Chasing You (Arcs 1-7)

My Dear Emperor (XXXII)

Forty silver red shadows darted out on foot. Ten in each group secured the four main points of entrance into the city. As long as they were able to close off the gates, there was no other road of escape available for the citizens inside of the walls. Once they were all in position, the all charged in in unison.

The next occurrence caught them off guard. The busy and lively city suddenly became deserted at the speed of light, and not even a single shadow of the inhabitants of the city could be seen. They all glanced at reach other and readied their weapons as they searched each quadrant of the city. After making sure that there truly wasn't any one left, they gathered some resources to bring back to Yeung Bai.

The city became a ghost town as it seemed as if the inhabitants suddenly dropped what they were doing and were picked up right off of the ground where they were. Everything was as they had left it, some plates half eaten, cups emptied, and even the street stalls still sizzled as it cooked the food.

Some of the more inexperienced officers cachinnated at how easy things were going. Were the people of Xuan Xing so easily scared that they would abandon everything upon seeing them? It was almost too funny on how cowardly they were. The elder leader scolded them, "Settle down and quicken your pace. I have a feeling that something is extremely wrong here. We need to report back to his highness."

They rapidly closed their mouths and hurried their actions. Following behind the others, they went back to the southern entrance. It would be the quickest route to their mounts.

Upon getting to the gate, the all dropped the sacks in their hands and took out their weapons; the gates were closed.

It was impossible to close the gates without any noise, not to mention that there wasn't even a soul left in the city. All of them held in their breaths as they listened to the somber silence that overplayed the city. It was so still that the sound of a pin dropping could be heard. Even their heartbeats seemed to be too loud in the eerie silence.

The leader of the platoon gulped, it seems that they weren't vigilant enough and were now trapped. He quickly instructed his men, "Split into groups of ten and go to the other gates of the city... If they are accessible to us, light up a flare and if they're not, return back to this point."

He gave them one last word of advice, "Be careful, something or someone is with us here. We are not alone like we had initially thought so."

They scurried to their little groups and set off to see the situation at the other gates. With flares in their pockets, they would be able to still communicate with each other or reach out for help. Ten set off for the eastern gate, ten to the northern gate, and the other ten to the western gate. The remaining ten would stay behind at their safe point, they would try and get the gates to open.

After the time it takes to eat a meal, the southern gate team had found out that they could not open the gate. There was no way for them to open from the inside and it was locked from the outside. It made the leader question why would they even build a gate to be locked on the outside but not on the inside. They even tried to scale the walls of the gates to see if they could hopefully find the mechanism to open it, but they were very unfortunate as it was too tall for them to reach it and they always fell short of its height.

The first thing that the leader had assumed was that the city had been built for invaders to stumble upon and was made to trap them... But then why would there people be residing in the city then? Would Emperor Tu use his own citizens as bait? He had no answer to his question and could only assume that Emperor Tu wouldn't be so uncultured and asinine to do so. It would only incur the wrath of his very own people.

The second assumption was that they would be ambushed by soldiers of Xuan Xing... But none of his officers had signaled for any assistance. He did not believe that they would be so easily wiped out as each member had at least a trained and experienced senior soldier with them. They would be easily able to light up a flare to alert the others if their situation called for it.

Time trickled by and half a sichen had passed by, and they have yet to hear any news from their comrades. Many of them started to become paranoid at their situation, thinking that they had somehow wandered into a haunted city.

The leader's lips was pressed into a tight line, "Let us go see what happened to the others."

As much as he wanted to deny the unpleasant feeling in his gut, the absence and quiescent that answered kept on pulling at him.

All huddled together, they set off to the eastern gate first. On their way there, they noticed that only their footprints were in the dirt and sand that was on the open path. Some of the superstitious believing soldiers had their hands shaking by now.

For them it was very different from killing a human to try and do that a ghost. Humans were something tangible and could be killed, whereas a ghosts was something that had risen from the dead. How could they 'kill' something that is already dead? Naturally none of them had carried any amulets or talisman with them for warding off the deceased's spirits. As of now, they would be the perfect unsuspecting vessel awaiting to be possessed or to be killed by the ghosts.

Many rambled to themselves the exiguous amount of Buddha's teaching that they knew. With there being too many known facts that there was no plausible way of exorcising a ghost unless they were a priest. That was but a scanty hope they had, as did any of them look like they were one? Obviously not.

Consequently getting to the eastern gate, they found it barren and the gate had been sealed as well. The ten men who had been sent over was nowhere to be found. The leader quickly dished out an order, "Searched the nearby buildings for the other ten!"

With feet that seemed to weigh a ton, they combed through the area only to come up empty handed as it had been so earlier. They all shook their head in disbelief as they had even doubled checked to see if the others had just gone to rest, but there was nothing.

The group had a small mixed feeling in what had happened: Some had assumed that they had simply left to meet up with the others, and the rest of them hypothesized that their comrades had been here less than a breath of time before their disappearance.

The leader hastened them and departed for the other gates. One by one, the checked only to come up with the exact same results... Three groups of ten men had suddenly vanished without any traces of them ever being here.