Dallying HuaLian, Night Fall in Sinner’s Pit
THE MORE ADAMANT the mud face was, the more alarmed Xie Lian became. “Everyone stand back, don’t go near him, and don’t listen to a
single word he says.”
The crowd dispersed in a panic. The mud face continued to chuckle. “Don’t leave—there’s no need to be like this! I’m a human too;
I won’t hurt you!”
Oh, you’re mistaken; you look nothing like a human! Xie Lian thought.
Just then, something unexpected happened. One of the merchants snuck back toward the field, probably thinking that he still had to bring back some herbs for the wounded. But when he bent down to pick up the
ferns he had dropped in fright earlier, the mud face twisted and spotted him with a glint in its spinning eyes.
Oh no! Xie Lian thought, rushing toward the man. “Don’t pick that up! Come back!”
But it was too late. The mud face opened its mouth, and a long, blood-red thing slithered out.
What a long tongue!
Xie Lian grabbed the merchant by his collar and hustled backward with him in tow. But the tongue that flew out was freakishly long and forced its way right into the merchant’s ear!
Xie Lian felt the body in his grip convulse violently. The merchant’s limbs writhed nonstop, and the man let out a short, agonizing scream before falling to the ground. That long tongue dug out a large chunk of something bloody from his ear and brought it back to the mud face’s mouth. The mud face happily chewed and cackled, his laugh so disturbingly loud it filled the entire palace grounds.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! So good, so good, so delicious, so delicious, so delicious!! I was so hungry, so hungry!!”
His voice was sharp and shrill, his eyes bloodshot, horrible and disgusting to the extreme!
This man, who had been buried for over fifty years in the ground of an evil-filled kingdom, had already been molded into its soil and became something other than human. Xie Lian loosened his grip on the deceased merchant, his entire arm shaking. He was about to strike the repulsive monster when the mud face screamed again.
“General! General! They’re here! They’re here!!”
A deafening cry, more savage than that of a beast’s, echoed in the distance. A dark shadow dropped from the sky and landed heavily in front of Xie Lian.
The entire palace grounds quaked on its landing. When it slowly stood up, its enormous shadow enveloped the entire group.
This “man” was truly much too big.
His face was as grim as steel, his expression ferocious and turbulent like that of a beast. He was at least three meters tall, clad in leather armor on his shoulders and chest. Rather than a man, one could say he was more like a walking wolf. Behind him, more and more similar forms appeared.
One, two, three…over ten of those “men” jumped off the roofs of the palace and surrounded them.
Each one of these “men” was as large as a horse, built like a beast, with a sharp, tooth-covered mace on his shoulder. They might as well have been werewolves. When they circled around the intruders in the garden, it was like a large steel cage had fallen upon them.
The soldiers of Banyue!
These soldiers emanated a dark aura and were undoubtedly no longer alive. Xie Lian was tense and held Ruoye in position, ready to attack.
However, when the Banyue soldiers saw them, they didn’t rush in to kill. Instead, they raised their heads and roared with crazed laughter, howling in a foreign language. The sound of their words was ghastly, guttural and heavy with tongue-rolling. That was the language of Banyue.
Although it had been two hundred years and Xie Lian had pretty much forgotten the language, he did review it with San Lang earlier in the General’s Tomb—and the words uttered by these soldiers were loud, simple, and vulgar, so they weren’t difficult to understand.
He heard the soldiers call the first man “General.” Their conversation was filled with phrases like “take them away” and “won’t kill for now.” Xie Lian took a deep breath to force himself to relax.
He said in a low voice, “Everyone, don’t panic. These Banyue soldiers won’t kill us for the time being. It seems they want to take us
somewhere else. Don’t do anything rash, I can’t guarantee I can beat them in a fight. We’ll figure this out as we go.”
It was clear that these soldiers would be hard to fight, each of them rougher than the next. Even with Ruoye in hand, suffocating one would probably take a bit of time, never mind ten. With mortals with him, Xie Lian couldn’t do anything bold and could only remain vigilant and protect them the best he could.
San Lang didn’t say anything, and the others had already lost their nerve. Even if they wanted to do something rash, they wouldn’t know how, so they could only nod tearfully.
Next to them, the mud face screamed again, “General! General!
Please let me out! I detained your enemies, let me go home! I want to go home!”
Seeing the Banyue soldiers, the mud face became hysterical, screaming and crying, blabbering nonsense with some Banyue words mixed in, no doubt learned from the many years he spent buried here. The massive nine-foot man they called “General” seemed to find the squirming mud face deeply disgusting and swung his mace toward it. He smashed the face into a bloody mess, the teeth of his mace piercing the brain. When he pulled his
mace up again, the entire body was pulled out with it, fulfilling his wish of “let me out!”
However, the body that was unearthed was not a full human body but a chilling skeleton!
The merchants screamed in terror. The mud face, bloody after crumpling off the mace, seemed to also freeze in fear after seeing his own
body. He sucked in a sharp breath. “What’s this? What’s this?!”
“It’s your body,” Xie Lian reminded him, seeing that the mud face was numb in disbelief.
It was easy to figure out. This man had been buried in the desert for more than fifty or sixty years. His body had fertilized the shanyue ferns until they cleaned him of his flesh and left only bones.
“How can this be?” the mud face cried. “My body isn’t like this! This is not my body!!”
His voice was incomparably shrill, and he was a horrifying and tragic sight. Xie Lian shook his head, but San Lang sneered.
“Now you’re not used to your own body? What was that thing that came out of your mouth earlier? You didn’t think that was odd?”
The mud face countered immediately, “That wasn’t odd! It was just… a tongue that’s a bit longer than average!”
There was nothing but mockery on San Lang’s face. “Yeah. Sure. Just a little longer, right. Ha ha.”
“That’s right!” the mud face cried. “It’s only a little bit longer! It’s just because I spent decades trying to live off insects, forcing my tongue to extend. That must be how it came to be like this!”
When he was first buried in the ground, perhaps he was still alive, and in order to survive, he had done his best to extend his tongue to eat flying insects and creepy-crawlies. Then, as he gradually became less and
less human, his tongue also became longer and longer, and the “food” he ate also moved from insects to much more terrifying things.
However, because he had been buried underground for so many years, unable to see the state of his body, he was unable to accept the truth and refused to believe he was no longer human.
The mud face kept trying to argue, “There are plenty of people who have long tongues, not just me!”
San Lang smiled, and Xie Lian felt a chill watching him. This youth’s smile really gave off a sense of cruelty, like he was on the verge of ripping
off someone’s face.
“Do you think you’re still human?” San Lang questioned.
The mud face felt a sense of danger at the question and suddenly became agitated. “Of course I’m human! I’m human!”
The mud face screamed and tried to move his white, boney limbs all at once, as if trying to crawl away. Finally unearthed, he was mad with joy, cackling, “I’m going home! I can go home now! Ha ha ha ha ha h—”
Crack.
The Banyue “general” finally had enough of this monster’s shrill cries. In a split second, he crushed the bones in one stomp, killing any more of his cries of “I’m human!”
After trampling the irritating mud face, the “general” roared at the soldiers. The Banyue soldiers all raised their maces and, growling at Xie Lian’s group, started herding them out of the palace.
Xie Lian walked up front with San Lang still following close behind. Despite being ushered by ruthless Banyue soldiers, the youth’s step was still light and casual, as if he were taking a stroll. Xie Lian had been hoping to find a chance to talk to him, and after a while, when the Banyue soldiers went back to conversing among themselves, he spoke to San Lang in a low voice.
is.”
“Those Banyue soldiers call their leader ‘General.’ I wonder who it
As expected, when he posed a question, San Lang still answered. “At
the time when the Kingdom of Banyue fell, there was only one general. His name, translated, is Kemo.”
“Kemo? As in ‘Millstone’?” Xie Lian wondered at the odd name. “That’s right,” San Lang said. “Apparently, it was because he was
awfully weak when he was young and was often bullied. He rallied and built up his strength by training with large millstones, which is how he got his name.”
