As Heavens Divide

Xin sipped tea in Erdeni's tent, sitting cross-legged on a plain-looking woven carpet. The world felt much smaller in the constraints of the tent's cloth walls, a sharp contrast to the boundless expanse of the steppe outside.

"Did I… make it correctly? Tea is a rarity in our tribe," Erdeni asked, her voice laced with worry. She knew how much Clay Folk cherished their tea, considering its preparation a hallmark of refinement and good upbringing.

"It's fine, I like the herbs you added. And the honey's good, too. It's considered uncultured to sweeten the tea, but I don't mind. My brother Lei drinks it like that." Xin smiled lightly when he remembered his friend. If he was here, we'd wipe the floor with the demoness, that's for sure!

"You never told me you had a brother! Tell me more!" Erdeni livened up, her face lit with curiosity. Now that Xin could talk, she could finally learn more about her beloved! And he and his sibling seem to have a good relationship, too! Wish I could say the same…

"Oh. That's just a figure of speech." Xin waved his hand. "He is my sect brother, though you can also call him my sworn brother. Never made the oath, mind you, but somehow we both assume we're sworn, hehe. By the way, Erdeni… If anything happens to me, seek him out. His full name's Wu Lei, and our sect's main building is near Tealstone, you won't miss it even if you try. If Wu Lei can't help for some reason, ask for Rui Ming…"

"What are you talking about?" She interrupted him. "Nothing is going to happen to you!" This Xin! First he sits silent for a good ten minutes, distant and detached, and now he's talking about dying… "Xin…"

"Hush, girl." Xin smirked playfully, yet there was a somber note to his voice. "In war, there is always a risk of death. I am going after a rank two, even a trashy one like her isn't to be underestimated. Past successes don't mean future results, and I might die if I chase after her. And you must be ready, not just for you, but for…" He pointed towards her belly.

"Him. It's a boy." Erdeni grabbed Xin's pointing hand and rolled up his sleeve. His skin now exposed to the oil lamp beside her, Erdeni could see it covered in ugly red spots and tissue, there were even some pus-filled blisters between the hand webbing. "What is this?! Are you alright?"

"This can wait." He dismissed her worries and pulled his arm away. "How do you know it's a boy?"

"I'd rather not tell you the method, it's rather embarrassing, but it was clearly divined that the child is a boy. Your hand, Xin! Möndu enduri..."

"It's just a burn, dear. I had to focus on other areas when I spread the healing seed, that's it. I'll finish healing it once my dao shard recharges again, and the pus can be handled with time and mortal medicine…"

"This won't do!" Erdeni was already rummaging through her medical supplies, housed in an old, worn box adorned with Skyfolk cloud ornaments. "Oh, this one. Yes."

She sat behind Xin, resting his arm on a towel spread across her lap. With a steady hand, she began applying a pungent ointment. Xin sniffed the air and focused on its contents. Some herbs smell unfamiliar, but it's a basic medicine. Serviceable. I could concoct something better once I return to my lair…

Please let her apply it anyway, master. She feels helpless and wants to help you in the only way she can. Let her feel important. 

Oh, so that's how it is! A mighty Baihu is going to give me unsolicited relationship advice now?

Well, it's good advice! I am not very experienced, but it's just common sense, and I felt your urge to pull away! Intervening was a righteous thing to do!

"Pff. Hehehe." A light scoff escaped Xin's lips. This damned creature. 

"What. Does it hurt?"

"No, I'm fucked up on painkillers, don't worry about pain. It's just that the totem is funny. Gave me some relationship advice."

"Oh, I see." Erdeni paused applying the ointment, confused. "Was it good advice?"

"Decent enough, but a waste of words. Told me to be grateful, as if I need to be reminded." Xin leaned back and kissed Erdeni on the cheek.

"Stop it, you charmer." She shoulder bumped him lightly. "I'm applying medicine here, don't interrupt the procedure! What was that bit about painkillers, though? And what happened with your hand in the first place?"

