The tormented started appearing around the world a short time after the catastrophe of the scars of fate.
They showed up especially around the scars themselves, possessing monstrosities and wild animals alike, making them twice as strong and twice as horrifying.
Nothing is more scary than seeing human parts in a monster. Some get a couple of legs, or a couple of arms. Some get the human eyes, which look bizarre and scary on the monster.
Or even a nose or teeth. Regardless, the effect more than making them horrifying to look at is the fact that they become twice as strong as usual, and they already start out pretty strong.
A lot of humble theories risen on the subject, but I got the only theory that matters, I was taking part in an expedition to clear a scar of fate that showed up next to the empire, when I noticed that the tormented are in fact human souls, tormented human souls that never left the earth to pass into the ether.
The scars allow them to have enough presence that they can possess these poor wild animals, turning them feral.
Their resentment towards humans, because of what happened to them in their lives, makes them want to kill any human they see, doesn’t matter if it’s a man, woman, or child, they will attempt to end them, regardless.
Holy magic works wonders on them, but in a world where nothing holy survives because of how corrupt everything has become, there are hardly any cultivators or even priests of the church who are good at that kind of magic anymore.
And if there are, they don’t want to put their lives in danger of joining expeditions to clear those scars of fate.
If it wasn’t for the empire, no one would attempt to clear the scars of fate.
Also, those rumors that it’s because of the empire, because of the massacre of Amoria, that the scars of fate appeared. I say that’s hogwash, not true at all.
The empire is the best thing that happened in this world.
The current emperor inundates us all with his kindness, and he leads us all with his wisdom.
I am not his alchemist advisor because of the money. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I see the goodness of the empire, and I’ll live to help further its cause.
The enemies of the empire made those rumors trying to harm its reputation, but they won’t get anywhere. The empire will live long and prosper, long live the emperor.
Scars of fate and other catastrophes.
By Zhi Zixin.
*****
image [https://imgur.com/XfBSXXC.jpg]
Seph and Sun passed through a portal on the right wall that teleported them to a garden full of trees and herbs, and buzzing life all around them.
The greenery was a welcome change of scenery, and Sun was looking around, trying to see if there were any fruits around!
There were many plots of herbs, and in the middle of each four plots, there stood a scarecrow. While there were bugs around, there didn’t seem to be any birds present at all.
Regardless, they walked right in, Seph ready to use his eye of the appraiser to figure out what’s actually valuable around here. He used the eye on one tree.
Appraising…
Name: Striking Willow Bark.
Type: Ingredients.
Quality: Plain.
An alchemical ingredient that’s highly sought after, used to make some powders to bolster physique for a short time, popular among martial artists to use before tournaments, only an experienced alchemist can identify it, due to how similar it looks to the mundane willow bark.
Location: Found in some forests that are rich in energy. Be careful of animals that feed on this bark. They cultivate after eating it, and will be hostile.
“Nice! Looks like we found our first ingredient Sun, I wonder what else around here could be an ingredient. Let me check that scarecrow.”
Seph used the eye of the appraiser on the scarecrow, only for the scarecrow to sprout a pair of human eyes that were red and bulging. With no eyelids, they looked really scary.
Seph got freaked the fuck out, and jumped back, and used the eye of the veteran fast on it.
Name: Tormented Scarecrow
Class: Scythe monster.
Cultivation stage: Body Dismantling (III)
Seph’s eyes went wide at the new information. It was a monster!
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Issue wasn’t even that, Seph was thinking, because there were 4 scarecrows around the field!
The scarecrow didn’t give him much time to think. As it started moving through the field, its wooden post was splitting the ground at an uncanny speed, making the earth in its way split into two small ridges around its path.
It then raised one wooden arm that had a scythe at its end and launched a strike towards Seph.
The young cultivator raised his palm and launched a strike of his own towards the scythe, which made the scarecrow spin around, but it tried to strike him with its other scythe arm instead.
He again hit it with another overbearing palm strike, and followed right after with another one to the wooden post, which split it in half. The scarecrow fell to the ground pathetically, still looking at Seph with wild eyes!
He scoffed at it, knowing that the fight was over. He walked towards it slowly, when the scarecrow did something he didn’t expect!
It crawled towards him, dragging its body fast on the ground, using the scythes awkwardly to dig into the ground and crawl!
Seph freaked out again and slammed the scarecrow on its head with his gourd with a north to south stomp.
He then removed the gourd, and struck it with one final palm strike to the head, which ended it.
