The demon’s head slid off its neck like melted butter. With a “thump”, the head bounced onto the floor of the cavern. Pools of blood spilled onto the ground, soaking the gravel in a dark color.

Murong Teng panted for air as he leaned his weight onto his bloodstained sword. He looked around at the piles of corpses and the flowing creek of red. The air stank with the smell of iron and feces. It was disgusting.

“Master! Are you alright?” A disciple came running towards Murong Teng. 

Murong Teng held up a hand in assurance. “Don’t worry about me,” He said weakly. “Go check around for anyone with injuries and tend to them at once!”

“Yes!” The disciple bowed. He took one last look at his fragile master before going off to assist his peers.

After Yuelong, Murong Zi and Sifei had left to rescue Mengjun, Murong Teng and his disciples had bravely fended themselves against the horde of demons. Luckily for the Lishui disciples, the demons were many in number but they weren’t well versed in battle, which helped secure their victory.

But during the battle, some Lishui disciples were also lost to the demons, who had savagely pulled their bodies apart limb from limb. 

“Master,” A disciple bowed. His hair was disheveled and parts of his robes were torn, exposing the tanned skin underneath. “The wounded are being tended to right now, but we also have lost many...”

Murong Teng nodded in acknowledgement. He was drained both physically and mentally. When he was first tied up against the pole, the effects of the mysterious toxins had worn off, granting him the time to recuperate. He took that time to suppress the toxins in his body but it had unexpectedly required a mass amount of energy to maintain it. And during the battle, he felt his body had aged a dozen years, his muscles ached and his bones creaked. 

Murong Teng grabbed a lock of hair from his shoulders and looked down at it. “White already… What a powerful poison.”

The Lishui Leader looked up at the roof of the cavern and tried to recall what had happened in the past couple weeks. During meditation practice he had felt unsettled but couldn’t figure out why. Next, some disciples had complained about having stomach issues even though they had grown up eating the food from Huajing Shuizhuang. Then came his sudden change of temper and the lack of sleep. 

Murong Teng released a long sigh. “Something must have happened to me during those days but when?”

It was not long after that he and the remaining disciples of Lishui felt a cold breeze that brushed against their skin. It wasn’t a comforting cool breeze of a summer day, nor was it a cold breeze of wind of winter. But it was the announcement of an unwanted guest.

The air around the disciples became silent except for a silent hissing noise. They looked around the cavern in distress.

Even being a master of the cultivation arts and slayer of numerous demons, Murong Teng could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise up. 

As the hissing got louder, a barely audible voice echoed through the cavern. “Well, well, well…”

“What an intense amount of demonic qi!” A disciple exclaimed, observing the air around him.

Although he was weakened greatly, Murong Teng focused his energy into his third eye to observe the changed environment. 

An unknown, malicious presence hung around the air in separate areas, which was followed by a rotting stench of a marsh. The presence drifted around the cavern like a slithering snake observing its prey.

A disciple suddenly dropped to their knees. 

The sound of metal clashing to the floor disrupted Murong Teng’s focus and his third eye closed off. Murong Teng looked at the kneeling disciple. They were shaking from head to toe, their eyes wide with anxiety.

“Everyone, come here! Get behind me!” Murong Teng demanded. He knew that the miasma around them was not from an ordinary demon.

Through the shuffling sound of footsteps, Murong Teng could have sworn he heard a voice laughing. It sent chills down his spine. He had experienced all sorts of danger and missions through his thirty years of being the Lishui Leader. But his instincts warned him of the miasma that now swirled around him and his disciples.

At the entrance of the cave, a dark shadow rose from the ground. Covered completely by a dark cloak, a tall, slender figure appeared. Illuminated by torches around the cave, the stranger’s shadow was projected onto the roof of the cave. It had nine, long shadows.

“Who are you?” Demanded Murong Teng, straightening his slouched back. Immediately, the presence of an orthodox sect’s leader appeared in his old frame.

“Old man, is that a respectful way to treat a stranger?” The voice echoed through the cave. It didn’t come from one sound source, but rather, from the air and cavern itself. 

