The wastelands grew worse as they traveled deeper.
The corrupted trees gave way to blackened stone, then to fields of bones that stretched as far as Lin Feng could see. Human bones, animal bones, bones of creatures that defied classification, all scattered across the landscape like discarded toys.
"What happened here?" he asked.
"War." Mei picked her way carefully through the remains, avoiding anything that might still be dangerous. "When the sects fell, the divine beasts went to war with each other. These were the battlegrounds."
"That was centuries ago."
"Corruption doesn't decay." She paused beside a skull that was easily three feet across, its empty eye sockets staring at the sky. "These bones will be here until the world ends."
Lin Feng felt the hunger stir as they walked. The bones held no essence, whatever had died here had been dead too long, but the corruption itself called to something deep inside him.
*You could take this*, it whispered. *Make it yours. Become part of this place.*
He pushed the thought away. The serpent's influence was still strong, its cold alien perspective bleeding into his own. Some nights, he dreamed in colors that shouldn't exist, felt his body sliding through earth and stone in ways that human flesh should never move.
"You're getting better at controlling it," Mei observed.
"Am I?"
"You haven't tried to dig through solid rock in at least twelve hours." Her tone was light, but her eyes were watchful. "The integration is progressing faster than I expected."
"Is that good?"
"It means you're adaptable." She climbed over a fallen pillar, carved stone, obviously man-made, a remnant of some structure that had once stood here. "It also means each subsequent consumption will be easier. Your soul is learning how to absorb foreign essence."
"And the cost?"
Mei didn't answer immediately. When she spoke, her voice was quiet.
"Every beast you consume leaves a permanent mark. You're not just gaining their power, you're gaining pieces of their identity. Eventually, you'll have more beast inside you than human."
Lin Feng considered that. The idea should have terrified him. Instead, it felt almost natural.
*Is that the beasts talking, or is it me?*
He couldn't tell anymore. And maybe that was the most troubling part.
---
They made camp that night in the ruins of what might have been a temple.
The walls were crumbling but still standing, providing shelter from the cold winds that swept across the bone fields after dark. Mei started a small fire while Lin Feng sat with his back against ancient stone, feeling the echoes of old power in its surface.
"This place was important once," he said.
"A healing shrine, if I'm reading the inscriptions correctly." Mei gestured at faded carvings on the walls. "The Jade Lily Sect maintained them throughout the region. Places where the sick and wounded could seek treatment."
"Your mother's sect."
"My ancestors' sect." Her voice tightened. "My mother was never formally trained. She learned from books, from scrolls, from fragments she could piece together. The real techniques died with the sect."
"Then how do you know soul medicine?"
Mei stared into the fire for a long moment before answering.
"My mother made a deal. With something she found in the ruins." Her hands clenched. "A spirit. A remnant of a Jade Lily elder who'd survived as a ghost for centuries. It taught her the basics in exchange for services."
"What kind of services?"
"The kind that eventually got her killed." Mei's voice was flat. "The spirit wanted to be reborn. It needed specific materials, specific rituals. My mother collected them for years, but someone found out before she could complete the process."
"The sects."
"The sects." She spat the word like a curse. "They murdered her for practicing forbidden arts. They burned our home. They would have killed me too if the spirit hadn't hidden me."
"Hidden you how?"
Mei touched her chest, above her heart.
"It's inside me. Has been since I was twelve. It can't manifest without the rebirth ritual, but it can share its knowledge. Its power." She looked up at him. "That's why I can use soul medicine. That's why I could sense your corruption that first day. I'm not a normal human, Lin Feng. I haven't been for a long time."
The revelation made a strange kind of sense.
"So we're both monsters," he said.
"We're both survivors." She managed a thin smile. "Monsters would have given up long ago."
---
Sleep came fitfully that night.
Lin Feng dreamed of the serpent again. Not its memories this time, but something stranger. He stood in darkness, facing the creature, and it spoke to him in a language of earth and stone.
*You took part of me, Devourer. That makes us connected.*
"I'll take the rest eventually," he said.
*Perhaps.* The serpent's laughter rumbled through the ground. *Or perhaps I'll take you instead. The connection works both ways.*
Lin Feng woke with a gasp.
The fire had died to embers, and Mei was asleep on the other side of the shrine. Everything seemed normal, peaceful.
But he could feel something in the earth below him.
Something watching.
---
They reached the edge of the bone fields on the fifth day.
The terrain changed gradually. Bones gave way to corrupted earth, which gave way to something unexpected: grass. Green, actual grass, growing in patches between the rocks.
"Life?" Lin Feng crouched to touch the vegetation. "In the middle of the wastelands?"
"The Jade Lily Sect's influence." Mei's voice held a note of wonder. "Their healing techniques could purify corruption. Even after a thousand years, the effects linger near their strongholds."
"Then we're close."
"Very close." She pointed toward a mountain range visible in the distance. "The monastery is built into those cliffs. If we push hard, we can reach it by nightfall."
Lin Feng stood, feeling anticipation and wariness in equal measure.
"What kind of defenses should we expect?"
