"Hmm, mnh... Where are we heading?" The gentle breeze of the morning gale swept past through Fuxiao's face, he yawned from the gentle caress of his skin.
Shen Gui's steps were brief and light, keeping the silence that enveloped the entire forest. The creature weighed a feather, mumbling on his shoulder out of drowsiness. It's unusual how this forest have zero crickets; eating them would only disgust the great, haughty Fuxiao, it's probably the best.
He is currently skipping throughout the willow path with Fuxiao on his shoulder as his arm wrapped securely around the creature. Unfortunately, this beasty boy sleeps like an oil, plus, he moves around A LOT. Earlier, he have to use the kitchen's utensils as an alarm for this That's also one of the reasons why they're heading to the nearest town from the forest.
(A/N: In case if you're clueless about "oil sleeper", it basically means that the person is hard to wake up. Likened to how oil can easily catch fire, meaning the person might not easily respond to danger.)
Throwing the creature to his shoulder is less dangerous than a piggyback ride, in that way, he could easily detect Fuxiao's slight movements.
The sun was still low in the sky, its morning mists cloaked the field in an ethereal carpet. Sunlights spreads out like the water has been poured down, moisture of the grass filled the air with its dense odor. When the ray of light hits Fuxiao's face, his eye lashes trembled, he let out a light grumble, stirring from his sleep.
"Aha~ you're finally awake~"
That voice was unusually closer to his ears than usual, as if...
"Ahh!! What are you doing!!" Fuxiao screeched, his body turning into a pile of wood as he stiffened up.
Lifting his hand to hit the idiot's back head, who knows that a mere concussion could benefit a life changing experience not only for this idiot. But just as his hand swung a friendly-fire attack, the placed him on the ground right on time, casually fixing his attire.
Fuxiao rubbed his eyes, retreating a few steps back to avoid that idiot's touch. It's still early in the morning, just like yesterday.
"Let's go buy some things for you, these dug up stones should be able to exchange valuable things."
Yesterday, after he gathered sufficient amount of insatiable foods, he stumbled upon a small cave. Resistance doesn't exist in his vocabulary, so he dragged Fuxiao along to dig for some diamons, just like in that one cube game. He found gemlike stones; digging up for diamonds seems like a hardcore.
Across the road, a town took up almost half of the forest's density. The town had just woken up, emerging from their houses as they brought themselves to a certain location in, some we're half-asleep to stumble on their own clothes, yet standing up and brushed it off as if nobody saw that.
When Gui could barely control his own laughter, the creature shoved his mouth with scallions, crossing his arms right after. That's what the idiot gets from startling him the moment he opened his eyes. He let out an arrogant exclaim, thinking that he had finally handled a beast straight from hell.
And yet, this idiot had the guts to giggle and eat the scallions raw. Fuxiao couldn't help but shiver at the sight of this goat-like resemblance Shen Gui displayed, his face contorting like one of those masks.
Looking back at the town, if someone were to witness this scene at three P.M. they would shit their pants and grew out some wings to fly away, thinking that they've been plagued during Jiangshi.
"Pfft."
"You know, it's probably the best to leave it," Fuxiao suggested.
Realizing that the clothes he wore is his night attire made by fox fur, he couldn't help snuggling his face on the soft fur. With a determined decision, his hand instinctively clasped onto the thickness of the idiot's sleeve, yanking him back to the forest, only for him to be pulled back by Shen Gui's initial force.
"Not until I buy those fuuuuuuuujin materials!" He have to refrain himself from swearing. Seizing the creature's hand, Fuxiao's face contorted into disgust and astonishment.
They followed the folks' path, leading them to a lavish temple. The walls were entirely covered with opaque vines that concealed its exterior, creeping mosses from the bottom of its structure as if it hadn't been cleaned for a while. When they got closer to the place, Fuxiao lifted up the vines and saw the fissures that crawled on the walls like a snake.
Fuxiao's hand took the initiative to trace the rifts. He took few more strokes as he felt heart beating loudly in his chest, echoing in his ears.
