Volume Two: Eyes of Hate
Chapter XXV
The Cave
Po reached for the hundredth climb on the ridge, stretching his tense paw, and mounted on the bamboo platform. He had almost attempted to fall about seventeen times, but his avian companion boosted him up to the hard-to-reach areas, carried him across on rocky cliffs and logs; the group strode and bounded toward steep surfaces. Po's breath became harsh, which scratched his inner throat. "Whoo! Climbing will give me sores tomorrow. Go on," he wafted his paw and sat down with a loud thud. "I'll catch up."
Xing likely ignored the panda's fatigue excuse at once Po and Shen entered the hole of dimness hollow; Crane landed next to them with Mantis, watching their six from jombies after the avian soared among them. The climb was long and tiring. The tiger knelt and scrutinized these viridescent splotches leave a zigzag trail into the velvet shadow. He grasped the jade swan's gore that Crane mauled his chi with, which Xing discovered Li Han's lore that the panda's complexity particles of blessing possessed the advantage against the immorality. "There's the trail," the Nine's Leader uttered.
The Dragon Warrior knelt on thick, light gray rock, gasping. "In a cave, where bats sleep? Oh, no!" He shook.
Shen snapped. "Oh, yes. Does your look feel hesitant? The pool of darkness does not startle the peacock," Shen scowled, craning his head near Po's face. "Let's move, Panda."
"Five more minutes," he continued panting after gestured his index finger.
"There's no time for that snack stop!"
"Okay."
Mantis creaked his wings. "At least, you all climbed on ridges to get here, and Crane and I have been waiting for hours."
Chen Xing ignored most of their voices when browsing on a wooden barrel with timber sticks wrapped with dry cloths. Next to the barrel bore a small portion of rock oils, only two remaining. He took one rock oil and the stone from the ground together on the cloth and scraped, kindling the torch. "Save your chi. You'll need it before you engage Wang. Let's go."
Shen whirled his red oak pole into the cave's hollow, which wafted its light cold breeze, the ghost-like chants murmuring in the dark. Po wandered behind his peacock student as he balanced his way through, his limb supporting the thick and wet rock structure. At further away from the Dragon Warrior, Xing kept his distance by the time he readied his chokuto, watching their backs, including his.
Po concentrated on the hollow surroundings, which the burrow appeared its faded droplets, moistened gravels, roomy enough that could fit more than a hundred people in a volume. Shen squatted the path, training on the scattered specks of dying green, meandered ahead and farther. Green trail splotches mesmerized with slow pulses. "This way," Shen whispered to Chen Xing.
The torch which Xing glided forward, the sound of fire tinges flipping the bedsheet. For a moment, they advanced with caution through the hollow, emerging glimmers of dying sapphire dust affixing rocky structures. One step snapped its compact under the tiger's feet, and Po checked the layer of the crown, almost widening his green eyes. Splinters of a horn-less bovine skull shattered and farther down into the complex hole, layered with scattered bones.
Mantis clung to his belly. "Geez. No wonder this cave can be this big thing for scaring people here."
Chen Xing inspected the layer of the bovine's crown, brushing his thumb on the surface. "What happened here?" Crane asked, as far as the avian and the albino peacock wandered in the cavern, tracing wavy blades, halberds, and daggers left beside bones. "Were they bandits?"
"Robber," discovered Shen, as he found yuans on the rabbit's body, splattered coins over.
One robber, six bandits, and a large bull — this one is the leader I stepped on?
Xing scrutinized the round chest with fractured ribcages. The bull's spine left with a familiar icon — a detailed flame pin that the tiger sought many of those who wore from the Gongmen City battle, thousands of them.
Fire Clan. What were they doing in here before those bandits died?
"Look. There's that trail leaving behind," Po pointed at the next hole and raised his head. "And it's — Up there with bamboo ladders? Aw, no!"
Po's cry echoed the cave, vibrating the structures of his voice. Loud and clear enough to make the group swim their heads wildly, distant rubble approached above them. For a moment, Po's shout was in silent, deafening soft rumbles. Chen Xing faced the tunnel where he and the four traveled on, remained still, albeit soft cracks lingered farther. The rubble was finally hushed.
