Chapter 15: Chapter 13: Wraith

Idony buzzed around their legs in excitement despite the oppressive midday heat that had Rui Yifu fanning himself, three meat buns in a basket she held with one hand while she was happily eating another meat bun she held in the other. Li Baobao was munching on one as well while they walked back to the Li Family Compound. There had originally been seventeen buns but between Li Baobao and Idony their numbers had been sorely depleted.

 

“Master Li Baobao, please pace yourself,” Rui Yifu gently admonished. “If you eat too much at once you’ll never see it disappear and it’ll harm your health.”

 

Li Baobao stared at the bun with a concerned frown, “r-really?” He then gently pinched his stomach warily. “Well, perhaps you might want one?” He suggested. “Id-Zhu Er and I have been eating all of them so far!”

 

“Oh no, I’m not hungry,” Rui Yifu shook his head. “But I do appreciate the offer, you’re quite kind.” In truth, Rui Yifu rarely ate anymore and satisfied his need for nourishment in slightly more esoteric ways. Nonlethally of course, he did not need any more trouble following him. Or someone finally sniffing him out before he could sniff them out. He strongly preferred fish regardless. He turned his gaze back to Idony as she went along the path. Despite the stiff bandaging around her waist she seemed barely impeded. Many of the homes that used to stand in the area had been bought up by the Li Family over the generations as their original owners passed and their descendants could no longer pay the upkeep, then the houses were destroyed and orange trees planted instead.

 

For obvious reasons, Li Baobao rarely talked about that part with guests.

 

It formed something of a barrier between the Li Family Compound and the rest of the town. Idony seemed to prefer slipping into the shadier parts, where the trees branches obscured most of the high sun. It was a smart idea to further beat the heat, so Rui Yifu took a few steps to the side as well to get the full benefit of the leafy shade. Li Baobao, who was used to such weather, remained in the sun.

 

An awful smell hit Rui Yifu, a mixture of meaty vomit and rice wine. He brought his long sleeve up to cover his mouth and nose. While the trees were a great symbolic barrier, they did nothing to stop the local drunks from using it as a place to purge their gorged stomachs after a night (or day) of drinking and eating. Idony made a sound of disgust but continued eating while Li Baobao seemed to have finally found something to quell his hunger as his round face turned a bit green.

 

“You smell it too?”

 

Li Baobao nodded, then sighed, “it’s always like this. The moment midday comes and the laborers from the Shen’s mines stumble out from the inns and make messes. They work through the night, then they drink until midday, then they sleep. It’s a terrible sleep schedule! The Bridge Water Sage says on page twenty two that a good night’s sleep is necessary to a healthy life.”

 

Rui Yifu snorted at the odd complaint, “Li Baobao has also stayed up through the night.”

 

“Yes, well, there’s a lot of… accounting to do…” the other man mumbled.

 

“You should ask for help then,” Rui Yifu suggested as he watched Idony bolt ahead briefly, circle around several trees, and then loop back to them. She had so much energy it seemed like she had no idea what to do with it. Again he felt lingering memories at the edge of his mind. Idony ran ahead once more, then slipped. He nearly called out in instinctive worry before slamming his hand on his mouth to swallow the name back up. His throat felt like it had cracked much like his heart.

 

Li Baobao called out to Idony, who still held the basket with the two remaining meat buns up, safe from spilling out. She then quickly popped back onto her feet with only a few scuff marks on her new clothes and went back to running around the two in loops. He smiled, “I wish I still had this much energy!”

 

“She’ll probably need to take a nap once we get back,” Rui Yifu’s voice was trembling only slightly. He reached past his scarf to touch the sweat on his neck that oozed past deep scarring on its sides. “And I will most certainly need a bath! It’s too hot, too hot! I’m sweating too much!” He exaggerated his fanning, a few stray hairs blowing back as he did so.

 

“Oh it must be quite warm for you, since I hear the Northern Kingdom snows all year long!”

 

“Only in the higher mountains,” Rui Yifu corrected. He always corrected people when it came to his home, even if he had last stepped foot in there twenty years ago. Although he did try to keep somewhat up to date with its going ons, he had been slacking recently. His mind drifted to the news Liu Xie had told him. He snorted. Who named their son "Bleeding"?

 

“So it isn’t all mountains?”

 

“No, although it does have a fair amount,” Rui Yifu explained. “We used to be more known as the Land of the Jade Rivers.”

 

“OH! Oh! I know, that’s another name for the Green and White Rivers and their tributaries right?” Li Baobao looked proud of remembering what Rui Yifu considered a basic fact.

 

“Yes, but it’s always been cold, I guess the mountains are considered more dramatic than the rivers,” Rui Yifu felt something hot on his waist. “Of course our rivers are full of monsters so it may be for the best.” Then he stopped in his step and exhaled softly. Something dark was twitching at the borders of his senses. Li Baobao and Idony kept walking ahead a few steps before noticing that Rui was no longer with them.

