A Tale of Forgotten Gods

Chapter Six: The Silent Hunt

His eyes glowed; the whole world was connected with silver threads. Some threads wrapped his hands and legs, pulling him away from the hit.

The strike hit on the street of glass, bursting the ground open. The glass fragments came out of it, scattering everywhere. Mo Fei stumbled backward, the threads slamming him into a wall of trees; the impact shook his teeth. ”The hell was that?” His eyes closed shut.

Inside the hole was an empty black liquid that flowed alongside him.

Suddenly a fragment of glass struck his right eye. A sharp pain shot through it. The world seemed to stop and shrink down to the pain. He wanted to scream, but he could not. All that came out was a choked gasp.

Mo Fei’s hand went up to his face. His fingers found something rough in his eye; his finger desperately tried to pull it out.

His gaze swept over the conductor. Tears streamed down from his good eye from the shock.

Then, the Conductor lunged forward while steadying himself. Its hand reached for his throat, but he already saw the movement of the silver threads.

His body was pulled before he could even think. He scrambled away, half blind, one hand over his eye, suppressing the pain. His other hand was trying to grab onto something—anything—to stop being pulled.

Finally, he ran toward the tree; it was the only thing that might help him.

Mo Fei winced with every step.

He glanced back, but there was nothing. The Conductor was gone. He had vanished into the disturbing noise of its own broken world.

He let out a breath that tasted like blood. He stumbled through the archway, a hollow space in the large stone structure.

Mo Fei leaned against the wall; his breathing was loud and uneven. His lungs burned from Ji Tang’s attack. The feeling hadn’t faded yet.

”If you die but do not really die, you just suffer forever?” He looked around the room. The walls were mirrors; they showed him a reflection.

It was not a pleasant sight; it just showed an ugly version of Mo Fei. His sleeve was all torn from what happened in World 2, and it was flapping around like a flag of surrender.

The fragment in his eye pulsed. He bit down hard on his teeth and looked outside again.

The Ji Tang.

”There it is. Same as before, completely still.”

But something about it was different now. The empty stare that used to be fixed on something far away was now directly focused on the entrance of his hiding place.

The stone finger that used to point at somewhere was slightly tilted downward towards the ground at its feet, where he saw a new crack in the glass.

Mo Fei’s expression changed from fear to a cold acceptance. Instead of a chase, it was inevitability. Something that had to happen.

Killing himself again was no longer safe. What bothered him wasn’t ’What if I die?’ But ’What if had not but wished I had?’

Mo Fei stripped off a piece of cloth from his other sleeve. The rough cloth hurt the skin around his eye as he tied it around.

He winced when it made his eye throb. His gaze swept over the room and saw a stick made of old wood leaning against the wall. Hurriedly, he picked it up.

”At least better than nothing.” He thought, looking for the tree. Then he saw it... A river. It was not there before. It flowed through the glass. Instead of water, there was a blood-like substance, and its source–

The tree.

That thing was not really a tree; it was a scream that had grown roots. The bark was slippery, as if sweating all the time. The leaves were not like leaves at all. They were like tight, crying tubes of flesh...

The fruit of that plant was no less than disgusting: numerous small, ugly faces all clustered together, frozen in a look of terror. Roots were partially underground. The substance flowed out of these roots like sticky blood. A nightmarish garden, perhaps a living organism.

Mo Fei felt sick to his stomach and pressed his hand against his abdomen.

Then he came out of the shelter. The Ji Tang did not look at him but made a tiny movement in its hand. Its fingers got tighter, like squeezing a gun’s trigger.

”Again?!”

Mo Fei put every bit of strength into his legs and sprinted toward the bleeding tree. The wind held the bitter scent of Crimson River. The silver threads passed through him as if they were illusions.

When he closed the distance, the air got thick all of a sudden. Something pushed his back. ”God damn it!”

The Ji Tang was upon him.

The wood came up in weak defense, letting out a groan as it blocked the attack, and then it broke.

