Pengfei watched as Horse chewed the Thousand-Year Ginseng.

  “What, are you a nervous eater? That’s… we’ll talk about this later.”

  He reached out and took the waterskin from the small bag that hung against Horse’s back thigh then made his way slowly back to the mortally injured Guoyu.

  He slid down the rocks and knelt next to the man, offering him a drink.

  “The … the ginseng?” Guoyu asked in between sputtering bloody coughs.

  “My, um, my horse ate it.”

  “…”

  “…So…yeah…”

  “Your fucking horse…?“

  Guoyu’s eyes rolled back in his head and his eyelids fluttered as he skirted the edge of consciousness. He began speaking quietly. Not to Pengfei, and not in a language the boy had ever heard before. Not a dialect of the Central Plains, not Mongolian, nor Tibetan. The alien words drifted away on the wind, the speaking ceased.

  The wounded man’s breath was labored and wet. The coughs turned into a sickening rattle and gradually slowed. Finally, the pained breathing stopped.

  Pengfei sat next to the body. There was no guilt. Not yet at least. He was still breathing quickly and had begun to shiver now. Not because of the cold, though it was creeping toward freezing. The jittering seemed to originate in his tight chest, the lingering remnant of terror.

  An urge to move overtook him. He stood, climbed up the rocks, picked up his bow, and looked for his mount.

  “Let’s get out of here, Horse.”

  But the mare had wandered off aways, left the canyon and laid down in the grass of the valley.

  “Come on, girl. Let’s go.”

  But she did not stir when Pengfei approached. Her eyes were shut as if she was sleeping, her chest rising and falling at regular intervals.

  “This is not a good time for a nap. Come on!”

  Pengfei tugged on the reins, tried to shake her awake, even shouted and clapped in her ear, but nothing would rouse the animal.

  “What the hell is going on?!” Then, remembering the Thousand-Year Ginseng, “Did you poison yourself with that fucking root?”

  His attempts to wake the horse became more desperate, pleading, but remained ineffective. Late afternoon slid by into evening, then late evening, and as darkness came Pengfei’s concern for Horse’s wellbeing was joined by other worries.

  “What if more of those guys show up? No, wait, he said the rest were heading back to the Central Plains…Would they come looking for him?”

  The anxious pacing did nothing to alleviate any of his concerns. Eventually, Pengfei narrowed his focus to the most immediate problem facing him.

  --Do I stay or go?--

  On one hand, he wanted to be as far away from here as possible. Put distance between himself and the blood and bodies, any companions of the deceased.

  On the other hand, Pengfei did not want to leave Horse. Even if he did, he wouldn’t make it far before dark. If he kept walking after sundown, he might make it back to the storehouse a few hours after midnight, but didn’t relish the thought of trekking though the cold.

  After a few more nervous laps, he came to his decision. He sat against Horse’s back with his sword in his lap and bow in his hand.

  “The minute you wake up, we’re out of here. If you wake up. Shit! You better wake up!”

  ******************************************************************************

  The night brought freezing temperatures but no snow. Pengfei did not want to lose sight of his surroundings but couldn’t risk facing the cold without some measure of protection.

  He took the tent he had packed and pitched it, in a manner of speaking. He did his best to cover as much of Horse as possible but her head poked out one side and her hindquarters out the other. Under the canvas, he laid against the mare’s warm midsection and covered himself with a blanket.

  The shelter was only partly effective. The shivering that had spawned from his fear hours ago now continued due to the elements. But it was different. It crept in from the chilling air instead of welling up from within him.

  In the quiet stillness, all the thoughts he had pushed to the side bubbled to the surface. He spoke them to the unconscious Horse.

  “I’m a killer now. Not sure why I did it… seemed necessary at the time. But we probably could’ve just galloped off. I doubt he could have caught up to us. I killed a guy who was already torn to bits by… something.”

  Pengfei lifted up the canvas to look outside into the night.

  --What did happen before I showed up? What could have done that to martial artists like that?--

  But his questions were forgotten a moment later and he continued the nervous rambling to the unconscious animal.

  “Killer… That’s pretty weird. Feels… I don’t really know. Empty? Surreal? I didn’t really want to kill him… didn’t really want to save him either. You kind of resolved that little moral dilemma for me when you ate the ginseng.”

  The mare’s breathing came steady beneath Pengfei, her chest lifting him up with each inhale and lowering him with every exhale.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “I guess I got revenge for Ma Feng. I wasn’t sure I cared about it. Just a while back, I told myself I would wait to decide, figure out if I really wanted that. That’s moot now. Check that off the list.”

  He looked into the darkness again. The moon and stars were the only illumination. There was no fuel for a fire. Still, he could see well enough by the lights from the sky. Nothing moved except the grass in the wind.

