Chapter 19: The Nine-tailed Fox stabs a ghost

tw: blood and gore

"Go get your sword" Lan Tian says to Wu Yun, already uncurling his whip from his waist.

Wu Yun still can't do much with a sword besides stabbing it into things and trying to slash it at anything that comes his way, but it's better that nothing. He runs outside and digs it out from one of the chests. When he comes back inside Lan Tian is already going up the stairs gripping the whip's handle.

The noise comes back again, this time it sounds like something bashing against the wall. Wan Mi follows after them with ungainly steps and noisy wing flutters to help her gain some height.

"Why did you have to eat that food? I knew this would end poorly for us." She steps on the landing and cranes her neck around an open doorway to look into a room.

"Will you shut up? You're drawing attention to us." Wu Yun walks ahead and starts peeking into open doorways that lead only into empty, dusty rooms.

The sounds seems to be coming from the only closed door in the inn. Lan Tian tests the handle and the door creaks open on rusty hinges.

The sound stops abruptly, but a foul smell wafts from the open doorway that makes them all recoil.

"I was right! Something did die in here," Wan Mi says looking haughtily up at Wu Yun.

He and Lan Tian walk into the room at the same time, and are met with a grisly sight that makes the food in Wu Yun's stomach threaten to come back up.

The room is splattered with dried brackish blood from floor to ceiling, and on the corner of the room lays an amorphous pile of entrails, bone and hair, that might at one point have been several people.

A creature, tall and emaciated, digs between the remains. Its stomach is swollen like that of a starving child, its translucent body is covered in oozing pustules. It turns around, sensing their presence.

Wu Yun stifles a gasp with his sleeve when he sees the creature's ruined face. Its blind and its jaw hangs unhinged in a perpetual scream. On its neck dozens of pus filled growths drip foul smelling ooze into its chest like a noxious fountain.

"It's an hungry ghost, I warned you!" croaks Wan Mi, almost whispering out the words.

"This thing was clearly already here, or can it appear out of thin air into a closed room?" Wu Yun snaps, wondering if the hungry ghost wouldn't rather have some fresh phoenix instead of rotten remains.

"How do we kill it?" Lan Tian asks, keeping a close eye on the creature's slow movements.

"Cut off its head, but don't let the pus from its boils get on you, it's venomous."

Wu Yun groans, that's going to be a challenge, considering the hungry ghost is covered in them.

"You distract him, I cut off his head," he says, walking slowly to the wall perpendicular to the creature and the pile of flesh.

Lan Tian cracks his whip against the floor to draw the ghost's attention, and moves towards the opposite wall. The creature follows the sound with staggering steps.

Wu Yun advances slowly behind it, holding the sword at eye level with both hands. Once the ghost has almost reached the wall, he shouts, "Duck!"

Lan Tian rolls out of the way and Wu Yun thrusts the sword through the creature's neck, embedding it in a wooden beam.

The ghost shrieks and tries to struggle against the sword impaling it against the wall.

"Well, it's not dead, but it's also not going anywhere." Wu Yun inspects his hands and robes to make sure none of the ghost's blood or pus got on him.

"Its head is still attached to its shoulders," Wan Mi points out with the condescending tone Wu Yun is beginning to associate with her.

"You do it, if it's so easy."

"What about your sword?" Lan Tian asks, nodding at the hilt protruding out of the ghost's neck.

"Lu Meng gave us a dozen of them, I can always use another."

"You'll run out of them if you keep leaving them attached to your enemies." Wan Mi says.

"You know, you're right! I should use them to skewer you over a roaring fire instead." Wu Yun starts running after Wan Mi with stretched out arms as if he's trying to catch her, she clucks desperately and runs out of the room fluttering her feathers.

Lan Tian shakes his head at their antics, and throws one last thoughtful look at the blood soaked room before closing the door behind him.

---

"We obviously can't stay here," Wan Mi says, incredulous that Wu Yun can just pick up his meal where he left off after what they saw upstairs.

"Why not? That ghost isn't going anywhere, you saw how it was moving. But if you want to sleep outside in the cold go ahead."

As Wu Yun expected, Wan Mi says nothing.

Lan Tian is trying to get a fire going on the hearth with little success. The flint stone catches against the steel bar, but the sparks always die out before reaching the kindling. Wu Yun takes the stone from his hands and strikes it against the flat of the steel bar. A shower of sparks hits the kindling and starts smoking.

"You did it so easily," Lan Tian says, watching the fire build.

"You can't be good at everything, save something for me." Wu Yun bumps his shoulders into Lan Tian's, smilling.

"I think you're good a lot of things," Lan Tian says, voice soft.

"I thought I only caused you trouble."

Lan Tian fixes him with a searching look, his amber eyes boring into him. Wu Yun looks away before that penetrating gaze discovers things he'd rather keep hidden.

"I think I like trouble."

Wu Yun feels his skin warm up. He's been out of sorts since the dream, and Lan Tian's smooth voice isn't helping. He can't help remembering Shu Luan's intimate words when Lan Tian's voice gets low and deep like that.

