Shortened Distance, Adrift in Sandstorms
“EVEN THOUGH it’s rogue records and rumors you read, the Kingdom of Banyue certainly existed,” Xie Lian explained.
“Oh?” San Lang said.
Just then, Nan Feng completed an interweaving array on the ground and called out to the others in the room. “It’s done. When shall we go?”
Xie Lian quickly packed a small bag and came to the door. “Let’s go
now.”
He placed his hand on the door and recited: “By the heaven official’s
blessings, no paths are bound!” Then he pushed gently.
When the door was pushed open, it was no longer a small hillside village outside. What replaced it was a wide city avenue.
As wide as the streets were, there was barely anyone on the road, maybe one or two pedestrians every now and then. This wasn’t only
because it was late in the evening but because the population in the far northwest was already small, on top of being this close to the Gobi. Even in broad daylight, there wouldn’t be many walking about. Xie Lian closed the door behind him, and it was no longer Puqi Shrine on the inside but a small inn. That one step certainly was thousands of miles, the miracle of the teleportation array.
A couple of pedestrians walked by, grumbling as they stared at them, appearing quite guarded.
San Lang spoke up from behind Xie Lian. “According to historical records, when the moon sinks in the sky, follow the North Star and you will come upon the Kingdom of Banyue. Gege, look.” San Lang pointed to the sky. “There’s the North Star.”
Xie Lian looked up and smiled. “It’s so bright.”
San Lang stepped closer to stand beside Xie Lian. He cast a glance at him, then looked up too. “Yeah. It seems the night sky in the northwest is
somehow more uplifting than in the Central Plains.”
Xie Lian agreed, and the two became immersed in a serious discussion on stars and the night sky. Meanwhile, the two junior officials behind them watched in disbelief.
Nan Feng questioned, “Why is he here too?”
“The door you created looked so magical, I followed along to check it out,” San Lang replied innocently.
“Check it out?! Do you think this is a fun tour?!” Nan Feng shouted angrily.
Xie Lian rubbed his forehead and said, “Let it go. Since he’s here, he’s here. He won’t eat your rations, I should have enough. San Lang, stay close to me, don’t get lost.”
“Okay,” San Lang responded, looking obedient and good. “This isn’t a question of rations!!”
Xie Lian sighed. “Nan Feng, please keep it down. It’s the middle of
the night; everyone is sleeping. Let’s just focus on the task at hand and stop sweating the small stuff. Let’s go, let’s go.”
***
The four followed the North Star and traveled northward. After walking nonstop for an entire night, the towns and greenery along the way became more and more sparse, and the ground slowly gave way to sand.
Finally, they reached the Gobi Desert. Although the teleportation array could cross over five hundred kilometers in one step, it used an exhaustive amount of spiritual power. The farther one went, the more spiritual power it sapped, and the time it took to restore that spiritual power also lengthened.
This one step Nan Feng helped them take would require at least several
hours to recover from. To conserve strength in case of an unforeseen battle, Xie Lian decided not to have Fu Yao perform the same conjuring. For a journey such as this, someone must have their spiritual powers at full strength.
In a desert climate, the difference between night and day was extreme. The nights were freezing to the bone but not too bad. However, when it became day, it was another story. The sky was clear and cloudless, giving way to a scorching sun. It was as if they were walking in a steaming oven, cooking them alive from the ground.
Xie Lian led the way, using the direction of the wind and small vegetation growing under rocks to find their path. After a while, he looked back, worried that someone may not be able to keep up. Nan Fen and Fu Yao were obviously fine, being immortal and all. Seeing San Lang, though, made him laugh.
Under the blazing sun, the youth had peeled off his outer red tunic and was using it to lazily block the sun, looking tired and cranky. His skin was pearl white, his hair coal black, and with the red tunic covering his face, his features seemed even more accentuated.
Xie Lian removed his bamboo hat and put it on San Lang’s head. “Here, I’ll lend it to you.”
San Lang blinked, then a moment later, he smiled. “It’s all right,” he said and returned the hat to him.
Xie Lian didn’t argue; if the boy didn’t need it, there was no need to
push.
“Let me know if you need it, then.” Xie Lian straightened the hat on
his head and continued walking.
After a while, the group noticed a small gray building in the midst of all the sand. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be an abandoned inn.
Xie Lian looked to the sky and saw that it was just past noon and time for
the worst of the heat. They had walked all night; it was time for a break. Xie Lian led the group inside, and they found a table to sit and settle at.
Xie Lian took out a water bottle from his bag and handed it to San Lang. “Do you want some?”
San Lang nodded. He reached for the water bottle and drank from it before Xie Lian took it back to drink himself. He gulped down the water,
his Adam’s apple rolling up and down as he drank. He felt the coolness pass down his throat, incredibly refreshing.
Next to him, San Lang had his arm propping up his chin, stealing
glances as Xie Lian drank. A moment later, he asked, “Is there any more?”
Xie Lian wiped away the bit of water that was caught on his moistened lips, then nodded and passed over the water bottle again. San Lang was about to reach for it when another hand blocked him from the water bottle in Xie Lian’s grip.
“Hang on,” Fu Yao said.
He retrieved his own water bottle from his sack and put it on the table, pushing it toward San Lang. “I have one too. Go ahead.”
Xie Lian immediately knew what he was planning.
Knowing Fu Yao’s personality, there was no way he would ever share his water bottle. He and Nan Feng had talked about testing San Lang the night before, so the liquid in the bottle must be Unmasking Water.
If a normal human was to drink a potion such as this, nothing would happen. However, if they were anything but human, the Unmasking Water would force its drinker to reveal their true form. Since Nan Feng and Fu Yao wanted to test to see if this youth was a supreme, the effects of the potion had to be considerable.
San Lang smiled. “Gege and I can share one bottle, it’s fine.”
Fu Yao and Nan Feng eyed Xie Lian, and he thought, What are you both looking at me for?
Fu Yao said coldly, “His is almost empty, don’t worry, help yourself.” “Really? Then you two go ahead first,” San Lang said, politely
declining.
“…”
Those two both fell silent. A moment later, Fu Yao tried again, “You’re a guest, you go first.”
Fu Yao sounded polite and well mannered, but Xie Lian thought he must’ve squeezed those words through his teeth.
San Lang also made a “please” gesture. “You two are followers of the host, please drink first, otherwise it’d be indecent of me.”
Xie Lian watched the three of them play this silly game of false
pleasantries and pitied the sad water bottle being roughly pushed around the table with barely hidden force. He shook his head; he could feel the poor
table tremble from their power play and feared it might not have long to live.
The secret battle went back and forth for several rounds when finally, Fu Yao snapped and sneered, “You not accepting this water means you have a guilty conscience!”
San Lang replied with a smile, “You’re unfriendly and refused to drink first. Who knows if you’ve poisoned the water? Maybe you’re the one with the guilty conscience?”
Fu Yao pointed at Xie Lian. “You can very well ask him whether this water is poisoned!”
“Is this water poisoned, gege?” San Lang turned to Xie Lian.
It was quite the cunning question. Technically, Unmasking Water was a potion that exposed one’s true form and didn’t harm real people.
Xie Lian replied slowly, “It’s not poisoned, but…”
Fu Yao and Nan Feng focused their glare on San Lang, and he surprisingly let go of his grip on the bottle.
“All right.” San Lang grabbed the bottle and shook it playfully in his hand. “If gege says it’s okay, I’ll take a drink.”
He gulped down the contents of the bottle in one go. Xie Lian didn’t think he’d be so straightforward and was shocked. Nan Feng and Fu Yao were stunned too and tensed immediately. Yet who knew, after San Lang drank all that Unmasking Water, he shook the bottle again, then threw it over his shoulder where it crashed and shattered.
“Tastes bad.”
Bewilderment flashed across Fu Yao’s face when he saw that the Unmasking Water did nothing to San Lang. A moment later, he replied coolly, “It’s only water. Doesn’t it all taste the same? What difference is there?”
San Lang reached for the water bottle next to Xie Lian’s elbow again and replied, “Of course it’s different. This one tastes much better.”
Xie Lian smiled despite himself. San Lang really didn’t care about any challenges being thrown his way, nor did he care about his true identity. So other than entertainment, this fight was meaningless. Xie Lian thought that would be the end of it, but Nan Feng stood up and dropped a sword onto the table with a loud clang.
With such a strong battle aura surrounding him, at first Xie Lian thought Nan Feng intended to end San Lang for good. It left him speechless for a moment.
“What are you doing?”
“The road ahead is dangerous,” Nan Feng stated darkly. “This is my gift to our little buddy, for self-defense.”
The sheath of the sword was ancient in design and bore wear and tear from the passing of ages. It was no ordinary sword. Xie Lian’s eyes widened in recognition, and he put his hand over his forehead and turned away.
He muttered to himself, “It’s Hongjing!”
The name of this sword was indeed “Hongjing,” meaning “Red Mirror.” It was a sacred sword. While it could not fight evil, no evil could escape its spiritual mirror. Should any non-human entities pull it from its sheath, the blade would turn red as if covered in blood, and the crimson
blade would reflect the true form of that which unsheathed it. Whether wrath or supreme, none could escape!
There were no young men who would not be interested in swords or horses, so San Lang appeared rather intrigued. “Oh? Let me see!”
Sheath in one hand, hilt in the other, San Lang pulled at the sword.
Nan Feng and Fu Yao stared intently. But when merely eight centimeters of the sword was pulled out, San Lang laughed.
“Gege, are your servants playing a joke on me?”
Xie Lian cleared his throat and turned back around. “San Lang, I already told you they’re not servants.” Then he spun back.
