Many kilometers to the northwest of where Qing Liao and Amami Yoko sat on a sandy island and purged the last impurities from their refilled dantians, a single ghoul, drawn out by the flickering scent of vital qi of human origin, stepped past a fallen stone lantern. This intrusion, though completely silent, did not pass unnoticed. In response, quiescent energies gathered, and a long-slumbering awareness was jerked back into consciousness.

The Endless Mysteries Sect, dead but not gone, surged forth to survey its lands once more.

Liao, seated between the open night sky and watching the great wheel of stars slowly give way to the coming dawn, felt the pulse of power as the vast network of formations that overlaid this land shifted and flexed. For a fraction of an eyeblink his advanced senses glimpsed a series of flashes, lights and colors no ordinary human eye could resolve, rain down from the dome-like networks of embedded qi that hung suspended across the sky above this strange place.

His heart fell at that sight, and he jumped to his feet. "We've stayed here too long," he announced, voice calm but senses screaming danger. The trap had been sprung. He did not know its shape, but he could feel the jaws closing.

"Agreed," Amami Yoko, still slick with seawater, vaulted from the waves with her fingers wrapped about the hilts of her swords. "Fight or flee?" She requested orders with dark-eyed fatalistic serenity.

"Flee," Liao decided instantly. "Whatever this is," he offered by way of rapid explanation. "It is not the plague. No need to make any unnecessary enemies."

"Agreed," a sharp nod bent the heart-shaped face into acceptance. It seemed that the warrior's desires for vengeance remained properly targeted.

"West," the choice of direction was easy. Assuming he'd gauged the formation's center correctly, it offered the shortest path to escape the confines.

They ran forward then, side by side, over the sand and across the river to the west, with the rising sun behind them. It was barely a minute's race, riding on light and spray, before Liao discovered they had already lost. The enemy was in front, not behind. The rings of death were closing from without rather than within.

Five steps along the western bank and he saw it. A fallen stone lantern, half-buried in the tidal wash, gave off a single green spark. This paired to a flash of singular, purified, and instantly recognizable qi. Jade, a stone long used as a well of power, one capable of imbuing artifacts, catalyzing potions, and granting motion to automata.

Recognizing that signature, Liao found he was not surprised by what occurred next. It matched, almost exactly, to an old world story Zhou Hua had told him during one of their many shared nights. Familiarity, however, did nothing to reduce the horror of the phenomenon.

Cleverly concealed seams in the stone body of the lantern split apart, and the thick cylinder that had served as the base of the structure unfolded into a simplistic carved figurine representation of a humanoid body, one complete with stumpy legs and arms beneath the glowing-green jade light that now served as its head. Faceless though it remained, the qi embedded in the veridian flame ignited and impelled the stone form to stumble forward. Awkward, stumbling like a newborn chick, it wobbled and wiggled, but it moved with the power and weight of its base material.

Qi flared on all sides. Liao sensed that this one was not alone. Hundreds of lanterns were coming to life.

"How can this be?" Amami Yoko stared at the construct in horror. Her swords were in hand, ready to strike, but the frightful creations induced hesitancy and confusion. Her qi swirled, palpably perturbed.

"The forbidden art of soul puppetry," Liao knew of it. Even in the old world it had been reviled, and it had been experiments in this practice – the use of vital qi as fuel for constructs – that served as the foundation of the plague's creation. How these stone things still existed and moved after so much time had passed, he did not know, but their threat could not have been more obvious.

These words sufficed to remove all hesitation from the ocean born warrior. Dashing forward in fluid, sweeping steps, Amami Yoko slashed past the lantern, blade out. A step to the left and forward at the moment of impact carried the sword in her right hand, coated in a sheen of liquid blue qi, straight through the center of the stubby construct's torso.

It collapsed to the white and gray sand, severed cleanly in twain. But it was not destroyed. Though the bottom half, deprived of a connection to the swirling nexus of qi pouring through the lantern flame, ceased to function, the stubby fingerless arms still pulled the stone creation forward over the grains and pebbles below.

Amami Yoko jerked back in horror, swords in hand before her as panic spread over her features.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"The jade core, in the center of the lantern!" Liao called out loud and ringing. The force of the outcry surprised him even as he moved to pull his daggers free.

Action resolved instantly. The water cultivator pivoted, spun her sword in her hand, and brought the point down in a swift jab. A thumb-sized piece of jade, carved into the form of a green flame, shattered. The puppet ceased all motion and collapsed to the earth at once. Qi fled the form, and only stone remained.

"How did you know?" The warrior turned back and launched this hard question, eyes steel. A mixture of gratitude and suspicion held her locked in place. Knowledge of forbidden arts was uncommon. That was the entire purpose of keeping them hidden.

