While she walked along the path, Mei-Yi noticed strange wooden poles sticking out of the ground. Lined up in straight rows, they were all connected with some kind of weird metallic string or rope. Though not even reaching up to her shins, they were still quite strange. Adequate size to use as chopsticks, though. She realized with minor surprise that she hadn’t actually eaten since the magistrate’s visit, not that she was hungry. 

“Xue-Yu, what are those?”

Xue-Yu poked his head out of her pocket, followed by Stanislaus’ spiked helmet. They had offered him his freedom, but he insisted that he would be court martialed for desertion if his foreign friends found him again. But the fact that he was allowed by the soldiers to stay in the same pocket as them was progress.

“Those? Telegraph poles.” Xue-Yu placed a finger to his lip curiously.

“We have those all around back in the fatherland.” stated Stanislaus. 

“So they’re a foreign invention?” Mei-Yi was tempted to pluck one out of the ground as one would do with a mushroom.

“Yeah. I doubt anyone around here can or would use them though.” Mei-Yi saw several homely columns of smoke rising behind a series of hills up ahead. Probably, rising from chimneys.

“I think there’s a village up ahead. We’ll see, then.”

“The village of Pingguan.” Kan-Tu’s muffled voice added. 

Each separate thud as her foot pushed deep into the ground was heard far around, scattering birds into the sky. She continued walking. The volume of smoke seemed to be abnormal. Not just a couple of streams crawling into the air like a Manchurian pigtail, but rather colossal black torrents of the stuff billowing into the air, like from a bonfire. They probably heard her footsteps and were preparing a massive feast or something. 

In the village of Pingguan, the cause of the smoke was immediately ascertainable, however. 

“Just as the huns under Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today strikes fear into the hearts of men, we shall do so as well. The Mongolians understood the power of slaughters thousands of years ago, and we shall follow their example. Fire!”

A line of rifles cracked, and a parallel line of bodies facing a wall slumped to the ground. The house wasn’t in good shape either. Flames petered out across its thatched roof. The fire consumed everything in its path: houses, people, crops, plants, everything. It tore further and further into the house, blindly, inexorably. 

Private Karl Hausmann puffed one last time on his cigarette, before rubbing the life out of it with his cupped palms. His long Western rifle leaned on his leg. An old hag crawled over to him, grabbing his pants with her wrinkled claws. Her imploration of mercy received a rifle butt to the head. She collapsed to the ground, dark red blood spilling out of her forehead. 

“Fucking whore,” he muttered under his breath, and kicked her corpse away. The only reason he put up with this job was because of the plundering opportunities. Indeed, an ornately decorated sword hung from his belt, involuntarily bestowed to Hausmann by its long dead occupant. By his feet sat an enamelled vase colored with Oriental textures. Bags of rice and other goodies were loaded onto stolen carts, overseen by a pig-faced officer. Today’s mission was executing a village full of bandits. The only resistance had been a couple of skinny teenagers armed with ‘rifles,’ old museum pieces of steadily diminishing martial value. Throwing themselves onto Hausmann and his fellow bastions of civilization with animalistic fury, they were quickly cut down. Though John Chinaman was indeed a ‘fighting man,’ his fighting tools canceled out any efficacy his spirit may have lended. That didn’t mean it was easy, though. He and his unit were up at the crack of dawn, rousing everyone out of bed. Kicking down doors and dragging them out if they didn’t move fast enough. A Chinese auxiliary policeman in the service of Germany from up North had done the translations, though it wasn’t necessary. Hausmann’s unit, eager for revenge against the humiliation of a previous force, decided to make this village an example. Though not an example to follow. 

