The group of men met back up at their spot before quickly agreeing to move their meeting to a small intersection of winding streets where the only audience was a fat black bird sitting on a broken collection of old boxes and jars.
The whimpering man that Bo had dragged back under Rui Yifu’s orders was still gibbering softly to himself as Liu Xie crouched down next to him. The man’s eyes rolled upwards to look at him and he shrieked, “A SPIRIT OF DEATH!! I’M DEAD! I’M DEAD!!!”
Li Baobao covered his ears, Bo nudged the man with his foot, Rui Yifu fanned himself in exasperation, and Liu Xie let out a very long exhausted sigh and fidgeted with his hair tie as though it would somehow relieve his own irritation.
“Maybe you should stop wearing so much white and get some more sun so you look less like a carcass?” Rui Yifu suggested.
“He’s not that pale,” Li Baobao offered softly. In truth, Liu Xie really was that pale even though he seemed to enjoy laying out topless in full sunlight. When he slept or at least appeared to be sleeping, he made little noise and almost never moved which gave the impression that he really was just a nobleman’s corpse with slightly tattered clothing.
“I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead,” the man continued chanting while Liu Xie still stared at him.
“Can you tell me about the fortune teller?” Liu Xie asked.
“Dead, dead, dead…”
“You aren’t going to get anything from him besides what we told you,” Rui Yifu sighed. “This creature has lost what little mind he had.”
Li Baobao turned his head in thought and reached into the bottomless pouch again while he walked over to the man and also crouched down in front of him. This time he pulled out a gold sycee studded with tiny emeralds that dug into his palm. The gibbering man’s eyes zeroed in on the gold and green item. “Do you know anything about the fortune teller? Or what she said to do? Or how your boss got to know her?” He asked gently with a soft smile. The terrified man in front of him may have been one of the men who beat him, but Li Baobao buried any anger he himself might have felt at the moment. Getting answers was more important, and holding a grudge would have gotten in the way.
“Th-the boss Lu lost his family in a blood feud and and and he goes to the spot they were killed every year to pray for them. He said he passed out and saw stuff and later a lady fortune teller came and he asked her about it. He got me and a few of the other guys together so she could tell us what to do-”
“It’s that fortune teller again. What did she say?” Bo asked, “and you better not be holding anything back on us or I’ll put out your eyes!” He gestured in what was probably supposed to be a threatening manner.
“She asked us if we knew about the murders of women going on recently and said it was because of a demon! She’s the one who told us how to make the altars!” He nodded rapidly, swallowing after every few words as though saliva was flooding his mouth. “We told other people about how to stop it and they told others and others told more people and-”
“Did she have you dig lines in the earth and then refill them with rocks?” Liu Xie asked softly, leaning over the man. Li Baobao began reaching back into his seemingly endless coin purse in anticipation of needing more ‘grease’.
The man nodded, “yeah! We spent weeks digging them according to her designs! The boss paid us extra!”
“Do you know about what happened to the little girl you took?” Li Baobao asked.
The man’s eyes went wide again and he shook his head rapidly, “I don’t know! I don’t know! The demon took her and walked away! He said he wasn’t the one killing people here! But I don’t believe him! He’s gotta be the culprit! He’s gotta be! What sort of monster…” the man choked on his own terrified memories and began dry heaving, rocking on his feet back and forth and sobbing.
“Hmmm,” Rui Yifu fanned himself languidly, “back to the demon again… and back to him being full of nonsense.”
Bo stood up, brushed his clothing free of dust, setting his hands on his hips. Li Baobao watched the man’s eyes go upwards to gaze at the raven that sat nearby and scratch his chin in thought, “I think we need to summon that demon ourselves.” He said.
“NO!” The trembling man screamed.
Li Baobao tipped his own head, watching the plan form in Bo’s eyes. “Summon it? But we can’t kidnap some innocent girl off the streets!”
“That’s why we don’t. We get someone willing who can be good bait. Someone that can play the part, but also defend themselves.”
Li Baobao made a soft ‘oh’ sound as he realized where the situation was going, then crouched down to the cowering man and placed a gentle hand on him while the other reached to get more precious sycees and other fat jewels. “You wouldn’t mind helping us, would you?” He asked.
The man’s hands wrapped tightly around the treasures, his head nodding stiffly.
Rui Yifu seemed to realize finally that he was being stared at by Bo and Liu and snapped his fan shut with a growl, “I am not acting as bait.”
“Why not? Is the cutsleeve scared of getting his lady bits a little dirty?” Bo mocked.
Rui Yifu made a face, “that doesn’t even make sense.”
“Of course it makes sense. Look at what you wear! It’s got to be tiny!”
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Rui Yifu leaned towards Bo, “would you like to see it then?”
Li Baobao held up his hands, “wait, wait, please stop.”
“If you two are going to share a bed, do it later,” Liu Xie snapped in a voice that sounded distinctly more like the command of an especially irritated ancient emperor, “I want to find Idony. Yifu, just pretend to be a woman long enough for something to happen. It’s not that difficult.”