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The heat on his waist was getting worse and he finally reached down to pick out a small metal talisman from his sash. Although painful, it was not actually harming him.

 

It was warning him.

 

The aroma of rice wine thickened much as the dark presence did as it realized it had been discovered. Rui Yifu wheeled around in time to see a woman in fine clothes standing next to a tree. Her face was ashen with blood seeping from every pore and orifice, her fingers rapidly twitching as her eyes danced in her sockets while her clothes were damp and carried the odor of rice wine. Rui Yifu thought she looked almost familiar, but before he could confirm she swung herself forward and ran towards them on all fours like a rabid animal with the flesh on her head splitting as her jaw opened far too wide. Rui Yifu’s eyes widened in shock as he hastily reached into his sleeve to pull out a knife and chanted the first incantation that came to his mind, slinging it at the dead woman as she raced past him and towards Idony.

 

The knife struck true, embedding itself into the middle of the woman’s head where its hilt and blade burst into a jade colored flame. The woman shrieked in agony, but got up again to continue towards Idony at a slower pace.

 

“Baobao, take Zhu Er and go back!” Rui Yifu ordered sharply as he fished around his belt for two particular charms.

 

Li Baobao was on the ground, pressed against a tree in wide eyed terror. In fact Idony was the one who was gripping his arm, yelling, trying to get him to stand up.

 

Rui Yifu found the baubles he had been looking for. They were stone carvings, made to look like fat headed tiny monks. At his touch their eyes lit up in a dull indigo, stone mouths moving slowly to chant deeply. Jade flame coagulated around him. The corpse's stench seemed to flare and taint the air as it continued rushing for Idony only to be abruptly thrown back by an invisible barrier. Rui Yifu felt a smirk on his face as the charm he had given to the child came into use.

 

The undead woman turned around. There was an awful snapping sound and the knife fell from her burnt face. She screeched unintelligible words at him and threw herself forward into another barrier that Rui Yifu’s stone monks were creating. The chanting stones grew slightly louder, but years of underuse had rendered them weak. He watched as the monstrous woman got closer and closer, her skin slowly cracking and peeling back as it burned. Rice wine and blood spilled from her screaming mouth, fingers burning yet reaching for him and he stepped backwards.

 

He pulled another paper talisman wrapped knife from his sleeve and tossed it into the woman’s head. Her head snapped backwards with sickening force as she was pinned to the ground by the weight of the spell upon the knife.

 

Several questions were burning in his mind. The first of which was who the woman was, the second being why she was so powerful despite it being the height of midday. These questions were overwhelmed quickly as the woman let out a horrific gurgling wail. The chanting monk stones immediately grew silent and fell to the ground inert as Rui Yifu covered his ears while a well of dark energy surrounded them like a surging wave, crashing through his body. His concentration was broken. He could see Idony and Li Baobao doing the same in response to the wail, the other man sobbing as Idony yelled like a furious animal.

 

Rui Yifu felt something warm staining his scarf, his back, his stomach, his legs. His fingers hesitantly touched his neck and he pulled them away to see a smudge of blood and sweat. The dead woman’s anger was powerful enough to reopen his scars slightly.

 

The woman’s limbs cracked, musculature reshaping itself as she continued her advance on Idony, her weighted head dragging horrifically upon the ground, flesh scraping away to reveal rice wine drenched muscle tissue beneath and then the bare skull itself.

 

Rui Yifu grabbed the two stone monks back up and then pulled another item from his sash. A rolled up paper talisman with a figure of the Empress of Hell upon it. He surged forward as glyphs of protection gleamed and drove it into the cold flesh of the woman’s body. A dozen earthen hands emerged from the ground to grab the woman, pulling her taunt against the ground as she writhed, pale hands grasping in Idony’s direction as her entire body broke itself to writhe through the arms to get to her.

 

But Rui Yifu did not let her get the chance, with the two chanting stone monks beside him he straddled her body and pulled a particularly long knife made of rune-carved bone and bronze from one sleeve and began to drive it into her meridians with brute force. With each blow, a black spray of liquid resentment flashed into the air only to be dissolved by the sun’s warm rays.

 

It was a messy and terrible way to purify a corpse, but without any of his other tools and with his dao long lost this was all he had. The woman’s body gradually stopped moving, the flesh becoming slack like melting wax upon the bones as the earthen arms released her.

 

The corpse laid still, completely empty of spiritual energy. The soul had moved on, or rather was forced to move on. Rui Yifu got up finally, clothing caked in clotted cold blood and rice wine, and felt both disgusted and concerned. He was about to go check on the sobbing Li Baobao and the pale faced Idony when he noticed Bo standing beside a tree on the other side of the path with wide eyes.

After a moment of silence passed between them, Bo finally spoke. “What just happened?”

 

“She died an unclean death,” Rui Yifu answered as he looked down at the body once more, examining the burnt skin and ruined mess of a face. Then he realized who the woman was.

 

It was Li Zhongshu’s wife!

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