Book 3: Chapter 33: Fear Itself
Hong Fu had spent most of his long life in positions of relative power and safety. He’d spent his childhood protected by his noble status, which had partially carried over into the sect that he’d joined. His quiet conversion to a demonic cultivator had fueled rapid, if somewhat unstable, growth in his cultivation. That had allowed for swift advancement in the sect. He wasn’t the most powerful elder in his sect, but that was by design. Better by far to allow others to draw the light of attention. He worked in the background. Reliable, indispensable to his peers and those above him, but largely unnoticed by most inside and outside the sect. It was the perfect camouflage for his work of undermining the moral center of the sect an inch at a time. It was the work of centuries, but work that would weaken the heavens by depriving it of righteous men and women. Then, when the time was right, he’d give the sect that one final push that would see it crumble into nothing or fall to demonic cultivation.
The quiet, unassuming life that allowed him to do all those unsavory, unspeakable things required of a demonic cultivator had come crashing down around his head a year ago. Word had spread through the questionable but all-important back channels demonic cultivators maintained that someone had made a list of every demonic cultivator they were aware of. Hong Fu could only assume that the list had been intended as some kind of leverage down the road. A way to extract favors or treasures that would give the holder of the list a better position with the true demons. Hong Fu might have even done the same if he’d thought of it. The list itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the fool who wrote it got himself killed, and the list was exposed. Unfortunately, no one had seen the list, which meant that there was no way to know if his name was on it. At first, Hong Fu had focused on tracking down and killing the boy who exposed the list. Some folk hero called Judgment’s Gale. Yet, like the list itself, the boy turned out to be more dangerous than he appeared.
It was believed that he was personally responsible for killing at least two core formation demonic cultivators and an unreasonable number of underlings and hired killers. Worse still, he was traveling with some woman who had proven herself positively lethal. She had slaughtered people by the score, yet no one seemed to know who she was. Even that wasn’t the worst of it. At first, there were just rumors, but those rumors had slowly evolved into a set of facts that made Hong Fu’s blood run cold. That boy, the ridiculous foundation formation child who could somehow kill core formation demonic cultivators, had gotten the list to Fate’s Razor. That old monster had shared the list with The Living Spear, and the two of them had gone on a killing spree the likes of which the continent hadn’t experienced in centuries. Demonic cultivators were being driven into virtual extinction east of the Mountains of Sorrow. That had been terrifying enough, but then the boy went missing. No one knew where he was. In the wake of that disappearance, the nascent soul demigods had simply gone mad. Where there had been two of them hunting before, now there were three. Alchemy’s Handmaiden had joined in their insanity, wielding poison and rage like they belonged to her and her alone. At her side, there was a green-eyed girl who matched her mistress’s rage with cold ruthlessness and calculated mercilessness. There were stories about the things that girl had done that were enough to make even Hong Fu shudder. They said that she only ever asked one question.
“Where is Lu Sen?”
When those stories had started to circulate, Hong Fu had reached out to the one who brought him into demonic cultivation. He’d been looking for protection or, barring that, advice. Yet, there was no response. She had either severed ties with him, been cut down by the murderous nascent soul cultivators, or fled. Not that it really mattered what had happened. The end result was the same for him. With nowhere to turn to, he made his decision. He ran. He ran to the west. Ran away from the slaughter and madness. He ran for his life. He’d shed all signs of his sect affiliation, changed his name, and even altered his appearance as much as he could. He’d started identifying himself as a wandering cultivator just passing through on his way to some randomly selected destination. For all that he didn’t know for sure that he was being hunted, he couldn’t shake the paranoia. He had left the need for daily sleep behind long ago, but now he didn’t sleep at all, save for brief, fitful snatches at night by his small campfire.
He had hunted people before, but he’d never been on this side of a hunt. He’d never appreciated how truly awful it was. The constant panic anytime he heard a noise he didn’t expect. The inability to rest. The fraying remnants of his ability to interact with others in a reasonable way. He’d killed more than one person who had, in hindsight, merely startled him. Of course, he was a core formation cultivator, so there were few willing to challenge his actions. Yet, those deaths were a sign of his passage, a clue that an observant or obsessed person might pick up on. They were a way to track him. He’d been able to simply hide the deaths that occurred in the empty spaces between cities and towns, but it was always worse when he was in a city or town. The low-simmering paranoia always swelled into a full boil, which made him edgier and more prone to rash violence. His demonic cultivation didn’t help with that either. His entire cultivation base was built on violence, bloodshed, and the death of innocents. It wanted to hurt people and eagerly responded any time his inclinations went in that direction. Unfortunately, deaths by cultivator hands in major towns and cities didn’t go unremarked or unnoticed. The guards and sects might not act against him, but it didn’t mean they weren’t paying attention.
So, he ran harder and moved faster. The continent was truly vast, so it took even core formation cultivators time to cross it. Yet, as the Mountains of Sorrow drew closer, Hong Fu’s fears slowly diminished. The amount of violence near those mountains had been comparatively sparse. So, it stood to reason that proximity to them was its own protection. He started to sleep again, a little. That was a relief. While he might not absolutely require sleep, it was a respite from his constantly churning thoughts and the draining presence of fear itself. He started to make vague plans. Demonic cultivators didn’t work together as a rule. They were too unpredictable in most cases. In some cases, they were too mentally unstable to maintain anything like a peaceful alliance. Their path had a higher price for some than others. Still, there were a few small enclaves of demonic cultivators, the more stable ones, spread out across the continent. He knew of one to the west of the mountains. He might go there. They would likely take him in, as long as he could demonstrate better-than-average self-control for a demonic cultivator. He’d successfully passed himself off as a regular cultivator in a sect for two hundred years, so he gave himself good odds.
His mood improved as the mountains grew larger and larger on the horizon. He was almost there. The mountains were treacherous, even for core cultivators, but they were passable. Even the mortals had found one or two safe routes through. If they could make their way over the mountains successfully, he was confident that he could do it. He started to debate with himself about what name he should give when he got across the mountains. A part of him was still attached to the name Hong Fu. It had been with him most of his life, but that seemed like an unnecessary risk. No, better to just wipe himself clean of that identity. The demonic cultivators in the enclave wouldn’t care about his name. His cultivation path was the only identification they would need. He would choose a new name. Something short, simple, and easy for him and everyone else to remember. Lia Bo, perhaps. He’d have to spend some time repeating that name to himself, both in his head and out loud. It wouldn’t do to introduce himself that way and then never react when people said it. Yes, he’d go with Lia Bo.
He’d barely had that thought when he found himself driven to the ground by the crushing weight of a will and a power that vastly exceeded his own. His eyes turned to the mountains. He had been so close to escape, to freedom, to a new life. He found himself hoping that it was Fate’s Razor or The Living Spear. They were straightforward, in their way. They might ask him a few questions, but then they’d just destroy him. That thin, vague hope died a whimpering death when two women walked up to him. The older of the two regarded him with open hatred on her face, but it was the young woman, the young woman with green eyes, that frightened him more. She looked down at him like he was some kind of rodent that she intended to play with for a long, long time before she finally let him die. The young woman cocked her head a little to one side and spoke to him in a lilting, musical voice that made the words themselves infinitely more terrible.
“Where is Lu Sen?”
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