“Hmmm. This doesn’t strike me as natural,” Art observed, as they waded through the sea of blood and organs. Yao gave him a nonplussed look, eyes lidded and mouth pinched.

“Really? You think?”

“Indeed, I do,” Art said, wilfully pretending not to notice her tone, “it is my express opinion, founded only on the firmest of scientific fact, that mountains are not, as a general rule, filled with blood, organs, and bits of what are undoubtedly human corpses.”

“Hopefully human. What in the Blazing Blue Baboon happened here? Besides you, that is.”

“Thank you for the clarification. And here I was worrying that my doing some push ups had caused all these cultivators to violently explode,” Art wryly remarked.

In spite of herself Yao snorted, and gave him a small punch on the shoulder. “Hey, you can always try harder next time.”

They slowly climbed a stairwell, taking care not to slip on the endless rivers of blood, finally reaching what looked like some kind of control room. (They were able to take a pretty good guess because of the massive sign saying “Dark and Evil Sect: Gander Gals Division: Control Room.”) A panel lay before them, dotted with symbols demarcating formations and talismans, and there were only three corpses on the ground. One had been impaled by a stalactite; the other two had been ripped apart.

“How pleasant,” Art said, although the joke fell flat before he’d even finished verbalising it. Faced with corpses that were partly assembled, jokes felt weak, even seeing the foetuses lying amidst the bodies.

“A shame,” said Yao, examining the bodies. “But if it’s any consolation, their death was at least brief. Based on these scratch marks they didn’t even survive the initial attack of the whatever it was.”

“Thank Heavens for small mercies. Even if they were demonic cultivators of a most unsavoury sort, I’d still feel bad if they had suffered on my account.”

“I wouldn’t. At least, not too much - don’t take pleasure in the deaths of the wicked, obviously, not when they can be reformed; but in this case you can reserve your weeping. Based on these readouts they were up to some truly vile experiments in this laboratory… A statement I make without the slightest amount of exaggeration… I will refrain from providing details, to spare you the nightmares, but the referents behind these symbols are unfathomably disgusting.” Yao murmured dully, as she examined the screen that Xie Fu and the guy in charge of security had been looking at prior to their untimely but perhaps merited deaths.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Art replied, contemplating the corpses with some remorse. It occurred to him vaguely that the Demon King could be like this, had he not chanced upon him while hunting for good architecture, but he dispelled the thought from his mind. Cultivation worlds were brutal; perhaps no more brutal than that of his world, at least not psychologically, but brutal all the same.

Heedless of his worries and his inner thoughts, Yao continued to examine the screen, carefully absorbing and then dismembering the data. The picture it painted was worse than grim, and the thin line her lips had been pursed in since first she’d seen it grew ever greater.

“It looks like this was a research laboratory, specialising in potions, plots, and plagues. We need not worry about the first - they’ll have dissipated by now, assuming they broke, and can be avoided with ease if they don’t - and the third was at a preliminary stage which, though potentially disastrous, is at present easily ignorable. The second, however, is a matter of some concern.”

“Oh?” Said Art, examining the tattoos on a patch of skin lying in a puddle of blood. “How so? There’s plenty of plots out there, most of them unworthy of remark, and the rest worthy only with commentary.”

“The latter, in this case - their plots all involved artificially constructed monsters.”

“And you think the monster is worthy of concern because…” Art asked. Yao waved her arm about expansively, taking in the massive number of corpses, oceans of blood, piles of organs, bits of bone, and-

“Okay, I get it. It’s a dangerous monster,” Art complained. Yao cocked one eyebrow.

“That’s one word for it. ‘Deadly’ might be more accurate, or perhaps words like ‘murderous’ or ‘an omnipresent threat that is nearby.’ Even these are arguably too weak, although I struggle to think of a term that is more appropriate.”

“I’ll forgive your linguistic inadequacy in this case,” Art growled, the oppressive atmosphere within the damaged demonic base beginning to wear on him. “Is there anything you want to do in this base, or can we leave?”

Yao sighed. “As much as I hate to say it, we have to spend some time exploring it… assuming this was the same demonic sect as the one which kidnapped me and assaulted you, we might find some clues as to their dastardly devilish plot in this base… if we can see them through all the blood…”

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Art nodded. This was a reasonable enough explanation, if not one he altogether agreed with. He may be an irrelevant side character - he was, he knew, too lazy to be a main character - but Yao seemed like main character material, so she’d surely find something. Maybe it would only be a crumb, maybe it would be an entire manifesto, but a clue there would be, and she would be the one to find it.

The two set about searching. It was a grim business. The rooms they turned up were filled not only with blood, but with the remnants of all manner of horrific experiments, malformed monstrosities whose form and nature turned the blood cold and knowledge of whose history turned it positively glacial.