  “I don’t know, the revenge… I haven’t been fantasizing about it or anything. But I thought I would feel happier about it. Maybe if I get Zihao’s killer too? I assume it was that thin-faced fucker. But who knows.”

  He moved to his side, trying to find a comfortable way to lay against the horse’s belly. Pengfei’s face brushed some of the hair on her flank and came away wet.

  “What…?”

  Pengfei sat up and patted Horse’s side, finding more dampness on her ribs. In the dark of the tent, he could only tell that the liquid was dark and…

  “Ugh! That smell!”

  It was a putrid stench, foul enough to drive Pengfei out of the makeshift shelter and into the cold without a second thought. He stumbled away several steps and then stood dumbstruck.

  Horse’s entire body was steaming. It billowed up from her in the crisp air.

  “What the hell is going on with you?!” Pengfei yelled.

  His shout drew a response from behind him. A sound, deep, guttural, and loud.

  Pengfei turned slowly, a tingle of fear creeping up his neck. He looked towards the source of the noise, the mouth of the canyon. Just a stone’s throw away.

  The sound came again. It echoed out from the canyon walls, distorted but recognizable.

  A growl.

  Pengfei snatched his bow off the ground and nocked an arrow. But when he lifted his weapon to aim towards the canyon, he immediately knew it was a useless gesture.

  Two round, yellow, irises glimmered in the moonlight. The face that held the eyes was still obscured in darkness but the eyes themselves were enormous. The distance between them suggested a beast of enormous size. Its voice rumbled out like thunder from a distant storm.

  “Horse! Get up! NOW!”

  Pengfei kicked backwards and caught Horse in the belly with his heel. To his relief, she whinnied and clambered up, stripping herself of the canvas tent like a snake shedding its skin. Pengfei was scrambling into the saddle before she had even straightened her legs fully.

  A last look at the canyon revealed the silhouette of a head. A large rounded ear, a blunt snout gaping open to reveal fangs like knives.

  “GO!” Pengfei screamed and dug in his heels.

  The acceleration nearly dislodged him from Horse’s back. He slid halfway off the back of the saddle but his ass caught on the pack still tied there. He leaned forward and pulled himself back into place even as Horse continued to race beneath him. Faster than she had ever run before. Faster than any mount Pengfei had ever ridden before.

  But the danger was not left behind so easily. A roar filled his ears, drowning out everything, including the pounding of hooves. Pengfei’s ears traced the direction of the sound as it moved up the side of the valley’s eastern ridge. He looked upwards.

  The animal, demon, whatever it was, had scaled the cliff and now bounded along the top of the ridge. Its exact form was still hidden but Pengfei could see it moving along the top of the rock. It was impossible to judge its size accurately from this distance but it looked as if it were longer than two yaks lined end-to-end.

  “What the fuck is that thing?!” he screamed into the air, then urged his mount forward. “Give it all you’ve got!”

  To Pengfei’s amazement, Horse’s speed increased. They were nearing a choke point in the valley, one of the spots Pengfei had identified as a good place to fence in the pasture. There, the ridges that formed the sides of the valley cinched together. The beast above was on a course to intercept them there.

  Pengfei looked ahead to the narrows then to his left at the shadow on the ridgeline. Their paths drew closer and closer.

  Horse sped through the pass as the shadow dislodged itself from the rocks above and leapt toward them.

  A gust of wind nearly knocked Pengfei to the earth as something massive passed within an arm’s length of his back. The sound of the beast hitting the ground was like boulders crashing in a landslide, accompanied by a frustrated, hissing, roar.

  Pengfei looked back. The thing was standing there in the moonlight, apparently giving up the chase. A leopard of some sort, black spots on dark and muted fur. Larger than any animal skin Pengfei had seen adorning the lavish homes of Sichuan nobles. Five times larger than such an animal had any right to be.

  He realized the truth of it when he saw the beast.

  A Mountain King.

  It stood in place nobly, ferociously, as Pengfei rode away.

  ******************************************************************************

  Morning had come before they reached Kunlun’s herding grounds. It wasn’t for a lack of energy on Horse’s part. She seemed happy to tear through the valley with that newfound speed of hers, positively giddy about it, in fact. Pengfei wondered if she had even been aware of the beast chasing them, the mortal danger.

  “Didn’t you notice that we almost got eaten? Maybe that thing is what injured Guoyu and killed his brother... could have killed us.”

  The mare strained at the bit and Pengfei had to pull back on the reins to stop her from bursting forward in another terrifying gallop.

  Restrained, Horse began to prance underneath him. Prancing turned to jumping, and then she was bucking like a horse being saddled for the first time, but higher, more forceful, and at the same time smoother.

