The Immortal’s Poison

The further they moved away from Namtso Lake, the closer they got to the evil cult followers. Although there was supposedly no more than a hundred and fifty kilometres between them and the enemy group, Xiao Sha’s pace in tracking was slowing down. They could not seem to catch up with the evil cult followers. Every day, they camped and rested whenever Xiao Sha had completely exhausted himself. They continued on their journey at the first light of day. This cycle went on for four days until the lift Tanggula Mountains come into view and blocked out the sky.

Xiao Sha finally called for a halt. He scrutinized the ground and started turning on the spot. He walked a few steps to the left then jumped onto the right as if his body was spasming and he had lost all control over it.

The giant pangolin glared at Xiao Sha and chided, “What are you doing?”

Xiao Sha’s face was filled with shock. He ignored Po Tu, running around back and forth the area. He kept busy for almost half a day before he stopped. He lifted his head to his companions as he stammered, “They… they parted ways. The eight groups had split up here, going in eight different directions.”

After taking a lap around the sacred Lake Natmso, the evil cult followers had gone off north-east until they reached the Tanggula Mountains. Upon reaching the mountains’ base, they scattered in eight different directions, like a glass bottle that had been blasted to pieces.

Xiao Sha did not wait for his leader to question before explaining himself, “I had branded the leader of each group with marks, each distinct from the other. From what I can see, each leader led their own troops in a different direction from the rest.” He stretched out his hand and pointed to the different directions as he sounded off, “The Khmer people went Southwest, the Persian people went Northwest, the Surinamese people-”

“What about the small town’s guardians?” head lama Rangjung interrupted, his brows furrowed in concern. Technically, the group that had gone froth ahead of them could be divided into nine groups. Eight of those groups consisted of the evil cult worshippers from the different regions and the last group was made up of the original inhabitants of Tuer Town, the formerly loyal and brave guardians that had been left behind by the highland cultivator.

Xiao Sha shook his head. “The Tibetan people were too odd. I did not dare to mark them for fear they would notice me. I can’t track them.” He looked towards his leader. “What do we do now?”

Gu Xiaojun responded without hesitation, “Find the Persians, follow them.” Back during the elimination race, apart from the China team, the ones with the most eye-catching performance and outstanding abilities were the Persians and the Indians but the Indians had been annihilated. Old Gu was confident in his decision to locate the Persians.

Xiao Sha turned westward and led the group in a chase.

After some distance, pangolin Po Tu swiftly plunged into the ground. He followed behind the group via under the earth. The head lama too kept his distance from the group, keeping himself out of sight. They did not want to be seen together with Wen Leyang and the others as they had not originally travelled with the group. Xiao Sha was not a slow runner and travelled fairly quickly but Wen Leyang grew anxious still. They ran for about fifteen kilometres before Xiao Sha stopped again.

Loft mountains rose in front of their eyes but around them, not a single soul was to be found. Po Tu poked his sharp head out of the ground, it’s face etched with impatience. “Kid, why did you stop?”

Fei Fei grew defensive of her brother, turning and scolding the pangolin angrily, “He needs to rest! No one can stand running endlessly for that long!”

Despite being physically fit Xiao Sha had, after all, ran the last fifteen kilometres. His face had turned pale. He panted heavily and shook his head. “I stopped because… the enemy’s tracks have stopped. It ends here.”

The head lama caught up to them and rejoined the group. Po Tu emerged from the ground in a muffled boom. “It ends here? What do you mean? Did they grow wings and fly away or something?”

Xiao Sha tried hard to calm himself. He squinted his already small eyes into one thin line. “If they knew how to fly, they would have done so a long time ago. They would not have waited until now to do so.” As he said this, he took out a shovel from the travel bag that Wen Leyang had been carrying and started to dig. Old Gu and Fei Fei looked at each other and followed in Xiao Sha’s footsteps. Wen Leyang hastily took the shovel from Fei Fei and dug according to Xiao Sha’s commands.

