bluedragonauthor

The Blue Dragon: Chapter 34

Added 2024-10-22 20:26:07 +0000 UTC

-- CHAPTER 34: Shen Wu --

****

‘I don’t get it.’

Aksel Andersen, you are not brought upon this world to ‘get it’.

‘Dude, you told me that I killed him.’

You did. He died. Knife straight to heart is quite the effective way of murdering someone.

‘Then how do you explain the fact that he’s standing right in front of me?’

Well I think I’ve figured out why they keep saying Shen Wu already found a supernatural path to immortality.

Although his face was familiar enough to recognize, the Warlord was not the same as I remembered him. Over a millennium ago, Zhu Wen had been roughly middle-aged. He’d carried a dad-bod belly but was otherwise healthy with reasonable musculature. He’d had some wrinkles by his eyes and graying temples, but most of his hair had been jet black. And his eyes had been hard, black coals filled with intent and glorious purpose.

The skin-clad skeleton with emaciated limbs before me had empty black pools of nothingness within its eye sockets. His crepey skin was ghost-white pale save for dull and discolored bruise marks that would never heal, and was saggy enough to flap with his movements. His white-gray hair was stringy and limp, both the hair on his head as well as his mustache and beard. His lips were pale and thin. Large yellow teeth hung loosely from shrunken gums. If it weren’t for the fact that the guy was standing up straight and holding his arms out, freakishly long yellow fingernails pointing at me, I would’ve thought the guy was dead.

In this case, he seemed… undead.

‘Resurrected.’

No, not resurrected; we’ve been over this already. He did not bring himself back to life, good as new. He’s reanimated himself through Earth magic, the same way he did to the Huodou giant dog.

‘Resurrected, reanimated, I don’t care. Why the fuck is Warlord Zhu Wen still here?!?’

Don’t you remember Dungeons & Dragons? He’s a lich, and I think you’ll find that he goes by the name ‘Shen Wu’ now.

‘Fuck, I should’ve known the guy wouldn’t be gone for good.’

Speaking of the devil, the undead bastard before me seemed on-guard, still holding his hands out and ready to fight. But when I continued to stand there stupidly without remotely attempting to attack him wearing nothing but dirt and leaves to cover my nudity (and indeed, I grabbed a big leaf stuck to my thigh and held it over my exposed junk), the ancient sorcerer finally dropped his hands and regarded me with a look of mild confusion.

“你和我记忆中的那个人不太一样” he stated uncertainly.

“Beg pardon?” I asked. “Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.”

Dong popped up on my shoulder and explained, “He said you’re different from the guy he remembers.”

“较小。较弱。不值得我花时间。”

“‘Smaller. Weaker. Not worth my time’,” Dong translated, giving me a helpless shrug.

Unlike everyone else meeting Dong for the first time, Shen Wu did not freak out at the sight of the little blue gecko. He merely acknowledged the little avatar’s presence and patiently waited for Dong to translate. But after exhaling a weary sigh (do reanimated corpses really need to breathe?), the ageless leader of the Cao Wei pursed his dry lips and then muttered in English, “You cannot be the same Liu Kang from Luoyang. You do not even speak Chinese.”

“That’s because I’m not,” I replied immediately. “You got the wrong guy. I’m not whoever you’re looking for. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just be heading back to my hotel and--”

“Dispose of him,” Shen Wu stated softly in English to his left, and from a dark patch of emptiness, several shadow tentacles suddenly burst forth straight at me.

“Whoa! Whoa!” I exclaimed, throwing up my hands defensively and instinctively summoning water barriers that blocked the magic shadows. The tentacles whirled and twisted to work their way around my defenses, but I kept my hands moving independently, warding off each of their attacks. And finally I crossed both hands across my chest in upwards curves, finishing with my arms extended like a capital letter ‘Y’, so that a seven-foot sphere of spiraling water streaks surrounded me like a globe of glowing blue droplets - exactly like the one that had been surrounding me and Hannah above the hot spring - that created an impenetrable barrier that completely prevented the tentacles from reaching me.

The tentacles withdrew and the Shadow Ninja stepped forward into the clearing, making himself visible in the moonlight that came down through the forest canopy. Now that I got a good look at him for the first time, I found that he reminded me of Raiden from Mortal Kombat, except with all black and gray clothing and a black conical hat. He scowled, looking distinctly pissed off as he tried to figure out how to penetrate my water sphere. And feeling confident for the first time, I actually winked at him.

