Blindfolded by Blood

It was as if blood was being dripped over his eyes, dying everything around Lee red.

The trees began to wither - the fireflies burned, falling to the ground - and the grasses and all the plants around Lee began to look dead. It was as if the life was being sucked out of the world around him, as he kept running forward.

He pushed his screaming legs onwards to keep running, his fists remaining clenched, trying not to drop his food source of peanuts until the next day. He felt the crunches of peanut shells breaking in the softest parts of the centre of his palm, and he used the pinprick pains of pain to distract him from the sharp, hot jabs in his knees. The front of his shins began to ache as he kept running, sapping his willpower and diminishing the supposed need for him to survive.

His mind screamed at him as he began to slow, his body firmly out of his control, as his arms flopped to his side, and his vision began to fade. Black dots, not of the darkness of night, began to blot out parts of his vision, and the world began to spin around him.

He needed to keep going.

Lee knew that it had to be the monster from before doing this to him, reaching out to him from over the river, seeking him as its next meal.

He heard none of the voices that had once tried to ply him into stopping, and giving himself up. It seemed to him that the monster had internalised that it wasn't going to work, and was now resorting to stealing his sight.

Or was this just the way it fed, stealing senses for the night, one by one.

Lee had to wonder why though.

Even if the beast distorted his vision, the closest Lee would come to it was if he fell into the river, his body carried away by the current, and he would still be left with enough sense to at least cling close to his own side to keep away from the beast that was trying to eat him.

The image of the forest in front of Lee's eyes, suddenly vanished, the world around him transplanted with an image of resplendence.

A sudden sight of a grand, golden palace imposed itself in front of Lee, and he forced himself to skid to a stop, finding himself blind to the forest around him. If he kept running he may have unwittingly charged straight into a tree, and could've seriously injured himself.

He fell promptly to the floor feeling none of the threads of grass or twigs but complete softness, as if he were transported somewhere else. His legs were now sapped of all their strength, his muscles harder than the river rock that he had found in the field, and Lee found that he could not move them. He pushed himself up with his arms and torso, enough to sit comfortably and gazed up at the palace.

It's columns were made of ivory marble, and each and every corner of the building looked as if they had been carved into their sweeping, arched points. Gold decorations were fitted to every single surface and joint, flat and curved, and there were guards made of clay on either side of the entrance, their weapons made of a shining metal in stark contrast. From where Lee could see, the inside of the building was decked with jade, with only the floors a pristine white marble.

The palace looked to be floating on a sea of white, completely flat and steady, with edges which seemed to just fade away, as if they were evaporating into thin air. Lee ran his bare hand over the floor which he sat on to find that it was slightly damp. He looked up and saw the blue sky darkening to a black above him, with the slight pin pricks of stars just slightly visible and framed by the navy blue. Lee startled backwards when he realised that he was seeing himself sat on a cloud.

A sudden cold shiver ran through him as solid, opaque legs walk through his body, as if he were a ghost. He saw his body paling where the figure kept moving its limbs through him, stepping through leg and seeing a knee appear in front of his eyes from behind.

Lee curled up, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling left behind, his skin and insides feeling raw as if he were a field that had been ploughed through. He felt an aching hollowness that was desperate to be refilled by something, anything. He felt violated and as if something irreplaceable had been stolen from him.

He looked up and saw what had passed through him as if he didn't even exist.

He wondered if this was what it was like to be a ghost.

The limbs that had passed through him belonged to two men of identical height, and wearing identical blood red, flowing robes. Both carried swords on their left sides, attached to a belt with twin black sheaths, moving with their legs. Both of the men walked together at the same pace, standing side by side, towards the palace, not speaking to each other and not looking at each other. Even as they mirrored each other's looks and manner, standing as close as siblings, there seemed to a heavy distance between them, fraught with tension and regret of things left unsaid, unwilling to be stated. The silence was not a serene one, but thick and heavy with awkward, painful emotions.

Lee recognised the shade of red they wore as belonging to the flying man that had accosted him the afternoon prior, and had taken the scroll.

He didn't know that he had a twin.

Lee didn't know of any Gods that were twins.

He watched the world flitter around him, before abruptly melting, the white of the world running down itself as if it had suddenly become water, and replaced with the jade green of the interior of the palace. The red of the two gods fell like blood, staining the white momentarily before being drowned out by all the other colours.

The scene had changed to reveal a vision of something else entirely.

There was a gold throne stood atop a tremendous staircase, made entirely of jade, and fitted with even more gold decorations. Bamboo décor stood at the sides of the room, with even more clay soldiers standing in front, in a straight line, allowing no deviations and forming a corridor for which the two crimson clad men to walk along.

More marble columns held up, seemingly only the frame of the roof, a majestic square to allow an unfettered view of the sky

Lee heard their hard footsteps echoing through the hall, and he scrambled to sit in between two of the soldiers. He looked behind him and saw, at every gap and interval between the soldiers, there was an arched doorway, completely unlit and pitch black, concealing the path on the other side.

Lee looked back to the golden staircase, hesitant to look any further upwards, knowing that the Jade Emperor would be the one sat at the top, reigning over his subjects with a mighty fist, able to see and hear all, assigning the mandate of heaven to those he deemed righteous and moral. If Lee looked up at him, it would be a mark of disrespect.

A part of him ached at his own internal logic: bowing down before the emperor, a being that he would never interact with, but happy to run away from home to escape a wedding and dooming his mother to a life where she would be looked down on by all the villagers.

Lee eyed the gold which was lavishly and carelessly spread all over the room. His mother would now be living with the Luo family.

He turned his head back to gaze upon the red clad strangers that had walked through him as if he wasn't even there. He caught himself a glimpse of their side profile, and his eyes widened to see that it was the flying man.

He didn't look any younger or older than when he had appeared before Lee and taken the scroll back.

Lee knew that cultivation could be used to perform miracles like flying, or slowing down aging, but he knew that he had transcended the best that humanity could possibly hope to achieve. He was in the presence of the Gods, and, and...

Lee didn't know what he was doing, or where he was, or what he was supposed to do, or anything.

He breathed heavily, panting loudly as he clutched at his hair and his entire body trembled. He almost began choking on his breaths, when suddenly one of the men spoke up, having completed their bows towards the man on the golden throne.

"The Twins who seek to become God of War give their greetings to the Jade Emperor," one of the men declared in a loud, noble voice, echoing around the room, and seizing Lee's heart.

All the air in Lee's lungs vanished, and he burst into tears.