Rui Yifu threw his hands up although his face was twisted with his own irritation and disgust, “fine! But when we find her, we’ll speak not a word of this.” He then opened his fan and began to rapidly fan himself as though the breeze might calm his anger. Li Baobao did not know what to do and awkwardly reached out to pat Rui Yifu. Rui Yifu looked at him with a small scowl, “perhaps you should go back to our room, Master Li? This might prove to be a bit dangerous…”
Li Baobao frowned, “but I want to help…” he felt it in his heart, the deep sense of guilt. Perhaps if he had been a bit more bold, a bit braver, a bit stronger…
“You got him-” Liu Xie gestured at the greedy yet terrified man, “-to talk more. That’s more help than you think.”
“Yeah! Besides, we don’t need to lose someone else,” Bo said comfortingly. “We’ll get her back, even if she ends up biting me again.”
“Oh no I’d stop her from doing that, she would get sick from whatever fleas you have,” Rui Yifu spat.
“Watch Baozi for us,” Liu Xie told Li Baobao. Although it was less of an order and more of a suggestion, he felt that he would feel useful.
Rui Yifu raised his hand to to get Li Baobao’s attention, “oh wait. I have a question. Does the name Lu Gongqi sound familiar to you?”
Li blinked. The name did sound familiar. He closed his mind and tried to remember the reams of records and notices he had handled for his family. Lu was a fairly common family name, but the given name stood out. “...Ah. Actually yes. I don’t personally know him, but I remember seeing his name on trade slips. He bought wood from one of our subsidiary businesses, as well as iron.”
The madded man looked around at the group suddenly. “Boss had some construction projects in the grain warehouses he owned, but I never saw it! I don’t know what for!”
“We’ll find out when we get Rui in there,” Bo said. “Hey Li, stay safe okay?”
Li Baobao smiled, “thank you. Good luck to you guys as well.”
After the innkeeper’s grumblings when Li Baobao ordered more water from the room (which indeed did cost money!) he sat down in the inn room and looked around. Baozi laid on his rounded stomach with a snout on the bloodied blanket that Idony had used. His tiny porcine eyes looked over at Li Baobao.
Li Baobao was fairly sure pigs were not intelligent beings able to form complex thoughts or process grief, but he could have sworn the pig looked at him with a gaze of “so you just gave up?”
He turned around and saw Idony’s jacket sitting in a pile with Rui Yifu’s untouched blanket. He picked up the smooth fabric, fingers tracing over the strange designs carefully sewn into it in thread that almost exactly matched the shade of the rest of the item. Li Baobao’s eyes looked over the rest of the room. There was still dried blood, most of it on the floor and some of it on the walls. How much did it cost to get blood out of surfaces? He rubbed his own bruises then quickly regretted the decision as a flare of pain traced through him. He found himself laying down on the ground and closing his eyes as if that would ease the pain.
His mind was full of screams, and he sat back up with a start and a chill in his skin. The lighting had changed in the room, near evening rays of the sun leaking in.
Had he fallen asleep? For how long? He could have sworn he had only closed his eyes for a moment.
His thoughts moved away from the screaming and back to the terrible things he had seen earlier. The strewn bones and rotten meat in the dead forest. Whatever person invented such a thing as a demon altar in the first place was just as demonic as those the altars sought to appease or summon!
He sighed, how terrible it was that people were willing to kill others to protect their own. He scooted over to sit next to Baozi, gently petting the warm pig as he spoke, “I really hope the others will be okay and that we can find her. I don’t get a place like this. Criminals policing criminals. Sacrificing others on those horrible altars to protect your own family.” He thought again how it was, in a way, similar to what his own family had been doing. Sacrificing innocent lives for the benefit of others.
The pig made a soft ‘oink’ sound, moving its snout deeper into the blanket.
“Wouldn’t it just cause more pain? An endless cycle, with everyone blaming a monster when…” Li Baobao paused in his words as a wordless plan took root inside his mind. The people were ready to jump at shadows and throw their neighbors sister into the fire to protect their own mothers. Fingers were going to be pointed at someone eventually. “Everyone’s ready to lose their minds. It wouldn’t take much to…”
Li Baobao sat on this plan as the sun crawled and began to droop downwards. Finally he took a deep breath to strengthen his heart. He had a name, Lu Gongqi, it was something to go from.
He pulled his hair loose, the thick curls falling over his shoulders and then he tried his best to make it look as messy as possible. Li Baobao tore his clothing at a few of the seams slightly and tried to ignore that a harsh lecture from Rui Yifu on ruining clothes would be in his future as he peeled away some scabs to make them bleed again, wincing.
“I’ll be back Baozi! Watch over the room!” Li Baobao said, not even pausing to consider how ridiculous speaking to a pig was. The pig, for his part, oinked in something that sounded like a ‘yes’. Li Baobao then, wanting to avoid any looks going out of the inn the normal way, climbed out of the window rather awkwardly, tumbling downwards onto the hard ground of the inn’s old barely maintained courtyard. He got up to his feet, dust and dirt settling onto his clothes, and ran a brief lap around the courtyard before he found an exit that led straight onto a dusty old road nobody was on.
Li Baobao wheezed from that bit of exertion, then began to walk out of the alleyway, his bare feet trampling over thick dewy white flowers as he traced old paths out towards the city. Li Baobao had not experienced many people mad with rage and grief before but decided that the best thing he could do first was make a scene that he thought would best demonstrate it.
So Li Baobao stepped out into a crowded pathway and started to shriek.
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