"Sorry, guys. My fault," Po regretted. "I'm sure there's still a light from where we came—"
"Not anymore. We're trapped in here," Chen Xing rushed his walk toward Po, glancing on bamboo stairs among rocky platforms.
"Now, what are we going to do?" Crane said.
"Climb. There's no turning back now."
One ladder and the next, and beyond that was tiring to Po's strength, wearing his muscles of flabby arms off as he made for the fifteenth ladder, two more to reach as Shen and Crane were the first ones on the seventeenth. Chen Xing reached for the Dragon Warrior's paw, pulling him to the wooden platform. Panting heavily while bending one knee, Po meandered above where his student and his avian companion stared down.
Not that panda asthma again. I count the mountain climb as the terrible one! This climb was slightly worst than the stairway to Jade Palace.
"You good, Po?" Chen Xing aided.
"Yeah, give me a moment. I need to breathe."
"We're almost there."
After Po and Xing caught up to Crane and Shen, the group barged in another complex hole with tiny splotches of the jade trail ahead. Deafening shouts gloomed across narrowed enough to sense as the tiger twitched his black ears, stretching his arm with the torch further. The tiger roamed through the narrow gaps of upward stalagmites; farther down the steep of the hole, ended the jade splotch streak.
Jombie swan's trail stops here. Now, where?
The avian pardoned while observing rocky moistures. "Where are those bats? When was the last time we ever saw them?"
Mantis reflected. "Last time, they were in Gongmen Battle. Remember those bloodsuckers that almost killed Lei Lei at Kong Bai Stadium?"
"It's been months, Mantis. I'm certain they were here before. Where are they now?"
Shen roamed through the side of the upward stalactites, readying his wooden pole when he checked for the surface above him. Nothing else but tiny sparkles of sky blue was around. Perhaps if only a tiny wing from the bat emerged and squealed to his brothers across the endless cave, that would be a nightmare trapping newcomers in the turf. Good enough to notice no movement from vicious creatures, as the Dragon Warrior checked with Shen meandering close to him, and Chen Xing beckoning his torch side by side, searching for another pit.
The bug softly grunted. "Those bats do creep around and bite us hard. I don't want to end up horrible how the girl got hurt."
"And Lei Lei's alive, Mantis. We don't see any bats in here, and that's a good sign," said Crane.
"I hope so."
I hope so, too. The Dragon Warrior meandered and knelt in front of the jade trail, whereas the splotch before the end brushed off, a talon shape as he determined. His paw, which wielding his chi within his palm, not to unleash the sun, nearly touched the stroke of the stain, and the trail scattered. Jade is still weakened from my chi. And my colleague's as well. Po ascended from his knee and strolled to the tiger. "Xing, have you found a path? Buddy?"
Their faces followed where the panda gazed on, and the tiger stretched his main arm forward, the torch engulfing the mouth of the cave. Not as before the Furious Five ever witnessed Tigress sometimes in solitude, something much puzzlement than to glimpse at her anxiety, Crane skidded closer with Po to Chen Xing, whose body motioned still and calm. "What's wrong with him?" Mantis pondered. Shen joined beside Crane and Po, inspecting any signs of the tiger's movement but those eyes. His stone eyes grew wide, his breath squirming in his muzzle, forcing in and out.
The next hollow, gloomed sudden darkness, swimming its fading stream of gray and eyes of wine — deep merlot. The tiger's cold sweat dripped on Xing's neck, dribbling his back. No. . . Not you. . . The ghost paddled near, pacing the tiger's breath as Xing lowered, his head rearing. The torch hushed its sheets of fabric light, dulling the cave's mouth. The ghost with a faint scar on its ink muzzle dissipated the shadow cloud, which the torch now kindled more. Mutters and the coos from the forest fire and his old village silenced.
Breathe in, breathe out. Do what Po says.