Murong Teng furrowed his brow. “This is telepathy? No, no, this is something else…”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” The hooded figure looked around his room. “Look at what you’ve done to these poor pitiful creaturesssss.” The stranger held out two pale hands, as if showcasing the piles of demon corpses.

“How shameless of you to call them pitiful!” Murong Teng spat. “The demons here have murder hundreds if not thousands of humans to achieve their humanoid forms!”

A wicked laughter came from the air. “What I hate the most are you people… Full of so called moralities and righteousness but yet, you fight amongst yourselves?”

Murong Teng opened his mouth to speak but decided against it. What this stranger said wasn’t exactly a lie. They indeed had fought amongst themselves in the last couple of days for unknown reasons. Finally, he said, “You, demon, what do you want from us?”

“Hmph,” The hooded figure walked closer towards Murong Teng and his disciples.

Even without looking back, Murong Teng could feel his disciples shivering with fear behind him. He gripped the hilt of his sword.

Stopping a few meters away from Murong Teng, the demon slowly took down his hood, revealing a wickedly handsome face underneath. Like an arrogant tyrant, the demon looked down at the group of cultivators with his green eyes, thirsty for blood.

Murong Teng gripped the hilt of his sword even tighter. “A demon that has a human form!? He must be at least five hundred years old! No… A thousand!”

The Lishui Master could feel drops of anxiety roll down his neck. He had eliminated hundreds of demons but none of them were past a thousand years. The oldest demon that he ever fought was only a wild boar that had lived past eight hundred years, and he battled it alone for three days and three nights before it died under his sword.

With a smirk, the demon lifted one hand. Almost immediately, the cultivators felt an enormous invisible boulder pressing down on them.

“Sheek!”

Murong Teng sliced upwards with his sword. A blinding shadow of silver flashed across the roof of the cavern. At once, the pressure above disappeared. The Lishui Leader then lunged forward with his sword and sliced at the demon’s neck.

The demon stepped back, the tip of the sword just millimeters away from his face. Unstartled by Murong Teng’s sword, the demon returned the attack. 

A shadow streaked across Murong Teng’s vision. Out of reflexes, Murong Teng lifted his sword in a defensive position, parrying the unnaturally fast attack. But even so, violent vibrations from blocking the attack had numbed Murong Teng’s hand completely. Nonetheless, the Lishui master still held onto his weapon.

“Not bad, old man,” The demon smirked. In one of its hands was a double-sided spear. “Let’s see if you can handle this then…”

With a twist of the demon’s body, two shadows detached themselves from his foot and rose up from the ground. The shadows now attained a physical form similar to that of the demon and both were wielding a double-sided spear.

Without warning, the demon and his two shadow doppelgangers struck at Murong Teng. Outnumbered by the enemy, Murong Teng leapt high up into the air, dodging the spears.

In his mind, Murong Teng panicked, “Heavens! I would have been shish kabobed!”

The Lishui leader summoned up clusters of energy at his palms and shot them at the demon. The demon and his shadows spun their spear in front of themselves, ricocheting the balls of energy into random directions.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!”

The cave shook from the impact of the energy balls. Stones of varying sizes fell from the roof of the cavern, hitting the heads of some Lishui disciples.

The demon plunged his spear into the ground. “Nice try, old man, but I’ll need to end this now.”

Sensing something big was coming, Murong Teng returned to his spot amongst the Lishui disciples. He thrusted his sword into the ground and closed his eyes, chanting a spell. A silver beam of light shot upwards from his sword and came down to the ground, encasing the Lishui disciples in a half-sphere.

The demon smirked, the look in his eyes mocking the leader of the Lishui Sect. He took a deep breath, his stomach expanding outwards. It was almost like seeing a frog croak, the skin under their necks puffing up tremendously. Then, the demon released it. In a steady stream, green fog came out from his mouth and circled around the silver shield.

A voice among the cultivators suddenly called out, “Fellow peers! We have to help our master! Everyone, pass energy onto master!”