The entire fight froze Sun, who had his eyes wide open in horror. That monster looked horrifying as fuck, and the martial artist monkey wasn’t ready for it!
After catching his breath and composing himself, Seph made a plan to attack the scarecrows with his lumps of pestilence first. They work on anything organic. They even dissolved the fuck out of those bones.
So he threw one at another scarecrow, and ran towards the furthest part of the field he could run to, while the scarecrow was coming after him.
By the time the scarecrow made it to him, it had sustained damage, and lost a quarter of its speed. A similar fight to the first happened, and Seph ended this scarecrow as well.
The next two were tricky, because they were closer to each other, Seph threw the first lump, and both of the scarecrows rose from their slumber, and came towards Seph, he threw another lump at the second scarecrow, and readied himself for the fight.
Once they reached him, he started doing his best to block their scythes. Each time he was unable to block one of them, Sun would block the other with his staff, which proved resilient against the bladed weapons.
Seph used an opening made by Sun, blocking a scythe strike by landing a palm strike to the scarecrow’s head, that made the eyes explode in gore, and launched the head of the scarecrow to the furthest point of the field on the other side.
The other scarecrow used the opportunity that it was spinning because of a palm strike to its scythe, and started a dangerous whirlwind with the two weapons.
Seph and Sun ducked under it, and landed another Palm strike to the wooden post, and rolled backwards out of harm’s way.
The fight was over; the cultivators sat on the ground catching their breath, both their eyes were wide open, it was a new thing to Seph to fight such a scary monster, so far he could blame everything on the feral beasts, except the one time with the fairies, but this was different, this was a real freakish monster that attempted to end his life!
Seph didn’t know what to think. What kind of monster is that? Why did it have human eyes? Nothing makes sense. Inanimate objects shouldn’t move that way!
After resting, the young man got up and checked the scarecrow’s body with the eye of the appraiser.
The eye highlighted a certain lump of straws in the middle of the scarecrow’s body, before giving this info.
Appraising…
Name: Sinister Straw.
Type: Ingredients.
Quality: Uncommon.
An alchemical ingredient used in making pills for Yin Cultivators, found on scarecrows that are possessed by the tormented, really dangerous material that has the potential to allow the tormented to possess again.
Location: Found in places where tragedy and misery had the last laugh…
“Okay, this is becoming way too scary for my liking Sun, what is happening? The location was really ominous and in a dark, bloody color. Who are those tormented? And how come it seems they can possess anything? Also, I am not really excited to eat a pill made of this thing. Zhi Zixin owes me a lot of answers. Actually, never mind, he doesn’t owe me. The man is a megalomaniac, but I’ll use my position as his disciple, to get this info out of him.”
Seph went over to each scarecrow and took out the sinister straws from each of them and put them in his spatial sack.
After that, he went over to the two trees that had striking willow bark, and worked with his sickle to extract 4 pieces of bark from each tree.
He then used the eye on the herb plots around him.
Appraising…
Name: Bullwhip Grass.
Type: Ingredients.
Quality: Plain.
This herb is used in myriad alchemical formulas, but it’s also consumed to energize humans and animals alike, used widely by doctors to treat physical lethargy.
Location: Grows wild in forests, naturally abundant, might be the second most present grass in the world after vitality grass.
Seph picked up eight of this herb, cleaning out an entire herb plot.
He looked around and found that the second plot was the same herb. He ignored it and went for the third plot instead.
He used the eye on the visible herbs, but nothing showed up. He pondered if he should extract the herbs anyway or not, and thought that he wouldn’t lose much time if he took out one of them.
The young man extracted the herb, and encountered a force similar to the earth root he got earlier in the trials. After some pulling, he got out a brown root that had a fuzzy texture, like it was covered in fur. To examine it, he used his eye.
Appraising…
Name: Bear Cub Root.
Type: Ingredients.
Quality: Uncommon.
A root used in alchemy to make strength based pills. Martial artists pay good coins for this root, as it helps them grow their muscles faster with less effort.
Location: It’s rarely found in forests rich in yang energy, and for some uncanny reason, bears are usually not far away from the vicinity of this herb!
“Good thing I took out this herb, eh, Sun? Anyway, I will pick up this entire plot and we will return to the workshop. I’ll leave one plot behind each. We can return to them later if we need them. My gut feeling tells me we won’t be able to make many pills because we don’t have enough sinister materials.”
With that Seph got to work, and Sun was playing with his staff, testing old moves, trying new moves, while his master got done with his task.