Freed from the crushing weight, the little wolf yelped and tried to scramble back, dragging its injured leg. It could barely stand. Long quickly knelt, hands open in a calming gesture. "Easy… you're free now," he murmured. The cub snapped at him once in a last show of defiance, its tiny body shaking. Long did not retreat. Instead, he tore a strip from the hem of his own travel-worn cloak. The fabric was relatively clean. He inched closer, heart pounding not from fear of the cub's fangs, but out of concern. The cub watched warily as he reached for the pinned leg. Its hackles rose but it was too weak to resist much.
As gently as he could, Long felt along the limb. The cub whined piteously. The leg didn't seem broken just badly bruised and cut where the branch had pinched it. Long bound the wound with his cloth strip, hands working with practiced care. His touch was light, almost instinctively knowing how to soothe. Who taught me this? he wondered dimly. Some distant memory of tending wounds, perhaps from a life before this one, guided his fingers. He finished the makeshift bandage and sat back on his heels slowly.
The white cub had gone very still, enduring his aid with a kind of trembling resignation. Now it sniffed at the cloth around its leg, then looked up at Long. Its one good eye locked with Long's dark, weary eyes. The snarling was gone. In its place, a hesitant silence. They stayed like that for a heartbeat, two creatures alone in the mist, studying each other. Long offered the hint of a smile. The cub huffed, as if uncertain what to make of this human who smelled of cold rain and something oddly familiar, something like the charged air before a storm.
The wind shifted, a slight breeze clearing some of the swirling mist around them. Long caught a metallic scent then, cutting through the damp moss and pine: the coppery tang of blood and the stench of something foul. It wasn't coming from the cub. He rose to his feet, senses on edge. The cub gave a soft whine, as if to protest his sudden distance. Long gently motioned for it to stay put. "Wait here," he whispered.
Just a few steps beyond where the cub had lain, the undergrowth was trampled and spattered dark. The smell of blood grew stronger. Long pushed aside a curtain of hanging ivy and felt his stomach turn. A corpse sprawled against a rock face, half-sitting as though propped by careless hands. It was a man or what remained of one. His robes, once white and green, were shredded and stained red-black with gore. One arm was missing below the elbow, torn off savagely. What was left of his face was frozen in an expression of ultimate terror, eyes wide and filmy, mouth agape in a silent scream. Flies buzzed in a frenzied halo around the body, drawn to the dried blood crusting every wound.
Long inhaled sharply through his teeth. He knew the cut of those robes, the pattern of jade-green vines embroidered on the collar. Jade Hollow Sect. A cultivator, likely a disciple or a wandering elder, though this man looked young - perhaps barely out of apprenticeship. What had befallen him was no simple accident; this was a slaughter. Long's eyes narrowed as he scanned the area. The ground nearby was churned, indicating a struggle. Deep gouges scored the rocky soil, as if something with massive claws had torn it up in fury. This cultivator must have crossed paths with a deadly foe here.
His gaze returned to the corpse's remaining hand. The fingers were curled around something clutched to his chest in his final moments. Long carefully crouched and gently pried the object loose from the stiff grip, offering a quiet word of respect to the dead as he did so. It was a small jade slip, cracked with a fracture down the middle. Wiping some of the blood off, Long recognized it as the kind disciples use to store techniques or messages. He held it between his fingers and closed his eyes, sending a tentative thread of his consciousness into the slip. A flash of information flickered in his mind: fragmented images and words. Most were lost - the jade slip had been shattered and its contents mostly spilled into the ether. But he caught the faintest imprint of something: a technique name, "Jade Cicada…something", and an emotion, urgent fear. There was also a sense of identity perhaps a message this cultivator had meant to deliver. The images were too broken to piece together now. Long sighed and tucked the broken jade slip into his sash; perhaps later, in safety, he could salvage more from it.
As he searched, he also noticed a round token lying in the dirt near the corpse's torn waist sash. It glinted green in a stray ray of pale light, carved from jade as well. He picked it up, wiping mud away with his thumb. The token bore the insignia of Jade Hollow Sect - a hollow circle encircling a carved gemstone symbol. A sect identity token. The name "Sun Ping" was etched on the reverse in tiny characters. Likely the name of this unfortunate young man. Long closed the dead cultivator's eyes with a gentle hand. "May you find peace beyond," he murmured, voice thick with quiet sorrow. He knew too well how easily life could be snuffed out, even for those who cultivated to defy mortality.
The cub's soft whine brought his attention snapping back. It had limped over, now sniffing at the air, its fur bristling again. It smelled the blood and death, and something else, something approaching. Long felt it too, then: a shift in the atmosphere, a prickling along his spine that set every nerve aflame with warning. The unnatural Qi in the ravine was suddenly on the move, swarming like agitated wasps.
A low growl rolled through the mist, so deep it vibrated in Long's chest. The cub yipped and pressed itself against Long's ankle, trembling. Long rose slowly, pocketing the token. His eyes scanned the trees, heart thudding. The mist ahead churned as a hulking shape emerged from it, darkness solidifying into form. Two eyes glowed red in a massive, misshapen head. The creature stepped forward with a heavy thud of paw or foot on wet earth.