Dude. You're winking at the guy who tried to invade your asshole with his tentacle. Though I suppose that would be another way to have supernatural sex.

Shen Wu sighed again and flicked his wrist.

Something grabbed my leg.

And then something grabbed my other leg.

Oh, shit.

The water globe around me wasn’t a perfect sphere. It would’ve been a perfect sphere had it extended all the way beneath me, but instead the barrier ended with a three-foot diameter circle around my feet. I was still standing on the forest floor, and muddy shackles had abruptly risen up to clamp around my feet.

You forgot he was an Earth Elemental, didn’t you?

‘I didn’t forget. And I got out of this last time, didn’t I? Now shut up and let me relax.’

Breathe in… Breathe out… Let go… Let go… The way of water has no beg-- “OWW!!!”

A massive earth tentacle had risen up from the ground beneath my feet within my protective globe and just smacked me in the head. I was dazed, the world around me spinning a bit. I had double-vision for the moment, so it looked like there were two earth tentacles right in front of me.

Then the tentacle smacked me in the head again.

Hard.

My world was filled with infinite darkness.

****

In a hole in the ground there lived a water elemental. It was a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a rat-demon-hole, and that means discomfort.

I was the poor, unfortunate water elemental presently living in the rat hole. Actually, an actual rat hole would’ve actually been more comfortable than the one I was actually in. This was more of a makeshift well dug into the underground basement of some long-abandoned shack in the middle of the woods, and I half expected my captor to appear at the narrow opening far above me, saying, ‘It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.’

My captor never said that, of course. Why the fuck would an ancient Chinese warlord ever watch The Silence of the Lambs? Of course, he wasn’t technically Warlord Zhu Wen anymore, nor was he Emperor Taizu of the Hou Liang Dynasty. Now he had styled himself “Shen Wu of the Cao Wei” - Rae hadn’t been kidding about how common it was for Chinese despots to give themselves high-and-mighty names and titles.

My stomach gurgled quite loudly. Again. I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious, and down here in the pit I had no concept of what time it was. It could still be nighttime. It could be morning. Days could’ve passed, and I wouldn’t even know it. But however long it had been, it had certainly been long enough to make me feel really, really hungry.

Now that I thought about it, a hose would actually be pretty nice. Although I’d done my best to brush off what I could, I was still naked and covered in dried dirt and leaves from my fall in the forest, and I could really use anything resembling a shower. Then again, there may have been a river or stream nearby, because the walls surrounding me were quite moist. Turning a hose on me down here would probably just turn my mud pit into an actual water well and put me at risk of drowning.

Drowning? You’re a water elemental, remember?

‘Does that mean I can’t drown?’

Yes, it means you can’t drown.

‘Oh! Cool! Is there anything else you can tell me about being a water elemental that might be helpful?’

Such as?

‘Such as… anything that would help get me out of this mess?’

Floating steps to walk your way up and out of this hole.

‘Something I can actually do right now.’

Summon a rushing wave of water to push you up and out of here.

‘Something I can actually DO while not currently powered-up with sex-energy.’

Umm… nothing I can think of at the moment.

‘Greaaat. Some all-knowing avatar of the great and powerful Azure Dragon you’re turning out to be.’

Hey! Don’t blame me for your lack of faith in your own abilities. Hannah’s right. You need to believe in yourself.

‘I believe that I can’t do this without being powered-up with sex-energy.’

Then you fucking shoulda fucked Magdalena when you had a chance! Or even Rae! She even warned you, ‘What if Shen Wu came busting in here right now?’

‘Fine! Fine. Everything’s my fault. I can’t summon my water abilities because I don’t have the proper faith in myself. I’m the idiot who disregarded the possibility of Shen Wu attacking us at the hotel. And I’m the moron who passed up Italian demigoddess pussy--’

As well as half-Chinese hottie virgin pussy…

‘-- to instead get into long, drawn-out conversations about whether or not we’d be having sex for the right reasons.’

Moral of the story: fuck first, ask questions later.

‘Uggghhh… Why do I even bother trying to talk to you? You’re absolutely useless.’

Hey, I’m doing my best here, bro.

‘Doing your best to do what? Get me laid?’

And I think I’ve been doing an excellent job of that!

‘Whatever happened to helping me on the quest for Faguang Long?’

