Chapter 40- Solitary Hunters of the Evil Path

Tian whipped his rope dart up and into the bug’s face. His expression didn’t even flicker when the centipede shifted slightly and the dart bounced off the hard shell. He had gotten very used to fighting all kinds of insects in the Wasteland. Centipedes were new to him, but he’d killed so many scorpions that he was sick of seeing them. Armored and venomous was now standard for the things he hunted. He knew how to kill this.

Tian dropped Counter-Jumper and shifted to Light Body Heavy Hands. The rope dart was recovered in a flash and spun around his head in a blurring, whirring silver ring as he dodged to the side of the centipede. Which twisted to face him, clearly having no trouble keeping up with Tian’s movement.

“Not good.” Tian thought. He smacked the dart into the centipede’s face, dropping his weight back to normal at the last instant. That hit with a much more satisfying CRACK! The bug disagreed. It charged straight in.

For such a big bug, it moved unreasonably fast. The fangs snapped down, coming in on either side of Tian. They were a yellowed ivory color against the black and red of the carapace. Hard not to fixate on them. There was a fishy stench. Whether it was the insect’s breath or the venom, Tian didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. He whipped the centipede again, this time aiming for one of the fangs. He might have hit it if he was standing still, or the centipede was, but he was dodging and it was lunging and they both missed.

“The legs are short and not really doing anything. Just kind of waving around. I don’t think they can pincer anything.” Tian was thinking as he moved. This thing was a few notches tougher than the scorpions.

Tian was rushing left but had to jump with a yelp as the body of the centipede twisted and rolled towards him. He saw the head coming from above and behind. “It’s trying to wrap me up!” Tian’s thoughts were a jumble. He could only rely on Light Body Heavy Hands to carry him through. That, and the jumping games he had been playing since he was six.

He hardly noticed when he kicked off the body of the bug, landed with one foot on a rock, kicked off the rock with the same foot, and whipped his leg around in an axe kick that knocked the centipede back a step. It’s just how the game was played. As was launching back off the centipede while landing a follow up attack with the rope dart. No need to think, that’s just what he had always done.

The dart wasn’t even marking the centipede. Tian frowned. His dart had been effective against humans, but against anything armored, it didn’t hold up. “Tsch!” He whipped the dart forward again and snagged one of the hundred milling legs near the head. He rushed forward and yanked himself up into the air, light as he could be. The centipede tried to snag him out of the air, forcing Tian to twist on the rope and shift his position slightly. The smooth shell of the centipede rubbed against him, cool and hard as a buried stone.

Tian wouldn’t waste a free shot. He slapped the side of the bug’s head, bypassing the armor and shattering the meat within. The centipede started to thrash, but Tian wasn’t done. He knew he couldn’t stay on the back of the bug for long, so the second he reached it, he slapped down as quick and hard as he could. He had no idea where the vital organs were, so he just aimed for “roughly the head.”

There was a spurt of clear liquid from the centipede’s mouth, and the fishy stench intensified. The long body started to shake, then spasm, convulsing. Tian was launched twenty feet through the air, his light body drifting downwards as the centipede thrashed then, eventually, died.

Tian fought to bring his breathing under control. He had gotten through the battle basically unscathed, but it had taken every skill he had, every scrap of martial arts he knew to do so. Those fangs were long. Very long. Still wet with who knows what venom. And it was actually longer than he thought, closer to twenty feet than twelve.

A few things you should know about centipedes generally. First- they aren’t insects. They are arthropods. That’s not relevant to anything, but people get it wrong all the time and it bugs me. Geddit? Bugs me?

“Yes, Grandpa.” Tian said in the long-suffering tones of children everywhere.

The second thing you should know is that centipedes are actually very sensitive to the sun. Their shell really doesn’t protect them well from the heat, so they are almost exclusively night hunters. And you will notice that it is roughly midday.

“Maybe it’s a different kind of centipede?”

Given that it’s twenty feet long, yes, safe to say it’s not your standard critter. The second to last thing is, do you see where you smacked it a couple of times on the head? That faint darker pattern against the red and black that has emerged after death?

Tian squinted. It was very faint. It looked sort of like the fires of Hell tried to invent their own language.

Don’t know what that is, but it sure doesn’t look natural. Could be a bunch of things, actually, all bad.

“Demonized?”

Feels likely. It could also be some kind of Gu mark, or a shamanic summoning, or, well, a lot of things. But yes, demonized seems the most likely. But we should talk about thing number three now. Centipedes are, in nature, solitary. They don’t cooperate with other centipedes at all, and will quite happily eat each other.

“Alright?”

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Now seems like a great time to ambush an exhausted cultivator. That’s what I’d do. I’d wait until they felt like they were safe and then WHAM! Gettem!

Tian jumped like he was electrocuted, pushing as much qi into Counter-Jumper as he could manage.

I’m just talking hypothetically here. I don’t have any specific information. It’s just a really common tactic used by everyone from wolves to that dickhead banging the neighbor’s… screen door.

“What’s a screen door, Grandpa?” Tian whipped his head around wildly. There was something at the very edge of his hearing, but he wasn’t able to quite pin it down.

Like a normal door but made with a very fine mesh of wires instead of wood. Lets the light and breeze in, keeps the bugs out.

Tian looked down at the ring he was delivering. The arrow was pointing in the same direction the noise was. A noise that sounded a bit like what he heard just before the centipede attacked, only over a much wider area.