As Zhao Tang’s fingers pressed into his temples, the bronze mirror became a swirling vortex of chronological displacement.

  The dust and mold of the present vanished, replaced by a vision of the chamber as it looked in the transition between the seasons of Autumn and Summer.

  The air in the vision was not cold, but thick and heavy with the scent of unwashed wool and the metallic tang of an approaching storm.

  “Summoned us, you; we ask of. A question that rises amongst us. What purpose?”

  The voices did not come from human throats.

  They were a cacophony of shrieking winds and grinding stone, a linguistic nightmare that seemed to vibrate the very frame of the mirror.

  Through the glass, Tang saw the room as it was on the darkest day of the year.

  Breezing winds, inert and subliminal, acted as the companions to the low-hanging clouds that had managed to seep into the sanctuary.

  The atmosphere was a physical weight, a tension so absolute, it felt as though the mountain itself were holding its breath.

  In the center of the room stood a figure that Tang recognized with a jolt of revulsion: Khetsu.

  But he was not yet the towering beast that had slaughtered the disciples.

  He stood like a merchant of wool, a man accustomed to shearing worth and value from unsuspecting, cruel sheep.

  He appeared, a shepherd of a herd, yet his posture was beginning to fail him.

  He was a brazen swine slouched in the dark, a merchant of flesh brokering a forbidden engagement.

  The flesh he offered was not that of animals; it was flesh that smelled and tasted divine, cultivated directly from the purest source of human spirit, a substance incredibly sought after and valuable to the deepest meaning of the word.

  The life-force of all beings, hidden most deliciously within the human soul.

  Jing (精)

  Among the pitched shades of darkness, a single linen lamp flickered.

  It held on against the frightening and utterly freezing invasion of winds that threatened to extinguish its tiny flame.

  Despite its short stature, the light it cast was unnaturally bright, capable of exposing the nightmarish features of the creatures in attendance.

  They were a flock of giantess birds of prey, the Holy Peng of the five-colored clouds.

  Khetsu took a forward stance, leaning toward the ginormous avians.

  Their anatomy was a defiance of natural law.

  They possessed three pairs of wings: the first pair served on the sides of their heads, appearing more like a crowned jewel of nature or a regal headdress than functioning aerodynamics.

  The second pair connected to their ribs, extruding outward with the traditional span of birdlike wings, a distance that stretched beyond the length of a modern coach bus.

  The third pair served as the balance for their massive bodies, allowing them to navigate the thin, freezone air of the peaks where no other creature could exist.

  Without the protection and isolation of the Tibetan mountains, birds of such scope could never have survived the passage of time.

  The brute, his front vulnerable, began to perform a vomiting parody of parenthood. It was a grotesque mimicry of an avian feeding its helpless offspring.

  Huuk, Hu---uuck.

  A violent retching phase took over his form.

  Khetsu gagged intentionally, an obedient gesture that unveiled itself without consequence.

  His eyes widened, his pupils expanding until they were no longer humane.

  Visible veins sprouted under his throat and led downward, pulsing as the blood vessels flew upward and dilation began.

  His eyes rolled back into his head, yet the sockets remained permanently open.

  Connecting nerves discharged, and a foul liquid exited every orifice of his body.

  What followed was a river of crimson hue, a sticky substance that coated the floor in a deep shade of despair.

  The Peng simply watched.

  They viewed the rite with a cold, feathered expression of agreement.

  Stomach acid, contents of unknown origin, and various other liquids escaped the internal chamber of the swine’s storage.

  A liver slapped against the sloppy mess of the ground.

  Another organ followed suit.

  One by one, each piece of his humanity bid farewell to its former host and slipped into the grotesque heap.

  The avians sharpened their sight, digging into the feast with a mechanical efficiency.

  They dove forth with their beaks and ravaged the mess like a delicious feast.

  When they were finished, only chunks of what had once been Khetsu’s physical body remained.

  Yet, the demon stood slouched as he had before.

  The expulsion discontinued, but he remained alive.

  He lived because the organs he had surrendered belonged to a human vessel, but the pig...

  the pig was never truly human.

  [Vomit blood at will: Inactive]

  “Holy Peng of the Chomolungas! All admiration be to you,”

  Khetsu stated,

  His voice fluctuating between a man’s plea and a beast’s grunt.

  “I offer the most intimate part of my outer Shen and Dao to you, in exchange for limitless wealth to my abode.”

  He clasped his hands tightly together, bowing in a submissive posture full of a twisted devotion.

  As Tang remained entrapped into the bronze mirror, Khetsu’s outline began to transform, appearing as though his skin were composed of thousands of locusts, a form full of gluttony despite the insectoid satiation.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  The room reeked of it.

