Tian and Hong exchanged looks. There was no breath of immortality coming from the lake, so it wasn’t a cultivator or cultivating animal. Though, the whole area was saturated with wood and water qi, to the point where it almost overwhelmed their senses. The crane crouched slightly and drew in her neck, ready to attack or run.
Tian got his rope dart out. Hong already had her spear in hand. They carefully approached the pond. The tree had small green leaves, somewhere between heart shaped and arrow shaped, with little clusters of grey-green berries hanging down.
“No berries on the ground. The ground looks almost swept.”
The pond water was dark green and still. They edged closer. Tian instinctively started circulating Snake Head Vine Body, and stopped as electric tendrils of pain spread through him. There would be none of that.
A hand reached out of the pond and slapped the shore. Too-long fingers dug into the earth, and a long green arm pulled the rest of the body from the water. The creature was all long limbs and long head, as though a normal human was carefully vertically stretched by someone who thought humans grew “up.” The rough, woody brown, green and grey of its skin showed that it was no kind of human at all.
“Demon?” Hong’s voice was tight.
“Caretaker. I am the caretaker of this place, little thief.” The creature’s voice was rough. “You have broken into my mother’s house. No matter, no matter. You go in the hole with all the others. Everyone who tried to steal what is rightfully ours.” It tilted its too-long head side to side, slit eyes watching them carefully.
“We haven’t come to steal. We have come to study the pictures on the wall, and if you are willing, we will trade for some of the oranges growing here.” Tian kept his voice calm. He desperately tried to remember if he had ever heard a demon speak before, and what it might signify.
“Thieves. Come to steal what isn’t yours, and to take what is rightfully mine. My oranges. My pictures. The Great One created this place, planted mother and her servants, painted the pictures on the wall, all to preserve them for their inheritor. Me.”
The creature gave no indication. No shift of tone, no sudden tensing of the body. It went from swaying hostility, to all out attack. Arms and legs swung forward, moving with eerie fluidity as it raced over the ground.
“Dragon Suppressing Palms! It’s using-” Tian yelled.
“I KNOW!” Hong was already in motion, planting herself in front of Tian and stabbing forward with her spear. The thing from the pond squatted, its legs too wide for a human, then swept its palms forward and up. Fast. Too fast. The long arms and legs stretched even further, and suddenly it was past her spearhead and moving to strike her lower dantian.
Tian whipped his rope dart around, trying to spear the palm as it came in. It struck, but not hard enough to pierce the skin. The palm slid off to the side and Hong hammered down her spear as she stepped sideways. The crack to the skull smashed the creature down, but it was up again a second later. Pressing forward, relentlessly. Always swinging. Always stretching.
Tian had the oddest moment of recognition. “Tree demon.”
Hong just grunted and kept her spear in motion. Her spearhead danced, the red tassel flickering, stabbing for the creature’s face and slitted eyes. It hissed, an awful parody of a laugh, and grabbed the spear by the shaft. Long fingers stretched and twisted, tightening around the hard wood. It pulled forward even as it planted a palm out in front of it, ready to smash apart Hong’s guts.
Her Highness stabbed it in the back of the head with her beak. Tian really couldn’t understand it. Who would focus on the two crippled cultivators when there was a fully capable Level Nine Crane standing next to them?
“HOW DARE YOU!” The monster screeched. The back of the head cracked open, filled with fatty, waxy, white matter. Arms shaped in parody of the human form whipped backward, clawing for the crane. She batted them away with flaps of her wings, shifting around with ungainly hops.
Tian and Hong piled on, smashing at the demon and pinning it down while the crane did the actual damage. Tian had his rope dart wrapping around limbs every second he could, but the demon was stronger than him. Once it got its feet literally planted, it could yank him around, rather than the reverse. Likewise, Hong was struggling to do much. The spearhead lodged a fraction of an inch into the bark, leaving no mark as it was withdrawn. Smashing it didn’t do anything much either.
It didn’t feel good at all. Not one bit. Tian didn’t even dare try to use the saw teeth on his rope, lest he injure himself without Snake Head Vine Body. The intuitive use of his arts had served him well, until now.
He kicked the heavy dart head up, snagging a stretching arm. The crane drilled her beak forward, destroying the demon’s shoulder. That got a scream! The three didn’t need to share a look. They just settled into their killing work. Hong and Tian had been fired in the furnace of the Redstone Wastes. It didn’t matter who killed the enemy, so long as someone did.
It was a suitably grim sentiment, but the tree demon refused to cooperate. It regenerated. Worse, it looked like it was slowly starting to sprout. There was an unpleasant smell, rancid but herbal. Greasy. Tian finally remembered where he saw the tree before.
“Pin it down! Better still, poke a hole in it!” Tian sent an image to the crane while he readied his trap.
“You can’t kill me! You can’t even hurt me!” The demon howled.
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“Sure we can.” Hong started using her spear like a two handed club, not even trying to damage the demon. She just knocked it around and kept it from getting planted. The crane stabbed out with its beak, shattering limbs and digging holes in the demon’s chest. Each crack and hole revealed a fleshy, oily white interior.
Tian dashed in and flung a fistful of powder from his left hand onto the creature’s body. The right he raised to his mouth, and blew.
The Steelburning Powder ignited, then spread to the demon. The white hot flames caught the oily, fleshy insides.
There wasn’t even time for a final scream. There was a flash of light and the dull thud of a pillar of flame igniting filled the orchard. Soon after came the smoke, black, oily and choking. The crane flapped its wide, white wings, driving it away.
