Sitting on the back of a gigantic spiritual tiger as it tore across the countryside was a new experience. Yuen Muk had ridden a horse once or twice as a child, and he had experienced the occasional privilege of being carried by his Master. Then there were the times when, playing around, Gaam Yuk Ying had picked him up and run while carrying him.
This was different from all of those experiences. Unlike a horse, where the back would stay relatively flat, a tiger’s back muscles tensed and stretched, and the shoulders and hips see-sawed slightly up and down with each spring. Yuen Muk flattened himself, clinging to the thick fur and skin around Gaam Bing’s neck, to prevent himself being blown or thrown off.
The route to Tsun Dzan would take them down from the mountains, and across the wide plains thick with silvergrass, to where the temple stood not far from the eastern coast…
Gaam Bing changed direction at the same time that Yuen Muk smelt the faint stench of blood and ash coming from a little way south of where they were headed.
“Mou Dang Sect?” Yuen Muk squinted into the distance. They were still too far away to see much, but the smell seemed to be coming from the location of the main stronghold of the sect. Soon, plumes of smoke could be seen rising from between the mountain peaks, and there was no mistaking it.
Gaam Bing burst out into the jumble of red brick, green-roofed buildings that formed the Mou Dang Temple Complex to find it a seething mass of fighting figures. Demons and humans alike fought each other viciously, and equal numbers of corpse from both sides lay amongst the smouldering rubble.
On the one hand, it seemed like the most proficient cultivators of the sect had gone to Tsun Dzan, so the remaining Mou Dang disciples struggled against the demon horde. On the other, the demons seemed to have improved their martial prowess. A familiar demon seemed to be directing the soldiers, a tall humanoid with red skin and large earlobes who caught sight of Yuen Muk and gave him a wicked grin.
The demon ducked, just in time, as another couple of familiar figures flashed overhead.
The first was a young woman, with a pretty nose and mouth, and staring eyes far too large for her face. Teem Djeung Baak whooped wildly as she dodged and weaved between the battling humans and demons, red sparks trailing from her fingers.
Gaam Yuk Ying was a hair’s-breadth behind, swords in hands. He couldn’t properly swing Lo Fu Ngaa with the other fighters around, and Teem Djeung Baak was twisting about too much to be properly skewered by Yiu Tsing.
Reaching the middle of the courtyard, Teem Djeung Baak whirled to face Gaam Yuk Ying. His swords closed on her throat.
“Bang!” she said.
The courtyard exploded.
Temporarily blinded, Yuen Muk immediately reached out with his internal energy, feeling the scorched earth. Gaam Yuk Ying had thrown himself clear at the last moment, and as Teem Djeung Baak, chaos achieved, leapt lightly away from the ruined temple, he landed beside Yuen Muk.
“I’m going after her.”
“Me too.” Chan Bik hopped past and disappeared into the woods so rapidly that she barely registered as a blur even to Yuen Muk’s vision.
Yuen Muk had barely nodded when Gaam Yuk Ying and his Master flashed away after the two women. Recovering his vision, bit by bit, he took in the situation. Dozens of humans and demons lay dead and dying, hit by Teem Djeung Baak’s explosive attack. Those on the edges of the blast looked dazed, but further into the collection of buildings, demons and humans continued to fight. Those demons who weren’t fighting were scooping up food and weapons.
The red-skinned demon had managed to avoid the damage and had joined the plundering work, retrieving weapons from bodies. If the cultivator he was trying to loot was not fully dead, he would place his finger on their forehead, and within a few moments, the human was visibly wrinkled and aged and definitely dead.
Yuen Muk formed a fist and punched upwards.
A large fist of earth rose out of the ruins of the courtyard and caught the demon in the back, sending him flying into the surrounding forest. At the sight of their leader being carelessly tossed like a doll, the demons immediately turned and fled, disappearing into the woods after him. Bleeding, exhausted, the surviving cultivators of Mou Dang watched them go.
