Threads 154-Rot 3

A lacquered black inkbrush drew itself across a page of charred parchment, painting characters in the wild handwriting that filled every wall of the chamber, and a rattling breath emerged from the corpse’s hidden face, emitting another stream of buzzing flies to join the swarm.

Xia Lin fell back to where she stood, a disgusted look on her face. “A corpse immortal,” she spat. “To think that even a Hui would be so debased.”

Ling Qi’s cloak writhed on her shoulders, transforming into a scarf of pale blue silk that wrapped her mouth and nose. “What in the world is that?”

Focusing her spiritual senses, she could feel the thing’s aura, and it was just as rotted as its flesh. She could see the glow of its dantian, sickly and cracked, and see the flows of meridians that had swelled until they drew visible lines under squirming flesh. Half of them had burst open like a dead animal left to rot in the sun, and chaotic qi leaked freely. More worryingly, she felt a knot of energy in its chest, a second dantian, albeit shattered and broken. Not even a memory of more potent energies clung to the fragments.

“When a cultivator reaches the end of their span, they may attempt to cling on regardless. This is the result,” Xia Lin said grimly. “Mind and spirit rots along with the body, leaving an increasingly mad thing focused on whatever task it had obsessed over in life.”

“I want to kill it,” Zhen spoke, startling her. His crimson eyes fixed intently on the fly-shrouded thing. Hanyi looked a little ill, having abruptly swallowed her snack at the sight.

“As well you should,” Xia Lin agreed, scowling. “Is our target visible?”

Ling Qi looked past the disgusting thing in the center to scan the walls. There, under the hanging papers, she saw a soft blue glow, faltering and intermittent.

<Pretty… Pretty sure that’s the power source. I couldn’t stay in there long though.> Even Sixiang seemed disgusted. <I don’t think I ever remember moving through a dream that rotten.>

“Do you think we can kill it?” Ling Qi asked. “And why hasn’t it noticed us?”

“Such things can be unpredictable… but their obsessions consume them and can make them easy to trick if one plays to their delusions,” Xia Lin said, warily eyeing the creature. “It may once have been a higher realm, but the older a corpse is, the more its power has rotted. No corpse immortal lasts more than a century or so. I believe we can eliminate it, particularly with a hard first strike.”

Ling Qi was less sure. Power still burned in its maggot-ridden flesh and lower dantian, even if most of its meridians were in ruins. She could probably slip in and remove the stone, depowering the formation without having to fight it. It might notice her, but if what Xia Lin said was true, if it did, she could probably trick it anyway. They could then return easily with everyone to eliminate it.

On the other hand… Ling Qi’s eyes lingered on the resplendent robe and inkbrush that glowed with powerful qi in her senses. There, too, was a silver ring whose contents were opaque to her eyes. How often did one get the chance at such treasures, divided between only two cultivators?

“What are your thoughts on the spoils of battle?” Ling Qi asked casually.

“They are a soldier’s due,” Xia Lin replied evenly, “the reward for high achievement.”

Ling Qi smiled. They really weren’t that different under the exterior, were they?

“We can do this. Do you think it will react if we prepare ourselves?”

“It may,” Xia Lin allowed, cracking her neck. “We strike the moment it shows awareness?”

Ling Qi hummed in agreement. “My most potent damaging art requires physical contact. Can I trust you to pin its movements when signaled?”

“You can,” Xia Lin said. Traceries of light began to fill the engraved grooves in the head of her weapon again. “My most potent damaging arts require me to shed my own defenses. Can I trust your arts?”

“You can,” Ling Qi parroted back, summoning her flute with a flick of her wrist. Lake qi, dark and still, began to ripple out. “Zhengui, I want you to bring up your lava when we strike. After that, focus on supporting us, okay?”

“Yes!” Zhengui agreed in two voices. His shell began to glow, and beneath their feet, Ling Qi sensed the movement of roots.

The wind began to kick up around her, playfully tugging at her hair and gown, wafting away the stagnant air, and Ling Qi began to play the Spring’s End Aria. Sixiang hummed along, weaving their qi through Ling Qi’s to empower the art, ensuring that it would not end mid battle.

“Duet time!” Hanyi said excitedly, hopping down beside her. She was already beginning to hum the Aria, shrouding herself in glittering snowflakes.

Beside them, white radiance flared through the eye slits of Xia Lin’s mask and the joints of her armor. The girl’s outline sharpened as if her very silhouette was a blade’s edge, and Ling Qi felt the wind hiss, parting around her as Xia Lin lowered herself into a crouch, halberd pointed forward.

Pebbles around their feet began to rattle under the gathering power, and soft gray ash began to fill the air. Two weapons, one an intricate singing blade and the other a utilitarian thing of straight lines and humming gears, formed over their shoulders, spilling mist and radiance into the air.

In the fly-shrouded chamber, a rasping breath hitched.

Stone shattered in a deep circle where Xia Lin had stood as she launched forward in a streak of unforgiving light. The soft sound of Ling Qi’s flute rose to a crescendo over the rumbling of the earth. Magma erupted beneath the corpse immortal, and twin voices raised in song lashed it with the icy cold, blackening rotting flesh even as fat and flesh boiled away and flies and maggots burned.

Xia Lin struck the creature’s back with a tremendous boom, sending magma splashing outward, and stone shattered into dust and pebbles.

There was a rumble, and a tremendous roar shook the chamber as a tide of black liquid looking like stylized waves swept out of the chamber, carrying Xia Lin with it. Ling Qi’s eyes widened as she seized Hanyi’s hand and flew straight up over the wave of ink. Below, Zhengui braced himself, and a wedge of roots parted the tide before it could sweep him away.

In the doorway of the now ruined chamber, she saw the corpse-immortal. “Lord Scribbler” stood hunched, almost apelike in posture, its glittering green robe falling open to reveal ribs wrapped in paper-thin flesh. Oozing black taint flowed through a rupture in its sternum, revealing the shattered dantian in its chest. Its legs were burned, down to the bone in some places, and as she watched, strips of frozen flesh sloughed off. A gaping wound had been carved down from its shoulder nearly to its pelvis, leaving a slice of its torso and its right arm hanging oddly. Maggots writhed, trying to stitch flesh back together, but blazing radiance crawled along the wound, searing the vermin.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

There was a sickening, crackling sound as the creature turned its head upward, revealing a dried, sunken face wrapped tightly around a skull. Blackened lips pulled back from teeth the color of mud. One eye socket was empty, teeming with tiny spiders, and the other held a blank white orb. As she watched, it rolled in its socket, revealing a sickly yellow iris and a glowing pupil that focused on her.

“Caaiiiiiiii….” hissed the corpse in a voice that echoed as if from the bottom of a well.

A thread of Liming outshone even the arms of the White Plumes, Ling Qi thought faintly.