“Who’s joking around with you?” Nan Feng demanded coldly. “How can one defend oneself with a broken sword?” San Lang
sheathed the sword and threw it back onto the table.
Nan Feng’s face froze for a moment, then he immediately picked up the sword to check. He pulled it from the sheath and heard a clunk, and suddenly, in his hand was now a sharp and chilling…broken sword.
Hongjing’s blade was broken eight centimeters down!
Nan Feng’s face changed colors, and he turned the sheath upside down. There was the clattering sound of a mess of clinks and clanks; what was left of the blade within the sheath was now broken into bright, sharp
little fragments.
The Hongjing sword was a powerful weapon that could expose its enemies, that wasn’t a lie. But Nan Feng had never heard of any technique that could break it from within the sheath!
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Nan Feng and Fu Yao both pointed at San Lang and cried, “You—!!”
San Lang snickered and leaned back in his chair, putting his black- booted feet up on the table. He tossed one of the broken pieces in his hand in the air to play with it. “I’m sure you guys didn’t do this on purpose and just weren’t careful enough with it on the road. Don’t worry about me, I don’t need some broken sword as protection. Keep it for yourselves.”
As for Xie Lian, he simply couldn’t look at Hongjing directly. The sacred sword used to be part of Jun Wu’s collection. During his first ascension, Xie Lian once visited Jun Wu’s palace and thought that, despite its lack of combat power, Hongjing was an interesting sword. So Jun Wu gifted it to him. After the first banishment, there was a time when things had gotten really hard, and Xie Lian gave the sword to Feng Xin to be pawned.
That’s right. Pawned!
The money made from pawning Hongjing was enough to fill their stomachs for a few meals. Xie Lian had pawned off too many treasures during that time, and he had forced himself to forget every single one of
them lest his heart bleed with regret. Feng Xin remembered the sword after his ascension and couldn’t bear having a sacred object lost among mortals, so he managed to find it again. It was sharpened, cleaned, and hung in the Palace of Nan Yang, and now it had been brought down by Nan Feng. In
any case, whenever Xie Lian saw that sword his head would faintly ache, so he could only look away.
He could sense that the other three were about to start bickering again and shook his head. Instead, he carefully observed the weather outside. The wind was picking up, Xie Lian noted. There might be a sandstorm later. If they continued on their way, would they be able to find shelter?
Just then, over the golden sand, two shadows suddenly flashed by. Xie Lian straightened up immediately.
Two silhouettes, one black, one white, sauntered unhurriedly but rapidly, as if they were gliding through clouds. The one dressed in black
was slender and elegant. The one dressed in white, on the other hand, was a female cultivator, with a sword on her back and a whisk in hand. As they sped by the abandoned inn, the black figure didn’t look back once, but the
white figure glanced over and smiled. That smile was like their forms: gone in a flash but leaving a forebodingly strange feeling.
It was only because Xie Lian had been keeping an eye on the outside that he caught that scene, but the other three probably only saw their retreating backs.
Nan Feng rose instantly. “Who was that?”
Xie Lian stood up too. “Don’t know, but they’re definitely not ordinary people.” After a moment’s deliberation, he said, “The wind is picking up. Stop playing around, and let’s go as far as we can.”
Although the bickering trio constantly argued, they had nevertheless steeled their hearts to do what they came here to do. So they immediately stopped butting heads and cleaned up the pieces of Hongjing before heading out the door.
The four of them continued their trek, now against a blowing headwind. They walked for another four hours, wind howling in their ears, but the progress they made was nothing compared to the distance they were able to cover earlier in the day. The whipping gusts grew stronger, and the wind whipping the sand battered their faces and bodies, beating at any uncovered skin. The more they advanced, the more difficult it became.
Gusts became deafening gales and whirling sand filled the air around them, obscuring their path.
Xie Lian, holding his bamboo hat down, called out, “This sudden sandstorm feels strange!”
No one answered him and Xie Lian looked back, afraid that someone might be lost. But all three were present and following, just no one had heard him. The gales were so strong that his voice was swallowed up. He wasn’t particularly worried about Nan Feng and Fu Yao; even with crazed winds whipping, the two walked steadily, full of killing intent. San Lang, on the other hand, followed closely behind Xie Lian, never more than five
steps away.
Even with so much sand blowing and thrashing about, San Lang remained calm and collected, hands clasped behind him as he walked. His red tunic and black hair danced wildly in the wind, as if he hadn’t any care in the world. Xie Lian could feel how hard the sand was hitting his face and
was worried by how little San Lang seemed to mind. He opened his mouth to tell the youth to watch out for sand getting in his eyes and sleeves but figured he wouldn’t hear anything he’d say, so Xie Lian reached over directly to help fold in his sleeves, patting them down to make sure no sand would get in. San Lang was taken aback by the sudden gesture.
The other two behind them approached, and with everyone in better hearing range, Xie Lian tried talking again. “Be careful, everyone. This wind came out of nowhere, it’s not right. There may be evil within.”
“It’s just a little sandstorm, how evil can it be?” Fu Yao said.
Xie Lian shook his head. “The wind is all right. It’s what the sand might carry that I’m worried about.”
Just then, a powerful gust whipped by, blowing off Xie Lian’s bamboo hat. If it flew off, it would disappear into the desert forever! But San Lang reacted immediately and grabbed the hat just in time with an abnormally fast hand. He returned the bamboo hat to Xie Lian once more, and Xie Lian thanked him.
As he retied the hat onto his head, he said, “We should probably find shelter for the time being.”
Fu Yao countered, “If there’s evil in this storm trying to stop us from advancing, then we must continue!”
Before Xie Lian could say anything, San Lang burst out laughing. Fu Yao’s head shot up, and he coldly demanded, “What are you laughing at?”
San Lang folded his arms and chuckled. “Does being contradictory give you the satisfaction of feeling unique and independent?”
Xie Lian had thought before that although this youth was always smiling, it was often difficult to discern whether it was genuine or purposely courteous as a form of mockery. This time, however, anyone could tell there was not a trace of sincerity in his smile. Fu Yao’s eyes grew dark, and Xie Lian raised his hand.
“Stop right there, you two. If you’ve got things to say, you can say them later. It won’t be funny if the wind gets any stronger.”
“What? Think it’ll blow you away?” Fu Yao mocked. “Yes, that may very well ha—”
Xie Lian didn’t finish before the three in front of him suddenly vanished.
Actually, they weren’t the ones who vanished, he did: another powerful gust had carried him away for real!
A twister!
Xie Lian spun wildly in the sky. He threw out his arm and cried, “Ruoye! Grab hold of something dependably solid!!”
Ruoye shot out from within Xie Lian’s sleeve. In the next moment, he could feel the other end of the white bandage sink as if it was tied to something, and it yanked him to a stop. After finally stabilizing himself in
the crazed wind, Xie Lian realized that he had been blown over thirty meters above the ground!
Xie Lian was now like a kite, attached to the ground by only a single thread. With sand whipping at his face, he held fast and tried to see what exactly Ruoye had tied itself to. Squinting and blinking, Xie Lian finally recognized a red silhouette. The other end of Ruoye seemed to be wrapped around the wrist of the youth in red.
Xie Lian told Ruoye to grab hold of something dependably solid, and it grabbed on to San Lang!
Xie Lian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was about to command Ruoye to grab on to something else when the pull on his arm suddenly grew lighter. Xie Lian’s heart sank.
This wasn’t the feeling of Ruoye being released but something much worse. Sure enough, the red silhouette suddenly grew closer and was soon within reach.
San Lang had been dragged into the windstorm too!
Xie Lian tried to shout “Don’t panic!” to him, but the moment he opened his mouth, he got another mouthful of sand. At this point, Xie Lian had gotten used to eating sand. He wanted to tell San Lang not to panic, but in all honesty, he didn’t think the boy would fret in the slightest. Ruoye continued to withdraw back to Xie Lian, closing the distance between him and the boy who had just been blown into the sky. As he suspected, San Lang didn’t look the least bit anxious, appearing as if he could calmly open
a book and read right then and there. Xie Lian wondered if San Lang had gotten dragged in on purpose.
Ruoye wrapped itself around the waists of the two to tie them together. Xie Lian hugged onto San Lang, then commanded, “Go, try again, but don’t bring up any more people!”
The silk band shot out once again, but this time it grabbed on to… Nan Feng and Fu Yao!
Xie Lian felt drained. “Ruoye,” he said tiredly. “I said no ‘people,’ but I didn’t mean it so literally…all right.”
Xie Lian twisted himself toward the ground and shouted, “Nan Feng, Fu Yao! Hang on! Hang on tight!”
Down below, of course Nan Feng and Fu Yao did their utmost to try to anchor themselves, but the winds were simply too strong. Soon, to no one’s surprise, another two silhouettes joined them in the twister.
Now all four of them were swirling about in the air at high speed.
Within the dark yellowness between the heavens and the earth, that twister was like a slanted sand pillar reaching the sky. Four silhouettes tied together by a white silk band were whirling nonstop within it, going faster and faster, higher and higher.
“How did you both get blown up here too?” Xie Lian shouted, enduring all the sand blowing into his mouth.
All they could see was sand, and all they could hear was wind. They had no choice but to use their loudest voices to shout to each other.
“Ask your dumb Ruoye!” Fu Yao yelled back, spitting out sand as quickly as he got mouthfuls of it.
Xie Lian seized his “dumb Ruoye” with both hands and said woefully, “Oh, Ruoye, all four of us are counting on you now. Please, absolutely do not grab the wrong thing again. Now go!”
