All Wu Ying could offer was the smallest mercy. A warm meal. A quick death. And a name remembered.
Chapter 14
The remainder of the journey had been prosaic─boring. Like before, the village elder had greeted them with a smile and all the courtesy he could muster. They had been given the village elder’s house, the man and his family vacating to live with another family. Then they’d been given the detailed list of attacks and the actions the village had taken to stem the dholes. As the dholes were diurnal hunters, the pair had partaken of a quiet meal in the evening and rested early, getting up long before dawn broke.
That was how the pair found themselves seated in the branches of two trees in the early morning, staring at the staked-out demon piglet. Grown specifically to feed cultivators, the creature had a cultivation of Body Cleansing 2, bordering on 3. Given enough time, it might reach even the apex of Body Cleansing 3 as a demon beast. A tempting enough target, the pair hoped, for the dhole. Better than having them attack and tear through flimsy mud walls to take another villager. Or, worse, their child.
Seated in the closer tree, Wu Ying had the crossbow on his knees. Unlike Li Yao, he had little experience with archery. He had played and practiced with the bows and crossbows in the village. It had been part of their regular training, the necessity of a land always at war. But a few hours every few months was obviously not sufficient for real competence.
The piglet squealed and shivered in the cold of a winter morning, staked on the flat, level ground near the rice fields, where rice stalks and grain would be stored. Wu Ying was grateful the trees that shaded the area rarely shed their leaves, unlike the stories he had heard of plants in the north. How strange would it be? To have bare trees, frozen rivers, and snow that refused to leave until spring returned.
Shaking his head, Wu Ying brought his attention back to the surroundings. Being on watch was boring. No matter how often you told yourself to focus, idle thoughts and boredom would win and you would find yourself distracted. More frustrating was the fact he could not even cultivate. Doing so would change the flow of chi in the surroundings. While Wu Ying was not certain what kind of expanded senses the dhole had, it could easily include the ability to sense ambient chi.
That was also why Li Yao was farther away. Unlike Wu Ying, she had not trained to contain her aura, making her presence more notable. Unfortunately, all their caution would be of little use if Wu Ying did not pay attention and catch the dhole as they sneaked up on the piglet.
Like now.
Wu Ying tensed as he realized the dark brown spots moving in the long shadows of early morning light were his targets. He flicked his gaze across the clearing, searching for the others. If there were two, there must be more. One more, in the corner near the ditch. And perhaps one in the ditch itself.
Wu Ying slowly moved his hand in the pre-assigned signal to Li Yao. He would turn back, but previous attempts to spot her had failed, so he would not attempt it again. Better to hope she saw his signal. Wu Ying cocked the crossbow and raised it to his chest, keeping his movement slow and smooth. Once he had it snugly against his shoulder, he looked down the sights and adjusted his aim.
Already, one of the dhole had crept to within ten feet of the piglet. The piglet was frozen in fear, a primal sense telling it of the danger it faced, but unable to escape. As Wu Ying watched, the other two demon beasts he had noticed crept forward, completing the encirclement.
The arrow that sprouted from one of the dhole was a vicious surprise. It took the monster in the side, making the dhole stagger in its crouch as it got ready to spring forward. The pig thrashed, pulling at the rope that held it fast, but Wu Ying ignore the distraction as he targeted and pulled on the trigger of his crossbow. The bolt shot forward, only to be dodged by the dhole he had targeted. The monster threw itself at the piglet, intent on finishing off its prey.
Forced to choose, Wu Ying discarded his spent crossbow and jumped down, already drawing his sword as he darted forward. The three surviving dhole rushed their prey, tearing into the staked piglet and killing it. Closer, Wu Ying could see the demon beasts in greater detail. The dhole looked like a larger variant of its mortal cousin, with its body nearly the size of an adult wolf but with a flatter and longer skull, reminiscent of a fox. Like the fox, it had a tawny, red coat but had a stripe of colour alongside its backbone that glittered in the dark.
As Wu Ying closed in on the group, the lead dhole clamped its mouth around the piglet and worried the body, attempting to retrieve the remains from the collar. Each jerk moved the stake up an inch or so. While their fellow pack member worked the corpse, the other two faced the charging cultivator.
A quick swipe and a proper lunge later, Wu Ying had one of the dhole skewered. As he recovered forward, lead foot shifting and rising to kick aside the other leaping monster, an arrow flickered by Wu Ying’s gaze. This one caught the leaping dhole high up on its body, throwing the monster away from Wu Ying.
Startled by the sudden loss of his packmates, the remaining monster dropped the corpse and turned to run. Wu Ying threw himself forward, only to cut the edge of the monster’s back leg as it darted away. In short seconds, the monster was gone, lost in the low brush and ditch, leaving the pair of cultivators with three corpses and their dead bait.
“Did you mark it?” Li Yao asked Wu Ying as she walked up.
“Yes.” Wu Ying looked at the tip of his sword. Blooded, the monster should be easy enough to track.
“Good.”
Li Yao turned to the monsters before them, quickly ending the life of the one remaining, dying dhole before she began the process of extracting the demon stones. Wu Ying followed her example, making sure to string up the creatures and cut their jugular veins. Leaving the creatures to bleed out, Wu Ying washed his hands on the offered water bottle and retrieved his crossbow. The villagers would finish the skinning, gutting, and butchering for them, but leaving the demon stones was a touch too much temptation.
By the time they were done, the dawn light had increased sufficiently that tracking the injured monster would be simple enough. Together, the pair took off, Li Yao in the lead. One of the many surprises Li Yao had sprung on Wu Ying was her competence at tracking. She did not track the same way the village hunters did, not exactly. While Li Yao used the blood, the broken branches, and other mundane signs of passage, she also relied on her ability to sense the escaping chi from the wounded monster.
Three hours later, the pair crested a hill to look down at the den. Wu Ying hissed under his breath, eyeing the clan of dhole spread before them. The dhole hunted in packs, but they lived in clans of up to twenty. Luckily, this group was only ten. But they were all demon beasts, including the monstrous dhole lying in the sun, too large to fit into the smaller holes of their original den. The dhole cavorted and played, the group barely paying attention to their injured compatriot as it returned sans meat. All around the clearing below, remnants of prior meals lay.
Wu Ying stretched his senses, allowing himself to passively soak up the chi radiating from the monster. Sensing and touching it, judging. Body Cleansing 12, pinnacle. Ready to break into Energy Storage. Dangerous. Very dangerous. The only good news was that three of the remaining dhole were pups, which meant the cultivators only had to deal with seven full-grown monsters. As Wu Ying watched, a pair of the pups worked over a piece of meat, pulling on either edge. Narrowing his eyes, Wu Ying realized the covering he’d taken to be fur was torn and dirty cloth. When Wu Ying saw the cloth, he could not help but see the rest of the hints—the torn meat, the all-too-familiar hip bones, a shattered portion of a skull. Fresh too.