The greasy stench of boiling bone-marrow and scorched sulfur swept down from the high northern crags like a toxic fog.
Along the jagged limestone bluffs overlooking the inner valley, thirty elite pyromancers of the Blood Sea Sect stood arranged in a crescent formation. Clad in hooded robes dyed with dried blood and trimmed with blackened bird feathers, they chanted in a harsh, deep-throated dialect that set the night insects to silence. Before each pyromancer sat an iron fire bowl mounted on three bronze claw-feet, filled with bubbling pitch and crushed crimson marrow-stones.
“Ignite the Sanguine Corpse Fire!” the high pyromancer rasped, raising a curved staff capped with a human infant’s stone-hard skull. “Burn their pine groves to ash! Burn their timber houses to cinders! Let the toxic smoke choke every beast in their burrows!”
With timed together thrusts of their blood-stained hands, the pyromancers threw handfuls of crushed brimstone into the fire bowls.
FWOOOOOOSH!
Jets of unnatural, violet-red fire erupted twenty feet into the night air. The flames didn’t dance like clean mountain woodsmoke. They writhed and hissed like dying snakes, throwing off thick, oily clouds of black soot that smelled of copper and rotting meat. Catapults lashed together from scorched pine timbers began flinging heavy earthen jars filled with boiling blood-oil over the gorge.
The clay vessels shattered against the upper slopes of the safe hall’s cedar ridge.
Skin-burning red flames right away took hold of the dry needle-bed. Where the unholy fire touched living wood, the bark blistered and melted, weeping dark sap that ignited into backup plumes of acrid vapor. Driven by the rising canyon drafts, a wall of crimson wildfire began creeping toward the lower agricultural terraces, threatening the tiered melon patches and the wooden waterwheels along the river water chute.
On the pavilion terrace, Su Ling’er stood up sharply, her three white tails bristling with tension as the foul smoke reached her delicate nose. “Master, that’s Sanguine Corpse Fire. Ordinary river water can’t put it out. The oil floats on water and feeds on spiritual qi in the air.”
Lin Xiao, still floating in his bamboo basket, extended an azure slime arm to sniff the air. He made a soft sound of distaste, wrinkling his ball-shaped surface.
“Ugh, that smells like burnt motor oil and stale liver,” Lin Xiao grumbled, thoroughly unimpressed. “Who cooks with sulfur and rancid lard? It fully ruins the fragrance of the night-blooming jasmine. Xiao Long, are you awake down there in the deep pool?”
From the depths of the Mirror Lake below the main waterfall, the dark water began to churn.
A low, ringing sound—neither a roar nor a whistle, but a deep, shaking sound hum like an ancient bronze bell tolling at the bottom of the ocean—echoed through the granite riverbed. The surface of the lake swelled into a smooth, dome-shaped mound of sapphire water fifty feet across.
KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!
A pillar of crystal spray blasted skyward. It caught the crimson moonlight in a thousand glittering facets. Climbing from the heart of the geyser rose Xiao Long.
The young horned river serpent had grown immensely over the past seasons. His snake-like body now spanned nearly one hundred feet in length, covered in overlapping scales of deep azure and liquid jade that shone like polished armor. Two elegant, branching antlers of pale gold rose from his noble brow, and long, silken whiskers trailed through the mist around his jaw. Azure spirit clouds gathered beneath his four clawed legs, buoying him into the upper air with fluid, easy majesty.
Xiao Long turned his great head toward the terrace, his golden slit-pupils softening as he spotted Lin Xiao. He dipped his snout in a brief, affectionate nod. That let out a gentle trill that sounded like a silver flute.
“Go on, little Long,” Lin Xiao called out with an encouraging wave of his jelly arm. “Wash the mountain. Those rude guests made a total mess with their torches. We need everything spotless for tomorrow’s market.”
Xiao Long let out a joyous, trumpeting roar that rattled the loose gravel across the northern crags.
Climbing into the heavy storm clouds gathering above the valley peaks, the azure dragon began to coil through the overcast sky. As he moved, rings of cerulean lightning crackled harmlessly between his scales, invisible the dry mountain air and filling the air with the sharp, clean scent of ozone and crushed rain-lilies.
The demonic pyromancers paused their chanting on the northern ridge, staring upward in slack-jawed disbelief.
“What... What kind of beast is that?!” the lead pyromancer stammered, his skeletal staff wobbling in his grip. “A river snake? No... Those horns, those clouds... It has dragon blood! Pure ancient flood dragon bloodline!”
“Shoot it down!” another pyromancer shrieked in panic. “Launch the blood-oil jars at the sky!”
The catapults groaned as they released five flaming barrels of corpse-pitch into the air, aiming directly for the coiling dark shape among the clouds.
Xiao Long didn’t even bother to dodge. With a contemptuous flick of his massive tail, he whipped up a nearby hurricane vortex that snatched the flaming jars mid-flight. The spinning gale redirected the projectiles into an empty granite sinkhole three miles outside the safe hall outer edge. There, they exploded harmlessly against bare rock.
