Chapter 20: Chapter 18: Shrine of Snakes

Through the halls, down the corridors, out the courtyard and further on. The shrine was ominous looking in the night. But he ran on anyway. There was a set of bloody smears that made his heart grow cold. There was a hall in there. One he had never seen before. He barely even paused in his desperate sprint, hurtling through it and heedless of the calls of the others right behind him. He had to get to her.

By the time they had reached Li Baobao’s mother, she was already hanging by her feet above a shallow empty stone-carved pool within the black stone floor, clotted with something dark. There was a hole in the middle that fetid air came from, just barely big enough for someone to slip through. She was wrapped in fine clothes, but her hair was loose, her eyes closed as she swayed slightly back and forth. The other sons of the Li Family were prostrated before their father, who was upon his knees at the edge of the empty pool, a plain yet ancient knife within his hand as he spoke.

“Oh Gracious Lord, we humbly offer you this blood and spirit in return for the bounty you continue to bestow us.”

“FATHER!”

Over a dozen eyes turned around to look at Li Baobao as he sprinted inside, practically vaulting over his prostrated brothers into the shallow pool that trembled beneath his feet to grab his mother. His loud hysterical sobbing filled the dark room.

The old man’s eyes briefly widened before his shriveled face settled into a sad frown, “my son, please…”

“Don’t kill her! Please! Why are you doing this!?” Li Baobao asked between tears. “Why all of this!?” He gestured madly at the darkened room around them and at his mother whose bonds he was desperately tearing at, managing to catch the thin old woman in his free arm.

“For the prosperity of our family and our future sons, we must be prepared to sacrifice something in return,” his father’s voice was slow and forlorn. “We would have told you when you too had married, when you are old enough to understand. My son, please, listen, dry your tears.To gain something valuable, you must exchange something valuable in return. To do so otherwise is to not only spit on the concept of respect but is to go against the Heavens.”

Li Baobao wailed in response and pulled his mother with him as he stepped out of the shallow cracking pool and toppled over onto his side, clinging to his mother as though somehow he could protect her from the disapproving gazes of his brothers and fathers. “Not like this! How is this prosperity? How is this a sacrifice approved of by the Heavens?”

“How selfish can you be, my child?” His father asked, his forlorn voice suddenly switching to plain irritation, “clinging to your mother like this. You are no longer a child. Do you know what will happen to our family if we fail to give a proper offering? A woman can be easily replaced, a lineage cannot! A history is easily erased by the selfishness of it’s creations!”

Each sentence fell into Li Baobao’s heart like a needle of ice, even as his eyes brimmed with more hot tears. He could not believe what he was hearing, “you can’t replace mother!” He insisted as his brothers rose to their feet.

“I’ve done it plenty of times before.”

“Did you say the same to-”

“Yes and he was upset, much like you, when I said we could find him another wife. He was in fact so upset he dared to raise a hand against his own father,” Li Baobao’s father explained coldly.

“Forgive this one for intruding on this discussion,” Rui Yifu’s voice was sharp as a jade colored flame illuminated the room. A sickly green glow that rolled over stone reliefs of winding serpents that slithered through rice paddies and fruit orchards. Li Baobao covered his mouth as he looked at the carvings on the wall. A closer examination revealed that the rice paddies were growing on the bodies of women, the trunks of trees made of bones. Rui Yifu let the burning talisman hang in the air as he casually spun a knife in his other hand, “but in all that nonsense I had been wanting to ask how many of you had daughters so I know whose stomach to open first!”

Bo’s face was green, but not from the light, and he stepped slightly away from Rui Yifu as he called out, slightly hobbling on one bandaged foot, “hey! Stop crying and bring her over here!” Li Baobao nodded and got to his feet only to feel cold metal near his throat. He glanced up at the pitiless face of his own father. Sweat rolled down his neck while his knees suddenly felt as though they had fled. Bo held his sickle up threateningly, but Li Baobao could see the slight shudder in his hands.

Liu Xie was quietly but swiftly walking towards the assembled Li family with sheathed sword in hand.

“Interlopers, coming into family affairs when you were so graciously allowed to stay,” Li Baobao’s father hissed as he pointed a bone-thin finger to them. “Quick, get rid of them if they’re so willing to break sacred hospitality.”

Li Baobao’s eldest brother was the first to rush forward with sword drawn despite his own older age. He brought it down without hesitation as he closed the distance between Liu Xie and himself.

