The unanimous conclusion the disciples came to after investigation was that calling the village that abutted the barn a ghost town would be a horribly truthful description.

As they crept through another empty home, a chair flew across the room and shattered. Splinters battered Tai Yang, behind which Gu Hong cowered.

For the cultivators, it was merely the latest encounter with inexplicable instances of doors slamming closed, windows snapping shut, and ominous untraceable sounds assaulting them during their exploration.

Zhao chose not to mention that in every case the Myriad Voices technique tormented him with an accompanying ghastly visage or wail.

Through the thick cloud that wrapped the village, each house was an island in a bleak ocean.

Every glance outside was a reminder of the rose white smog that threatened to smother them completely. Threatening to leave only corpses hidden in its boundless sprawl.

Tendrils of vapor slunk in through cracks and crevices in walls until the separation between inside and outside was barely noticeable.

“I don’t think it's natural,” Gu Hong said as they entered another missing villager’s dwelling.

Grateful for the interruption of their somber search, Zhao humored the boy. “Why is that?”

Running a hand along the doorframe, the younger cultivator winced. “I can’t exactly explain it. The Qi just feels… resentful.”

To punctuate his comment, a specter silently burst from the wall snarling. Zhao watched it try to strangle Gu Hong, only to fail to make contact with the material plane. A second later, it vanished.

He shook his head, dispelling the Qi that had escaped his control to activate the Myriad Voices art. A more forceful and tightly controlled circulation caused the hallucinations to recede along with the distant howling.

Except one particularly lively outcry.

Che Fang turned his head. “Do you hear that?”

The four moved as if rehearsed, retracing their steps to a two story building that overlooked the mainstreet of the deserted village.

Whatever the source of the distress was, it crawled nearer every second.

After the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the cultivators watched a scene play out indistinctly from their vantage point.

A tall lanky figure dragged a more normal sized one behind it. Occasionally the captor turned to rain punishment on its victim when the incessant protests attracted its ire.

Despite the beatings, the vaguely recognizable voice pleaded with undisguised desperation relentlessly, brutalization only staying the begging long enough for anguish to overwhelm the fear keeping it silent.

Eyes wide, Gu Hong shared a realization shakily. “That sounds like Han Lee…”

Hiding from the danger outside, each of the cultivators immediately recognized the truth in his words. Zhao closed his eyes solemnly.

Presumably, the monster had found the merchant alone and broken on his cart.

“Damn it!” Tai Yang muttered bitterly.

Yet as the obscured duo drew closer to their hiding place and each party’s screamed words became clearer, an ugly picture took shape.

“Please, please stop, please!” Han Lee screeched. “I did all I could, I promise I did all I could!”

A resounding slap rang as the skeletal figure turned on its prisoner again. “You’re useless! You let them escape, and now I’ll be lucky if all I lose is face!”

A series of blows landed on Han Lee’s prone form, interspersed by obscenities, until the man’s crying turned to low whimpers.

“Do you know how much it cost me to give you those trinkets?!” the psychopath raved. “How immeasurably far away that ridiculous outfit came from?”

Tainted Qi seeped into the street as the aggressor’s rage boiled over. “You’ll be lucky if I let you keep your dog life after wasting all the effort I put into this! Now stop whining before I lose my patience.”

Watching the drama unfold, each of the spectators had a different reaction.

Tai Yang snarled.

Che Fang’s visage became a mask that conveyed an icy promise.

Gu Hong, still new to the world of cultivation, seemed shattered at the revelation that the traitor had been responsible for luring them out of the sect.

Finally, Zhao counterintuitively breathed a sigh of relief, feeling much better about their chances of survival as the puzzle began to resolve itself into a clearer picture.

“W-what do we do now?” the youngest amongst them asked anxiously, fidgeting in place as he avoided looking in the direction Han Lee and his captor had disappeared down.

“We follow them,” Che Fang said darkly.

Tai Yang added his own thoughts quickly. “Then we smash that prick’s head in.”

Zhao decided to allow them to drive the developments for now and gave an unasked assent before they slipped back out into the mist and after their targets.

The belligerent cultivator hauled Han Lee through the town without stopping, only breaking off the main road after leaving the buildings far behind.

Fearing being lost in the unnavigable whiteness again, Zhao drove their group closer than what he considered a safe distance from their target to ensure they did not lose sight of him.

The forest floor was littered with leaves, damp enough from condensation that the usual crisp noises of leaves crushed underfoot was replaced with the soft noise of rot being trampled.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Trees with dying branches grasped for sunlight around them, abruptly thinning in number after a few minutes of walking.

The ever present mist became thinner too, barring the sight at the center of the clearing where a crater in the ground revealed a massive cauldron belching an alabaster smoke up towards the sky. Presumably the source of their troubles.

Scattered on the trampled ground were the grisly remains of the villagers and their livestock; headless corpses and desecrated animal carcasses strewn about carelessly.

The perpetrator yanked Han Lee up by his hair, an ornamental knife appearing in his hand as he prepared to sacrifice another to his project.

Zhao motioned the group to advance in an attempt to stop the murder, but belatedly realized Gu Hong was frozen. The boy had fallen to his knees in shock.

When a shove to the shoulder was unable to rouse the pure soul from his trance, Zhao nonetheless pressed his two functional allies to surround the demonic cultivator as the man chanted ominously.

Creeping on the edge of the clearing while staying out of sight, Zhao settled behind a thick tree trunk right as a dreadful sound called his attention.

Above the cauldron, Han Lee’s throat was torn open with a wet gurgle that intermingled with the man’s dying moans.

Feeling numb, Zhao blinked away tears and swallowed bile.

He questioned what his solution to their situation was. Were they to kill the foreign cultivator as punishment for what he had done to the others?