Xing did most of what he must while closing his eyes, breathing in and out. For a moment, reflection was worth noting to be tranquil from disturbing howls among him. Hearings, by sensing strokes of fire surroundings, his ears diminished, the apparition from the burning forest smothered to a silence. Finally relieved to glimpse the shadow of the horror, now dissipated ink sheets to a small white hole, the tiger stepped forward —
The barrier, a shape of the hoof, and dribbling ember eyes rushed in his head, and Xing launched to the side, bellowing. The torch he carried collapsed next to his feet.
"WHOA! Xing, relax—!" Po skidded beside the tiger, who skidded behind the moist rock, panting in terror.
"What was that?" Mantis startled.
Crane's head was paling. "I don't like it, Po. We should find another way out of the cave, now."
"No!" Xing clasped his chest while he flooded his air in cold lungs, flaring his veins. He glared at the cave's light. "We're almost there. Wang is near."
"Are you okay?" Po insisted, palming Xing's upper shoulder. The tiger wobbled his saunter while bridging his paw against the structure. "Something was wrong, and even you were looking at something that scares you. What did you see?"
Strains under the tiger's lungs pressured further beforehand, not wanting to clench his eyes closed. He aligned his back. "Don't worry about me. If I ever see anything with my own eyes and go frightened, do not interfere, any of you," he fixed his eyes at them. "I'll handle the evil spirit. Even if it bothers me."
Shen stepped in beside his panda teacher. "Was that the beast who mauled you?"
One way and the other, I will put an end to you again, Huoju. Not this time.
Chen Xing let his firm breath out, eying on the cavern's hole, which dimmed the sparkle of white meeting the reflection of his stone eyes, reverberating muffled shouts, that you could hear a scream covered in cloth.
"There's light, the aperture of the cave. We'll go there," advised the Nine's Leader.
Not long enough to approach the light, which the gap above unveiled the enormous mouth of the cavern, the group reached for the steep ridge after sidling on the edge of the structure, veined with tiny roots of plants and leaves. Muttering questions were thriving from the four, pondering their tiger colleague uneasily, further on to give him aid; under dubious enough, Shen suggested the one who wounded Chen Xing. Under the group was the lip of the cave's barrier, its thick rock glistened with soils from outside, the cloudy horizon beaming the shadow of the cavern's end of the throat.
Shen inspected the tiger clasp on the tsuka of the chokuto, drawing an inch of the fine blade. The name Wugu of the sword shimmered crystal emerald, vibrating tinges brighter and real. The throat of the cavern's mouth thundered the Jade Antlers's growl, made the group sidle behind a rocky surface. "Those cowards will not find me, you halfwit! I still want their souls!"
Curses from the Jade Antlers spluttered, piling full of hatred to whoever he spoke to while feasting his eyes on the jombies he controlled. To the Dragon Warrior, he reflected on the talkative one, in a gruesome way in common. "That guy acts like your student, Xing."
"No wonder," Mantis agreed, now leaping on Chen Xing's shoulder from Crane's conical hat.
The deer with pointy antlers appeared upon one of the bamboo platforms, which bore strong woods to any individual's weights. Amid Wang were ancient stones of dragons cloaked in earthy mosses. They were individuals of the four, which represented names of large rivers in all of China. The jade emperor was in the middle of marvelous creatures, a goat in voluminous velvet green hanfu robes.
Wang's head twitched upward. "Ow, you piece of filth! I'll boil you in that saucepan! Hey, you lady with stripes! Mind your claws if I were you!"
"Wang's still fighting at the Valley of Peace," Xing figured, turning to the three as Mantis tapped on his shoulder. "Listen. We are confronting him. By that, I'll have to persuade him first. If anything goes south from Wang, either me or Po will have to cast that jade magic out of his body."
The panda moved his head closer. "And you know how to do that, right?"
"Apparently not," he said, made Crane offer a small sigh. "One way another, Po, we'll restrain him by any means necessary. I want him alive. No Wushi Fingerhold."
The avian had drawn his head close. "How can I help?"
