Ferenike 6 - Pursuit
Wu Gan tripped down a fifty meter dune, rolling ungainly like a desert spider until he came to a rest in the trough amid some golden flowers that smelled sharp and astringent.
"Ah!" He gasped, sand flying around him as the fourth Heavenstage Blood Path cultivator scrabbled to get back up and
flee. Red light rose above the dune behind him and his heart shuddered in primordial terror at the horrific roar that echoed down into the trough. That monster had followed him for
ten fucking li through the desert, a horrific storm of molten sand and blood pursuing him relentlessly from the City of Golden Bells. He had to return to his master!
An enormous presence descended and landed lightly upon the flowers in front of the kneeling Blood Path cultivator.
"Ho there! Going somewhere?" The
damned Flood Dragon expert said conversationally, hands held in a meditative mudra as his red hair blew in the wind of his passage.
"Fuuuuuuuck!" Wu Gan gasped as he scrabbled away.
Roaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar...
A rushing of wind and a massive impact kicked up a wave of sand, knocking Wu Gan over and choking him with fear. The monster was here.
He scrabbled away on hands and knees, screaming as red light filled the shaded trough.
There was a sharp
crack and the sand rippled under his hands, searing hot and steaming in the daylight. With a crash a small tree of red glass emerged from the desert and sharp pain ripped through him as some of its thorns pierced him! "Ahhh!" He screamed, wiggling like a trapped fish. Behind him in the reflection on the glass branches in his face he could see his pursuer, the roots of the tree emerging from its foot resting on the sands.
A devil, reincarnated to hunt him and his school down for his sins against Buddha. Its skull was a covered in a spiked helmet with a wide and round turtle shell brim, under which dark pits held its gaze and in its horrible mouth of fangs the fires of hell bloomed. Light roared around it, blooming from the gaps between its spiky armor, a flowing sheathe of terrifying robes of firey glass in the general shape of a Golden Devil Legionnaires travelling robes. On its shoulders rose a series of spikes, two of which held the heads of his allies, blood leaking from open mouths and dead tongues.
Under its feet the flowers burst into short lived flame and the sand liquified. In its hands it held a spear forged of Spirit Bronze and wound about with red glass on its haft, and one of their damned shields of the same bronze.
"Wu Gan." The devil spoke in a voice like a roaring inferno, his bowels loosening, and it walked closer. He whimpered.
It rounded the tree of glass he was pinned to like an insect, his blood darkened in the red light and staining the sand beneath the tree and stood before him. Jamming the butt of its spear into the sand it reached out and grabbed his face, pulling him close. He wailed as his flesh boiled and blistered away from his bones under its hellish heat.
"Where is the Leg Thief? Where is his master Zu Jing?" The devil asked.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Wu Gan screamed pitifully.
"Hahhhh." Ferenike sighed as she relaxed in the Spirit Oasis Spring, red semiprecious stones carved with arrays in the bottom of the pool providing a nice circulation to the qi infused water. Going at full strength like that still drained her, but damn if it wasn't fun to get her anger out on these Blood Path cultivators. Behind her the neatly folded forms of her clothing and a letter in a sealed travel box remained. She'd gotten a response from her Senior Xiao Yi. She would have to compose a response to his insights, and find a suitable wine to bolster his heart into action.
She inhaled the smokey Qi laced into the steam of the spring and felt her dantian grow that little bit more, feeling phantom pains of her skin stretching and tearing as her spine bent like a tree in a storm. Incremental painful progress over months, but incremental progress added up to a lot quicker than most might think. Especially when you were as patient as Ferenike was, her Dao-heart calm and tenacious.
Outside the small domed building containing the small personal spring she was using, one of many in the entire Oasis complex, she could hear the tolling and pealing of the bells which gave the City of Golden Bells its name. The place was home to a tiny sect called the Sacred Tone Keepers, and their jade embossed golden bells filled the air of the city with a richer Qi than one might find out in the desert. It was something of a resort town for cultivators actually, and the local magistrate chief had been horrified to discover her and Rencao's evidence of a Blood Path sect infiltrating her city.
Bad business that.