Was his heartbeat ever been this loud?
As they inserted themselves within the folks, their devotion left the two visitors offhandedly. Exchanging glances, Fuxiao held his breath and murmured, "They are weird, now let's go home-"
Shen Gui prodded his elbow to the creature, a gesture seemingly unperturbed and playful; he replied with a tinge of quiver in his tone.
"It isn't weird to worship the god the town obeys. Buddy, humans worship gods because they believe that fortune would come meet their way: most are like the see, vast and boundless; some are like ponds, still and hollow. People worship because they're driven by their own selfish desires. Genuine hearts are as scarce as a diamond." Fuxiao's ears perked up attentively, picturing humans' selfish behavior.
Back then, when he came across a certain battlefield, war unfolded like a piece of cloth. With a blink of an eye, it ceased in no time. The components lost their hearts and bodies, then struck the first question, who was he to care?
At last, he crossed past their last breaths, as if a single war couldn't hinder his journey. It was written in history that the humans' pride are often tinted with stupidity, though it seems that it's not the only matter now.
He heaved out a deep sigh: the world is like a flower with the bees; although used up, its sweetness still lingered.
"I went to a temple once and discovered the so-called God named 'The Jade Emperor'. I dared not to question; hence, the temple was made of white jade with golden ornaments plastered on the walls like decorations. Their selfishness brought them to such extent only to heighten their blessings," Shen Gui shared; it was absurd to offer expensive contributes for selfish desires, that's what he thought at the very least.
Humans are intelligent they say, but they speak without their tongues. In the world of ignorant creatures, lives their petty existence. They were brought to the world to prolong the nature, and yet they're harming it by themselves.
Unsolved mystery hung high upon the air, their ramatic introspection blurred Fuxiao's vision, causing him to unconsiously step on a twig, its snap breaking the tension of their conversation.
"Eek!" Shen Gui yelped in surprise.
Fuxiao froze in spot, afraid that he might've disturbed the folks, with an abrupt glance around the place his attention was brought into one direction. The statue stood tall, it's significance and divinity filled the whole place with sanctity. Despite being placed on the ground with moss creeping on its feet that shrouded on the ground, as if it hadn't visited by the folks daily. It was packed with the whole town, praying and picking their places.
"Hey," as his voice tries to reach out for Shen Gui due to the uneasiness that filled him, he could hear the drums of his heartbeats through his ears.
"Mhm?" Shen Gui hummed, his gaze averting towards his friend. Fuxiao's heart felt at ease by the sound of Shen Gui's voice, he brought their attention to the statue.
Sunlight filtering through the fissures, illuminating the statue of a god, its rays is cloaking the statue like a holy light: a delicate carved smile was traced on its face with stance reaching down for the prayers, emanating the blissful peace it consecrates.
"Hopefully this precious Picturesque would leave a great taste on you humans," Fuxiao's voice was filled with doubt and wonder, his eyes searching Shen Gui's for an answer.
Shen Gui's once frivolous demeanor changed to dread and scrutiny, his lips frowned in deep thoughts. He propped his elbow atop his hand, cupping his chin with his other hand.
It is indeed inappropriate to put a statue of God on the floor without their consent, he thought that this is a bit too peculiar especially when this statue is crafted deftly. So remarkable, yet useless!
He glanced back up at the statue and sighed in dissapointment. Not only was it beautiful with its charmed glory, but it's also treated like a vending machine.
But we can't blame them without any further reasons, maybe it's there's a hidden meaning behind this, so stop blabbering, Da Gui!! He tried to fight off his thoughts as he faced the idiot once again.
"Mhm, hell it is," he admited, "M-maybe it's just their culture, you know? Maybe there's more to it."
It is unusual for a statue of a high god on the ground without an altar, or else the worshippers might get punished for this act, Fuxiao thought.
His heart beating like drums in his chest. The burning incense clogged his nose, its woody scent mingled with the moldy odor of the cobblestone. The folks' chanting prayer echoed through the temple, a haunting melody that seemed like an endless loop. His gaze faltered away until it stopped by the wall, where carved figures loomed over the dim rays that filtered through the fissures.
