Ch. 6: Trap

The short arrow of the crossbow was buried deep in the trunk. Meifeng tugged hard, but her weak arms could not manage to do the task, which disappointed her. Her agility and speed seemed to be inherent abilities within her, but in terms of strength she was as weak as any ordinary woman.

"Master now is not the time for playing with an arrow. We must leave!" System begged to deaf ears.

"Number three," Meifeng counted to herself.

Meifeng had already moved, scurrying under a bush and letting out another devilish laugh. Watching the man spin around in circles as he tried to locate her was rather amusing. This feeling of playing with people within the palm of her hand, it felt familiar to Meifeng as if she had done it many times before.

She climbed up a tree branch and called. Before executing an elegant swing into a snowdrift that once again sent arrows firing off into nothing. Meifeng had counted how many the arrows the man had; 6 loaded into the weapon and replacements too far away for him to retrieve.

By now, there was only one left.

Meifeng suddenly stood from the snowdrift, chunks of snow sticking to her hair and eyelashes. A slight disappointment churned within, the kind that comes when a game is won too easily for one's liking.

"I had thought you could see me," Meifeng said softly to the man, who was wildly swinging his crossbow in the complete opposite direction of where she stood.

The man and System were confused by her words. But unlike the man, System was now accustomed to its strange Master.

"You could see much better than Xiao Peng. I thought you knew." Each word was slow and measured, reminding the listener of a spring breeze passing through a meadow.

Despite the brutal evening chill of the woods, the man felt a brush of warmth when hearing the beautiful stranger's voice, before reason returned and he swung his crossbow at her chest.

"Die!" he yelled with gritted teeth, channeling all his strength into squeezing the trigger. But right before he shot, he made eye contact with Meifeng.

The night was dark, so dark that he could barely see his hands in front of him. But he could see the girl's eyes, the round, seductive things gleaming under the moonless night. They looked friendly and affectionate, unlike the eyes of someone who had just murdered his best friend.

The air between them hung still, carved in half by an arrow. The girl was still smiling as the arrow barely nicked her neck, sending a swath of long hair flying as she stood unharmed. The man's hand shook and his breathing became more labored. He was a good shot, good enough to win the local hunting competition year after year. Yet now, with an unmoving target less than a stone's throw away, he had somehow missed.

He pulled the trigger again, then once more. The sound of clicking was hollow though, and he realized to his horror that he was out of arrows. The girl did not seem surprised by his revelation, already slowly approaching him as a line of red dripped down her collarbone. It was a sight he had seen many times already this winter, the sight of blood against lush, white snow. But suddenly he didn't know why he felt like the prey that lay bleeding out rather than the hunter.

"So, you are curious!" Meifeng simply said. The man stood frozen with his crossbow extended, the weapon still aimed at the girl's neck. The neck he had missed.

His cloak was gone, stolen by this wicked woman, but he did not feel the frigid winds as the girl walked by him, gracing him with a knowing side smile. His heart beat faster, but it was not from admiration.

Behind him, the soft crunch of footsteps atop snow grew more and more distant as the girl returned to the campsite behind them. The man gritted his teeth, abject hatred filling his bones. He didn't know why he thought of his mother at this time, but something within him told him he had to get rid of this female scourge. Dozens of his mother's favorite tales she had regaled him with flowed through his head as the man slowly turned around with a determined expression.

"You..." he started in a low voice, leveling a deadly gaze on the strolling figure ahead of him.

"Master, this man seems very determined this time!" System squeaked nervously, watching the man break into a sprint, kicking up large chunks of snow.

"You must die!" He viciously bellowed, the icy breath from his mouth surrounding his face like a halo. His crossbow was out of arrows, but considering the hefty weight in his hand, he knew it would still make for a good weapon.

His large steps quickly overtook Meifeng's smaller ones and he swung the crossbow over his shoulder with great strength. Such a blow, if it managed to connect, would wreak damage upon the victim. There was an apprehensive moment when even System held its breath, the man's previously calm long gone like a dream. He was so close to the girl that if he reached out with a hand, he would be able to brush the drying blood on her neck. But he never had the chance.

Just as suddenly as he was about to strike, he was gone. System gaped at the blank scenery, before a low groan tugged its senses towards the ground, where a gaping hole was.

The sight was gruesome. As much of a dunce as Xiao Peng had proven himself to be, the simpleton was skilled in making traps. And now, in a sense of poetic justice, Xiao Peng's good friend found himself within one, speared on the sharpened planks of wood that he himself and carved by hand.

"H-Help..." he sputtered weakly, blood flaking from his dry lips.

He did not know how he had managed to miss the pit, such an obvious hole that he would have noticed otherwise in the dark. The vibrant pain would have driven him to his knees if he wasn't impaled on various stakes, a few buried in critical locations. Something cold kissed his cheek, a fleck of snow. From the hole in the earth, he could now only see the sky, which was indiscriminately covering him in snow. The sensation on his exposed skin felt like tears, tears he wanted to shed but couldn't. For he could feel it, his breaths slowly decreasing and his eyelids feeling heavier.

Death.

A head of black hair peeped over the edge of the hole, encroaching his previous view of the sky. His eyes twitched and he struggled to speak, gagging on the blood filling his throat. More snow began to fall and he felt a caress, his shocked brain somehow likening the touch to that of his mother. Suddenly the man's eyes widened, his breath sputtering as he realized he knew. He knew what she was. And more than anything, he hated that he had not taken Xiao Peng and run away, for being lost in the woods would have been much better than ever running into a thing, no a monster, like her.

"So you know?" the girl asked, playfully propping her face on her hands as she watched a man die.

"Hu... Huli..." the man said weakly. His tan, rugged face was almost as pale as the snow now, the dirt beneath the stakes black from absorbing his life essence.

He could not believe that such a scourge was now within the world, the flat stare fixating on him as the rest of her face remained animated causing his heart to skip a beat. How he wished he could run to his village while banging a drum, warning everyone that a beast dressed as a beautiful woman had come to wreak havoc upon their lives. But just taking in another breath to avoid his inevitable passing was a struggle.

Meifeng smiled widely, every tooth frighteningly on display. "Say it. Say it!" she said, a fevered light in her eyes.

There was a dark, lingering hatred in his eyes and he seemed to gather up his strength for one, last final word. Despite being confused by the events, System too found itself leaning in to hear this man's last words, its heart full of pity for the fool who had provoked its Master.

"Huliji-" the man spat hatefully before a light went out in his eyes and his head flopped back. He was gone before he could even finish.

Meifeng frowned deeply, the greatest expression of displeasure she had shown since she woke up. She looked at the corpse for a long time, not moving as snow began to slowly pile into the hole and body. By morning, it would be as if no one had been there at all.

System did not understand what had happened, although it found the man's reaction quite unusual as if he somehow knew something about its Master that System did not. But eventually, System concluded that that couldn't be possible. After all, what would a wild peasant from a rural village know about its Master that it didn't know from her file?

Most interestingly was when the girl proved to be an old hand at taking down the camp. After tugging Xiao Peng's body into a hefty snowdrift, she moved around putting out the fire and disconnecting the horse from the ox cart.

"Too boring," Meifeng complained softly, looking at the dismantled camp behind her with a sigh. Without another word, dressed in the large muslin top Xiao Peng had worn as an undershirt, Meifeng journeyed towards the lights of civilization below just as the sun began to creep over the horizon.