Bo was walking as resolutely ahead as he could despite not really having a good idea of where he was going besides 'northwards'. That was all Shuang Que had given for direction and in the time since they had spoken he had not raised any objection to their course which followed the wide band of river they walked (and in Que's case, hobbled) along. Instead, Shuang Que seemed to have decided to instead give Bo the most useless or horrifying answers possible to his questions.

"How does Zhu'er know you?"

"We met each other a few times and became friends, I'm great with kids you see," Shuang Que said cheerily. "I drowned almost four hundred of them in my lake."

Bo frowned, "that's not a good joke."

"Never said it was a joke."

"... Hey Zhu'er come walk with me," Bo said, holding out his hand to her. He did not like this guy's tasteless joke.

"He's okay!" Zhu'er insisted.

Bo paused in his walk to move back to Zhu'er, taking her free hand to pull her after him. He did not walk so fast as to leave Shuang Que behind, just enough so if he felt Shuang Que was planning something, he could grab Zhu'er and run.

He had always been good at running.

In fact he had gotten a decent amount of coppers acting as a runner boy when he had wandered into a town, he remembered. He had been dirty and still weeping for his family, flinching at the sound of crackling flame. A few of the local merchants pitied him and hired him to run product around. He had left that town eventually without learning anyone's names, the winter had come and most people were bunkering down since it was suspected to be a very cold one.

Around them the land was relatively flat, a few hills and some scattered trees. The most prominent vegetation around was ankle-length grass, weeds, wild growing handgrouds that he had to carefully walk over to avoid tripping in their coilings of vines and roots. Further the grass was much taller, and the trees were more frequent.

Bo glanced over to the river with its peaceful flow and the beautiful uniform river stones littering the bottom, reeds at its banks still in the breezeless air. He looked at the water itself, the bottom of the river clear in its crystal water. Even the blood from the serpent far back had fully dispersed. He stopped, wary, seeing a monstrous yet small growling face sticking out from the riverbed.

"Why did you stop?" Shuang Que asked from behind.

"Look," Bo pointed at the thing in the water.

"That's a statue," Shuang Que said.

Bo squinted as he looked at the thing. It... was a statue. Unmoving, its stony form lined with a bit of river weed. Nearby it was a wooden door, half-rotten. Pieces of a wall. A wagon. What looked like a jumble of river stones were actually house tiles, crumbled and left at the bottom of a river. "Ah." He looked around them, at the short grass and the handgourds. Zhu'er muttered something.

"What is it?" Shuang Que was also looking into the river. "I don't see anything."

"There's an entire village in this river," Bo said, peering forward. As far as he could see, it seemed like the remains of the ruined town were all toppled into the water. He gestured at the low grass around them and then at the much taller grass further away. "Look, it's all mismatched. There was a town or village here and somehow it all ended up in the water. What happened?"

"Maybe a flood?" Shuang Que shrugged. "I don't know why this is important. Don't we have some place to go? Zhu'er, what are you looking at?"

"Rui told us all something. This is a place where things don't really die. So if an entire village fell into the river, where did all the people go?" Bo asked.

"Bo! Bo!" Zhu'er was speaking louder, pulling on his hand and pointing out towards the taller grass which shivered and bent as something approached very fast. Bo grabbed Zhu'er and started backing up quickly as the movement in the grass increased. Behind himself he heard the sound of water rapidly freezing. A long strange spear poked out from the grass, followed by a horse's head, its flesh pockmarked with scabs that leaked thick pus. The horse's legs trembled and yet still resolutely carried its form forward and its shriveled rider was tightly clutched to the body, its head pressed to the horse's broad neck while its hand was locked with a vice grip on the long spear. The rider's armor was moldering, giving the sweet smell of decay and rust from the tiny reddened metal loops.

Bo was about to yell when jagged shape of ice tore through the horse, ripping its head and part of its spine violently off in a shower of shattered melting pieces of ice and blood. The rider's head cried out as the horse's front legs gave out, then collapsing on its side.

"...This isn't... a demon or a moving corpse..." Shuang Que said, confusion and perhaps even fear coloring his words.

Bo crept close to the corpses and looked down at them and was immediately reminded of the old man fused to the wall in the First Palace. Not only were the rider's legs entirely missing, most of his chest had been entwined with the ragged remains of a saddle and the horse's hairless skin to the point it was hard to tell where the rider began or where the horse ended. The head's neck was a little too long, jutting out from the horse's to give the impression it was still a separate entity from the beast. There was some patchy fabric over the 'riders' back, with a barely visible... shape on it. It was too sun bleached for Bo to make out however. "This armor it's got is weird," he observed, poking tentatively at the rings of rusted metal.

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"Ab..."

"Did either of you say something?" Bo asked. Zhu'er shook her head.

"No, why?" Shuang Que was scanning their surroundings, one hand tightly gripping his walking staff. A chunk of river was still frozen behind him, small bugs crawling over the ice.

Bo stood up and backed away from the body, the blood mixing with the earth and grass beneath it. "Lets uh... keep going then," he had the feeling of eyes watching them and was getting increasingly uncomfortable at the thought of being watched by something he could not see.

"I don't have any problem with that," Shuang Que said, walking much faster abruptly to grab Zhu'er and forge on ahead. Zhu'er did not seem to mind terribly being carried like a sack of millet, a remarkable change from the feral creature he remembered, but Bo did mind greatly that some random unclean spirit was carrying around his boss's kid.

"You can't just grab her and walk away," Bo fumed, quickly catching up with the two. "I thought you were a cripple anyway! Why are you walking so fast?"

"I can not be a cripple if I want," Shuang Que revealed, sticking out his formerly bent leg to show a fixed one. "It's just easier to be one since it takes less effort for me."

