Shattered Lands: Book 8 of Painting the Mists

by Laplante, Patrick

  Pai Xiao was already gone. He was an avian demon now, soaring far above the clouds, trailing the blood masters as they returned to their monastery. His eyes glowed red with hatred.

  Cha Ming could berate himself all he wanted for not killing them earlier, but he couldn’t change what had already happened. Those thousand were dead, as was likely the case in many more cities. All he could do now was follow and save Mo Ling and anyone else they came across. That, and slaughter each and every blood master in the monastery they were taking her to.

  He would bury them along with the dead.

  Chapter 7: Culling

  Cha Ming followed the blood masters as they traveled toward their monastery. He kept a careful eye out on his surroundings as he flew across the skies. To his relief and grief, they didn’t stop at many villages like he’d thought they would. Then he realized it was because they’d already been there. Grieving parents lamented the passing of their children, while wives mourned the passing of their husbands and vice versa. Every village, without exception, was holding a mass funeral for their loved ones.

  The proceedings were rushed, almost frantic. These smaller villages had been hit even harder than Liaoning. Here, it wasn’t just cultivators that had been reaped but serfs as well. A tenth of the mortal serfs had been brutally murdered, leaving only bloody grass behind. Hundreds of thousands of souls had been lost in only a few days. Cha Ming’s anger mounted with each passing village.

  Two hundred miles later, they arrived. The Blood Master Monastery was a jagged building that jutted out of the lush plain it inhabited. No animals or demons dared approach it, for the place reeked of death and slaughter. It was a small building, enough to house a few thousand men. A large empty practice yard occupied the center of the complex. There, men fought bloody battles that would spell certain death for normal body cultivators. Fortunately for them, they weren’t normal; they were blood masters.

  The blood masters returned to their training the moment they arrived. Their leader dropped Mo Ling to the ground and took the bloody stone they’d collected to the tall building adjacent to the training grounds. Mo Ling was brought to another, smaller building by the black-robed man from the Spirit Temple. She was placed in a holding cell where she was restrained but otherwise unharmed. She was safe for now, so he waited.

  Hours passed as group after group of blood masters returned. At sunset, the skies seemed to weep tears of blood. Cha Ming knew that every team who returned meant hundreds of thousands more had died to the vicious and cruel men and women who lived here. There was only one thought he could take solace in: When he killed them, they’d never be able to harm anyone again.

  He waited an entire day before the last of the blood masters returned. Once the last had returned, the head of the monastery distributed small red beads to each of them. They immediately went to work using this concentrated blood vitality to cultivate blood arts and strengthen their cultivation. The strongest among them, the abbot of the monastery and a mid-grade-marrow-refining cultivator, did the same.

  An agonizingly slow day passed under Cha Ming’s watchful eye. He only moved when the man from the Spirit Temple—a medium, it turned out—entered Mo Ling’s holding cell. The man began preparing tools and glyphs he couldn’t understand, along with massive piles of sin crystals.

  There are ghosts down there, you know, Sun Wukong said. It’s probably best to do something about them.

  Cha Ming nodded. He’d never fought ghosts before, certainly not on such a massive scale.

  I only know the few formations I obtained from the Church of Justice back then, Cha Ming said. I’ll need to modify something.

  He took a few precious minutes to rearrange the elementary diagram in his mind, adding to it and expanding it using the many formation principles he’d learned over the years. The result was an early-core-grade grand formation. It was a mile wide and completely circular. From the previous formation he’d set up, he estimated that this new one would be able to detect ghosts below the resplendent realm. Do you think there are any stronger sprits down there?

  Doubtful, Sun Wukong answered. It’s not a full Spirit Temple, so there’s no need for them to spend so many resources spying. What will you do about messages and those trying to physically escape?

  I’ve learned a few tricks over the past hundred years, Cha Ming said. He took out the Space-Time Camera and held it toward the monastery. He fed a few top-grade spirit stones into the camera, which didn’t refuse the abundant offering after so long without. Then, he took careful aim before snapping a picture. A moving picture.