She sighed again, frustration bubbling before subsiding under patient contemplation. Her and her Flood Dragon travelling companion had discovered and dispatched five of them, all beneath her in Heavenstage but the two men she was looking for remained so far unfound. The best they had at the moment was that they were
close. In the region this city controlled. The two travelling cultivators had found a small mortal hamlet of perhaps a hundred denuded of life and crushed like a beast attack had passed through it, but that was a false conclusion. Careful examination revealed traces of corrupted blood and viscera, and a cook fire in the middle of the wreckage. All signs of Zu Jing's work.
A knock came on the door, a heavy
thump-thump. "May I share the water, O Lady Ferenike?" Flood Dragon Gong Rencao asked, tone whimsical.
She blinked, brain locking up for a moment.
"NO! You imbecile I'm naked in here! Go find your own pool dammit!" She said as she turned towards the door and shouted at him through it.
"...Worth a try. Ah well, my apologies." He said with a chuckle. The door thunked as he presumably sat against it. "I'll just sit out here in the cold then!"
She huffed irritably. "What do you want Gong Rencao?" She grumbled, sinking into the spring deeper.
"Well, I was walking past and found myself burdened with a curiosity and decided I would ask the source of it. Would you happen to be from one of the caravaning families that criss-cross your Clan's lands? The way you handle horses and your familiarity with the Turtle Tongue is familiar to me." He asked.
Ferenike sighed. Most people couldn't tell she wasn't directly from the Clan's core territories due to her hair and brassy skin. She was in a way mildly regretful there was little outward sign of her mother and father's people on her, but her family was the Legion now and she wore their colors like she used to wear her family's own blue and red.
"Insightful of you Senior. Did the thought of bedding an exotic nomad maiden tickle your fancy?" She asked archly. She hadn't completely forgiven the annoyance yet.
He snorted and chuckled. "No, I'm not that stupid. You're pretty in your own right." He said sincerely.
She sighed, crossing her arms on the lip of the pool and resting her chin on them as she stared at the door. "Hmmm, why ask then?" She prodded at him.
"I'm a traveler, as most Flood Dragons are, and the thought of a kindred wandering spirit amongst our allies is a comfort." He said, voice quiet.
Huh, that was...much more personal than she thought. She smiled slightly, annoyance dissipating.
"It is nice to travel with someone with a similar spirit. Was there anything else?" She asked him happily.
He chuckled. "Well I was perusing the drinks available in this fair city and a little bird gave me a lead to some interesting people down by the east end of the city in that towering stack of forges and butcheries leaning against the city wall. I got a strange little tale from them of an old mine that one master Spirit Blacksmith used to dig his ore from, about thirty
li from here to the north east, till a couple months back when the guy disappeared, apparently travelling to visit some relatives. Other locals near the mine have said the place has become dark and smells of blood. But given the seclusion of the place barely anyone goes there in any particular year. It would make a good hide out for someone to go to ground."
Ferenike's heart thudded in her chest. Zu Jing was close. Heat bubbled on her tongue and the water in the pool started to bubble violently. "Oh... fortune smiles upon us then. I was speaking to some of the tailors and rice farmers near the gates, and found tales of a strange man matching descriptions of the Leg Thief and a name. Jianxi Bai. And he let slip to a tailor he fancied that he was coming and going from a small town called Ling a few dozen
li to the east from here. And, he should be coming to the city tomorrow to pick up an order for a 'relative' of his."
"Ho? Good work. This is your quest, which do you want to seek first?" He asked through the door, tone anticipatory.
Ferenike's smile was sharp and vicious looking. "I think Jianxi first. Rip the last connection his master has to the outside world and force him to have to emerge from his den if he wants to hunt. We will meet Zu Jing in battle then as he flees his hide."
Gong Rencao laughed. They spent time plotting for another hour or so until left.
As he did he paused and through the door his voice carried. "You know Ferenike an idle thought occurs to this one. Perhaps it might help you to consider the limits of an enemy mind's desires for patience? A bit of old lore I remembered from a text on war I read once in Jingshen lands."
Ferenike's mind was already going a
li a minute as she processed the little nugget of insight he had inadvertently given with his advice. Her Qi soared and her dantian grew fiercely as she pondered within her mind, phantasmal glass hands beginning to shape a puppet of glass, a facsimile of Zu Jing that she could fill in with what she knew of him and in the depths of her mind patiently use as a tool to ferret out his secrets.
