Chapter 38: Chapter 36: The Burnt Forest

Rui Yifu folded his hands back into his sleeves as they stood in the pitiful thing that may have at one time long ago been called a forest. Probably longer than he had been alive in whatever form.

 

He had been expecting the place to be swimming in a molasses of evil but as he and Bo walked through it he found it strangely pure. He pressed his fan to his chin in thought, perhaps pure would not be the correct word. Empty.

 

“Lots of ash,” Bo muttered, kicking away the occasional ankle high mound. Since the little talk in the alleyway, Rui Yifu felt like Bo had been somewhat more wary of him. The young man would keep glancing at the stone focuses with something like fear and concern.

 

“Hmm,” Rui Yifu walked in the cleared tracks that Bo made and turned his eyes to the ground. Just as his ears caught a strange mewl nearby his eyes spotted something in one mound of ash. It was a charred looking dome of something. “Bo. Come here and pick that up.” He gestured at the object.

 

“What?” Bo turned around to walk back over to him to look at the thing in the ash. He picked it up and before even looking at the item his face puffed red and he looked back at Rui Yifu. “Fuck you! You don’t tell me what to do!” He held up the thing like he was ready to pitch it across the forest before Rui Yifu snatched it from his fingers. It was then Bo looked at it and yelped. Rui smiled slightly that Bo seemed to be back to his usual self.

 

What he had touched, and what Rui Yifu now held, was a charred human skull. There was still some crunchy flesh clinging to it.

 

“Oh don’t be ridiculous, you saw an infant in rice wine, a skull can’t really be that scary,” Rui Yifu snorted while looking at the skull. Despite its horrifying appearance and that it felt rather recent, he could not quite sense anything wrong with it. No dark miasma or lingering curses. He furrowed his brow and turned the skull over in his hands, leaving human grease on his fingertips. He glanced back over at Bo who was looking around at some of the other ash piles and started kicking them down, discovering more burnt bones before he came back to Rui Yifu’s side.

 

“Is that one of the missing?”

 

“No,” Rui Yifu explained, running a thumb over its brow ridge. “This skull belonged to a man most likely. You can tell because of the ridge of the brow and these things,” he held up the skull to point at the almost triangle shaped bit of bone at the bottom of either side of the skull. “They’re a bit larger in men usually.” His fingers stroked over the back of the skull where they ran over a set of deep gouges. Like a bite. “Bo wh-” He looked up to see Bo had wandered over to a tree and walked around it.

 

“Who the fuck are you!?” Bo yelled, and in response a flailing man rolled over from a sitting position behind the tree, scrambling away. He was covered in soot and crusted over scabs. “Get back here!”

 

“DON’T KILL ME! DON’T KILL ME!!!”

 

Rui Yifu stepped in the fleeing man’s path, lifting up his knee slightly so that the man ran right into it and fell backwards, winded.

 

“We’re not going to kill you,” Rui Yifu opened his fan to start fanning in the direction of the terrified man. Rui Yifu just wanted to block at least some of the stench of a man who had undoubtedly been sitting out in an ash and roasted meat filled forest all night long. “Please, calm down and tell us what happened.”

 

Bo squatted down to look at the man with a scowl, “or I’ll bust your face in.”

 

“Yes or else the dog will get very angry,” Rui Yifu rolled his eyes. This same peasant had been upset about his own interrogation techniques? The man’s face turned whiter than milk at the mention of ‘dogs’.

 

“N-no… no dogs! Please! No!” He begged, tears pouring from his eyes. “He said it’d just be an easy thing and that nothing bad would happen! I didn’t know a real demon would show up when we were going to stab her! I didn’t think Du would die!!”

 

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“Stab!?” Bo’s eyes widened. He grabbed the man by the collar, “what is wrong with everyone in this damn city?”

 

Rui Yifu’s hand clenched around the fan tightly. If it weren’t for the metal blades hidden within, it would have been pulped with how firmly he was holding it. He wanted to chuck this man into a burning fire himself suddenly. At least those girls did not seem to be making a habit out of what they had done. “Please tell us, we’re here… to… help…” He began to reach for the man too, but Bo pulled the man out of his reach.

 

The man’s eyes rolled around in his head wildly, the words spilling out like a flood. “Boss Lu said he had a vision and had it confirmed by a fortune teller lady. The fortune teller lady told us about how all the murders can be stopped! The boss said I’d be a hero and I’d get money and I could share it with my friend Du, but Du was more concerned about his family than the money so we gathered some other worried people and I bribed a few people and then we started finding girls but then last night we were going to do it when this man appeared and he turned out to be a REAL demon and he just took her away! I thought they all looked like horrible monsters but he looked so… so human…” he shuddered, “suddenly there were wolves made of ash and everyone was screaming and Du’s head was snapped around and… and…” the man lapsed into heaving sobs and started gibbering away.

 

Rui Yifu sighed, fanning himself to cool down the heat that was rising from a mixture of anger and frustration. “Bo, pick him up. We’re going back to meet up with Li Baobao and that other one.”

 

“Why can’t you pick him up?” Bo asked with a raised voice over the mutterings of the man on the ground.

 

“Because he’ll get my clothes filthy!” Rui Yifu explained, clearly speaking each word as though Bo were a slow dog. He also was unsure he could resist strangling the man himself. He turned over the man's words in his head. This had been an entire operation done by... who? For what reason?

 

Then he remembered the shopkeeper's words. "...Lu Gongqi..."

 

"Who?"

 

"Someone I heard about."

 

Bo rolled his own eyes as he heaved the man onto his back, grunting with effort as they began to walk back to the city. “Y-you know, maybe the bitey little sister will be okay. She’s probably part wolf anyway or something so maybe she’s just returning to her people.” Bo’s face showed he believed not a single word he was saying.

 

“Demons most certainly aren’t her people, Bo,” Rui Yifu said. “I don’t understand why you aren’t more concerned. Do you hate her that much? She’s a child.”

 

“She attacked me the first time she saw me! I still have the scar on my leg!”

 

“To be honest I would attack you too if I had the awful shock of seeing your face at such a tender young age. You probably looked like a monster to her.”

 

Bo’s face turned red, but with the madly mumbling man on his back he could do nothing to retaliate. Instead as they emerged from the ash covered forest he sighed thoughtfully, “y’know… when I was much younger, I remember my mother would tell me not to cry outside because a monster wolf would come get me. Swore to the Heavens and rivers that it happened to her friend’s sister’s husband’s brother’s wife’s daughter’s son. So whenever I’d go outside, whenever I got hurt I’d run back inside to cry or just try to not cry at all. Maybe the little sister was crying and the wolf got her, eh?” He sounded almost hopeful.

 

Rui Yifu paused in his step, “ah…” he brought his fan up to hide his face as it briefly contorted in horror and worry as his mind brought up terrible options of what happened to Idony. Without more information gently pressed out of the man on what had happened he could not confirm his darker fears, he comforted himself. After all, he had not been seen in the Western Kingdom for decades, why would he show up at some Free City?

Even so, the idea that the Lord of Wolves was involved sent a very rare involuntary shudder of terror down his spine.

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