"You, Shen, and Mantis will handle Wang jombies," he inspected the cavern's mouth briefly before seeing his colleagues. "There's no doubt they will come in a harm's way when he summons here anytime. If you see a jombie leopard with a crown jewel, that's a colleague of mine from Righteous Seven. Bring Lady Kasi back, and accompany her to Jade Palace."
"We'll take her there, Xing," the avian nodded.
"Continue your approach," Shen bobbed.
The tunnel vision of Wang's eyes trained on pacing sights of the Valley of Peace in a rampage. Each speck beckoned to squirm his view, upon one scene and the other twitching his head; his jombie servants attempted to engage one that followed the rest: Tai Lung clobbering three kicks in the air against Zhan, Tigress unleashing agile fists, leading her uppercut to the rhino, and in the air, she hammered her foot on his head. "HA!"
You wretch. . . I'll show you how I fight like a Little Bull.
Several servants feasted their eyes onward the striped feline, their polished throats roaring. The bunny villager was struck by Monkey's wooden pole, which glistened his storming yellow light; Viper clenched her body under the correctional rhino's ankles, striving her way ahead of her feline sister in the middle of the Valley path near Mr. Ping's. Various upon his scenes writhed with sharp cries, one view exhibited a gray wolf in cobalt sleeveless shirt with a flower snarled at the boar jombie.
Wang wriggled his jombie toward the she-wolf, pulsed his hoof on her chest, throwing her whole weight onto a structure of Masters of Jade Palace pictures. Cried in agony, Lotus wrestled the boar's stone arm, which his hoof fastened her throat. "Here's my prize. You are coming to Iron Antlers, Lotus."
"I'm not yours," Lotus growled, her silver paw angrily cast her yellow orb.
The boar crashed on two tables, and Wang staggered his stance, made him chuckle while brushing his muzzle.
"There you are. Stop in the name of Kung Fu justice!"
Only that happened when the panda announced at the Jade Antlers, the jombie porcupine swift his turn and aimed his bow at the Dragon Warrior, pulling his quill with haste. "HOLD!" Next to the ancient warrior, a Tibet red deer gestured his hoof to a halt, hissing his teeth. "Put your quill down. Here's a visitor —" Wang rotated his head at first, "— continue slaughtering the rest, my servants."
Now eying on the emerald eyes of the panda, the Jade Antlers simpered while chuckling menacingly. The Dragon Warrior sauntered. "I assume you must be Wang. I hear you are the next Jade Slayer. I mean, I call you the Jade Antlers!"
Jade Antlers? Who the hell calls on those who are total badasses?
Wang beckoned his head with mockery, darting his hoof at Po. "Isn't this fat panda called a Dragon Warrior, theee Dragon Warrior?" the Jade Antlers palmed his own chest. "My pleasure."
"Okay. First of all, we never met before, but I heard you're such a big fan."
Wang bent his muzzle. "I never follow your inspiration — such a shame on me. My motivation is simply to splatter bloodshed on my first occasion. My second occasion is to rule with my servants," the red Tibetan deer spread his limbs apart. "Would you like to be part of my team?"
"How I'm honored!" the panda gaped. His surprise started to collapse by the time Po kept his posture in serenity. "I would love to, but I can't be sure I'm interested in evil schemes. There's a saying that every child and even an adult should know. Strangers can be friends, as friends can be strangers."
"Oh? And how dumbfounded am I? As by stupid you are, trust no stranger, even a friend has come to mind to be a trickster," the Tibetan deer sharpened his pupils, directly contacting somewhere over the panda's shoulder. "You have brought the backstabber."
Po glimpsed at one who readied for his wooden pole. The former peacock lord gave a silent scowl alongside the panda. The Jade Antlers strode back and forth, side by side, while reflecting on the second guest. "I've listened to strange rumors about the peacock's resurrection — the return of Lord Shen. And these rumors meant to be true," he stopped and glared at Shen. "You are the arrogant son who massacred black and white bears. How did that feel when you bathed in their fears, panda killer?"
"By silencing your tongue if that's what your mouth disgusts feelings. I suggest you antagonize somewhere else."
