Chương 20: The Village of Thornwood — Part 1

The village appeared suddenly—first the smoke, then the roofs, then the palisade wall constructed from thorn trees woven together into a barrier. Thornwood village. Wei Chen had heard of it in Silverstream, mentioned by merchants as a waystation between the fringe territories and the kingdom's heartland. It was not on any major trade route, not prosperous enough to attract significant commerce. It simply existed, a small community of farmers and woodcutters who had carved a life from the forest's edge.

But something was wrong. Wei Chen sensed it before the caravan entered the clearing—a disturbance in the ambient qi, a wrongness distinct from the forest's natural background. Not the corruption he had detected earlier. This was absence rather than presence, a gap in the spiritual landscape where life should have been.

"Stop," he said quietly to Bo. The caravan master reined in his horses.

"What is it?"

"Something's wrong in the village. I can feel it." Bo's expression tightened. He had learned to trust Wei Chen's instincts.

"Bandits?"

"No. Something else." They approached cautiously, the guards forming a defensive line. The village gate stood open, unguarded. Beyond it, the main street was empty. No children played. No dogs barked.

"Hello?" Bo called.

"Anyone here?" A door opened, revealing a face old beyond its years—a woman whose hair had gone white, whose eyes held the hollow look of someone who had witnessed things that broke something inside.

"Travelers," she said, flat.

"You should not stop here. You should keep moving."

"What's happened?" Bo asked, dismounting. She looked past him, at the caravan, at the guards, at Wei Chen. Her gaze lingered.

"People have been disappearing. For three weeks now. First Old Man Fen, who went to check his traps and never returned. Then the Miller's daughter. Then the blacksmith, the shepherd..." She shook her head.

"Seven gone. Vanished without trace. No bodies. No blood. No signs of struggle. Just gone."

"Bandits?" one guard suggested. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"Bandits leave bodies. Bandits take valuables. These people took nothing—just the people themselves." Wei Chen stepped forward, his senses extended. The wrongness was stronger here, concentrated in the village's center.

"May I examine the places where they disappeared?" he asked. The woman looked at him.

"You're a powerful cultivator""Yes."

"We've had some through before. They looked, they promised to help, they left. Nothing changed."

"I won't promise. But I'll look." She studied him, then nodded.

"The last disappearance was the blacksmith. Three nights ago. His forge is at the village's center." Wei Chen walked through the empty streets, the guards following at a distance. The village was small—perhaps thirty houses, a well, a grain barn, the blacksmith's forge. The kind of settlement that existed in thousands across the kingdom. The forge was cold, its fire extinguished for days. But the wrongness was strongest here. He knelt beside the anvil, his qi extending to probe the spiritual residue.

What he found made his breath catch. Traces of qi had passed through this space, carrying something with it. The signature was faint, degraded by time, but unmistakable. A spirit beast. Large. Predatory. Capable of moving through solid matter without leaving physical evidence.

"The blacksmith was taken from here," Wei Chen said, standing.

"By something that can pass through walls. Something that hunts people specifically."

"A demon?" the old woman asked.

"Not a demon. A spirit beast with specialized hunting behavior. The old texts call them… Void Stalkers. Rare. Dangerous. They phase through physical barriers, hunt intelligent prey, and consume spiritual energy rather than flesh."

"Can they be killed?"

"Yes. But not easily. They exist partially out of phase with normal reality, which makes them difficult to strike with conventional weapons." Bo approached, troubled.

"Wei Chen, we're on a schedule. The capital waits."

"I know. But if this thing isn't stopped, it will continue hunting."

"That's not our responsibility."

"Maybe not." Wei Chen looked at the empty forge.

"But my parents taught me that power without compassion is merely violence. And I have power." Bo was silent. Then he sighed.

"Two days. That's all I can spare. If you haven't dealt with this by then, we leave without you."

"Two days is enough." Wei Chen spent the first day gathering information. He interviewed the families, learning patterns: the victims were taken at night, from enclosed spaces, without noise or struggle. The Void Stalker preferred solitary targets, striking at three- to four-day intervals. The second day, he prepared his trap. The legacy contained techniques for dealing with phase-shifting entities—not common knowledge, but preserved from an era when such creatures had been more numerous.

The key was spiritual resonance: creating a zone where the barriers between physical and spiritual reality were reinforced. He constructed the zone in the blacksmith's forge, using qi-infused minerals, geometric arrangements of iron tools, and his own cultivation energy as anchor. The process took six hours, draining his reserves. When he finished, the forge glowed with a faint silver light visible only to spiritual senses. The villagers were evacuated to the grain barn.

The caravan guards maintained a perimeter, following Bo's orders. Wei Chen sat in the forge's center, his sword across his knees, his qi circulating in a pattern designed to attract spiritual predators. He was bait, offering himself as prey. The trap was set. All that remained was to wait.