Even with the Steelburning Powder, it took a long time to burn out. The demon was quite rich in fuel.
“I finally figured out what that damned tree is. It’s a tallow tree. You can get oil from the seeds.” Tian collapsed on the ground. It was bare dirt. Tallow trees famously didn’t like competition. Or rather, they simply didn’t allow it. Once they could shade out competitors, that was it. Pretty soon, all there was, was tallow trees.
“Edible?” Hong sat down heavily beside him. Both were trying to keep away from the slag heap that had been the demon’s corpse. Just because they were used to nasty smells and vile sights, that didn’t make them pleasant.
“Mildly poisonous, but it makes wonderful soap, I’m told. See the way the fruit are starting to turn dark? In a little while, they will be covered in a white, waxy layer. That’s the stuff that you can turn into soap. They can drop tens of thousands of those little things, with time.” Tian pointed at the darkening fruit.
“Do your herb books cover soap making too?”
“No, it’s listed as a species to watch out for. They can take over your whole garden if you aren’t careful. All those seeds spread like crazy, and crowd out other plants. Worse, they like to grow next to rivers and animals like to eat the fruits. They spread like crazy. Burning won’t kill them permanently, cutting them down won’t do it, even ripping them out of the ground won’t do it, because they can sprout again from fragments of the roots. You have to use poison, and do it repeatedly. Which does kind of make me wonder…”
“Just how dead that demon actually is.” Hong concluded. “It did say we couldn’t kill it.”
“Mmm. But it will take time to regrow.”
“Yep.”
Neither stirred.
The crane started poking around the pond. So far there wasn’t anything to eat, but hope sprang eternal.
“Well, I hate this.” Hong said.
“Yep. Me too.” Tian nodded.
“Medicine?”
“Sure. But let me take your pulse first.”
“You learned pulse reading?” She asked.
“Not very much. I’m just checking on your meridians.”
Hong shrugged and offered her wrist. Tian put two fingers on it and started a pattern of lightly tapping and resting, his eyes half closed. “Give it another day. You are in better shape than me, but still a lot more fragile than I would like.”
“Yeah. The oranges are still green. That’s disappointing. I don’t feel like hanging around for months either.”
“Definately a mixed result. But let me see what’s carved on that stone tablet on the ground over there. I have a feeling there is more to this place.”
That feeling was coming in the form of Grandpa Jun, who was practically bouncing with excitement.
Oh ignore the girl, read the sign! You always need to read the signs. And the pond! You won’t believe the good stuff that’s hidden in the bottom of ponds. I bet the demon had a lair. And it mentioned going in the hole. Did it bury other cultivators? Did it have a charnel pit or midden? A charnel pit is another super high quality place to search for loot. Oh blessed day! I’ve been waiting a decade for a day like this!
Tian was suddenly and vividly reminded of the fact that Grandpa had, in fact, been lobbying for him to go adventuring on his own since he was eleven. His bitter critique of the loot available from the heretics of the Redstone Wastes had never really let up, and he had been notably more cheerful since they left the Windblown Manor. It seemed that Grandpa Jun truly had the heart of an adventurer.
Suppressing a laugh, Tian walked over to the stone tablet and started reading. Then he re-read it. “Liren, get over here!”
“Who the hell are you calling without honorifics?! See if I don’t beat propriety into you in place of your brothers!” Hong spasmed into the air, landed on her feet and rushed over full of wrath.
“Sure, fine, whatever, Read this!” Tian pointed at the stone tablet.
Dear Little Zheng-
I read through that art of yours, and it’s pretty cute. It’s not something you can really use without spending half your life cultivating your vital energy, though. Grandpa knows how busy you are rushing around unifying the country, so I decided to be nosy and make this place. I picked this spot since it’s a node on the nation’s dragon veins. It will suppress fortune and keep the country prosperous. Fortune is the true qi of the kingdom, its destiny, and its roots. So long as fortune endures, so will this little country of yours.
So, chalk it up to me spoiling you- I made this garden to help you out and to stabilize your new country. I took those sickly orange trees you left me and had a friend of mine graft them onto better root stock. I also fixed up the soil, put a qi concentrating array, a concealing array, and other minor things. Don’t mind the details.
What you should mind, and keep this firmly in your mind, is the tallow tree and the pond. Gather up the berries and some of the water and have your alchemists make a paste with it. Combine the powdered rinds of the oranges and the oil paste. Rub it all over your skin, ALL OVER, hair included, little mister “I don’t want to wash my hair, Grandpa!” and let it sit for at least four hours. Overnight is better, but more than twelve hours won’t bring any more benefit.
The oranges are fine by themselves, but too much yang is a poison. This art contains hidden dangers- it’s no wonder it fell out of use. It’s not just hard, it’s self-destructive. Enriching the flesh with yin and your internal energy with yang, bringing both in harmony as you cultivate the art, that is the true path to success.
-Your Loving Grandpa
P.S. If it’s not little Zheng reading this, and some other fellow Daoist managed to make it through my array, then you must have great merit. Spare the roots of the little sprite I have set here to tend the place, and take only the fruits and some water. Everything I wrote to little Zheng goes triple for cultivators at the Earthly Realm, and the art on the wall is useful for you too. Take just the fruits and some pond water. I will hold no grudge over just that, and I’ll chalk it up to fate. Or try to take it all. You could even gamble on whether I am still around and try to grab the dragon vein. It would be one way for you to find out what’s on the other side of the Heavenly Realm, and I’m a great believer in education.
-Starsieve, Third Generation Sect Master, Ancient Crane Monastery