Wang clenched his teeth, nodding. "Thank the Gods you are safe so that the Peafowl Noble bloodline can persist for a generation. But, quite an evil as you are, and always will be. Under these circumstances to what you believe in, make no mistake: Pandas will tear you apart, Lord Shen."
"Enough, Wang. It's over."
Neither Shen nor Po intervened in their voices to stand against Wang's poisonous tongue, but their tiger colleague was the one who hollered, stepped in beside the peacock and panda. Crane flapped his wings next to Po, and Mantis creaked his on the avian's hat.
"WE MEET, AT LAST!" the Jade Antlers roared, registering the shakes of the enormous cavern that echoed Wang. His scream briefly died out.
"This one is mine," Chen Xing wavered his paw on Po and Shen. Strange things adapted: Both Shen and Po glimpsed at their tiger colleague, and the antelope, known the next Jade Slayer as Wang, cheered with his hooves throwing in between his antlers.
"Where the hell have you been hiding? I finally searched for you for five years," Wang snapped.
The tiger pressed on the deer. "You are bearing those eyes of hate. Who formed you into another Jade Slayer? What caused you?"
"I'm so glad you finally asked first, rather than these mutts of yours who they should have questioned me about my condition. I found that I felt ravaging the flesh, sensing those savages that mock the Gods, insulting every master like you."
Shen quietly growled under his long throat, and the tiger wavered his paw, stopping the albino. "Wang, you're not yourself right now. What you're capable of using that loathsomeness enchantment, you're desperate by guiding your minions, butchering most of the people. Later on, filling despise, you'll doom thousands, and you may never be the same as you are."
"I'm extremely talented with my newest gift, Xing! And by using that gift, I can converge these souls across thousands of their homelands, immerge my chi in their bodies. Starting with you," Wang pulled his wicked grin, spreading his hooves above him.
For a moment, the Swan Dancer Amy screeched her glassy hail from the cavern's mouth, soaring onward. The swan jombie perched on the dragon stone, making Crane ready his wings. "Where did you find that gift?" Chen Xing interrogated the Jade Antlers, stepping ahead. The porcupine stone readied his quills, only let the tiger cease as Wang chuckled once more.
"Why don't you ask that creature who barely achieved his quest to devour all masters. Ask him how he neglected his wretch. You should inquire me something he lost these. . ."
Wang unveiled these sharpened edges behind his belt. Po had registered echoes of the wind that sliced with its scream across the mountains where he was along with the pandas. Shen collapsed his crests from clinking chains that snapped with lightning emerald sparks. Xing glittered his wary eyes, recognizing the metal that tinged with the Beast of Vengeance's view.
By the hour of velvet black with pale stars swimming with the clouds, streams poured its drizzles. Each drop battered foams, the air tinged to a soft white. In his traveling green robe, Wang had strolled down to the southern path beside the bamboo forest, vouching for his ideal in day one he could dare face to face on one who ripped him apart. When thunders of yells spread like wildfire across the sky, snapping trees farther away, Master Le's son cast behind his back on one of round stones for cover, unable to witness who or what drew his attention.
"You are one of the panda's friends. I have a proposition for you," said the original Jade Slayer.
Onward toward the mountain cliff where the creek raced ripples further, Wang crouched behind the stone and peeped at the enormous bull trod back and forth near the edge, spitting curses while wavering his jade knives. Gladly, the deer was there in time to see another combating the Master of Pain — the bear in black, Phantom. Moments went on until the black bear plunged the Mightiest Warrior's ribcage, the witch screamed while soared across the velvet blue sky, Wang raced down toward the cliff, gazing at the lake swallowing the bull.
He crawled away from the three (two warriors and one yak villager), avoided their suspicious surroundings. He sought and recognized the Nine's Dancer and Doctor while the wolf and their yak companion heave and bear Kai toward the lake bank and into the forest. "Where are his knives? Where are they?"
The next night, just as the sunlight's cherry and tangerine drowned in a deep to velvet black with pale stars, the Iron Antlers dived from the cliff and plunged to the lake, swimming downward. Foams met across his surroundings, the deep emerald hue under slowly pulsing. Breaking more strokes, Wang fondled the fine blade's edge, the jade lightning touching his hoof.
