The sudden, rhythmic freezing of those Ancient Ones—the ghosts of the Plain White Banner—sent a shivering rattle through the gears of Big Brother Deng and Teacher Mao. They knew the score: turning back to trade blows with the Emperor's designated butchers was a void of logic, even if those stone effigies were decades past their prime.
Deng and Mao understood the math of the slaughterhouse: processing a soul into cold meat didn't require the fire of youth. It was a matter of focused, urgent haste and knowing exactly where to slide the steel. A thin blade driven into the solar plexus could strip the gears of a giant with only a pittance of force, and the real kicker was experience. These fossils had a roadmap of trauma etched into their bones that the gang couldn't begin to bird-dog. To face them head-on would be a final thud of certainty in a charnel house of their own making.
With no other play in the machine, the two lead vultures of the Black Cloud Gang pushed their pack toward the Ancestral Shrine. They clung to the plan like a drowning man to a life preserver: snatch the seven Ancient Ones and use them as merchandise to wring submission from the rest of the village.
The Hall of Ancestors sat anchored on a low knoll to the west—the monolith of Wangchun. From the main street, the building was a spent shell of a roof peering over the dark galleries of the surrounding timber. At the end of the line stood the staircase: nine steps of sallow, green-gray sandstone. Each step was a pittance of a yard wide, cracked and marked with the swampy reek of moss where the years had simply decided to rot through the stone.
At the summit sat the carcass of a gateway: four massive hardwood pillars, unroofed and weathered into a dirty patchwork of splinters by centuries of storms. Mounted atop this monument to the dead was a black board etched with the words "Ancestral Shrine"—a jagged scrawl that looked far newer than the rest of the human wreckage.
The brush and trees crowded the stairs like a heavy blanket, turning the ascent into a choking emptiness. As the Black Cloud vultures climbed, the canopy closed over them, making it feel as if they were marching through a dark tunnel straight into the sarcophagus of the past.
The Community of Vultures that had surged into the village with a high-voltage shriek was now as silent as a grave. Not a single soul dared to strip the gears of the silence with even a half-word. They moved with feet that felt like cold lead, their eyes performing fantastic rubber acrobatics as they scanned the dark galleries of the path. Big Brother Deng hunkered down in the center of the pack, a predator who had suddenly lost his appetite, refusing to take the point until they breached the final step.
At the end of the line, they emerged onto a square monolith of a courtyard, an 8-meter expanse of dirt and gravel that sat in a choking emptiness. No shadows moved; no stone effigies stood to meet them. Deng and Teacher Mao stepped to the front, their faces masks of cold knowledge, and eyeballed the carcass of the building ahead.
The Ancestral Shrine was a one-story monument to the dead, its gray tiled roof a cracked and dirty patchwork where years of neglect had let moss and pissant weeds take root. Some tiles were spent shells of their former selves, while others were fresh artifacts, making the whole thing look like a washed blackboard of gray and grime. The walls were a necrotic gray stone at the base, topped with pine and brick that had been processed with a sallow coat of white plaster.
Dead center sat the monolith of an entrance: twin slabs of wood as black as an abyssal pit, standing nearly ten feet on the clock. The brass door-pulls, carved into the likeness of dragon-faces, stared at the intruders with idiot indifference. Deng stared at the wood, his pulse starting to red-line, before he issued a jagged command for his grunts to hammer the way open.
Three or four of the human wreckage lunged forward, searching for a tool to turn the key in the lock, but the building had its own ideas. A sound like a shivering rattle of a ghost filled the air—EEEE-AD!—as the doors began to unhinge and creep open by themselves, as if a ghost in the machine were inviting them into the dark.
The vultures froze, their traps shut in a paralysis of fear. After a heartbeat, Big Brother Deng pushed past his men and pressed his palms against the wood. The doors swung wide with a final thud of certainty, revealing a hall that felt like a sarcophagus. It was a void of 6x8 meters, topped with heavy timber beams and a floor of battleship-gray brick. Along the sides sat benches of hardwood and bamboo—ghostly guardians of the silence. And against the far wall stood seven black wooden chairs, their armrests and high backs looking like sentinel rows waiting for a committee of ghosts to take their seats.