Xie Lian couldn’t resist thinking, Then he could’ve just as easily been named Dali, for brawn…
San Lang continued, “Legends have it that Kemo was the strongest warrior in the history of Banyue, three meters tall and extremely powerful. He was a loyal supporter of the state preceptor.”
“Even after death? Is he taking us to the Banyue state preceptor now, then?” Xie Lian asked.
“Perhaps,” San Lang replied.
If there were more Banyue soldiers there, how would they escape? Who knew how Nan Feng, who had lured the other two away, was doing? The shanyue fern was in their hands, but how were they going to deliver the ferns to the wounded within twenty-four hours?
Xie Lian contemplated as he walked and soon noticed that General Kemo was leading them to a remote place at the far end of the city. When they stopped and Xie Lian looked up, a colossal yellow earthen wall stood before him like a giant.
Their destination was the Sinner’s Pit.
Although Xie Lian had lived in the Banyue area for a time, he’d rarely gone into town and had never gone near the Sinner’s Pit. Seeing it this close, Xie Lian’s heart started pounding for some reason.
The yellow-earthed walls had a set of stairs along the outside. While they slowly climbed the crude stairs, Xie Lian scrutinized the pit and tried to look with his human eyes into the depths until he finally understood why his heart was pounding.
It wasn’t because of thoughts of how this was a place of torture and cruelty, and it wasn’t his worry about everyone getting pushed in. He was feeling the palpitations of a very powerful array at work.
Someone had purposely set up an incredibly powerful array using the Sinner’s Pit’s surrounding terrain and structure. And this array only had one purpose: to prevent the fallen from ever resurfacing!
What that meant was, even if a rope or a ladder was sent down into the pit, whoever tried to climb from the bottom would get cut off halfway
up and thrown right back down. Without outwardly showing his intent, Xie Lian used the wall as support to climb up the stairs. After walking for a stretch, he determined the material of the wall. He discovered that, while it
looked like it was made of earth, it was actually incomparably hard stone, probably enforced with a layer of magic. It’d undoubtedly be very difficult to break.
When they reached the end of the stairs and came to the top of the pit, standing along the wall’s eaves, the only word to describe the sight was awful. That is, it inspired awe.
The whole of the Sinner’s Pit was formed by four great walls surrounding it. Each wall was over a hundred meters long, over sixty meters high, and over a meter thick, the structure standing solemnly tall. At the top of each wall there was nothing, neither gazebos nor railings.
Within the enclosure there was a deep abyss without a bottom in sight. With the growing night, there was only blackness and a chilling smell of blood wafting up from below.
No one dared look down while walking along the railing-less eaves tens of meters above the ground. After a while, they could see the pole that stood in the center. And attached to that pole was a hanging corpse, the
same one they had spotted before. The corpse was a small, black-clad girl, her clothing tattered and head bowed.
Xie Lian knew that this pole had been used specifically for hanging criminals that deserved shame and humiliation. The prison guards would usually strip the criminals of their clothing and hang the bodies naked. The criminals would die from starvation or dehydration, and after death the
corpse would be left to flail in the wind, scorch under the sun, and rot in the rain. When the corpse rotted completely through, it would fall into the pit itself. That sort of death was an exceedingly ugly sight.
The corpse of that girl didn’t seem to be rotten, so it must not have been long since she died. Perhaps it was a local girl that the soldiers captured. What a cruel and vulgar thing to do to a young girl. A-Zhao, Tian Sheng, and the others’ faces blanched at the sight and paused in their steps, afraid to go forward. Kemo didn’t force them onward either but turned to
the pit and let out a long cry.
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Why is he yelling? Xie Lian wondered, but his question was soon answered.
From the bottom of the dark pit there came wave after wave of roars in response to the cry. Like predatory beasts, like monsters, like tsunamis, hundreds upon thousands, deafening to the ear. The walls trembled with the noise, making those standing on the eaves lose their balance. Xie Lian could clearly hear rocks and debris falling within.
Only criminals were thrown into the Sinner’s Pit. Were those the souls of the criminals answering Kemo?
Kemo roared again, and Xie Lian paid more attention, listening. This time, Kemo wasn’t making meaningless noise, and he wasn’t cursing either. Instead, he was giving encouragement. Xie Lian was very sure he heard the words “my brothers.”
After roaring, Kemo turned to the soldiers watching Xie Lian and the others and shouted another command.
Xie Lian understood. Kemo had said, “Just throw in two and detain the rest.”
The others might not have understood what was being said, but the intent of those soldiers was not hard to guess. Everyone looked pale as ghosts. Xie Lian saw that a couple couldn’t even stand upright anymore, shaking from fear.
He stepped forward and said in a small voice, “Don’t worry. If anything happens, I will go forward first.”
Xie Lian thought that if they all must fall, he might as well be the first one to check things out. It couldn’t be worse than venomous snakes and beasts or menacing ghosts. He couldn’t die from the fall, from getting beaten, from bites, or from poison. As long as it wasn’t lava or fire, or some pool of corpse-dissolving water, it shouldn’t be too terrible when he jumped down.
Besides, he had Ruoye with him. Even if he might not manage to
escape the array, he could still use it to catch the others who fell after him. Kemo had said “detain the rest,” meaning that most of the others should be
safe temporarily. After all, it wasn’t easy hunting for prey in the Gobi Desert, so they should savor them instead of eating everyone in one go.
Xie Lian’s mind was clear. But who knew, there was someone next to him who couldn’t wait any longer.
Ever since they reached the top of the Sinner’s Pit, everyone—
besides San Lang, who looked like nothing was out of the ordinary—was trembling, but especially A-Zhao.
He must’ve thought that if he was about to die, he might as well go down fighting. He clenched his fists and suddenly revolted. He went charging toward Kemo with his head down!
The charge looked like A-Zhao was ready to perish but wanted to
take Kemo down with him by knocking them both into the pit. Even though Kemo was the bigger of the two, strong like a steel tower, he got pushed back three steps from A-Zhao’s desperation. He roared in outrage and immediately threw the young man in.
Everyone started screaming when they saw A-Zhao plunge into the dark abyss, and Xie Lian called after him too.
“A-Zhao!”
From deep within the bottomless pit there came a roaring cheer and then sounds of the cruel ripping of flesh like fierce ghosts fighting over a meal. It was easy to understand from hearing those noises that the young man A-Zhao would never survive.
Xie Lian was dumbstruck by this development.
He had been suspicious that A-Zhao was a subordinate of the Banyue state preceptor, purposely leading travelers to the ruins. He also suspected that he was the one who was here “fifty or sixty years ago,” but the young man ended up being the first killed. How could he possibly survive that
jump?
Could he be faking his own death? But now that they were all captured by the Banyue soldiers, if A-Zhao really was the state preceptor’s subordinate, he’d have the upper hand and could gloriously reveal his true identity. Certainly he didn’t need to do anything extra, like faking his own
death before their eyes. It was completely meaningless. But then, why did A-Zhao rush Kemo? Wasn’t that an equally meaningless death?
Xie Lian’s thoughts were in knots again, while the Banyue soldiers decided on the next human to push down. Kemo sized them up and pointed at Tian Sheng. Another Banyue soldier opened his large palm and reached out to capture the boy.
Tian Sheng screamed in terror, “Aah! Help! Don’t take me! I’m…”
Without any more time to think, Xie Lian stepped forward. “Please wait, General.”
Hearing him speak, and in the Banyue tongue no less, shock appeared on Kemo’s dark-skinned face. “You know how to speak our tongue? Where are you from?”
“I’m from the Central Plains,” Xie Lian replied.
He would’ve been fine with lying that he was also a citizen of Banyue, but that wouldn’t have worked. With how rusty his Banyue dialect was, his lie would fall apart after conversing with Kemo for too long.
Besides, it was also obvious from his appearance that he was a man of the Central Plains. The people of Banyue detested liars more than anything, so if Xie Lian was found out, the result would be much worse.
“Central Plains?” Kemo questioned. “Descendants of Yong’an?” “No,” Xie Lian replied. “The Kingdom of Yong’an has long since
fallen. There’s no more Yong’an now.”