Fuxiao's thick eyebrows knitted together, his eyes bore the carvings as his piercing gaze would crumble it down. Like a hypnotizing incantation, it began to swing and twirl, reflecting a certain dance. With naivety being his greatest friend, he let his body getting swayed towards the chisels. Each steps felt like he's walking across the yellow river.
From the corner of Shen Gui's eyes, he saw the fool with a dance oddly the folks would change their places as soon as Fuxiao passes by, his facial muscles started to twitch in annousnce. Followed by the path that Fuxiao danced for, when he was about to call out the other's name, as if he was trapped in a mouse trap, his body stopped moving. The faint sunlight that outlined the carvings, imaging the daily lives of the town.
His stomach wrenched in an unsettling way, forcing him to swallow the big lump on his throat, but terribly choked on it; his head felt strangely hot.
This is fucked as hell!! He screamed internally, battling with his emotions as he catches up with Fuxiao.
Shen Gui's subtle tug brought him back to the present, just as Fuxiao faced him, he could see another heart-wrenching visage again. Shen Gui urged him to respect the sanctity of the temple; still in trance, he nodded.
They bowed with Shen Gui's hastiness, and his thoughts lingering past those carvings that creeped through his buried memories and another of his friend's new expression.
Ever since they stepped foot into this town, their hidden faces seeped through the rifts of their charade.
Shen Gui was battling his emotions within, choking and punching himself internally.
Was it his fault that the dynamical rhythm of this world's current timeflow and its traditions changed?!?
A temple with carvings? Fuxiao thought that it was only done inside a cave, why not the paintings?
Their turmoil blended with each other, their steps disappearing with silhouettes they head out to the deserted street.
The town was small and inferior despite having the same structures. Legends says that the inhabitants collaborated with, that every morning, a revolting stench would fill the morning mist like the ashes from burned piles of corpses. If the army forces were to choose a nearby location, they would rather endure insomnia than experiencing daily cemetery.
Shen Gui clicked his tongue in skepticism, searching for answers behind those carvings.
Fuxiao, on the other side, probed Shen Gui's back. His eyes flickered open when a sudden flash of vague, fragmented memory interrupted him. A body, broad and bulky, towered over him like a shield.
"Mhm..."
His hand jerked foward, yet the scene vanished away just as he was about to grasp that figure, his hand inadvertently clutched onto Shen Gui's linen.
Although the other seemed to care less about it, he thought that it should be worth caring.
He kept his hand like a dazzling garment behind Shen Gui's back, the level of his concern decreased down as the floral scent bathing on his friend's hair replaced the musty odor earlier. Unknowingly, his lips curved up in a gentle, sweet smile.
If Shen Gui was his enemy, he would surely defeat him and win him perpetually.
Shen Gui pondered tad bit before he spoke, his mind jammed with inquiry and skepticism. "Those hieroglyphs..." He muttered.
Back when he used to loiter his grandfather's ancient library, picking history books that includes myth. Albeit, there was a part of Egypt which he vividly remembered till now, the hieroglyphs. Since history and myths were combined into one book, it didn't have a single page introducing hieroglyphs to China. Even if this was a different world, the history should be no different from his former world. It felt as if this world is out of a child's imagination, hoping that the folks weren't ghosts.
He felt his teeth grazing down his lip. His gaze hardening as he tried to recollect every single detail he had read back then. But he was as reckless and frivolous as he is now. Whenever he was assigned thick books to study, he would flip all the pages until his hand felt numb, which was his cue to study.
Wahhh!! Forgive me grandpa!!
"Hieroglyphs? What on earth's name is that?" Fuxiao asked with curiosity, making him sound like an innocent school girl.
Shen Gui snapped out of his thoughts, glancing back at Fuxiao with a masked smile, "Hieroglyphs?Oh yeah! Hahah~ hieroglyphs are usually the ones you have seen earlier. They represent the daily lives of the..." His muscles tightened, trapping him in his spot.
