6.10 - Ghosts of the Past

He Yu and Chen Fei made their way down to the valley floor together. They walked, as using either treasure or technique would require at least some portion of their cultivation base. They’d agreed that on the chance anyone remained, they’d keep their spirits restrained. According the Chen Fei, the most powerful expert had been Golden Core when she’d left. Most of the village had been Third Realm or below.

As they picked their way along an overgrown path, Chen Fei said, “I don’t know why they’d leave. This village has been here for hundreds of years, if the stories the elders told were right.”

He Yu kept silent. Partly because he didn’t have an answer, and partly because what he considered the most likely explanation wasn’t something he wanted to give voice to. He suspected Chen Fei thought the same thing, and wasn’t giving voice for much the same reason as he was. Easier to hold on to hope if you don’t speak the obvious.

It didn’t take long for them to arrive on the valley floor and finally lay eyes on the outer boundary of what had once been Chen Fei’s home. A formation stone—or what had once been one—sat next to the path, marking the boundary between the wilds and the tiny, once-pocket of civilization. The stone itself was intact. A bit weathered, and it clearly hadn’t been maintained for years, but it showed no signs of damage. A building, half collapsed and with rotting beams, sat a few yards past the stone. From a cursory glance, it didn’t appear to have suffered any damage, either. Just neglect.

Together, they crossed what had once been a barrier formation. One that clearly hadn’t functioned in decades. They poked through the outskirts of the village, peering into dilapidated buildings that had once been people’s homes. Everywhere they looked, the story told by the overgrown paths and homes was the same. Empty. Abandoned. Left to the ravages of time and neglect.

“I don’t understand,” Chen Fei said, coming out from one of the more intact buildings. A smithy’s home, by the looks of it. The sight of the cold forge gave He Yu a pang of homesickness. “Why would everyone leave?”

He Yu glanced around, but found the same thing he’d found every other time he’d done so. A village that had clearly been abandoned. From what he could tell, there weren’t any signs of conflict. Nothing had burned, no doors had been broken in. No telltale scars of a cultivator’s technique, and no evidence of spirits or beasts. Sure, it could just be that whatever attack had happened occurred so long ago that the evidence had been wiped away by the passage of time. But there should be something.

Chen Fei headed off down the largest of the paths, toward what He Yu could only guess would once have been the village center. Even from where he stood, he could make out the signs of nature’s reclamation of the square. As they made their way there, Chen Fei paid less attention to the surroundings with each step.

The first few houses they’d seen, at least those that still stood, she’d insisted they check inside. For what, He Yu couldn’t have said. But he wasn’t about to dissuade her. At first, it seemed she’d grow more distraught as they poked around what was left and uniformly found nothing. Things like tables and chairs, chests, shelves and the like, sure. That remained. All of it in the same sorry state as everything else. Forgotten and falling apart after years of neglect.

The homes had otherwise been empty. Where one might expect to find hanging racks of herbs, or roots, or long-forgotten rotting game, there was nothing. Hearths lay cold and empty, with evidence they’d been put out before being abandoned. Any chests or cupboards that remained contained only dust. Had anyone come through to loot, there was no evidence of it—mostly because there’d been nothing left to take.

As they neared the center of town, He Yu finally activated the Peerless Judgment. The truth of things came to him, and he couldn’t have said it had been surprising. Everything here was exactly as it had appeared. There hadn’t been an attack. Not from raiders, nor from beasts or spirits. Those who’d once called this place home had simply packed up and left.

They’d done so not in panic, nor out of some sudden and urgent need. They’d had time, and they used it well. As far as He Yu could tell, the villagers had left in family groups, by ones and twos. The complete abandonment of this place had occurred over the course of years. Whatever death this village had died, it had been a lingering one. When the last residence had finally left, whoever they may have been, they’d resigned this place to its ultimate fate. Given it over to the relentless march of time and the elements.

Chen Fei sat down on the low stone wall of a well. It had been boarded over, and those boards looked one firm push away from crumbling. Folding her hands in her lap, she stared at a spot on the ground before her. He Yu sad down next to her, and waited for her to talk.

“I don’t know what I expected,” she said after a long time. The sun already neared the horizon in the west, casting the red-gold evening over the steppe and valley alike. “I’d hoped they’d take me back. Maybe they’d just tell me they didn’t need me, I guess. That they’d done fine all this time without me, and that I shouldn’t have bothered. But not this.”

He Yu didn’t know what to say. Instead, he put his arm around her. She leaned into him, and they sat like that while the setting sun dipped ever lower.

“At least I can’t blame myself for this,” she said with a bitter laugh.

“I don’t think you should have blamed yourself, even if it had been different. But at least we know that whatever happened, they’re out there somewhere.”

“You think?” she asked.

“I looked at things with my perception technique. They left slowly, abandoning the village one family at a time. They weren’t driven out by anything. At least not by anything that demanded they leave in a hurry.”

That seemed to help, given the way she shifted under his arm. “I’d hoped we would get to have something like when we visited your father. Minus the part where Dong Wei summoned who’d sworn your death.”

He Yu allowed himself a small smile at that. It was an attempt at humor, if a poor one, and he was relieved to hear it. “I’d hoped for something like that, too,” he said. “Minus the summoning of any sworn enemies.”

“My parents would have liked you,” she said.

