Chapter 188: Swept Off His Feet

The moment skin touched skin, the hand beneath him froze.

Yang felt a heat grow beneath his chest and immediately realized that it was the bead. Being cut off from sight and sound had left him sensitive to every flicker of sensation his body could still register. He felt the warmth spread outward, sliding along his ribs, down through his shoulder, along the length of his arm until it gathered at his palm where it lay pressed against the hand on his arm. It was only then he realized that this time the bead was doing something it had never done before. 

Instead of helping Yang, it was reaching past him towards the Senior Brother holding his arm.

Yang's first instinct was to snatch his hand back. Years of habit, of always keeping the bead's existence a secret from others, had made that reaction a fixed part of his nature. But the bead had never once acted without reason or led him wrong, and if it had chosen this very moment to reveal itself to someone else, then it was clear that the situation was far more dangerous than Yang had thought before.

He didn't know how long it took, but soon enough the hand beneath him turned over and grasped his own with such force that his knuckles crushed together. Before he could even flinch at the grip, an arm wrapped around his waist and hauled him bodily against his Senior Brother's side, pinning his left arm uselessly between them in a tight hold, and before Yang could even struggle, he was violently swept off his feet.

His stomach fell as his body was lifted off the ground and his head snapped back on his neck hard enough to make him go dizzy. He could feel himself being whipped through the air as they jerked and made sharp turns without any care for his comfort. After a while of this, the next thing he felt was pain as they struck something rough. A boulder, maybe, judging by the way his shoulder screamed. They also seemed to be up on higher ground, as he had felt his feet nearly skid out from under him. He would have pitched forward into open space if the arm around him hadn't brutally wrenched him back at the last instant, making him let out an involuntary groan.

Before he could gain his bearings, he was again lurched towards the left and then back, and felt something rush past his face so closely that the fine hairs on his skin stood on end, making him realize that something had just tried to swipe his head off and missed by less than a finger's width.

They were clearly in a fight for life.

His Senior Brother, guided by nothing but the bead working through the single point of contact at Yang's hand, was fighting something in this place, and Yang was nothing more than a dead weight strapped to his side. He wanted to help, but he was completely incapable of offering any assistance, as with his current capabilities he could not even prepare himself for the next blow.

The minutes that followed were some of the worst of Yang's life. He was full of adrenaline, anticipation, fear, and dread as he was yanked around like a puppet on a string. 

There was also the added gift of feeling the teeth-rattling shockwave each time his Senior Brother struck with his sword. 

He made his body relax and stopped resisting the movement because each time he tensed up, the blows hurt more, and not making himself harder to carry was all the help he could offer.

The next thing he knew, something slammed into him. The impact was so forceful that for one dreadful moment Yang thought his ribs had caved in. But before the finishing blow could land, he was dragged down to the ground and dragged again hard to the left, at which point his Senior Brother's movements became frantic, faster and more erratic as whatever was attacking them pressed its advantage.

Yang kept his breathing even through sheer stubbornness until his shoulder was nearly wrenched from its socket and his face was slammed flat against a stone hard enough to split his lip. 

And then, without warning, the world came back.

His eyes screamed in protest at the sudden return of his vision. Sound came in half a second later, a harsh shriek that seemed to claw straight down his ear canal and into his skull. He had no time to brace for either.

A hand dragged him up and threw him with a push on his chest that was already hurting. He definitely had broken ribs. Yang had one terrified breath to imagine hitting something at speed before a soft pressure molded itself around his body and slowed his speed, settling him gently down on the floor. Yang let out a groan as he righted himself, clutching his sides, wondering if he would have to get used to being thrown around like a ball as long as he was with his Senior Brothers.

He blinked hard, forcing his stinging eyes open, and understood that he had been thrown to the base of the far wall, as far from the fighting as possible while his five Senior Brothers fought a creature in the center of the chamber.

As Yang looked closer, he felt ice form in the pit of his stomach.

It looked, at first glance, like a caterpillar with a human face, and the thought alone was enough to make bile rise in his throat. But then his gaze took it fully in, and the true horror of it settled in.

It was made of bodies, actual naked human bodies, more than a dozen of them, strung together in a grotesque chain. Each one knelt with its head resting against the base of the spine of the body in front of it, matted hair crusted black with old blood. Their arms and hands had been bent and forced to serve as legs, gripping the hips of the one ahead, so that the whole obscene construction crawled and lunged on dozens of borrowed limbs at once. Some of the bodies were fresh enough that Yang could still make out the slack, horrified expressions frozen on their faces. Others had rotted past recognition, skin sloughing in wet strips, held together by whatever foul magic had bound them into this shape to begin with.

And they were aware. It was this fact that intensified Yang's horror. Only the foremost head seemed to direct the thing, but as his hearing sharpened past the shock of its return, he began to pick out other sounds beneath the sound of steel and the monster's own screaming. Small, broken whimpers and a wet, gurgling moan each time one of his Senior Brothers' blades cut into it.

Each time an arm or a leg came free under a sword blow, the face of the segment it belonged to would twist and cry out before the sound was swallowed by the general noise of the battle. Only when the foremost body was injured did they all cry out. Yang watched Senior Brother Qing An's blade take an arm clean off at the elbow, and the head attached to that segment let out a cry so plainly human pain that Yang had to look away.

He also noticed that his Senior Brothers were fighting with steel and their own strength alone. No technique flared to end this creature, making it clear that while the senses had returned, there was still something in this place suppressing their qi. They were being forced to do this the hard way.

Since he was safe for the moment, tucked against the wall while the thing occupied itself with his Senior brothers, he cast his eye around to give a look at the surroundings and pushed back the nausea that came when his gaze fell to the ground.

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