Of Hunters and Immortals

Say what you would about Zhang, but he made for an excellent distraction.

Jiang moved in a low crouch, using the chaos of the main fight as cover – though he probably needn't have bothered. Zhang was a whirlwind of controlled violence in the centre of the camp, fire and Qi flaring as he met the bandits' relentless charge. For every man he put down, another two seemed to surge forward, their faces twisted in snarling rage. They were dying, but that didn't seem to bother the remaining men.

Still, Jiang had to give credit where it was due – he knew for a fact that he wouldn't be doing nearly as well in Zhang's place. Even his tactic of trying to make distance and pick them off one by one wouldn't work; these bandits were all but suicidally throwing themselves at Zhang, and while Jiang was confident he could outrun them, he couldn't do it while running backwards and firing arrows.

Jiang ignored the main brawl, his eyes fixed on the handful of men providing ranged support from the edge of the camp. They were focused on Zhang, loosing arrows in ragged volleys, seemingly unconcerned with the risk of hitting their own men.

He closed the distance to the nearest archer, a lanky man half-hidden behind a stack of furs. The man never heard him coming. Jiang's knife slid between his ribs from behind, a quick, brutal motion. The archer grunted, a wet, surprised sound, but somehow still had the strength to swing wildly behind himself, almost clipping Jiang. The action seemed to take the last of his energy, and he collapsed over his bow.

Jiang didn't pause. He grabbed the fallen bow and the half-full quiver, slinging it quickly over his shoulder. He still had twenty or so arrows of his own – but there were a lot more than twenty enemies.

A shout went up from the other archers. They'd seen their companion fall. An arrow hissed past Jiang's head, thudding into the tree beside him. He dropped flat, rolling behind the trunk as another two shafts sliced through the air where he had been a moment before. He came up on one knee, an arrow already nocked on his new bowstring.

He drew and loosed in a single, fluid motion. The man who had fired the first shot staggered back, clutching at the arrow now buried in his shoulder. He wasn't dead, but he was out of the fight.

Or so Jiang thought. The man let out a roar of pure, animalistic rage, dropping his bow and yanking a crude hatchet from his belt. He ignored the arrow protruding from his shoulder, his arm hanging limp at his side, and charged, his good arm swinging the hatchet in a wild arc.

Jiang sidestepped the clumsy attack and drove his knife into the man's exposed side as he stumbled past, pulling it free in the same motion. The bandit took two more staggering steps before collapsing into the snow, finally down.

The last two archers used the distraction to loose another volley. Jiang dropped behind the trunk of a thick pine, the thud of arrows biting into the wood uncomfortably close. This was getting predictable. He waited a beat, then pushed off, sprinting not away, but parallel to their position, using the trees as a moving screen.

He heard them curse as they tried to track his movement. He burst into a small clearing, giving them a clear shot. As they drew their bowstrings, he was already diving into another patch of cover. The arrows hissed through the empty air behind him. He rose, nocked his own arrow, and fired before they could reload.

Both archers fell, shafts buried in their chests.

With the ranged threat dealt with, Jiang moved back to the edge of the treeline, finding a spot that gave him a clear view of the chaotic melee. Zhang was a storm of steel and fire dancing at the edges of the camp, his sword a flashing arc of death. He was bleeding from a shallow cut on his cheek, and his immaculate robes were spattered with mud and blood, but he was holding his own.

Jiang raised his new bow. He didn't aim for the men directly engaging Zhang; they were too close, the risk of hitting the disciple too high. Instead, he targeted the ones circling the edges, the ones waiting for an opening to flank him.

His first arrow took a man in the back of the neck as he tried to rush Zhang from his blind spot. The man crumpled without a sound. His second caught another in the side, causing him to stumble directly into the path of Zhang's sweeping blade. A few of the more aware bandits noticed their fellows dropping from the new threat and split off to charge across the open space towards Jiang.

He dropped them before they even made it halfway. It would have been amusing – crossing open ground directly at an archer was about the stupidest thing he'd ever seen – but instead it was just unsettling. These were experienced men who had made a living preying on others. They were not new to combat.

So why were they acting so off?

Another shot. Another man down. Jiang moved along the treeline, shifting angles, keeping the bandits from realising where the arrows came from. Each strike peeled another attacker away from Zhang's flanks.