I AM helping you on that quest too.

‘And how, exactly, are you doing that?’

The world works--

‘Works in mysterious ways, yeah, yeah, yeah. You keep saying that, but sometimes it feels like you haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re doing and are just winging your way through all of this.’

Of course I’m winging my way through all of this. We’re not in the past anymore, bruh. This isn’t a closed loop. I’m as in the dark about what’s going to happen next as you are.

I put my head into my hands, feeling even more lost and depressed now than I’d been when I first woke up in this hellhole. Hell, I felt even more lost and confused than when I’d first opened my eyes to find a half-Chinese girl with electric-blue hair in a disconnected pixie cut above my face and a massive anti-venom needle sticking out of my chest.

Back then, I knew that somebody was trying to kill me and basically nothing else. I’d been thrust into a terrifying universe of supernatural villains with the stress of making world-altering decisions, told it was my destiny to find four ancient relics to release The Golden Dragon and stop a great evil from coming. I’d been told that I was The Chosen One. And I’d believed it.

Now I wasn’t so sure.

The further and further along on this quest I’d gone, the more and more I’d questioned both the mission and my importance in it. First of all, there were apparently others with enough Shu Han blood purity to unlock the gates to the ancient relics. Further, I wasn’t even the right “Chosen One” to retrieve the Sword of Baihu. Ziyi was. And although some part of me had wondered whether or not finding Faguang Long was the right thing to do in the first place all along, a celestial Tiger Goddess herself had just told me flat out that putting such divine power into mortal hands was a bad idea. And now that I knew Shen Wu had gone out of his way to capture me, not kill me, I REALLY thought it was a bad idea to complete the quest and unleash The Golden Dragon upon the world.

It’s a sobering thought to believe the world is better off without you in it. Depressing.

Bro, you can’t think like that.

‘But what if it’s true? What if it’s NOT my destiny to release Faguang Long? What if the world IS better off without me in it? Or Ziyi? Then nobody would be able to get their hands on either the Sword of Baihu or Faguang Long. No Golden Dragon with the power to shape reality, no zombie plague. Everybody would be saved and life would go on.’

First of all, you’re right: There ARE others with enough Shu Han blood purity to unlock the gates to the ancient relics and ultimately find Faguang Long. So you dying would merely delay the bad guys and not necessarily save the day. Plus, you’d be thrusting some other innocent soul into a terrifying universe of supernatural villains with the stress of making world-altering decisions. And of course, you’d be dead. And Ziyi would probably be dead. And maybe even Hannah and Rae. Now I KNOW you don’t want ANY of those things to happen.

‘I don’t.’

Then stop fucking feeling sorry for yourself, get your ass up and outta the mud, and DO something about it.

‘Like what?’

Floating steps. Rushing wave to lift you up. Something. You just have to believe.

‘Easier said than done.’

****

I must have dozed off, because I was startled awake by the sound of a man angrily barking at me to wake up. The small circle at the bottom of my water well wasn’t wide enough to lie down in, so I’d been leaning against one of the muddy side walls and now had wet dirt crusted against my cheek. And I only had time to blink and begin to contemplate the merest fragment of an idea to ask what was going on before a shadow tentacle abruptly wrapped around my waist and then bodily yanked me up and out of the hole.

I had just started to consider bringing up my defensive ice armor to shield my skin against the icky, toxic burn of the tentacle when I was unceremoniously dumped onto the dirt floor of the shack. It was a simple structure, reminding me very much of a communal outhouse with a row of three toilet seats built atop a rectangular wooden base. And I fought the urge to retch as I realized that they must’ve been keeping me in the depths of a long-abandoned shit pit.

I’d been unprepared for my landing and thus found myself sprawled out on the ground. Shadow Ninja eyed me intently, carefully watching for any sign of resistance. But I merely took my time getting up to my feet and dusting myself off as best I could before slouching like a sullen teenager and asking, “Where are we going next?”

He grunted something in Japanese, the only word of which my Anime-trained mind understood being ‘ikuzo!’ which I knew to mean, ‘Let’s go!’ So when he gestured at the open doorway, I went ahead and walked outside while he stayed right behind me, a prison guard ready for action.

At least my hands and feet weren’t bound.