  Among the Glorious Peng, a female with a distinct velvet coloration-crown of feathers resting upon her head stepped forward.

  Her wings rested calmly, the pair on the sides of her cranium displaying sharply.

  “Mortal. Flesh. Humans, we desire,” she spoke, her lucent golden beak widening to reveal a cavernous interior.

  “Lowly mountainous creatures cannot satisfy the hunger. Quench the desire that burns. Wealth? It shall be immeasurable.”

  These were the ultimate birds of prey, predatory avians of immense weight and size.

  Their wingspans stretched farther than a dozen adults lined up in a row.

  They appeared like eagles, yet the overlapping features and sheer mass spoke of a more sinister origin.

  Revered as the Signature and Holy birds of the Evernest sect, they had actually been born from the carcass of a demonic fish.

  They shed their previous skin to carry the weight of their sins toward the pure Yang Mountains of the north.

  It was their pursuit of redemption through the ultimate deity.

  Sacred as they were deemed by the ignorant, they were heinous and vicious pursuers of human life.

  They descended from the peaks of Tibet, usually driven by a lack of food at the end of their long lives. They would instill a reign of terror, luring upon the emotions of people across miles of territory before devouring them whole.

  Khetsu, now a swine demon in truth, covered the belly of his hollow torso with his hand. Recovering from his submissive posture, he stared into the dilating eyes of the Peng. He was unfazed, carrying an emotionless fa?ade, his eyes devoid of all and any feeling. Suddenly, Tang was pulled back.

  His consciousness snapped back into his body like a taut rubber band, the recoil jarring his entire system.

  He gasped, stumbling backward as the chamber, the master, and the dusty air rushed back to fill the void left by the vision.

  He clutched at the bronze mirror, its metal now cool and inert against his skin, the swirling visions gone, leaving only the distorted reflection of his own terrified face.

  The master stood before him, unchanged, his presence an anchor in the storm of Tang’s reeling mind.

  He had not moved.

  But as Tang looked into the old man's eyes, he saw that they were not merely reflecting the room's dim light.

  They held the exact same images that had just burned themselves into Tang's soul.

  The vomited organs, the feast of the Peng, the transaction of flesh for wealth.

  “Master…” Tang began, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  “You saw it. You saw exactly what I saw.”

  Yeng Chen did not respond with words.

  He simply gave a slow, deliberate nod, the movement as heavy as a tombstone being lowered.

  His dull, lifeless eyes were suddenly deep wells of shared experience, confirming Tang’s suspicion with a chilling finality.

  The bronze mirror clattered to the floor, the sound echoing in the suffocating silence of the chamber.

  Tang’s gaze drifted downwards, landing on the dusty stone where Khetsu’s liver had lain in the vision.

  A phantom stain, a darker shade of grey, seemed to linger there, a permanent scar on the fabric of the room.

  “What… what was that thing?” Tang finally managed to ask, the question forcing its way past the lump in his throat.

  “Was it a mirror? It felt… like I was there. I could smell the… I could smell everything.”

  Yeng’s fingers stopped stroking his beard.

  He placed both hands on the armrests of the ancient seat, pushing himself up with a faint groan that spoke of a thousand unspoken burdens.

  “That mirror is no ordinary reflective surface, Zhao Tang,” he said, his voice raspy, yet carrying an undeniable weight of authority.

  “It is a vessel of Shen technique, a rare and potent artifact we call the ‘Eye of Retrospection.’”

  He began to pace, the dust swirling around his feet like tiny, agitated spirits.

  “It does not simply show an image. It forces the observer to occupy the moment, to breathe the same air and feel the same spiritual pressure as the subject of its focus.

  What you felt, the stench of the offering and the oppressive hunger of the Peng… that was as real as it gets.”

  Tang shuddered, hugging his arms around himself.

  The lingering chill of the vision seeped into his bones.

  “Those… birds,” Tang pressed, the word feeling inadequate for the monstrosities he had witnessed.

  “Khetsu called them the Holy Peng of the Chomolungas. The disciples… the sect…I knew--" Tang took a pause, he read chinese history when he was school; in the form of Xiao Tang. He had an idea that the Peng were mythological creatures from his Chinese folk research. He recalled his 5th grade research, but he couldn't sound obvious. "I, I was taught they were divine guardians. Symbols of purity.”

  A bitter, hollow laugh escaped Yeng’s lips, a sound like stones grinding together.

  “Divine? A myth woven by men who fear the truth, Zhao Tang.

  The Peng are no more divine than a vulture that picks at a carcass.

  They are ancient creatures, yes, born from the corrupted essence of a leviathan that once swam in the primordial seas.

  When the mountains rose, they were trapped, their great size making the lowlands a prison.”

