MA 2 Ch 8.2: Ashes

He set off into the forest, following the familiar hunters' trails that wound between ancient spirit pines like ribbons laid across the landscape.

The trees here were absolutely massive —some of them easily thirty chi in diameter, their trunks rising straight and true for over a hundred chi before branching out into expansive canopies. They'd been standing for centuries, perhaps even millennia, and their presence created a temple-like atmosphere: solemn, slightly dim even at midday, filled with the soft sounds of wind moving through needles.

The morning sun filtered through the canopy in shafts of golden light, solid-looking in the slight mist that still clung to the forest floor. Dust motes and pollen drifted through these beams like lazy snow, creating a magical scene. The forest floor itself was a thick carpet of fallen needles — rust-red and soft underfoot, muffling his footsteps until he moved almost silently despite his pace. The scent was rich and complex: pine resin, damp earth, slowly decomposing organic matter, and underneath it all, the clean smell of mountain air.

Birds called overhead — their songs normal now, no longer silent with the fear that had characterized the forest during the Boar King's reign of terror. Chen Mu identified them automatically, that mysterious knowledge of his categorizing species without conscious effort.

The forest felt... healed.

Not completely, of course — there were still scars visible to those who knew where to look. Trees with marks from the King's territorial displays, the bark stripped away in long gouges. But life was returning with the inevitable persistence of nature reclaiming its territory.

And Deer had been spotted in areas they'd fled from, their tracks visible in soft earth near streams. Even smaller spirit beasts — mostly badgers and foxes — were re-establishing their territories, no longer driven away by the King's dominating presence. The natural balance, disrupted for months, was slowly returning.

And Chen Mu, walking through the dappled sunlight with his hunter's awareness fully engaged, felt himself marveling at how much he'd changed in six weeks.

His body hadn't transformed dramatically — there was no sudden growth spurt, no visible alteration in his physique. He was still the same height, same build, still possessed that strange "mortal but not quite" physiology that defied easy categorization.

But he was, unquestionably, stronger now. It was not obvious in a visible way, but in the subtle indicators he was learning to recognize and could no longer deny.

Trees that would have required significant effort to climb — using rope and spikes and careful planning — now felt almost trivial to him. He could easily pull himself up with arm strength alone, his muscles showing no sign of fatigue even after extended exertion. The pack on his back, loaded with supplies and tools, easily twenty or thirty jin of weight, felt lighter than it had any right to, as if gravity had decided to apply differently to him than to other people.

And his endurance... he'd walked for hours yesterday while helping out with a construction project, carrying heavy timbers and working without rest, and finished the day feeling barely winded! And there was no soreness the next morning either!

His senses had sharpened too. He could hear sounds that should have been too distant or too quiet — the rustle of a rabbit moving through underbrush fifty meters away, the distinctive pattern of deer hoofbeats on different types of ground, the subtle difference between wind moving through living trees and wind moving through dead wood. His vision seemed clearer, able to pick out details at distances that should have been challenging. And his sense of smell... he could track animals by scent alone now, something he absolutely shouldn't be able to do without specialized training.

Whether it was from eating spirit beast meat for weeks — that concentrated spiritual energy slowly infusing his tissues, strengthening him from the inside out... or from the act of using Sword Intent, which had left some kind of permanent mark on his very essence... or, perhaps it was simply from his mysterious physiology continuing whatever development had begun when he'd lost his memories... Chen Mu couldn't say.

But he was definitely getting stronger.

And that terrified him almost as much as it reassured him.

Because if he was becoming more powerful without even trying, without cultivating qi or deliberate training or conscious effort... what, then, did that suggest about whatever he'd been before? What kind of existence left behind an afterimage potent enough that, even stripped of memories and cultivation base, it still continued to grow?

Just what had he been before, that this was merely his baseline, his body's un-enhanced, natural state?

The questions circled in his mind like carrion birds, persistent and ominous.

But he wisely pushed them aside. After all, baseless speculation was a waste of time. Today was for hunting. For providing. For being Chen Mu rather than whatever he might have been in his forgotten past.

The rest of the morning passed peacefully, almost meditatively. He checked his snares —simple but effective rope-and-stick constructions that he'd placed in strategic locations based on his reading of game trails and feeding patterns. In those traps, he came across three rabbits and a xing-txi — a kind of fat bird whose white winter plumage was just beginning to show at the edges of their brown autumn feathers.