Deep in the choking emptiness of the building sat the monolith of the altar. It was a three-tiered carcass of black ebony, its wood etched with an ancient, jagged scrawl of carvings so intricate they looked like living vines frozen in stone. Dozens of spirit tablets stood in sentinel rows, each a dead-letter file of a name etched in wood. Before them sat brass candle-holders and flower vases, but the real kicker was the massive earthenware incense burner. It was choked with a Rorschach of ash and spent sticks, several thick ones still bleeding a slow, noxious plume of smoke that filled the stagnant air with the swampy reek of incense.
The place was a monument to the dead, so ancient and sacred it made the Community of Vultures shut their traps. Not a single small-fry dared to strip the gears of the silence; a few were even holding their breath, terrified that a high-voltage gasp might trigger a trapdoor into the abyss.
"Where the hell did the fossils go?" Big Brother Deng hissed into Teacher Mao's ear, his voice a dry, shivering rattle. He was trying to keep his mask of cold knowledge tight, desperate not to let the grunts see the fantastic rubber acrobatics his nerves were performing. "Is this a void of logic... or a slaughterhouse of a trap?"
"Maybe they're in the back-hulls," Mao whispered back, his eyes performing a silent patrol of the shadows. "Er Dao and Lao Sha bird-dogged some intel from the locals—said the Ancient Ones have a rat-warren tucked behind the shrine." Deng offered a sharp, clinical nod, a thud of certainty returning to his gears. He called the two bad actors over and issued a jagged command: ten men to hold the line inside the shrine and watch for any fossils trying to darken the door from the village. The rest would follow him to the rear.
Er Dao and Lao Sha accepted the math with a mask of cold knowledge. They posted their sentinels, two of them peeking out of the monolith of an entrance like trapped rabbits to watch the road. Deng and Mao then led the remaining twenty-odd vultures out of the hall. They moved with focused, urgent haste, eyes performing fantastic rubber acrobatics as they scanned the dark galleries around the building. This was the beating heart of the village, yet it was a dead-letter office—no watchers, no guards. The choking emptiness was fundamentally wrong, but the machinery of the raid had reached the end of the line; they had to push through.
They rounded the carcass of the shrine and found the elder's quarters. It was a single-story brick-and-mortar hull topped with a patchwork of gray tiles. The building was long and narrow—a sarcophagus that looked more like a row of cages or a stable for livestock than a home for men. A swampy reek—the stagnant, acrid odor of dried cow dung—clung to the stagnant air of the place, swirling around the monolith of the building.
"Could there be a cow byre in these parts?" Teacher Mao muttered into the stagnant air, though his mind wasn't really on the livestock. The math of the situation was turning ugly, and both he and Big Brother Deng felt their internal gears starting to strip. Their only play—the only way to avoid a final door-slam from the world—was to bird-dog those Elders and snatch them as merchandise. Without hostages to leverage against those designated butchers of the White Banner, they were just leading their pack into a slaughterhouse where the winner was already decided.
Deng Liang eyeballed the building, his pulse starting to red-line. It was a strange, necrotic hull—a door but no windows, a sarcophagus of brick that felt too tight, too choking. A clammy sliver of dread began to burrow into his gut. What if the "Seven Elders" were a void of logic? What if they weren't meat-and-bone men at all, but just ghosts in the machine—spirit-wraiths representing the ancestors? If there was no one to truss up like spring turkeys, their chances of seeing another sunrise were giving up the ghost fast.
"Someone's in the machine, Big Brother!" a scout whispered, his voice a shivering rattle. "I hear the machinery of life moving inside!"
The news hit Deng like a high-voltage jolt, snapping his courage back into place. "Good! Fantastic!" the dark-faced wall of meat bellowed, his voice a jagged command. "Raid!"
One of the vultures gave the door a tentative shove. It unhinged instantly—no key in the lock, no bolt to stop the darkness from spilling out. They burst through the threshold in a focused, urgent scramble, a riot of greed rushing into the void.
Inside, the building was a dark gallery of absolute blackness, but it wasn't silent. There was a sound—a low, rhythmic scuttling. The light from the entrance revealed hunched shadows, a collective of figures bobbing and weaving on the floor like stone effigies come to life.
"Light the fires!" Mao shrieked, his voice thin as splintered glass.
As the torches caught, the sudden glare was a physical blow. The gang performed a frantic little dance of terror, their boots performing fantastic rubber acrobatics as they scrambled back to huddle against the exit wall.
