The Tale Never Ends

“Goddammit!” Edelweiss and I swore together. The doors grew wider and only then I fully noticed how different was the tenth floor this side to the tenth floor of the real world! The scene outside the elevator doors gave way to a black, empty space. The sprawl of office cubicles that stretched far carried webs of fissures and clefts that coursed jaggedly along the broken tiles on the floor and through them, one could see what laid underneath: a deep, black chasm of nothingness. So were the walls, I realized. Craggy cracks climbed the walls like vines and the same black hole of oblivion peeked from outside. It appeared as though the entire tenth floor of the Fog World was suspended in the midst of outer space.

And right outside the elevator doors, some distance away from the office floor in the middle of this Lovecraftian dimension, was a gap. That was where Na San had plunged into!

Edelweiss and I shared a grave look. The gap was easily more than fifty meters wide. “What now?” a slightly-worried Edelweiss asked. “If you asked me this last week, I’d fret with anxiety. I daresay it’s different now, my dear…” My sword buzzed before it escaped my grip and hovered right outside the elevator, magically growing in size in visible speeds!

The ordinary sword grew wondrously until its blade looked just as large as a surfboard and I stepped onto it. I spun around, before I held out a hand to Edelweiss but she had already jumped onboard even without me helping her. Well, that’s my wife for you, I reflected, A former outlaw is just different to weak and timid girls!

Despite her reservations and uncertainty, Edelweiss trusts me fully, hence she hopped on without a moment’s hesitation.

Riding on swords to fly into the air would have sounded like a fanciful fantasy if I was the me before. But after mastering the basics of sword telekinesis magic, taking a ride on a sword sounded just as easy as riding on a skateboard and riding a bike.

We flew on my sword over to the floating island that was the office level where I dropped Edelweiss there and I said, “Wait here. I’ll go down below to see if Na San’s still alive.” She murmured a wordless assent and I wheeled my sword around and I flew down the space under the floating island.

The space around the floating surface of innumerable offices was not devoid of anything; under it there were many other floating ruins, drifting lazily in the emptiness. Some were large clusters of fallen pillars and broken structures where one could make out entryways and even chambers, some were so small that they were barely chunks of debris. Fragments from destroyed floorings or ceilings now gliding aimlessly like ordinary flotsam in a tide.

For quite some time, I weaved among the ruins until I finally found his shirt fluttering in the windless space, caught on a door handle. I flew closer. Indeed, the same blood-stained shirt Na San wore, hanging on the door handle of a door which had been opened.

I landed before the doorway, preparing to walk up the steps through it when a loud bang startled me. Something black shot out from inside and it would have hit me if its overinflated girth had not got it stuck between the door frame. Only then I realized what it was. A huge baby’s head! Large as a boulder, the head got itself caught between the doorcase and it struggled to free itself. Yet as it shook, one of his eyes, as wide as a basketball, rolled around to stare at me! A stare was so venomous that I felt my hair stand!

“SCRAM, DAMMIT!” I yelled and I kicked furiously at the humongous eye! Only the baby’s head felt not as sturdy or solid as I expected it to be. Like a balloon filled with air, my foot plunged into the head and the baby’s head let loose a squeal so terrible that a pig’s dying squeal would have sounded tens of thousands of times better before it bounced loose from the door frame and glided away swiftly into the distance!

Then I realized, there was nothing but only a baby’s head! Whatever this monstrosity was, it had no torso and limbs! Just a ball-like grotesquery with the elasticity of a rubber ball!

Then a thunderclap resounded on high, coming from somewhere beyond the opened door, followed by another squeal of pain from the baby’s head somewhere unseen. I ran through the door and I found a still-standing living hall, and right in the middle, with his chest and shoulders bare but yet bathed in blood, was Na San hitting at his shamanic drum! The thunderous roars that his drum emitted were causing terrible pain to the baby’s head but not without himself suffering great injury! “Na San! Stop!” I yelled. My calls made him turned and he looked amazed to see me. Before he could call “Young Lordling”, he belched another gulp of blood and he collapsed.

The end of the thunderous drumbeats meant also a breather for the monstrous baby’s head; he hung in mid-air, looking around and saw Na San lying on the ground with a wicked grin breaking from ear to ear. Then he lunged, hollering a long “Arrgghghh” as it streaked towards Na San’s unconscious body. His gaping mouth opened like the yawn of a cave and inside, I realized with horror, were rows of sharp fangs! Panicking, I snarled, “STOP AT ONCE, YOU MONSTER!”