He killed them quickly and humanely, his hands moving with that automatic precision that no longer surprised him, and stored them in his pack.

Then, he spent some time tracking deer signs through the upper part of the valley — following trails of droppings and hoof prints, reading the landscape for indications of where the herds were moving. The work was meditative, requiring a degree of focus that was not excessive, and Chen Mu found himself enjoying the familiar rhythm of it.

His mind could wander while his body navigated the terrain with an automatic, unconscious competence.

...

He was perhaps fifteen li from the village, up in the higher elevations where the air grew thin and the trees gave way to more rocky terrain, when he smelled it.

Smoke.

Not the comfortable, familiar scent of hearth fires carefully tended and contained. Not the pleasant aroma of food being cooked or herbs being burned for medicine. This was something heavier, more... acrid, carrying undertones that made his nose wrinkle and his instincts scream warnings. The kind of smoke that came from structures burning rather than controlled flames.

The kind that spoke of destruction.

Chen Mu paused mid-step, his hunter's instincts suddenly overriding his wandering thoughts. He turned, scanning the horizon with narrowed eyes, and there — to the northwest, perhaps another ten li distant — he could see it. A dark column of smoke rising into the clear autumn sky, thick and black and fundamentally wrong in the same way that blood in water was wrong. It rose straight up for perhaps a three hundred chi before the prevailing winds caught it and began to spread it, creating a dark stain against the perfect blue.

That direction... there was another village there.

Not part of their immediate community, but close enough that they traded occasionally —bartering grain for tools, or offering labor during harvest in exchange for access to better hunting grounds. A settlement called Six Brothers Village, slightly larger than Bao's village, nestled in a hanging valley near where some of the old Azure Cloud Sect's outer spirit farms had once been.

Chen Mu stood there, one hand shading his eyes against the sun, and felt unease coil in his stomach like a living thing. Fires were dangerous in the mountains — everyone knew that much. Especially as autumn dried the grasses and fallen needles into tinder, turning the landscape into a disaster waiting for a spark.

Mortals were particularly vulnerable to flames. A house fire could spread to adjacent structures within minutes if the wind was wrong. Such a disaster could easily consume an entire village if not caught quickly and fought aggressively. The forest itself could catch, and then you'd have a real catastrophe — flames racing through the canopy, jumping from tree to tree, growing large enough to make their own weather systems.

And Six Brothers Village, if he remembered correctly from the couple of times he'd traded there with Bao, was built mostly of wood and thatch. Perfect fuel for an out-of-control blaze. The structures were close together too, separated by narrow lanes that would act like chimneys, funneling heat and accelerating spread.

And that much smoke? That couldn't be from a single house. That was definitely multiple buildings, burning hot and fast. That was a major fire! The kind that required the entire village's effort to contain, everyone forming bucket brigades from the nearest water source, dousing neighboring structures to create firebreaks, pulling down buildings that couldn't be saved to prevent spread.

Chen Mu stared at that distant smoke for a long moment, conflicting instincts warring in his mind. Perhaps he should go investigate and offer assistance? After all, mountain communities looked out for each other because there was no one else to rely on.

But...

But it was also at least a four-hour run away from his current position. And he'd promised Bao he'd be back before dark. And besides... there was probably nothing he could do anyway at this point anyway — fighting fires required numbers and water, neither of which he could provide alone. And whatever was happening would surely be long over by the time he got there.

No, these villagers there were experienced, capable people. They'd surely be able to get it under control. They had to!

Hope everything will be okay, he thought, and marked the direction carefully in his memory with the precision of someone whose spatial awareness operated at an almost supernatural level. If the smoke was still visible when he passed this way on his return journey, he'd consider detouring to offer assistance. Or, at least, to check if they needed any supplies to be sent from Bao's village.

But for now...

For now, he had hunting to do. Responsibilities to his own community. A deer to track, if he could find one.

He turned back to the trail, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand, though that column of smoke lingered in his peripheral awareness like an itch he couldn't quite scratch. The unease persisted: a deep fear that he couldn't fully dismiss.

Something felt wrong.

But "something feels wrong," without any further evidence, wasn't actionable intelligence. It was just paranoia.

And paranoia wasn't going to put food on the table.

So he pushed the worry aside with determined effort and focused on tracking.