Chapter 11- The Smokey Shadow of the Demon

There wasn’t a fight. The mortal swung a mallet at Tian and watched in horror as Tian stopped it with a finger, then flicked it hard enough to send the four pound sledge through the wall.

“Your particular brand of heresy is called the Art of Smoke and Fire or something like that?”

“Im… Immortal!”

“Compared to you? Yes. Where did you get this art from?”

“I shall never tell! Glory to the Heavenly Demon! Glory to he who rules in-”

“This little monk must stop you there.” Tian literally did so. It looked like the potter was reaching for something, and he didn’t plan to let him suicide. Even his crude medical skills were enough to strike a nerve and paralyze the mortal’s arm. It wouldn’t have worked on a cultivator.

“Now. Where did you get your scriptures from? Look at it this way. Whoever gave it to you is your best hope for revenge, so why not send this monk into their clutches?” He thought he sounded very reasonable, but the way the potter was thrashing around suggested he was missing something.

Not that he cared. The long metal hooks, the knives and rasps and saws and buckets that littered the workshop suggested that this particular potter liked to work with more than clay. That he enjoyed it when his medium screamed in his hands.

“You. You will never make me talk!”

“No, I won’t.” Tian agreed. “Torture defiles both the tortured and the torturer. This little monk despises torture and will kill you as soon as he thinks he can not learn anything more from you. All your dreams of immortality gone, and your soul sent to be eaten by devils for eternity. Your friends did explain that part, didn’t they? The devil soul eating?”

“What? You lie!”

“No.” Tian lied. He wasn’t very good at it, but the basket was covering his face. Every little bit helped. “There is a reason real cultivators don’t use it. Why are you using it?”

“Because the heavens deny me immortality, so I will take it for myself! The Art of Immortal Smoke grants life eternal. I have seen it. I have seen the Demon in the smoke. I have seen the ancient masters. Your pathetic tricks are no match for their dread power!”

“Oh.”

The heretic was running high on terror and fanaticism, barely hearing Tian. “With one hand, the Great One picks the sun from the sky. With one hand, the demon overturns the heavens! With his foot, he suppresses the earth! In all the universe, the Holy Demon alone is honored!”

“So far there is a great one, a demon and a holy demon. And some ancient masters. Are they all the same person, or different people? Sorry, this little monk is not familiar with any of this.”

That seemed to throw the heretic. “What do you mean, not familiar with-”

“This little monk has never heard of any heavenly demons or any of that. Ancient masters, yes. Any cultivation sect is going to have its ancient masters. But this little monk really doesn’t know which ones you are talking about.”

“Still pretending to be a monk?” The heretic sneered as he slowly fiddled in his sleeve for something.

“This humble one is a monk.” Tian nodded, determined not to break character. Mostly out of spite. There was something about the evil crushing wandering monk character that appealed to him. Besides, he would need the black robes soon enough, and they were already dirty. No sense in changing into something clean now.

“Who do you-” Tian hit his shoulder hard enough to shatter the bone. The heretic screamed and stumbled backwards. A small jar falling to the ground. Tian picked it up and gently tapped it. There was a rattle- a pill bottle, likely. Nothing he wanted. He tossed it into a corner of the room.

“He will kill you. The Ancient Master will kill you!”

“No, he won’t. Last chance to say something useful.”

“The world will die in smoke and fire!”

Tian slapped the man in the chest, angling up and towards the wall. His palm was empty, but held thunder. He put his body into the hit. What remained of the heretic slammed into the wall. Some of the bones survived in recognizable fragments. None of the flesh did. Tian’s vital energy infiltrated the tissue virtually unopposed, running rampant. Each vibrating thread tearing apart mortal meat with contemptuous ease.

The disgusting sludge slammed into the wall hard enough to bounce. The spray flew back and hit Tian. His monk costume was now coated in gore.

“That’s not great,” Tian muttered. “If kind of expected.” He searched the house. There was a whole chest of clothes in all different sizes and styles. Many with bloody holes in them. Tian would have thought the man would incinerate them with the bodies. Maybe he liked having the trophies. Plenty of them in his size, he noticed. There were quite a few that were considerably too small.

He also found a rather elegant dagger. Not cursed or enchanted. Just a good steel blade mounted on a handle inlaid with silver. Not the kind of thing a blacksmith would make or a potter would own. Perhaps a jeweler made it and gifted it to him. That would be quite an interesting connection. There were two makers marks on the blade. It might be unrelated, or it might not. He would run it down anyhow. Particularly since he recognized one of them from his earlier run through the city.

Tian debated changing into his new clothes, and decided not to. It wouldn’t be any hardship to just run over the rooftops. The odds of anyone managing to see him would be low. Besides, if he was right, he would just be getting a clean set of clothes dirty after only wearing them for a few minutes.

He entered the small back yard and jumped, catching a window frame and with a light push, jumping to the next window, and so on until he reached the roof. His feet landed on the terracotta tiles thistledown light. Light Body, Heavy Hands hadn’t gotten much of a workout in a while.

Tian looked around, admiring the orderly rows of houses built into dense squares delineated by streets. There were four main thoroughfares quartering the city, then smaller streets breaking the quarters down into eighths and even smaller streets breaking them down into yet smaller blocks. Everything was orderly and efficient.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Sister Su must be loving this. An optimized city.” Tian chuckled and set off at a run for where he remembered seeing the mark advertised. His feet made almost no sound as he raced across the tiles. It became a nice distraction from the blinding fury that was just under the surface of his thoughts.

He challenged himself to be completely soundless as he crossed the roofs. He wasn’t there yet, and the city wasn’t cooperating. Not only were there birds living up on the roofs, some of the tiles were broken. He nearly tripped, and once almost stumbled into someone’s attic.

Some of those clothes had been very small. The heretic was here. Not in the wasteland but in a Mortal city under the protection of the Broad Sky Kingdom and the Ancient Crane Monastery. The heretic was prospering. Maybe the heavens would allow it, but he wouldn’t.

He crouched down behind the ridge of a roof, ignoring the soot and bird droppings covering the tiles. The shop was just across the street. It looked like they made decorations out of various shiny metals- gold, silver, copper, others he couldn’t quite identify. He had no sense of whether they were well made or not. There were bars on the windows, but a handsome apprentice was greeting people at the door and bringing them in.