Every now and then Yao would offer an ‘aha’ or a ‘darn,’ or an ‘aha’ followed by a ‘darn,’ as she rooted through the material remnants of the former laboratory, seeking to uncover the secrets of its demonic purpose. Art was more silent. Once he tapped Yao on the shoulder, motioning to a now-stilled monstrosity of twisted flesh and steel, but mostly he remained silent, taking in the lab.

It was one thing to read about demonic cultivators, and another to experience them. The sight, frankly, contextualised the righteous fury and seriousness of many orthodox cultivators, if slightly decreasing his ability to understand why Yao was so obsessed with the evil of transmigrator advertisements.

It was a huge laboratory, cyclopean in size and labyrinthine in form, with endless twisting halls stretching deep under the earth. Some were less filled with blood than others; some had no blood at all; others had far worse. In all of them there was something foul or unspeakably vile, abominations brought forth from the black past of human history and given new form under the insidious scalpels and microscopes of those for whom humanity was no more than a tool.

Far, far down underground they went, seeking clues as to what abominable monster had commissioned this nightmarish keep, but finding none. The guardians of this place had been meticulous in their organisation, careful in their planning, and firm in their memory - no written instructions could be found, save for scraps of paper listing out statistics or lists of chemical ingredients.

These Yao pocketed, remarking that she might be able to decipher the recipes at a later date and thereby determine something of the character of the laboratory. At this Art felt his interest pique, as even if he was never going to use recipes like these the act of studying them would provide him with at least some theoretical knowledge, which he might be able to apply (less immorally) elsewhere.

They had reached the very bottom of the laboratory, where there were the least bodies, and the least signs of… experimentation. A handful of trashed rooms, a couple corpses, several smashed machines…

“They were remarkably thorough in covering their tracks,” Art observed, as he searched fruitlessly through the smashed machinery. Yao snorted in annoyance, but tragically found she had no choice but to agree.

“It’s unusual for demonic cultivators: most of them want to advertise their crimes, the better to show off their wickedness to the world. It inspires fear, angers righteous cultivators, and generally suffices as a way of drawing attention, with all its various benefits - to quote a frivolous if popular transmigrator idiom, ‘There’s no such thing as bad news.’ That this sect’s cultivators saw no need to do this, instead preferring silence, speaks volumes about the wickedness of their plans and their worries about interference.”

And she would have said more - for she was a great fan of yapping, when the subject in question was the wickedness of demonic cultivators and the transmigrators they patterned themselves on - when they found themselves unfortunately and rudely interrupted. There was a roar far off in the distance, a throaty, thrumming sound which reverberated through their bones and caused an unpleasant sensation in the pit of their stomach.

Yao turned and drew her sword in one smooth motion, eyes hard. “Looks like we’re about to meet the source of all the blood.”

For the first time in his journey, Art wished he had a weapon. He knew a little about martial arts - all true wizards did - and a little about swordsmanship - all true wizards did - and a little about astrological combat - all true wizards did. But this was merely in his world, where most denied even the existence of magic and few knew how to use it. In this world, he knew nothing other than the Body Regeneration Technique and one or two other esoteric arts he’d picked up over the course of his travels but which, as the monster roared with ever increasing fury, struck him as fairly useless in the field of combat.

The undulating and painful sound was accompanied by a scrabbling of claws, and then the beast burst into view. Its head was a pulpish mass of viscous flesh, its beady eyes practically unidentifiable within the twisted purple mess. This colossal cranium was attached to a body that was far, far too small for its head, with a spindly chest and withered back legs. The only part of its torso that looked like it might fit the form of its head were its arms, massive clawed things that scraped and hammered at the lab concrete as it charged the startled pair.

It swung once, its claws striking out at Yao's naked blade. She brought the sword up to block, but the force of the blow was so strong that it sent her flying, slamming into Art and taking him with her.

The two slammed into the wall at the back of the hallway, sliding down to the ground. Yao winced in pain as she climbed back onto her feet, holding her blade unsteadily in front of her. The beast uttered a deep, throaty chuckle, padding closer to the desperate pair.

Art felt the wall against his back. He thought desperately about the few techniques he’d picked up, trying to think of a way out of this catastrophe. His mind turned up nothing but blanks… or, rather, that was nearly the case. There was but one technique he knew that might help, one he’d received - it felt like ages ago - from the cultivator dressed all in white, way back in the Luminous Nut Secret Realm. He gulped.

“Do you feel like taking risks?” He asked Yao. She glanced askance at him.

“What sort of question is that? We’re in the middle of a risk, a risk that’s going badly, to say the least.”

Art nodded. His mind was set. “Then you’ll have to forgive me.”

Yao’s eyebrows raised. “Forgive you? Why would I have to-”

And then there was a burst of glitter and a puff of smoke. The mountain shook once more, for but a moment, before stabilising. When it had returned to normal the beast paused. It snuffled about the sea of blood, but to no avail.

Art and Yao were gone.