  I don’t have to take a still shot every time, he explained. I can simply freeze the boundaries, and the seal’s energy will only be depleted when they try to exit. Communication with the outside world will be impossible.

  Satisfied with his barrier, Cha Ming swooped down. He was an eagle now, and the eagle dive-bombed toward the blood monastery. Once it was five hundred meters away, it transformed back into Cha Ming, who threw out 360 formation flags with glowing white runes. There was no need to use top-grade spirit stones to feed it. He drew on Huxian’s light-based demonic qi and used it as ink instead. It infused the grand formation with power, which activated and revealed a hundred or so ghosts. The formation hadn’t been laid in secret, so the moment it activated, the monks panicked.

  “Intruder!” someone yelled. Bells tolled as members assembled in the square. Since time was of the essence, Cha Ming held out his Clear Sky Staff and rapidly extended it toward the building containing Mo Ling. It pierced through the roof, stabbing through the surprised medium’s chest with surgical precision. Cha Ming retracted the staff, using the movement to pull himself forward. Mo Ling screamed as he smashed through the roof, slapping the medium’s escaping spirit with a wave of creation qi. It screamed as it dissipated to nothingness.

  “Stay here,” Cha Ming, who was now Pai Xiao, said to Mo Ling. Seeing a familiar face, she let out a sigh of relief. Pai Xiao walked out of the room, large staff slung over his shoulder. The blood masters had all stopped their cultivation and swarmed into the courtyard.

  All the better to kill them in one fell swoop.

  “Abbot, he’s done something to our transmission jades,” one of the blood masters said. “We can’t send out any messages.”

  “Abbot,” another man said, “we tried to send out a messenger, but he couldn’t get past an invisible boundary ten feet outside the monastery.”

  The grandmaster ignored the men. Instead, he studied Cha Ming, who was calmly approaching them with a staff slung across his shoulder. “Who are you?” he asked calmly. “Why have you come here?”

  “Oh, I was just a nobody until recently,” Cha Ming said. “But then you decided to cull the countryside. It’s too bad you upset the wrong person.”

  “Oh?” the abbot said. He grinned, revealing a set of sharp, filed teeth. “And you alone will stop us? That’s very brave of you. I’ll be sure to take my time tasting that strong and delicious body of yours.”

  “You’re welcome to eat me if you can,” Cha Ming said. “Now, are you going to fight me one at a time or will you save me the effort and come all at once?”

  The abbot took out a black jade slip. He crushed it, and Cha Ming felt the blood in his body boil with excitement. The building behind the abbot blew apart, sending splinters of enchanted wood all around the courtyard. A large pool of blood vitality appeared as a whirlwind of bloody mist. The abbot brought his hands to the front as though praying. Then, he thrust them outward.

  The bloody mist split in two. Half of it shot into the majority of the monks, invading their bodies without permission. They didn’t rebel against the bloody energy but drank it in greedily. Their eyes glowed red, and large red veins spread out from their hearts, covering their entire bodies in an intricate meshwork of violent energy. Their strength soared, and in only three seconds, they began breaking through one at a time.

  Paff. Paff. Paff. The sound of breakthroughs echoed throughout the
courtyard. Though they were rushed breakthroughs and would have dire future ramifications, they were still significant increases in strength. Some of the weaker blood masters used the excess energy to shoot for a second breakthrough in the bone-forging realm. More pops filled the air as they closed the gap with their seniors.

  The second mass of bloody vitality didn’t shoot into these lesser monks. Instead, it shot into the abbot himself. The middle-marrow-refining cultivator channeled the energy into carefully prepared runes on his skin. Unlike the others, this man had clearly been preparing for the increase in power. His energy levels mounted chaotically, and just as the last of the junior monks finished stabilizing their condition, a sharp crack filled the air. The abbot broke through to late marrow refining.

  “We might have wasted more than half the blood essence we gathered due to rushing, but we can always get more,” the abbot said calmly. “Alas, how else are we to fight one like you, a person I can’t even begin to see through?”