But to those of Banyue, all those who came from the Central Plains were pretty much the same: relatives of the descendants of Yong’an. The Banyue were annihilated by the army of Yong’an, so the moment he heard
where Xie Lian was from, Kemo’s dark expression flashed with rage. Many of the Banyue soldiers also started growling, cursing vulgarly at him. Xie Lian listened, but it wasn’t much more than “despicable,” “liar,” and “throw him down.” Xie Lian couldn’t care less.
Kemo demanded, “Our kingdom disappeared in the Gobi over two hundred years ago. You are not of our people, why do you know our
tongue? Who are you?”
Xie Lian couldn’t help but steal a glance at the calm youth behind him, mentally hoping that if his lies fell apart later, maybe he could shamelessly ask San Lang to save him. He cleared his throat and was ready to start jabbering nonsense, when another series of enraged growls sounded from below.
It seemed that whatever was down in the pit had finished ripping A- Zhao apart, but they were still hungry for more and cried out to convey their thirst for fresh blood. Kemo waved his hand again, ready to have Tian Sheng thrown over, so Xie Lian spoke up.
“General, please take me first.”
Kemo must have never heard anyone request to go first before, and
his eyes bulged like balls. He demanded in disbelief, “You go first? Why?!”
Xie Lian couldn’t tell him the truth and say it was because he wasn’t scared. He thought for a second and came up with a logical answer. “General, they are innocent passing merchants. There’s even a child among them.”
Kemo sneered. “When your Yong’an army annihilated my kingdom, do you think we did not also have innocent merchants and children?”
The fall of the Kingdom of Banyue was over two hundred years ago, and since then, countless dynasties had come and gone. However, these
were the dead for whom time had stopped. Hatred and grudges would not fade with the changing times.
Kemo continued, “You’re very suspicious, I will need to question you. You are not going down. Throw in a different one!”
There was no helping it. Xie Lian was ready to jump if all else failed anyway. However, behind him, San Lang stepped forward.
Xie Lian’s heart lurched, and he looked back.
With his arms crossed, the youth was nonchalantly looking down into the dark, bottomless Sinner’s Pit with intrigued air.
This wasn’t a good sign. Xie Lian called out, “San Lang?”
San Lang looked over at the sound of his call and smiled softly. “It’s
fine.”
He took another step forward and was teetering dangerously on the brink. Both Xie Lian’s head and heart started pounding.
He called again, “Wait, San Lang, don’t move!”
At such a height, at the very edge of the pit, the hem of the youth’s red clothes danced in the night breeze. San Lang glanced at him again with a smile.
“Don’t be scared.”
“You…come back here first. Come back here, and I won’t be scared,” Xie Lian said.
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to leave for a bit. We’ll see each other again soon,” San Lang said.
“Don’t—”
Before he finished, the boy took another step forward, his arms still crossed. Then with a light leap, he instantly vanished into the unfathomable darkness.
The moment he jumped, Ruoye shot out from Xie Lian’s wrist and transformed into a streak of white, trying to grab hold of the youth’s form. Yet the plunge was too fast, and the white silk band returned dispiritedly without even a sleeve corner.
Xie Lian fell to his knees at the edge of the wall and screamed, “San Lang!!”
Not a single sound.
After San Lang jumped, there was not a single sound!
Next to him, many of the Banyue soldiers started yelling instead, all dumbfounded and bewildered. What was wrong with today? In the past, they’d always had to catch their prey and throw them into the pit. But tonight, their prey took turns fighting to jump down on their own, and when held back, they jumped anyway?
General Kemo yelled for them to calm down. As for Xie Lian, when he saw that Ruoye didn’t catch San Lang, he didn’t waste any time thinking before pulling back the silk band and taking a leap off the wall himself. But
when his body was still in midair, he felt his collar tighten, and he stayed in place.
Xie Lian looked back. It turned out that when General Kemo saw him jump, he reached out and nabbed Xie Lian by the collar, preventing his fall.
If you want to join me, that’s fine too! Best if we go down together.
Xie Lian urged with his mind, and like a snake, Ruoye shot out once more. It wrapped itself up Kemo’s arm and roped his whole body.
Seeing that the white silk band was unpredictably deadly and spirited, Kemo’s veins popped, and his muscles instantly swelled as if trying to forcibly rip the fabric tying him. Xie Lian was at an impasse with Kemo when he saw something peculiar out of the corner of his eye.
The corpse hanging on the pole suddenly jerked and raised her head slightly.
The band of Banyue soldiers also saw the corpse move and started yelling, swinging their maces to attack it. But the black-clad girl somehow untied herself and hopped off the pole before speeding toward them.
She was like a black wind blowing through the eaves, fast and wicked. The soldiers couldn’t maintain their balance and were quickly swept into the Sinner’s Pit one by one, screaming. Outraged, Kemo yelled extreme vulgarities at her, many of which were street slang that Xie Lian couldn’t understand well.
But he did understand the first words: “It’s that bitch again!”
The swearing ceased in the next moment because Xie Lian suddenly yanked Kemo over to fall into the Sinner’s Pit with him.
Into the inescapable Sinner’s Pit!
While falling, Kemo roared with such fury that it almost killed Xie Lian’s eardrums. He had to recall Ruoye and give Kemo a kick while he was at it to get the general farther away from him, just to protect his ears. Soon after, he urged Ruoye to fly upward to try to grab hold of anything that could prevent him from falling deeper, or to slow him enough that when he hit ground it wouldn’t be too painful.
However, the Sinner’s Pit was formidably built and had an equally powerful array at work. So not only couldn’t Ruoye reach higher, it also
couldn’t find anything to hold on to. Xie Lian thought he was going to crash and flatten like a pancake as he had many times before, when suddenly in
the darkness there was a flash of silver.
The next moment, a pair of hands caught him lightly.
Whoever it was caught him perfectly, as if they were waiting there at the bottom just to catch him. With a hand across his back to grasp his
shoulders and another under his knees to support his weight, they easily dissolved the devastating force of the fall.
Xie Lian had just fallen from such a high place, and with such a forceful stop, that he was still somewhat dizzy and confused. He subconsciously reached out and held tightly onto the person’s shoulders.
“San Lang?” he called out.
It was dark all around and nothing could be seen, including the person holding him. But still, he blurted out that name. The person didn’t respond, so Xie Lian felt around their shoulders and chest, hoping to confirm.
“San Lang, is that you?”
Maybe it was because the stench of blood here at the bottom of the pit was heavy and disorienting. Who knew what was going through Xie Lian’s head, but his hands continued to roam upward until he reached a strong, hard Adam’s apple. He snapped out of it in shock and immediately reprimanded himself, withdrawing his hands.
“It’s San Lang, right? Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
It took a moment before he heard the youth respond in a deep, low voice, from somewhere very close to him. “I’m fine.”
For some reason, Xie Lian thought that his voice was curiously different from before.
“San Lang, are you really all right? Put me down,” Xie Lian said. “No,” San Lang replied.
Xie Lian was taken aback by the response. What was going on? Was
there something on the ground?
That pair of arms was still holding him tightly, without any intention of letting him go. Xie Lian raised his hand and was about to gently push himself away. However, just as he laid his hand on San Lang’s chest, he abruptly remembered how after he was caught from the fall, his hands had roamed and felt up that hard protrusion on the youth’s neck. He quietly
withdrew his hand again.
Xie Lian didn’t know what was up. It had been hundreds of years since the last time Xie Lian cared about being “awkward,” but now there
was a voice in his head telling him that he’d better stay still and proper. To behave himself.
Just then, there was an enraged, sorrowful wail, and a sharp voice from the other end of the pit roared, “What happened to you?!”
Those words were shouted in the Banyue language, and from the voice, it was General Kemo that Xie Lian had dragged down with him.
Since he was already dead, the fall wouldn’t have killed him. It was a violent crash, however, so he probably blasted out a human-shaped crater in the ground with him embedded. And once he climbed out, he started yelling.
“What’s going on? My brothers, what happened to you?!”