Po Tu was a typical, worthless wretch. When someone asked it to do something, he would turn down the request and display a face of unwillingness. When nobody asked for his help, it would sulk in the corner wearing a look of boredom. Po Tu folded its arms and watched the group for a bit, then criticised them. “Step aside, all of you. I am the ancestor of digging, I can do this much faster than any of you.” Without giving them a chance to protest, the pangolin pushed them aside and dug into the ground. Po Tu’s thick, strong arms made quick work of the earth while simultaneously using its back claws and tail to push the dirt out of the hole.

Po Tu may have used magic to tunnel into the earth but digging was also a natural instinct it possessed. When it moved, the difference between it and other creatures was obvious. The giant pangolin worked at the speed of light within the twelve-meter square drawn out by Xiao Sha. To anybody watching, the patch of ground before them sunk steadily into the earth, like tofu being scraped away by a knife. In no time at all, Po Tu had dug a pit about ten metres deep. It called to the people above, “They’re coming out!”

With a whoosh, a bare-chested Persian man with a golden band around his left arm suddenly leapt out of the pit. His eyes were filled with deep grief and betrayal. He stared at the group with a fierce look.

Fei Fei had poked her head into the pit to take a look when the gruesome, burly man shot up to meet her. She cried out and fell back in alarm. The sounds of gunshots rang out. Old Gu and Xiao Sha reacted quickly to the man. They had immediately pulled out their guns and started to shoot.

Wen Leyang smiled bitterly as he shouted into the pit, “That was a bad joke!”

The man who had been shot did not cry out in pain. He did a somersault upon being hit and fell to the ground like a dead fish. Old Gu only saw it then, the man was already dead.

Po Tu laughed loudly from inside the pit. It was a mischievous demon. When it had dug up the corpse, it had tossed the body up.

At the bottom of the pit, a dozen or so corpses laid one on top of the other. They were all followers of the Persian evil cult, a golden band around their arms. They’re gallant leader, Wahid, was among them. On every Persian’s face was a look of surprise and anger. There was a deep gash on each of their backs.

Despite having mentally prepared themselves while they dug the hole, upon seeing the corpses, Wen Leyang’s group still gasped in surprise. Po Tu and Wen Leyang worked together to transport the corpses onto the surface, laying them neatly side by side. With Gu Xiaojun’s help, Xiao Sha checked on the bodies while simultaneously calling out his findings. “Livor mortis has set in, you can see this from where the blood pools. Their corneas are cloudy but their pupils can still be clearly seen. Rigor mortis is starting to leave the body… the upper part of the body is starting to relax. These people have been dead for about a day to a day and a half now.”

Xiao Sha proceed to examine the wound upon concluding the time of death. Xiao Sha discovered a gruesome detail, all of the corpses were missing their hearts. Judging by their positions and the spray of blood on their wounds, these Persian evil cult followers had been bound and had their hearts carved out while they were still breathing,

“The technique they used to carve out the hearts is different from what I know. They swept in from behind…” Xiao Sha’s already small eyes became even more impossibly smaller as he squinted with a frown.

Other than the bodies below the earth, there were no other clues in their immediate surroundings. No footprints… No signs of any battle…

Old Gu nodded. He wasted no time in giving his next order. “Let’s follow another direction and find the other groups.”

After another six hours, Xiao Sha found the spot where the Khmer people had disappeared. The giant pangolin bore into the earth under the watchful eyes of the group. Like the Persians, the dozen or so skinny but bold Khmer people had been killed and buried. However, it wasn’t their hearts which were missing. Their deaths were far more gruesome. The corpses were akin to empty canvas sacks, all their bones have been removed. Even their skulls had been removed by some strange and unknown technique. The only wound on them was positioned along with where their spine should have been.

Wen Leyang started to grind his teeth.

Xiao Sha did not stop there. He led the group on to the other groups.

At the third location, they found the Indians buried there. Their brown-red skin had taken on a frightful pale colour. Their bodies were shrivelled and stiff. Their skulls were severed from their spines, bearing fatal knife wounds. Their corpses had been drained of all their blood but around the pit, there was not a single drop could be found. The town’s residents had taken with them every single drop.