High in the sky high sky, Xiao Long opened his jaws wide. He drew the moisture of seven surrounding mountain ranges into his lungs. The azure storm clouds turned from slate-grey to deep, glowing indigo.
RUUUUUUUUUUUUUMBLE!
The sky tore open.
It wasn’t merely rain. It was a pouring, continent-cleansing deluge of sacred spirit-water. He dropped upon the valley like a falling ocean. Millions of crystal raindrops, each infused with Xiao Long’s refined dragon-vein essence, hammered down upon the burning cedar ridges with the rhythmic fury of a thousand war drums.
The moment the sacred rain struck the Sanguine Corpse Fire, the skin-burning flames didn’t flare up or spread. The pure water-origin qi contained in the downpour smothered the oily grease on contact. The noxious violet-red fire hissed in agony, choking under the deluge with wild plumes of white steam that smelled of clean pine sap rather than burning rot.
In less than twenty heartbeats, thirty acres of burning forest were fully put out.
“My fire!” the lead pyromancer howled, dropping to his knees as cold sheets of rain soaked through his feathered robes, turning his brimstone powder into foul, useless mud. “The corpse fire is eternal! How can mere rain wash away the old family flames of the Blood Sea?!”
“Because that isn’t ditch water, friend,” Lin Xiao murmured from the dry shelter of the pavilion roof edges, watching the water cascade from the tiled roof in nonstop silvery sheets. “That’s mountain-spring dragon water. Full of minerals, fully pH-balanced, and excellent for the skin.”
The deluge did far more than cool the flames.
Five hundred thousand cubic meters of spirit rain poured down the slopes. Then, it acted as a massive high-pressure broom. The sticky, foul blood-foul fog that had hung over the valley floor was washed out of the air. It was dragged down to earth by the heavy water droplets.
Down in the valley, the network of stone irrigation channels and hollow iron-oak water chutes that Lin Xiao and Elder Lu Da had engineered went to work. The pouring runoff surged through the paved gutters. It carried the diluted soot and mud directly into Tie Shan’s triple-layered quartz settling water tanks at the lower defile. There, beds of porous fiery foam-stone and crushed zeolite trapped every fine dust of demonic ash. It allowed only pure, crystal-clear water to exit into the southern river.
Along the charred hillsides, an extraordinary phenomenon unfolded under the downpour.
The soil, enriched by the ancient qi carried within Xiao Long’s rain, began to pulse with life. Charred cedar branches shed their blackened bark, sending forth tender emerald shoots. Wild mountain ferns uncurled from the steaming loam in rapid, time-lapse blooms. Clustered patches of silver-dew bellflowers and fragrant wild thyme sprouted across the blackened soil, covering the scars of battle in a rich mix of green and violet blossoms within minutes.
High above, Xiao Long coiled lazily through the storm, his silken whiskers drifting through the downpour. He lowered his massive head beneath the cloud deck. He looked down upon the rejuvenated green valley with huge, quiet pride. Seeing the clear water flowing through the ditches and the young trees sprouting fresh leaves brought a deep warmth to his snake-like core.
On the northern crags, the thirty demonic pyromancers were shivering wildly, their soaked robes clinging to their gaunt frames as cold mountain mud swirled around their ankles. Their fire bowls were flooded, their brimstone cakes reduced to wet sludge. Their teeth were chattering like dry gourds.
“Retreat!” the lead pyromancer wheezed, his dignity washed away into the gutters. “Fall back to the southern assembly grounds! The beasts of this valley aren’t mortal creatures... They’re nature spirits of the ancient wild!”
Before they could turn their sodden boots toward the southern pass, a soft rustle sounded from the drenched bamboo grove behind them.
Xiao Hei emerged from the shadows, his midnight fur fully dry despite the downpour. His ruby eyes glowed with cold amusement. Flanking him were twenty shadow wolves, their lips curled back in silent, toothy smirks.
“Going so soon?” Xiao Hei rumbled in the demonic tongue. His voice carried the calm weight of an apex hunter. “Our Sovereign hasn’t finished inspecting your permits for setting open fires in our national park.”
With a series of coordinated, non-lethal pounces, the shadow wolves disarmed the shivering pyromancers, binding their arms with tough river reeds and marching them down the slope toward Tie Shan’s holding pens.
On the terrace, Lin Xiao bobbed contentedly in his basin. He watched the last of the rain clouds scatter to reveal the twin moons shining with clean, silvery bright glare.
“Good job, Xiao Long!” Lin Xiao called into the clearing sky. “Come down and have some steamed carp dumplings later!”
Xiao Long let out a delighted whistle, coiling downward toward the lake with graceful, sweeping turns.
“Master,” Su Ling’er said, pointing a slender finger toward the southern mountain ridge. “The surface forces have been broken, but look at the spirit-compass. The underground leyline is throbbing with rhythmic malice. The demonic control over the leftover beasts hasn’t faded—it’s coming from below the bedrock.”
Lin Xiao settled his blue mass against the basin rim, his internal core focusing downward into the earth. “Ah. The signal antenna. If we don’t turn off the radio, those poor animals will keep running until their hearts burst.”