For all their numbers, the Dead River Gang were no match. Zhang cut through them like a firestorm, Jiang's arrows thinning the tide wherever it pressed too close.

And yet… they didn't break. Not once did a man turn to flee. Even as corpses piled, even as fire consumed some screaming in the snow, the survivors only pressed harder. Jiang watched one man charge barehanded after losing his sword, only to be cut in two for the effort. Another staggered forward with half his body charred, still trying to swing a spear.

It was a slaughter. Brutal, one-sided slaughter.

Jiang loosed another arrow, watched it punch through a bandit's spine, and felt no triumph. His gut twisted. These men should have run long ago. Fear of death was universal, stronger than pride or coin. But not here.

By the time the last fell, the camp was quiet save for the hiss of melting snow where Zhang's fire had touched it. The ground was littered with bodies. Not a single one had fled. Not a single one left alive.

Jiang lowered his bow, the wood rough in his hands. His shadow writhed beneath him, restless, uneasy.

There was no one left to question. No answers. Just sixty corpses and the cold certainty that something about this was very, very wrong. The Dead River Gang was a dead end, literally. They were his best lead, his only real chance of finding a trail to where his family had been sold. The other gangs the Broker had mentioned were small-time thugs, not slavers with the resources to move an entire village.

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He stopped near the centre of the camp, his gaze falling on the empty iron cages. A cold, familiar anger stirred in his gut, but it was muted now, overshadowed by a profound sense of futility.

"They did not break."

Jiang turned. Zhang Shuren stood a few paces away, his sword clean, his face a mask of grim contemplation. The earlier arrogance was gone, replaced by a sharp, analytical focus that was far more unsettling.

"Mortals break," Zhang continued, more to himself than to Jiang. "They run. They beg. They surrender. They do not charge headfirst into a cultivator's fire with nothing but rage in their eyes. Not like this."

"I noticed," Jiang said dryly. He still wasn't entirely convinced that normal bandits would actually just surrender, but there was no denying that what had just happened was… unnatural.

Zhang walked over to the nearest corpse, nudging it with the toe of his boot. "My Qi suppression alone should have all but broken their wills. The spiritual pressure from a cultivator at my level is not impossible for a mortal to fight through, but… not this many, not all at once. They barely even noticed."

He crouched, placing two fingers on the dead bandit's forehead and closing his eyes. Jiang watched, curious despite himself. After a moment, Zhang pulled his hand back as if burned, a look of dawning horror on his face, spinning and repeating the motion on another body.

"What is it?" Jiang asked.

"Every one of them," Zhang whispered, his voice tight with disbelief as he continued to check more bodies. "They all have a flicker of Qi. It's not trained, not refined. It's a poisoned, stagnant thing, like a guttering candle flame. But it was enough. Enough to let them resist."

"Wait. Are you telling me… they were all cultivators?"

"No," Zhang said, pushing himself to his feet. "Not true cultivators. They had no techniques, no control, not even the instinctual reinforcement that should come with an ignited dantian. Someone… made them like this. Forced a change upon them, a crude and unstable awakening. It is the only explanation for their lack of self-preservation. Their minds were likely… broken in the process." He finally looked at Jiang, and for the first time, Jiang saw something other than arrogance or disdain in his eyes. He saw fear. "This is the work of forbidden, unorthodox cultivation."

Jiang stared at him. "So someone just… made them into this? Like tools?"

Zhang's mouth was a thin line. "Tools that burned themselves out the moment they were swung. It is crude work. Dangerous. Whoever did this either has no regard for stability… or no regard for life."

Jiang let his gaze sweep the field of corpses. The sight was enough to turn his stomach – being a hunter meant he was no stranger to death, to say nothing of the lives he'd taken himself in the last few months, but this… this was different. It was a slaughter. There was no other word for it.

And it left him with nothing. No prisoners, no leads. Just bodies.

He swallowed the sour taste of futility. "This must be Gao Leng, then," he said quietly. Who else could it possibly be? He already knew that Gao Leng was involved with the bandit gangs, and as a rogue cultivator, it wouldn't surprise him if the man had turned to unorthodox methods.

"That… cannot be. That a former disciple of the Azure Sky Sect would stoop to this level is… impossible. " Even as Zhang said the words, Jiang could see him working through the possibility..