  “Burn in hell,” Cha Ming said. As the men had been transforming, he hadn’t been idle. He’d covertly sent 512 combat sigils throughout the entire courtyard and connected them with blazing red qi. He connected the last line and poured most of his fire qi into the sigil network. The entire battlefield erupted in a sea of flames. The blood masters screamed as their skin and blood burned and boiled. They leaped at him with blades, staves, swords, and scythes while simultaneously using their blood arts to restrain his body’s movements.

  Cha Ming was unfazed by their sudden attack. He shrugged off their feeble attempts and swung out with his staff, striking dozens at a time with the giant pillar. The blow caused the space around the staff to warp and crackle. Despite many of those charging at him being marrow-refining cultivators, with dense reserves of vitality, not a single person survived the dreadful strike from the transcendent artifact.

  “Self-detonate!” the abbot ordered coldly. “Our leaders in hell will treat us well for our sacrifices today.”

  Unlike what Cha Ming had originally expected before coming, none of the blood masters were devils. It was as though being devilish was at odds with the art they practiced. Instead, every one of them had accumulated a thick ochre glow that rivalled that of the many devils he’d slain.

  Bodies exploded around Cha Ming at the abbot’s command. Some of them even pierced his qi shields and struck his body, eating deep pits into his skin and muscle. But why would Cha Ming, a peak-marrow-refining cultivator, care about mere flesh wounds? His skin and muscles regrew almost instantly.

  As the blood masters self-detonated, avoiding a certain death at the hands of Cha Ming’s formation, Cha Ming swung his staff at the abbot, who held up a peak-core treasure to defend. It shattered as soon as the Clear Sky Staff touched it. Crushing chaos burned away at the man’s blood vitality as his body stubbornly regenerated around the pillar. At first, the man grinned as he pulled himself forward while his wounds healed. After all, he was a marrow-refining cultivator, and a blood master at that. Killing him was nigh impossible.

  His grin soon faded, however, as his pool of blood vitality burned away with no end in sight.

  “I am invincible!” the abbot yelled. “I can’t be killed by a mere mortal!” He growled, and suddenly, his hands became sharp claws. His figure flickered as he pushed himself along the Clear Sky Staff and appeared before Cha Ming. He dug his claws deep into Cha Ming’s chest, and blood vitality began oozing out from the fresh wounds. It funneled into the blood master and began to heal him.

  “You think you can handle my power?” Cha Ming asked softly. “Drink it in, then. Drink it all.”

  He hadn’t wanted to waste time with the blood master, but the memories of the slain were fresh in his mind. He wanted the man to suffer, so he emptied his meridians of normal qi and filled them with something most people weren’t equipped to handle: destruction qi. His body regenerated as it broke apart bit by bit while delivering the qi to where the man’s claws were inserted. The abbot drank it in, and to his horror, the black energy quickly spread throughout his body like a poison. Black lines of destruction traveled into the abbot’s body. He pulled out his claws, but it was already too late. His body smoked and hissed as it fell apart, unable to regenerate from the intense destruction it suffered. The square grew silent as the abbot crumbled to ashes and the other blood masters that hadn’t self-detonated burned in the formation’s flames.

  “It’s done,” Cha Ming muttered. His assailants were dead, so he directed the formation to burn all other buildings and melt the stone in the monastery. The ghosts patrolling the area weren’t spared either. By the time he’d finished his work, all that was left of the place was the building containing Mo Ling. She sat down, holding her knees close to her body, crying, trembling, and coughing from all the smoke.

  Cha Ming banished the smoke with a wave of his hand and held out his other. “Come. We need to go.”

  She hesitated, then took it.

  “Is that really you, Pai Xiao?” she asked.

  The man might be their town’s hero, but she’d never heard of him being capable of unleashing such destruction. Where was the kindhearted man she knew, the one who liked helping people and building wonders?

  “Yes, it’s me,” Cha Ming said. “But don’t tell a soul what you saw today, all right? The consequences would be catastrophic for you, me, and Liaoning.”

  Mo Ling nodded.