In the fourth pit were the Surinamese people. Cause of death was similar to the Persians but it was their liver which was missing, not their heart.

…

Digging up the bodies and checking them did not take a lot of time. The problem lies in the fact that these eight groups had all went in different directions. Xiao Sha’s tracking skill could only lead them to the next group after they have backtracked to where the groups had first scattered.

Even great elites of the magical world like Wen Leyang and Rangjung felt exhausted after running around all day and night, let alone ordinary people like Xiao Sha and Fei Fei. The speed of their investigation had dropped considerably, from finding the corpse pits to checking over the bodies. It was noon of the third day before they had managed to find the seventh group of followers. All of the groups had died violently and been buried in pits.

Po Tu cursed in anger, “Did these town residents have to divide them up and kill them separately? Why couldn’t they have just killed them all in one go?”

All of the dead belonged to one evil cult or another, none of the bodies was Tibetan. Po Tu, who did not like to use its brain, could have easily guessed who the perpetrators of the murders were.

The location each corpse pit varied greatly from where the groups had broken off from each other. Some were near while some were much farther away. Fei Fei bit her lip in frustration and said, “It’s some sort of pattern, we just can’t see it yet.”

Fei Fei opened the notebook which she had brought with her. She drew out a map indicating the location of the corpse pits and showed it to the others. She chuckled, “If we could superimpose a map of the world onto this drawing, you would be able to see it clearly. Where the groups had split up, that is the centre and judging from the direction and the distance of each pit in correlation to the next, each group had been buried according to where they originate from. The centre acted as the Tibetan plateau. They are some errors but they are negligible. These guardians sure are well versed in world geography.”

Fei Fei drew out a rough sketch of a world map next to her drawing of the corpse pit locations. She sketched the continents and oceans. As Wen Leyang looked, it was just as Fei Fei had predicted. If they had condensed the world map into a hundred-kilometre map, the spot where the evil cult followers had parted ways was the base of the Tanggula Mountains and the location of every pit was the coordinates for the country of origin for each group.

The corpse pit of the Persian evil cult followers lined up with the coordinates of Ancient Persia; the corpse pit of the Khmer corresponded to the location of Cambodia; the burial place of the Indians followed the location of the North American grasslands…

Fei Fei was an intelligent girl. She had already realized the oddity of the situation after they had found the third corpse pit. After the Indians, she had instructed Xiao Sha to search for their targets according to which was the nearest to where they were. They had now dug up seven pits so far. The only one left was the pit which should contain their African brothers, which was furthermost from them.

The giant pangolin took a look at Fei Fei’s notebook. Its face filled with puzzlement. “I had heard that the Earth is round but what you drew… it looks more like a butt and is flat?”

Fei Fei ignored the divine beast. She flipped over a few pages and read out the forensics data that she had been collecting. Seven out of eight groups of evil cult followers had been located so far.

The hearts of the Persians had been carved out,

The Surinamese people had their liver removed.

The Canaanites were missing their spleens.

The Australian aboriginals had their lungs taken out.

The Khmers had all their bones removes, even their teeth.

The Indians were drained of all their blood.

The Gothic evil cult followers from Europe had suffered the most tragic death of all. Their corpses were nothing more than a mess of flesh, hair, blood, and bones. No one could tell apart the bodies, they were buried in one blood-red pile in the pit. Even if one had summoned help from every medical expert and make-up masters of funeral parlours from all over the world, there’d be little hope in restoring these bodies to their original looks.

The seven groups all had suffered different deaths. Their time of death, other than the Goths’ whose were unintelligible, were all roughly the same.

Upon Fei Fei finishing her report on the death of the evil cult followers, everyone stood around looking at each other. Other than Gu Xiaojun, who was an experienced and knowledgeable old fox, nobody could wrap their head around the matter. When suddenly faced with such a complicated case that had such bizarre causes of deaths, none of them could come up with any solid conclusion.