Each hut was a haven for banditry, and was dealt with accordingly. Some were set on fire, others blown up with grenades. Their occupants were slaughtered as well. They had been gathered about into a huge foul-smelling horde, and mowed down with machine guns, the popping drowning out the many-voiced choir of despair. Some of the more creative fellows decided to use the cannons, by tying villagers to the muzzle and firing. A fitting fate for a bunch of barbarians. Another rattle of rifle fire broke out, and the screams ceased to ring. From within one of the smouldering huts a toddler waddled out, not understanding the situation with a foolish grin on his face. All the loud noises and vibrant colors excited him greatly. 

“This gold is yours if you can hit him... ...from the hip.” Krause, Hausmann’s friend, walked up to him and held up a golden yuanbao, shaped like some sort of odd elliptical boat. 

“Good as mine.” Hausmann raised his rifle to his hip, squinted, and fired. A tuft of dirt shot up near the toddler. 

“Shit.”

Hausmann worked the bolt on his rifle carelessly, letting the spent cartridge drop to the ground. 

“That sword does look pretty nice. Mind if I try for it?” Krause did not wait for a response and lifted his bayonet-tipped rifle up. Its bayonet was speckled with red. He fired, and the toddler dropped. Before he could celebrate, a loud thud shook the area.

“The fuck?”

As far as they were told, the Chinese army did have modern artillery. But only near major cities. The only cannons out in the countryside were Napoleonic black powder cannons, where crews would take their lives in hand when firing. Either way, these were still a threat, no matter how antiquated. The thud was not alone, and each subsequent thump got closer and closer. 

“Artillery! Get down!” Great care was given to the stolen treasures they possessed. Hausmann grabbed his vase and hit the ground. Several artillerymen zipped up their pants after committing some rather obscene acts, and rushed to manhandle their own cannons to return fire if needed. What appeared next muted the barking orders. A colossal figure blotted out the sky. Her shadow fell over all of Hausmann’s unit, darkening the radiant sun’s beams.

“My god,” Hausmann breathed out. The gigantic jacket she wore was dotted with bullet holes, as if she had met another unfortunate group of soldiers. 

“Hello.”

Mei-Yi’s greeting was abruptly interrupted by what she saw. The smoking huts, the numerous bodies piled on the ground, and the foreign soldiers. Her eyes darted to something red and white lying near a mud wall of a livestock fold. She looked closer, and saw the naked body of a woman folded across. She looked no more, and turned her now fierce gaze towards the tiny soldiers before her. Mei-Yi keeled over, holding her stomach, and retched. Then shock  left, and fury succeeded in its place. She could hear Xue-Yu asking something from within her pocket, but she did not understand a word he said. Her mind was so filled with pounding blood that it registered only as gibberish to her, as nonsensical as the foreigners’ language. A Chinese auxiliary policeman walked up nervously. He could have been mistaken for a villager if not for the massive heraldic eagle crest on his loose fitting smock. Inscribed underneath this crest and on a white armband was foreign text. Mei-Yi glared at him with contempt. A secondary devil. A collaborator with the people that were destroying her country. 

“Hello, miss. Can you understand me?” 

Mei-Yi did not feel very cooperative at this, and simply nodded gravely. She wasn’t actually planning on conversing with this secondary devil, but rather she was sizing up the opposing foreign force in front of her. The only thing that was concerning was the artillery. As she looked closer, she realized that the stacks of ammunition besides them was unusually empty. Then, she ascertained with disgust why this was. The policeman spoke placatingly, “Miss, please listen to me. These people were-”

“Fuck you.” 

Mei-Yi abruptly stomped on a nearby soldier. The policeman staggered backwards with phlegmatic shock, as if he was only a bystander and had nothing to do with it. The pig-faced officer guarding the loot stared with confident outrage, as if he expected Mei-Yi to just run away or surrender. 

“Open fire!” 

A hail of hot lead flew towards Mei-Yi. The sporadic volleys of rifle fire and the staccato bursts of the machine guns overlaid the fairy like twinkling of spent bullets. The cannon crews twisted the elevation wheel desperately, unused to aiming so high. If not for the spectacular display of pyrotechnics, Mei-Yi would not have known she was being shot.