"I am not going to go into much detail, sorry. The battle with the tiger spirit was rather bloody, and afterwards I had to donate my human qi by sticking my hand into a boiling cauldron. I've been hurt… A lot in these past few months, so it's only natural to take some medicine. Despite being at Foundation stage, my pain tolerance is still mortal-level. That's proving to be rather troublesome…"

"By the ancestors…" Who knew the totem refinement could be so gruesome? "Wait, these Clay Folk painkillers are addictive, right?"

"Just like the spirit leaves. I am careful not to overuse, but… it's getting hard lately…"

Who am I fooling? I'm already overusing. But what am I supposed to do? It's not just my body, at times my mind flares up as if I was stabbed, even when I'm not even injured, and I need the pills to numb this awful feeling... I'll quit once this demoness business is dealt with.

"Xin… So, all these scars you have, you felt the pain of every single one? For some reason, I just assumed that martial artists have special techniques to ignore the pain, if need be…" 

"I'd say I endured much more than my scars show." Xin replied coldly. "Sometimes when I was healed, the method would also remove the scarring. Other times, I wasn't so lucky."

"Oh… I am sorry." Erdeni frowned. "I never knew you had it that badly, I even wondered if your scars were a cosmetic choice… You know, like tiger stripes… Sorry, it sounds stupid now that I said it."

Tiger stripes? Seriously?

"Yeah, sounds retarded." Xin scratched his temple with his other hand. "Don't worry, I'll be fine."

Master! Don't be so rude!

Hush. Xin cut off the contact with the totem.

"Xin?" Erdeni tensed up. Her lover turned out to be rather caustic, and she constantly caught herself walking on eggshells around him.

"Oh. Sorry. Guess my voice was too dry to express sarcasm properly. Probably the painkillers. I am also worried about them. But I'll be fine, I overcame worse. Let's talk about the demoness." He tried switching the topic to avoid the awkwardness.

"What about her?" Erdeni finished applying the ointment, wiped her hands with a towel, then kissed his hand and sat opposite of him.

"Mom used to do this when I was hurt as a kid." Xin smiled mournfully with a corner of his lips. "Thanks. Well, the demoness, what do you people know about her? Anything that might help me find her."

"She just popped up one day and started extorting us. We only know what you also know, I think." Erdeni shrugged, wishing she was more helpful.

"There must be something. She speaks Skyfolk, doesn't she? This could be a clue."

"She does, but I'd say she speaks it rather crudely."

Yet her Imperial sounds clean. She's probably of Clay Folk, but on the other hand, didn't Di E Go also speak without an accent?

"Well, it's a start," Xin muttered, sipping his tea in a brusque manner. He felt sluggish, disconnected. Need to snap out of it. "Did she mention allies? Other tribes? A base? Anything?"

"No, nothing like that. First time she came, she killed Darang, one of my father's sworn riders. He was the strongest fighter in our tribe, so I assume it was a show of power. A dozen of her plant creatures emerged afterwards, surrounding our encampment. She demanded a tribute of spirit stones, dao shards and cultivation materials. It was pointless to fight her, and several of our tribe's key warriors were riding out, so we just handed the stuff over." She scowled, ashamed of her tribe's pathetic state.

"Did she take all of your cultivation-related valuables?"

"Yes, almost. We managed to hide some things, of course, but she took several dozen spirit stones worth of stuff. At some point, she said we had enough and left. Uncle Oygun tried to plead with her, yet she just ignored him, gathered her plant monsters and left. We haven't seen her for a few months afterwards."

"Slow down, I have several questions." Xin put a hand on Erdeni's shoulder. "That rider, Darang, how did she kill him?"

For a few moments, Erdeni stared at her feet, detached, then spoke up:

"Knocked him off the horse with her vines, then restrained him and pierced his brain with a thorn launch. Xin, how is this helpful to you? I don't understand."

Xin tensed his lips.

"Listen, I don't know what will be helpful and what won't. I need to be meticulous. Was Darang qi active in any way?"

"Physical cultivator, his soul was also trained. Could invoke some animal aspects in his martial arts, but nothing on your level."

"No totem, then?"