After a while, Wen Leyang said slowly, “Excluding the Goths who had been crushed into a mash of flesh, the other six groups, they each had their heart, liver, spleen, lungs, bones, and blood taken away respectively. Although I do not understand the use of each material, it must be part of a plan to cast some Devilry Art. This ritual must be related to the nine-headed snake.”

Rangjung was familiar with the powers of the Tibetan Buddhist magic. He knew a fair amount about the magic arts of the few sects on the central plains but he could not place where this kind of magic was from. After thinking hard for a while, he gave up and sighed, “I don’t get it. I don’t know! I can be certain of one thing though. The African followers will be missing their kidneys.”

The others nodded in agreement. They had already noticed, from the groups that they have uncovered, four of the five internal organs had been removed. The final piece, the kidney, must be harvested from the evil cult followers. By the look of things, the African brother would not be able to hold onto their kidneys for much longer.

The members of the group pondered with the thoughts in their own head. Gu Xiaojun took a deep breath and reminded his companions in a loud voice, “We can discuss this further once we have found the bodies of the Africans.”

Gu Xiaojun may have been an ordinary human but he was the one with the greatest experience in solving mysteries, even more than all the rest combined. In his experience, the final clue always shed the most light on the situation. If one started to come up with any theories too early, they would hit a wall very soon and that would be of no help in finding out the truth. That was what he reminded the others of.

Xiao Sha’s complexion was pale. He had been hard at work for the past few days, tracing eight different sets of footprints. The corpse pit nearest to the breakaway point was fifteen kilometres away. Xiao Sha was exhausted but he still managed to keep his spirits up as he continued to observe the tracks on the ground. The others did not waste any energy in commenting, just silently followed behind Xiao Sha.

Fei Fei was heartbroken, seeing the exhaustion on her little brother’s face. She fell to Wen Leyang’s side and asked softly, “Does your family have any formulas or medicines which could restore a person’s stamina?”

Wen Leyang frowned and shook his head. “We do but it is too strong for anyone not trained in Venomancy. It would be like quenching your thirst with salt water, it would do more harm than good. If I gave this concoction to Xiao Sha, it would damage his heart and kidneys.”

Xiao Sha was shocked upon hearing this. He quickly shook his head – he would not do anything that might jeopardize his kidney functions.

As the sky started to darken, Xiao Sha stopped and sat on the ground. He pointed to a spot roughly three meters in front of him and looked towards the giant pangolin with tired eyes. “Dig.” Xiao Sha laid down and started to snore almost immediately.

Fei Fei whipped out a sleeping bed and asked for Wen Leyang’s help to tuck her brother in. The giant pangolin knew that this was the final pit. The fog in the surrounding area was the thickest and most confusing here. Po Tu started to claw away at the soil.

The dark-skinned corpses were found just a few dozen metres below the surface, laid on top of one another. Po Tu tossed the bodies upwards while Wen Leyang caught them and laid them beside the pit. Old Gu donned a pair of white gloves and took over Xiao Sha’s role in examining the bodies.

Wen Leyang was well-versed in his family’s teachings. He also had gained some experience after studying the Jianghu. Wen Leyang may not have possessed the deductive knowledge of death like Old Gu and Xiao Sha but he could at least point out the cause of death just by glancing at the corpses. When Wen Leyang had caught the first corpse, he frowned. The corpse’s dark skin carried a slightly purplish tone, indicating the cause of death to be strangulation. The bodies did not have any wounds on their backs, as the group had guessed.

Wen Leyang felt something amiss when he looked at the black man. He could not tell what it was though that bothered him. Po Tu was tossing up the bodies at a steady pace, leaving Wen Leyang very little time to ponder over the matter. Wen Leyang merely caught body after body and laid them down at Old Gu’s feet.

The bodies were slowly being cleared from the pit. The African cult followers all had clean, smooth bodies, with no fatal wounds on them. Their skins were purplish and their eyes had a white cast over them, it was obvious they had suffocated to death. Wen Leyang finally realized what was wrong with the bodies.

It was at this moment that the body of the African cult leader, Batis Tutatunte, was tossed up.