Hausmann, on the other hand, was not feeling so great. His heart went into rapid palpitations, dispersing the blood through his body serenely only minutes before. He stared in complete disbelief as an impossibly huge foot lifted up into the air, its digits curling as if taunting them, and then crashed down upon a huddled group of soldiers. It shook the very earth itself, and Hausmann ducked to the ground instinctively. For a creature of this size, Hausmann’s expectations had borrowed extensively from the hideous cyclopes and gnarled trolls from folklore and mythology. But her/its foot was very smooth, free from any wrinkled deformities he had expected. Its soft beauty seemed quite young, petite even at this size. This certainly contrasted with the monstrous way the soldiers’ bones snapped when she crushed them. Still, this was impossible, was it not? Only children would believe in such things. Perhaps Hausmann was dreaming, stuck in an endless Chinese limbo. But he had no time to muse to himself, and simply acted on impulse. Framing the giantess looming before him in his rifle sights, he pushed his rifle to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. 

Nothing happened. The bolt moved slowly to the center. What the fuck? Hausmann wrenched the bolt in quick, jerky motions. The giantess ground the soldiers into the crater that was her footprint. She then turned and looked in Hausmann’s general direction. His legs went weak and he almost slid to the floor. 

“Fire!”

A cannon fired, vomiting up plumes of bright orange fire. The shell hit Mei-Yi’s right thigh, detonating with extravagant blasts of light. Mei-Yi only felt a light tapping sensation. Her shorts were not so lucky, and once the smoke cleared (enough to see anyway) there was a charred hole, with little bits of flaming cloth floating around it somberly. She, in return, shot a dark glare at the cannon. 

“Assholes!”

She stomped over in deliberately short-weaved steps to maximize the devastating consequences, muffling the foreign devil’s dying screams with her feet. The cannon crew at this time could have loaded another round and fired, but fear overtook them. Plus, what would it have done? Mei-Yi had simply shrugged off the previous shell. The officer started spouting propaganda and firing his pistol, while the others simply took off. Mei-Yi pulled her foot back and kicked the cannon. At impact its barrel was compressed into a thin shard. Its wheels simply snapped right off, like a twig. Its mechanical fineries were ground into dust. The cannon itself was tossed far, far away, like a throw pillow. The officer, though thrown off balance, continued taking well-placed (or so he thought) shots with his pistol. Mei-Yi’s previous experience with foreign officers was not pleasant, so she took care of him first, with the normal method. But this time, her foot didn’t crush his entire body underfoot. He crumpled at contact, and tried to worm his way out, but was only able to get his lower body out. He was scythed apart in an instant, bursting open in a splatter of bloody mulch as if cleaved by an invisible sword. Her foot exploded his squirming form in an injurious display of ragdoll physics. The other crew were vanquished just as easily, being flattened into red flakes before they could escape, the rounded spike on their artillery helmet providing even less protection. The other cannon fired, hitting her uselessly in the knee. This crew was more resolute, and desperately tried to load another round, and got as far as ejecting the previously spent shell until Mei-Yi’s foot plummeted down on them.

Hausmann slammed his rifle onto the ground in a mixture of frustration and terror. After destroying their pitiful artillery, she was coming back to finish off the infantry. Hausmann, giving up on his jammed rifle, tried to scramble away but he slipped on a thickening puddle of blood and hit the ground, his own helmet slamming into him. He tried desperately to get up but his faltering legs would not budge. They weren’t even legs anymore, just lifeless trousers stuffed with rags. The blood was from the woman he had killed earlier. Hausmann shut his watering eyes. Krause rushed over, and helped him up. 

“Fuck this shit, man, let’s get the hell out of here!”

