The argument had somehow continued long into the morning despite Bo complaining repeatedly of the ache in his side and Li Baobao’s own head feeling like it might spill its contents out. While the healing herbs and incantations had fixed any actual broken bones or split skin he still felt their dull throb in his body.

Or maybe the argument was just taking its toll on him.

“They said nothing! I don’t know where they were going!” Bo yelled at Rui Yifu. “Did the fact they fucking cracked my head and left me and Baobao to die not register in your head?”

“You just said they were asking for apologies!” Rui Yifu snapped back while using his fan to swipe at Bo’s face only to narrowly miss. He picked up the water container beside him to take a swig before he continued. “What were you doing anyway!? A few old men shouldn’t be trouble for an ugly attack dog!”

“Th-there were some younger men-” Li Baobao tried to interject but Liu Xie stomped his foot and pointed at Rui Yifu.

“This is your fault,” he said, although his voice sounded dead.

“How is it my fault? Look at your dog!”

“I didn’t fucking invite them!” Bo screamed. “This isn’t my fault! I got hit too!”

“You should have done more! Now Zhu'er is missing.” Rui Yifu snarled. “Possibly dead because you were off pulling a quick one, right? Is that what you were doing?”

Bo looked incensed, “I was NOT! I was watching you two fight! Why were you fighting!?”

“YOU WERE FOLLOWING US?” Rui Yifu’s voice reached an impressive pitch given how deep it typically was. “YOU LEFT THE BUILDING TO FOLLOW US DURING OUR DISCUSSION?”

Li Baobao blinked as a thought sparked to life in his aching head, “w-wai-”

“Yeah!” Bo shouted, “I saw you cut off his head!”

Liu Xie was reeling next to the wall. “Possibly dead, possibly dead… Eona, Eona… Eona... “ he leaned heavily against the wall, his fingers fidgeting with the ribbon at the end of his hair, fraying some of its threads. “Everything for nothing… Eona, I'm so sorry.” He slumped downwards with his head bowed.

“Yes I did cut off his head, look he’s fine!” Rui Yifu gestured at the quiet immortal with his fan. “If you were watching you’d know he also tried to kill me!”

“Everyone please li-”

“I’d try pushing your face into the mud too if you insulted my woman!”

“I never did! I suggested a possibility!”

“And then you two were trying to kill each other!”

“Please, I have-”

“Where was his loyal dog, hmmm? Too scared to come nip at my heels?”

The table suddenly smashed into the wall, exploding into a hundred splintering pieces. Liu Xie stood where the table once was as he looked at the two arguers. “Let Li Baobao talk,” he spoke quietly. Bo bit his lip to contain a remark while Rui Yifu began fanning himself while looking at Li Baobao, giving him a slight nod to begin.

With all eyes on him, Li Baobao wanted to be a mouse and scurry away. “W-well, I was… thinking… well, I, uh… hm…” the words were lurking at the back of his tongue.

“C’mon, say it,” Bo demanded. “What do you have to say? Huh?”

“Don’t be rude,” Rui Yifu hissed, but then suddenly he was very close to Li Baobao, staring down at him with a sharp predatory glare in his eyes that made him shiver.

“I was, uh, uhhh… er… well… I was thinking,” he began slowly as he reeled the words forward. “That… uh… they didn’t just appear inside. I remember hearing steps in the hall and the door opening so they had to have come inside the normal way.”

“Or a window,” Bo mumbled.

“Someone had to have seen them, ri-right? In a place like this though I think it… might be difficult to just ask but…” he reached into his sleeve and pulled out a worn looking bag, a gift from his brother before he left. There were very intricate yet tiny characters sewn into it. He could not make out any of the words himself. It was actually an item from a foreign land, said to hold anything that could fit through its opening. Rui Yifu’s eyes brightened a bit. Li Baobao reached inside and grabbed the first thing he felt. He pulled out two shiny round red gems.

Rui Yifu’s eyes seemed to get even brighter, “rubies!” He snapped his fan shut. “Oh Master Li, you’re certainly clever.”

“Clever, what? What are you going to do?” Bo asked in confusion.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Li Baobao got to his feet while still holding the rubies. “We need to talk to the inn owner. ‘Honest discussion is greased by a show of generosity’” he quoted what he remembered from the numerous pages on the Bridgewater Sage he read when younger. Somehow remembering the quotations made him feel a little better.

But only a little.

The group went down from their room to the bustling lower floor of the inn which was already full of nervous people asking for food, rooms, young men of different gangs flashing knives or threats, and the grumpy wizened innkeeper sitting behind a small booth scolding a cooking girl with one hand while the other knocked against the wood of the booth.

“How did you manage to burn the glaze off!?”

“I-I’m sorry sir…”

Li Baobao leaned a little against the booth, with the other three men standing behind him. The innkeeper turned his head briefly to look at the group, “go and find a girl to talk to. Can’t you see I’m busy?” He snarled before turning back to the cowering cooking girl.

