Fatherly Asura

Do not equate their savagery to lacking intelligence, to tactless motions and primal desire.

Though the latter is known as truth.

Devouring. Swallowing. Pilfering. Consuming.

Their [Arts] signify such.

[Demon Scars] are not travelled by the likes of humans, immortals of beast. None might say what stands beyond.

Yet we know the strength of their arm.

Their jaw.

Their steel.

It does not wont.

And we know not the scope of their lands, or their hierarchy aside from [Gu].

Champions, and experts given rise by how vast a void one might hold.

But none would seek to, and no merit can be held in understanding beyond what truth is abundant.

Our Qi is slain for their nourishment, and this affront will be ever challenged.

“On Gu,” - A Primer of the Western Demon Front

The [Demon’s] blade entered his arm like a ragged saw, shearing through bone a flesh alike, trumping his [Resilience] to sink in the earth below. Pain went in hand with this, searing, violating and intolerable.

He felt the metallic edge score between muscles, and yank.

Though this was of Fu’s making, for his arm was a meagre tithe to pay when hedged against all he might lose upon death.

What dregs of [Might] he could summoned rolled him from his skewer, blood-wet and sopping, bringing him to his belly some few strides away. He grunted in protest, flailing his solitary, functioning arm to grasp at the dust-riddled earth.

But he heard the zhanmadao slice down for his final rites.

[Dao of Wayward Breezes].

The wind stole him in his limited concentration. No drift across a thousand li, but a stutter to deliver him only ten paces distant. Here, he gasped in ragged draws, scrambling to his feet.

“Hushi,” broke his voice. “Hushi,” he repeated, maddened. “Why can- why are you faint in my mind’s eye?”

His Bond was limp, and their connection more so. A faint remnant of the link that touched his soul at all times. Time would not allow him to inspect his douli, nor the octopus within, yet his heart cried out to do so.

The Gu has done this. What a fool I am!

His [Demonic] foe huffed his disapproval ahead. His blade lowered, the menace of his face further soured. Words passed from it in no tongue that Fu could parse. Nonsensical, if song-like in cadence.

“Coward.” No doubt. “Fool.”

Fu readed his hook- cursing when he spied it at his foe’s feet. The absence of his weapon, the banishment of his Qi, the pain, the futility of him. Should he unearth a [Dao]? Flee, and in doing so sully the civility between [Demon] and man? What would await him?

Jeering. Rage. A pursuit by this blade-wielding monster?

No. His options were not so limited.

With a settling breath, he tore his sleeve free. It exposed the teal of his bicep, the [Ink] inscribed beneath a patchwork of blood and horribly aligned flesh. The gutting where a fillet of his muscle hung loose like the yawning mouth of a carp. He took an end of fabric in his mouth, securing the sleeve around it.

“Gratitude,” he managed. “Gratitude, [Demon].”

The beast of sure intelligence inclined his head. Then its, his, perhaps, words flowed once more. Fu’s heart waivered to hear them, and the act that followed. For his foe did not launch forth with execution in mind, but interred the tip of his zhanmadao into the earth. Taking a stride beyond it.

The notions I held- of nightmare and terror.

He dismissed his thoughts, these musings that came so readily when fatigue so prominently ruled his mind. Unsure as his step was, he approached the [Demon]. One arm raised, and his [Intent] ready to spill.

“Apologies, honourable foe. But…” Fu’s energy wilted as he spoke, but he resumed after a breath. “But I cannot fall here.”

The [Demon] charged, and Fu met him. He swerved by the first fist, the second, and sixth. A set of motions from the [Stifling Stream Revolutions], his body ill-prepared for leaping, inversion and the acrobatics of his [Wind Phantom Strides].

But he could not complete his set. Not with [Bone Refinement] incomplete. The bare vestiges of his Qi still wound into spirals, and oppressed his bones with an assailing force despite their wonting strength.

So Fu put effort into the slight of motion. Half-steps without blocking or striking, edging closer into the [Demon’s] furious guard. He felt the rush of knuckles burst by, the displaced air at his back, stinging his wound, threatening to topple his weakened state.

Until he loosed his will with a close-range flood of [Intent].

The [Demon’s] blows slowed to meet it, and grunted as it conjured its own. Opposing forces of immaterial power.

A great and terrible wave clashed against Fu’s. An enormity of strength, yet one that spoke of precision and diligence. He felt the effort this beast had exuded. Its focus, its sense of the martial path. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ novel⟡fire.net

The… youth of it.

Some reminiscence of sect disciples. Shallow, and instructed. No tempered thing.

“I am glad,” Fu coughed. “That your life seemed free of difficulty.”

His [Intent] was unlike this, and gently enveloped the other. A pool of tranquil, resolute waters that suppressed his foe beneath it. The [Demon] cringed, drawing it into a half-stumble.

[Dao of Suffocation].

There came a rasping heave as his foe impacted the ground, hands at its fleshy throat. With no hook in his grip, Fu could but watch the torment of his [Dao] infused [Intent] squash the air from its lungs, feeling his mental energy drain by the second.

So he bolstered himself, and pained his way over to the nearby zhanmadao. Lifting it, to return it through its owner’s eye.

🀧

Hushi rose limply to his chest, in half, for he had little strength to leave the cradle of Fu’s folded lap. There was a lack of luster to his teal, and the fatigue of their Qi deprivation had taken a sheen from the octopus’ eye.

“We have extracted some benefits from this [Trial], Hushi, and we now know what it is we must face.” This reassurance would not have cheered him were he to hear it, but it was all his pain would allow him to think on.