What sounded only like a simple shout in my ears was actually as loud as the deafening blast of a dragon’s roar to the monstrous baby’s head! I did not know if this was the Champion’s Bane technique Father once told me about, only that it has worked for me, at least during my pilgrimage into the past. The baby’s head shuddered and his face rippled visibly with horripilation of dread. My trick had worked, although watching the change on the grotesque face only aggravated my urge to vomit!

But enough was enough; I could only take so much of the monster’s abhorrent manner and mien. I waved an arm and eight flying swords, each imbued with the flames of my Fire Charm, impaled the giant head like a pincushion. The baby’s head slowly dissipated, sparing me the sight of its death throes, although what became next left me stunned. As the giant head crumbled, in its place remained hundreds of damaged souls, each of them small and infantile, truth be told. Hundreds of impaired ghosts, all of them were babies, and they scattered around like little birds taking into the sky after being disturbed in their sleep, distressed and terrified.

Upon my observation, I realized something: the infant ghosts were all damaged. In Chinese esotericism, the human ghost consists of nine parts: three Souls and six Spirits. The former three represents the human’s self-awareness to be alive while the latter six represent the human sentience, emotions, and perception of surrounding elements. But all these infant ghosts were lacking two of their three Souls and this deficiency should have been enough to completely destroy them. Yet they were able to maintain their state as ghosts and I did not know how. Until the first among the multitudes of baby ghosts pouring into the sky burst like a harmless air bubble, I finally understood! All these damaged ghosts were able to maintain their state because someone had used some infernal sorcery to bind them all together to form the huge malevolent baby’s head! My destruction of the monster had unmade the sorcery that bound them and freed them all. And now, with the sorcery no longer working, they began to pop and burst, one after another like balloons after a kid’s birthday party! Gods, I grimaced with a motley of revulsion, dismay, and aversion, Gods please have mercy on them all!

I felt dizziness that the many pitiful and innocent lives being squandered for nothing. Is this all the work of the demented Mr. Huang? I thought with growing dread. Assailed by grief, pity, and anger, I whipped out my Spirit Gourd and aimed its mouth at the fountain of baby ghosts and quickly muttered a spell and I drew them all into my Spirit Gourd. Every single one of them. At least, inside my Spirit Gourd, the damaged baby ghosts would be able to maintain their present state for now. I would think of something later. Perhaps they could be sent to the Realm of the Nine Twilights—the deepest of the deepest corner of the Underworld that mirrored the Ninth Heaven up above. Maybe they would be able to stay there for eternity instead of being completely destroyed into nothing. Being damaged to such extent, these infant souls would never again be allowed to reincarnate, so that would be the best I could do for them. But I would need to be quick lest they would still vanish after some time.

Stoppering my Gourd, I stowed it away to kneel down beside Na San. He was still conscious, but barely. He struggled to get up as I slipped an arm under his shoulder to help him up, although he could not without my help. With his arm over my shoulders, I lifted him, muttering under my breath as I heaved, “So all right there?” “Of course, Young Lordling!” He panted.

Riding on my sword, we took off again, gaining altitude until we saw the elevator doors. There it was, sitting lonesomely on a single flat piece of rock, floating like a lost buoy in the middle of an ocean!

I looked at my back and what I saw made me nervous! Edelweiss was gone?! “Oh, my God!” I groaned and I willed my sword to pick up more speed as we accelerated towards the floating island that was the office level where I had left Edelweiss just now. As soon as we landed, Na San crumbled to the ground, disgorging more blood! His heavy injuries, coupled with the speedy ride on my sword, had terribly weakened him.

I bent down to check on him. “How are you?! Are you all right?!” “I’m fine, Young Lordling,” Na San croaked, his waving gesture doing little to assuage my concerns before he said, “We need to find His Highness!” I muttered dryly, “It’s not only your prince this time, even my wife is also missing now!”

I propped Na San’s arm up over me again and we hobbled together towards the end of the corridor. What was formerly a long office walkway in the Real World was now only a short passageway here with a three-way junction. The left fork led to into layers of obscured shadows while the right passage led to an opened door.