Deep inside of the woods, a streaming river relentlessly flowing through the passage and on the riverbank, Li Kong was dipping his feet in the water as he wiped off sweats from his body using a towel.
Nearly a month had passed by since he'd first trained and his body had shown some differences since the last time he checked. His muscles on his body had been more defined.
After a few minutes, he retracted back his feet and stretched his body for a while before standing up before a light voice rang and asked, "What you'll do after this?"
"Hmm... I don't know maybe I'll take a stroll around the forest? When I was hunting with uncle Ye, he told me that somewhere in the forest it smelled so bad so I'm thinking of searching it. What do you think about this, White?" He gazed at the white bead on his palm.
"Sure, why not? But don't push yourself too much. Tomorrow you'll be carrying those buckets up the mountain again. Last week, you finally successfully carried it up and down the mountain once so tomorrow we're going to up the difficulty to two times so save your energy as much as you could."
"Two?!" Li Kong widened his eyes. His voices shook from utter disbelief. "My legs nearly snapped in half doing it once and now you want me to do it twice?"
"And did your legs snapped afterwards?" White snorted. "And before, I planned you do it at least three times but when I see you barely making it halfway the first time you did it, I changed my mind and made it so that you just have to carry it once. Consider it my goodwill." White stated like it was the most normal thing to said.
"It was supposed to be three times?!" Li Kong raised three of his finger and looked at it with utter disbelief before shifting back to the bead and saying, "Let's just forget about this and investigate the weird smell. On to the deep forest we go!"
Li Kong cheerfully exclaimed as if the talk before never happened while White kept his silent and followed him from behind.
...
"Should be around here right?" Li Kong popped out his head from the bush and observed the surroundings.
Li Kong recalled that his uncle wasn't someone who would travel deep into the woods and being his uncle's most trusted henchmen, he could more or less guess where his uncle went to.
Something weird is definitely happening here. Li Kong thought to himself. Where do all the animals go?
The forest was unusually silent. The constant noises usually present all disappeared as the sound being left was the leaves swayed by the wind.
Frown creased between his eyebrows and by the time he finished scanning through the trees and bushes, something entered his nostrils and as he sniffed at it, almost immediately, his body was thrown into disorient and he jumped backward.
"Li Kong! What's wrong?" Sound filled with concern entered Li Kong's ears but he couldn't care less about it for now.
His eyes teared up and gastric juices threatened to knock on his throat but no matter how hard his body tried to force, nothing expelled from within his body.
Li Kong was on all four as saliva continuously dripping down from his mouth. He closed his eyes and recollected his thoughts before pulling his body backward and let it fell to the gravity, landing on his tailbone.
'What is that smell?' Li Kong wasn't completely recovered as his chest sank and resurfaced along with his breath.
The smell was akin to something rotten. It was sticky, pungent, and nauseating. It was nothing like Li Kong ever smelled in his entire life.
After a period of a time, Li Kong planted his palm onto the ground and pushed himself then he wiped off the remaining saliva on his lips before reaching to the bead inside of his waist pouch and shortly after, his ears filled with a voice of concern as the bead glowed increasingly.
"Li Kong! Are you alright?"
"I'm okay." Li Kong said.
"What's happening? Why did you suddenly choke like that?"
"The smell was so bad." Li Kong explained shortly to White and after that, he stopped talking and waited for the bead's response.
"Rotten. Is it a corpse then? Dead animals perhaps? But if it was carcasses, how come the smell able to overwhelm you?" White asked.
Li Kong shook his head, "I don't know but we have to find out what it is."
White replied no further and after a moment catching his breath, Li Kong started to move again.
"Cover your noses with something." White advised.
Li Kong nodded and draw out the towel he had used before, pushing it deep against his nose. After that, he slowly proceed and recalled where the smell coming from.
While treading his path, he looked again at his surroundings and no signs of life detected near him. Even the tiny insects disappeared from sight, everything was silent.
Something slowly building up and creeping upwards his spine but he swallowed it down and continued further.
The stench becoming more intense each time they walked and after a while, they arrived in front of giant bushes.
Li Kong observed the giant bushes with suspicion and looked at the white bead on top of his palm and as the bead glowed, Li Kong ceased his hesitation and walked past the bushes and right off the bat, Li Kong's sense of smell was overwhelmed by a putrid scent but he braved through the sensation and opened his eyes and in front of his eyes, lied a mountain of red.
The mountain was built upon Moon Rabbit corpses.
In front of the mountain, heads with the red eyes flickering by the ray of the sun, arranged in a specific manner, circling the mountain of corpses, dyeing the ground beneath them red and behind the mountain, stood an old wooden sign, ordained by many heads of Moon Rabbits, a full body nailed to the sign with its guts spilling out everywhere.
Li Kong froze at the sight of the mountain. His whole body put into a stop and unknowingly, the towel slipped from his hand, exposing his nose to the air.
And as the putrid smell began invading, Li Kong couldn't contain his stomach any longer and he stormed out as fast as he could and spilled out everything out of his guts while the bead floated still in the air and observed the scene with attentively.
'What kind of sick mind made this?' White grimly said within his heart and floated close to the mountain of corpses.
He looked at the heads circling in front of the mountain of corpses and after seeing it and didn't reach to any conclusion, White ignored the head and moved onto the next part, the mountain.
