บท 103: Whispers of the Dead
When the morning sun is faintly rising in the vast sky that is still largely shrouded in the darkness of dawn, a group of crows as black as night devours the multitude of dismembered bodies of people and animals scattered on the blood-red ground of a small mortal village.
But to the misfortune of the crows and other scavenging animals enjoying the grand feast for their palates, a group of seven men mounted on large, colorful lizards quickly approached.
*kraa* *kraa* *kraa*
The crows cried out in dismay before flying away, abandoning their feast, as did most of the other animals on the scene due to their instincts to avoid predators.
And if there is one thing that seven large lizards, almost two meters tall with sharp claws and teeth, rough skin like rocks, and mouths drooling with foul saliva, scream to their alert instincts, it is "danger, a predator!!"
"Well, if we had any small doubts about the veracity of this demonic Gu master terrorizing Yu village, we now have our definitive answer..." Huo Tie spoke in a low, hoarse voice that carried great authority.
"...the demonic bastard committed a filthy bloodbath massacre!" His face showed disgust as he looked at the corpses of men, women, children, and the elderly, all dead and rotting.
He was a tall, middle-aged man with an impressive stature of a seasoned warrior, emphasized by his red combat uniform with blue details and a sash at his waist with a copper symbol bearing the number two and the word "Upper."
The wind carried a metallic smell of blood along with the stench of rotting bodies, making his long but balding dark blue hair sway fervently.
"These demonic bastards are truly despicable..." Huo Lee spoke, his high-pitched voice echoing for several meters.
"What do you say? What do you think about who or what did this?" Huo Tie asked Huo Lee beside him.
"Hmm, it is definitely the work of a Gu master since a horde of beasts would have broken houses..." Huo Lee said while dismounting from his large green lizard that seemed capable of easily carrying several people on its back. "And they wouldn't abandon the bodies without eating anything, leaving everything for scavengers like here."
Huo Lee, who had an almost lizard-like appearance, approached one of the corpses, kneeling down, and as if it were nothing, licked the body with his large, snake-like split tongue.
"These bodies are at most five days old, I believe..." Huo Lee said, ignoring the looks of disgust he was very accustomed to. "The cuts are irregular... so I imagine whoever did this to the body was not very experienced."
"They must be far from here by now," Huo Tie dismounted from his golden lizard and approached the bodies.
"Probably... that's why I'm here, right? To find and track the traces they left, no matter how small, right?" Huo Lee had a knowledgeable look on his face as he was renowned as one of the best investigators in the clan.
"Exactly..." Huo Hei, who held the reins of his lizard, had a deep look on his face as he watched Huo Lee licking the corpse. "Because unless this Gu master lost his movement Gu, i will not catch up to them easily."
Huo Lee got up from his kneeling position and moved further into the blood-soaked village, carefully inspecting everything around him.
"Can you tell if more than one person was responsible?" Huo Hei dismounted from his black lizard and looked around, trying to ignore the fact that Huo Lee had already licked more than a dozen corpses.
"My Heat Vision Gu cannot find a warm body of any living person," he continued, sighing helplessly as his investigative Gu, though powerful, had this significant flaw.
"How do you expect me to know that?" Huo Lee had a puzzled expression on his face. "...but well, I would say it was done by more than one Gu master since it seems to have been a relatively quick massacre, so it couldn't have been done by just one person."
"According to Elder Huo Xi, the mortals said the demonic Gu master had wives accompanying him," he walked among the bodies.
"It's quite possible that they are also Gu masters if they hold the position of 'wives' instead of concubines," Huo Tie nodded to the Gu masters who had not yet dismounted from their lizards.
"You will search the surrounding areas for mortals who escaped the massacre or saw it from afar," Huo Tie cast his gaze over them to see their expressions. "And try to find evidence that leads us to these demonic bastards."
"Yes, mission leader!" The four spoke in unison with determination.
"Hmm, wait, Huo Ni Ma, you will stay with us to search the village... I only need the three of you to search outside," Huo Tie didn't care to hear if he agreed and just continued to search the village.
"Yes, sir!" Huo Ni Ma, a short young man of average appearance, responded immediately while dismounting from his lizard.
The other three, upon hearing this, only exchanged glances for a moment before coordinating their lizards to quickly head away from Yu village and towards other smaller villages nearby.
"Are you sure those three are enough? This could be the work of a rank 4 Gu master, for all we know from the mortals of this village who arrived at the clan," Huo Hei questioned his decisions since they were from rival factions in the clan. "...well, at least I expect a minimum of rank 3 given their desperation."
"Mortals get desperate over anything! If you were a rank 1 initial stage Gu master, they would already treat you like Mt Tai, hahaha!" Huo Tie said in good humor, dismissing Huo Hei's words.
"...I say it is highly unlikely this is the act of a Gu master above rank 2," Huo Tie used blue flames to burn a body too disfigured to identify who it belonged to.
The fierce blue flames created a moving image of an old, wrinkled lady running with difficulty, stumbling every few steps with a look of fear and despair on her face, which worsened with each step.
But suddenly, the flames swayed fiercely as the images quickly changed to the old lady being cruelly cut in half by a thin ribbon of black blood that seemed to appear out of nowhere, with no visible Gu master origin of the attack before the flames slowly extinguished, leaving only smoke.
And the dismembered body, unrecognizable, belonging to the person he burned, now disappeared without leaving even the ashes of the old lady who had met a cruel death.