Li Baobao felt Bo push him forward a half step, “w-we want to ask some questions…”

“Not here to answer questions,” the innkeeper said. “Now go!”

A strange metallic rattling noise started intruding on Li Baobao’s ear and he turned to see Liu Xie holding his sheathed sword which seemed to be shaking on its own. He quickly pushed Liu Xie’s wrists down as panic filled him, “d-don’t! We don’t want trouble!” he spoke.

The innkeeper noticed the sword however and harrumphed, “don’t think this isn’t my first time being threatened. I can snap my fingers and you’ll find out how I’ve survived this business for so long-” as he spoke, Li Baobao reached over and pressed the two rubies into the man’s thin hands. The old man looked down, then looked back up, then back at his hand.

Li Baobao reached back into his little pouch and pulled out three more objects that he did not even take the time to look at before he put them into the man’s hands. A clear shining green gem, a dark blue one, and finally a thick gold coin that weighed his hand terribly before he had handed it over. The old man’s eyes widened and he waved the cooking girl away as he carefully placed his new goods into his sleeves.

“What do you want to know?” The innkeeper asked in a low voice nearly lost amongst the chatter of the people around them.

“Last night, several men came into our inn room and attacked us. They took away a little girl we had with us,” Li Baobao explained. “Do you know anything about the men or where they may have taken her?”

The innkeeper looked around them to make sure no one was too close, then bidded them to lean towards him. He spoke in a near whisper, “ever since the king possibly died, things have gone completely mad in this Kingdom. We, in the Free Cities, are surprisingly lucky. Yeah the families and ‘associations’ may cover the streets in blood every few years but it’s nothing you can’t handle after a bit… but right now half the royal army has deserted and turned to banditry and strange spirits have started stalking roads outside of towns at night. I heard even Lady Gu herself had to descend from her mountain to cleanse a city past the Black Snow Forest and Lord Song-”

“This isn’t telling us anything,” Liu Xie spoke quietly. He had made a face at the mention of the famous poet, warrior, and musician Lord Song.

“Shhh! I’m getting there. You don’t wanna hear you can leave!” The innkeeper spoke before he continued on, “we thought we were safe. But then people started vanishing. First it was just field laborers and foreigners, those who wouldn’t be missed, then women started vanishing. I heard some fortune teller recently passed through and declared it to be the work of a demon… and then things got worse. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard she gave a ‘solution’ to the problem. Building demon altars and sacrificing another in the place of any relatives of yours who might become potential victims.”

“That’s madness!” Rui Yifu gasped, “a demon altar will only assuage it for so long, if you’re lucky! Usually those just attract more malign spirits and become places for demons and the like to feed! It's basically asking for malevolent ghosts and spirits to start haunting an area.”

The innkeeper nodded, “it’s terrible, right? Men going around at night searching for girls to kidnap to protect their own. Usually they target travelers, orphans, beggars… ones who won’t be missed. That might be what happened to yours.”

“Yet you heard and knew nothing?” Liu Xie tipped his head.

The innkeeper shook his head, “I don’t live in this building. You don’t shit where you eat after all.”

“Would the servants know?” Rui Yifu asked.

“Most go to sleep in the kitchen,” the innkeeper answered, before scratching his chin like a thought had come to him.

“Oh! We can ask those girls passing out water last night,” Bo suggested.

The innkeeper looked confused, “what? We don’t hand out free water!”

“But last night there were some girls passing out water, putting the bottles next to the door…”

“Unless those girls didn’t actually work here,” Liu Xie muttered darkly, “and were simply marking targets…”

“That must have been why we came out from the jar,” Rui Yifu said. “It was the closest source of safe water.”

The innkeeper looked troubled. “...Someone may have bribed a few of my girls, two of them suddenly ordered an entire roasted hog from the place up the street. I got business to attend so I let them have it. Am I free from your prattling?” The innkeeper asked.

“Thank you for your time,” Li Baobao bowed politely and got a snort from the old man who moved away from them. He turned to look at the other men waiting for a suggestion of what to do next while he turned over the words of the man in his head. Sacrificing one for another, just like how his family had been doing. He felt uncomfortable.

Liu Xie spoke first, “Rui Yifu and Bo, you two should search north after you go talk to those girls.”

“What?” Bo cocked his head, “you want me to go with him?!”

“Disgusting, the dog probably hasn’t even bathed,” Rui Yifu sneered.

“You two make a lovely couple,” Liu Xie answered. “Besides, Bo you said you saw girls putting out water so you would be able to identify them. I’ll take Li Baobao and search south. We’ll meet again when the sun’s at the highest point in the sky. If demon altars are involved, north and south should be the two directions they usually stand in. The bird sees too much, the tortoise sees not enough…”

“With all respect boss, that sounds like babble.”

Liu Xie gave Bo a shrug in response before he began walking away from the others. Li Baobao realized he was meant to follow and ran after Liu Xie before he got stuck in the brewing argument of Rui Yifu and Bo.