Fuxiao exchanged the glance, his thick brow jerked up in confusion. Shen Gui's sudden pause in the middle of his sentence caught him off guard, it was unusual for his frivolous behavior to falter away unless that last time,
"What's the matter? Why did you stop?"
"Uhm.. Er-ge, have you seen bare people with skin of a bark-tree?" Shen Gui asked, his mind flooded with unsolved testimonies and doubtful tuitions.
Just one answer, one answer! And he'll definitely go feral!
Fuxiao trekked out of his cave many times, yet no foreigners had crossed his path. Difficulties have once hindered him from further investigation, though his determination was combusting.
There was a time when he was accused and sent out to prison for theft and assault. He discovered he had been used as a scapegoat for the couple's crimes, rather his friends.
He was left with no choice but to use little tricks. ଘ( ᐛ ) ଓ
Fuxiao started to gather his abundant mana to transport his consciousness to his soul and successfully completed the process as he started to sneak out of the prison bars.
When he finally got atleast a li away from the place, he transmitted his spiritual energy back to his back, basically pulling it back to him. Soon enough, in a blink of an eye, he felt the warmth of his body once again.
The technique that he used was what they called the fourth stage of cultivation named "nascent soul" in which cultivators project their soul outside their body to further advance into a higher state. But if a normal living mortal had their soul out of their body, they're presumably dead once exposed to the land of wandering lost souls.
Someone would likely possess their body, causing an unexpected death.
And yet, Fuxiao handled that technique like the back of his hand. He was no mere cultivator, of course.
He was a creature...
Let's, let's-this is all nonsense. Human's name-picking ability is making my tongue twirl, I don't even know how to pronounce them correctly. He pondered for a moment, feeling his eyes water before he continues to recollect that matter.
After a decade of hiding from the walls of his cave, he went out on his journey again.
Just as he thought that his journey was going uphills, it flipped upside down when he spotted the couple's rotting bodies in the middle of the forest. He tilted his head on different angles, but found no witnesses of someone's attempt to give them a burial.
It was extremely... Pathetic...
Palm sized holes gouged out their hearts, causing their undetermined deaths. Though he never found out who murdered them behind their backs, he gave them a proper burial for a moment of peace.
Although, it's odd how that case happened right in this spot.
When Fuxiao shook his head, as Shen Gui expected, the temperature dropped low, blocking out air for him to breath. A sweat came running down his temple, as he tried to remember the current event that folded right in front of him. He thought that adventures would be easy, but he had never thought that such phenomenon would even exist.
Earlier, when he was examining the details carved within the statue, for all he could remember, it was directed down to the prayers. But, the arms were shifting as the head started to tilt upwards.
The delicate smile that was carved upon its face started to curve slightly higher, impacting the gawking eyes it had on him.
This caught a primal grip on his heart, causing him to break a sweat. Albeit, he tried to shake off those feelings and continued to inspect other subjects instead.
A droplet of water rings inside of his ear, his attention slipped of from his inner turmoil.
Shen Gui jerked his head up and searched for any water sources that may have been leaking, but memory came back that the walls were the only fractured parts.
Jolly fucking Molly, I am fucking haunted by some unknown creature who wants to kill me for no reason~~!!! Hāhā!!
He knew that there's obviously something wrong with the statue, but he kept it aside to pay respect during the folks' early prayers. Yet it seems like he had annoyed this thing!!
With a sudden realization, his eyes flickered back down to the deity, noticing the glowing light around the statue. This may be one of those cliché baits just for the characters to discover that their ally was the enemy the whole time, and yes, Shen Gui was once an otaku in his prime back then, he was glad he was forced to stopped though. He lifted up his hand and slapped himself with all the strength he got, vexing himself with poisonous words internally, he could already feel his limbs numbing as he tried to fight this cheap trick.