With heroic solemnity, Xie Lian released Ruoye once more. “Stop relying on that toy! Think of something else!” Nan Feng
roared.
But just then, Xie Lian felt a tug from the other end of the silk band and lit up. “Wait! Give it one more chance! It’s caught something!”
“It better not be a random passerby! Let the poor person go!” Fu Yao roared too.
Xie Lian was also afraid of the same thing. He tugged back at Ruoye, but it remained taut and firm, and Xie Lian let out a breath of relief.
“It’s not! It’s something solid, quite stable!” Then he commanded Ruoye: “Pull!”
Ruoye rapidly shortened against the force of the crazed twister. The four silhouettes were quickly pulled out of the wind pillar, and gradually, in the midst of boundless yellow sand, Xie Lian could make out the contours of something large, black, and half-round down below.
This landmark was extremely big, about the size of a small temple; it was what Ruoye had latched on to. When they came closer to the ground, Xie Lian could finally see clearly that this round structure was actually a giant boulder.
In a windstorm of such force, this boulder was like a solid, silent fortress, no doubt the perfect shelter. While on the road earlier, however,
none of them had seen such a rock. Who knew how far that strange twister had taken them? When they landed, they immediately circled around to the back of the boulder to shelter from the wind.
The moment they went around, understanding dawned on Xie Lian. “Thank the heaven official’s blessings!”
Turned out, in the back of this boulder there was an opening. The hole was as wide as two doors but only half the height of one. Although a
bit low, it was still possible for a grown person to enter if they bent down. The hole’s opening was jagged and slanted, but it appeared to be haphazardly manmade rather than naturally formed. When Xie Lian entered, he discovered that the inside of the boulder was hollowed out, and quite deep. It was dark further inside, so he didn’t bother trying to look around and settled down where there was light. He brushed the sand off
Ruoye and wrapped it back on his wrist.
Nan Feng and Fu Yao were both spitting out sand and covered in it from head to toe, from their eyes to their ears to their mouths and noses and
all over their clothes. They peeled off their outer robes and shook them out; they were heavy with fine grains of sand. Of the four of them, only San Lang looked unruffled as he lazily dusted himself off and made himself proper again. Other than his lopsided ponytail, his carefree form remained unaffected. That ponytail had been tied by Xie Lian and was askew to begin with, so a little wind made no noticeable difference anyway.
Nan Feng wiped his face and started cursing while Xie Lian dumped sand from his bamboo hat. “Hahhh, I didn’t think you two would get pulled in as well. Why didn’t you use the Thousand-Pound Weight spell?”
“We did! It was useless!” Nan Feng spat angrily.
From the side, Fu Yao was still ferociously shaking sand out of his outer robe and said equally ferociously, “Where do you think we are? This is a desert in the northwest, not the main domain of my general.”
Nan Feng continued, “The north is the territory of the two Generals Pei, and the west belongs to Quan Yizhen. You won’t find a Nan Yang
temple within a hundred-kilometer radius of this place.”
There is a saying in the Mortal Realm that even a powerful dragon cannot win against the local snakes. As Nan Feng and Fu Yao were deputy generals of the southeast and southwest, it couldn’t be helped that their
powers were restricted when they tried to use them outside of their own territories. Seeing their incredibly sullen, frustrated faces, Xie Lian thought this was perhaps the first time they were sent flying by a huge wind to
tumble in circles without any way to land. “You two have worked very hard.”
San Lang sat down next to him and propped up a cheek with his hand. “So are we just gonna sit here until the storm blows over?”
“Looks like we’ll have to,” Xie Lian turned to him and replied. “As strong as that twister is, it can’t possibly blow a giant rock into the sky.”
“You never know. Like you said, there’s certainly something off about that wind.”
A sudden thought came to Xie Lian. “San Lang, may I ask a question?”
“Ask away,” San Lang replied.
asked.
“That state preceptor of Banyue, is it a man or a woman?” Xie Lian
“Did I not mention earlier? She’s a woman.”
Just as I suspected, Xie Lian thought. “Earlier, when we were resting
at the abandoned inn, didn’t we see two figures pass by? Their steps were graceful and strange, definitely not those of a mortal. And the one in white was a female cultivator.”
Fu Yao looked doubtful. “It’s not easy to identify whether they were a man or woman by the robes, and they looked taller than the average woman. Are you sure you saw right?”
“I’m absolutely sure,” Xie Lian said. “So I thought she might be the state preceptor of Banyue.”
“It’s possible,” Nan Feng said. “But there was another black-clad figure traveling with her. Who could that be?”
“Hard to say, but that person was walking even faster than she was.
Their strength is definitely no less than hers,” Xie Lian said.
“Could it have been the other evil state preceptor, Fangxin?” Fu Yao wondered.
“I think, regarding that, the whole ‘Dual Evil Masters’ title was only given because, historically, their actions were similar. Both were equally evil, so people connected them together as a pair to remember them more easily. Like the ‘Four Great Calamities’ of the Ghost Realm; even if there aren’t really four that fit, they are made four because it’s simpler.”
Hearing Xie Lian say this, San Lang burst out laughing. Xie Lian stared at him.
“It’s nothing,” San Lang said, “I just thought what you said made sense. One of the four in the Four Great Calamities is certainly only there for the headcount. Please continue.”
Xie Lian continued: “In reality, the Dual Evil Masters have nothing to do with each other. I’ve heard of State Preceptor Fangxin: he was the state preceptor of Yong’an, born at least a hundred years earlier than State Preceptor Banyue.”
“You don’t know of the Four Great Calamities in the Ghost Realm, but you know about State Preceptor Fangxin of Yong’an in the Mortal
Realm?” Fu Yao asked in disbelief.
“I overhear things while collecting scraps in the Mortal Realm. It’s not like I collect scraps in the Ghost Realm, so of course I don’t learn anything about them,” Xie Lian explained.
The wind outside the cave seemed to be dying down. Nan Feng approached the opening of their shelter, patting the rocky surface here and there, inspecting its material. He stared fixated at it for a moment, then lowered his head.
“Why would there be a hollow rock like this in the middle of a desert?”
He thought the boulder was rather suspicious, but Xie Lian wasn’t surprised by it.
“Hollowed boulders like these aren’t unusual. The people of Banyue used to build shelters like these to hide from sandstorms, or even for passing the nights while taking their livestock to graze. Some holes weren’t dug but were rather blown out,” Xie Lian said.
“How could they graze in a desert?” Nan Feng asked, confused. Xie Lian smiled. “It wasn’t all desert here two hundred years ago.
There used to be an oasis.”
“Gege,” San Lang called.
“What is it?” Xie Lian turned his head.
San Lang raised his hand and pointed. “The rock you’re sitting on seems to have writing on it.”
“What?” Xie Lian looked down, then stood up and found that where he had been sitting was actually a stele, a carved stone monument.
After wiping off the layer of dust, there were indeed letters on its surface. However, the characters were carved rather shallowly, so the words weren’t very clear. At least half the stele was still buried, and the words stretched from beneath the sand all the way up until they faded into blackness.
If there was writing here, it had to be examined!
“I don’t have much power left. Can someone lend me a palm light?
Thanks!” Xie Lian asked.
Nan Feng snapped his fingers and a small burst of flame ignited in his palm. Xie Lian stole a glance at San Lang, but the youth didn’t appear surprised. Xie Lian supposed that after seeing the teleportation array, there wasn’t much more to be surprised about. Nan Feng moved his palm to
where Xie Lian directed him to brighten the writing on the stone stele. The characters were incredibly odd, slanting as if randomly scribbled by a toddler.
“What is this?” Nan Feng wondered.
“Banyue script, duh,” San Lang replied.
“I’m sure Nan Feng asked the meaning of the words,” Xie Lian said. “Let me see.”
Xie Lian dusted more sand off the stone stele, revealing the first column of writing with the largest characters. That had to be the heading. The same characters also appeared repeatedly in various sections of the text.
Fu Yao approached and produced a palm torch. “You know how to read Banyue script?”
“Truth be told, I collected scraps in Banyue before that Evil Master of Banyue or whoever came about,” Xie Lian replied.
“…”
“Is there something wrong?”
“Nothing,” Fu Yao humphed. “Just wondering where you haven’t
collected junk.”
Xie Lian flashed a smile, then looked down again at the characters. A moment later, he suddenly said, “General.”
“What?” Nan Feng and Fu Yao answered at the same time.
Xie Lian looked up. “The first word on this stone stele is ‘general.’”
He paused for a moment. “But there’s another character after it that I’m unsure the meaning of.”
Nan Feng seemed to sigh in relief. “Then you’d best look some more.”
Xie Lian nodded, and Nan Feng shifted his palm over further to light up the other words. Something didn’t feel right, Xie Lian thought. There seemed to be something else on the periphery of his vision. With both hands pressed on the rock, Xie Lian slowly looked up.
Above the stone stele, the flickering flames illuminated a stiff human face. This face, with its bulging eyes, was staring straight at him.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”
The one who screamed wasn’t Xie Lian or Nan Feng, but that stiff
face.
Nan Feng immediately took out his other hand and ignited it as well.
He put both hands together and grew the flames until they were bright enough to light up the entire cave.
The one whose face was revealed by the light was a person who had been hiding in the shadows the whole time. When the flames grew bigger, he scurried along the walls toward the back of the cave, and there Xie Lian saw seven or eight people huddled together and trembling in fear.
“Who are you?!” Nan Feng shouted.
