At the moment of impact, Yun Jieshi's high was quelled immediately.
He hadn't expected that his fist contained enough power to make the Jade Imp's head pop like a melon.
Its exterior – a hard shell of jade – exploded into chunks, but the soft, bloody insides made unseemly noises as they landed on the ground in every direction, staining the snow.
As the towering body of the Jade Imp fell, the old sagely voice rang in Yun Jieshi's head.
"Disharmonised Elite Jade Imp from the Broken Lotus Cavern."
The Discount Sage landed on the ground with a dumbfounded look on his face. He stared at the corpse of the Elite Jade Imp for a few seconds before releasing a sharp breath.
'Elite Jade Imp, is it?' he thought, but the bulk of his thoughts rushed to critique his strength. There was the slightest bit of blood on the back of Yun Jieshi's fingers. He quickly rubbed it off with the water on the ground, produced when Honghuo melted the snow.
The remaining Jade Imps were fleeing, crying, and dying. Yun Jieshi didn't find a reason to pursue them. If anything, maybe it was best for them to find their peers and report how strong he was. Perhaps that would deter the Imps some.
Or it could just force them to send a stronger force to kill him.
Yun Jieshi sighed. He didn't allow this to detract from the remnants of his thrill though. It took engaging in battle for Yun Jieshi to truly feel as though every facet of his prowess was amazing. He felt the same way when he faced the Jade Imps for the first time on the rock pillar.
'I'm writing that song after all,' he thought with a smile.
Hua Dongmei was screaming excitedly behind him.
"I told you! The Sage didn't need any help! Look, now because you meddled, you got yourself injured. Serves you right!"
Poor Honghuo's light and flame were fluctuating. The arrow in him refused to burn and he couldn't take it out.
"Sage! Sage!" He was crying. "Please help me!"
Yun Jieshi rolled his eyes secretly.
He went over to Honghuo, weathering his heat. The glowing ball tempered his temperature somewhat. Around him, the ground was so hot that it had blackened and reddened.
The arrow going through him was very long. It was longer than Yun Jieshi was tall. He grabbed it from its end and pulled. Honghuo let out a sharp, howl-like scream when Yun Jieshi yanked once. He shuddered when Yun Jieshi yanked twice, and let loose a frightening growl that shook the ground when the monkey finally pulled the arrow out.
"I'm free! I'm free!" Honghuo shouted, and he lifted off the ground and circled around in the air. "I owe you much, Sage."
"Yes, you do," Yun Jieshi said, but his sights and thoughts were pinned on the large arrow in his hand and what the old sagely voice had said about it.
"A bone arrow soaked in the blood of an enlightened Qilin."
The arrow was as thick as Yun Jieshi's arm and had a hefty weight to it.
'An enlightened Qilin? As far as I remember, a Qilin is supposed to be a legendary chimera, but here… I'm not sure what it would be,' the little monkey thought. He lamented how he still had no idea what enlightenment was. Hua Dongmei had some idea, it seemed – evidenced by her knowledge of what a Sage was. He would have to ask her about it in detail.
While measuring the arrow, Yun Jieshi walked up to the Elite Jade Imp's bone bow and picked it up. It was very heavy, and more than twice his height.
The little monkey couldn't use it. While he could hold the bow up with one hand, he couldn't nock any of the large arrows the large Jade Imp had been using. He needed longer arms and better balance.
Surprisingly, the weapon wasn't anything special. It was simply a bone bow, according to the voice in the little monkey's head.
'How tight is the string, I wonder?'
Yun Jieshi tried pulling it. He managed, but it took some effort. The distance between his arms wasn't nearly enough to make drawing the string of the large bow easy, even though he knew he could.
The little monkey found that his muscles were a little sore and he was already feeling rather tired. His body had never been stressed this much.
'Do I actually need exercise?' This might have been true. While this mystical world was, well… mystical, some of its principles were grounded. 'I'll keep the bow then. I can use it to train myself – to up my endurance and strength. I can't keep counting on Bei Jun's scales. Their role is clearly different.'
Yun Jieshi shrank his ruan and fed it into the large sack filled with Shuang Fingers. He needed both hands free to carry the bow. But soon, he found that he couldn't carry the quiver and the bow at the same time.
And indeed, he wanted to keep the arrows too – all four of them that the Elite Jade Imp hadn't fired, along with the one that had pinned Honghuo.
"Hua Dongmei. Can you… Ahem. Carry these for me," he commanded.
The fairy immediately stopped the belittling game she had been playing with Honghuo and rushed over.
"Of course, Sage!" she said and she pulled up the quiver with some effort. "Will you be coming with me to my home now? I really want to pay you back as soon as possible."
"Right," Yun Jieshi said. He had almost forgotten about that. "How far is it?"
"It's not too far. It's only some distance in that direction." Hua Dongmei pointed East of where Yun Jieshi meant to go – the trench.
This was the first thing to deter him from wanting to head to Reed Lake.
Worse yet, this home of Hua Dongmei's didn't sound close. What did she mean by some distance anyway? Could she not describe how far it was?
