Both Feng-Lung and Ori’un slipped into the snow-drenched streets of Marsul village without incident, each man surveying his surroundings by expelling a small fraction of Qi energy and projecting it outwards like a net to catch malevolent spirits. XJ-V could feel exactly what they felt in the moment: the residue energies of evil that still floated in the air, gradually fading to nothing as they approached the first of Marsul’s sandstone huts.

“We should go house by house,” Feng-Lung suggested, knowing he still had to take the lead, and push through the fear the boy no doubt felt radiating up from his chest. “I can sense an aura of evil that still fills the air. But I cannot get a clear read on its location.”

Ori’un nodded and followed the boy, his own sharp eyes scanning the rooftops for the eyes of the beasts that could be watching them from above.

The village streets were desolate, seemingly abandoned in the same fashion as the outlying farms. The chill breath of winter blew through the village totally unhindered, and XJ-V could feel the tension brewing between the Cultivators even from within the dream-vision of Ori’un’s past mind.

Did you know where they were, Ori’un? He asked the present Planeswalker who was allowing him to see this vision.

A Core Regulator would normally be able to sniff out a pack of Aoyin from a distance of five hundred feet or more, he replied. But when the horde of these spirits grows to a certain mass, they are able to mask their Qi readings, normally by burrowing underground.

XJ-V thus watched bitterly as Feng opened the dank curtains of each building’s doorway and beheld only wrecked furniture and increasing signs of struggle within each house. He dove towards each door like a man ready to let fly a storm of strikes to any on the other side – friend or foe – but XJ-V could feel that the Ori’un of the past who guided him knew the boy really wanted to see nothing more than an indication of human life still in the village. It would have placated his soul, somewhat, to simply deny what his heart was telling him.

Finally, they came to his old home – a dismal looking shack on the edge of town – and Feng-Lung breathed deep of the Qi before bursting through the door-curtain.

Once again – he was met with nothing. Sights of his childhood filled his mind – his infantile form chasing kittens as they dove in and out of the doorway, his mother reading to him by the now extinguished fireplace at the end of the room, his brother and he sparring out back in the quaint garden where his mother’s tomato saplings were kept. Everyone had always told her how talented she was in coaxing plant life to grow even in the most dire of circumstances. She was a woman that wanted nothing more than to see the world grow again. So it was with her son, whom she had offered to Ramor-Tai so he could live a better life.

Now that same son looked upon the broken furniture and claw-marked walls of his home and wished he had stayed. He wished he had denied the Master that had been promised to him. What did eternal life matter if he had to see those that he loved die?

He let loose a bolt of flame that speared through a rusted chair by the wall and threw splinters across the floor.

“Gone!” he said. “The fiends. I…I shall find them, Ori’un. I shall find them!”

“Fury will not serve you in this task,” the Planeswalker replied. “Focus on the residual energies left by your foes. Think: what is the common link between all these houses we have seen?”

Young Feng straightened and bent low to trace a shaking finger across two of the viscious claw-marks that had been made on the ground. They were fresh. Fresh enough to have been made only a few hours ago. As he focused, he directed the Qi flow within him down through his fingers and allowed it to pool within the thick grooves the marks had made, and slowly his mind resolved a picture of the events that had transpired to produce such marks.

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XJ-V could not see what was happening in his mind in this moment, but he knew the boy was barely holding on to what he saw. He knew the boy was in pain.

“They were taken,” he said. “They were corralled like cattle by the beasts, who spoke with the voices of friends come to relieve the villagers of their corpse-burning duties. They took them…below…”

Feng’s face flew to the outside world again, though it was clear he was loathe to tear himself away from the sight of his once-home.

“This would explain the lack of blood,” he told Ori’un. “They took them somewhere beneath the village, where they could mask their collective Qi. But their long-taloned claws are their undoing.”

Ori’un smiled.

Good, he thought. The boy still has focus.

Young Feng led the way back outside and scanned the horizon again, navigating the blizzard-blanketed streets via memory alone. Memory, and his enhanced senses that told him of the life that lay below their feet.

And when he opened his eyes, that’s when he saw it so clearly that it almost shook even XJ-V within the dream-vision.

A well.

A brick and mortar well at the center of the village large enough to fit several bodies. Deep enough, and dark enough, to be a perfect home for evil.

Feng-Lung approached the object and brought a tiny flickering flame into life upon his fingertips. He swept it over the thing, remembering how all the mothers of the village had forbidden their sons to play down here. As he tossed his small orange burr of light down to assess the depth of the hole, he saw that it was far deeper than he recalled.

“Because it has been extended,” he said as he saw the flame finally bounce and die out as it reached the bottom. “The creatures have used their talons to dig into the earth beneath the bricks, and have made this place their den.”

“Not altogether unusual for Aoyin,” the Planeswalker agreed with an impressed whistle. “The darkest corners of this earth are the haunts of the Flesh-Eaters. Somewhere isolated, promising danger to mortals, and yet also somewhere useful to them – well, that’s just a perfect hiding spot for those that dwell in the dark.”

Feng-Lung nodded silently as he climbed up on the lip of the well.

“Feng.”

“I must do this, Ori’un,” he said. “This means more than just a test.”

“Think carefully,” the Planeswalker cautioned again, knowing, XJ-V could tell, that he was overstepping his bounds as impartial test administrator. “Use the Qi as your guide, boy. Your enemy has entrenched themselves. You can sense that their numbers are beyond a simple pack. You would be able to sense, too, any signs of human life that still drew breath down there. The chances of anyone down there being alive…”

“The Qi is not always right,” Feng-Lung snapped back. “A Cultivator does not rely upon instinct alone. He must look upon this world with his own eyes if he is ever to contend with it.”

Ori’un stood back, heaving another sigh of resignation in the snow.

“This is the mantra of the Planeswalkers, is it not, Ori’un?”

The weary mountain smiled. “Yes, Feng-Lung. It is.”

And without saying another word, young Feng jumped down into the depths of the abyss.

You could see it on his face plain as day, couldn’t you, XJ-V? Feng-Lung of the present asked him. Anger. Spite. The desire for vengeance, plain and simple. Desires that bring nothing but ruination to their bearer and all those around him.

So why did you not stop him? The Cog asked.

I have often asked myself the same thing, he replied, his past-self hesitating on the lip of the well. Back then, I still felt I could become a Master one day. I still had boyish desires of my own – to achieve Soul Actualization but do so for the benefit of the Wastes. So, I tried to copy the grating objectivity of the Masters who look upon us all not as humans, but as mere blips in the Dao that might become something more. In truth, though, I was greedy, XJ-V. I thought he might become one of us. I thought I might have found someone who looks upon the ruins of this world as I do – with a sense of wonder, not fear. That was the vision I saw in my Grey-Potential. I saw myself standing beside another young warrior of Ramor-Tai, and shepherding the Wastes along a better path with him.

The Ori’un of the past swallowed his trepidation and jumped atop the well, ready to dive.

It blinded me, Cog, his present-self said. It stopped me from seeing what was so plainly obvious. It stopped me from realizing that I was sacrificing the happiness of a youth to claim my own. What happened next was my fault, XJ-V. Make no mistake of that.

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