Nan Feng’s angry shout echoed in the cave, and Xie Lian, whose ears were still ringing from the scream earlier, covered his ears. Noise from the windstorms had deafened them, and anything spoken too softly wasn’t heard. After they entered the cave, they had discussed the Evil Master of Banyue, then focused their attention on deciphering the stone stele, so no
one had noticed there were others also hiding within their shelter.
The seven or eight people trembled. A moment later, an elder of fifty or so years stammered, “We’re a merchant caravan passing through the area. Just ordinary merchants. The sandstorm is too fierce, so we’re hiding in here for the time being.”
He was the most composed in the group, and by the looks of it, the leader.
Nan Feng asked, “If you’re just ordinary merchants, why are you sneaking around and hiding so furtively?”
The elder was about to respond when a youth of around seventeen years shouted, “We weren’t planning on sneaking around! But you guys
suddenly rushed in here; who knows whether you’re good or evil? Then we heard you talk about the Evil Master of Banyue, then some Ghost Realm stuff, and you ignited fire in your palms. We thought you guys were Banyue soldiers out patrolling and hunting for flesh! No way we’d make a sound!”
“Stop talking, Tian Sheng,” the old man hushed the boy, afraid that he might have offended the other party.
The youth had thick brows and large eyes, with the face and mind of a tiger. As soon as an elder spoke, he shut up immediately.
Xie Lian put down his hands, his ears no longer ringing, and said amiably, “It’s nothing but a misunderstanding, just a misunderstanding. Let’s all relax a bit; no need to be so nervous.”
He paused for a moment before continuing to explain. “We’re not Banyue soldiers. I am just a cultivator from a small shrine. These are…
people…from my shrine. We only know a few tricks, nothing fancy. You’re ordinary merchants, and we’re ordinary cultivators without malicious intent. It just so happens that we all entered the same shelter to hide away from the same sandstorm.”
His voice was soft and gentle, each word spoken slowly to calm everyone’s nerves. After much explanation and reassurance, the merchant party finally relaxed.
Yet unexpectedly, San Lang suddenly laughed. “I think they’re being way too humble. Those merchants aren’t as simple as they say they are.”
No one understood what he meant and looked at him in confusion. “Don’t at least half the travelers go missing when trekking through
Banyue Pass? To cross this land while knowing that rumor; surely you’re all extraordinarily brave. Nothing ordinary about you.”
“That’s not all true, young man,” the elder responded. “Besides the fact that rumors are largely exaggerated, there are many caravans that have passed through without harm before!”
“Oh?” San Lang said.
“As long as you find the right guide and go around Banyue territory, all is well. So we sought out and found a local to lead us,” the elder said.
“Yeah!” that youth Tian Sheng said. “It all depends on the guide! We owe everything to A-Zhao-ge! If not for him, we wouldn’t have been able to avoid all those quicksand pits. When the sandstorm started, he knew exactly where to bring us to hide, otherwise we would be buried alive in sand by
now!”
Xie Lian took a glance. This A-Zhao who guided them looked rather young, seemingly in his twenties, with an attractive, stony face. When he was praised by the other two, he didn’t make a show of it.
His head was down, and he mumbled, “It’s nothing. Just doing my duty. Hopefully when the wind dies down none of the camels or cargo will be damaged.”
“They’ll be fine for sure!”
The merchants were all very optimistic, but Xie Lian had a feeling things weren’t as simple as they all thought.
If all trouble could be avoided by simply not crossing into Banyue territory, then did all the former travelers who lost their lives die because they didn’t believe the rumors?
Xie Lian gave it some thought and said to Nan Feng and Fu Yao in a quiet voice, “This is too sudden. Once this storm passes, we’ll need to make sure these people pass through safely before going to the Banyue ruins.”
Then, Xie Lian looked back down to continue deciphering the
Banyue writing on the stone stele. He recognized the word “general” earlier, but that was because it was a common word. It had been two hundred years since he last visited the Kingdom of Banyue. Even if he was fluent then, it had all been forgotten since. Shouldering the burden of translation really required time and patience.
Just then, San Lang said: “Tomb of the General.”
Xie Lian remembered now. The last character was the one for
“Tomb,” “Grave,” “Burial,” and other similar terms. He turned to look at him, amazed.
“San Lang, do you know the Banyue script too?”
San Lang smiled. “Not much. I only know a few words because they’re interesting.”
Xie Lian was already used to him saying that. The word “tomb” was not one often used; if San Lang really only knew “not much,” how could he just happen to know exactly what this one character meant? His “not much” probably meant the same as “ask away,” and Xie Lian grinned immediately.
“Excellent! Maybe the characters you recognize happen to be the ones I don’t know. Come closer and let’s examine this together.”
Xie Lian waved lightly to beckon, so San Lang went over. Nan Feng and Fu Yao stood next to them, lighting the tomb with their palm torches for them to read. Xie Lian lightly touched the words with his fingers, reviewing the writing in a low voice with San Lang, softly reading the words. The
more they read, the more amazed they looked, before gradually growing glummer.
The merchant boy Tian Sheng was young, and youths were prone to curiosity. After the little chat earlier, it was as if they had become familiar, so he called out, “Gege, what does it say on the stele?”
Xie Lian snapped out of it and replied, “This stone stele is a memorial; it tells the story of the life of a general.”
“A Banyue general?” Tian Sheng asked.
“No, a Central Plains general,” San Lang answered.
“A Central Plains general?” Nan Feng was puzzled. “Why would the people of Banyue build a memorial for a Central Plains man? I thought the two nations were constantly at war with each other.”
“This general was special,” San Lang replied. “Although the memorial calls him a general, he was actually no more than a captain.”
“Was he promoted to general later?”
“No. At the beginning, he led a troop of hundreds, but it dwindled to a troop of seventy, then to fifty.”
“…”
“In other words, continued demotion.”
The feeling of being demoted to the point of nothing was quite familiar to Xie Lian, and he could feel eyes on him. He pretended not to notice and continued to decipher the Banyue writing.
Tian Sheng couldn’t understand and continued asking, “What kind of official gets demoted lower and lower in rank? As long as he didn’t make any major mistakes, there should only be delays in promotion, not demotion, right? How much of a failure do you have to be?”
“…”
Xie Lian clenched his right hand in a fist and raised it to his lips. He faintly cleared his throat and replied in a stern voice. “Young man, receiving continuous demotion is not as rare as you think.”
“Huh?”
San Lang chuckled. “It’s true. It happens a lot.” He paused before continuing. “This captain got demoted time and time again not because he was incapable or incompetent. It’s because despite poor relations on both sides of this conflict, instead of winning battles on the battlefield, he kept getting in the way.”
“What do you mean, ‘getting in the way’?” Nan Feng asked.
“He prevented his enemies from killing civilians of the Central Plains, and he also blocked his own army from killing the people of Banyue. Every time he did this, he got demoted a rank.”
San Lang spoke lightheartedly, and the seven or eight merchants sat closer to him like it was story time. Soon they got into it and started commentating.
“I don’t think the captain did anything wrong!” Tian Sheng remarked. “It shouldn’t be a problem to let soldiers kill each other but not civilians,
right?”
“He’s too blindly kind for a soldier, but overall, he didn’t commit any crimes?”
“Yeah, he was saving lives, not killing people!” Xie Lian smiled at all the comments.
These merchants before them had never lived a day at a battle-torn border; they were not the same people as those here two hundred years ago. The Kingdom of Banyue had long since perished. It was easy for them to say this, criticize that, even give compliments, but the actions of that captain weren’t so easily forgiven back then, not with a simple remark like “he’s too blindly kind.” Within the group, only A-Zhao understood better— probably because he was a local.
“Now is now, two hundred years ago is two hundred years ago. To only receive demotions was a blessing for this captain.”
Fu Yao, however, clicked his tongue. “How laughable.”
Xie Lian could pretty much guess what he was about to say and rubbed his forehead.
Sure enough, the light of the flickering flames illuminated Fu Yao’s glum look. “One must do the duty demanded by their position. If he became a soldier, then he must always remember to defend his country and kill
enemies on the front lines. Casualties are inevitable in war. Such
softheartedness has no place in war and will only drag down his fellow soldiers. His enemies will also think him foolish. No one will thank him in the end.”
Fu Yao’s words had irrefutable logic, and silence soon filled the cave.
He continued dryly, “People like that only have one end: death. They will either die in battle or at the hands of their own people.”
After being struck speechless for a moment, Xie Lian broke the silence. “Yeah. You’re right. He did die.”
Tian Sheng was shocked. “Ah! How did he die? Was he really killed by his own people?”
After a moment of deliberation, Xie Lian still replied in the end. “Not really… Here it says that there was once a battle when both sides clashed, and as they fought, this man’s boot laces came loose and he stepped on them, tripped, then…”
Everyone in the cave had assumed the death must have been tragic but heroic, so they were all taken aback at first, thinking what kind of death was that? Then, laughter exploded.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“…He was trampled by the soldiers on both sides who were blinded by murderous rage and was cut down by a mess of random weapons.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…”
“Is it that funny?” San Lang quirked a brow.
Xie Lian also piped up. “Ahem. Yeah, it’s rather tragic. Let’s be more sympathetic and not laugh, okay? We’re in his tomb after all, let’s give him some face.”
“I don’t mean anything malicious by laughing!” Tian Sheng immediately claimed. “But his death is just…so…ha ha…”
There was nothing Xie Lian could do. Reading the epitaph to this point, even he wanted to laugh. He didn’t comment and continued to translate.
“In any case, even though this captain didn’t have a good reputation in the army, some of the border citizens of both Banyue and Yong’an were very grateful for his efforts, so they called him ‘General.’ They built this
simple stone tomb for him and erected a stone stele to remember him by.”