In tiger form, Gaam Bing was equal in speed to Chan Bik. Gaam Yuk Ying rode with practised ease on his master’s back, dodging low branches as the trio hurtled between the cedar and plane trees populating the rocky woodlands.
Gaam Bing’s and Chan Bik’s feet barely skimmed the quartz-rich stones as they rushed further and further.
“Why haven’t we caught her yet?” Chan Bik demanded. Gaam Bing’s expression was growing darker by the moment. Suddenly, he skidded to a halt, kicking shards of rhyolitic rock into the air.
“Master… Father?”
“WHERE DID SHE GO?” Chan Bik screamed, vanishing amongst the trees.
“Her energy has disappeared,” said Gaam Bing. He and his disciple listened to the distant sounds of Chan Bik screaming and wildly attacking the vegetation.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Disappeared?”
“I don’t understand it myself.”
They trotted on until they reached a clearing in the woods.
The clearing was an extremely fresh one. Huge trees had been reduced to smouldering stumps, the understorey scorched to the earth. Chan Bik sat amongst the destruction, screaming violently as she beat her hands against the ground, leaving gouges in the rocky soil.
“WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS SHE?”
Silently, Gaam Bing walked further into the woods, sniffing the air. He moved in ever decreasing circles, until he was pacing around and around three large trees. Hopping to the ground, Gaam Yuk Ying began searching these trees too. When Chan Bik, fists bruised, finally joined them, she watched their movements with confusion.
“What are you doing?”
“This is where her traces end,” growled Gaam Bing. “Do feel that?”
“It’s uncomfortable,” Gaam Yuk Ying said, eyes narrowed. He prodded at thin air with a finger, frowning. Chan Bik experimentally waved her hand through the same patch of air.
“What the hell? What is that? It feels so… weird. Like… I can’t even explain it.” She withdrew her hand and clutched her stomach with it. “Why do I feel so nauseous?”
Gaam Bing sniffed the air again, but did not come any closer. “It seems we will not learn anything else here. We should return.”
Reluctantly, Chan Bik followed Gaam Yuk Ying and Gaam Bing as they headed back to the Mou Dang temple complex. The demons were now long gone, and Yuen Muk was energetically directing rescue and retrieval operations. It was clear now that the Mou Dang disciples present were generally the younger and lower cultivation practitioners. They seemed relieved to have someone in charge.
Yuen Muk was bellowing orders from where he crouched over an older man, pale with blood loss, who lay on a makeshift bed amidst the wreckage of the courtyard. Gaam Yuk Ying landed neatly beside him, rolling up his sleeves as he did.
“Press here,” Yuen Muk ordered immediately, jumping up as Gaam Yuk Ying took his place. “Don’t release pressure. You there, we need more emergency beds here. Move the less injured to a more comfortable place, bring the seriously wounded here.”
“Did they know?” muttered the man whose ribs were being held together by Gaam Yuk Ying. “They must have known. What was that woman? She didn’t look like a demon…”
He coughed wetly, blood leaking from his lips. His lung must have been pierced.
“Chan Si-mui, I’ll need you to cauterise some of the wounds, I can’t treat them all.” Yuen Muk returned to Gaam Yuk Ying’s side. “Yuk Ying, find out if any of their doctors or healers are still here.”
Gaam Yuk Ying disappeared amongst the jumble of temples and returned quickly with a couple of junior doctors, one unceremoniously bundled under each arm. Meanwhile, Gaam Bing was lending a paw to shift fallen walls and pillars, much to the distinct alarm of the Mou Dang disciples. When most of the debris had been moved, he took a huge leap over everyone’s heads and vanished into the east.
Teeth clenched, Chan Bik pressed her glowing white fingertips to open wounds, her face turning green at the scent of burning flesh and the agonised screams of the wounded. Gaam Yuk Ying held the patients down as they struggled against the pain.
Yuen Muk, sweat dripping down his nose, focused his inner energy through his hands into the deep wound at the man’s side.