  “Whoa! Shit!”

  It didn’t seem like she wanted to dislodge her rider, just wanted to test her own power.

  When she finally calmed, Pengfei considered his next course of action. What to tell the elders, his sect mates.

  --Nothing. Tell them nothing.--

  That decision had been made quickly. He killed a man. That was bad enough by itself. But in doing so, he had violated Kunlun’s punishment. Or so he gathered from the snippets of conversation he had overheard from the elders.

  By closing its gates, Kunlun was forbidden from interacting with others of the Jianghu.

  --And I’m pretty sure putting an arrow through someone’s chest counts as an interaction. If anyone finds out… what happens? The Wulin Alliance comes and wipes us out? The elders destroy my dantian to appease them?--

  There were many possibilities, but in the end, it was his ignorance that kept him quiet. He had only been at Kunlun for a few months. He had no idea what the elders of the sect would think, what they would do. Better to avoid it altogether.

  With that decision made, the anxiety faded. Replaced with fatigue. His eyes drooped as he rode but he spotted the storehouse when it came through half-shut lids. Its two tenants standing outside. The giant Qingfang, easy to discern next to his normal-sized companion, waved in greeting from a distance.

  He should have been nervous, pressured to keep his secret from his fellow disciples. But he couldn’t find the energy to worry. Perhaps he had used up his week’s allotment of fear in the past few hours.

  --Just need to get inside… get some rest--

  Qingfang’s brow creased as Horse slowed to a stop in front of him. “What did you do?”

  “What? Nothing, I –“

  “Your face is cut to hell. Did you fall off your horse?”

  “Fall?” Pengfei repeated the word, sluggishly. “Yes… I, uh, fell.”

  Qingfang’s partner, who still hadn’t introduced himself to Pengfei, chimed in too. “Why does your horse smell like shit?”

  “She fell too.”

  “That… what? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “You don’t make sense.” Pengfei retorted, drawing a quizzical look from his interrogators.

  He hopped down from Horse’s back and barely managed to remove the saddle and bags before she tore away, sprinting and leaping through the valley, startling the sheep, goats, and yaks. The other boys watched, awed and confused at the mount’s behavior while Pengfei carried his belongings inside.

  He dropped them just beyond the door, climbed the ladder to the second-floor landing, and laid on a bedroll for blessed sleep.

  ******************************************************************************

  Rest came quickly but didn’t last long. Pengfei had woken in a fright shortly after dozing off and spent the rest of the day in pensive silence.

  Now, Qingfang and Fei, as the third disciple turned out to be named, sat across from him. A fire burned between the trio, made of burning dung at the end of the daylight hours. They ripped at pieces of jerky in their hands.

  The more probing questions from earlier in the day had been satisfied with a meandering story involving a snake, a spooked horse, and a muddy puddle of snowmelt. If the others were not convinced, they kept it to themselves.

  Pengfei was mostly silent while the other two chatted easily. He silently relived the events that had transpired again and again in their hazy and jumbled details.

  --If Neng was here, or even Nanxi, I’d probably be spilling my guts.--

  But there were still a few topics he could discuss without giving any of his secrets away. One, in particular, that Pengfei thought would be safe to ask about.

  He interrupted the conversation between Qingfang and Fei, speaking loudly and distractedly.

  “Have either of you heard of Thousand-Year Ginseng?”

  The two looked between each other, taken aback. But Qingfang swallowed a bite of food and answered.

  “It’s a divine herb. Cures disease, detoxifies poison, strengthens the body, and so on. Supposedly, it can give you a decade’s worth of internal energy. Or more.”

  “You mean, ten years-worth of qi, just from eating a plant?”

  “Not just eating. You would need to circulate your qi to absorb the energy into your dantian. Let it flow through your meridians, break through blockages, and expel impurities.”

  “I heard that when you take an elixir of high quality like that, you shit yourself.” Fei added.

  Qingfang tutted. “Don’t be crass, Fei.”

  Pengfei eyed Horse, who grazed nearby and occasionally darted nimbly and playfully to some other tuft of grass.

  --Expel impurities?-- Pengfei thought back to the sweat that had come off of Horse while she laid unconscious in front of the canyon, the acrid smell of it.

  Fei interrupted the memory. “Let me know if you find one. It could make an average fighter like me into a legend. Third-rate to first-rate in the blink of an eye.”

  Qingfang tried to bolster his companion. “You don’t need an elixir for that, Fei, you just need to put in the hard work.”

  “Thanks. It’d be nice to have a shortcut though.”

  --Yeah, must be nice.-- Pengfei thought, looking to the mare prancing through the valley.