Mei-Yi’s colossal foot slammed down onto another group of soldiers. Mhe soldiers scuttled about in erratic patterns, shooting haphazardly while running. This wasn’t even a battle, it was just a struggle to prolong their survival. Each step was not just a casual step, but a real stomp, a harsh thrust into the ground, like separate stabs with a knife. If she wasn’t blinded by fury, she might have enjoyed it. The amount of terrified screams grew lesser in number, and why this was Hausmann and Krause understood with horrifying clarity. Not wanting to share their fate, they scurried away, only to ram into a large wall. Not a wall of mud bricks, but rather a warm, fleshy wall that was Mei-Yi’s foot. 

“Oh shit! Oh fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

Krause plunged his bayonet into her foot, but it bounced off harmlessly. Hausmann took this chance to escape. Krause, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, failed to utilize this opportunity in a similarly timely manner. 

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” 

Mei-Yi’s foot rose upwards, and came crashing down upon Krause’s f-bomb. Hausmann tumbled to the ground and was splashed with Krause’s remains. One second a living, breathing person, the next only flesh. Hausmann attempted to crawl away, his legs dragging behind him uselessly. He emptied his bladder, as well as his tear ducts. Hausmann felt tiny droplets of blood drip down on him as he felt the heat radiating from Mei-Yi’s foot. He considered using the sword he stole, but instead dejectedly buried his face in the grass. 

“My god in heaven!”

Mei-Yi's foot rushed towards him with immense speed and turned him into paste. At this point, most of the soldiers were flattened. A few of them cautiously dropped their weapons and stuck their hands up helplessly. Mei-Yi’s hatred outweighed any other rational thought on the scales of her feelings and without hesitation crushed the surrendering soldiers. 

“Die, Chinese schweinehund!”

The thatched door of a hut opened to accommodate the long barrel of a machine gun spraying heavy fire at Mei-Yi. With that came more pangs of rifle fire. A few ran out, cocking their arms to lob grenades. Unknown to Mei-Yi, several soldiers had snuck up behind her and had assembled a pack gun. Its caliber was far too small for her to care, however. Mei-Yi raised her foot above the hut, but then decided against it. She didn’t want to destroy the village any further. Lowering herself down to the level of the hut, she felt the bodies of a couple of ill-fated soldiers compress and give out underneath her weight. Her feet unintentionally hit the pack gun, completely pulverizing the crew. By some miracle the pack gun was able to escape the worst fate by being captured between her toes (as well as some remains of the crew), but this did not last long. She scrunched her toes together, feeling the cold metal mix with the ooze of the crew. 

Surprisingly, Mei-Yi lying down on her tummy and facing their makeshift cover was exactly what the machine gunner wanted. Taking shots to her face would be far more inimical than to the body. Mei-Yi shielded her face with one hand and smashed a group of scattered infantry with the other. With a newfound resolve, the machine gun erupted even more fiercely than before, neglecting to fire in short bursts. A hiss and a cascade of smoke, and the machine gun’s barrel turned smoking red and refused to fire. The ammunition feeder, frantically pulling on the charging handle, realized it was overheated and made a mad scramble for his canteen. Mei-Yi gently moved the hut door open with one finger, and then pinched the now exposed machine gun. It imploded in a shower of metal bits, just as the ammunition feeder had opened his canteen, and the gunner whipped out his pistol and fired randomly out of desperation. Mei-Yi, careful not to hit the frame of the doorway, reached in with two fingers, and grabbed the gunner screaming and kicking by the arm. She was far gentler to the hut than the gunner, and the gunner screamed in agony and terror as her massive fingers crushed his bones. What made this whole ordeal even worse was that her hand was already covered with carnage from a previous group of unluckies. She dragged the gunner out, and as soon as he was out of the hut she flung him behind her. He whistled through the air, and hit the ground several hundred meters away and his head opened and its insides poured out. The ammunition feeder tried to scurry deeper into the hut, but Mei-Yi managed to snag him by the legs, although slightly deforming the doorway of the hut a little. The ammunition feeder flailed wildly for a few moments, kicking at her fingers with his free leg and swinging at it with his pistol butt after exhausting the ammo in the general direction of Mei-Yi’s face. She dumped the wretched man onto the ground, the grooves of her palm becoming his new view of the concave of heaven.  Covered in the remains of his comrades, the man began tugging hopelessly at the grenade pouch on his leg. Mei-Yi stopped lowering her hand, and watched curiously, since the threat to her was nonexistent. The ammunition feeder did not have the luxury to carefully unstrap a grenade, pop the safety cap off, pull the cord and throw it. In his panic he accidentally yanked a cord off with a telltale clink. Realizing his mistake, he tried to unstrap the live grenade, but his sweaty hands kept slipping, and he gave up halfway through and tried to slip the pouch off his leg. Too late; and he exploded in a spout of fire and flesh. Mei-Yi turned away from the explosion instinctively, but stared at the little pile of flesh with some passing morbid interest.

