Blood River

17. Group Hunt: Part Four

Jiang YueHao and Jiang Yueming never got along. The former was calm and the latter was excessively active, their sister was the glue that kept them together despite her herself having clear favourites - Yueming always ended up the abandoned one in their day to day life. Sharing a room was bad enough, but being forced into a night-hunt together was the last straw for the younger boy.

Currently Yueming sat drinking in his room, his brother had just stormed off after an argument. Being a couple of wine jars in, he couldn't even recall what it was about in the first place, all he thought was, he hated his older brother.

Hate wasn't even powerful enough of a word. He despised that man with an undying passion. He could tell by how he looked down on him, he could tell how he saw him as a spare, a replacement, as a nuisance more than a brother, he could tell the lack of love and respect in that emotionless gaze which peered at him. He hated it.

He chugged down the jar in his hand in one go before throwing it across the room, the strong clay it was made of stopping it from breaking, instead toppling over a few times before landing and rolling into a random spot in the inn bedroom.

Yueming hated being in Gusu, away from home, away from his dogs.. his dogs understood him, they didn't judge him like his family did, they loved him unconditionally, and he loved them... but pets aren't allowed in the cloud recesses..

He sighed, looking out the window that was the last jar...

.....

It had been about about an hour since Yueming left his inn bedroom through the same window he watched the streets from earlier, he could swear the tavern wasn't this far from the inn when he was last there, but he just couldn't find it, so he kept walking through Hanbin* town trying to find the seemingly walking tavern.

He felt extremely cold, this town lay ij the country of Binghai* which bordered the shallow parts of the ice ocean. In his drunken state, he could vaguely remembered his brother telling him to pack padded robes, because this parts of Gusu which lay near the frozen body of water were the coldest, he also vaguely remembered telling the older to leave him alone.

He kept walking without a care in the world, at this point he hugged himself because of how cold it was, it was also HaiShi, and the temperature in Gusu dropped immensely once the sun set, needless to say he needed the heat of the alcahol more than he needed the mind-boggling effect at this point in his walk.

At some point Jiang Yueming could tell he'd stopped moving, he couldn't lift his feet anymore, and his face couldn't form expressions. It was so cold it physically hurt, how come people live in Binghai, when it is this cold at night?

He tried to lift his right leg to walk, only to realise he actually couldn't, and he wasn't delusional, once he looked down he could see ice climbing up his legs, freezing them slowly through his impassiv state.. could it really get this cold during spring, then how are winters here?!

"Help.." he called through his frozen lips though it hurt to speak and his spoke came as a mere wheeze, he could tell his face was freezing rapidly as well. He couldn't help, but wonder if YueHao's advice to wear padded outer robes would've helped in such situation..

He took note of his surroundings at this point, frozen in the position where he hugged himself, he looked up to see he was inside a frozen cave. Could he have been led to walk in here? I should've paid more attention.. he scolded himself growing anxious as he accessed his situations.

Just then a huge light-blue snake aproached him slowly as it sneared at him, it's long tongue seethed provocatively. He couldn't even see the end of the creature's thick body no matter how close the head got to him.