My steps kicked up dust as I followed the scream down the road. I could feel my muscles straining with all the blood pumped into them. The pines thinned as I came across a cleared, fenced-in property. It was as I feared, as I’d known it would be the moment I heard the scream of farmers being attacked by spirit beasts.

  The barn doors lay shattered on the ground, and early morning light revealed massacred livestock inside. I ran off the road and climbed up the short wooden fence. The structure was built to pen livestock, not stop monsters.

  On the other side of the barn lay a single-story house built from the surrounding trees.

  A young woman with bright red hair was backed up against a house wall. She had two young children — hers, judging from their hair — backed up behind her. From the house’s broken doors and windows, it was clear they’d tried to escape after something broke inside. Unfortunately, the small troop of blood-stained monkeys hadn’t let them get very far.

  Four monkeys hooted at her from the yard, picking up clods of dirt and hucking them at the young boy and girl hiding behind her robes. The woman held a pitchfork and swung it this way and that, but the spirit beasts remained out of her range and hurled their projectiles. While these monkeys distracted her, a fifth monkey slowly crept along the thatched roof. No doubt this monkey would pounce down onto the woman from above and disable her.

  After that, the spirit beasts would feast.

  The monkeys’ eyes blazed with red light, and they howled with bestial laughter as the young mother placed herself between the children and the projectiles.

  “Hey!” I shouted at the monkeys. “You lot!”

  The monkeys flinched at the sound of my voice, and the one from the roof lost purchase and fell to the ground. It struck the ground in front of the red-headed family. The mother leaped forward with her pitchfork and stabbed it in the neck while it was down.

  The spirit beast howled and flailed at her, knocking her back and leaving the pitchfork embedded. The monkey grabbed the pitchfork and ripped it out. Blood dribbled from the wound as it scrambled upright and hooted at the now defenceless family.

  Then it saw me and stopped.

  All five monkeys went silent, ignoring the woman and her children as their burning eyes locked onto me and widened. There was more intelligence in their gaze than I expected, as though I looked into the flames and the fire looked back.

  I felt a tug on my mind, calling me deeper into the forest.

  I looked over the heads of the monkeys and into the pines as dawn crinkled the edges of the mountains with light, but saw nothing.

  The monkeys kept staring at me as the tug faded.

  Meeting the fiery eyes of the monkeys reminded me of the warped people floating in the green tubes back at the facility. Though my fellow test subjects had lakes of wide black pupils in their eyes, not smouldering red flames.

  I glanced at the woman and her family. There was no way I could directly ask the monkeys about the facility in front of her. I couldn’t risk my secret spreading.

  “What was that?” I asked them. “What did you do?”

  I stepped forward, and the monkeys hooted. The woman held her children behind her as the monkeys pounded the ground. They howled at me, straining the air with their volume, and once more the tug came to my mind.

  This time, I wasn’t sure if it was pushing or pulling.

  The monkeys scrambled away into the pines, leaping over the fence and bounding into the trees. Their pale forms vanished quickly into the distance as dawn continued to flood the trees with golden light.

  “Wasted opportunity,” Cabbagy said. “Instead of talking, you should have honed your skills upon their tender flesh.”

  “I’d rather not start a fight if I don’t have to,” I said.

  “Kid, the world started this fight when you were born, and it’ll only end when you die. Unfortunately for you, it doesn’t look like you’re going to die anytime soon.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” I said to Cabbagy as I slowly approached the family. “But you’re fucked up. You know that, right?”

  “I know,” Cabbagy said with a forlorn sigh. “That’s why my wife left.”

  I shook my head. At this point, I doubted that he even had a wife, but I doubted I’d gain anything out of confronting him about it.

  Now that the monkeys were gone, the young, red-headed woman sagged against the side of the house.

  “Thank you for saving us, cultivator,” the woman said.

  I shot a look over my shoulder before breathing out a sigh of relief. For a moment I’d thought someone had snuck up on us — I’d heard that powerful cultivators could walk around as though they were practically invisible — but she was talking to me. For whatever reason, she thought I was a cultivator.

  “What should I say?” I whispered to Cabbagy.

  “Lie,” Cabbagy whispered. “Lie your heart out and explain the truth later, or never. Trust me on this, kid.”

  Of course, I didn’t trust him, but it was apt advice. If they all thought I was a cultivator, I could use that to my advantage.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The redheaded woman was too out of it to pay attention to our whispered conversation. She held her children close as she stared out at the monkey footprints in the mud.

  I didn’t get too close to her, lest I startle her like I did Tan Lu.

  “Are you alright, miss?” I asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “But we’re not injured, at least not badly. You came here just in time.”

  She struggled to her feet, legs wobbling with exhaustion.

  “Thank you for saving us.”

  The woman bowed to me, and held her children so they could bow to me, and I bowed back to be polite, and then they all limped toward the broken front door of the house.

  “Kid…”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” Cabbagy said with a sigh. “You’re just going to leave this damsel in distress after shouting about being a warrior who fights evil? Don’t you know how every warrior’s story ends?”