"The leader of the Crimson Blades told me he's the only true 'Hollow Fang'," Jiang pressed, recounting the story. "That he gathers other gangs, lets them use the name when he works with them on a big raid."

Zhang fell silent, his gaze turning inward, piecing together the grim puzzle. He began to pace, his immaculate robes a stark contrast to the blood-stained snow. "It makes a twisted kind of sense," he murmured, more to himself than to Jiang. "His exit from the Azure Sky Sect was public enough that he would struggle to find resources to continue his cultivation – no wandering or independent cultivator would wish to attract the Azure Sky Sect's attention by aiding him. So he turned to the gangs, using them as a disposable workforce to gather… resources. He enhances them, turns them into these puppets, so they can gather more resources for him."

He stopped, frowning. "But why target villages? He had to know that would attract more attention than it was worth – most mortal towns wouldn't even have any resources that would be of use to him."

"Unless… unless the people are the resources," Jiang whispered, remembering Mistress Bai's explanation of unorthodox cultivation.

Zhang sucked in a breath through his teeth. "This is a harvest. He must be using the captives for the same process. Turning them into these half-formed cultivators, and then… what? Why? To drain them. To take their Qi, their life force, to fuel his own advancement. It would explain the scale of the raid on your village. He needed bodies. Dozens of them."

The world seemed to tilt under Jiang's feet. The image that flooded his mind was so monstrous it stole the air from his lungs—his mother, frail and gentle; Xiaoyu, small and bright; their life force being siphoned away, turned into fuel for a monster's ambition. Were they even still alive at all, or had he just been chasing ghosts this whole time?

Zhang finally seemed to notice the effect his words were having. The analytical coldness in his expression faltered, replaced by a flicker of something else—awkward, unfamiliar empathy. "My apologies," he said, his voice losing its sharp edge. "I was… processing. That was tactless of me."

Jiang looked up, his face a mask of pale horror, his own voice barely a whisper. "Are they… could they still be alive?"

The question hung in the air, heavy and fragile. Zhang hesitated, for the first time seeming unsure of what to say. He looked away from Jiang's desperate gaze, his jaw tightening as he clearly weighed the kindness of a lie against the cruelty of the truth. He chose the latter.

"That depends," he said quietly, "on whether they were deemed… suitable. Tell me about them. Were—are they young? Fit? Do you have brothers or sisters?"

"It's… it's just my mother and my sister," Jiang said, his voice hollow. "My mother… she's not strong. A few hard winters… she always made sure my sister and I had enough to eat first. And Xiaoyu… she's just a child. Not yet twelve. Small, but… energetic."

Zhang was silent for a long moment, considering the grim calculus of it all. "Understand that I cannot offer guarantees," he said finally, voice careful and precise. "But anything that would change a mortal to this extent would doubtlessly require a strong constitution to survive, to provide any meaningful return. If Gao Leng is as pragmatic as he is monstrous, he would have started with the strongest men from your village. The ones most likely to yield the greatest results."

He met Jiang's gaze, and there was no pity in his eyes, only a cold, hard logic that was, in its own way, a lifeline. "Your mother's frailty, your sister's youth… they might have been seen as poor material. Unsuitable for the harvest, but instead used to turn a profit by being sold as slaves. It is possible, Jiang Tian. It is possible they were spared for that reason."

Jiang clung to the words like a lifeline.

"In this, Gao Leng has crossed a line no cultivator should. This is more than just a stain on our sect's reputation; it is a danger to the whole province. It cannot go unanswered." Zhang turned to Jiang and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Your personal quest has become a matter of the highest priority. Gao Leng must be found."

He let his hand drop, the weight of his decision settling in the quiet air between them. "Do this with me, Jiang Tian. Help me hunt this monster down. When it is done, when this threat has been purged, I give you my word. I will personally petition the Elders on your behalf. We will bring the full weight of the Sect's resources to bear on finding your family. Our network of informants, our archives, whatever it takes. You will have your answers."

Right now, Jiang was desperate enough to accept anything. Part of him didn't want to get involved with the Azure Sky Sect again, whispering that he could do more by himself when not constrained by the Sect's rules.

But that was stupid. He looked from Zhang's determined face to the field of corpses around them, at the cold, empty cages, and felt the last of his own hesitation burn away.

He gave a single, sharp nod.