The world beyond the portal was both dark and dank. Like an underground chamber with no airflow, the atmosphere pressed against them physically. Their skin felt slimy within moments.

“There really are no stars.” Chan Bik shivered, glancing at the sky.

“What are you talking about?” Gou Dzing said cheerfully. “There's two here! One! Two!” He pointed to Chan Bik and Cheng Baak-hap. The two girls laughed weakly.

“Pay attention,” Wong Tang chided sternly. She looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable, but her mouth twitched a little.

Gong Lau Yan led the way, carefully following a broken road away from the portal. In less than a minute, they almost tripped over a couple of demons.

The two small figures froze where they sat on the road, eyes huge and luminous. They had ears like cats', no arms, and tiny glowing lights orbited them.

In the dirt between them was etched a grid, and some of the glowing lights were nestled in the grid squares.

They seemed to be playing a game.

One of the demons, eyes fixed on the weapons carried by the unexpected visitors, began to whimper, a sound so high-pitched it was almost beyond human hearing. Everyone winced.

The second demon flung itself at them.

Razor-sharp teeth sprouted suddenly from a gaping mouth. Still, it couldn't defeat Gaam Yuk Ying's speed. His hand shot out and slapped the demon on its short nose. The demon crumpled immediately, wailing.

Cheng Baak-hap frowned with concern. “These... are children, aren't they? So soon-”

Before she could even finish her sentence, they could hear the sound of many people approaching at a rapid pace. The demon children fled in the direction of the sound.

“One... Two... Five... Seven approaching,” Gong Lau Yan counted quietly.

“Can I try speaking with them?”

Everyone turned to look at Gou Dzing. Maan Dzi King's mouth bent coldly, but the others merely looked curious.

“How?”

“I'm not sure, but we should try...”

The small group of demons appeared over a low hill. The demon children were immediately pulled behind them, but the demon rescue part were themselves in poor shape, nervous, thin, and badly armed with sharpened sticks and broken swords.

“Given that there have been reports of demons stealing weapons,” Cheng Baak-hap surmised, “there must be some kind of hierarchy. These demons have so little.”

Wong Tang could have flicked her finger and destroyed them all in a second, but instead they all watched as Gou Dzing stepped forward with his hands spread to show they were empty, hoping that this would be a universally understood gesture. “Yuk Ying, take your hand off your blade,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth without turning around. Gaam Yuk Ying scowled, but did as he was told.

“Hello?” Gou Dzing called out to the group of demons. “Do you understand any Dzue?”

Clearly not. The demons hissed and mewled nervously. At least they weren't running away.

“Here.” Gong Lau Yan tapped Gou Dzing on the shoulder. As she approached, the demons retreated. Ignoring them, she handed Gou Dzing a scroll of paper and returned to where she had been standing.

Gou Dzing unrolled it.

In their hurry to follow Tim Dzeung-baak, the young cultivators had not had the opportunity to see for themselves the messages left on the walls of Ming Yuet by the demons. Now, Gou Dzing was looking at a replica of one, miniaturised to fit onto the scroll.

The markings resembled the scratching of chickens on dust, messy lines that made no sense to him. He turned the scroll to face the demons and pointed to it. “You wrote this, didn't you? We're here because of this.”

The wariness did not disappear from the demons' faces, but an additional air of understanding appeared amongst them. One of the group crept forwards on long, spindly limbs like a spider, a long tongue falling from its round head. It paused, then tapped the ground in front of it.

There was an awkward pause.

The demon tapped the ground again. Gou Dzing exchanged mystified glances with his companions.

“You want us... to come over there?” Cheng Baak-hap asked hesitantly, moving forward slowly and gesturing between herself and the spot that the demon was tapping. Seeing her move, the demon backed away again, although this time with an expectant air. The group moved forwards and the demons slowly began to travel away, although not without continuously casting suspicious glances behind them.

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“I guess that's it...”

Without any other clues, the travellers decided to follow the demons. With a healthy distance between the two groups, they slowly made their way across the landscape.

Gaam Yuk Ying's silver eyes seemed flatter than usual. Gou Dzing, his own gold and black eyes scanning their surroundings, noticed the change. “Yuk Ying, are you ill again?”

Gaam Yuk Ying glanced at him. “Don't mind it.”

“But-”

“Don't mind it.”

He had a point, they couldn't exactly stop right there and then to rest, in this situation, but it didn't make Gou Dzing feel any better. He swore to himself, not for the first time, that he would convince Yuk Ying to get checked by a doctor.

Strangely, the Grandmaster was looking oddly ill-at-ease too. This, of everything, had the travellers the most concerned. Even Chan Bik noticed the uncomfortable atmosphere. “Grandmaster, are you okay?”

Wong Tang blinked and did not answer immediately. Now everyone was convinced something was wrong.

“Did you notice something, Ah Poh?” Gong Lau Yan asked.

“Divine Empress, what is it?” Maan Dzi King questioned urgently.

The Grandmaster sighed and laughed, tweaking her granddaughter's ear. “It's... my own issue, children. Nothing for you to be concerned about.”

“You're... Grandmaster, you're the Divine Empress, creator of humanity, the power at the centre of the world,” Cheng Baak-hap pointed out. “If you're concerned, then we're concerned.”