I found that it was nighttime when we walked outside, although given how much my stomach kept growling and how much time I’d experienced while awake, I was certain that it was now the following nighttime after my initial capture. I must’ve spent all day in the pit. One thing that did surprise me though was that we weren’t in the woods anymore. In fact, I could see distant city lights to the right, left, and in front of me, although I was not in an urban area at the moment. Rather, I was surrounded by massive rock walls and old buildings that looked like they had been built during the Feudal period of Japan. And when I finally turned to look behind me and craned my head up high enough, I realized I was staring at a humongous white castle that I knew I’d seen before, at least in travel guides.

Himeji Castle or Shirasagi-jō, the White Heron Castle of Japan, Dong the Tour Guide explained helpfully. Presently the largest and most visited castle in all of Japan.

‘You know I did always want to come here, but as a tourist, not a prisoner.’

Silver lining: you get to check it off your bucket list before you die. Good thing, because you might be kicking the bucket tonight.

‘Thaaanks. I feel so much better now.’

Ooh! That’s Okiku’s Well over there!

‘Okiku-what?’

Okiku’s Well. According to legend, a maid named Okiku was in love with a daimyo’s samurai retainer. Her master, another samurai, was plotting to overthrow the daimyo. When the maid found out about the plot, she told her lover, who foiled the plan. And when Okiku’s master found out she had betrayed him, he falsely accused her of losing one of the daimyo’s family treasures, a crime punishable by death, and she was thrown into the well. And ever since then, her wailing voice continues to call out from the well at night.

‘Creepy story. Does she crawl up out of the well with her hair in her face like in The Ring?’

We’re fighting an evil undead sorcerer who makes reanimated zombies. You sure you wanna press your luck?

I kept walking across the castle grounds, being directed with grunts and finger points and the occasional shadow tentacle giving me a shove. Eventually we arrived at a small section of the courtyard with a sign on it that read: Harakiri-maru.

‘Umm… is that Harakiri as in ‘Japanese suicide’?’

Yes, exactly. This was the designated place for Japanese lords and samurai to commit seppuku, or ritualistic disembowelment. The samurai would bathe and dress in a white robe, eat his favorite meal, and write a death poem. Then he would stab himself in the belly with a short sword and drag the blade horizontally so he could see all of his guts spill out. You can see there’s a stage filled with sand to catch all the blood and allow everyone on that viewing platform over there to witness the act. If the guy was lucky, one of his friends would put him out of his misery by swiftly slicing off his head. Then the head would get carried over to the well, washed off, and saved.

‘Umm… Should I be worried that I’m being led to a place of Japanese ritualistic suicide?’

Hey, you got to check ‘Visiting Himeji Castle’ off your bucket list!

‘That joke wasn’t any funnier the second time.’

Here’s my TripAdvisor Review: The toilets are disgusting, the water is corrupted, and the quality of the rooms made me want to kill myself. I’ve checked Himeji Castle off my bucket list, and now I’ll use that bucket to vomit in.

I knew Dong was trying to get me to relax, but I was still so terrified of dying that I actually came to a stop right before stepping across a line of stones onto the “stage” of the Harakiri-maru, despite a healthy shove in the back from Shadow Ninja. I turned to look back at him over my shoulder, my expression clearly stating that I’d really rather not. But he gave me a harsh look beneath his conical hat and raised up three large shadow tentacles in warning, and after taking a deep breath, I finally stepped across the line of stones.

If Shen Wu wanted me dead, he could’ve killed me already by now. I had to believe I was still alive for a reason, and as long as I was still alive, I still had hope.

Hope to find and save Ziyi. Hope to return back to Hannah. And Rae.

Hope to save the world.

Maybe I wasn’t the One and Only Chosen One.

Maybe I wasn’t destined to find Faguang Long.

Maybe I was just an ordinary guy living an ordinary life with supernatural sex powers and magic elemental water abilities and okay fine I don’t think I can call myself “ordinary” but still maybe I wasn’t quite as special as I may have once thought I was but at least I was special enough to have the power to do something to protect the people I cared about and therefore had the responsibility to do so, at least according to Uncle Ben.

I had to try.

I came to a stop “on stage” and turned around to face Shadow Ninja, looking at him expectantly. And when he didn’t say or do anything to indicate what I was supposed to do next, I shrugged and held out my hands, asking, “Okay, now what?”

Large hands from the ground beneath my feet grabbed onto my ankles.

And then they dragged me under.

****

In a hole in the ground there lived an earth elemental. It was a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a rat-demon-hole, and that means discomfort.