“You must be Dzik Suet’s replacement,” the man gasped. His lips, where they weren’t dyed with blood, were turning blue.
“I apologise for my lack of experience,” Yuen Muk replied sincerely.
The man laughed weakly. “We do what we can…”
Yuen Muk felt sections of muscle knit back together, wishing desperately that he had finished learning the acupuncture points in the chest before he had arrived. A moment later, he felt something else below his hands, an energy that was not his.
The man was circulating his own energy. To Yuen Muk, it felt as though something were spinning slowly below his fingers, and he knew this was the Yam-yeung Arts of the Mou Dang Sect. It was fascinating to observe, light chasing the dark chasing the light, but he refocused his efforts. At last, the wound was closed and the bleeding had stopped, but the man was still pale as death and Yuen Muk was shaking with the unfamiliar effort.
With a wordless bow to his patient, he turned to the next person who had been laid out for emergency treatment. She was dead.
Numbly, he moved to the next, a girl little more than a child, who had her hands clamped to her throat. Blood dripped continuously between her fingers. Her chest rose and fell in sharp bursts, and he could see the whites of her eyes as she turned them fearfully towards him. “Si-hing… Help…”
Dizzy, he placed his hands over hers and began to channel his energy. He almost fainted immediately.
“Bik Si-mui, go help him,” Gaam Yuk Ying said, pushing her lightly.
She stumbled, confused. “But he said-”
“He’s low on energy. Give him some of yours. Fire begets Earth. I can’t…”
“Metal exploits Earth,” she murmured, dimly, as she hurried away. Gaam Yuk Ying turned to a disciple with a rusty chunk of metal stabbed completely through the muscle of his calf, and removed it with surgical precision. One of the Mou Dang junior doctors immediately pounced on the wound with poultices and bandages.
They worked on. Even with Chan Bik supplying Fire hei that Yuen Muk could transform into Earth energy, they quickly ran dry.
Before long, Gaam Bing reappeared from the east in human form, two Elders of the Mou Dang Sect by his side. At the sight of the destruction, one turned back immediately, rushing away in the direction they had come. The other landed in the remains of the courtyard, catching sight of the man that Yuen Muk had first treated.
“Elder Dzuk!”
“Master Laan…”
They conversed in hushed tones, the injured Elder Dzuk speaking slowly and painfully. Occasionally they would turn and look at Yuen Muk, slumped, blank-eyed, against the cracked steps that led to the next temple building, or Chan Bik, trying desperately to channel her energy into her fingers, or Gaam Yuk Ying, coldly and efficiently continuing to remove shrapnel from where they were embedded into people’s bodies.
They didn’t dare take more than a glance at Gaam Bing.
Soon, the distant forms of a large group of people could be seen rushing through the mountain passes to reach Mou Dang. From their black and white robes, and the energy exuding from them, this had to be the party that was dispatched to attack Tsun Dzan.
Master Laan rose to meet them, and not a word was spoken as the cultivators of Mou Dang began gathering up the survivors, ferrying the injured who had been treated to more comfortable locations, tending to those who still needed tending to.
Yuen Muk tried to focus as Master Laan approached and bowed stiffly to him. “Many thanks for your assistance. Will you come this way? We will have a place for you to rest and recover your strength. For your companions too.”
Chan Bik drifted bonelessly over without a second thought. Gaam Yuk Ying, however, looked out towards the alpine woods where Teem Djeung Baak disappeared. His silvery eyes met Yuen Muk’s with a hint of indecision.
“Stay a moment, Yuk Ying.”
A pause, then a curt nod. Gaam Yuk Ying helped Yuen Muk to his feet, the taller man leaning gratefully on his lover’s shoulder, and took Chan Bik’s hand. Master Laan thought to offer some help, but closed his mouth before any words could come out.
Gaam Yuk Ying led his lover and his friend carefully, proudly, without the slightest expression of exertion, up the cracked quartz steps to a place where they could rest.