Wong Tang said nothing, but she seemed to be thinking. They continued to walk in expectant silence. The ground was rough and crumbling beneath their feet. A single dead tree by the side of the road had them unsettled for a moment.

“I haven't seen any plants here,” Cheng Baak-hap whispered. “But this dead tree... there must have been plants once?”

The Grandmaster visibly shivered, letting out a hiss of annoyance. She gritted her teeth. “The world has always spoken to me. I could go anywhere and speak to anything, as a part of the world... and with the world as a part of me. But here... this place... is beyond me. I can't understand the language of the world here. This feeling...” A short laugh of bewilderment escaped her. “Is this... fear?”

Maan Dzi King hummed with comprehension, but chose not to share her thoughts with the group.

“Master, what advice would you give to me,” Gou Dzing asked, “if I were in a situation like this. Where I'm experiencing something I've never felt before, something that destabilises my worldview?”

Wong Tang tweaked his ear too. “Don't be cheeky, brat.” But her expression had improved. “Keep moving, or we'll fall behind.”

Gou Dzing felt Gaam Yuk Ying's hand slip into his. It was cold and clammy, but firm.

Ahead, the demons had reached a mountain.

An enormous mountain that climbed into the sky with no visible peak, the site was all the more strange, give how flat and featureless the surrounding landscape was. Yet here was this gigantic monolith, disappearing into the red and black sky.

The majority of the lower reaches of the mountain were covered in buildings, the same red-brown of the soil and the rock. They seemed to have been carved directly into the mountain, and beautifully so. Windows and awnings with intricate designs that seemed to resemble leaves and flowers, and long switchback staircases straight as arrows. The travellers stared in awe.

The demons had begun to climb one of the staircases. Following behind was easy enough; years of scrambling up and down Mount Faa had given the human cultivators goat-like climbing skills. They passed multiple small buildings hewn directly into the rock, faces appearing and disappearing in the windows. There was no-one outside that they could see.

At last, they reached a particularly large building. They walked through the empty doorway, Gong Lau Yan leading, Wong Tang following at the rear.

It was even darker inside. Things moved and hissed in the darkness around them. Gou Dzing instinctively stepped in front of Gaam Yuk Ying, even though the other man hardly needed any looking after. Chan Bik and Cheng Baak-hap found each other's hands.

Their eyes adjusting, the group could just about make out the shape of a table, with several figures surrounding it, in the gloom ahead.

“Little Bik, could you create a little spark, please?” Gong Lau Yan asked. The girl did as she was told, clicking her fingers. A tiny light appeared.

Chan Bik swayed. “Ugh... Why is it so...” A trickle of blood crept from her nose.”

“Bik Bik, stop! Put the light away!” Cheng Baak-hap hurriedly staunched Chan Bik's nose with her sleeve. The room fell into almost complete darkness once more.

In the brief moment of time that Chan Bik maintained her light, Gaam Yuk Ying's gaze had swept the interior of the room. “Table. Five demons. They seem... important.”

“Why is that?” Maan Dzi King asked.

Gaam Yuk Ying didn't gift her with an answer.

“Can you see them, Ah Poh?” Gong Lau Yan interrupted the sudden air of tension.

“I can.” Wong Tang drew her pipe and polished it with her sleeve. “Little Gaam is correct. These... people seem to be important. We have to try to converse with them.”

She bowed lightly, and the others followed her lead, with varying degrees of formality. Hisses and croaks reached them from the table of demons.

“This is a waste of time,” Maan Dzi King muttered. “How are we supposed to communicate with them like this? We should have done more research and planning before-”

“We're looking for these people.” Cheng Baak-hap produced two pieces of paper and held them up in the direction of the demons. There was a faint squeaking noise, and a pale light washed over them.

A mound of faintly glowing mushrooms sat in the centre of the table, casting a pale blue glow over the room. As Gaam Yuk Ying had said, there were five demons seated around it.

One was pale as a ghost, and almost as insubstantial. It trembled as though a slight breeze might blow it away. Shapeless, it turned two huge and mournful eyes on the travellers. Otherwise, it had no other distinguishing features.

The demon sitting next to it was the most humanoid demon they had seen so far. It had fiercely red skin, small horns sprouting from its forehead, and long earlobes. It's bright red eyes watched them with apparent amusement.

The next demon was brown as soil. Its skin was as dry and cracked as the ground on the plains below. Somehow, it hurt to look at it.

The fourth demon was bright blue and frilly. Like a jellyfish, it seemed to be formed of layers and layers of diaphanous material that floated gently on an invisible current. It did not appear to have any eyes. In the pale light of the fungi, it glowed a little.

The last demon was round and pure black, with a pair of white circular eyes and a small gash of a mouth. Smoke-like tendrils drifted off it and vanished. The eyes expanded and contracted continuously.

They all examined the pages that Cheng Baak-hap held.

The two drawings were well-rendered, one showing a good likeness of a round woman with fluffy hair. The hair had been coloured bright red.

The other drawing was of a younger woman, with a pretty nose and mouth and eyes too big for her face.

The demons' eyes were riveted on this second drawing.