A soft squelch was muffled by a strange ‘thud’ as Liu Xie caught the blade in his free hand, red liquid slowly rolling down both metal and flesh.

“Breaking sacred hospitality? Who drew blood first?” Liu Xie asked curiously as he tightened his grip around the blade to yank it from the man’s hands. He then swiftly shoved it into the thin flesh of the man’s chin with enough force the head bent backwards with a crunch that made Li Baobao’s stomach roil as though it were full of oil.

As though some cue had been made, Li Baobao watched as his other brothers rushed towards the other men. He curled up tighter around his unconscious mother, trying to shield her body from any blades as well as hide his eyes from the violence.

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“Please, please stop!” Li Baobao begged, sobbing, tears staining his mother’s clothing.

“Do you want to die!?”

Li Baobao was yanked upwards by Rui Yifu, who was standing over him with a look of disappointed irritation. “N-no!” He looked around them as Rui Yifu crouched down to check his mother’s vitals. Three of his brothers were laid on the ground in pools of blood. Bo was running, lowered to the ground, barely escaping blades that tried to jab or slice at him. Bo was fast, but the Li family sons were skilled and Bo was avoiding landing too much weight on his bleeding foot. Cloth was torn, and deep lines of red were opening up on his arms and legs. A screech filled the stone room as Bo’s sickle ripped into the tendons of someone before he quickly returned to running around the others.

He really did look something like a dog in that moment.

Liu Xie kept walking straight towards Li Baobao’s father, simply stepping out of the way of anyone who moved close to him or kicking them with bone splintering force in Bo’s direction.

A thin needle clattered at Li Baobao’s feet and his mother’s voice softly stirred the darkness. His heart leapt briefly in joy as he watched her open her eyes slightly to look at him, “...little Melon?” She asked in confusion. “Mother’s so tired right now, let her sleep.”

“N-no, mother stay awake!”

“Let her sleep,” Rui Yifu insisted. “It’s better for her to rest right now.” Then he gestured to Li Baobao’s father and Liu Xie while pulling out two small stone carvings of monks from his sleeve.

The two men stood at the edge of the empty pool. An elderly man facing down a younger man, both with unreadable expressions on their faces. Li Baobao’s father held his knife, Liu Xie’s sword remained in its sheath, the other sword discarded somewhere on the floor.

“Master Liu Xie!” Li Baobao found his voice somewhere in his sobs, “please don’t hurt him! He should be brought to justice, not just… just killed! He was only doing what he thought was right…. I… ” The words tumbled out before he really thought on them. He was asking for mercy for his father, who was unwilling to spare his own wife or him any. Something in his mind laughed at the ludicrousness. His eyes looked down at his mother and all he saw was dark old blood coating his hands as they rested on the sleeping woman. Li Baobao heard a yell and snapped his gaze back up to see that his father and Liu Xie were falling into the crumbling pond. He opened his mouth only for any sound he could make getting devoured by the noise of stone tumbling away into dark depths further below.

“Father!” The other still standing Li sons yelled in chorus.

“Boss!”

“Mangy dog, get over here unless you want to die too!” Rui Yifu demanded.

It was only then that Li Baobao noticed why nobody had come towards them. Two pairs of knives cloaked in syrupy looking green flame were circling around them rapidly, creating a wide arc that made the shadows on the wall twitch and dance. They looked almost like the ghost knives he remembered in scary stories or bad dreams, except this time the nightmare was real. Bo dropped onto all fours and quickly skittered underneath before he rolled onto his back beside Li Baobao’s mother, smearing blood everywhere.

“...What did you do to yourself?” Rui Yifu asked.

“I didn’t do this to myself, I got stabbed you fucking cutsleeve!” Bo barked before whimpering after Rui Yifu slapped one of the nastier looking cuts on him.

Li Baobao found something familiar and safe in being the defuser of tense situations so he reached out with bloodless hands, “y-you’re hurt. Master Rui Yifu pl-please don’t hurt A-Bo anymore.”

“Hey! Hey! What’s with this ‘A’ thing? I’m older,” Bo tried swatting Li Baobao’s hands away while Rui Yifu began tearing his own sleeve to create makeshift bandaging for Bo.

“Yes but you’re also a peasant. Li Baobao, be useful and hold him down,” Rui Yifu ordered curtly.

Li Baobao nodded and obeyed without question, focusing on anything and everything that wasn’t his father’s cruelty nor the truth of his family, even as it stared down at him from the cold eyes of the carved snakes on the walls.

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