And as expected, it broke into pieces, but what else did he expect? It changed the direction of the force and pushed him backward.

Mo Fei’s foot tripped over something as he stumbled back, and on the ground was a hand, rotting. The fingers were curled up, pretending to grab.

His hand hit the cold tree trunk. A thorn stung his palm. ”Ouch!... You told me where to go, but what now?”

A red beetle moved, going behind it. He peeked behind the tree, and there was a large heart made of roots and stuck in a cage of thorns. Each time it pounded, more of the substance got pushed into the river.

Behind him, the Ji Tang disappeared somewhere. The Conductor was nowhere to be seen either.

”This thing is letting this happen?” Mo Fei closed his hand around the broken stick.

”Should I destroy it?” He lifted his hand and then stopped. His body was frozen in thought when someone grabbed his shoulder. Behind him came a humming, covered in a slow and sad melody.

The Conductor.

His muscles got all tight. The pain in his right eye increased further.

In that moment, everything stopped, and his instincts just took over. Without thinking twice, he pushed himself forward with all his might, pulling his shoulder out of the Conductor’s grip.

He used all his strength to push the sharp tip of wood into the heart, piercing it.

The heart let out a loud, chilling scream. The sound was beyond the range of human hearing, so loud that it could tear a person apart.

His skin began to peel away. It had a hold on him bit by bit from the places where he was hurt the most.

The Conductor watched, and its figure began to dissolve like a sandcastle when a wave came. His lips curled up in a long grin, the same as before... waiting for the next ”thief.”

Mo Fei’s ribbon, 叁 (3), went dull gray. The character 肆 (4) started glowing slowly. And then his body ripped apart; he couldn’t even feel any pain, and then he ”died” once again.

Meanwhile.

In the Town of Collected Bones of World 2, a man who seemed to be twenty-six years old was standing in the street. He wore a long cloak alongside a white and red Hefu. The wind itself sighed softly. The man’s eyes were dark brown and serious but held a softness deep within them.

His gaze landed on a piece of cloth caught on a sharp root. It was a sleeve. He picked it up carefully with his fingers. ”This year another seven people fell into the Creator’s trap,” the veteran man said quietly. His voice was low. The surrounding quietness made it difficult to hear.

A sad twinkle flashed across his face. As he walked, his dark hair moved slightly in the wind. He seemed like a shadow among all the still things.

The man went into the house of madness. The circle of skin and bone was still hanging on the door, slowly dripping blood.

”Two,” he said, then walked quietly on the stones and went to the alley where Mo Fei had run away. That was where he found the mark. A body without a head, lying in a pool of blood.

This was not something the Collector would do; it was a messy and violent thing. Only a Yan Gu would do this. The Collector liked things neat, while the Yan Gu just liked to hurt people.

”Three.” A deep sadness filled his brown eyes. He was not sad for the people who had died because their suffering was over. He was sad for the way things were. The worlds were a never-ending cycle. Seven people were chosen again; one was killed, one was used to make something disgusting, and one was cut up to be used as food.

”So, four have made it through,” he whispered to himself. ”They need to push through fear and pain.” He thought about the sleeve. ”Impressive that he escaped a Yan Gu.” His hand went to his side. He slowly took out his blade, made of darkened bone.

The edges were sharp in a way that seemed impossible. The surface of the blade had some shiny symbols that looked the same as on the bones of the Yan Gu. That was a weapon made from the prison where the Yan Gu were kept. The blade was one of its parts, and now it was being used as a weapon.

”Lin and the others are waiting for me.” With a brief glance at the beheaded body, he said, ”Rest well, my friends; you are free from suffering.”

He came here to help people, not to stand around and watch. He was already running behind schedule, and one of these four ascended... One survived through will.

”Which world will break you first?” He asked the silence, watching the town through the window. ”Or will you be the one to break a world?” A final glance around him, and he whispered, ”Survive until we meet.” The ribbon in his hand glowed faintly. He raised the blade to his throat and slashed it.