"What does that mean?"

"Taking a less familiar form, even a tiny bit different, takes more energy. It might just be a tiny bit more, but it's still adds up over time," Shuang Que explained. "I'm not really in a state to expend a whole lot at the moment."

"Can you put me down?" Zhu'er asked, "you're kind of cold."

Shuang Que put her down as asked, and went back to hobbling, "sorry, I forgot about that."

"Zhu'er, how did you meet this guy anyway?" Bo asked again, looking down at the red haired child who was aggressively itching at her arm and batting aside the increasingly tall grass around them. Bo tried pushing some of the grass away to give her a clearer path, insects sometimes falling off from their perches.

"He stole Ji Ying when she was Baozi from me so I had to go after him!" She described in such a nonsensical phrase that Bo briefly wondered if her stunningly quick grasp of the language had failed her. What did she mean by 'Ji Ying when she was Baozi'? "Then he appeared again and tried drowning me, but we talked and now we're friends. It's okay now."

Bo moved so that he was standing between Shuang Que and Zhu'er, "you tried drowning her? I've heard of faces as thick as mud but you're on another level," Bo growled.

"I'm not going to deny it," Shuang Que replied with a guilty frown, looking down with his good eye. "I'm not a good person. I'm not even human. I'm... not proud of what I am."

"He apologized, he doesn't need to go," Zhu'er said quickly, tugging on Bo's hand. "He's okay now! He's helping!"

"Zhu'er! I don't know about you, but I probably wouldn't be okay with being friends with someone who tried to drown me! When did this happen? In Lang Lang's town?" Bo backed away from Shuang Que more, pulling Zhu'er with him. He did not trust the guy very much in the first place but now the not-joke from earlier was making more sense. Bo felt he probably should have taken it as a warning in the first place.

"Yeah, in Lang Lang's town," Shuang Que confirmed. "But listen, I'm honestly trying to help you. You don't need to trust me, you just need to let me get you up close enough to the mountain. Do you understand? That won't take too long."

Bo huffed, he did not trust Shuang Que but he had not actually done anything against them. In fact him putting down the horse-rider-thing was actually quite helpful. Zhu'er seemed to trust him too, but she was only eight or six and Bo was fairly sure that was not an age where someone's senses of other people's intentions were fully developed yet. He rubbed the scarring on his hand, thinking. "Dammit, if I at least had Ji Ying here I wouldn't have to worry about you freezing me to death or something behind my back."

Shuang Que suddenly stiffened. "...You're talking about the celestial maiden right?"

"What?"

"Ji Ying. She's dressed like a disciple of Lady Gu's sect. She's not human, you... didn't know that?" Shuang Que asked, bewildered.

"She used to be a pig!" Zhu'er offered.

The sunlight on the river looked like golden scales, a frog croaking nearby echoing in Bo's mind as he tried putting together the disparate pieces of information given. Zhu'er had not just been mixing up her words. She really did mean that Ji Ying used to be her pig Baozi. Suddenly his joke about Baozi being good as braised pork felt a little off color and disgusting to him. "So she was a celestial maiden and... sent to us?"

Shuang Que nodded, "yes but..." he paused as though suddenly uncomfortable with the subject. He took a deep breath before continuing, "but she's not that anymore. She got a new master."

Zhu'er's face turned into one of confusion, mimicking Bo's. "What? Ji Ying is... nice-ish..."

Bo wanted to shake his head at that statement but instead waited for Shuang Que to continue, folding his arms together.

"Ji Ying was going to take Zhu'er to... the thing, that thing that came in through the moonlight," Shuang Que said after a moment filled only with the sound of rustling grass and croaking frogs.

Baichan.

"N-no," Zhu'er shook her head. "She's, but she's not, she's a little mean but she wouldn't do that."

"I'm sorry but it's true."

Bo had never liked Ji Ying but had simply made the assumption she had just spent every day of her life drinking vinegar and poison to the point it had eaten at her heart. But Shuang Que was presenting a different option. She had never felt the need to be friendly because she was always going to betray them. "So all those strange things she did, was it just... why? Was that why she attacked Lang Lang?"

"I can't say," Shuang Que admitted quietly, "maybe it was just to slow you guys down a little bit in your journey. He wanted to get to the First Palace first."

Bo's heart ached with anger. "So it was all a trap all along! We walked right into it and now, and now... Rui, he's still there and Li! Li's stuck with them too, or maybe he escaped? I don't know!" He kicked at the ground, clutching his head. "How much was that bastard behind!? What was he gonna give that bitch!?"

"Her freedom. Celestial maidens or dolls don't have much willpower of their own except in rare circumstances, but even then they're still bound to the desires of gods. They can't fight it, although sometimes they can act out. The thing is, the Jade Prince told me that... that thing? It's got a strange idea of how it completes its deals. It's only really focused on it's 'family' right now." Shuang Que explained.

"Its family? Who?"

"That bride in the First Palace, and her-" Shuang Que pointed at Zhu'er, who was staring ahead in quiet shock and hurt before she realized she was being pointed at. "That's why you two need to get to that mountain."

Bo took a deep breath but his heart continued to burn. Before he could speak however, something else did.

"Ab..."

In a flash, he saw some vaguely familiar circular shapes appear in the air, and a bolt of fire sailed by, missing the group by an arm's length and catching upon the grass. Shuang Que turned around, pulling ice from the waters of the river as a shield as a thin body staggered towards them. It held a metal staff with a filthy glowing red jewel on top, and it wore a similar rusty metal ringed armor as it came close, a tattered stained tunic with a horned horse flapping in the heat-stoked breeze.