"Unknown. The sect was destroyed before they could be documented." Mei started walking, her pace quickening. "But based on what I know of their techniques, we should expect traps designed to identify and neutralize corruption. Your unique nature might make that problematic."
"Meaning the defenses will see me as a beast."
"Possibly. We'll need to be careful."
Lin Feng followed, his enhanced senses scanning the environment. The grass grew thicker as they walked, forming meadows that seemed impossibly lush compared to the wasteland behind them. Flowers bloomed in colors he'd never seen before: white and gold and a soft lavender that seemed to glow in the sunlight.
"It's beautiful," he murmured.
"It's a graveyard." Mei's voice was sharp. "Don't let appearances fool you. A thousand people died here, Lin Feng. Their bones are beneath our feet."
He looked down. Through his earth sense, the serpent's gift, he could feel them. Skeletons arranged in neat rows, buried with care and ceremony. The dead of the Jade Lily Sect, waiting in eternal rest.
"They were laid to rest properly," he said. "Someone survived long enough to bury them."
"Or something." Mei's expression was unreadable. "We should keep moving."
---
The mountains loomed larger as they approached.
Lin Feng could see the monastery now, carved into the cliff face, a sprawling complex of buildings and platforms that must have been magnificent in its day. Now it was silent, empty, a memorial to everything the cultivation world had destroyed.
"There." Mei pointed to a wide stairway that climbed the cliff face. "The main entrance. It's the most dangerous path, but also the most direct."
"And the alternative?"
"Side passages that snake through the mountain. Safer, but they'll take days to navigate." She glanced at him. "Your choice."
Lin Feng studied the stairs. Through his earth sense, he could feel the weight of the stone, the age of the construction, the subtle vibrations of something moving deep within.
"The main entrance," he decided. "We've come too far to waste time on detours."
They began to climb.
---
The stairs were wider than they'd looked from below, easily twenty feet across, designed for processions or perhaps for the wounded to be carried on stretchers. The stone was worn smooth by countless feet, and the carvings on the walls told stories that Lin Feng couldn't quite interpret.
"Healing miracles," Mei explained as they climbed. "The sect documented their greatest achievements. That panel shows a man being cured of corruption. That one depicts the restoration of shattered meridians."
Lin Feng paused at that image. A figure lying on a table, surrounded by healers, lines of light connecting their hands to the patient's body.
"They could repair meridians?"
"In theory. The technique was never perfected before the sect fell." Mei's voice was wistful. "Imagine what they could have accomplished given time."
"Imagine what I could accomplish if I could cultivate normally."
"Would you want to?" She turned to face him. "Give up the Devourer's Path for conventional cultivation?"
Lin Feng considered the question. A month ago, the answer would have been immediate: of course, yes, anything to be normal. But now, with beast power flowing through his veins, with the hunger as much a part of him as his heartbeat...
"No," he admitted. "I don't think I would."
"Then perhaps the sect's fall wasn't entirely tragedy." Mei continued climbing. "If they'd survived, if they'd perfected their technique, you never would have become what you are."
It was a strange thought. His existence as a Devourer, dependent on centuries-old destruction. His power, built on the ashes of people who might have cured him.
*Nothing is ever simple*, he reflected.
---
They reached the monastery gates as the sun began to set.
The gates themselves were massive, thirty feet tall, carved from a single piece of white stone that seemed to shimmer in the fading light. Characters were inscribed across their surface, too weathered to read clearly.
"These should be sealed," Mei said, frowning. "The defensive formations—"
The gates swung open.
Lin Feng's hand went to the knife at his belt, a weapon he'd taken from Mei's supplies, better than nothing but barely adequate. The hunger surged, sensing potential danger.
Beyond the gates was darkness.
"Someone's expecting us," he said quietly.
"Or something." Mei drew a vial from her pouch, something that glowed with faint luminescence. "Stay close. Let me light the way."
They passed through the gates together.
---
The interior of the monastery was vast.
Lin Feng's earth sense told him they were in a chamber that extended hundreds of feet in every direction, with multiple levels rising above and below. The ceiling was so high it disappeared into shadows, and the walls were lined with what might have been doors or alcoves.
Mei's light revealed only glimpses. A carved pillar here, a broken statue there, dust thick enough to choke on.
"Nobody's been here in a very long time," she whispered.
"Then why did the gates open?"
Before she could answer, light blazed from somewhere ahead.
Lin Feng threw up his arm to shield his eyes. When he lowered it, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
A figure stood in the center of the chamber, glowing with soft white light. It had the shape of a woman, elegant robes, long hair, features that might have been beautiful, but it wasn't solid. Lin Feng could see through it to the wall beyond.
A ghost. An actual ghost.
"Welcome," the figure said, its voice echoing strangely. "We've been waiting for you."
"We?" Lin Feng's grip tightened on his knife.
The ghost smiled.
"The Jade Lily Sect isn't dead, Devourer. We've simply changed form."
More lights appeared. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
The chamber filled with the ghosts of a murdered sect, and every one of them was staring at Lin Feng with what looked like hope.
"We've been waiting for someone like you for a very long time."