Erdeni nodded.

"How did she appear? This is important."

"I haven't seen it myself. By the time I ran out of my tent, Darang was already gone. People say she… came out of nowhere."

"Could it be that she burrowed up from underground? Explains the sudden appearance, matches with my prior knowledge of her."

That's how she killed outrider Lu. By the emperor, Xie Taowei, why didn't you use your tremor sense? Whatever…

"Well, it sounds plausible, but she didn't leave any burrows behind, we'd probably notice. Got any thoughts?"

"No, I guess…" Xin cross-referenced what he just heard with the Riversong manor attack. "Wait, what was the weather when she first came?"

"It rained, I remember it clearly for some reason. Is this important?"

Xin felt his heart start beating faster. That's another clue! Think!

"When she attacked us in the Riversong manor, there was a huge downpour, it even hailed. There was no rain when I fought her the second time, in your camp, but it rained the day before…"

"I think you're onto something, dear! It rained shortly before or during each of her visits! What does it mean, though?"

Xin rubbed his chin:

"It seems that she needs wet soil or rainwater for her cultivation methods, yet the intensity of rain is not that important. How many visits were there in total?"

"Four, including the last one. And now that I think of it, it rained during or before each of her visits."

"Interesting. It's safe to assume that she needs lots of water to feed her plant monsters' wood element as she raises them. What confuses me is that I haven't seen a pit like the one she dug in your camp back in the manor. It smells awful, it wouldn't be hard to detect. Perhaps she thoroughly covered it in earth once she was done 'refining' the manor's inhabitants, or maybe she didn't dig it out at all?"

Erdeni shuddered when Xin mentioned the fate that befell the manor's inhabitants. Is this what awaits us if we don't stop her?

"She only dug this pit the last time she came, the first three visits were just extortions. Once we ran out of useful stuff, she finally demanded we sacrifice horses."

Oh, that's a clue! Xin's pupils widened. Something can be deduced out of it…

"Please let me think, that's a lot to digest." He stared at the oil lamp, its flickering flame casting faint shadows on the tent walls. Erdeni quietly refilled his tea, her movements slow and deliberate.

The first three times, she was just trimming the sheep, but the fourth time, she went for the kill. Why? Was it because the tribe had nothing she could find valuable, or did her own circumstances change?

Something happened, and her need for soldiers trumped the need for valuables. Either she antagonized someone and needed to defend herself, or was preparing to attack someone. That's also a clue. 

Her plant monsters are a huge shambling mass of humanoid vines, how come I haven't seen their tracks outside the encampment, only inside? In the Riversong manor, there were no tracks of monsters, either. It's understandable, as the downpour would wash any away. Yet inside the houses, there wasn't any dirt or tracks, either, only that one flipped table and the horse tracks in the stable. What does it mean?

Xin sighed and took another sip of tea. Sweet. He had several versions in his mind, but tried reconstructing the most probable one.

Riversong manor, downpour. People are all sheltered inside, trying to warm themselves up. She burrows under the walls, emerges in the backyard and unleashes several monsters from her core's aperture. Scouts around, then uses the plant monsters to block the doors of every building. Then goes around and personally executes people in every house, dragging their bodies outside. Probably uses some sort of blood path method to thoroughly clean every single drop of blood off. Works for hours to obscure her tracks, yet misses a few crucial hints — a flipped table, the tracks of one of the horses (we know for a fact there were more) and the cloth…

Wait, the cloth!

She wasn't in her barkskin form, she was wearing her own clothing! Could it be… She walked in normally? Right, an old demon like her would know how to impersonate an innocent old woman, she probably came in alone or with a small number of allies, then killed everyone and started raising her vine men. With how many of them we fought, she couldn't have kept them all in her core, and most of them were covered in mud — means they were also burrowed underground in advance.

Why would a rank two demon sit in ambush like that? Even a group of mortal travelers led by a rank one wouldn't be a threat to her. And what's even the point of sitting in ambush that night, unless…

"What are you thinking, Xin?"

"I think we've confirmed our prior worries today. She knew about our caravan in advance."