But that was as far as I got in noticing the quality of this particular hole. The very first thing I saw was my beloved Ziyi. Well, actually, the only thing I saw was Ziyi’s head.

Lest you think she’d been beheaded or something, my lover’s noggin appeared to still be attached to her neck, but the rest of her body was completely out of view, given that she’d been encased up to her chin within a massive, lumpy cylinder of earth.

“Ziyi!” I exclaimed, immediately attempting to rush forward and free her, but my legs were still encased in magic earth shackles and I couldn’t move.

Ziyi’s eyes went wide at the sight of me and she struggled to try and say something in reply, but was unable to do so with a BDSM ball-gag in her mouth. She clearly couldn’t transform or otherwise shapeshift to free herself, and my heart sank into my stomach at the look of anguish and desperation on her face. I could only imagine how torturous her captivity had been for her, but for now we were both rather helpless.

“Are you alright? Did they hurt you?” I asked.

Dude, in what world would being encased in a cylinder of earth be ‘alright’ and not painful?

Ziyi whimpered but shook her head, and I realized I hadn’t been very clear with my questions, so I wasn’t sure if she was saying ‘No, I’m not alright’ or ‘No, they didn’t hurt me’.

But before I could ask a follow-up, a menacing, creaky voice commanded, “Silence. Or I will have you gagged as well.”

Unable to turn and step with my feet bound, I twisted in place to look behind me and saw Shen Wu standing in the shadows of the dimly lit underground cavern. This was a much larger area than the tiny hole I’d been trapped in earlier. In size and scope and color scheme, it reminded me of Jabba’s Throne Room from Return of the Jedi, with a raised dais for the former warlord’s throne beneath a low, wide archway. I stood in the central area before the throne next to Ziyi’s bound figure. And Shadow Ninja relaxed against the side wall to my right with his arms folded across his chest, the same way Boba Fett had done in the movie.

So would that put Ziyi into the role of Han Solo? Where’s a thermal detonator when you need one?

‘A thermal detonator would be really useful right now.’

The throne on the dais was a near-replica of the Chinese Imperial Dragon Throne, with three vertical rectangles comprising the back - the center panel being the tallest of the three - high side panels, and a wide, flat seat. The base had curved legs, reminiscent of dragon feet. But while the actual Imperial Chinese throne was made of lacquered wood, this one was made entirely of stone.

And it was covered in rats.

Big, hairy, smelly rats. Some were black. Some were brown. There had to be hundreds of them crawling around across the dais and the stone throne. And every single one of them was absolutely silent, not uttering a single squeak, which was almost as unnerving as the mere sight of them.

You’re thinking of mice. Rat vocalizations are ultrasonic, undetectable by the human ear, and they’re certainly talking right now. You just don’t really want to know what they’re saying.

‘But you can understand what they’re saying?’

Certainly. But like I said, you don’t wanna know.

‘Well now you’ve actually got me curious.’

No time. Big Bad Guy is coming.

I looked up to find that the Big Bad Guy was indeed approaching from the shadows behind the throne. Rats scurried out of his path so as not to get stepped on but then immediately filled in the empty spaces in his wake. They vacated the seat on his throne as he turned to sit. And then as if they were all linked together in a single hive-mind, every single rat froze in place at the exact same time, all of them pointed to stare straight at the ancient sorcerer like military soldiers at attention.

That’s not creepy…

“So… Liu Kang… We finally meet again,” the skeletal figure that was more or less the reanimated corpse of a Chinese Warlord who I’d stabbed to death over a thousand years ago spoke, his voice creaky like the aging timbers of an old sailing ship, swaying on the sea.

“Well, actually, we quote-unquote ‘finally met again’ like… last night,” I corrected with a shrug. “Your shadow boy back there snatched me up in his tentacles, carried me kicking and screaming into the forest, and then tossed me on the ground. You tried to speak to me in Chinese, I told you I don’t speak Chinese, you told your hired muscle to dispose of me, but then I made a pretty water sphere that stopped him. In the end, I’m the one that got knocked out, but if you can’t remember all that, then maybe you’re the one who needs to check out his memory.”

