Perhaps he is placing him on a pedestal, viewing him as if he is some pristine, celestial being who has no faults, that in doing so he is courting disappointment when he proves all too human after after all. Because the truth is Xiao Xingchen, who is eager to help and to explore, and who takes kindness and compassion towards all he meets as seriously as any night hunt, is as young as he is, not yet out of his teenage years. So even though it isn’t fair or even sensible to view him as if he is some celestial being who had come down to the mortal world, Song Lan still feels blessed by every moment that he gets to be in his presence.
The path ahead of them suddenly opens out, the trees that had once clustered closely around them are shattered and splintered, the ruins of a fierce battle. The traces of resentful energy are much stronger here, the deepening shadows of late afternoon seems to swarm with it. It reminds Song Lan of insects, wriggling, writhing creatures hiding in the damp and dark. It makes his skin crawl.
“It’s close,” Xiao Xingchen says, stopping at the edge of the clearing and taking Shuanghua from its scabbard. The slim blade glitters in the weak light, it and its wielder the only bright points in the encroaching gloom.
Song Lan nods. Moving to stand at his side, he draws Fuxue, ready for any attack that may come. They have fought together side by side many times since the previous spring when they had first met, but the thrill of it, of knowing that he will see Xingchen’s fast and elegant swordwork, will never grow old.
The pines around them are dark and silent. Mist rises up from the forest floor, the damp earth and the scent of decay mixing with the rank, crawling feeling of resentful energy. He tightens his grips on Fuxue and waits.
There is a faint rush of wind across the treetops overhead and then it is upon them.
A yaoguai, Song Lan decides. Once it had been a bird of some kind, but now it is a creature of nightmares. Half against as tall as himself, it’s fast and strong, it’s beak and claws viciously sharp where it snaps and slashes at them.
They leap back and away from each other, barely avoiding its initial attack, their choice forcing it to decide which one of them to pursue. It whirls round shrieking, the long flight feathers on its wings are razor-sharp, they slice into the surrounding vegetation, sending leaves and small twigs shredded on the ground.
It’s incredibly fast, but perhaps not as fast as it once had been. One wing seems weaker than the other, the way it beats the air halting and stuttering. Amidst the gloom, Song Lan thinks can see something bright, metallic, amidst the feathers on its back just behind the wing joint.
It screeches and lunges at them again, beak snapping and taloned feet lashing out as it flaps and flutters just off the ground.
Xiao Xingchen whirls away from it, Shuanghua effortlessly blocking a razor sharp wing tip that comes too close, his movements as light as flakes of snow caught on the wind, Song Lan’s thinks. Yet there is little time to admire his fast and graceful fighting style. The yaoguai, although already injured, possibly from its previous encounter with the other rogue cultivators, is still dangerously fast.
For a moment Song Lan thinks that it is driving Xiao Xingchen back, as he sees him leap backwards beneath the tangled pine boughs, then he nods to him, an indication for him to drive the creature towards him. Xingchen was pretending to be forced back, luring the yaoguai to where its wings and speed would mean nothing, trapping it in a place where it could be killed.
There is a sadness that comes when elimination is the only option that is open to them. It has always felt rather like failure to Song Lan when liberation, to allow it to move on, or suppression, so that perhaps one day its angry spirit has calmed enough that liberation can be tried again, is unsuccessful or impossible. Elimination is final, a spirit obliterated from the world and denied reincarnation.
The yaoguai however gives them little choice as its relentless flurry of attacks continues unabated.
Xiao Xingchen’s choice to force it back to where the thick tangle of branches work against, to where its wings catch and drag on the trees, is working. It screeches in fury as its attacks are blocked, its ability to fly up and attack from above lost as its wings beat futilely against the sturdy boughs. The branches shudder and shake, pine needles and cones falling like a strange rain around them, but they hold.
There is a recklessness to Xiao Xingchen that worries Song Lan sometimes, how he rushes in fearless, heedless of any danger to himself. It makes him worry that if he were not there what situations his friend might get himself in.
Despite the yaoguai’s existing injury and Xiao Xingchen’s trap it continues to fight viciously, and Song Lan is certain that if they were facing it at the peak of its powers and on open ground they would have found themself out matched, possibly fatally so.
As if to emphasise the fragility of their advantage the creature suddenly swerves, seemingly not caring how its already lame wing collides with one of the shattered pine trunks. A moment shrieks in triumph as the tip of one of its talons rakes across the back of Xiao Xingchen’s arm.