  He stopped pacing and turned to face Tang, his eyes seeming to absorb the meager light in the room.

  “They survive on Qi, on life essence. And for a creature of that magnitude, the Qi of a mountain goat or a snow leopard is but a single grain of rice to a starving man.

  They crave the concentrated, refined life force of a cultivated human soul.

  That is why they sought out our sect, and why Khetsu… that foolish, greedy boy… sought them out in return.”

  Tang’s mind raced back to the vision. The visceral, nauseating transaction. “The organs,” he said, the words tasting foul on his tongue. “He… vomited them out. For them.”

  “The offering,” Yeng corrected, his voice devoid of emotion. “The most potent parts of a cultivator’s Jing—the life essence forged in the dantian. To a mortal, it’s poison. To a Peng, it is a delicacy beyond measure, a draft of pure vitality.

  He surrendered pieces of his own humanity, his own cultivated soul, to secure their alliance.”

  Tang stared at the old man, a cold dread creeping up his spine.

  "I suspect, Khetsu traded the lives of new disciples in exchange for luxuries to adorn the Sect."

  "When I returned and after destroying his monstrous self, the conscious remaining disciples, save for you who was unconscious, tended to the rest of the unconscious or slightly living disciples. I noticed that the sect was decorated in gilded and passionate jewels as well."

  "Something that an ordinary sect interim guardian could not manage without help from higher beings." Yeng added.

  Hedonism.

  The word echoed in Tang’s mind like a tolling bell.

  He had swum in those waters before, in his life as Xiao Fang.

  He had tasted the poison of limitless pleasure and seen how it rotted a man from the inside out, leaving only a hollow shell that demanded more, more, more.

  He saw the same emptiness in the memory of Khetsu’s eyes as he offered up his very soul for material wealth.

  "Master Yeng," Tang began, the question burning on his tongue, finally forcing its way out. "Why were you gone? When you and Khetsu confronted each other, which Tseng claims to have happened 2 days ago now, ...he said something. He said something along the lines of, 'You finally returned. I was so lost when you left without meaning.'"

  Tang watched the master's face, searching for any flicker of emotion in that ancient, placid exterior.

  For a long moment, Yeng Chen remained silent.

  He turned away, his gaze fixed on the wall where Khetsu’s phantom liver had stained the floor.

  The silence stretched, becoming a presence in the room, heavier than the dust and colder than the stone.

  "I left," Yeng said at last, his voice so low it was almost a whisper, "to seek the answer to a question."

  He paused, and when he spoke again, there was a profound weariness in his tone that went beyond physical fatigue.

  "The Trinomial Clan, my lineage, we are the Evernest. We were tasked with a sacred duty since the very founding of this place. To shepherd the pure of spirit toward the path of Dao, to maintain the balance between the mountain's sanctity and the greed of the world."

  "I may appear Old, but I'm more younger than you are. Spritually, the lineage I carry is more than thousands of yours. Yet, I remain the only cultivator that still lives from my Clan." he continued, the bitterness in his tone subtle but unmistakable. "It is a lonely vigil."

  He finally turned back to face Tang, and in the old man’s eyes, Tang saw a reflection of the same desolation he felt in the nihilistic void.

  "But, somethings are to found for later. You will get more answers as the summer passes. For now, be known that I attempted a journey to the peak of the Chomolunga for a great meditation."

  A faint, ghostly smirk touched Yeng's lips, a fleeting expression of pride that was quickly swallowed by the encroaching shadows.

  "Were you able to succeed in your pursuits?" Tang asked, testing the waters. "Did you succeed in making it to the peak?"

  The ghost of a smirk vanished from Yeng's face, replaced by an expression of profound neutrality. He looked at Tang, not as a master to a disciple, but as one ancient being to another, as if weighing the question itself.

  "That," Yeng stated, his voice as dry and unyielding as the dust that coated the forgotten chamber, "is one of the things to be found later on."

  The words hung in the stale air, heavy with implication.

  It was not a dismissal, but a redirection. A promise to a test.

  Yeng Chen gestured toward the now-empty doorway, a silent command that their discussion had reached its conclusion.

  "Go rest, speak with the other disciples or whatever you may do within the boundaries of the sect. Let it be known that I am the master, I partially erased the memory of Khetsu and the ordeal from their minds."

  Tang processed this. He was the sole keeper of the night's full horror, the only one and perhaps Tseng too, who remembered the pig-devil's name, the details of its transformation, and the true, vicious nature of the Peng.

  The others carried a vague, sanitized trauma, the memory of a tragedy with its cause conveniently excised.

  He turned and walked out of the desolate chamber, leaving Yeng Chen alone with his secrets and the dust of forgotten atrocities.