The eerie chanting prayers of the folks started to disappear like a blown whisper, replaced by a ringing bell that echoed loudly in his mind, distracting him from his thoughts. The dense scent of the woody incense mingled with cobblestone would soon suffocate his lungs, soft mists of scorching pants started to blur his vision from the scenery. It was sure as hell so hot and unbearable that he felt the thickness of his layered clothes.
As everything turned into a disturbing image of a contorted sacred temple, the dim light coating the statue would soon grow blinding.
So this is what it's like being a normal living mortal in this world?!!!
Shen Gui kept standing on his guard as the level of the yielding force rose up, hoping not to get suctioned successfully by this conscious statue. Its tenuous polished smile is now cracking into a wide grin, stripping its divinity away.
This gave him ten golden thunderbolts from the heavens before he gawked right back at it, like a brave rat facing his nemesis!!
That was ridiculous, anyway-
When the light started to change hues into a deep-set crimson pallette, the light grew brighter and pulses like a heartbeat, each beats sending out ample of dominating radiance, like the rhythm of a dancing curtain and a gale.
Shen Gui stumbled back, the first strike was like a torrent of shredded glasses, each pieces stabbing his hard flesh.
The second beat hits harder than his grandmother's beatings!! Tightening his organs in a disorderly manner.
With vengeful eyes, he didn't stammer and kept standing up like he wasn't attempted to get murdered by some weird ol' evil spirit.
Taste this you little shit!!! I'm not letting grandpa's hard work go on waste!!
Shen Gui was about counter attack when sudden surge of a heavy aura started to fill the place like a tsunami. Its twinkling haze illuminating the beauty of the universe as it started to dance around him.
"What... " he was left speechless, he was seeing the image of the universe by the fluid motion of the dancing phosphorescent mist.
His eyes met the phosphorescent mist in its dancing symphony. An energy was chanelled throughout his meridians, like the rhythm of a guqin's melodic plucks, tranquility came at its finest as he saw how the burst of flaming energy cleared everything back to normal. But there's only one issue.
When he glanced back at the statue, it was then frowning with the same posture as it had. Though it hadn't scared him off like before when that odd phosphorescent mist came. He was unaware of its essence lingering into his soul, like a binded string.
No bullshit, this town is not normal. I mean, obviously!! He thought.
But what should he expect? Isn't he already in a world of creatures?
He turned back at Fuxiao who was waiting for his answer patiently, "Nothing particular, maybe we should just ask the folks about this whole thing later..."
"Is it about the statue?"
Shen Gui turned his head as if his neck snapped. It was like falling from a ten story building to survive from the heavy fall with a big concussion in his brain.
So he knew all the time?!!
---
Last night, a lean man cloaked by the night's darkness roamed the streets.
The streets was then lit by the moonlight's presence, its brightness giving pathway to the ghosts. The man's appearance was like the twinkling bright stars in the night sky, as if a dark canvas was decorated with vivid constellations. When the light hit his figure, a crystalline, white linen was adorned gracefully in his body as the hushed whispers of the wind, dancing along his movements with dainty aura.
Monsters groaned as they awoke, they protruded out of the earth's surface and used their strengths to pull themselves out of their graves. As soon as they're finally out, they began to follow the strong qi scent. The shriveled up appearances threatening to reach the fragrance, crashing against each other as they rushed towards the man.
Their grunts and roars disturbed the hallow music of the air, their stomps as loud as a giant's steps. The man's scent began to spread out as the souls started to dissipate throughout the town.
He turned his head, his eyes caressed the Moon's surface as a frown etched up on his delicate face. "This town shall live through the years of the revolution without any disruption," his tender voice hung in the air. With a flick of his sleeves, he disappeared into thin air, leaving nothing but a tear floating in the air.
The scent alone made the monsters tremble in hunger, impatient upon consuming this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strengthen their cultivation. They started to spread out to the exterior of the area, leaving a mark of their monstrosity on the ground. The town was jammed with awakened monsters scattering all over, but they weren't noticeable enough to disturb a single fly.
The droplet of tear that floated in the air began to vaporize with a soft hush of gentle hum.