Xiaojun remembered the night before the Jiaguonese began their attack on the castle. He had found himself sitting on one of the towers and looking off into the enemy camp. The enemy was drinking and partying, a clear sign that they were going to attack soon. After all, the best soldier is one who is too drunk to realize he was going to die.

Nina sat herself next to him. She rested her head onto his shoulder. “Xiaojun, I’m scared.” Her words were short, yet powerful. “It seems like everything is telling me that something bad is going to happen.” Xiaojun held her as he tried to assure her that things would be okay. “We will make it. This isn’t the first losing battle we’ve fought.”

“You don’t understand,” Nina said, “I’ve been having terrifying dreams,” she said. “I had a dream that this entire green field in front of us was dead, and that monsters of unbelievable sizes and proportions walked the land of the living. I’ve had this dream ever since this siege began, and I don’t know what it means.” Xiaojun held her as the girl cried. “Things will be okay. I promise.”

Things were never okay. Now Xiaojun was arming himself in the hut, ready to venture into the Fog of the Depths. His body felt completely healed as good sleep and a continuous diet of calories and huli jing blood accelerated the process. “Are you ready?” Hua asked. Xiaojun held his weapon ready. “Of course.”

They charged out with Xiaojun holding into Hua’s hand. Using a compass and her sense of smell, they navigated through the fog. “Demon! Coming from the right!” Xiaojun turned to see a large mouth charging right for him. With a quick movement, she sliced it open and stabbed his weapon into the demon’s eye. With the monster screaming and returning to the fog, they continued moving.

They both knew the dangers of the fog as they continued to run. They both knew that if they wanted to escape, they had to fight for it. “To the left!” Once again, Xiaojun turned as he came upon multiple humanoid beings stiffly hopping towards them. He made quick work of this horde as he slashed and diced through them. After cleaning his blade, they were back on the move.

They ran quickly as the distant sound of roaring accelerated their pace. Hua coughed as she covered her nose. “So many damn demons! I can’t even tell which direction it’s coming from!” Still running, Xiaojun held her hand tightly as he held his weapon in his other hand. Then, jumping from the mist, were dozens of different creatures.

With that one hand, he slashed them away as they continued to run. Demons ranging from dogs to the centipedes he witnessed in the Diyu attacked the two of them as they continued to run through. Every time Xiaojun blinked, he remembered the horrors and beings he witnessed in the Diyu. “Keep moving… keep moving…”

Suddenly, Xiaojun stopped and placed his hand in front of Hua. Clawing at them were piles upon piles of hands and cries which emerged from the fog. “Flesh… give us flesh…” They turned directions as they went around the wall. Going around, they realized it wasn’t just a wall, but a cube. It was an obelisk of bodies and arms. Ignoring the thing, Xiaojun and Hua continued to move.

The fog continued to endlessly continue as the two of them could only see a few feet in front of themselves. Turning back was surely not an option, since they didn’t even know which way was backwards at this point. Though they had brought a compass from the hut, the contraption continued to malfunction as the needle spun erratically. As if inside a maze without a wall, the two of them were trapped.

Fog was just as bad as darkness. Anything could be hiding inside. Continuing to run through this terrifying substance, the two of them refused to stop even for a moment. Stopping in a place like this would certainly mean death. They saw the things that lived here. They knew how fatal being stationary was.

Hua gagged as one word screamed from her mind. “Demons!” Xiaojun pushed her aside as something lunged towards them. Immediately, the warrior sliced the thing midair, leaving a split body to crumble onto the floor. Looking at the corpse, it looked to be some kind of humanoid covered in cysts that acted like scales. Along its vertebrae, like bones, were extended horns which bled from the base. Its eyes glowed in the fog, as if they were creatures made specifically for it. They looked around to find that dozens of these eyes were looking right at them.

They sprung from the darkness in random amounts as Xiaojun sliced each and every one of them apart. Black bile showered like hellish rain as the fogdwellers continued to pile about. “Keep your head down!” Xiaojun commanded. Just as Hua ducked, the warrior chopped another fogdweller into the ground before stomping it down. He had to make sure they were dead.

As soon as the attack diminished, Xiaojun grabbed Hua’s arm and dragged her once more. “Move!” The fogdwellers scampered and jibbered amongst each other as they began to get on their fours and speedily crawl away. “That was weird,” Hua said. “What made them run away?” Then they felt it: the ground began to shake.

“Children! Children where are you?” The bones in Hua froze as she remembered the titanic spider she had once witnessed from inside the hut. She could remember the gaping maw which crushed the head of a horse as it smashed bones with every bite. She wanted to run, but as she turned to look at Xiaojun, she found that he had different ideas. Hua found that Xiaojun was smiling.