They make makeshift beds right there on the floor, since none of them is particularly inclined to go upstairs where someone or something has died, violently by the looks of it. Wan Mi curls up on herself next to the fire and falls asleep instantly.

The hungry ghost's pained screams are still audible, even in the lower floor, so Wu Yun isn't expecting a restful night. Maybe that will keep the dreams away.

"Why are you sleeping so far away?" Lan Tian asks as he watches Wu Yun drag his bedding until a table is between the two of them.

"Oh you said I was making noise in my sleep, I don't want to disturb you."

Lan Tian frowns. "Is this about what I told you? About how being close to you makes me feel odd sometimes? You said I should ignore it."

Wu Yun barely remembers that conversation, it seemed like it happened to someone else at this point. Now he's the one who is being odd, he feels like an hypocrite for telling Lan Tian to ignore it when he can't.

"No, it has nothing to do with that."

He can't look Lan Tian in the eyes. Lan Tian notices, and says, sounding wounded. "You said you never lied to me."

The disappointment in his voice makes Wu Yun want to tell him everything, but he can barely make sense of the dream itself, how can he hope to explain it to Lan Tian? The idea is too mortifying to consider.

He opens and closes his mouth several times, but no words come out. His shoulders slump in defeat and he lies back down on the sheets, his back turned to Lan Tian. "Good night, sleep well."

Lan Tian is quiet for so long that Wu Yun thinks he went to sleep without saying anything. He's about to give in to exhaustion when his soft words reach his ears, "Sleep well, I'm sorry."

---

The next day Wu Yun wakes from a fitful, dreamless sleep with the sun shining through the grimy oiled paper windows, and someone's fist banging on the inn's rickety door.

Lan Tian wakes up at the same time, sitting up on the sheets and rubbing his eyes.

"There's someone at the door," Wu Yun whispers to him. "Go hide the chicken."

Lan Tian throws the sheets off himself and walks towards the hearth. Wu Yun hears him make a confused "Uh" sound and goes around to check.

Instead of the phoenix there's a naked girl with black, waist-length hair, sleeping curled up on herself. Several pear stems peek out from her closed fingers.

"What do we have here? After all that whining she ate the damn pears too!"

The fist banging on the door grows more adamant.

"What do we do? It's easier to hide a phoenix than a human girl!" Lan Tian says, still whispering.

Wu Yun is quick to act. He searches through to the chest of clothes Lan Tian carried inside the day before, and picks out a random set of robes.

"Wake up and wear this," he says, throwing the robes at Wan Mi's face.

She wakes up with a start and pulls the robes away from her long hair with a glare. "What's going on?"

"Congratulations, you're no longer a chicken, now get dressed, there's someone at the door."

Wu Yun opens the door just a sliver, and sees the weather beaten face of a stocky man, his fist raised as if he was about to knock on the door again. Behind his muscled shoulders stands what looks like an entire village.

"Yes?" Wu Yun asks carefully.

"Oh, you're alive! We saw smoke coming out of the inn last night and thought perhaps some poor travelers would have met their end."

"You're talking about the hungry ghost? It's been dealt with," Lan Tian says appearing over Wu Yun's head.

"Yes, we're fine. Thanks for checking in, goodbye now," Wu Yun says, trying to close the door but the man's rough hand shoots out to stop him.

"Wait, are you cultivators? Would the young heroes help our humble village?" the man asks, bowing so deeply his head almost hits the door frame.

"We don't..." Wu Yun starts.

"They would love to," Wan Mi says, throwing the door wide open and smiling brilliantly at the old man and the gathered audience.

She's wearing robes clearly meant for a much taller man, but she tied up her hair the best she could in a delicate half-tail, that streams over her thin shoulders like a waterfall. She's delicately pretty, with fine bone structure and large humid eyes, but her smile is cunning like the little pest Wu Yun knows she is, regardless of how innocent and sweet her human face might look.

"Ah, the young heroes' little sister?" The old man says looking up at Wu Yun, and then at Lan Tian.

Likely noticing the lack of any apparent family resemblance between the three of them, he corrects himself. "Ah, young heroes, forgive my ignorance! We simple country folk aren't used to seeing cultivators around these parts. You must be dual cultivators!"

Wan Mi grins so wide it threatens to spill out of her lips. She nods at the old man. "Yes that's what they are."

Wu Yun and Lan Tian exchange twin looks of confusion. Jiang Tanmei has told them about cultivation sects, in some detail, and Wu Yun has some inner knowledge from when he first became sentient of how cultivation works, but he has no idea what dual cultivators are. Nothing good, judging by how happy the old man's words are making Wan Mi.

The old man laughs, and pats Wan Mi's head as if she is a particularly well-behaved dog. "The young heroes' daughter is very smart. How old is she?"

Wan Mi's grin dies frozen on her lips, her dark eyes widen to the size of small moons. "Wait..."