The Scent of the Orchid in the Forest of Secrets (密林兰香)

Chapter Fourteen

Shu Haolin had thought they were a part of her dreams—long howls of pain and desperation, claws that grasped at her hair and robes and asked her to save them, to please rescue them from their misery. But when she suddenly opened her eyes in the dark of night underneath the makeshift tent that was set up as shelter, she realized that the screams that had wormed their way into her dreams came from outside. They were breathy and airy and seemed to ride along with the wind, whistling and drilling into her bones. A mad wind stirred up the air outside, causing the tent to creak and threaten to fall. Shu Haolin got up to check out the situation, lighting a flame stick, but Yu Jielan was faster, blocking in front of her. "Don't go out, it'll pass in the morning. They can't hurt us."

"What is it? It sounds like people need help, are you sure we shouldn't go check it out?"

"They're already beyond rescue..." In the flickering light of the flame stick, Yu Jielan's face looked especially gloomy and grim.

"What do you mean?"

"They're dead already." Chen Linfeng's hoarse voice came from a corner. It sounded like he had already been awake for a long time. "What you're hearing is the resentment of the trapped souls of the Lin Sect. I suppose we must've agitated them or let them out somehow yesterday. But it's been so many years. This is merely their last struggle, a sort of terminal lucidity. They're too weak to do anything but scream."

Yu Jielan's face was dark as she glanced back towards where Chen Linfeng's voice came from in the shadows. "You seem to be an expert," she commented coolly. Shu Haolin turned towards Chen Linfeng as well, frowning, but she didn't say anything for or against him. Instead, she listened to the voices. They continued to scream, causing goosebumps to form all over her arms, but something about the inaudible things they said made Shu Haolin unable to resist listening closer, feeling like she was missing something. She stepped closer and closer to the edge of the tent, to the point where she almost burned the tent down with the flame stick. She capped it, and the flame stick went out, leaving the tent in darkness.

"Let's go back to sleep," Yu Jielan asserted.

"How can someone sleep with this kind of background noise?" Chen Linfeng retorted.

Shu Haolin didn't respond.

"Haolin?"

A cold wind pressed against the tent, and it seemed to seep through and leak into the tent, chilling Shu Haolin to the bones. She listened hard, with the urgent feeling that there was something important that she was supposed to be listening to, to be hearing...

Within the screams, Shu Haolin finally picked out coherent words.

"Son, quick, take Lin-er and your wife and go!"

"Don't linger any longer, we'll hold them off for you!"

"Lin-er, don't be afraid... don't be afraid..."

Shu Haolin felt like she had been doused in a bath of ice water. It had been so long, so long since she'd heard someone call her "Lin-er". It had only been around a year since her parents died, yet their gentle calls of "Lin-er" felt like a lifetime ago. But who were these voices, who did they belong to, how did they know her nickname? And what had happened to them, such that their souls had been stuck in the ruins of the Lin Sect?

The wind whistled around her, gathering speed and volume, drowning out everything around her, and it felt like she was about to be swallowed up in its sheer, powerful momentum, until—

"Haolin!" A cold hand grabbed onto her wrist. Shu Haolin jumped and almost attacked before she realized it was Yu Jielan.

"Sorry, what did you say?"