When he roared into the pit earlier from the top of the wall, there
were hundreds and thousands of voices that answered his call, as if the pit was filled to the brim with angry, menacing ghosts. But right then and there, other than Kemo’s cries, Xie Lian could only hear dead silence. There wasn’t even any sound of breathing, or that of a heartbeat, from San Lang right next to him.
Xie Lian’s breath hitched, suddenly realizing what was amiss.
That’s right. Even though Xie Lian was pressed against San Lang, he couldn’t detect the sounds of his beating heart, or of his breath!
Kemo roared, “Who killed you? Who was it?!”
When A-Zhao first fell, there were horrifying sounds of flesh being ripped apart. But after San Lang jumped, there was no more noise. Who else could have done it?
Kemo himself must have realized this, and he shouted toward them, “Killing my soldiers? You’re dead! I’m gonna kill you!”
Although he couldn’t see, Xie Lian could still sense danger rapidly approaching, and jerked.
“San Lang, watch out!”
“Don’t worry about him,” San Lang said, still holding Xie Lian tight.
He made a small sidestep and spun around.
In the dark, Xie Lian heard a series of fine clinking sounds: pleasant to the ear, clear and intense, swishing here and there. Kemo pounced to
capture them but missed the first time. He whirled around to lunge again, but San Lang easily sidestepped and dodged him again. Xie Lian’s arms involuntarily climbed up San Lang’s chest once more and held on tight to his shoulders, subconsciously clutching at his clothes.
But the arms carrying him were steady; even with all the spinning and sidestepping, the hold was still strong and secure. Xie Lian could feel something cold and hard on those arms that would poke at him every so often and was a little confused. In the endless blackness, streaks of shimmering silver flashed everywhere, and sounds of sharp metal slicing wounds into flesh were accompanied by Kemo’s angry roars.
It was obvious that the Banyue general was heavily wounded by now, but as tough as he was, he refused to admit defeat and once again rushed toward them.
Xie Lian called out, “Ruoye!”
The silk band answered his call and shot out. A loud “snap” sounded above them. Kemo seemed to have been whipped high up in the air, then flipped and dropped to the ground.
This fall made Kemo roar angrily, “You two! Two against one!
Despicable!”
You were gonna kill us! Who cares if it’s two against one, or
despicable or not? Saving my life is more important, and I’ll kill you dead first, Xie Lian thought.
San Lang, on the other hand, only humphed a mirthless snort. “Even one-on-one, you won’t win. You don’t have to fight.” The last line was
directed to Xie Lian, and in speaking it, his voice was deeper, with none of the previous glib, mocking tone.
“All right,” Xie Lian responded but also prompted him, “San Lang, why don’t you put me down? I’ll be in your way like this.”
“You’re not in the way. Don’t get down,” San Lang said.
“Why can’t I get down?” Xie Lian asked in spite of himself. This guy couldn’t possibly enjoy fighting while carrying someone, could he? He didn’t need to go that far to look down on his opponent, did he?
San Lang’s answer was only two words: “It’s dirty.” “…”
Xie Lian had never imagined that would be the answer—and said with such seriousness too. He thought it was a little funny, but it also made him feel inexplicably strange, his chest growing slightly warm for some reason.
“You can’t possibly keep holding me like this!” “I could,” San Lang replied.
Xie Lian was only joking, but San Lang’s reply had no trace of humor. Suddenly, Xie Lian didn’t know how to respond. While they were talking, Kemo never ceased attacking. Both of San Lang’s hands were holding him firmly, but something else was keeping Kemo at bay, whipping him to his defeat.
While slowly backing off, he shouted, “That bitch made you two…”
He hadn’t yet finished his words when a large boom sounded. The massive man fell to the ground, beaten to the point where he could no longer stand.
Having heard this, Xie Lian said, “San Lang, don’t kill him! We’ll still need to question him if we want to get out of here.”
San Lang indeed stopped his attacks and remained still. “I wasn’t planning on killing him anyway. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have lasted till now.”
Dead silence returned anew to the bottom of Sinner’s Pit.
After a moment, Xie Lian asked, “San Lang, were you the one who did all this down here?”
Even if nothing was visible in the dark, with such an overpowering stench of blood, such an aura of bloodlust, and Kemo’s madness and rage, it was obvious what happened down here. There was another momentary
silence before Xie Lian heard San Lang’s response. “Yes,” he said.
It was the expected answer. Xie Lian sighed. “How should I say
this…”
Xie Lian chewed on his words and organized his thoughts before continuing in an earnest tone. “San Lang, next time you see a pit like this, don’t just jump in randomly. I couldn’t even stop you. Really, I didn’t know what to do.”
San Lang didn’t seem to expect that kind of response and was stumped for a moment. When he spoke again, he sounded a bit odd.
“You don’t want to ask anything else?”
“What else do you want me to ask?” Xie Lian said. “For example, whether I’m human,” San Lang replied.
Xie Lian rubbed his forehead. “Hmm. I don’t think that’s necessary.” “Is it not?”
“Is it? It’s not important whether you’re human or not,” Xie Lian
said.
“Oh?”
Xie Lian crossed his own arms while being held in San Lang’s and
replied, “Forming a friendship should depend on how well two people hit it off and how well their personalities match, not their identities. If I like you, you could be a beggar and I’d still like you. If I dislike you, you could be
the emperor and I’d still dislike you. Shouldn’t it be like that? It’s simple logic, so whether you’re human or not is irrelevant.”
San Lang laughed out loud. “Yeah. You’re very right.”
“Right?” Xie Lian said, laughing along too. But the more he laughed, the more he felt something was off, and it came to him suddenly.
He was still letting San Lang carry him. And the scary thing was, he had gotten used to being in this position without realizing it!
This was gonna be the death of him. Xie Lian cleared his throat quietly and said, “Um, San Lang. We can talk about that later. Why don’t you put me down first?”
San Lang seemed to have flashed a smile and said, “Hold on.”
He carried Xie Lian and walked on for a bit before gently setting him down. When Xie Lian was back on his own two feet, he could feel hard, flat ground.
“Thanks!”
San Lang made no gesture in response, and after thanking him, Xie Lian gazed upward.
In the deep blue sky there hung a brilliant crescent moon, exceptionally beautiful. It was just that it was framed by a squared-off sky that made him feel like a frog stargazing in a well.
Xie Lian tried urging Ruoye to reach for the top again, but as expected, it only leapt up halfway before it was stopped by something invisible and rebounded, unable to go higher.
“There’s an array drawn around the Sinner’s Pit,” San Lang said.
“I know, I just wanted to give it a try,” Xie Lian said. “I can’t give up until I’ve tried, you know. I wonder how the others are doing up there. Will that girl in black also sweep them down?”
He recounted to San Lang how the girl who was hanged on the pole suddenly escaped and swept all the soldiers down into the pit. While talking, he stepped on something on the ground; it appeared to be an arm, and Xie Lian almost tripped. He steadied himself immediately, but San Lang still reached out and helped support him, chiding, “Be careful.”
“I told you the ground was dirty,” San Lang added casually.
Xie Lian now understood what “dirty” meant and said, “It’s fine. I want to ignite a palm torch, see what’s happened down here and go from there.”
San Lang didn’t respond. Just then, from afar, Kemo’s cold voice bellowed again, “You two, doing the bidding of that bitch—the thousands of wronged souls of this kingdom will curse you!”
Xie Lian turned toward Kemo and asked using the Banyue tongue, “General Kemo, who is that…person you speak of?”
Kemo replied hatefully, “Why pretend to ask? That evil cultivator!” “Is it the female cultivator who roams the city streets?”
Kemo spat angrily on the ground, and Xie Lian took that as a yes.
He continued to question, “Weren’t you a loyal supporter of the Banyue state preceptor?”
Kemo was provoked by his words and yelled, “I, Kemo, will never again be loyal to her! I can never forgive that bitch!!”
A long string of curses followed. Kemo was hysterical and spoke rapidly, so fast that Xie Lian blanked out at the end, unable to follow. He quietly whispered, “San Lang, San Lang.”
