Choices and Consequences

The White Lotus(Bái liánhuā, 白莲花)

Mount Buzhou

Sand sprayed around him like confettis falling except they are not soft like flowers. Ye Hua's head felt like it made contact with concrete.  Despite a blurry vision and a very  sore head, Ye Hua managed to roll to his knees and stood up. He rotated his neck and shoulders to check if anything was broken.  He let out a sigh of relief when every bone on his neck and shoulders seemed to be intact.  He cast his eye around looking for Tian Shu.  The surface of the red sand shimmered and rippled with a mirage like sheen.  Ye Hua squinted his eyes and used his dragon vision to see through the mirage. He can see a shape emerging from the sandy surface.  "Tian Shu, is that you?" he called out.  "Yes, Your Highness but I can't see where you are."  "Don't move, I'll come to you," Ye Hua replied.  He started moving forward to Tian Shu when he noticed that he started sinking into the sand.  The sand is moving faster and is sucking him down.  He stopped moving and the sand slowed down to a mere ripple.  Once he started moving again, the sand reverted back to its sucking fast flow.

Ye Hua conjured a protection barrier on himself and sprinted to where Tian Shu was still standing waiting for him.  He just managed to reach and took hold of Tian Shu's arm when with a loud crack, the river exploded all around them and sucked them both down its depths. Burying them alive.   Ye Hua's protection barrier just about held from the powerful assault.  A mad cackle erupted around them.  It felt like it was coming from every particle of the sand that's trying to suffocate them.  It assaulted every sense that they possessed.  His protection barrier shattered.  Anger bloomed in Ye Hua's chest.  His normally warm chocolate brown eyes darkened to obsidian black. His black dragon is manifesting itself. 

There is a demon controlling the sand.  His dragon senses can feel it circling them, manipulating the sand to keep them both buried.  Tian Shu is struggling, trying vainly to keep the sand from filling his mouth and nose.  The demon is using the sand to entomb them to death.  But before Ye Hua could shift to his dragon, the sand formed a vice-like hold on his throat, choking him.  He tried to claw it off but the sand just sifted through his fingers.  He is fast losing his consciousness.  Ye Hua couldn't allow the demon to succeed in killing him.  With an enormous burst of power, Ye Hua erupted out into the surface taking Tian Shu with him.  He conjured an impenetrable barrier around Tian Shu and summoned Qingming, his sword into his arm. 

Thunder rolled in the sky above them.  Lightning flared up from the Qingming's tip.  Ye Hua was incensed.  He glared around him looking for the demon.  "Show yourself, demon!  Stop hiding behind the sand!" He shouted.  A form slowly  emerged from the surface of the river.  An enormous shape manifested in front of Ye Hua.  Its head is topped by blood red eyes with gaping holes of shifting sand for nose and mouth.  A giant figure of a man, made of shifting sand stood in front of Ye Hua. It eyed him maliciously and a guttural laugh ensued from its gaping maw.  "So the pansy prince of the celestials thinks that he can beat me, Sha Wujing.  Let's see you try then eh!."  The creature laughed and sand started crawling around the protection barrier.  Ye Hua can feel the pressure on the barrier.  The demon lifted its arms and smashed it at the barrier trying to shatter it.  Ye Hua lifted the barrier off him and plunged his sword straight into the chest of the creature but the sand just shifted around it leaving the demon unharmed.   

"Is that all you have, pansy prince? You are no more than a pretty face, I see.  Hmm..maybe you should have sent your big brother.  That one knows how to fight for sure."  The demon taunted Ye Hua.  With his mind whirling, thinking of ways to defeat the demon, Ye Hua avoided the sand tentacles that's trying to trap him.  An idea formed in this mind which made him smile at the demon.  Ye Hua shifted into his black dragon form and blasted the demon with a deluge of water which scattered and melted the demon into a wet puddle at his feet.  He shifted back to his human form and cast a spell to freeze the demon into a solid block of ice.  He freed Tian Shu from the protection barrier who then stood at his side looking down at the frozen demon.