In any case…
"I will have to go there after I defeat the Imp King," Yun Jieshi said. He didn't want to tell Honghuo or Hua Dongmei about the lights he saw – his present goal.
He had intended to ask about them at first, but after he found that Hua Dongmei apparently couldn't smell the Stench from the Imps, he thought better of it.
'There are things only a Sage like me can discern. For now, I'll keep them to myself.'
Honghuo was elated by Yun Jieshi's decision.
"The sooner you defeat the Imp King, the better, Sage! While you are off, I'll find something to give you in return," he said, much to Yun Jieshi's exasperation. He didn't have that much confidence in the fiery entity, but he nodded all the same.
"Come to think of it, Sage. Do you have a name? We can't just keep calling you Sage."
Hua Dongmei seconded Honghuo's stance. It was unusual.
"That's right! It's disrespectful to simply call you Sage, Sage. Please, may we know your name?" the fairy asked, beaming.
Yun Jieshi gave a small smile.
'I guess I might as well…' he thought.
It was no trouble creating a fake name that made him feel… cool.
"You can call me Sage Xingyu."
After both Hua Dongmei and Honghuo marveled at the name for reasons the little monkey could only sigh at, they joined Yun Jieshi on his mission, trusting that he knew where he was going.
United as companions of a Sage, they became less abrasive with each other over the next hour and learned to tolerate the other's presence.
Yun Jieshi also grew to enjoy their company. He even allowed them to help him with the lyrics to his song. They were all too happy to help, but with how much they kept singing his praises, and adding a lot of cringe-inducing lines, Yun Jieshi began to wonder if he was getting a little full of himself.
'No way!' He discarded such a foolish notion. He didn't think his song was too self-serving either. It was perfect!
"There's no great and small in winter
Says snowfall and flakes of old
Come a parade of the mighty before Spring
Where fiends scream, sing, fly
Bounding to me, me and you
Firing lightning – lightning masked as bone
But the Sage will not hear it
A clamor he brings – sweet song most of all
Born in burning frost
Faring against the red over white snow
Bounding to me, me and you
Firing lightning – lightning masked as bone
The might in a small fist,
Sleek as bamboo, flesh, its filling
Tempered by a lying fish and his coat
Breaks the great and towering
Bounding to me, me and you
Bests lightning – lightning masked as bone."
Yun Jieshi named the song, Against Lightning Masked as Bone. He wondered if Faye Wong would approve.
'Sure, she would!'
The little monkey, the fairy, and the large ball of spinning flames sang the song more than a dozen times as they went.
Only when Yun Jieshi felt his throat hurt a little did he call for them to stop.
"How much time do we have left with the light?" Yun Jieshi asked. He didn't want to give away the fact that he didn't know anything about the conditions of this world. Well, Hua Dongmei had surmised that Yun Jieshi had just recently appeared in the Lower Southern Plateau, hence his ignorance, but he still preferred to look as though he knew something about this world and was only oblivious to minor details.
The fairy answered briskly.
"Wei Fang's light starts to fade after about nine hours. Of course, Zi Kun's nest grows stronger from then until he dives down to devour us all. I've always wondered why our world is designed like that. Do you know why this is, Sage Xingyu?"
Yun Jieshi might have been struck by lightning. He turned stiff.
'They have names?' he thought, staggered.
The oddly-shaped, pronged sun, and that bird that rushed down from the black dot to devour the world had names?!
Yun Jieshi managed to fake looking thoughtful. He didn't know what to tell Hua Dongmei. After all, he wasn't friends with whoever made this strange world.
His mind worked quickly.
"Mortals are not supposed to know the secrets of the Immortals and the Sages. For all you know, Zi Kun is an evil Immortal cursed for his greed in a previous life, and now he is forced to consume and spit out the world every day. Would knowing this make you feel any better?"
This was the best Yun Jieshi could come up with. A glance at Hua Dongmei told him that it worked. Hua Dongmei looked horrified. Honghuo dimmed.
"I-Is that what Zi Kun is, Sage Xingyu?" the fairy asked in a fearful voice.
Yun Jieshi laughed.
"I'm only joking," he said. "But be sure not to ask too many questions if you can help it."
The fairy and the ball of flames expressed their intent to obey.
As they did, Yun Jieshi continued to agonize over the two entities in the sky.
Was Wei Fang, the eight-pronged light, a living thing?
Was Zi Kun, the gargantuan bird, some Divine creature that served some formidable Emperor in this world? Or was it perhaps as Yun Jieshi had surmised, some cursed Immortal? Who knew?
'The Zi in Zi Kun made me think it's a title rather than a surname. That's how I came up with that ridiculous theory,' the little monkey thought. 'But I suppose that's wrong.'
As far as he understood it, Zi was an honorific used when addressing ancient philosophers, but the placement of it in the name of Zi Kun suggested something else.
Before Yun Jieshi could judge what else the names of the entities in the sky could mean, he and his companions had reached the great trench.
It was both a marvel and a horror.