And so San Lang translated, “He’s cursing. He says that woman betrayed his country, opened the city gates, and let the Yong’an army in to slaughter. She’s got the blood of her people on her hands, and of his
brothers who she pushed into this pit. He will hang her dead a thousand times. Ten thousand times.”
“Wait, hold on!” Xie Lian quickly exclaimed.
How could this be? There were two things that didn’t match!
First, “the woman cultivator roaming in the city streets” that Xie Lian spoke of earlier was supposed to be the lady in white. But now, Kemo was calling the Banyue state preceptor “bitch” and saying she pushed his
brothers into the Sinner’s Pit. Earlier, when the black-clad girl swept the soldiers into the pit, Kemo swore and cursed her with the same profanity. Plus the last bit, “hang her dead a thousand times”—Xie Lian suddenly realized they didn’t seem to be talking about the same person.
Secondly, it was the Banyue state preceptor who betrayed the Kingdom of Banyue?!
Xie Lian interrupted Kemo. “General, the Banyue state preceptor you speak of, was it the girl in black hanging on the pole of the Sinner’s Pit?”
“Who else could it be if not her?!” Kemo shouted. “…”
The scrawny, corpse-like girl in black was the real state preceptor of
Banyue! But if that was the case, who were the lady cultivator and her black-clad companion, who strolled through the streets looking to kill them?
The girl in black had immeasurably strange powers and could easily sweep dozens of fierce, powerful Banyue soldiers off the wall. So how was she hanged above the Sinner’s Pit?
The story was getting more and more bizarre, more and more convoluted, the more Xie Lian listened.
“General, I want to ask…”
“No more questions!” Kemo interrupted. “You killed my soldiers, what else could you want to know?! I won’t answer. Now fight me!”
“I killed them. He didn’t do anything,” San Lang said. “You can answer his questions and fight me.”
Well, that was irrefutable logic. Kemo yelled angrily, “You’re both her helpers, there’s no difference!”
Xie Lian immediately said, “General Kemo, I think you’ve misunderstood. The only reason we’ve come to the Gobi is to get rid of the state preceptor of Banyue. How can we be the helpers she sent for?”
Hearing that Xie Lian was actually there to destroy the state preceptor, Kemo fell silent. After a while, he asked, “If you weren’t helping her, then why did you kill my soldiers?”
“Because you were going to throw us into the pit and we had to defend ourselves?” Xie Lian explained.
“Nonsense!” Kemo argued. “I didn’t throw a single one of you!
I even caught you! You all jumped down yourselves!!”
“Yes, yes, yes, we all jumped into the pit ourselves,” Xie Lian said. “General, we’re all trapped at the bottom of this pit—let’s just call it a truce
for now, all right? Why did that Banyue state preceptor open the city gates to let the enemies in?”
As if Kemo would listen to reason. He said resentfully, “You two are despicable, fighting me two-on-one.”
Xie Lian felt a little exasperated. “I really only smacked you once. I didn’t do much.”
He didn’t mind being called despicable or sly or whatever. If the situation called for it, never mind two-on-one, he would bring a hundred to beat one down; who cared about fighting fair? But earlier, San Lang obviously had the upper hand even while carrying him, and he also told Xie Lian not to fight. Kemo seemed to think he could’ve won if it had been just him and San Lang though, and Xie Lian felt bad for him. Still, it seemed Kemo was the type who could easily be made to spill the beans. Xie Lian would just have to go slow, not a problem.
San Lang, on the other hand, didn’t have the same patience. He said leisurely, “You’d better answer his questions, for the sake of your soldiers.”
“You already killed them,” Kemo said. “It’s pointless using them to threaten me.”
“They are dead, but their corpses are still around,” San Lang replied.
Kemo grew alarmed, unable to remain sprawled on the ground anymore. “What are you planning?”
“That depends on what you do,” San Lang said.
Just by his voice, Xie Lian could imagine the way San Lang would narrow his eyes when he spoke. “Do you want their next lives to be
fortuitous or for them to be reborn as a pool of blood?”
Kemo stopped but soon understood what San Lang meant. “You…!”
The people of Banyue took death and funerals very seriously. They believed that however the deceased looked at the time of their death, that
was how they would be reborn. For instance, if the deceased was missing an arm, they would be reborn disabled. If the corpses in this pit were destroyed, what would their rebirths be like?
General Kemo was a purebred man of Banyue and couldn’t help but be afraid. As expected, on the other side of the dark pit, Kemo gritted his
teeth soundly in rage, then after a while he relented helplessly. “Don’t touch their bodies! They were good, brave soldiers. It was already a tragedy that they were trapped in this pit for so many years. I don’t know if being killed by you is a blessing or not, but I will not have their corpses humiliated further.”
He paused, then asked, “Are you really here to kill Banyue?”
Xie Lian replied warmly, “That is no lie. The more we know, the better chance we have of winning. Very little is known about the state preceptor of Banyue in the outside world, so we have no idea how to fight her even if we want to. But you have worked under her before in the past, so perhaps you can enlighten us?”
Maybe it was because they shared the same enemy—the state preceptor of Banyue—that a sort of bond was developed. Or perhaps in this inescapable abyss, atop the dead bodies of his soldiers, Kemo became disheartened. Whatever the case, Kemo seemed to have lost the will to attack them.
“You don’t know why she opened the gates and let those Yong’an in?
It’s because she wanted revenge against us! She hates the Kingdom of Banyue!”
“What do you mean she hates the Kingdom of Banyue? Isn’t the Banyue state preceptor a person of Banyue?” Xie Lian asked.
“Yes, but not entirely,” Kemo replied. “She’s of mixed blood. And the other half is from Yong’an!”
“Ah…”
As it turned out, the Banyue state preceptor was born of a Banyue woman and a Yong’an man. Living on the border where the people of two nations shared mutual hatred of each other, things were difficult for an interracial couple. After a few years, the Yong’an man had finally had enough and moved away from the border, back to affluent and peaceful Yong’an.
Although it was an amicable divorce, the Banyue woman soon passed away from heartache. They left behind a child, six or seven years of age.
Without any guardians, the child grew up missing meals. The couple had received cold shoulders everywhere when they were around, and now their
daughter also received contempt wherever she went. The people of Banyue were tall and brawny and saw beauty in strength and liveliness, but this girl was born of mixed blood and appeared small and scrawny among the
Banyue children. She grew up bullied and became more and more sullen. The Banyue children wouldn’t play with her, though there were some Yong’an children who did pay attention to her.
When this little mixed-blood girl was about ten, a riot broke out at the border and the two armies fought. That battle took many lives, and afterward, the little girl disappeared.
She had neither friends nor family in Banyue, so no one noticed or cared when she vanished. However, the next time she appeared, it was a different story.
In those years, she walked thousands of miles and single-handedly crossed the Gobi Desert to Yong’an. No one knew what kind of encounters she’d had, but when she returned, she had learned black magic and could control the venomous creature most feared by the citizens of Banyue: the scorpion-snakes.
Upon her return, though many were impressed, many were also afraid. That was because the girl’s personality never changed, she was still gloomy and unsociable. There were also many who bullied her in the past, so if she were to enter the palace and become a high-ranking official, wouldn’t she one day seek revenge against them and cause trouble?
“I’m sure there were many who spoke poorly of her,” Xie Lian commented.
Kemo humphed. “It didn’t stop at ill talk. They went straight to the palace to advise the king, saying she was an evil messenger sent forth from the scorpion-snake clan, here to bring ruin to the Kingdom of Banyue. But none of them succeeded.”
“She got them hanged first?” Xie Lian guessed.
Kemo was even more disgusted. “You, man of Yong’an, why is your mind so full of depraved and vile developments? There was none of that! I protected her!”
Xie Lian was exasperated. “I already said I’m not from Yong’an… All right, whatever.”
At the time, Kemo was already a distinguished, fierce warrior. There was an incident where he took his troops out to exterminate the nest of a band of desert bandits and brought the girl who had become the Palace
Sorceress along.