Upon further inspection, he found many of headless bunny mingled in the group and all of them had its stomach opened up, revealing the bloody guts within. Then he discovered beneath the mountain, there was something else of a distinct color beside red and white stood out from his vision.
He emitted out an invisible energy out of the bead and slowly pushed the pile of corpses aside and he took a look at what might be it and it turned out to be slab of some stone, roughly carved to be sphere.
After that, he set aside the whole mountain, causing it to tumbling down to the side and revealing the full size of the sphere.
'Now I look more of it, it looked more like some kind of plate than a simple sphere.' White thought to himself.
The edges of the sphere sticking out a little from the rest, perhaps to prevent the mountain from collapsing.
After inspecting the sphere, White shifted his focus back at the ominous wooden sign. The sign was stained with the crimson color and signs of decay apparent on the wooden surface. On the surface, some kind of strange symbols carved on top of it.
'What language could this be?' White tried to make sense of the symbols but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't figure out the meaning behind of the symbols and he set it aside for now.
Then White slowly inspected all of the head etched deep but found no profound meaning behind them and slowly went up to the only bunny who its head still attached. The bunny was nailed through the back of his mouth, its mouth facing up as if it was pleading to the heaven.
And at last, White arrived at the last piece of the bloody scene, the butchered head standing on the very top of the wooden sign, the very defining feature of a head wasn't even present anymore on it as everything turned into a mess. It was like whoever did this forcefully thrusted the head onto the sharp edges of the sign.
White raised the head with his invisible hand and throw it far into somewhere before looking back at the sign once again and there he found a symbol of a twisted eye looking upwards to the heaven.
'This...'
A rustles coming out from his behind and he immediately shouted, "Who's there!"
"It's me, White." A weak and youthful voice spoke.
White turned all of his attention to the source of the voice and flied to his side hurriedly.
"Are you okay, Li Kong?"
"I'm fine, I think. Rather..." Li Kong replied weakly before gazing at the bloody mess in front of him.
"What... What is this?" His voice filled with apparent disgust.
The scene had changed considerably since the last time he seen it.
"Did you do all of this, White?"
"Yes. I inspected it before you come back." White stated calmly.
"Did you figure it out what this mess was?"
"Not yet. But it was probably an altar of some sort."
"An altar?" Li Kong asked.
"I've seen some civilizations build an altar like this to sacrifice to what they perceived as their 'gods'."
"Why?"
"To grant them wishes. Some think that with offering animal or in some extreme cases, human sacrifices, the gods will showered them with whatever the want. Fortune, fertility, good weather and whatnot but most of the times, their sacrifices went in vain as their 'gods' didn't listen or maybe they couldn't." White scoffed. Each of his words was filled with contempt.
Li Kong noticed the change of White's tone but refrain from asking about it any further and instead asking, "Then is it the same with... this?"
"It's similar but this one grotesque do stick out from the rest."
At White's words, Li Kong looked back at the red scene before him and unknowingly nausea knocked on his throat again but this time, he swallowed it forcefully and strengthened his hold of the ground.
"Will anything happen to the village?" Li Kong asked.
White stayed silent for a moment before saying, "I don't know. But it's impossible to say that someone in the village didn't have a role in the making of this altar."
"What should we do now?" Li Kong's voice appeared lost.
"We burn them."
White collected the corpses and carefully placed it so that the fire wouldn't spread to anywhere.
After White had arranged them, Li Kong, eyes closed, stood before the pile of corpses, then he opened his eyes and glanced at the pile of corpses with pity in his eyes before he readied his stance and took a step forward.
'O' Flame, heed my call.'
Following his command, flame flaring up from his knuckles went straight to the pile of corpses. Smokes slowly made their way up and the corpses was swallowed whole by the flame.
In front of the burning ember, Li Kong stood silently before clapping his hand into one and prayed with his eyes closed.
White took a glance at his student before looking at the burning mountain for the last time.
"Let's go home, Li Kong." Li Kong felt something entered the pouch he carried on his waist.
Li Kong nodded without uttering single words and made his way back home.
The sound of fire crackling filled his ears before gradually disappeared.
...
Li Kong parted with White midway. White told him to gathered his thoughts and the usual cultivation session would be put on hold for tonight. And so without any places to be at, Li Kong mindlessly wandered through the village.
He met with many people in his way and politely greeted them like the usual but for some reason, worries started to weigh on his heart even more as he smiled at the passing familiar faces and the scene of their face ended up at the same place as those bunnies flashed on his mind and made him sick in the stomach.
The usual crowdy voices he heard dimmed in volume and static voice rang deep inside of his brain but still, he continued to walk.
After an unknown amount of time, Li Kong found himself standing in front of the giant tree once again. He trudged his body forward and leaned on the strong trunk before dropping himself to the ground.
He opened his eyes and rays of light shooting through the shroud of leaves entered Li Kong's pupil but shortly after, a dark looming thing overshadowed him.
The thing was looking spherical with a curtain surrounding its and as Li Kong squinted his eyes to made out what covering his field vision and a voice akin to a bell began to ring.
Slowly, the shadow retracted back, revealing the face beneath it. It was a familiar face, a face he had grown bored to look at, a face he had trusted since the beginning of time and a face who was now smiling at him.
"What are you doing here, Mr. Sleepyhead?" Yu Mei said with pure smile.