The Ghost Of You

Chapter 9

Teleportation was surprisingly easy. Feng Xin had prepared for the worst. He'd prepared for being taken apart, for being ripped into several smaller pieces, and then unceremoniously put back together.

Instead, he got nothing. Nothing besides five seconds under crushing darkness followed by the unmistakable feeling of falling.

He opened his eyes in dim light. The endless blue of Heaven Realm's sky had been blotted out with rock. The stench of sulfur came first, with blood following it soon after.

In the vague distance someone was screaming. An awful, keening wail echoed through the caverns. It wasn't Mu Qing's voice. It wasn't the voice of any living thing.

Mu Qing, for his part, had vanished. Mindlessly, Feng Xin reached for him, finding nothing. That had not calmed him. It had been better to keep Mu Qing near, if only so he could watch him. Better to walk beside him, then allow him to sneak up from behind.

There was blood on his robes, angry red blossoms spreading out across white fabric. It seeped through, spreading out across the stone. He could not remember if it was his. He could not remember being injured.

There was no pain in it. Feng Xin pulled himself from the ground, and staggered to his feet, a hand placed on the wall for support. He yanked it away in horror, when blood coated his hand.

That was when he saw the bodies.

A sea of long dead corpses, stretching out around him. The bodies were bloated and rotten, skin pierced open by arrowheads, bruises spreading across papery skin. A massacre's remains, staring at him through cloudy eyes.

He could not see the full extent of it. The scene was fuzzy at its edges, blurring out the middle distance and the corpses' identifiable features. He did not need to see the full extent of it.

Feng Xin ran. The cave moved with him, its images changing, and rearranging themselves. The bodies were gone in an instant.

He found himself kneeling on the floor of a larger cavern, with no memory of how he'd gotten into the position. The blood had returned, now tenfold. He was holding his hands out, as if to cup an unknown object, as blood poured from his palms.

The world was burning hot. It felt like being held down and drowned in boiling water. He was half aware of viscera, clinging to his body, of flayed skin, and of meat held in his hands. Pain cried out inside him, clawing his chest open. The screams had become his own.

Feng Xin lost himself to a misplaced vow, and to being remade. Mount Tonglu opened up and welcomed him like a lover.

He undid himself in its last holy place, underneath the burning gaze of one thousand eyes. It was a sin. It was a desecration. It terrified him more than anything could have.

"Feng—" Somewhere, a voice not supposed to be there rang out. He barely registered his own name.

"—Feng Xin!"

A shadow passed before him, saying words he could barely hear. He was too far away.

"It's an illusion, you idiot! It plays off of fear! It's not real!" Mu Qing, ragged and desperate, impossibly close and impossibly distant.

"Oh gods, you're crying, you bastard. Don't do that, oh, your eyes always got so puffy. Don't, you'll look so horrible."

The shape of Mu Qing was in front of him, blurred out on the edges. He would recognize him from shadow alone, leaning over him, hands hovering near his face.

Feng Xin was weak, and he was afraid. He gave in, bowing his head before him, presenting every tender and vulnerable spot, and waited.

If Mu Qing had come to kill him for a second time, he could do it in an instant, without Feng Xin able to stop him.