That group of bandits was strong, and they had built their lair below the sand. In that battle, both sides suffered casualties, and while Kemo stole the victory, the battle caused the lair below the sand to collapse. Between that and the coming of windstorms, they couldn’t stay. Kemo retreated with some soldiers, but the other group, which included the sorceress, didn’t
manage to escape.
Once they had retreated to a safe point and waited out the sandstorm, Kemo returned anew, hoping to dig out the soldiers to bury them properly. Yet who knew that when he got there, he found that the sorceress had, by her power alone, dug out a sizable hole and managed to drag all the surviving, wounded soldiers in to hide away from the winds.
All the bodies of the dead were dug up too and laid out in neat order. She had done this all by herself. When they got there, the sorceress’s body was stained with blood, but still she guarded the entrance to that hole silently, hugging her knees and waiting for them like a little lone wolf.
“After that incident, I thought she was a good woman who acted on principle,” Kemo said. “I believed that she never had any intention of harming the Kingdom of Banyue, so I became her guarantor with all my might and fought back against all those malicious voices.”
In addition, Kemo himself had been bullied growing up and could understand her strife, so naturally, he paid more attention to her. The more attention he paid, the more he realized just how powerful this girl was.
Thus, he endorsed her all the way, helping her reach the position of state preceptor while he became the one later recorded as the most loyal supporter of the state preceptor of Banyue.
This lasted until another war broke out, and the Kingdom of Yong’an sent armies to annihilate the Kingdom of Banyue.
“With the two armies’ conflict at a lengthy standstill, she conducted a grand ceremony to pray to the heavens, saying it was to bring blessings upon us Banyue soldiers,” Kemo said.
Thus, the soldiers’ will to kill was whipped up, their battle spirits inflamed, and they defended the city gates to the death. There were arrows, giant boulders, boiling oil, swords and blades; the slaughter was endless and massive.
Yet unexpectedly, just as the fighting was at its peak, this state preceptor suddenly opened the city gates.
With the gates opened wide, millions of enemy troops swarmed into the city like mad. As the iron cavalry trampled past, the entire walled city instantly became a ritual of blood!
Kemo, who was fighting hard against their enemies, went mad with rage when he heard that the state preceptor had opened the gates. But no matter how tough he was, one could not win alone against so many.
Kemo gritted his teeth. “I only learned right then that she had long been colluding with the enemy general and agreed to let their troops in at that moment. But even if I was destined to die in battle, before I died, I was going to kill that traitor no matter what!! So I sent a troop of soldiers to charge up the city tower, and we dragged her down and hung her dead over the Sinner’s Pit. Hung on that pole!”
After the enemy troops passed, the Kingdom of Banyue became a dead realm. The state preceptor and the general who died in the battle also became trapped within the ruins, both keeping watch over the other in mutual grudge and hate.
“So,” Xie Lian said, “General Kemo, you lead the Banyue soldiers under you to search for that shadow, the state preceptor, everywhere, and every time you capture her, you ‘hang her dead’ over the Sinner’s Pit?”
“It won’t be enough even if we hang her dead a thousand times, a million times!” Kemo exclaimed. “Because she’s been apprehending all my soldiers who turned wrath and throwing them in the Sinner’s Pit! She’s set up a powerful array around the pit that only she herself can break. Once you fall, you can never climb back up. And those of us who have been betrayed by her, those soldiers who died wrongfully in battle, hold a deep resentment that only devouring the flesh and blood of those from Yong’an can appease and thus allow us to slowly pass from this earth with our hatred released.
Otherwise, they can only howl into the long nights without absolution!”
asked.
“Is that why you keep capturing people to feed them?” Xie Lian
“What else can we do?” Kemo replied. “Listen to them wail down
below and do nothing?”
“The people you threw down, did you catch them yourselves, or…?” “We can’t stray too far from the Kingdom of Banyue. But thankfully,
her snakes like to haunt the area and often crawl out of the ruins to bite people. And caravans who suffer bites come into the city to look for the shanyue fern.”
“That mud face in the palace, was it you who buried him?”
“That’s right. The man buried in the earth was originally planning on stealing the riches of the palace. But all the treasures our kingdom had were cleared out by those Yong’an men two hundred years ago.”
“Why did you bury him instead of throwing him down here directly?” Xie Lian asked.
“There’s gotta be fertilizer to grow the ferns, you know,” Kemo replied. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to hold the scorpion-snakes back. We don’t want to run into those creatures either.”
That’s not right, Xie Lian thought.
If Kemo and his party consciously knew to grow and fertilize
shanyue ferns, going as far as using live humans as fertilizer, then it was clear that even though they were no longer alive, their fear of those
scorpion-snakes was still strong.
In that case, that fear must’ve been even greater while they were alive. If that Banyue state preceptor could control a murder weapon as great as those scorpion-snakes, then how was she so easily dragged down the city tower by a bunch of soldiers and hanged to death?
According to Kemo, in the past two hundred or so years, he had captured the state preceptor over and over and hanged her dead repeatedly. Either way, Xie Lian felt that if it were him, and he had such a killing weapon in his hands, he would never allow the enemy the chance to come near him.
And regarding the scorpion-snakes that would slither out of the ruins to bite people—was that an accident? Not likely. It was more likely that they were purposely trying to lure people into the pass. Then was the state preceptor doing so intentionally? Wouldn’t that only be helping Kemo catch live humans to feed his soldiers? “Mutual hatred” wouldn’t make sense.
Were they pretending to be enemies, then? What was the point in
that?
And in all of this mess, there was also the mysterious lady in white
and her companion. Xie Lian decided to ask more questions. “General Kemo, when we first entered the city, we saw two ladies, one in white, and the other in black. Do you know who they are?”
Before there was a response, San Lang whispered, “Shhh.”
Xie Lian didn’t know what was going on, but he closed his mouth immediately. A strange hunch made him look up.
It was the same framed dark blue sky with a crescent moon. But next to the moon he saw a person: a small, black-clad silhouette was peering over the edge and looking down.
After watching them for a bit, the little form suddenly grew bigger— it had jumped down.
As the figure fell, Xie Lian could see clearly that it was the state preceptor who had been hanging from the pole earlier!
“Kemo, what’s going on?” the state preceptor asked in the Banyue tongue as she landed.
The moment she spoke, Xie Lian thought her voice was very different from what he imagined. Although it certainly sounded somber, her voice was tiny. It was like the muttering of a sulky child, not cool or powerful at all. If not for his good hearing, Xie Lian might not have even heard her properly.
“What’s going on?! They’re all dead!” Kemo shouted. “How did they die?” the state preceptor asked.
“Isn’t it because you pushed them all down and trapped them in this godforsaken place?!”
“Who’s here? There’s another person,” the state preceptor said.
There actually should’ve been two “people” at the bottom of the pit besides Kemo. But San Lang had neither breath nor heartbeat, so the state preceptor didn’t detect his presence. It was also complete chaos on top of the walls earlier, and no one had kept track of who fell and who ran away, so she thought there was only Xie Lian.
“They’re the ones who killed all my soldiers. Are you happy now?
They’re finally all dead!”
The state preceptor was silent. Suddenly a tiny burst of light flared, illuminating a small, black-clad girl conjuring a palm torch.
The girl surprisingly appeared to be only fifteen or sixteen. She was dressed in plain black cultivator robes, and her eyes were gloomily black as well. She was not unbeautiful, just unhappy. Her forehead and cheeks were covered with bruises, clear and distinct under the light.
If it hadn’t been confirmed earlier, no one would believe that the state preceptor of Banyue could be such a pale young girl.
The flames in her hand illuminated herself and her surroundings. At her feet were the armored corpses of Banyue soldiers.
Xie Lian couldn’t help but sneak a glance beside him.
The palm torch in the state preceptor’s hand was very small and did not light up the entire pit, so they were still immersed in darkness. But borrowing the small light, Xie Lian could still see the red-robed figure
beside him.
Perhaps it was his imagination, but although San Lang had already been taller than him before, he now appeared even taller somehow. Xie Lian’s gaze slowly moved upward and came to the youth’s throat. He stopped for a moment, then continued upward, his eyes stopping at an elegantly shaped chin.
