He remembered then that, despite the brief snack at the check point by the river, he had not fed in a while.

The Black Temple did not have a statue of the Empress of Hell like most others did. Instead it held a magnificent wall painting of the Empress of Hell floating above a massive crevice in the ground, from which stalks of grain and vigorous looking farm animals came out from. Her dark hair was done in loops that gave the impression of a rabbit’s ears, her feet floating above a river of mist and her magnificent clothing dirty and tattered around its edges by the numerous faintly depicted souls of the dead grasping towards her. Sluggish green light of the earliest hour of the morning cast a verdant glow near her feet.

Below the crevice was a depiction of the border to hell, the White Ash Desert, where sinners crawled on hands and knees on wind scoured dunes while the good and just rode upon boats to the Gardens. It was one of the more popular depictions of the journey to the afterlife in Western Kingdom poetry.

The scene below that Rui Yifu did not get to see, because Liu Xie had just socked him in the face.

It felt more like getting hit by wood than flesh and bone, Rui Yifu shrieked as his nose was flattened by the fist and he stumbled backwards. Here he had been hoping that running into a temple would give the legendary immortal some pause, but it in fact seemed to inspire a new vigor in him!

“My face! That wasn’t very polite of you at all!” Rui Yifu placed a hand over his nose to forcefully reset it.

“Why are you so upset over a cheap face?” Liu Xie asked.

“Cheap? It was quite a bit of effort to get it, I’ll have you know,” Rui Yifu replied, “also I can’t believe you would attack someone in a temple. I’m shocked the Beautiful Sister hasn’t ascended from the ground right now to strip your immortality from you.”

“You’re the one who ran here, knowing I would continue to pursue you,” Liu Xie began walking towards Rui Yifu. Rui Yifu summoned a few bright and sharp jade leaves on the ground where his blood had splattered, stabbing into Liu Xie’s boot. Liu Xie hissed and backed away, hopping on one foot briefly as he clutched his wounded foot. “And now you attack me too?”

“I don’t care about the gods, let them curse me,” Rui Yifu replied simply. They were only useful when they provided sanctuary, anything more was beyond them in Rui’s opinion. He tasted bitterness on his tongue, and it was not from blood.

Liu Xie finally set his foot back on the ground. He looked like a mess, there were burns and cuts on his clothes and body, and his odd sap like blood had oozed over his face and stuck his hair to it. Rui Yifu, much to his own disgust, likely did not look much better. His limbs were only staying functional due to him forcing them to, and he was not sure how much longer he could burn through his reserves of stolen energy before he had to make the choice between keeping his youthful looks or being able to walk.

“I haven’t even done anything wrong,” Rui Yifu continued, getting back to his feet. “You’re getting upset over a foreign wom-” Stars appeared in his eyes as he felt his face go numb from a fist colliding with his cheek, his head landing on the bloodied ground while a foot stomped on his back. Perfect, with the ambient flame in the temple and his own blood, he could just open a portal right here, slip back near the inn…

Clipclopclipclop

Both men turned their heads to the chubby fast moving bolt of pink and splotched black that was running as fast as its little trotters could go. It came to a tumbling stop before them before it hopped back onto its feet and began oinking in panic. It jumped up and down, pacing wildly back and forth, wheezing and trembling all the while.

“...Is that Baozi?” Rui Yifu asked.

“Yes…?” Liu Xie removed his boot from Rui Yifu’s back to instead just stare down at the pig in confusion.

Rui Yifu was also confused and got back to his feet to also look at the pig. Baozi was continuing to be noisy, hopping up and down while the two men turned to look at each other. It was strange to see a shadow without its owner, so where was Zhu'er?! Liu Xie’s face was suddenly full of terror, much like Rui Yifu felt. Unlike the time at the checkpoint, the only people Zhu'er had were two rather useless normal mortal humans, and he doubted the dog or Li would be much help in whatever situation had happened to bring Baozi running to them.

“I hope you can swim,” Rui Yifu said, wiping some blood from his face to draw inhuman seals within the air. The blood stuck to the air like paint, worming like a snake grasping its own tail as it grew larger and larger.

Liu Xie picked up the pig, “what are you doing?”

“Do you know how to get back to the inn?” Rui Yifu asked, “also why are you bringing Baozi?”

“Idony would get upset if I left him,” Liu Xie answered. “And no, I don’t.”

“I thought so, and personally flying swords don’t do it for me, so a portal it is.”

Liu Xie gazed upon the newly opened portal. It now resembled something like a giant black mirror with a thread thin red frame. His eyes narrowed, filled with suspicion, but Rui Yifu did not allow him the chance to say anything more before he shoved him inside. Rui Yifu then hopped inside himself.

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Cold water gushed around him, swallowing him up in the darkness. He summoned forth a small jade light, illuminating an area only a little bigger than his head. The vaguest shapes of massive creatures swam around them, as though blocked off by some invisible walls. Their movements sent ripples that could be felt through bones and yet did not move them at all. Liu Xie’s face looked freakishly false in the jade light, like an empty puppet with glass eyes, with black hair swirling around his head like oil.

