Chapter Text
Shen Jiu’s mind felt like a tea egg. The blackened shell was cracked all over, just waiting for someone to chip it away with their fingernails. The threads holding his thoughts together would give at the slightest pressure, and anyone would be able to sink their teeth into the meat of him.
He shook his head, stumbling for a moment against a fir tree, the rough bark catching against the silk of his zhiju. He was deeply glad he had been assigned this hunt alone—if his martial siblings had seen him trip, he would never live it down.
It was just that his mind felt like a tea egg—but hadn’t he already had that thought? It kept cropping up. He’d seen a street vendor in town pull a fresh tea-boiled egg out of a pot to hand to a woman, who passed it to her son, who stripped the shell away with an easy stroke of his thumb, revealing marbled flesh.
Shen Jiu shoved his sleeves back from his left arm and dug his nails into his arm, raking bright red lines across his skin. Blood welled up where he broke flesh, and he kept going until some amount of lucidity returned. He blinked down at his arm. His skin looked just like the flesh of a tea egg.
No. Wake up, Shen Jiu. A night hunt was no time to be giving in to exhaustion. He gripped Xiu Ya and forged head, following the faint trace of corrupted energy that had already led him three hours into this fir forest.
Shen Jiu hadn’t slept in several weeks now.
His mind circled around the thought like a darting swallow. He had stolen hours here and there, curled in the woodshed as his wilting mind convinced itself that he was alone on the peak, that no one could possibly find him. His cultivation level meant he wasn’t suffering the effects of sleep deprivation like a mortal would, but cultivators still have to sleep eventually.
It was just that the last time he’d returned to the mountain from the Warm Red Pavilion, it had been to Liu Qingge’s disgusted disapproval, the titters and mocking laughs of his peak siblings, the silent judgment of his shizun.
Normally he let it roll of his back as best he could, and did what he had to to keep himself on two feet. But then he’d been silently stricken from the inter-peak night hunt that upper-level disciples participated in several times a year, and it hadn’t just been the judgment of his peers he’d had to contend with, but a tangible threat: fall in line (fall apart), or lose everything he'd worked for.
So here he was trying to regain favor by taking on a night hunt alone—not that anyone would volunteer to accompany him—while specks of sleep-hallucination flickered in the corners of his eyes. He had even tried to sleep on the trip here, had curled up on fir needles and kept a knife in his hand, but he had reached that critical tipping point when one’s body was so tired, it forgot how to sleep.
Which might have been why the corpse beast caught him by surprise.
One moment he was putting one numb foot in front of the other, bringing up a wide sleeve to cover his nose at the abrupt stench of rot, and the next he was flying through the air, a smack from a bear-like paw sending him crashing into the undergrowth.
Xiu Ya was in his hand before his vision settled, and he caught the next swipe on her blade, slicing into the meat of the monster’s paw.
Shen Jiu never admitted a mistake. But looking up at the beast, he could admit to himself that he should have pressed for a companion on this hunt.
The corpse beast was twice his height, a decaying amalgamation of animals and lower-level demon corpses twisting up to form its mutated body: six mismatched legs clawed the ground with hooves and paws, a slavering mouth gaped to show three sets of jaws fused together, bristling with the teeth of canines. Its eyes were glassy and dead, but it didn’t need them: the energy of a living being, especially the qi of a cultivator, was a beacon to its unthinking mind. Until it was put down or it grew too heavy to sustain itself and collapsed, the corpse beast would seek out life to add into its rotting mass.
It was fine, it was fine. Shen Jiu had taken care of more powerful beasts before. Maybe not with a tea-egg mind, but the only other option was death.
The corpse beast threw itself bodily at him and he leapt away, losing a slice of his hem to one of the middle legs. Too close to his flesh. Far too close. He landed with one hand on the ground, sliding through pine needles, Xiu Ya stretched behind him. When the beast came for him again, he leapt, sailing over the beast’s head and dragging his blade down over its neck, qi burning through his meridians to keep him alight—
The world wavered, and the beast’s tail—he hadn’t realized it had a tail—sent him slamming into the ground. Xiu Ya skittered from his hand has he hit the ground and rolled in the opposite direction as clawed paws slammed down into the dirt, again, again, again, until they caught him, rending flesh from hip to ankle.
Pain so severe it became numbness almost immediately flooded Shen Jiu’s body. He couldn’t feel anything—not the ground beneath him, much less his bloody leg. The corpse beast reared again, strands of silk caught in its claws, preparing to crush him to dust.
He forced his numb fingers into a sword seal, and Xiu Ya came plummeting towards him, lodging herself into the belly of the best, the hilt caught in its fur, trapping the blade inside it.
The corpse beast roared, but it had to be outrage, not pain. Corpse beasts were did not feel pain. They kept attacking until they were dismembered. But Xiu Ya’s presence inside whatever it possessed for guts bought him time, and he risked another burst of qinggong, pushing himself with a hand and his uninjured leg away from the beast.
He skidded to an ungraceful fall in the fir needles, so thick they cushioned him a small amount. But his meridians were on fire, making his fingers spasm against the ground, his jaw clench. Each surge of violent qi through them burned like salt water in a wound.
A massive roar made him look back, scraping strands of hair from his eyes. Xiu Ya was still inside the corpse beast, but it had lost interest. It bared its unnatural melted-together jaws, the amalgamation of eyes on its head squinted and runny with death, and charged him.
Its maw came down on pine needles. Shen Jiu’s mind was on fire, qi careening through him like tea tilted back and forth in a cup, drops spraying upwards. He made a sword seal again, again, but either Xiu Ya was stuck or he hadn’t the strength to call her any longer.
Claws flashed towards him and he rolled; they caught his arm and raked over the scratches he’d left. He kicked desperately out with his good leg, shunting himself backwards, but the corpse beast lurched forward and put a clawed paw on his leg. It held him there like a snake by the tail. If corpse beasts had had a spark of sentience, he would swear it was taunting him.
Shen Jiu lay there beneath the beast as it breathed cold, lifeless breath down at him through its mutated jaws, calling and calling Xiu Ya with his good hand, but it was useless. His qi was sloshing through him, sickening, like a ship on a stormy sea. Deviation. He’d felt it many times before.
But never so close to death.
Perhaps, he thought blankly as he stared into the triple faces of the corpse beast, deer and dog and hare melting into each other at the mouth, perhaps it was for the best. This thing would kill him, and eat him, and his body would become some part of it. And it would keep killing and eating until someone killed it or it grew too heavy to haul its bulk around and fell over and died.
Could he honestly say it was worse than the path he was on?
As its prey went lax, the corpse beast lowered its head and put its maw on Shen Jiu’s torso, drawn to the beat of his heart. Fangs widened around his chest. The pressure on his leg snapped the bone. His qi erupted into a house fire, burning out his meridians like he had burned out the Qius.
Shen Jiu tipped his head back to the sky.
Just as the tips of the corpse beast’s fangs punctured his chest, there was a great whistling and a slam the sound of a stone door banging shut. The corpse beast went flying off him, followed as fast as sound by a massive, coiling form. Sick, snapping crunches came from beyond his tunneling field of vision, the corpse beast’s roar gurgling out into silence, yet still followed by the visceral noise of dismemberment.
If the corpse beast couldn’t kill him, then surely this new fiend would do the job. So be it. Shen Jiu was tired. He closed his eyes and let himself fall.