“Idiot.” her only comment was a little scoff at the man’s clumsy death.

While all of this was going on, two soldiers near the hopelessly twisted shards of metal that used to qualify as a pack gun had managed to survive. 

“God in heaven…”

Before them were the colossal overturned soles of the giantess. Within the creases were rags and caked blood. Shining a bit with sweat, her toes were curled casually, as if she were just laying down and reading a book. Luckily, she was unaware of their existence, and was too busy torturing some poor fellows over there. The younger of the two muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes in amazement. The elder soldier, rotund, red and out of breath, tightened his helmet chin strap. On his chest was a bronze medal with a picture of the Kaiser in profile. 

“We can’t fight against demons like this. Not with rifles, not with cannons.” 

“Then what do you suggest, Alber? We don’t exactly have a lot of options.”

Alber, the older one, twiddled his medal thoughtfully. The monster, despite being strangely beautiful, seemed to be invulnerable to small arms fire. 

“Artillery, Hans, artillery. We need to get out of here. Warn a garrison. They could pound this thing to bits. C’mon.” 

Alber and Hans picked up their rifles and started running. They got as far as the carts of loot before the ground began to tremble. 

“Dammit!” 

That could only mean the monster was getting up. They could by no means outrun such a being, and fighting it was already proven to be futile. The monster was busy crushing another group of unfortunate troops, but they wouldn’t last long enough for Alber and Hans to make a getaway. Alber turned to the cart. One could hide under it satisfactorily, and the monster, being too busy with its monstrous monstrosities, would easily overlook it. Plus, a dead heap of flesh and cloth that used to be an officer would obscure them. But, it had only enough room for one. 

“Quickly, Hans, get underneath the cart!”

“There’s no room!”

“There’s plenty of room! For you! Now get in!” 

Alber shoved Hans to the ground and much to his horror, started pushing him under the cart near the dead officer. 

“What the hell, Alber? What about you?”

Alber made sure the giantess was busy torturing someone else, and then took off his medal. He rubbed some dirt on it to make sure it wouldn’t reflect sunlight and give off their position and thus end their fragile existences.

“Hans, this was from my service in Africa.”

He flipped it over, revealing an engraving with some olive branches and the like. Above this was a grandiose crown with some text underneath. 

“Look, it says ‘the courageous soldier for Germany’s glory.’ You fit the description quite well, don’t you think?  I want you to have it, take it along as you go.”

Alber did not have the time, education nor spirit for a long, poignant monologue, and simply left Hans underneath the cart with a little “do not follow me” as Hans sputtered in fear. 

Mei-Yi found a great fat man crouching near the carts filled with stolen goods, probably reaching for some treasure underneath. Mei-Yi mustered up even more disgust. This jerk had the audacity, even for a foreign devil, to abandon his comrades and go straight for the loot. The fatty twisted around and before he could even comprehend what was happening Mei-Yi squashed him right there and then. Even when he was reduced to a stain, Mei-Yi could have sworn that she heard him continuing to scream. Not that big of a deal, since the foreign menace had been eradicated.