Sitting one behind another, they rested their hands on the shoulder of the disciple in front and poured their energies into their palms, creating an energy circuit that gave Murong Teng the power to strengthen his shield.

Almost immediately, the shield flared a bright light of silver. The shield’s thickness doubled in size.

Like a giant serpent, the green fog slithered around and atop of the silver screen, completely blocking the visions of the ones inside.

The voice of the demon once again echoed through the cavern, “I truly pity you, old man. Your death is near yet, you don’t know what will kill you…”

Focused on maintaining his shield, Murong Teng didn’t answer, nor did he have strength to. His face was written with wrinkles and tiredness.

The demon seemed to have the ability to see past the green fog and at Murong Teng’s tired expression and laughed. “Because I pity you, old man, I’ll tell you the truth behind your aging and sudden change of temper…”

This at once caught the attention of Murong Teng. The change in Lishui disciple’s temperament was the sole reason they were caught by the horde of demons. While they were worn out from fighting amongst themselves, the demons had the upper hand and caught them all. Murong Teng gritted his teeth at the thought of the disciples who had died from the internal fighting. 

Murong Teng blamed himself for the trouble they were put through. “If only I had been careful enough… If only I was a little stronger and detected the poison in time… If only I had arrived faster that day to save my sister, then she would still be alive and would have procured the antidote… If only…”

As if reading his mind, the demon replied in a mocking tone, “Oh, since you’re so smart and have discovered you all are poisoned, why don’t I tell you how you were poisoned?”

A loud hissing noise came from all around them. 

“Haven’t you noticed that some of your disciples would disappear late at night from your precious little water palace?”

Murong Teng looked up. “No, it cannot be…”

Once again, the demon seemed to know what Murong Teng was thinking. “Oh yes… my people have already infiltrated every single orthodox sect, and they’re just waiting for the right timing…”

“How is that possible?” Murong Teng asked himself.

The demon laughed. “How is it not? If your sect is so righteous, then how did you end up in today’s state? It is because you hypocrites aren’t true at heart and are easily swayed with a little… how should I say this? Persuasion? Satisfaction? Promise of eternal wealth and comfort?”

Murong Teng closed his eyes in disappointment. “So that’s what happened. Some of my own disciples had been swayed by false promises of this demon that they would betray their own sect for worldly pleasures!?”

A more sinister laugh echoed around them nonstop.

“Worldly pleasure? Worldly pleasure? What? Did you actually think that there would be something more precious than wealth, women and power? How foolish of you to think that.”

Murong Teng called out to his disciples, “Worldly pleasures hinders us from understanding the true laws of Heaven! My disciples, do not be blinded by such ethereal things!”

The demon laughed again. “Funny how those are your last words. So useless and hard to remember…”

Murong Teng confidently rebuted, “Even if they are my last words and only one person followed them, I will die a happy man because they have not strayed from the righteous path!”

Touched by Murong Teng’s selflessness and responsibility to his disciples, a few Lishui disciples sobbed.

“Master…”

“We will bear this in our minds!”

A voice suddenly called out, “What a load of bullshit!”

All attention turned towards the speaker. The Lishui disciple had broken off from the energy circuit and stood apart from the other disciples.

“What are you doing, shi-di? We need everyone’s power to sustain the shield!” A disciple scolded.

The demon laughed joyously. “See? You are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites… The rest of you, join me and I will spare your lives! Kill the old man and break the shield!”

“No!”

“Never!”

“We will die with our master!”

Murong Teng held back his tears. He looked around at all the disciples, many of them he had raised as a child and some he had taken in from orphanages. They had been through numerous New Years and countless new moons. They’ve been through too much to stop here at the hands of a demon.

“I, Murong Teng, thank my disciples! We will stand against the evil that threatens the lives of the people! Put your faith in good and never be afraid of evil! For they can never subdue the good—”

A sharp pain shook through his entire body. Something cold had penetrated through his back. 

“Master!”

“No!!!”

Murong Teng looked down. A blood stained blade had pierced through his chest. He coughed up a mouthful of blood.