The features of San Lang’s upper face were still hidden in the shadows, but Xie Lian thought the bottom half was subtly different from before. No less handsome, but the lines were much more defined. Feeling he was being watched, San Lang tilted his head, and his lips curled upward slightly.
Perhaps he wanted so much to get a better look, to get nearer, that without realizing it, Xie Lian took a step closer to him.
Just then, Kemo wailed in the distance, seemingly in shock after seeing the bloody tragedy before him. Xie Lian abruptly snapped out of it and turned to look, and saw Kemo clutching his own head. Despite the general’s cries, the state preceptor’s expression remained wooden, and she only nodded.
“Good.”
In the midst of mourning, hearing those words made Kemo rage once more. “Good?! What’s good?! What do you mean?!”
“‘Good’ means we’re finally free,” The state preceptor said.
She turned to Xie Lian, who was still shrouded in the dark. “Are you the one who killed them?”
“It was an accident,” Xie Lian replied.
“You’re lying through your teeth!” Kemo exclaimed.
Xie Lian responded bold-facedly, “Life is full of accidents!”
The state preceptor gave him a look, but her expression was unreadable. “Who are you?”
Her words were spoken in perfect Han dialect,8 and weren’t said in an interrogative tone.
“I’m a heavenly official. This one here is…my friend,” Xie Lian replied.
Kemo couldn’t understand their words but could tell they weren’t fighting, and demanded, “What are you two saying?”
The state preceptor looked Xie Lian over and eyed San Lang for a moment before quickly looking away. “We’ve never had heavenly officials visit before. I thought you all already abandoned this place.”
Xie Lian had expected that they would have to fight the state preceptor of Banyue but was surprised to find her this despondent and devoid of any will to fight.
She continued, “Do you two want to leave?”
“Of course we do, but there’s an array set in this pit, so we can’t,” Xie Lian said.
Hearing this, the state preceptor walked to one of the walls, raised her hand, and drew something. She then turned around and said, “There. I released the array. You two can leave now.”
“…”
This was way too easy! Xie Lian really didn’t know what to say.
Just then, a voice called from above, “Hey! Is anyone down there?! If not, I’m leaving!”
It was Fu Yao’s voice.
Xie Lian heard San Lang tsk next to him and immediately looked up.
There was a shadow of a man looking down into the pit.
Xie Lian shouted, “Fu Yao! There are people down here! I’m down
here!”
He waved, and Fu Yao shouted back from above, “You’re actually
down there? What’s at the bottom besides you?”
“Um…a lot of things. Why don’t you come down and see for yourself?” Xie Lian said.
Fu Yao probably thought the same, and with a loud rumble, he hurled a large ball of fire into the pit.
In an instant, the entire Sinner’s Pit was lit up, bright like day, and Xie Lian finally saw clearly the kind of place he’d been standing in.
All around him were mountains of bloody corpses piled high,
innumerable bodies of Banyue soldiers stacked on top of each other, faces and limbs blackened, dark blood smearing their bright armor. The corner where Xie Lian stood was the only spot in the entire Sinner’s Pit that did not have a dead body.
This was all done in a flash, in the dark, by San Lang after he jumped
in.
Xie Lian turned to gaze at the youth next to him again.
Before, in the dark, he vaguely saw that San Lang looked taller and
subtly different in certain features. But now, under the bright firelight, the
one standing next to him was the same handsome youth he knew. When he saw Xie Lian looking over, he smiled.
Xie Lian looked down to check his wrists and boots, and both were also the same as before, having nothing that would cause any jingling sound.
Just then, Xie Lian heard a muffled noise. It was the sound of Fu Yao jumping down.
“Weren’t you looking after the merchants?” Xie Lian asked.
Having just entered the pit, Fu Yao wasn’t yet used to the stench of blood and fanned his hand to make the air flow. He replied indifferently, “We waited for over six hours and there was still no sign of you, so we figured something had happened. I drew a circle for them to wait in and came to check things out myself.”
Xie Lian frowned. “The circle won’t last long. With you gone, what if they leave the circle thinking you left them behind?”
Fu Yao shrugged. “Eight horses can’t pull back a man who really wants to seek death. I can’t stop stubborn people, so I won’t try. What’s with those two over there? Who’s who?”
Fu Yao was on high alert, his guard raised against the two unknowns.
But he soon discovered in astonishment that Kemo was already heavily wounded on the ground, barely able to stand, and the state preceptor of Banyue was quiet with her head hung low.
“That one is the general of Banyue, and the other one is the state preceptor of Banyue. Right now they’re…”
Kemo suddenly leapt up before Xie Lian could finish. He had been lying on the ground gathering his strength and was finally able to jump up with a shout, aiming his fists at the state preceptor of Banyue. A large, beefy warrior attacking a little girl—normally, Xie Lian would never allow that sort of thing to happen before him. But Kemo had every reason to hate the
state preceptor, and she could defend herself perfectly well. However, she didn’t, and allowed herself to be thrown around like a broken ragdoll.
Kemo shouted at the state preceptor, “Where are your scorpion-
snakes? Come on! Let them bite me to death too! Give me that release!”
The state preceptor gloomily replied, “Kemo, my snakes don’t listen to me anymore.”
“Then why don’t they kill you?!” he scoffed.
“…I’m sorry, Kemo,” the state preceptor apologized softly. “Do you really hate us that much?!”
The state preceptor shook her head, and Kemo became angrier. “You’re going to be the death of me! If you don’t hate us, why did you betray us?! You shameless spy, disgusting mole, traitor!!”
Fu Yao watched him strike harder and harder. The blows were all single-sided, and he couldn’t help but frown. “What are they saying?
Shouldn’t we stop them?”
Xie Lian couldn’t watch anymore either and rushed forward to stop Kemo. “General! General! Why don’t you tell us who that Yong’an thug really is, and we’ll—”
Suddenly, the state preceptor seized his wrist.
The grip was hard and came unexpectedly, and Xie Lian’s heart dropped, thinking she was going to attack him. But when he looked back down at her, the state preceptor was on all fours on the ground. There was a small bruise at the corner of her mouth, and her head was raised, staring at him intently. She didn’t say a single word, but her dark eyes were intense with the fire of life.
This demeanor overlapped with an image from a far-gone memory.
After a pause, Xie Lian blurted, “It’s you?”
The state preceptor also called. “General Hua?” This back-and-forth stunned everyone in the pit.
Fu Yao rushed forward, knocked Kemo out with a punch, and demanded, “You two know each other?”
Xie Lian didn’t have the time to answer him, however. He knelt down, gripped the shoulders of the state preceptor, and examined her face.
They’d been standing too far apart before, and he couldn’t see clearly. Plus, it had been over two hundred years; this girl had matured in that time,
and for many reasons, he didn’t recognize her at first. But now that he looked again properly, it was the same face from his memories.
Xie Lian couldn’t speak for the longest time, and it was a good moment before he sighed. “Banyue?”
The state preceptor quickly clutched at his sleeves, surprisingly a little excited. “It’s me! General Hua, do you still remember me?”
“Of course I remember you. But…” Xie Lian gazed at her for a moment and sighed. “But what have you done to yourself?”
When she heard that, the state preceptor’s eyes suddenly filled with
pain.
“I’m sorry, Captain… I messed up,” she muttered.
In that exchange, there was “General” this, “Captain” that, making it
glaringly obvious to the bystanders. Fu Yao was dumbstruck. “Captain?
General? YOU? How did this happen? Then the Tomb of the General is…?” Xie Lian nodded. “My tomb.”
“Didn’t you say you only came to collect scraps two hundred years
ago?!” Fu Yao questioned.
“This…is a long story. That was originally the plan,” Xie Lian answered.
Around two hundred years ago, due to certain reasons, Xie Lian couldn’t muck around in the east anymore and decided to stay out of sight for a while. He had planned to cross the Qing Ridge and head to the south to start a brand-new life of scraps. Thus, he took up his compass and walked southward.
But the more he walked, the more he thought woefully, why was the scenery all wrong? There should have been an abundance of trees and greenery, cities and life, so how come his path was becoming more
desolate?
