Feast

Demon.

Somehow this death had become his fault. Blast.

On top the tree, the winds were harsher. The snow had started pouring down mercilessly.

He had to leave.

He remembered the yellow talisman and the rider. The calligraphy work was familiar. The image of Lady Su painting in old Bao's chambers flashed in his mind.

Was this some form of plot? A set up? Zero clenched his jaw. Whatever it was and whoever had done this did not matter in the slightest.

He was far from Qiqi, he had no idea what roads were safe or not. He was on the brink of losing control and somehow, he had now committed a crime.

A grave crime that would shake the imperial palace and the entire Empire of Chu. A ghoul. He had to hide. But where? He did not know where to go. His fists clenched.

He realized something. Whether or not the princess saw him today, he still would have been blamed for the prince's death. Because, if he had finally gotten to him and suddenly he died, he would still be held as culprit.

Was old Bao truly behind this?

He recalled the rider who rode to the west. Old Bao was south of here. It did not add up. Zero did not have the time to ponder these things. He felt extremely weary.

The camp was in disarray. The guards had turned all the tents upside down in search of a skinny demon lad with silver hair and eyes.

Jin city was a month away at normal pace, but with constant riding, in less than a week it was possible. The nobles that accompanied the now dead prince sent out the fastest riders to deliver message to the capital as soon as they could.

The son of the Third prince and a beloved grandson of the Emperor was dead.

Killed by an unnatural.

An imperial decree would be sent out. Actions would be taken. Zero had to run.

He jumped down from the tree but lost his footing as he landed. A branch snapped. The noise resounded and the young man paused for a moment, hoping no one had heard.

He was wrong. Coming from a distance behind him were two guards. The would not have noticed him due to the bad visibility in the snowfall but the branch snapping drew their attention. They looked his way.

"There!"

Zero did not have his hat on. It was still in the princess's tent. It was too late to go back there. He sprinted forward, ignoring the wooziness he felt.

He took long strides in the snow, trying not to look back. The men behind him were not ordinary folks. They were Qi practitioners who had been trained as martial artists as well. They were exceedingly quick. Zero had to think fast. He could not evade them for long.

He sped on, sharply turning to the left, in the direction of the rider he saw. That was the only route he could think of.

The path was wide enough for a horse to run through, but it was riddled with branches, fallen logs of wood and thick piles of snow.

The men were fast, but they were huge. Jumping over the logs and trudging through the knee high snow, seemed to slow them down.

"Enough! Stop where you are!" Came a voice. It was a young man in pristine white. He was crouched on a tree and had an arrow notched in Zero's direction.

His heart sped up. If he stopped, he would most certainly be imprisoned and killed. He could not afford to lose his life for a crime he did not commit. He ran faster, refusing to stop.

A whistle.

The arrow found its way into his leg. The same one that had been injured a month ago in the slavers camp. "Stop right there, demon!"

Zero did not stop. He did not look back. The leg burned, his lungs felt like he inhaled acid. The chilly wind nicked at his skin. If he looked up, he would notice how the clouds gathered more over where ran through.

It was the Heavenly Dao. The law that hated his existence.

Perhaps him being accused for the murder of a prince was not a coincidence? A game of the damned Dao?

He did not know. He certainly did not care.

The only way forward was to run.

The man that had shut the arrow aimed for the running ghoul but the snow was a menace. It howled fiercely as if in anger. His arrows were deflected by the wind and his vision impaired by the heavy snow flakes.

The other two guards tried not to lose him, pushing on in the bad weather.

Zero turned back to see how far off he had come. The guards appeared to be tiring. He looked up. It was not the Dao then. It was no one. Just the snow. He was extremely lucky. With this new development, he put in more effort into running than before, blistering the skin of his feet in his boots.

It was absurdly cold.

He did not know how long he ran for, time was hard to tell as the winter clouds hid the sun. But he did not stop, chosing to go off the main routes and into the thick woodlands instead.

He had stopped running, but he did not stop moving. He left the iron in his leg as it was, not willing to bleed out.

He trudged onward, crazed from the adrenaline. His breaths came out as loud pants that bordered on pained groans. The cold had numbed his entire body, his face was full of frost.

He was hungry.

Zero's hands shook as he realized what was near. No.

This time it was different. It felt different. His eyes were droopy and his body was giving out. The clouds were clearing. The moon was out in full and the goddess upon it was ready for the show.

"Let us see how this mortal surpasess this next challenge."

/Yin spirit, a horror of hell awaits you. On your first moon, you experienced the tortures of hunger. Now, your perception of good and evil will be tested./

The Voice, his sinister companion, was awakened again. Zero's knees buckled and he knelt in the piling snow, shivering.

No.

/The Heavenly Dao is against you, so the rules have been bent. A mile from here is a town. You are to go down there and deliver judgement on the people based on their deeds. Eat the souls of the sinners. However, your consciousness will decieve you./

/Beware. A revenge spirit resides in this town. It is hard to kill and will eat what is yours. You must feed to your fill to avoid disintegration/

Silence. Zero's mind was extremely fogged up.

His vision was blurred and his movements were shaky. He rose. He could not believe it. Why was the scroll so cruel? How could he possibly know who had sinned or not? What was he to do?

Why...

No. His eyes shut.

When he gained his coherence, he was on a lonely path. A wagon was far ahead of him. Attached to this wagon was something that seemed to pinch at him from so far.

A blessed lamp. Many villages had lamps for travelling long distances after the Great Nascent wars. A few villages in extremely polluted areas had bells that never stopped ringing.

Qiqi was in a fairly good area so the need for lamps and bells were not as much.

He could hear the faint sound of a bell.

This area was corrupted. Heavily so. He blinked slowly, consciousness slowly fading. Blank.

At the time he awoke, he saw himself on top of the wagon. There was blood on his hands. ' No, no no. What did I do? '

Zero was shaking profusely. This was a mess. This was a horrible mess. He did not want to kill again. He did not want to.

The donkey still pulled the wagon but the driver was missing. A trail of blood and flesh led back to the dense forest behind him. A severely dried up corpse that was rotted so black that it looked like it had been dead for months, lay there.

Zero shook his head. The face of the first person he had killed, the three armed woman, flashed in his mind. He remembered liking what he had done. He remembered wanting to do it again.

But not to innocents. Not like this.

No. This was wrong...he fell into slumber again.

The third time Zero opened his eyes, he was off the wagon, stumbling in an oversized coat, with dirty silver hair and dead eyes, heading towards the small town.

"Feifei" he read the town's name off the plaque. This time, he was determined to stay awake. He would not hurt anyone. He was not going to.

The extreme tiredness came once again but Zero reached down to the arrow still lodged in his leg and pulled it out with force. The pain jolted him awake but it was not nearly enough. It felt like a slap. It stung, but it didn't hurt for long.

The first thing he saw as he went into the town was the liveliness. These people were also in the period of feasting as River's End City was. They were celebrating the winter solstice.

/Quest 2: Identify the unworthy souls. Judge and eat/

His eyes closed and it all went black.