I'm so proud of you…

Shen Wu stared at me blankly, not even blinking for a long time. To be honest, I wasn’t sure he even needed to blink anymore. I mean, he wasn’t exactly alive, right? Do reanimated corpses with empty black eye sockets need to blink? Anyways, he eventually took a deep breath and sighed long and loud (Come to think of it, why would a reanimated corpse need to breathe? Unless it was just to draw in air with which to speak), and the undead shu yaoguai rat demon gave me a look of severe disappointment before muttering, “Such insolence. Is this an American thing? To make feeble attempts at humor when faced with certain death?”

“Ha-ha. You’re not wrong,” I conceded with a smart-alecky grin, doing my best to act like I had my shit together and was super-calm even though my heart was racing a mile a minute. It was much like my modus operandi when talking to a pretty girl. In this case, though, I was desperately trying to think of a way to get both myself and Ziyi out of this mess without dying.

Good news. I checked and there isn’t a rancor pit beneath your feet.

‘Not helping.’

“In this case, though,” I continued, keeping up my sense of bravado, “I’m dead certain that I’m NOT actually faced with certain death. If you wanted to kill us, we’d both be dead already. The simple fact that I’m having this conversation with you suggests that you need us for something, and I think I can guess what that something is.”

Shen Wu’s eyelids leveled halfway down. “Do tell.”

“You want Faguang Long. You can’t release your zombie plague without it.”

The ancient warlord with the new name spread his hands out wide, admitting plainly, “This is true. My magic is quite powerful, powerful enough to keep my soul trapped within this prison of rotting flesh and bones I call a body. I am powerful enough to raise the dead - including myself.”

With that final word, Shen Wu opened up the front of his robes, baring his chest to me. His ghost-white skin beneath was paper-thin. He had virtually no musculature to speak of, with a hollow chest and obvious dents around his ribcage. But my eyes were fixed on what appeared to be a still-gaping wound right above his heart.

Right where I’d stabbed him that fateful night on the outskirts of Luoyang more than a thousand years ago.

The hole in his chest had never fully closed. The pale skin was purple and discolored around the penetration point. Shen Wu took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, and I half expected to see bubbles rising up to the surface. But the old man merely winced and then stared at me with cold, inky black eyes.

“It still hurts,” he muttered bitterly, his voice still creaking with every word. “It hurts every. Single. Day.”

“I’m glad,” I told him flippantly. “Glad to know that even though you found a way to cheat death, you’ll always be reminded of who killed you the first time.”

“Indeed,” he mewled with a sickening grin. There was malice in that smile, a promise that he would ultimately have his revenge, and despite my bravado I found myself swallowing thickly. But then the old rat demon closed up his robe, stood up straight, and looked at me impassively once again. “But despite the pain, I should thank you. It is because you killed me that I was able to come back even stronger for it. I am not truly dead, but nor am I truly alive. I exist in-between. And it is only because I am this close to death that I have access to magic that no one else on earth has ever been able to access before!”

The weak, creaky voice crescendoed in both power and volume over that last sentence, during which the ancient sorcerer also raised up his arms, pointing those sickly yellow fingernails to the cavern ceiling. One of the rats on the ground rose up into the air, its little limbs flailing as it silently struggled. I could see its mouth opening and closing as it screamed in terror at ultrasonic pitches that a human couldn’t hear. But the hundreds of other rats filling the dais could certainly hear, as all of them were writhing about the platform and the throne, running helter-skelter and climbing over each other in a panicked frenzy.

The little rat’s body abruptly folded in half as if it were a book being slammed shut on a table. I may not have been able to hear its silent screams, but I could certainly hear the sickening sound of its spine snapping. All of a sudden, it stopped wriggling, and at the exact same time, the hundreds of other rats all stopped running as well, pausing to raise up on their hind legs and simultaneously scream.

For some reason, their voices were no longer ultrasonic. I heard the hundreds of rats screaming at the same time, a high-pitched wail of Nazgûl despair that made me sick to my stomach, and I bent over to dry-heave.

The folded-in-half dead rat remained floating in mid-air. Shen Wu was patient, waiting for me to return my full attention to him and to his poor, little victim. It felt a little strange to feel sympathy for the rodent, but nobody deserved to have their life snuffed out so callously like that.

Shen Wu’s arm was extended, dirty fingernails pointing straight at the dead rat. Once he was sure I was paying attention, he flipped his hand over and slowly curled his fingers into a ball, baring his grotesque teeth that hadn’t been brushed in a thousand years and opening his inky black eyes wide while he growled.

The rat twitched once.

Then it twitched twice.