"Hmm, well, this is unexpected. It seems this is a rank 3 Gu master..." Huo Tie stroked his chin thoughtfully as he looked at the ashes. "Perhaps a newly advanced one or someone who just lost several Gu in a battle?"
Huo Hei, watching from afar, had a false expression of surprise on his face while his eyes revealed his true feelings of mockery towards Huo Tie.
'If my Last Flame Gu were rank 3...' Huo Tie sighed helplessly, knowing that despite his Gu being extremely strong, it had a path with no end stopping at rank 2. '...well, since I can't change the fact that my Gu is rank 2, it's better to find a body that was killed by one of his wives.'
He quickly shifted his focus to others, rather than the main culprit of this massacre, as even though his Gu was extremely esoteric and strong, he still couldn't obtain much information about a Gu or Gu master in ranks above him.
'...anyway it's impossible that all of them are rank 3 Gu masters!' Huo Tie continued to walk towards another body that seemed to belong to a child.
"Leader Tie! I found something here," Huo Lee, who was walking far from them, was kneeling beside a large pile of bodies. "Apparently, they made a bonfire here... and I suspect they even refined some Gu in some way."
"Refine Gu? Why would they do that among these corpses? Do you think that maybe the corpses could have been Gu material?" Huo Tie changed his steps and walked over to Huo Lee.
Huo Lee was kneeling near a wolf, inspecting the animal's corpse without the slightest disgust or hesitation, even though the animal reeked horribly and was full of worms. He even licked the wolf's intestines.
This alone demonstrated Huo Lee's great professionalism and dedication to his investigative task, which had brought great disdain and disgust from his peers in the clan but had also made him the most esteemed and valued investigator by the clan elders and leader.
"This is concerning if it's the case because a rank 3 demonic Gu master causing massacres and using corpses for refining, wandering freely in the clan's territory, is a big problem," Huo Hei did the same as him, setting aside what had just happened since the clan's safety was more important than any petty disputes.
"Is this a wolf? If so, I can help with this!" Huo Ni Ma, who hadn't done much until now, seemed excited seeing the wolf's decayed, disgusting state.
"Of course... I'll leave it in your hands," Huo Tie, who had a complicated look on his face, now smiled, satisfied with his good decision to keep the young man with him.
He unfortunately could not use the Last Flame Gu to discover through the wolf's eyes if there really was a Gu refining and how this supposed Gu refining was done and who did it, because the Last Flame gu can only be used on humans.
Huo Ni Ma kneeled and lowered his head until his ear was next to the wolf's mouth while covering his nose to withstand the awful smell.
"Hey boy... who's my good boy? You are my good boy," Huo Ni Ma said lovingly while gently stroking the wolf's head fur. "Boy, do you want a treat? Tell me what happened in this village? How did you die? And what did you see?"
"Wuf Wuf!! Wuf... wooow... uuu wuf wooow!! Wuuu uuf wuff?"
As if straight out of a horror story meant to scare someone to death, the dead wolf began to weakly howl and bark into Huo Ni Ma's ear, who nodded occasionally.
"He apparently came here because of the smell of blood before being captured by a young-looking man who--" Huo Ni Ma couldn't finish speaking before the wolf interrupted him.
"Wuff!! Wooow wuf wuf!"
"...an ugly, cruel young bastard," Huo Ni Ma said helplessly after being corrected by the wolf, who could understand his words just as he understood the wolf's howls.
"...well, continuing, the young man kept him confined with other animals for several hours before, ah well," Huo Ni Ma showed doubt on his face before continuing, "from what the wolf describes, it seems like a Gu refining but doesn't resemble any refining I know of. But if it is, it's definitely demonic!"
"Ah! And he asked what else you want to know and where his treat is," Huo Ni Ma said while looking at everyone who frowned deeply in thought.
"Ask him how many people there were in total... and if he can describe their faces," Huo Tie spoke in his hoarse voice, full of the authority of a leader.
Huo Ni Ma, hearing this, wasted no time before whispering the leader Tie's questions into the wolf's ear.
"Woof uuu wuf!! wooow wu? Wuf Wuf wow...."
"Well, he says that besides the young bastard, there were three girls and three man..."
"From what I understand, three of them must be hairymen... and the three human girls are quite beautiful if even the wolf noticed that," Huo Ni Ma tried to speak quickly, not leaving out any details.
"And he saw nothing more before dying sadly..."
Huo Tie stroked his beard in deep thought about what to do next while looking at the sky, now fully bright with the blue of the new morning.
'A young man and three beautiful ladies... that matches the description from the mortals, but where did these hairymen come from?'
'...well, it's likely they are slaves used for refinement by the demonic Gu master.'
'Hmm, besides that, it's really probable that these wives are also Gu masters, so this will be a big problem.'
'And we still need to know definitively what type of Gu he uses...'
But before he could say anything else, he saw a large amount of dust rising on the horizon. He then saw three large lizards running towards them at great speed.
"Mission Leader Tie! We managed to find witnesses from the village who escaped before the massacre or were not in the village when it happened!" Huo Xue said enthusiastically, imagining the great honors he would receive for his successful task.
Huo Tie looked with a simple, thoughtful expression at the young man with an enthusiastic expression atop his large dark red lizard, which had bulging eyes and was drooling incessantly.
"Well, if that's the case... let's hear what they have to say then!" Huo Tie said with a wide smile on his face.
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