  I frowned.

  “I only did all that for you.”

  The woman glanced back from the doorway, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Oh, of course, honored cultivator,” she hurriedly said.

  I glanced over my shoulder, but the coast was still clear. When I looked back, she had bowed again while her children went inside.

  “We are grateful, but we don’t have much to give. My husband is injured, otherwise he would…”

  “I don’t need anything,” I said.

  She sobbed and rushed into her house.

  “Damn, she has a husband,” Cabbagy said, but at least he whispered so only I could hear him.

  The monkeys were gone, and this family seemed as safe as they were going to be. I could still make out the trail the monkeys had left as they ran away. There was the faintest echo of the tug. It wouldn’t last for long.

  I took a few steps in that direction before the little redheaded boy and girl ran up and grabbed my sleeves.

  “Please, mister warrior!” the little boy shouted.

  “Our daddy is hurt,” the girl added, her voice barely squeaking past her tears. “Can you help?”

  I glanced toward the forest.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Take me to him.”

  The kids led me toward the house by my sleeves.

  I might not have wanted to get involved, but saying no to those adorable faces?

  I’d have to be a monster.

  ###

  The damage to the farm was both lesser and greater than I’d thought at first glance. None of the buildings were demolished — as could happen when a spirit beast tide rampaged through a settled area — but the amount of damage to the roof, the windows, and the sharp, bloody odour leaking from the barn’s shattered doors told me that this family would have a hard time recovering from the loss.

  Despite the alluring smell coming from the barn, I let the children guide me inside the house. Their panicked expressions were enough.

  Though most of my memories felt as distant as rain on the horizon, I remembered what it was like to have parents — and I knew what it was like to lose them.

  With those dark emotions bubbling beneath the surface, I stepped inside the farmhouse and beheld the greater damage.

  The house was more of a long cabin built of the same pine filling the valley. There were no inner walls, and curtains served as the dividers. All these were torn and strewn about, lying over broken furniture and soaking into puddles of blood.

  A man lay bleeding, caught up in the scattered fabric. His jian lay discarded several feet from his body. At first, I thought he was dead, but then his eyes opened and darted from me to his children.

  A pained look passed over his face, but whether he wanted us to leave or come closer, I couldn’t say.

  His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything as his children tugged me closer.

  “You should help him,” Cabbagy said.

  “Hmm?”

  “He’s a warrior.”

  I nodded in agreement. They both were. The man had obviously fended off the monkeys, and though he hadn’t killed any, he’d bought his family time to escape the house. Not enough time, but the woman hadn’t hesitated to defend her children with the pitchfork.

  His wife helped him sit upright, and I examined his wounds. Part of me thought he smelled delicious, but it was easy to ignore.

  “Are you a doctor?” he groaned as he held pressure on a wound to his stomach.

  I thought about that. I was already lying, after all. Funnily enough, I’d had pretty similar injuries only a few hours ago. Still, I doubted eating a monkey would help him.

  We didn’t even have any.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not a doctor.”

  What little fight he had in him seemed to sag, and deflated completely when his wife walked in from behind.

  “He Dong!” she said as she hurried forward, grasping his hand.

  “Luo Hong,” he said softly.

  The children were crying. The stench of blood was overwhelming. I looked around for something, anything, I could do.

  “Is there a town nearby?” I asked.

  The wife shook her head.

  “The spirit beasts killed our livestock. There’s no way we’d make it to the town in time.”

  “Oh, I can carry him.”

  “What?”

  “I’m strong,” I said, giving a little flex of my arms.

  “You’re not strong enough to carry a family, kid, get a cart.”

  “Sometimes you do have good ideas,” I said.

  “What?” Luo Hong said with a bewildered look.

  I shook my head to indicate I wasn’t talking to her, but she was too tired to notice. The family must have been fighting for hours.

  “Where’s your cart?” I asked.

  ###

  Blood and viscera were smeared and splattered over the shattered doors lying outside the barn, and the handprints and footprints of monkeys in the gore-streaked mud showed how they came and went.

  A low rumbling came from inside the tent, and though light slanted through the walls, there was too much shadow to see the source. With caution, and my willpower calling on my blood, I entered.

  Straw lay everywhere, and the air reeked of blood. Dawn peeked through the gaps, the yellow light made suggestions, but left enough shadows to hide the scene. Even as I entered, the barn grew brighter as the morning advanced. Judging from the splatter of blood, mud, and hooves, six or seven pigs had been torn apart and stuffed into the belly of a fat, snoring monkey.

  He was larger than any of the others I’d seen.

  At least seven feet tall if he were standing, with muscles like bags of grain stashed under his pale fur. He lay snoring with one arm draped across his eyes. The tip of his tail slowly curled and uncurled with each inhale and exhale of fetid breath. His lips peeled back and revealed fangs like daggers.

  The overstuffed spirit beast seemed inordinately comfortable sleeping in the back of the family’s cart.