There was a peculiar feeling in his stomach, like a hornet trapped in a jar that had been shaken relentlessly. Every time his peripherals scanned over the spoiled ground, the emotion’s buzzing intensified.

A frigid logic supported the urge towards violence. No matter what perspective Zhao took, the safest bet was to take the life before him.

The cultivator was guilty of crimes against humanity. He was acting in self defense. Jianghu demanded the story play out this way. That it was resolved with bloodshed.

Standing in contrast was everything Zhao had been taught on Earth.

All life was precious. Murder was inherently wrong.

Other people could wield violence. He could justify that in the abstract. But Zhao was not the type of person to raise his hand against another.

A hint of a sensation brushed against the back of his eyes.

Qi riled up in the pattern of the Myriad Voices offered to drop a carmine screen over his vision.

It occurred to Zhao that it would be like playing a video game, or watching a television show, or-

He clutched at his head.

The influence proffered by the spirit art was integrating into his own ideas seamlessly.

If it continued, Zhao wasn’t sure how he would be able to distinguish the technique’s influence over his own ideas.

There wasn’t time to delay. Already the villain was gutting Han Lee’s cadaver above his cauldron.

He had to. He just had to.

Zhao signaled his pair of accomplices, leading them as the trio shot forward with preternatural speed.

With a swipe of his blade, the demonic cultivator severed the tortured man’s head cleanly with superhuman strength. As it dropped into the pit, he slowly raised his gaze at the approach of the three Misty Cradle disciples.

Unperturbed, gnarled hands flashed a series of unfollowable signs before a crooked grin rent the surrounded man’s face.

“Fools!” he hissed. “Courting death- Shackles of the Damned!”

The bone white gas surrounding them twisted, chains weaving themselves from thin air and shooting towards the advancing men with inescapable accuracy.

In the instant before the chains connected, all three cultivators felt the power of a Foundation Establishment foe unleashed. Despair accompanied it.

Chilled metal bit into Zhao’s wrists and ankles, paralyzing him as the devilish spirit art wormed its way inside him, pulling his consciousness away from his body.

Struggling futilely, Zhao fully activated the Myriad Voices with a cycle of Qi. His last hope in the face of certain death.

It accomplished nothing, except to bring that odd feeling of a fragment inside him to the fringes of his mind.

As the pulling of the shackles became a tearing sensation in his mind, Zhao used that fragment to orient his fraying psyche and retreated in its imaginary direction as best as he could.

Weightlessness seemed to take hold, Zhao’s frantic hopelessness fading away as if dreamt by another. In its place came bewilderment, misery, and finally a rising torrent of rancor.

Zhao let the alien emotions envelop him as the kiss of the bindings receded like a memory lost.

---

Jiang Shu cackled at the naivete of the Misty Cradle Disciples before licking his lips in anticipation of their souls.

Greed bubbled up in him. Each of their bodies would be worth a bounty of a month’s worth of spirit stones.

The clear chime of spirits displaced from their bodies resounded.

Idly he wondered if his last prey had already expired, or if he would need to go track it down.

Casting a glance around the ritual grounds in search of the missing disciple saved his life, as he ducked under a whip of water that whistled overhead with enough strength to sever his mortal coil.

Wide-eyed, Jiang Shu turned on the new threat, only to stop dead at the sight of one of the ensnared boys seeming to have transformed into a vixen.

“Who dares lay a hand on this beauty’s descendent?” a beguiling voice asked as the odd superimposed figure looked down its nose at him.

Although he wanted to, Jiang Shu couldn’t muster a response under the crushing pressure of the woman’s cultivation.

From behind, a blow sent him reeling into the bloody filth on the ground, his vision catching a white eyed giant before he felt his knee crushed underneath the brute’s foot.

“Ara, look at this strapping young lad,” the seductress intoned. “Operating on muscle memory and piloted by overwhelming bloodlust.”

She chuckled, and Jiang Shu was granted respite as the behemoth froze in place. “And you, Zhao Mi, isn't it? Why don’t you tell auntie how you can still move.”

The other seemingly frozen disciple stiffened and then blinked rapidly, causing Jiang Shu’s eyes to bulge; how could all three of these puny Qi Condensation cultivators resist his technique?

With a frown, the Zhao fellow turned to regard the form of the overpowering cultivator with a whistle. “Wow, Ja Cob seems to be bedding a hell of a babe!”

That seemed to be the wrong answer, as Jiang Shu felt the woman’s cultivation bear down on the offending disciple, bringing the man to his knees.

“Such insolence!” she snapped before waving into the mist. “Come out little one… and don’t make the same mistake as Zhao Mi,” she added sweetly.

Though Jiang Shu couldn’t move, he heard the fourth disciple he was wondering about scramble around somewhere in the forest.

A young voice called out, “D-d-disciple greets… auntie?”

Pearlescent laughter resounded as the witch nodded. “Yes that’s right, now come here and let me show you something.”

The shuffling of feet gradually approached Jiang Shu’s prone form.

“See this cultivator here tiny Gu Hong?” Assent seemed to be given nonverbally as the woman’s lecture continued. “Let’s have some fun, shall we? I’ll hold him over the cauldron, and you slit his throat. Don’t worry about the details.”

Lacking a response, the heretofore enticing voice took on a dangerous note. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint auntie, would you?”

A moment passed, and then Jiang Shu felt shaking hands pull his own knife from limp fingers.

Whatever protests he wanted to give couldn’t escape his sealed mouth, and like this he found himself swung over the cauldron like one of the many villagers he had killed.

Soft hands gripped him tightly with strained knuckles, and Jiang Shu finally understood the heaven’s justice as his throat was slit messily.