The strings on Wen Leyang’s heart tightened. He reached out to catch the body when suddenly, Tutatunte’s eyes flew open. Tutatunte’s eyes were bloodshot and filled with malice. The previously still, bamboo-thin body sprang to life, attempting to wrap both its hands around Wen Leyang’s throat!

In the haste of the moment, Wen Leyang could not tell whether Tutatunte was not dead or was the body a zombie of some sort. All he knew was that he could not risk hurting Tutatunte. The African’s strike was swift and sudden but it was still slow in Wen Leyang’s eyes.

Wen Leyang merely took a small step back from the pit, avoiding Tutatunte’s attack. Recognition flashed through the man’s eyes. The African relaxed his fighting stance as he asked in a hoarse and surprised voice, “Yang?” Whack! Tutatunte was hit by the next corpse that Po Tu had thrown up.

Po Tu emerged laughing. It winked at Wen Leyang. “Did that give you a fright, kid?”

The divine beast was the ancestor of playing dead, Tutatunte’s trick did not fool it for a second. The demon was a prankster at heart though and did not want to expose the trick too early.

Gu Xiaojun stomped his feet in anger. Luckily his dark brother had attacked when he did. If Tutatunte had waited after Wen Leyang had put him down with the other corpses, twenty Old Gus would be dead by now.

Tutatunte recognised the group as his acquaintances. He heaved a long sigh and went limp, falling to the ground heavily. Out of the dozen African followers, he was the only one who had survived.

With the giant pangolin’s protection, Fei Fei escorted the African leader some distance away from the pit to question him.

Wen Leyang and the others crowded around the corpses of the Africans. They looked at one another in puzzlement. These people had not been disembowelled as they had predicted but instead buried alive after being restrained by magic. The stranger detail, which Wen Leyang had failed to notice at first, was that these bodies had no hair. The hair on their heads, their eyebrows, even the fine hairs on up and down their arms and legs had been shaved off by the Tibetans. Their entire body was so smooth, with one touch, it made one’s skin crawl.

Old Gu held Fei Fei’s notebook in his hands and tried to connect the eight clues that they had uncovered. He led the group to sit down and officially started their analysis of the case.

The eight cult groups have had four out of five main organs removed, the spleen, lungs, heart, and liver. Hair, blood, and bone was also collected from the corpses. There was also the mystery item collected from the gruesomely, mashed up bodies of the Goths.

The lama spoke first, “From what I understand, no matter what spell or method they use, Devilry usually asks for one or all five of the organs. There’d be no reason to take only four.”

Old Gu suddenly flashed a smile – something about it was unsettling. He shook his head and said to the head lama, “Master, you’ve only just arrived at this town hence you see yourself as a man on a hunt for an evil sorcerer. The truth is, we have another disguise. We are known as the ‘Jiugui Sect’. In the eyes of the Tuer Tibetan people, we are also a group of evil cult followers who worship the nine-headed snake.”

“Oh no.” Wen Leyang cried out. His hands unconsciously went to where his kidneys were located. “What you mean is… that they’re not done with the evil cult followers yet and they have counted in our kidneys as well?”

Master Rangjung squinted his eyes. He shook his head after some pondering. “This doesn’t make sense. If the evil cultivator wanted our… your kidneys, he would not have just left. He would have at least waited for you guys before departing.”

Gu Xiaojun waved his hands dismissively. “It’s just an inference. Let’s try to piece together all the clues first, perhaps that will make it easier for us to reach a conclusion. For now, let’s count…” Looking straight into the head lama’s eyes, his tone got heavy. “Our kidneys in as well.”

If one of the five organs were missing, nothing could be accomplished. Now, Old Gu counted in their kidneys as well. “Five organs, bones, blood, hair, and flesh. What can they do with them? Rather, what could this all mean?”Old Gu’s brows knitted together in concentration as he reiterated the story so far, “The actions of the evil cultivator are somehow related to the nine-headed snake, Xiang Liu. Only nine groups of evil cult followers were left in the end, most probably to represent the nine heads of Xiang Lui-”

Wen Leyang suddenly interrupted in n excited whisper, “I think I’ve got it!”