He seized the jade knife's grip. And the Iron Antlers roared his foams.
The Iron Antlers trailed out of the lake, pulling General Kai's links of two blades. "I will find you, Kai. I'll put an end to you first before I kill Xing," Wang promised.
"You were there at the waterfall lake," feared Xing, "found Kai's swords underwater. How? How could you?!"
"After all these years, your competitor despises you after the tournament," snapped the Jade Antlers. "No matter the resentment that his spoiled buck master complains this and the other for many moons, as one given this peace treaty to your feeble teacher from me, I seek a rematch. This particular enchantment is the next level of my conception, reflecting a single thought of someone's head should crown on my antlers."
"That's your imagination," Xing growled.
"Speaking of imagination," continued Wang, stroking the sharp edge of the fine blade, "should you like to tell your tiny beast how he lost the war and his battalion? Tell him that his dead wretch sings in his sleep but never get to speak with each other after his competitor burned his house?"
He's been watching my student. How long has Wang been looking at his views?
"No matter how many times Kai tries to bury every bloodshed," the deer grimaced, "the war never changes, but soldiers were, even him."
The Nine's Leader quivered his head. "You're mad. General Kai lost everything, and by everything, I meant his loyalty, his devotion, all of them," Chen Xing drew his head close. "You don't know how that warlord feels when someone he knew died right in front of him. Can you even bear the loss of love?"
"Such a pity. I bear hate than this world rotting in suffer."
Shen and Po watch the tiger shake his head. "The Nine and all classes know that you have complexities from your dad, Wang. Master Le talked to Ming to my palace and said he hadn't seen you for months. Head home without the jade, and forget about the rematch."
Wang pointed one of Kai's blades at the tiger. "You shattered my soul, Xing. You gave that away to me, and I want it back — the last round I should have won to make my father proud."
"Hey, isn't that exactly like your partner's student complaining about?" Crane asked Po.
"The leopard is the secret ingredient. Tai Lung's been missing that—"
Chen Xing snapped while gesticulated his open paw. "Listen to me, and hear me well, Wang. I will not compete in the tournaments. Your dad and your brothers should know that issue, knowing the Fire Clan will know where I am. You need to let the past go."
The Tibetan deer forced his rough growl, sighed in disappointment. "Such a cowardly warrior, not accepting the challenge against the challenger who demands a rematch," he squinted his emerald eyes. "That white dragon changed you. I was there in Gongmen City when you drove that coach and almost ran me over. I was there when you did sword fighting against Prince Huoju. I was there when you brought that creature to the sky, cleansed every demon soul. That was when I left Lu Disciples to do a scheme that neither of my father or my brothers can do: hunting you and the Nine. But I found one path — the path that advances my plan, just as simple enough to find you, with my army."
"You have no army, Wang. Jombies, including you, will be back to normal, and you are heading back home. You need help."
The deer's head had drawn away, inch by inch, softly closing his eyes. Giving a moment to consider his surrender, Wang brought his breath under his throat. "And how will you help me?"
"Submit that gift," Xing said. "Whatever that gift you found did something to you to spill all that hate on me, don't be the next General Kai who claimed that his tortoise brother betrayed him. You will suffer from it, Wang."
"We all live and die with sickness on this Earth, even unfortunate deaths," he bent his muzzle. Wang drifted his glance on his feet, embarking on nodding at his old rival. "Perhaps. . . Perhaps I have brought another who has desires to wanting not only supreme but to regain recognition from what's lost."
Avian screeches thundered from the cave's mouth, emerging two jade hawks with sinister emerald glares. Below their talons, they gripped, carried Chen Xing's student.
Author's Note:
— Only legend readers/writers caught a title reference of the redemption fic we love to read. If ya spotted it, which is hard to miss, then hooray! Those who could not find what I mean, I'll give you a recommendation of the story called "The Return of Lord Shen" by Synchronized Harmony, here on FanFiction. His redemption fic is promising!
— And the final chapter of Volume Two is next! Are y'all ready for the falling action?! Let's go!