“Later, the people of Banyue discovered another miraculous thing about this memorial: as long as one kowtows before this stone stele three times, one can transform all disasters met in the Gobi to good fortune,” San Lang completed the translation.
He spoke so enigmatically that it was very convincing. His expression was also serious, so when the group heard, several of them immediately started prostrating, muttering that they’d rather believe it true than not. Xie Lian, however, was confused.
“Wha—? Is that written here? Is it really that magical?”
San Lang smiled softly and said in a lowered voice, “No. I made that up. But since they laughed earlier, their prostrating now should make up for it.”
Xie Lian looked back at the stone stele and saw that it was indeed the end of the epitaph, and there were no more words. He had been feeling a bit woeful, but now he thought it funny.
He whispered back, “Why are you so mischievous?” San Lang stuck out his tongue, and the two chuckled. Just then, someone shrieked, “What’s this?!”
The shriek echoed in the cave, sharply reverberating against the walls, and it caused all their hairs to stand up.
Xie Lian instantly turned toward where the shriek came from and demanded, “What happened?”
Where the merchants were once prostrating, everyone had jumped up in a flash and scurried away in fear and alarm.
“Snake!!”
Nan Feng and Fu Yao moved their palms toward the commotion and lit up the ground in that direction. Curled on the sandy floor was a slender, brilliantly colored snake!
“Why is there a snake?!” The crowd was growing increasingly anxious.
“How…how did this snake not make any noise?! We didn’t hear when it slithered over at all!”
When the flames appeared near the snake, it instantly became alert and raised itself into an attack position. Nan Feng was about to torch it when someone leisurely strolled over. That person easily snatched the snake with his left hand, clutching it at its heart.
He brought it closer to observe it and said, “Isn’t it normal to see snakes in the desert?”
Someone that fearlessly gutsy was, of course, San Lang. They say to fight a snake, seize it at the heart; if pressed there hard enough, no matter how venomous its fangs, it’ll be helpless. The snake wrapped its long tail around San Lang’s left arm meekly. At closer range, Xie Lian could see
clearly: the snake had translucent skin, and its vivid red insides were visible and mixed with threads of black, resembling organs—rather disgusting. The tail was the color of flesh and segmented with layers of hard shell, unlike that of a snake, more like a scorpion.
Seeing this, Xie Lian’s face changed, and he called out, “Watch out for its tail!”
Before Xie Lian finished speaking, the long snake body wrapped around San Lang’s left arm suddenly let go. The tail snapped backward and tried to stab viciously toward San Lang.
Venomous as the tail was, San Lang’s right hand was faster, and he easily caught it. Now holding both head and tail, San Lang showed off the snake to Xie Lian like it was an interesting toy, laughing.
“This tail is pretty interesting.”
On the end of the tail there was a long, flesh-red needle. Xie Lian sighed in relief. “I’m glad you weren’t stung. As I thought, this is a
scorpion-snake.”
Nan Feng and Fu Yao approached to observe the snake too. “Scorpion-snake?”
“That’s right,” Xie Lian said. “It’s a kind of venomous vermin found only in Banyue; they’re very rare. I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard of them. Body of a snake, tail of a scorpion, its venom has the strength of both combined, and if bitten or stung…”
Xie Lian trailed off. He watched San Lang twisting the snake, pulling and squeezing it as if it were a towel, stopping just short of tying it into a
bow.
Xie Lian was speechless for a moment, then gently chided, “San Lang, stop playing with the poor thing, it’s dangerous.”
San Lang laughed. “Don’t worry, gege, it’s nothing. The scorpion-
snake is the totem of the Banyue state preceptor, gotta take this rare chance to examine it!”
Xie Lian blinked. “The totem of the Banyue state preceptor?” “That’s right,” San Lang said. “Apparently, it was because the state
preceptor could control these scorpion-snakes that the people of Banyue believed in her infinite powers and worshipped her.”
Hearing the word “control” alarmed Xie Lian. When it came to controlling anything, whatever it might be, they usually came in huge
numbers. He immediately cried, “Everyone, leave this cave! There may be more than one scorpion-snake…”
Before he could finish there came a wail. “Aaaah!!!”
“Snake!” Other voices started yelling. “So many snakes!!!” “Over here too!”
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From the shadows, seven or eight scorpion-snakes soundlessly slithered into the cave. They came so swiftly and quietly from unknown crevices, but they didn’t attack, only watched, judging. Soundless in both movement and attack, not even hissing, truly extremely dangerous. Nan Feng and Fu Yao released two fireballs and shot them toward the snakes, and a large ball of fire exploded inside the cave.
“Get out!” Xie Lian yelled.
No one needed to be told twice, and everyone ran outside. Luckily, it was still light out and the twister had long passed, the wind calmed. The group of them escaped into open ground and kept running.
As they ran, someone said, “That stone memorial is too scary! How come after we kowtowed three times we still ran into stuff like that?!”
Xie Lian was thankful that they didn’t know those last words were fabricated by San Lang. But then, he heard someone else say, “Yeah! It’s pretty much the same effect as worshipping the Scrap Immortal! The more you pray, the unluckier you become!”
“…”
Even when the issue was barely related to him, he still got shot. Xie Lian was speechless.
Suddenly, Tian Sheng yelped in alarm, “Uncle Zheng!”
That elder he had been assisting had collapsed. Xie Lian darted over. “What happened?”
Pain filled the face of old man Zheng, and he raised a shaky hand.
Xie Lian grabbed hold of his hand and frowned, his heart sinking. There
was a growing, angry swelling spreading rapidly down his palm, and within the red and purple bruising, there were two small punctures, barely visible. A wound that tiny would not have otherwise been noticed until it was too late.
“Everyone, check and see if you have any wounds on your bodies!” Xie Lian called out immediately. “If you do, use a rope to stop the spread!”
Xie Lian turned the hand over to examine his meridians and saw that the red and purple swelling was visibly climbing up the veins of the arm.
What a formidable venom, Xie Lian thought. He was just about to unravel Ruoye when, next to him, A-Zhao ripped a strip of fabric from his own clothing and promptly knotted it tightly around the old man’s bicep to prevent the venom from progressing. Xie Lian mentally praised him. He looked up, and without needing him to say anything, Nan Feng had already taken out a medicine bottle and popped out a pill. Xie Lian helped the old man swallow it.
“Uncle! Are you okay?” Tian Sheng cried. “A-Zhao-ge, Uncle won’t die, will he?”
A-Zhao shook his head. “To be bitten by the scorpion-snake means certain death within four hours.”
Tian Sheng was shaken. “Then…what do we do?!”
Old man Zheng was the leader of the caravan, and the other
merchants also started panicking. “Our friend here just gave him a pill, right?”
“That wasn’t an antidote,” Nan Feng said. “It’s for temporary longevity. The most it can give him is twenty-four hours.”
The crowd became even more distressed. “Only twenty-four hours?”
“Does that mean we can only sit here and wait for death to come?”
“Is there no saving him from this venom?”
Right then, San Lang walked over slowly. “There is a way.”
Everyone turned to stare at him. Tian Sheng turned his head joyously. “Zhao-ge, if there’s a way, why didn’t you say so? Gave me a fright!” However, A-Zhao stayed silent and shook his head.
“Of course it’s not easy for him to say,” San Lang said. “How could he possibly tell you that the bitten one can only be saved at the cost of
everyone else’s lives?”
“San Lang, what do you mean?” Xie Lian asked.
“Gege, do you know the story behind the scorpion-snake?” San Lang
asked.
In the legends, many hundreds of years ago, there was once a king of Banyue who, while hunting, inadvertently caught two spirits borne from two venomous creatures: one snake and one scorpion.
The two venom spirits cultivated deep within the mountains, ignorant of the world and causing no afflictions. Nevertheless, the king considered their nature and believed they would cause evil sooner or later, so he decided to execute them. They begged and begged for their lives to be spared, but the king was cruel. He forced the two creatures to mate in front of him and his ministers to serve as entertainment at one of his many banquets, and after the feast, they were executed.
Only the queen pitied the two creatures. But she feared going against the will of the king, so all she could do was pick the leaf of a fragrant fern and cast it out to cover their corpses.
The snake and scorpion became vengeful spirits, immensely resentful, and they cursed the descendants borne from their mating to forever remain in the Kingdom of Banyue to destroy its people. Ever since then, scorpion-snakes were found only within Banyue territory. Should
anyone be bitten or stung, the venom would spread through their body like wildfire, and they would die a miserable death.
However, thanks to that one act of kindness by the queen, the fern leaves used to cover their corpses became the antidote for their venom.
“That plant is called shanyue, and it only grows within the borders of Banyue,” San Lang finished.
“Is…is the legend true? Can it be believed?” the merchants asked anxiously. “Buddy, this concerns life and death, don’t joke around with us!”
San Lang smiled but said nothing, refusing to speak more after telling Xie Lian the tale.
Tian Sheng turned toward A-Zhao. “Zhao-ge, is what that red-clad gege said true?”
After a moment of hesitation, A-Zhao replied, “Whether the legend is true, I do not know. But the shanyue plant does grow within the walls of Banyue, and it is indeed the antidote for the scorpion-snake venom.”
“Meaning the only way to live after getting bitten is to venture into the Kingdom of Banyue?” Xie Lian said.
No wonder so many caravans passed through Banyue territory
despite knowing the deadly rumors. It wasn’t that they were defiant and stubbornly went to seek their own deaths, but rather that if they didn’t go, they would most certainly die!