Baozi was under his arm, bubbles emanating from its mouth.

Rui Yifu pointed forward, and then swam ahead, trusting Liu Xie to follow after him. The distance to the end point of the watery path was short, and he had always been a good swimmer. He kicked in the darkness up to an oddly small point of dim light. He floated in front of it for a moment. He had not thought of a specific location besides “close to” the inn, there was a small sluggish canal nearby and large puddles of suspicious water, but none that would make the exit so small. If it was not for the fact his hair would tangle around his fingers, he would scratch his head.

He turned around and could make out the shape of Liu Xie approaching, so he turned back to the light and stuck his arm through. His sleeve was pushed back allowing for rough clay to scratch his upper arm. Rui Yifu felt even more confused now. He bent his arm downwards in the dry air outside to feel a wooden floor, then he moved it closer in to feel glazed clay.

It was a jar!

The portal ended at the top of a damn jar!

What kind of joke was this? Rui Yifu thought to himself. He balled his hand into a fist and swung it down into the clay, shattering it. Abruptly the small portal expanded and Rui Yifu quickly dragged himself out and into the air. A soaked pig sailed over his head and Liu Xie was out too, flopping onto the ground quite a bit less gracefully than Rui Yifu.

Rui Yifu checked his face, touching around at it to make sure nothing had fallen out of place from getting punched and slapped around by an overly sensitive tree immortal.

“Master Rui!”

Li Baobao practically threw himself at Rui Yifu, wrapping his arms around him. Before he could even speak however, Liu Xie had already grabbed him and reeled the young man around to look at him. “Where’s Idony?” He asked.

Li Baobao’s eyes were wide and wet, and there was a large bruise forming on his jaw while blood trickled from his nose. “Some men stomped in to grab her. I… I tried fighting back but there were so many of them and I’m not very strong and then she threw Baozi out the window and they started beating her too and Bo came in and ohheavenshe’sbleedingeverywhereandigotthebloodtostopbutheisn’twakingu-”

Suddenly Bo came stumbling out of the inn room, nearly ramming into the wall on the other side. His face was almost completely covered in bandages and stained with blood. “Those… pricks… coming out of nowhere. My head’s spinning….” he jerked his head around and his body nearly fell over. “Zhu'er was stolen!” He said, snorting up blood. “...Did they get you guys too?! Boss?!”

Rui Yifu pulled Li Baobao back to himself, since Liu Xie was standing completely still with a blank look on his face. He then pulled Li Baobao with him as he walked over to grab Bo by his arm, dragging both with him back into the inn room and leaving Liu Xie outside alone.

A sick feeling filled him when he noticed the blood smears on the floor. One had pooled out, larger than his hand, while another was swipes of blood, small hand prints, and a doll. He had only just bought the doll for her, the way her eyes had shined so brightly reminded him of his own daughter…

Here he was, losing another child.

He quickly collected himself. He had not lost her, not yet. With one hand holding the trembling young man up, he reached into his sleeve and pulled out a coin with a cage carved into it. “Did the men say anything? Make any demands?” They could not have taken Idony far, he believed. How long had they been gone?

“Uhm, uhm,” Li Baobao was sweating in fear and worry, “something about demons and sacrifices and and… that they were sorry.” His drifted down to the coin, “wh-what is that?”

“A little charm I took from a Fish Person long ago,” Rui Yifu answered, flipping it through his hand. “Since they do not use the Flames or qi in their creations, they tend to have interesting contraptions that do not work as traditional spiritual items do. There’s a second one that I gave to Idony, the charms are connected so no matter how far apart they are, they can provide a general direction of where the other is.”

“How?” Bo burbled from near the ground.

“It’d be a waste to teach you,” Rui Yifu replied sharply.

“So you’re just going to let me bleed to death, you crossdressing cutsleeve dick sucking-”

“How do you know how to use it?” Liu Xie finally spoke as he entered the room although his face had not changed in expression at all. He was soaking wet yet the chill did not seem to bother him. His eyes just stared blankly ahead. Baozi had staggered over and collapsed by his feet, softly snoring. The poor thing was probably exhausted after its journey and the quick swim in the water. “Fish People aren’t exactly the most open and accepting groups to foreign scholars.”

“It’s not so hard that an intelligent person, like myself, cannot figure it out,” Rui Yifu replied. He tossed the charm coin into the air, where it spun rapidly above them. He held out his sleeve below it. It spun and spun and spun, turning more and more red and distorted. When the distance was far enough, it could create the phantasmal image of a map. But it was taking much longer than usual. He had never seen it glow so red.

It spun. And spun. And spun. Gradually it flattened, stretching out.

His confidence shattered just as the charm itself exploded into multiple tiny little pieces, falling to the ground as inert bits of metal.

“...Is it supposed to do that?” Bo asked.

Rui Yifu started picking up the pieces desperately, fingers trembling as he tried to fit them back together. But nothing would stick. Instead there was the lingering touch of something else. Something powerful and old. It had to be powerful and old. The items of Fish People were not as easily destroyed as the enchanted items of humans.

It was something that did not want to be followed.