Now all that was left was the auxiliary policeman, who was cowering with his back to the wall of a hut, too cowardly to attack or run away. Mei-Yi turned to face him, and he tried to scrabble backwards more, but the wall was in the way so he simply struggled in place and fell to the ground. 

“M-m-miss! I-”

“Stop calling me that.” Mei-Yi spoke harshly, and moved closer to him. Every step she took was a tremor in the ground. She kneeled down.

“What the fuck are you even doing here? You’re a fake foreign devil.”

The desperate man snatched off his gua pi mao hat, revealing his shaved head. He lifted up his pigtail. 

“Look! Look! I’m Chinese! Please, I didn’t want this, I-”

“Then why didn’t you stop them?” 

“Their foreign weapons are too strong-”

“Coward. A pitiful excuse for a pitiful person. You’ve betrayed your country.”

“Mei-Yi! What the hell is going on?”

Xue-Yu’s exasperated voice came from within her pocket. She lifted everyone out and dumped them on the ground in an unorganized heap, her focus mainly being on the policeman.

“By the Fire and Wind Wheels of Nezha, what happened?” Xue-Yu surveyed the damage around him. A black bile, bitterly sweet, rose in Xue-Yu’s throat and overflowed through tightly clenched teeth and was finally stopped by his shirt sleeve. Yong-Liang peered into a foot-shaped crater, with the tattered remains of a khaki uniform. 

“Mei-Yi, did you do this..?”

“They were massacring the whole village. Devils deserved it.” Mei-Yi’s eyes suddenly caught movement. She spotted someone peeking out from behind a hut.

“Hey! Come out, you devil, and I’ll consider sparing you!” she shouted, not really caring if they understood Chinese or not. But they did, and it wasn’t a devil. It was a villager. Wearing a battered straw hat, she stepped out nervously from behind the hut. The first things she saw were Mei-Yi’s gigantic toes, stained a brilliant red, and whimpered a little. 

“Oh, no, don’t worry! I won’t hurt you!” 

More villagers followed suit, until there was a little crowd. Tong-Pao strolled up to them and offered medical assistance. Mei-Yi shoved the policeman roughly into her pocket so he wouldn’t slip off. Mei-Yi decided to give them an abridged version of Li Huang’s speech.

“Listen, good people, we are the Society Of Righteous And Harmonious Fists. We fight only for your wellbeing. The foreign devils have corrupted our country long enough. I’m sure you have all seen opium addicts wasting away on the streets, foreign missionaries perverting our traditions, and soldiers robbing our treasures. We provide what the Qing cannot.” she added a little “No offense” when her ‘private squad’ gave her inquisitive stares. 

An old man stepped forward, probably an elder or a leader. His queue was sparse and greying. Despite his wobbly, rheumatic stance and reliance on a cane, he kneeled down with a contorted expression of anguish. He kowtowed down to Mei-Yi. All around him, the other survivors did the same, a massive ocean wave of gratitude. 

“Thank you, Society. What can we do to repay you?”

“No worries, no worries. That won’t be necessary. All we ask is that you consider becoming brother or sister disciples of the Society. And once you have self-strengthened yourself, meet us in Beijing. Together, we will expel the foreign menace and restore glory to China.” She remembered Stanislaus. 

“But no matter the temptation, do not steal, do not rape and do not kill indiscriminately! Though the foreign governments are straight out of hell, not all foreigners are evil.” 

While Mei-Yi was discussing all this, Xiong and Luo-Yang explored the village. Giving contemptuous sneers at the foreign corpses and contemplative stares at the villagers, they spotted something moving far away. Just a little khaki speck sliding along in the distance. Xiong raised his rifle, but it was way too far to shoot.

The ostensibly lucky escape of Hans would actually doom many more of his comrades, however.