“When I was trapped in the Diyu, I was terrified,” Xiaojun admitted. He held his weapon high as the smile grew on his face. “But now that I’ve seen what else has been lying in that hell, I haven’t got a single tremor in my body.” The shaking grew louder as the spider came into view. Even within the fog, the silhouette of its darting face and jumbling legs could be seen. Hua watched as the face turned right towards them. “There you are children!”

It charged towards them as Hua attempted to begin running. But Xiaojun grabbed onto her hand as he stood in place. “What are you doing?” Hua screamed. “Have you not seen what that thing is capable of?” The warrior readied his blade. “Have you seen what I’m capable of?” The spider rushed towards them as the face on it began to sing and laugh. “Children! Come close! I must keep you safe!”

Xiaojun closed his eyes as he felt every vibration of the quaking earth. It was as if a clock were ticking in his mind, the seconds counting down as only his breathing could be heard. “I’m here! Your mother is here!” the spider cried. Then Xiaojun made his move. He ducked to the left, narrowly dodging the impaling foot of the spider, before grabbing Hua and jumping onto the beast.

Sitting on the top, the face began to scream as Xiaojun gave a monstrous grin. “You are not my child!” the spider cried. It attempted to reach its legs to its top only for them to narrowly miss. The two beings were simply out of range. Walking towards the face, Xiaojun placed his hands around it, the face trembling as it began to cry and wail. “Your child is dead.” With that, he placed his thumbs inside of its eyes and pushed it forward.

The spider screamed as it began to run in the direction that Xiaojun pushed. The warrior laughed as he continued to steer the monster to his will. “The Fog of the Depths can last for miles,” the warrior said, “but this can definitely shorten our distance.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Hua understood the ingenuity of the plan, yet the sight of Xiaojun’s pure brutalism and the agony of the spider still disgusted every part of her soul. Not long ago, this monstrosity was a kind woman who wished she could protect the one child she had. Perhaps that was they it ate with its underbelly, as mothers long to protect their children by placing them back in the womb. But now that the fog had arrived, the kind woman was just another monster.

Sudden screeches invaded the air as Xiaojun continued to smile. Removing his hands from the face, he jammed his foot inside instead. Kicking hard enough to lodge his foot into the skull of the spider, Xiaojun held his guandao ready. “Hua. Keep your head down.” She complied immediately as she ducked to the ground.

Large bats began to dive from the sky as Xiaojun repelled them with his weapon. These bats looked more like men who were transformed into the shape of bats. Their teeth were as grotesque and long as fingers as they caused the mouth to protrude from their face as their backs had grown a fleshy and webbed set of wings.

The warrior cut many of them down from the air as blood splashed onto Hua’s hiding face. She screamed she wiped it off. Her enhanced sense of smell caused her to gag as the smell and taste of demon blood was as disgusting as rotten meat. Hua remained low as Xiaojun kicked the face one more time. “Faster!” he demanded.

The spider complied as its legs trampled even more quickly. The continuous invasion of bats did not secede, however, as they continued to flock and dive at the warrior. His bloody body revealed that they succeeded in getting a few swipes at him, but his smile revealed that they were far from defeating Xiaojun. “Come on! Try that again!”

The bats made another onslaught, but Xiaojun was ready. He grabbed the first one by its wings and threw it into another bat, causing the both of them to topple to the ground below. With his guandao in hand, he sliced another as the audible crack of its bones reverberated in the air. With another motion of the guandao, Xiaojun skewered another one of the demons from the air. It screamed as blood trickled from the blade, only for the warrior to quickly fling the thing into yet another bat. When any of the bats fell to the earth, they were immediately feasted upon by the fog dwellers. A bat on the ground is nothing but meat.

“Behind you!” Hua called. Xiaojun turned to find a bat ready to bite into his throat. But before the creature could even have a chance, Hua got to it first. Transforming into a fox, she snapped her maw into the creature’s veins. Shaking it around, she threw it to the ground before returning to her human form. “Gross!” She vomited off of the spider to get any remaining taste of demon out of her system. “You owe me for that one!”

Just as she said that, Xiaojun lunged his sword into something right behind her. As the demon fell to the ground below, Xiaojun wiped his blade. “Consider the debt paid.” Finally, after what felt like a complete eternity in combat, the two of them finally had some respite. The onslaught of bats had ended.

Xiaojun exhaled as the exhaustion exited from his strained muscles. Through all of that fighting, his body had endured numerous different scratches and cuts as blood trickled from his armor. Seeing this, Hua handed him a knife and presented her shoulder. “You’re hurt. Take a sip.”