It isn’t the one that holds Shuanghua, and he doesn’t acknowledge the wound at all. Instead he uses the opportunity to strike at the yaoguai, his blade slicing through the flight feathers on its uninjured wing, grounding it.
“Zichen!” he calls out. “Don’t let it turn.”
Although Song Lan doesn’t know the exact nature of his plan he does as he is asked. With all of its attention focused on Song Lan and avoiding Fuxue’s deadly blade, the yaoguai has no time to react as Xiao Xingchen leaps high into the branches above it, before bringing Shuanghua down onto the back of the creature’s neck.
The yaoguai’s neck is almost completely cut through in a single blow. It thrashes for a moment, the body seemingly still able to act without its connection to the head, then it.goes still and falls to the ground. As it does so its body seems to fold in on itself, its appearance returning to something closer to what it had once been in life, its size diminishing now that the rage and malevolence was draining away. The bright flash of metal at its shoulder is revealed as the remains of a sword, the blade snapped clean through about a third of the way down its length.
With the yaoguai no longer a threat, Song Lan turns his attention fully to his friend.
Xiao Xingchen looks ghost-pale in the gathering gloom of evening, the autumn night drawing in fast now that the sun has dipped down behind the densely wooded hills. The only splash of colour is the growing patch of red staining his sleeve.
“Don’t look so worried, It doesn’t feel too bad,” Xiao Xingchen replies, unbothered by the injury. Taking a spare ribbon from his sleeve, he starts to wrap it awkwardly around the wound.
“Let me do that, it will be easier,” Song Lan says, relieved to have something to do that might be of practical help. Easy conversation has never come easy to him, and while it has been easier with Xingchen than almost anyone else, he still often feels like he is several minutes behind where he should be whenever they speak. There is an utter frustration in only finding the right words once the conversation has already moved on.
“Do you have another?”
“Why? It’s really not that bad, is it?” Xiao Xingchen says, trying to turn and look at the back of his own arm. “Is it still bleeding?”
“”No,” he replies, feeling almost foolish now. “For a sling, it would be more comfortable.”
“A sling?” Xiao Xingchen shakes his head. “Zichen, it’s barely more than a scratch. You don’t need to make such a fuss.”
“If you are certain.” Reluctantly, Song Lan steps back, wishing he could find another reason to stay close, another reason to touch him.
“Yes.” He pats Song Lan’s hand as if he is somehow the one who is hurt and in need of reassurance. “If it does get sore I’ll tell you.”
“You should.” He regrets how it sounds almost immediately, certain that it comes across as too demanding, too much like an order rather than a request from a friend.
Xiao Xingchen however doesn’t seem to notice, his attention already turned to the remains of the yaoguai. He kneels down next to it, and runs a hand over its patchy, dark feathers, its remains now resembling nothing more than a very large crow. “I wonder what made you like that? Why were you so angry?”
There are no answers to be had or anything else can be done for it. So as the darkness draws in they burn the creature’s remains. Shrunken now, the body half dessicated already, it doesn’t take much for the flames to reduce it still further. The lingering resentful energy within it is cleared as the body burns away to ash, yet the deep, lingering sadness that haunts the air still seems to remain.
Xiao Xingchen looks out into the dark forest, his outline barely lit by the fading embers of the fire. “The bodies of those it killed are still out there. They should not remain unburied.”
“We will find them,” Song Lan replies. The last thing the people of Fuling needed was the spirits of those who had been killed to start haunting the forest. “They will not go unburied and unable to rest.”
“Shall we split up to search?” he asks, turning to look at him. “It would be faster.”
“Not tonight. We will return when it is light,” he says, as he places the broken piece of sword in a qiankun pouch. Perhaps when they look at it more closely it might give some indication who had once wielded it, that perhaps the rogue cultivators that had lost their lives could at least be buried with their names remembered. “The people of Fuling need to know they are safe.”
That he needs to be reassured that Xingchen is safe, to make sure that the cut on his arm gets cleaned and bandaged properly, isn’t something that Song Lan finds he can speak aloud. He wonders if he appears heartless because of it or if it is a relief that he isn’t making a fuss about it.
“Oh right, yes. They probably are wondering where we are,” Xiao Xingchen replies, “We don’t want them worrying that the yaoguai got us as well, do we?”
“No.” Moving aside so that there is enough room on the path for them both, Song Lan waits for him to join him, then side by side they walk on together into the dark.
Part 2 = https://silver-sun.dreamwidth.org/269828.html