They waited in the sands outside the city. Here there were a pair of cliffs of sandstone, passing through the dunes and between them a road passed which led to the little village Jianxi would be travelling from. The sun beat high in the sky above and Ferenike waited on one of the cliffs, laying close to the stones as she waited. Gong Rencao was on the other prominence, sipping tea as he hid behind a rock. Even to Ferenike's powerful senses the man's aura was completely invisible and it was not possible to see or hear or even smell him from below with simple senses of the body. Rather impressive if she was honest.
Her mind shifted tracks as she saw a familiar man walking the road below, meandering at an easy pace. She could see the tension in his shoulders of a hunted man though.
Stronger now, eighth Heavenstage like her. She remembered the three lesser cultivators who had been disciples of the so called "Blood Tiger" as Zu Jing was now calling himself. Their bodies were in a storage ring she'd taken from Wu Gan, and she'd put Jianxi Bai and Zu Jing's into it as well when this was over. Thing would be damn near overfull but it would do.
Her heart beat, blood thickening into molten rivers, shimmering from her skin faintly. She surged forward and leapt for the other prominence and then as the red light exploded into being around her she bounced off of it with a sharp crack of shattering stone.
There was a crack of stone and a masculine grunt of effort and then a massive stone blocked one end of the road, slammed down by Gong Rencao as he settled on top of it with a laugh, his Qi restrained to the fifth Heavenstage.
Jianxi Bai looked up at Ferenike and grimaced. "Fucking you again!? May devils rip your eyes out and skin you and your lap dog!" He shouted as he leapt away from the molten impact crater she'd just punched into the road. She turned with a spin and leapt, spears of glass growing out in a forest from where she had impacted.
There was a puff of distorting Qi and then his hands were filled with a
disgusting three-sectioned staff made of bronze bones. Those were Gallius's leg bones bound with sinews! Anger made her scream, the walls of the cleft melting as she roared at him like a beast. His staff cracked against her spear as she lunged. But she had a dozen more and her passage ripped through the forest of red glass around them and she hurled them at him with kicks as she chased him down.
He raced for the edge of the forest and she grit her teeth. She took a great
breath, glass trees bending towards their mistress, and a massive well of Qi built behind her breastbone.
Boom!
Her exhalation of heat flashed the sand behind Jianxi to liquid as a glob of white hot glass shot over his head and landed behind him, forcing him to leap to the side and then Ferenike was
there. Clang! Her shield caught him in the ribs as she turned in the air over his leaping form and he smashed into the ground, forming a crater as blood burst from his mouth.
"No escape for you Leg Thief!" She roared as she stabbed down with her spear!
Crack!
His staff extended and slammed into the armor forming on her chest. The qi in it reacted with the hungry and explosive Qi in the butt end and she was flung away by a massive explosion, tumbling through the air nearly to the top of the cliffs again half a
li up. That was annoying, she'd be sporting bruises from that under her lamellar armor tomorrow. She hissed and then righted herself and looked down.
The man was hiding amongst the stones, a trail of blood leading her to his Qi and the faint glint of that
damned staff and she smiled. Pointing down towards his hiding place with her spear she pulled up on the qi in her veins, and they writhed as the little soldiers in her body readied their siege weapons in her minds eye. Veins bulged on her arm glowing brighter than the sun and then they
erupted from her in a rain of glass spears.
A horrific rain of molten glass and fantastically hot blood erased the rocks from existence, charring them to ash and then stabbing into Jianxi. Pinning him to the ground surrounded by a searing pool of liquid sand steaming in the daylight.
She fell now and as the earth claimed her she directed her fall to skip off the second cliff dive for the man. Her veins subsided, digging deep to grab her bones and muscles. Her strength redoubled once, then again, far beyond what her enhanced muscles and bones could already provide and as he screamed and twisted and ripped a badly burned arm free from hardening glass she
thrust.
His chest crumpled under the blow like paper and the interior of his shattered rib cage became a bonfire as she stood over him and Gong Rencao joined her with congratulations. Her distracted mind however did not take note of what he said, a well of satisfaction and growth overtaking her.
After months of waiting and planning and careful hunting, she was pleasantly satisfied.
One down, one to go.
Even if it took years.
Another
@occipitallobe! Like the last one please put this supplemental bonus onto Ferenike's cultivation this turn. I'll be having likely one more update for her fight with Zu Jing and then be moving onto the Teaching arc!