The scorpion-snake was the totem of the Evil Master of Banyue, and she also controlled them. The appearance of these snakes was no mere coincidence. With only a few heavenly officials like them here, there was no way they could ensure the absolute safety of the entire merchant group, and there was no telling how many more snakes would show. Xie Lian raised two fingers and pressed them against his temple, trying to connect with the heavenly communication array to see if he could shamelessly
borrow more junior officials. No dice. He couldn’t connect to the array, couldn’t reach out at all.
Xie Lian lowered his hand and wondered, I didn’t use up all my spiritual powers, did I? I calculated this morning, and there was still a little bit left. He turned to Nan Feng and Fu Yao. “Can either of you try to enter
the communication array? I’m getting no connection.” After a moment, the other two also looked grim. “I can’t get in either,” Nan Feng said.
There were cases where the connection would become fuzzy near highly evil auras—auras potent enough to diminish the powers of various heavenly officials—and sometimes cut them off completely. It seemed that was the situation they were in now.
Xie Lian paced back and forth and wondered out loud: “It might be because we’re too close to the Kingdom of Banyue, so the communication array is blocked…”
Just then, in the corner of his eye, there was a flash of red.
Nan Feng and Fu Yao were busy trying to reconnect with the communication array, and everyone else was occupied checking for wounds on their bodies. The boy Tian Sheng was anxiously holding tightly onto old man Zheng and didn’t notice a wine-red scorpion-snake soundlessly climbing up his spine, curling near the neck, and opening its mouth.
However, the fangs were not aiming at Tian Sheng’s neck but at San Lang’s arm right next to it!
The snake leaned back, then pounced!
In the speed of a second, before the snake had the chance to sink its fangs into San Lang, Xie Lian’s hand shot out and snatched it right at the heart with blinding precision.
Given his strength, Xie Lian could crush the snake’s heart if he wanted to, rupture its innards and spill its insides. But not knowing whether the snake’s flesh was also poisonous, he didn’t dare to press harder. Xie Lian raised his other hand to grab for the tail, but the snake was slippery and artful, making it difficult to catch. Xie Lian squeezed, but he only felt something soft and cold slither away from his fingers. The next moment, a sharp needle pain flared from the back of his hand.
The scorpion tail!
After the sting, Xie Lian snatched the tail and captured the snake properly, then squeezed down hard until it fell unconscious. Even having been stung, Xie Lian’s face never changed, and he tossed the unconscious snake onto the ground indifferently.
“Everyone be careful, there may be more snakes around…”
He felt a tight grip on his wrist before he finished and looked to see that it was San Lang who caught hold of him.
“San Lang?” Xie Lian was slightly taken aback.
The reason he sounded confused was because, at that moment, the expression on the youth’s face was off. It was unexplainable, frosty almost to the point of being frightening.
His eyes were focused intently on the tiny wounds on the back of Xie Lian’s hand. The wounds themselves were originally the size of needle punctures, but the venom was vicious. The back of his hand had immediately swelled up angrily with a large patch of purply red, and those small puncture wounds had visibly enlarged to the size of knife cuts.
With a dark expression, San Lang wordlessly snatched Ruoye from Xie Lian’s arm and immediately knotted it firmly on his wrist, preventing
the venom from advancing. While Ruoye enjoyed snuggling up to Xie Lian,
it wasn’t normally that well behaved. And yet, in San Lang’s hands it was so compliant it was like it was dead.
For all the time they’d known each other, Xie Lian had never seen San Lang look like this. He opened his mouth to speak, but San Lang turned to pull a dagger off the waist of one of the merchants. Nan Feng saw and
knew instantly what San Lang was about to do, and he ignited a palm torch. Without sparing a look, San Lang burned the tip of the dagger to disinfect it before turning back to Xie Lian and drawing a cross over the puncture wound.
Just as he was about to lower his head to the hand, Xie Lian hurriedly said, “It’s okay. The venom is aggressive, sucking it won’t do much. I don’t want you to get poisoned…”
San Lang ignored Xie Lian’s protests, tightened his hold on Xie Lian’s hand, and placed his lips upon it. Xie Lian felt his own arm tremble slightly, and he couldn’t explain why.
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Next to him, Fu Yao said in disdain, “I can’t believe you went and got yourself stung. What were you doing, catching the snake when the kid might not have even been bitten? You’re just causing unnecessary trouble.”
That was true. Now that Xie Lian thought back to the airy way San Lang played with the snake in the cave, he probably wouldn’t have even cared about an attack and would’ve easily avoided being bitten. But just in case. Just in case San Lang didn’t notice the snake in time. Then wouldn’t it be too late for regrets?
Xie Lian waved his good hand. “Don’t worry. It’s not like it hurts, and I won’t die from it.”
“You’re really not in pain?” Fu Yao asked.
“Really. I don’t feel pain anymore,” Xie Lian answered honestly.
His words were true. Xie Lian was someone who possessed the worst of luck, so when he ventured deep into the mountains, eight times out of ten he would step on vipers or run into venomous insects and get bitten, stung, jabbed, or poisoned in thousands of ways. However, he’d always been very stubborn at not dying, and at most he’d run a fever. After three days and
three nights of fever, he’d wake up right as rain and continue on as if nothing had happened. He simply wasn’t sensitive to pain. So as much as it hurt, he could live with it.
Right after he said this, San Lang finally looked up. The red swelling on the back of Xie Lian’s hand had gone down, and San Lang’s lips were stained with blood. His eyes were extremely cold, and he moved his glare to the unconscious snake on the ground. There was a loud BOOM! and the
snake abruptly exploded into a purplish-red pool of blood and flesh.
The sudden blast surprised everyone, but no one knew who did it. Even if the blood didn’t splatter onto anyone, there was still a feeling of unease blanketing the crowd.
Tian Sheng, remembering that Xie Lian had also been stung, asked worriedly, “Gege, you got stung too! What will you do?”
Xie Lian felt the bandage on his wrist and smiled. “Don’t worry, little one. We’ll still stick to the plan of going to the Banyue ruins and searching for the shanyue fern.”
Another merchant asked, “You guys are going? What about us?
Should we send someone to go with you?”
“You can all stay here. Banyue territory is dangerous; the more
people there, the more mishaps can happen. We will find the fern and bring it back to you within twenty-four hours,” Xie Lian said.
“Will…will you really? Thank you so much—!” “How can we possibly ever…”
A number of the merchants started stuttering their thanks, but then their faces changed when Xie Lian continued to speak. “In order to reach Banyue as soon as possible, I want to borrow your guide temporarily, if that’s all right.”
Naturally, Xie Lian meant A-Zhao. The merchants went from grateful and relieved to largely hesitant. Xie Lian knew where they were coming from. They were afraid that Xie Lian might run off with their guide once he found the shanyue fern—or even if A-Zhao didn’t run away, he would still be greatly delayed. Nevertheless, none of them wanted to venture into that wicked place where “at least half go missing,” so it was a huge dilemma.
Their worries were perfectly normal, so Xie Lian quickly added: “And just in case anything else comes to attack you, Fu Yao will stay until we return.”
With one man staying, the merchants finally agreed and nodded. “All right. As long as A-Zhao is willing to go with you.”
Xie Lian turned to A-Zhao. “Are you open to lending us a hand, my friend? If not, that’s okay too.”
A-Zhao nodded and said, “Yes. But the Banyue ruins are actually not hard to get to. Just keep going in this direction and you’ll reach them.”
After bidding the merchants farewell, A-Zhao took the lead with Xie Lian, San Lang, and Nan Feng following right behind.
A while later, Xie Lian inquired, “A-Zhao, do the scorpion-snakes appear frequently in this area?”
“Not frequently. This was my first time seeing them too,” A-Zhao replied.
Xie Lian nodded and had no more questions. Truthfully, he did live in the Banyue area for a number of years, and this was also his first time seeing a scorpion-snake. A-Zhao’s answer was not surprising.
Nan Feng realized Xie Lian’s intentions and asked in a low voice, “You’re suspicious of this A-Zhao?”
Xie Lian responded in a whisper, “Either way, we’ve brought him out. Just keep an eye on him.”
In the past, it was usually San Lang who would talk to him first. Xie Lian wasn’t sure if it was because of the incident earlier, but the youth still looked rather upset, walking without speaking a word. Xie Lian couldn’t
figure out what was going on and didn’t know how to talk to him, so he kept on walking as well.
The four continued to trek through the vast Gobi Desert for close to an hour. The windstorm had long since passed, and without any obstructions, they advanced quickly. Soon, they could see ragged weeds
here and there, growing in cracks in the rock and sand. By the time the sun was setting, Xie Lian finally spotted an ancient walled city on the horizon.
The city was difficult to see because it was the color of sand, camouflaged by the yellow so it became one with the desert. Some parts of the city walls were caved in and buried in the sand. As they approached, they found that the walls were extremely high, towering over thirty meters. It wasn’t hard to imagine the city’s past magnificence, how grand it must’ve been.
Passing through the barbican, the four formally entered the Kingdom of Banyue.
Past the gates was a wide and empty city street, with dilapidated houses on each side and rotten beams and broken bricks strewn about.
Perhaps out of habit, A-Zhao cautioned the others, “Please be careful and don’t leave the group on your own.”
The other three didn’t need that reminder. The actual Banyue city was far different from what they’d imagined.
Nan Feng wondered, “This is the Kingdom of Banyue? It’s smaller than a capital!”
“A desert country is only as big as the oasis it’s built on,” Xie Lian explained. “At its peak, the population was only about ten thousand. It was actually pretty lively in a small city like this.”
Nan Feng continued to observe the surroundings. “It would probably only take a few days to siege a country of this size.”