“Do you want to go search for them?” As much as he wanted to head north, to seek the center of that ancient primal storm on the steppe, this somehow felt more important.

“I don’t know,” she admitted after a moment. “My home is on the other side of the village. I don’t know if I want to go there. I’m afraid of what I’ll find.”

He Yu nodded as he pulled her closer. “I wish I had something wise to say.”

As the light finally died, Chen Fei disentangled herself and stood. “Let’s go.”

She headed off in the direction he thought she might, and he trailed after her. The other side of the town was little different from the one they’d already seen. Dilapidated buildings, abandoned homes, and not a single sign of struggle. Finally they reached a home, as empty and nondescript as any other. Rather than go inside as she had with the rest, Chen Fei stood at the threshold, waiting. She turned and looked at him over her shoulder.

“This is it,” she said.

He Yu waited. When she finally went inside, he followed. The interior was the same as the rest. Stripped bare, with only the larges and bulkiest of furniture left. The structure itself given over to the ravages of time and the elements. Nothing was left except for a bamboo scroll sitting atop a dusty table.

The scroll was clearly scripted. It showed no signs of age or decay, looking as though it had been left only moments ago. Given that Chen Fei’s family art was so closely related to formation scripts, He Yu had little doubt as to who left it. Chen Fei’s hand hovered over the scroll, as if she were afraid to touch it. Like it would vanish if she did and reveal itself to be an illusion and part of a cruel trick.

Eventually, she picked it up. He Yu stood in the doorway to her family home as she sat on a bed pushed against one wall, left bare and forgotten. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes as she read. When she finished, she sent the scroll to her storage treasure. She crossed the room in a step, and buried her face in He Yu’s shoulder.

He did his best to make it comfortable, but she had to stoop. Despite all his years of cultivation, she was still a full head taller than he was. Although he’d expected her to cry, she didn’t. A shuddering sigh felt like she was about to. They stood there like that for a time, holding each other as he gave her what comfort he could, and she drew what she needed.

“They’re fine,” she said after a while. “At least, they were when they left. It’s just like you said. People left over the course of years. It wasn’t anything catastrophic. A drought, followed by a year of far too much rain, and then more drought. As the crops failed year after year, and a fire chased away most of the game, the village couldn’t sustain itself. Then the well dried up.”

She shook her head and leaned against the wall. Casting her eyes to the ceiling, she kept speaking. “Eventually, they didn’t have any choice. They couldn’t stay. My parents left this for me, in case I came back.” She turned back to He Yu, eyes bright with unshed tears again. “They said they waited as long as they could. They were one of the last to leave. They waited for me.”

Sinking down to sit on the floor, she drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them close.

He Yu sat next to her. “They never blamed you,” he said.

“I almost wished they had.”

In a way, he could understand that. If they had, she could just keep going on as she had all these years. Doing what she could to protect those close to her—both emotionally and physically. But this. Knowing they’d waited, knowing she’d have been welcome, had she only come back sooner. It robbed her of all the closure she’d so obviously come here to find. He Yu almost suspected she would have had a far easier time if the village had still been populated, and even her parents had told her she’d not been welcome. She’d been prepared for that—were he to guess, she’d expected it.

“Did they say where they went?” he asked after a little while longer.

“East. Into the empire,” she said. “They figured that would be their best bet. Despite living on the western slopes, and how we might look, we’re all imperial citizens.”

He Yu nodded, understanding her meaning. The nomads of the steppe were largely considered barbarians among the people of the empire. They had strange names and strange customs. They spoke a strange tongue. Although Chen Fei always dressed in a manner similar to those people of the vast steppe, her name was one that flowed off He Yu’s tongue easily. When he’d first met her, she had a bit of an accent, but people from all over the empire had regional accents. It made sense that her family, forced to abandon a dying settlement, would go to the other further into the empire. They were easily far enough west that most of the chaos of Jin Xifeng’s ascension to the imperial throne would have left them untouched. Especially if they stuck to the mountains, where villages and the occasional proper walled town lived in blissful ignorance of the state of the wider world.

“Should we go after them?” He Yu asked. He meant it, too. If she wanted to go search for her parents, he would go with her for as long as it took.

She shook her head. “No. They’ll be fine, I think. They’re cultivators, too. If living in these mountains teaches anything, it’s how to fend for yourself. My father was in the early Fourth Realm when I left, and my mother was peak Body Refining.”

“Only if you’re certain,” he said. They’d spent more than enough time together that he didn’t need to elaborate.

“I’m certain,” she said, voice firm as she doubled down on her resolve. “How many people need us? If I failed my village all those years ago, what better way to make up for it than protecting an empire?”

As they stood and turned to leave Chen Fei’s abandoned childhood home together, the faint flickering light of a lantern cast an uncertain orange glow over the path outside. With no evidence of any threat, He Yu and Chen Fei both kept their spirits tightly under control as they stepped out and into view.

An old man with a long white beard and a stooped posture held a lantern aloft in one hand. He used his other hand to lean on a cane carved from a tree branch. “Who goes there?” he asked. “Who disturbs these sacred peaks? Show yourselves to me! Show yourselves to Abbot Liao Shan!”

When He Yu activated the Peerless Judgment, he wasn’t surprised to see the old man’s frailty was merely an act. He was surprised to see that he was in the middle stage of the Seventh Realm—Divine Body Attainment.