"Good teachers and an extensive library," Liao answered. This particular understanding could be traced to the tutelage of Su Yi, who had done her best to catalog all possible weapons of the old world that might remain active anywhere in the Ruined Wastes.

"We cannot wait here," he added when that brief answer seemed to satisfy. He looked over at the fallen puppet, analyzing quickly. Made of stone, it had been durable and strong, but slow and awkward. Whatever its intended purpose, he suspected these mechanisms were easier to outrun than ghouls. "We need to escape this formation."

Amami Yoko nodded. "Agreed. I will lead the crest then," she decided. "Clear the sides with your arrows."

This edged dangerously close to taking command, but Liao felt no need to contest. It was a solid and simple approach, and it seemed the athletic cultivator was naturally suited to the vanguard role

They ran west.

More lanterns arose in their path as they raced over the sands. The constructs had surely been initially placed according to some complex geometric formulation, but time had scattered them about seemingly at random. It had even damaged a number of them, leaving them cracked, chipped, and broken, though that had little impact on their combat capability.

Sometimes the constructs were alone. At other points they gathered in clusters or lines. As the cultivators moved close to them, some part of the qi matrix animating these puppets detected their vital qi and surged them forward into battle. It was a simple order, clearly, nothing more than a broad directive to attack all strong qi concentrations, but likely all these stone things were capable of understanding.

Having observed the behavior of ghouls for over a century and a half, Liao was startled by the awkward motions and simply pathing of the stone lanterns. They struggled to keep to their feet even when moving across the flat and open ground of the desolated landscape. Whenever either of the cultivators stepped past one, the lantern inevitably tried to turn about too fast for its stubby limbs to manage and flopped fully to the sand beneath. They could only stand upright again with considerable effort.

Amami Yoko destroyed many that they passed in this way, slipping by their stumpy arms and then driving the point of her swords into their cores like a spike from on high. Liao, recognizing the efficacy of this approach, imitated it using his daggers when the constructs grew dense, though his shorter reach mandated careful rolls across the downed lanterns.

Arrows proved less useful. The stone panels of the hexagonal room that served as the lanterns' heads concealed the core jades behind walls of stone with narrow windows. Striking for effect required either a perfectly chosen angle for the shot or the expenditure of qi to press the arrowhead through the blocking stone. One wasted time, the other energy. Soon, he put the bow away, finding it easier to simply run past.

The lantern puppets were numerous, but predictions as to their sluggishness proved correct. Even a mortal human could run past them and though they were clearly tireless the boundary of the formation was not so vast that this mattered. Liao, running behind Amami Yoko's swift and languid strides, believed they could break free without any difficulty.

This hope lasted until they moved close enough to the western edge of the formation, another set of forested hills rising to the west as a narrow strip of river-laced coastal plain gave way to ever more roughly bent and rising ground, to feel what gathered there.

Amami Yoko, her stronger but less surface-refined senses detecting the difficulty in the same moment, came to a sudden halt. Liao flashed into place a single step behind her, fully cognizant of the danger closing in upon them. "This trap, it was not meant for us, but I have led us into it." Somber regret flooded him. Foolishness and overconfidence, the consequences of both lashed against him then.

A huge mass of demonic qi surrounded the boundary of the formation. Demons, drawn by the massive rush of vital qi animating the lanterns – much of it somehow extracted from the people who lived here long ago through abominable means Liao had no desire to imagine – had surrounded the edge of the death zone. Fluctuations, a low rumble unleashed by forces in deadly conflict in the absence of any life to obscure the signal, suggested ghouls and stone lanterns engaged in a battle within the haze-filled boundary that marked the contention between a world dominated by plague and one lost to death.

The demons were few, for now, but more were arriving every moment.

"The brave whale may smash the school of squid," the water cultivator spoke with quiet, battle-ready calm. "Do we breakthrough?"

It was possible. They could, perhaps, simply leap above the ragged skirmish between red and gray puppet monsters and race away. To fight through, well, Liao thought they possessed such strength, but it felt too much like a step backward. They had lost the plague's attention, for the moment. He did not wish to sacrifice that gain. Not if other paths remained.

Instead, Liao turned south. Looking across the bay to the distant peninsula whose hazy heights girded it against the full power of the ocean. There were trees on those distant hills, and trees meant that the death formation did not hold sway at that distance. "Let us go south, swimming," he decided instead. "Let the monsters fight each other while we slip away. Whatever controls this formation, I do not believe we want its attention."

Hearing this, Amami Yoko briefly opened her mouth as if to speak, only to stop and let her words pass by unspoken. She simply nodded instead and took the lead again. They ran back to the shore and plunged into the bay, trusting their hopes to the wet road.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.