  They walked out of the monastery hand in hand as the flames died down. Then, after setting fire to the last building, Cha Ming picked her up and flew off toward the South with a speed very few in the continent could match. Once he was fifty miles away, he stopped and set up a concealment formation. Then he built them a fire and summoned a shelter using creation qi and creation essence.

  “We’ll have to stay here for a few days,” Cha Ming said, warming his hands over the fire. A powerful presence was heading toward the monastery from not far away. “Someone powerful is out there, and we need to lie low to keep safe.”

  “Thank you,” Mo Ling said. No smile lit her face, and her gaze didn’t focus anywhere specific. Cha Ming could practically see the troubled thoughts rampaging through her innocent mind.

  Cha Ming, unsure of what to say, poked at the fire, sending sparks into the night sky. It was a starless night, with the moon hidden by a dense carpet of clouds. Minutes passed before finally, the young woman who’d survived when a thousand others had been killed and millions of mortals had been slain, began crying. The emotions she’d bottled up over the past two days emptied out in a few short minutes.

  When she was finished, the red-eyed girl looked up to Cha Ming, who’d continued stubbornly poking at the fire. “I can’t go back, can I?”

  Cha Ming shook his head. “No, you can’t. If you do, they’ll know you were involved. Not only would your family suffer, but your entire city might be slaughtered.” The South was a brutal place, far more brutal than he’d ever imagined until just a couple of days ago. “You’ll have to change your name and your identity. It probably wouldn’t hurt to dye your hair and change how you dress.”

  “And what about you?” Mo Ling asked. “Where will you go? You can’t go back either.”

  “I was going to leave anyway,” Cha Ming replied. “I’ll go to Ashes, the third-largest city in the Ji Kingdom.”

  “And you’ll be safe there?” Mo Ling asked, doing her best to hide her agitation.

  “Safe enough,” Cha Ming answered. Hearing Mo Ling’s stomach rumble, he sighed and summoned rations with creation qi like he’d done in the past. He did the same for water. She ate and drank in silence, but he could tell at a glance what thoughts were running through her mind. “I’ll take you with me,” he finally said. “For now.”

  The girl nodded. She ate what she could and fell asleep, leaving Cha Ming to keep watch. He cultivated as they waited, doing his best to ignore the sadness in his heart.

  Chapter 8: Icy Heart Pavilion

  Within an isolated chamber in the Red Dus
t Pavilion, Hong Xin sat on a lonely stage. She held a black-and-gold flute in her hands, the same flute she’d trained with at the Red Dust Pavilion. No, trained wasn’t the right word; she’d been broken there, and remade. Her passion had been dancing, and they’d taken that away from her, forbidden her from practicing it. Fortunately, all that remained from that painful time was the flute she’d hated with all her heart.

  These days, she enjoyed playing the flute. Like any other instrument, it was a tool. It played the music you wanted, but only as well as you could play. And she could play, and well. She wasn’t the best, of course—that would take decades of practice—but her songs could move hearts, break barriers, and soothe nerves. Currently, she was doing just that. Her fingers moved as she blew softly over the central mouthpiece, producing a soft whistle of a melody.

  What is the Icy Heart Pavilion, really? she thought as she played. Is it really just like the old Red Dust Pavilion, or have they changed their ways? Was it a terrible place like she imagined, or was it all in her head? Their members were older members of the Red Dust Pavilion who had undergone the same training as her, but did that mean they taught the same path? Things were different now. For one, they no longer had possession of the Frozen Heart Oath Stone. For another, they weren’t ruled by the same person, who’d go to great lengths to extract any bit of value from every young girl who entered their halls. Their current leader was an enigma to Hong Xin, one she hoped to figure out soon enough.

  How ironic it was that they were the ones who held the stone and used it. But what was she to do? Mistress Shan and the original teachers of the academy had personally broken many of their members. Even more young girls had been driven to their deaths for the sake of results. They had blood on their hands, and she wasn’t about to let murderers roam free. Wasn’t it a mercy that she spared their lives and put them to good use?