Xie Lian shook his head. “Not necessarily. Don’t underestimate the people of Banyue, Nan Feng. Even if their population wasn’t more than ten thousand, they kept the number of soldiers at an average of four thousand. There were more men than women; aside from the sick and old and the farmers, most men joined the army. Besides, the majority of those soldiers were over three meters tall, each more violent than the next. With maces in
hand, they would keep fighting even with swords through their chests. They were very hard to fight.”
A-Zhao seemed rather surprised and glanced at Xie Lian. “This young master seems to know a lot.”
Xie Lian maintained his smile and was about to converse some more when Nan Feng posed a question.
“What’s that wall?”
He was indicating a giant yellow earthen building in the far distance. “Building” wasn’t quite the right word to describe it. It was a giant
enclosure formed by four massive mud-colored walls, with neither doors
nor a roof. Each wall was over thirty meters, and on the very top there was a pole with something tattered attached, flying in the wind. It was a chilling image.
Xie Lian turned his head and glanced, then said simply, “That’s the Sinner’s Pit.”
By the sound of the name alone, it was obvious it wasn’t anything
good.
“Sinner’s Pit?” Nan Feng frowned.
Humming gravely, Xie Lian explained, “You can think of it as a jail.
It was made specifically for imprisoning criminals.”
“How does it imprison anyone if there isn’t even a door? Throw them in from the top?” Nan Feng wondered.
Xie Lian was hesitating to answer when San Lang suddenly spoke up.
“They do get thrown in. And the pit is full of venomous snakes and starving beasts.”
Xie Lian was relieved to finally hear him speak, but when he looked over to San Lang, the boy met his gaze and turned away.
Nan Feng swore. “That’s no fuckin’ jail! That’s torture! How cruel!
The people of Banyue were either sick in the head or savage psychos!”
Xie Lian rubbed his forehead. “Not all of them were like that. Some were quite endearing…” He paused suddenly, his brows furrowing. “Wait.”
The other three stopped, and Xie Lian pointed upward.
“Look at that pole up above the pit. Is that a person hanging from it?”
In the dimming light of the setting sun and at such a distance, it was difficult to see what exactly was hanging from the pole. But going closer and scrutinizing the shape, it became obvious that it was a scrawny little person in black, their clothes unkempt, dangling in the wind like a ragdoll.
“It’s a person,” San Lang confirmed.
When A-Zhao saw the hanging person, his face paled. This was such a bizarre, anguishing display that even a calm individual like him couldn’t bear the sight of it.
Just then, San Lang tilted his head and said in a low voice, “Someone’s here.”
He wasn’t the only one who noticed. Xie Lian also heard featherlight footsteps approaching. The four immediately moved to hide in the many decaying houses on the roadside. Xie Lian and San Lang entered one house, and Nan Feng and A-Zhao hid in the one across the street. Soon after, at the end of the broken street, the female cultivator in white appeared.
The woman was dressed in a pale white robe with a whisk tucked in her arm, the garb of a Daoist priestess. She roamed along the street, peering here and there. Her eyes were bright and observant, as if she were in her own backyard garden and not the Banyue ruins. Strolling right behind her was another woman clad in black, her hands clasped behind her back.
The black-clad woman was beautiful yet cold. Her eyes were piercing, her raven hair long and free, and it was like she radiated chill from her very person. Although she was walking behind the female cultivator, no one would mistake her for a subordinate.
These were the same two they’d seen outside the abandoned inn at
noon.
At that time, they had passed by too fast and Xie Lian couldn’t make
out the details of the lady in black, but he now saw clearly that she was indeed a woman. If the one in white was the state preceptor of Banyue, who was the one in black?
The state preceptor swished her whisk leisurely and spoke, “Now where did they go? We were careless for one moment and they all disappeared. Do I have to dig them out and kill them one by one?”
Just as Xie Lian thought, they were being watched from the moment they stepped foot into the city.
The lady in black approached and stoically said, “You can call your friends to help you kill them.”
By “friends,” she must have meant the soldiers of Banyue.
The state preceptor of Banyue laughed. “Ha! I don’t like calling other people. I like calling you. Aren’t you glad?”
The lady in black ignored her completely and said coolly, “There’s nothing agreeable about being called out by the likes of you for something like this. Just go.”
The state preceptor of Banyue arched her brows but still sped away. Listening to them, it sounded as if they were close. They were no ordinary folks, so the lady in black must be someone of renown. Someone who would be close to the state preceptor of Banyue? A mysterious fellow
cultivator? Or was there a queen or general they didn’t know about?
Xie Lian was trying to connect the dots rapidly in his mind, but he held his breath. Now wasn’t the time to be discovered. It looked like the state preceptor had an unpredictable personality; if she should find them
and excitedly summon her legendary, nine foot tall, mace-wielding Banyue soldiers, more time would be wasted fighting them. Twenty-four hours. One
hour wasted was another hour they’d sink deeper into danger. But there was no helping his bad luck; whatever he didn’t want to happen would always happen. The lady in black was passing the house Xie Lian hid in, but stopped mid-step, and her piercing gaze swept over the decayed shelter.
The state preceptor of Banyue was already farther ahead, but she noticed that her companion had stopped and came back around.
“Hey, are you coming?”
The lady in black didn’t look at her. “You. Step back.”
“All right,” the state preceptor responded obediently and actually retreated. The lady in black was about to raise her hand when suddenly, a loud rumble blasted from across the street!
On the other side, the house Nan Feng and A-Zhao had hidden in had collapsed! The crumbling of one house led the entire row to cave in. Dust and sand rolled into the air and clouded the whole street. Within that cloud, a black shadow leapt out and shot a streaming flame toward the state preceptor, but the lady in black rushed forward and shielded her from harm. With her left hand still behind her, she flipped her right palm and easily absorbed the flames before reflecting them right back. The black shadow parried her while escaping and soon disappeared. The state preceptor immediately chased after that shadow, but the lady in black gave the house behind another sweeping look before following.
Bless you, Nan Feng, Xie Lian thanked mentally.
Everything happened so quickly but Nan Feng had no doubt known somehow that they were about to be in trouble and created a diversion to lead their enemies astray. He was the only one who leapt out, so A-Zhao must still be inside the collapsed house. After making sure the state preceptor and the lady in black were indeed gone, Xie Lian dragged San Lang out of their hiding spot and called out.
“A-Zhao, are you still alive? Are you hurt anywhere?”
A moment later, a muffled voice came from under the ruins. “…I’m
fine.”
Xie Lian was relieved. “Thank goodness.”
Although Xie Lian trusted Nan Feng’s ability to control the crash and that he would no doubt leave enough space for A-Zhao to stay safe, it was still more reassuring to see it with his own eyes. He raised one of the rotten beams with one hand, and after a moment, A-Zhao emerged from underneath, covered in dust from head to toe. He brushed himself off a bit and returned to his stoic expression.
“Now there are only three of us left,” Xie Lian said. “Nan Feng is creating a diversion, so we must move faster. Do you know where we can find the shanyue fern, A-Zhao?”
The young man shook his head and said, “Sorry. I only know where the city is, but I’ve never been here before, so I don’t know where the fern can be found.”
San Lang spoke up. “They say the shanyue fern prefers shade. It is small, its roots thin, but its leaves are big, like a heart-shaped peach. Why not search near a large building?”
“A large building?” Xie Lian contemplated.
If they were talking big, there was no building larger than the palace.
In the legend, it was after the festivities that the queen picked a shanyue leaf, which could mean the fern grew on the palace grounds.
The three moved their gaze afar, and in the center of the city there was indeed a palace built of brick and wood.
From a distance, the palace had a grandiose aura, but upon a closer look, it was not in much better shape than the dilapidated houses on the streets. Through the palace gates there was a massive garden; perhaps in the past it wasn’t a garden but a palace square. With years of neglect, weeds had flourished and spread.
Indeed, it wasn’t sand beneath their feet now but mud. This was most likely the last sign of the oasis that once was. And the shanyue fern could very well be growing among all the other plants.
“Let’s not waste time,” Xie Lian said. “We only have twenty-four hours. But keep an eye out for scorpion-snakes.”
A-Zhao and San Lang both hummed in acknowledgment and lowered their heads to start searching through the plants. As they rummaged, it
suddenly occurred to Xie Lian that, if the state preceptor of Banyue could control scorpion-snakes, there should be an abundance of them slithering about in her territory. Ever since they entered the city, they had not seen a single snake.
He straightened up and was about to speak when one of his hands fell on a long object.
Looking down again, he found that it was a human leg. “Waaaaaaaah!!”
Xie Lian withdrew his hand and was struck speechless.
It occurred to him that every time he was faced with some horrifying incident, or saw or touched anything frightening in the dark, it was always the other party who would scream before he could say anything. But shouldn’t it be the other way around?
The plants in this garden were tall and thick, and whoever’s leg Xie Lian had touched was someone who had already been hiding and crawling in the weeds. The moment they touched, the leg recoiled, and the weeds in front of him rustled.
Someone called out, “Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me! Gege, it’s me!”
Xie Lian scrutinized the wild grass and saw that the one who emerged crying “don’t hit me!” was thick-browed, large-eyed Tian Sheng. The boy in turn saw that Xie Lian recognized him and sighed a breath of relief. Xie Lian, on the other hand, wasn’t relieved; rather, he became even more alarmed and raised his good arm in a defensive stance. In
circumstances like these, it was more likely that this was an illusion created by something evil.
“Weren’t you with the others back in the desert? How are you here?
Are you really Tian Sheng?”
Tian Sheng explained hurriedly, “It’s me! I’m the real thing! I’m not the only one; three other uncles also came. They’re just inside. Look if you don’t believe me!”