Its body straightened out. Its four limbs started moving. And then it opened its eyes.

Shen Wu tossed the rat to me.

I jerked my head back and exclaimed, “Oh shit!” as I suddenly found an undead zombie rat flying through the air straight at my face. My hands instinctively went up into a defensive position to shield myself from the impact, but the shu yaoguai held out his hand to arrest the rat’s parabolic arc, freezing the rodent in mid-air right in front of me. And when I dropped my hands back down from in front of my face, he released his telekinetic hold on the creature to let it drop.

Not even thinking about it, I caught the rodent and then held it up in my hands. The rat sniffed around my forearms but didn’t attempt to run away, simply letting me hold it. The little creature turned its pointed snout to my face and stared up at me, appearing to be… well… kinda cute, actually, with its big ears, harmless demeanor, and blank stare. Its eyes were inky black, but then again, I was rather expecting a rat to have black eyes in the first place. To be honest, the rat seemed rather… normal… save for the fact that I’d seen it get snapped in half and go limp a minute earlier.

To witness Shen Wu both kill and then resurrect a rat right in front of me had been impressive. But at the same time, I knew he’d reanimated other creatures before, most importantly the Huodou fire-breathing dog back in Luoyang. So it wasn’t a surprise or anything to see him do it now.

I was still unable to move with my feet bound to the floor by my earth shackles. Squatting in place, I set the rat on the ground and watched it scurry back up onto the dais to join its friends. With so many rodents milling about, I quickly lost track of which one of the rats was the undead one. Perhaps there were already dozens of undead rats in the crowd, if not a hundred, indistinguishable from the rest.

“I have power,” Shen Wu continued, his voice creaking once again. “But I am not powerful enough to transform all the people of the world. I am not powerful enough to reshape the very fabric of reality and remake all of humanity into my own image. For that, I need Faguang Long. For that, I need your help.”

“And what makes you think I’d ever help you?”

“Motivation.” Shen Wu grinned that sickening grin again. “I do not need you to want Faguang Long for me. You will want Faguang Long for you.”

“And why would I do that?”

“For her.”

Oh, SHIT.

Ziyi started screaming behind her ball-gag as the massive, lumpy cylinder surrounding her body suddenly rose up into the air. Her body was completely encased within the earthen tomb, but her head was still visible, wriggling side-to-side and around as she struggled to free herself. I could see her mouth trying to widen and create gaps around the ball-gag, and every now and again I could hear her cries of terror.

“Ziyi!” I exclaimed, reaching out to her. But my legs were still encased and I couldn’t move. I frantically searched around for something - anything - I could use as a weapon. I needed a source of water I could use to transform into a spear or a unicorn or even a fucking snowflake, something to try and break apart the mound of rock holding her tight. “Ziyi!”

Shen Wu was cackling with laughter as he clearly enjoyed watching me struggle. “Time to watch her die.”

“No! Wait! You don’t understand! You need her! She’s the only one who can get the Sword of Baihu!”

He wasn’t listening. Shen Wu merely kept his hands raised and threw his head back, cackling even harder.

Gotta get free of these shackles, dude.

‘I’m trying! I’m trying!’ Breathe in… Breathe out… Let go… Let go… The way of water has no beginning and no en--

The earthen mound abruptly folded in half as if it were a book being slammed shut on a table. Ziyi was a serpent and I knew she had a flexible spine, but there was still no mistaking the sickening sound of bones cracking. The rock that entombed her likewise cracked, and great chunks of it started falling off her body to slam down onto the cavern floor. Her body was no longer fully enclosed, but it didn’t matter.

Ziyi had stopped wriggling, and her limp, crushed, folded-in-half body dropped like so much dead weight onto the ground in front of me, hitting the floor with a moist, meaty thump.

My ears registered a high-pitched scream of ultimate horror.

The scream was mine.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue & Chapter 1: The Ax Effect: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102225387

Chapter 2: Santa Monica: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102437478

Chapter 3: The Zellij Fountain: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102691018

Chapter 4: Euhemerism: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102919819

Chapter 5: The Fremont Troll: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103191700

Chapter 6: Jade: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103443053

Chapter 7: The Blue Gecko: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103699709

Chapter 8: Yaoguai: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103978374

Chapter 9: Rome: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104213388

Chapter 10: Seeing Sights: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104466709

Chapter 11: Liu Kang: https://www.patreon.com/posts/104728056