The light revealed a circle of ancient souls—fossils whose skin looked like a cracked and dirty patchwork of spent years. Men and women alike were hunched over, their jaws unhinged, gnawing with predatory intensity on long, pale objects scattered across the dirt floor. As the bandits watched in white-faced astonishment, the sound filled the room—a constant, wet KRUNCH-KRUNCH-KRUNCH. The Elders were gorging themselves on a mountain of giant bamboo shoots, their teeth working the fiber with a shivering rattle that sounded like a machine processing the dead.
Suddenly, one of the ancient souls jacked himself upright, his head tilting at a joint-twisting angle as he eyeballed the pack of vultures with a vacant, staring incomprehension., In his skeletal talons, he clutched a pale bamboo shoot—a meter-long club held with predatory intensity.
"You old bastid, what kind of devil-spawn are you?" Big Brother Deng bellowed, his voice a jagged rattle, though a clammy sliver of dread was already burrowing deep into his gut.
"Truss them up! Get the rope and drag them out!" Deng commanded, his pulse starting to red-line. "Let those fossils in the village see we've got their precious Elders in the machinery of our raid!"
The Black Cloud vultures hesitated, their gears stripping. The stone effigies in front of them were all rising now, their movements performing a grotesque, boneless dance that made the hair on the men's necks stand up like frozen soldiers. No one dared to cross the line.
"Who... goes there...?" one ancient soul wheezed, his voice a dry, shivering rattle that sounded like a soul in a centrifuge. He looked to have been on the clock for over a century, a spent shell of a human being.
"We're the Black Cloud Gang," Teacher Mao chirped, his voice thin as splintered glass as his eyes performed fantastic rubber acrobatics to scan the room.
The Elders were a cracked and dirty patchwork of indigo-dyed rags, their faces and hands a roadmap of grime. Their hair was a bird's nest of dark static. The building itself was a windowless sarcophagus—no beds, no chairs, just a floor piled thick with rotted straw and a mountain of gnawed bamboo carcasses.
"Thieves..." "Bad actors..." "Wicked ones..." "Humans... all bad..." The raspy voices drifted through the stagnant air like a chemical curse, popping out one word at a time.
"Snatch them!" Deng shrieked, yanking his piece and leveling it at the fossils. Ten of his grunts surged forward in a riot of focused, urgent haste.
"Using force..." "Wicked..." "Can we process the meat?" "Break the fast... let the precepts go."
The Elders suddenly jerked their frames in a final, violent snap. They performed an act of rubber acrobatics so powerful it sent the bandits flying backward like weightless rag dolls—discarded pieces of human wreckage hitting the walls with a final thud of certainty.
"Pull back! Get the hell out of the machine!" Teacher Mao screamed, grabbing Deng's arm in a blind, rat-like scramble.
The pack surged for the exit, but the geometry of the room was a trap. The doorway was a choking emptiness, too narrow for the stampede. As Big Brother Deng breached the threshold and hit the stagnant night air, the screams of his men filled his ears—high-voltage shrieks of sheer, unholy agony and white-faced astonishment as they were unmade in the dark.
"Shut the portal! Bolt the goddamn machine shut!" Big Brother Deng bellowed, his voice a jagged rattle of pure panic., Three or four of his grunts—vultures looking to hide behind a door-slam—lunged forward to brace the wood., But then, the world unhinged.
BANG!!
A sound like a final thud of certainty hammered the building, followed by the shrieking agony of splintering timber. The heavy wooden slabs didn't just open; they exploded inward, processed into a cracked and dirty patchwork of splinters. The men who'd been pushing were tossed back like weightless rag dolls, hitting the dirt as spent shells of human wreckage. Some groaned in a world of pain, while others simply gave up the ghost and lay still.
And the nightmare wasn't finished. The masonry beside the entrance buckled and tore, brick and mortar raining down in a choking emptiness of dust. Out of that dark gallery of rubble, the seven Ancient Ones emerged, walking with the focused, urgent haste of predators in a slaughterhouse.
The real kicker—the sight that froze the marrow in Deng's bones—was the woman in the lead. In her skeletal talons, she clutched a dripping hunk of fresh meat: a human arm, slick and heavy with blood. She unhinged her jaw and began to gnaw on the limb with the same predatory intensity she'd used on the bamboo shoots, her teeth working the meat with a shivering rattle.
"Devils!!" Deng shrieked, his mask of cold knowledge finally stripping its gears. He leveled his piece and sent five liquid whipcracks of lead screaming into the stagnant air, hosing the fossils with fire!
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