“Har.” Wu Ying shook his head, recalling the shocked look on the attendant’s face when he asked. And the attendant’s greater shock when the attending Senior crossly informed the cultivator that such stores were reserved for greater threats. “No. Surprisingly, black dog urine that is properly conditioned and treated is hard to acquire. It seems the urine has to come from pure black dogs during certain periods of the month for proper effectiveness.” Grinning with mischief, Wu Ying added, “But I was told that if we could find a young man who has never touched or shared an intimate moment with a woman, his urine would work.”
“Really?” Tou He said blandly. “That’s good to know.”
The pair raced down the mountain, crossing li after li before Wu Ying finally couldn’t stand it anymore. “It’s you. You’re the young man!”
“No. I’m not.” The still-bald ex-monk picked up the pace.
Wu Ying’s eyes widened and his friend pulled well ahead of him before the cultivator shook off his shock. After that pronouncement, Wu Ying definitely needed an answer. Or better yet, a story.
Days later, the pair finally arrived at the village sans a story about Tou He’s scandalous rendezvous with a young lady. Wu Ying wondered how much his friend hid beneath that smiling demeanor. After all, Tou He had been kicked out of the monastery. Wu Ying had even briefly doubted the veracity of his story, but the cultivator pushed those doubts aside. He had no reason to believe his friend had lied to him and good reason not to let doubts mar their friendship.
Wu Ying eyed the village as they reached the top of the grass-covered hill that housed the central living areas and the shops that made up this farming village. Beyond the fact that Hongmao was located in a series of rolling hills, unlike the flatter terrain of Wu Ying’s village, Hongmao could have been said to be a copy. Numerous residences rested among the hills and stepped fields. The villagers were out in the fields, working the land, weeding, clearing out ditches, and repairing terraced walls. A wave of nostalgia washed over Wu Ying as he saw the all-too-familiar scene.
The villagers eyed the pair of sect cultivators, clad in their green-and-blue robes, with caution and some relief. Wu Ying understood the caution entirely. Too many “real” cultivators considered those who had not ascended in their cultivation as lesser beings. Though now that he had been on the inside of the sect, Wu Ying could not help but wonder if some of that might have been an issue of nobles looking down on commoners, rather than cultivators looking down on the untrained.
As they entered the center of the village, the village head appeared, breathing hard from his run to greet them. “Greetings, honored cultivators.” The village head bowed low. “I am Teoh Kah Hock[17]. Welcome to our small village.”
“Cultivator Long Wu Ying of the Verdant Green Waters Sect.”
“Cultivator Liu Tou He of the Verdant Green Waters Sect.”
The pair bowed in unison as if they had planned it, forcing Wu Ying to smile as he realized what they’d done.
“Thank you for coming, cultivators. The hopping vampires have been troubling us greatly,” Kah Hock said.
“Not at all.” Wu Ying followed the village elder as they walked into the village. “Have you not tried to hunt them during the day?”
“We have, honored cultivator. But though the jiangshi might be weaker in sunlight, they are still not weak. And there were too many by the time we found them,” Kah Hock said.
“Too many?” Wu Ying said.
“Yes. The cemetery they live in is an older one. Abandoned by our village centuries ago. We did not realize it was not consecrated any longer till, well, now,” Kah Hock said, making a face. “The Taoist priest we hired to consecrate the grounds and appease the spirits when we learned of it was injured and grew sick from the overabundance of yin chi. He says he will go back when it’s cleared.”
Tou He nodded amiably, looking around the quiet village center. Wu Ying followed his gaze, spotting a group of elders and a pair of kids lying and sitting in a corner of the village square, soaking up the rays of sunshine. All of them were strangely pale and entirely too lethargic, especially the children. Wu Ying extended his senses, feeling toward them, and frowned as he felt the lack of pressure from their auras, the absence of vital chi within their bodies.
“They are the victims of the jiangshi,” Kah Hock said when he spotted the pair’s eyes. “Those who survived.”
“I see,” Wu Ying said, growing more resolute. Thrice-damned restless spirits.
“It is too late to journey to the cemetery tonight,” Kah Hock said. “If the honored guests will accept our humble hospitality, we will show you the cemetery tomorrow. We would ask for your aid tonight if they break through, but the priest’s formation should hold.”
The pair quickly accepted Kah Hock’s suggestion, placing their burdens down in the guest rooms offered inside Kah Hock’s own home. As the largest building, it was also the only one that had enough free space to properly accommodate the pair. Wu Ying took the opportunity to wash away the stink of his excess cultivation while leaving Tou He to finish unpacking. Once they were done, the pair exited their rooms to explore the small building.
To their surprise, the cultivators found a silent Taoist priest in the inner courtyard, seated in a cross-legged meditative position. Like the other victims, the bearded priest was unnaturally pale and doing his best to soak up the yang energy from the sun. Unlike the other victims, he also bore physical injuries along his arms and across one blood-stained, bandaged shoulder.
Tou He elbowed Wu Ying, jerking his head toward the exit, and the pair tiptoed out. Best to leave the priest to heal. Over the next few hours till the end of day, the pair walked the village, eying the defenses set up, their peach-wood weapons strapped to their bodies.
Later that night, Wu Ying and Tou He sat across from each other in the lamp-lit courtyard. The priest had abandoned the courtyard when the sun fell, passing a few words of greeting and caution to the pair before he retired. Village-head Teoh excused himself after offering the pair their supper, indicating he had to check on the remainder of the village.
“This is really very good,” Tou He said, holding up the simple bun made from a rice wrapper and stuffed with fresh chives, bean sprouts, onions, and marinated pork. “Not enough meat, but quite tasty.”
“You and your meat,” Wu Ying said with a roll of his eyes.
Tou He grinned unrepentantly. “What do you think?”
“Of?”
“The assignment.”
“There are more hopping vampires than we were told to expect,” Wu Ying said.
Initially, that number had been six. Too many for the single Taoist priest, but viable for a pair of experienced cultivators. Even if neither of them were in the Energy Storage stage. From their conversations with the few villagers, it looked as though the initial estimates were grossly wrong. There were at least a dozen of the monsters, a number that would require at least one other cultivator. If not two.
“Can we do it?”
Wu Ying considered the question. “Not if we fight them all.”
“Then?”
“We hunt. Tonight,” Wu Ying said, pushing aside his concern. “If we can catch them alone, it should work.”
“Will they be alone?” Tou He asked as he finished off the bun.
Wu Ying shrugged. It was not as if he had ever dealt with so many hopping vampires. There were many reasons for the vampires to be born. Evil necromancers would raise them to harass a village for money, while others rose from corpses that were not properly consecrated. In this case, errant spirits had chosen not to return to hell and taken control of rotted bodies. In Wu Ying’s village, there had been but a single incident of these monsters, and in that case, it was a single body.
“Well, the sun has set,” Tou He said, eyeing the darkness before he picked up another rice bun and his new staff. “Shall we?”