Blossoms of Love

Chapter 14: The Beast in the Lake

The prince rushed into the shack before Master Yin had a chance to stop him, kneeling by his brother's side as he checked for a pulse.

There was no one else around. The only sign that anyone else had even been there were the fresh bandages that had been wrapped around various parts of Song Guang's body.

Out of curiosity, Yin Jianguo examined the room. Only when he noticed a pot of warm tea perched on a small table in the corner of the room, was he certain that someone else had been there no longer than an hour before they arrived.

"What are you doing in my shack?"

Song Mengyao did not flinch at the sound of the unfamiliar voice and rather continued to focus all of his attention on his brother's wounds. He was alive, although his pulse was faint. Master Yin, however, turned with a slight jump before greeting the elderly man who was standing in the doorway with a freshly killed rabbit in his hand.

"Are you Old Man Yaozu?"

The old man scrunched up his face and walked into the shack, closing the door somewhat aggressively behind him. "Who's asking?"

Master Yin felt a smile pulling at the corner of his lips as he shook his head, reminding himself that he should be respectful to his elders. "I am Yin Jianguo and this is Song Mengyao, that man you have here is his elder brother."

Old Man Yaozu examined the young prince, eyes squinting slightly before he hummed in approval. He seemed to have noticed the attention the boy had been paying to the wounded man and had no reason to doubt that they knew one another.

"Sit." He pointed to an old cushion on the floor and carried his rabbit over to the table, almost immediately slicing into it after putting it down.

As the old man hacked away at what would soon become his dinner, Song Mengyao finally allowed himself to ask the questions that were sitting on the tip of his tongue. "What happened? Who did this to my brother?"

With bloodied hands, the elder snapped his head toward the boy. "Not who, but what."

"What?" The young master echoed. He had sat down as he was asked to, setting his sword down on the floor beside him as he crossed his legs. He tilted his head slightly with one eyebrow raised, although a part of him already knew the answer he was going to receive.

Old Man Yaozu hummed and continued to slice the skin from the dead rabbit. "It was a demon that did this to him, a serpent lurking in the depths of the lake."

"The Xiangliu?"

Again, his head snapped back, this time toward the young master. "So, you know of it. The creature has been in a slumber for centuries, but something has awoken it."

Song Mengyao, for the first time, glanced back curiously. "My sister, when she wrote to me, she mentioned something about the shift in the air. How the demons had grown more aggressive as of late, attacking more frequently."

The moment he had said what he needed to; he returned his attention to his brother, who had been severely wounded by the creature. A third of his torso was wrapped in bandages, blood still seeping through. His left arm was bandaged all the way from his shoulder down to his fingers and one of his legs was raised ever so slightly by a pillow, clearly broken in several places.

"Now that you mention it, there was something strange about the forest of the sun wraiths when we fought the Huodou. There was a lingering of this force I had never felt before. Something dark. Something powerful. It feels the same here. It's as if something unnatural is swaying the events of our world," Master Yin added to what had now become a discussion.