He pointed toward the inside of the palace, and sure enough, three men came running out; they were indeed the men from the caravan. When they saw Xie Lian, they froze in their dash and looked awkward.
Xie Lian puffed out a breath before finally rising to his feet and dusting off his white sleeves. “What’s going on?”
The merchants looked at each other and no one made any noise. It was Tian Sheng who spoke up after an awkward silence.
“…Gege, after you guys left, Uncle Zheng’s pain flared up, and he was really miserable. We didn’t know how much longer we should wait for you to return, and we were afraid that you guys might’ve gotten lost. A-
Zhao-ge said to go straight to get to the Kingdom of Banyue, so we thought the more hands to help the better, so…”
So what he really meant was that the merchants regretted letting them go after all. They were afraid that Xie Lian and company would rob them of their guide after finding the shanyue fern for themselves, so they sent
people to come follow them. Xie Lian imagined that Fu Yao couldn’t
persuade them otherwise and was probably also too lazy to hold them back. It was impossible to stop stubborn people who refused to listen to reason.
Xie Lian felt rather exasperated. “You’re all too reckless. Who knows what there might be, and what might happen, in a place like this? And you still came?”
Tian Sheng himself knew that what they’d done made it obvious they didn’t trust Xie Lian, and he felt bad. This was why he didn’t make a sound while hiding in the weeds earlier, as awkward as it was.
“Sorry, this concerns a man’s life, so we couldn’t sit still…”
No matter. This was a life-or-death situation, and to be wary was entirely natural. To go so far into danger for an antidote also proved that they were worthy companions. Xie Lian couldn’t continue to scold them for this and sighed.
“If you didn’t bump into anything weird when entering the territory, then it’s your good fortune. But how did you know to come to the palace to search for the shanyue fern?”
Tian Sheng scratched his head and replied, “We didn’t know where to start, but in the story the red-clothed gege told, it was the queen who picked the leaves, right? The queen couldn’t possibly leave the palace grounds, so I thought we’d come here and try our luck.”
Well, this child’s mind could certainly spin, and it spun right on target, Xie Lian thought.
Just then, San Lang spoke up from the side. “I found it.”
Xie Lian turned to see San Lang striding with his long, lithe legs toward him. In his hands were a few turquoise-colored leaves with roots still attached at the stems.
The leaves were about the size of a baby’s palm and in the shape of peaches, slightly pointy at the ends, with thin, tiny roots. Even without A-
Zhao to confirm, Xie Lian knew without a doubt that this must be the shanyue fern. Without waiting for Xie Lian to say a word, San Lang grabbed his wounded hand and lifted it.
The hand that was stung was originally frighteningly swollen, but after San Lang sucked the poison from the wound, the swelling had gone down significantly despite it not being fully cleared of the venom. With Xie Lian’s wrist in one hand and the shanyue fern in the other, San Lang closed his palm on the plant. After only a second, he reopened his palm and the fern was crushed into powder without him appearing to exert any force.
San Lang gently but firmly rubbed the powder onto Xie Lian’s hand, and he could feel coolness and relief stinging on his skin.
“Thanks, San Lang,” Xie Lian said.
San Lang didn’t respond, however, and after applying the powder, he let go of Xie Lian’s hand. Xie Lian couldn’t help but think that the air between the two of them now was really strange, but he didn’t know how to ask about it without sounding odd. This wasn’t something anyone else would notice either, or something they could possibly understand.
“Gege, are you feeling better? Is the herb working?” Tian Sheng asked anxiously.
Xie Lian snapped out of it and replied, “Much better. It should be the right herb.”
Hearing this, everyone became excited. “Hurry! Let’s find more!”
Soon, A-Zhao also raised a handful of leaves, crying out, “There’s more here!”
The shanyue leaves in A-Zhao’s hands were much bigger and fuller than the small, pitiful one San Lang used earlier, but the shape and
markings were all correct, so everyone crowded over and happily exclaimed:
“There’s an entire field here!” “So many!”
“Pick lots! Let’s pick a bunch! Do you think we can sell this?”
Noisily, the merchants busied themselves picking the herbs. Xie Lian turned his head to examine his hand for a moment, then tried to start a conversation with San Lang.
“You also searched the same area they’re in now, right? Didn’t you find any there?”
It was obvious Xie Lian was trying to force a conversation, and after asking the question, he felt that he was rather pathetic. But San Lang shook his head.
“You shouldn’t use the ferns over there.” “Why?” Xie Lian wondered curiously.
Before San Lang could answer, they heard someone scream. “Go away!”
Everyone stopped, their movements halting. “Who said that? Who’s screaming?”
“It wasn’t me!”
“It wasn’t me, either…”
Then they heard that sharp voice again. “Go away! You’re stepping on me…”
Only then did the group notice: the voice came from near their feet! In a flash, the crowd retreated from that field of ferns. Seeing this,
Xie Lian walked over. He was used to being the one in the lead when it
came to these things. He approached the bush where the shrieking had come from and stripped away the thick weeds. Everyone’s breathing hitched.
Under the weeds, in the mud, there was a man’s face.
In this field, there was unbelievably a live human being buried in the mud, with only his face showing above the surface!
It was a nightmarish sight, truly incomparably creepy. A couple of merchants screamed in fright, holding onto each other.
Xie Lian once again comforted them in a skilled and practiced manner: “Don’t panic. Everyone calm down. It’s only a face, nothing extraordinary. We all have faces, no?”
That face chuckled. “Oh, did I scare you? Hahhh, I frequently scare myself too.”
After reassuring the others, Xie Lian half-crouched and examined this face in the mud.
It was a man’s face, quite flat when he wasn’t smiling but extremely wrinkled when he was. Xie Lian couldn’t tell whether he was old or young and couldn’t say whether he was handsome or not. He couldn’t make much out of this face at all, so he simply asked directly: “Who are you?”
The face in the mud asked back, “Who are you?”
“We’re merchants passing through,” Xie Lian replied.
The mud face breathed a long sigh. “Merchant passersby. I used to be part of a caravan too, but that was fifty, maybe sixty years ago.”
The situation just got freakier.
Was a man buried in the grounds of an old city ruin for fifty or sixty years still human?
One of the merchants shakily asked in trepidation, “Then…then… how did a senior like yourself…get…here?”
The mud face cleared his throat and screwed up his face. “I…I was captured by the Banyue soldiers. I accidentally entered the city. They caught me and buried me here, and made me the fertilizer for their shanyue ferns…”
No wonder the herbs in their hands were big and full! They were fed with live humans!
The merchants immediately dropped all the plants in their hands, feeling as though they were touching corpses.
Xie Lian couldn’t help but glance at his hand too but heard San Lang say, “That one was fine.”
No wonder that, even though San Lang had looked through that field earlier, he left it to pick a small, almost withered fern from elsewhere. He probably saw what was in the soil and guessed that the herbs were grown with human fertilizer. So he ignored the lot completely, and turned around and walked away until he found normally-grown herbs in a remote area that was clean of corruption. Only after finding those herbs did he apply them to Xie Lian’s hand.
“San Lang was considerate and careful. Thank you, truly,” Xie Lian
said.
San Lang nodded his head, but his face was still gloomy.
Ever since Xie Lian was stung by the scorpion-snake, San Lang had
behaved like this. A couple of days ago it was all “gege this, gege that,” but now he hardly called him gege anymore. Other than sucking poison and applying herbs, San Lang seemed to be avoiding bodily contact with him as much as possible, and this thoroughly puzzled Xie Lian. Xie Lian couldn’t grasp what he was thinking, and it was making him feel unsettled.
Just then, the mud face began to speak again. “I haven’t seen real
people in so many years. Can…can you come closer and let me see you all properly?”
The merchants all looked at each other, everyone thinking they best not do what he asked. After a while, seeing no one stepped forward, the mud face muttered, “What? What. You don’t want to? Hahhh… What a
shame…”
“Why is it a shame?” Xie Lian turned and asked.
“There’s something that’s been bothering me ever since you all
arrived,” the mud face said. “So I wanted to confirm with my own two eyes, which is why I asked you to stand closer for me to see. I want to see each and every one of you clearly to make sure.”
“To make sure of what?” Xie Lian pressed.
The mud face cackled, “Don’t be scared if I tell you…there’s someone among you I’ve met before, fifty years ago.”
Hair raised on everyone’s necks at that statement.
If someone met this mud face fifty years ago, they’d be at least sixty or seventy by now. But among the people present, the oldest definitely didn’t look older than forty, so how was that possible?
Unless…that person wasn’t really a person!
Xie Lian gave a sweeping look across everyone’s faces, from A-Zhao to Tian Sheng. Some were in shock, some stricken with fear, some shaking with anxiety, some speechless and confused. Everyone’s reaction was normal and within reason. If one had to pick the odd one out, it’d be San Lang. But for him, no reaction was probably the normal reaction.
Xie Lian turned back to the mud face. “Who is this person you speak
of?”
The facial muscles of that mud face twitched and it gave an
exceedingly freaky smile, as if it was giving its all to make itself look more reliable, but it couldn’t fully conceal the sinister smirk hiding beneath. He beckoned mysteriously.
“You…come closer, and I’ll tell you.”
Xie Lian believed him eighty percent the first time the mud face asked, but after this, only fifty percent.
Who knew if this monster was only luring them closer to commit some evil deed?
Of course Xie Lian wouldn’t listen to him. He got to his feet and was about to walk away when the mud face raised his voice.
“Do you really not want to know who it is? He will kill all of you, the same way he killed us!”