Xiaojun rejected the knife, but Hua remained persistent. “Please. You don’t need to prove anything right now. Just think of it as avoiding injury. As you obviously know, injury can offset your journey.” Though reluctant, he ended up taking the knife. Sighing, he cut a gentle gash into her arm and began to suck on the wound. Hua seethed a little as the blood drew from her body.

In the end, Xiaojun was healed and the bleeding ceased. He wrapped a bandage around Hua’s arm. Marked with perfect timing, they exited the fog as they initially covered their eyes upon the brightness of the outside world. Even the spider began to stutter as its body remained disoriented.

“I’m sorry for all this,” Xiaojun said to it. “May you see your child and husband in another life.” They jumped off of the spider and, with one strong swipe, he cut a large slash into the being. The slash then started a chain reaction that, like paper, tore the spider apart. With the two of them safely on the ground, they observed this tearing. All that was left was a corpse, and a pile of bodies that had resided in the monster’s stomach. Humans, fog dwellers, animals, bats, and the one horse that unfortunately ended up in the fog. Finally, the woman’s soul would know peace.

Hua brought the compass out of the bag, smiling as the contraption began to resume its normal functions. “We got lucky! We’re actually heading north! I could’ve sworn we accidentally took a wrong turn.” Leaving the Fog of the Depths behind, they returned to their journey.

“You know,” Hua started, “you’ve mentioned her, but you never said who this Nina girl was.” Xiaojun said nothing as they continued to walk. “Are you curious?” he asked. Hua nodded as she pointed to the bandage on her arm. “From what it sounds, Nina is the reason why I’m giving you blood in the first place.”

They traversed through more dead fields and forests as Xiaojun responded to her. “Perhaps you do deserve to know, considering that the though of eating me hasn’t overpowered you.” Hua laughed as she jokingly bared her teeth. “The thought hasn’t even hit me.”

Xiaojun visibly began to think, as if trying to find the right words to describe Nina. So many years together, and yet so difficult to describe. “She was an exceptional person,” he finally said. “One of the few people who tried to fight for what she thought was right. It seems like everyone, even her father, was more considerate of their image rather than their actions.”

“It sounds like you had a crush on her,” Hua teased. Xiaojun paused and prepared to release a mouthful of words. Then he sighed, as if swallowing this outburst. “Perhaps you’re right. Maybe in the end, it was only a crush.” Hua gawked as she giggled. “So you did have feelings for her!”

Xiaojun just continued walking as Hua continued to tease and joke around with him. “The man who can tear a house apart is the same man who has a cutesy crush!” She pointed fingers and even sputtered her tongue as she danced about. “Xiaojun’s a softie! Xiaojun’s a softie!”

The warrior sighed. “If you continue this gesture, I will leave you in these woods.” Immediately, the girl went silent as she stood straight and kept walking. “Sir yes sir! My lips are shut!” For a little while, the march was quiet.

There wasn’t a single sound other than the sound of wind pressing against dead trees and grass. No chirping of birds. No trickles of rivers. Not even the roar of monsters. It was just pure and oppressive silence. “Xiaojun,” Hua finally asked, “did you ever get lonely out here?” To this, Xiaojun had but one answer. “Yes.”

He didn’t even remember how long he had been doing this. For all he knew, the War of Sin could’ve been a century ago. Years of marching into deep and darker forests. Years of fighting through deep and darker demons. Years of enduring deep and darker loneliness. It had the same feeling as knowing that he was going to die as soon as he turned around: pure dread and pure weakness. “In these moments, I have to remain strong and harness strength from inside.”

“How do you do that?” Hua asked. They set themselves down as their exhausted bodies were ready to rest. “I simply have to remember what I am, and what I came here to do,” he finally answered. “Even now, I still have the choice to simply find a cave to retreat to and hide. But I know that this will leave Nina still in the hands of the Beast of Corruption.”

He knew how poorly it sounded as he said it. “I am the envoy of humanity, and yet I care only about a girl who’s soul has been captured. Humanity caused this to happen anyway, by living in ways that capsized the God of Purity.” Though Hua didn’t have any idea what any of that meant, she still agreed. “You are kind of right. Humans suck.”

She had more than a few unpleasant memories of the days with Zheng Qiang when the human would conduct countless experiments on them, treating them as if they were nothing but toys to be broken and tested. But at the same time, it was also Zheng Qiang who taught her the beauty and elegance of the outside world. “I can’t say I hate them though,” Hua admitted. “There are some good humans out there, somewhere. Besides, humans taste pretty damn good!” she joked.

Xiaojun laughed a little as he closed his eyes. It was a strange world of both horror and beauty, even in this modern age of darkness. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Keep talking like that, and you’ll convince the envoy of humanity to fight for the right reasons.” Within less than a moment, he managed to fall asleep in a blink. Only with Hua was that ever possible.