However, Xie Lian pushed his suspicions aside and stubbornly continued. He walked and walked and came upon the Gobi Desert. It took a gust of wind blowing a fistful of sand into his face for Xie Lian to finally
realize that his compass had long been broken.
The direction it guided him that entire journey was wrong!
Since there wasn’t anything he could do about the whole thing, he thought that he might as well take this chance to visit the desert scenery, so he continued onward. The only difference was that he changed course slightly at the last minute for a destination to the northwest, and finally arrived at the border, where he temporarily settled near the Kingdom of Banyue.
“At first, I was just collecting junk or something in the area,” Xie Lian said. “But the border was troubled, and with so many skirmishes, there were often runaway soldiers, so the army would draft anyone to make up
the numbers.”
“So you were forced into the army?” San Lang asked.
“Yeah,” Xie Lian replied. “But doing anything was more or less the same, so it didn’t matter to me. And then, after chasing away some bandits a couple of times, I somehow got promoted to Captain. The ones who gave
me face would call me General too.”
“Why did she call you General Hua?” Fu Yao questioned. “Your surname isn’t Hua.”
Xie Lian waved his hand and said dismissively, “Don’t worry about it. I randomly made up a fake name at the time. I think it was ‘Hua Xie.’”
Hearing the name, San Lang’s face changed slightly, his lips faintly twitching. Xie Lian didn’t notice and continued. “With a battle-torn border came many orphans. When I was free, I’d play with them sometimes. One of them…was named Banyue.”
When there were bandits, Xie Lian was surely the bravest soldier, and no one dared block his way, nor even dared to stand beside him. But when
there weren’t, it was as if anyone could order him around.
One day he went and sat by a wall to start a campfire, using his own helmet to cook. As he cooked, the smell of it drifted out, and a few enraged soldiers came and kicked over whatever it was he was cooking. Xie Lian picked up his helmet with a broken heart, but when he looked back, he saw a small, disheveled, grimy child crouched behind him. She was picking up the stuff knocked to the ground with her hands and stuffing it into her mouth without caring whether it was too hot.
He was shocked. “Don’t! Wait, little kid, you!”
As expected, that little kid scarfed down a few lumps of the stuff she had picked off the ground and then dry-heaved harshly, crying loudly. Xie Lian was so shaken that he picked her up upside down and ran laps until all the stuff she ate came back out. After that was done, he crouched down and wiped his sweat.
“Are you all right, little one…? I’m so sorry. But don’t ever tell your parents about this, and next time, don’t pick up any more random stuff off the ground to eat… Wait, what are you doing now?!”
That child’s face was covered in tears, but she still went to pick food off the ground again, wanting to eat. It was only after Xie Lian grabbed her that he realized that the skin of this child’s stomach was practically pressed to the back of her bones.
When people were starved to that point, anything could be eaten.
Even if it was disgusting to the point of tears, she would still eat it.
Xie Lian had no choice and went to get her the last of his rations.
After that incident, he would often see the child stalking him in the shadows nearby.
In his memories, the little girl Banyue was always gloomy. Her body and face were covered in bruises, and when she looked at him, she would clutch the hem of his clothes and stare at him just so from below. Because she was singled out by the children of the Banyue kingdom, besides Xie Lian, only a particular Yong’an boy living at the border would sometimes pay attention to her. She’d spend her days tagging along behind the two of them.
She rarely spoke, but she was fluent in the Han dialect, so Xie Lian didn’t know where she came from. But she was a random wandering child, so he randomly took her in. When he was free, sometimes he’d teach her songs, sometimes wrestle, sometimes show off his busker move “Shattering Boulders on One’s Chest,” and other stuff, and they got along quite well.
Xie Lian shook his head. “I had thought the ‘Banyue’ in the state preceptor’s title was the country. I didn’t realize it was actually the name of the state preceptor.”
“And then?” Fu Yao asked.
“And then…it’s pretty much the same as what the memorial wrote,” Xie Lian said.
After some silence, San Lang spoke up. “The memorial said you
died.”
As for that memorial, Xie Lian was extremely bummed out.
Weren’t memorials usually full of praise and exaggerated good deeds
to glorify the deceased? All those mentions of his demotions aside, why did it have to so seriously record the embarrassing way he died?!
While they were hiding away from the sandstorm and he read to this part, he could barely look at it straight on. If it wasn’t for San Lang, who also understood Banyue script and was watching him, he would’ve pretended that section never existed. Having something like that written down, even he wanted to laugh at it, never mind other people. And he didn’t even have the nerve to ask those seeking shelter in his memorial not to laugh as they commentated and joked about his epitaph. That made him feel really bummed.
Xie Lian’s forehead was becoming red from all the rubbing. “Oh, that. Um. Of course I didn’t die. I faked it.”
Fu Yao had a face full of disbelief. Xie Lian explained himself. “I got trampled too hard and couldn’t get up, so there wasn’t any option besides faking my death.”
Truthfully, Xie Lian couldn’t quite remember exactly how he “died,” nor why that battle broke out in the first place, only that it was over something petty. He really hadn’t wanted to fight, and victory or defeat
were meaningless. But by then his rank could go no lower, and no one would listen to him. In the midst of battle, everyone saw red, so when he rushed out and both sides saw it was him, for some reason all the blades and swords went after him and cut him down.
Fu Yao questioned, “You must have been standing in the middle being an eyesore, and that raised the ire of both sides, right? Otherwise, why would people cut you down on sight? Besides, I’m sure you knew
there were many who hated you, so why didn’t you avoid them? Why did you have to charge in? I’m sure you could’ve avoided the whole thing if you’d wanted to.”
“I really don’t remember, all right?!” Xie Lian said.
Even if nothing could kill him, he still couldn’t endure that kind of butchering, so with the thought “this can’t go on!” Xie Lian resolutely dropped to the ground to fake his death. But even in “death” he was trampled to the point of passing out. It was water choking him that roused him, because corpses were usually thrown into the rivers after battles. Xie Lian went with the river’s flow and floated back to the Kingdom of Yong’an like a heap of junk. Afterward, he took several years to recover from his wounds, then picked up an unbroken compass to start off anew and finally made it to his original destination in the south. He then stopped paying attention to what went on in the Kingdom of Banyue.
“I’m sorry,” Banyue muttered again.
Fu Yao furrowed his brow. “Why does she keep apologizing to you?” San Lang suddenly spoke up, “Kemo stated that the state preceptor of
Banyue left for the Central Plains after a clash between the two armies.
Were you involved in that?”
With that reminder, and recalling what was written on the memorial, some things were coming back to Xie Lian, though only in bits and pieces. “Ah, maybe…”
“It was to save me,” Banyue said.
Everyone turned to look at her, and she said softly, “General Hua got flattened because he entered the fray to save me.”
“…”
Xie Lian instantly remembered the agony of being trampled by thousands, and he hugged his body despite himself, but when he saw two
others watching him with unreadable expressions, he pulled himself back in a hurry.
He said, “Not flat. Not too flat.”
Who knew why Fu Yao was looking so smug? He said passive- aggressively, “Well, aren’t you a saint.”
Xie Lian waved dismissively. “Nothing of the sort. I don’t remember the specifics anymore. But there were two children playing at the time, and
I was just going to pick them up and run away immediately, but we didn’t manage to retreat fast enough and got caught between the two armies…”
“If that’s the case,” Fu Yao demanded. “How can you not remember something like that?”
Xie Lian replied, “Do you not know how many hundreds of years old I am? So much can happen in just a decade, there’s no way to remember everything in detail. Besides, some things are best forgotten. Rather than remembering how I was butchered and trampled hundreds of years ago, I’d prefer to remember that I ate a delicious meat bun yesterday, no?”
“I’m sorry,” Banyue said.
Xie Lian sighed. “Oh, Banyue. Saving you was my own choice. You’re not at fault. If you’re going to apologize, perhaps it should be to others.”
Banyue was taken aback and hung her head in silence.
Xie Lian continued, “But…maybe it’s because my impression of you is from two hundred years ago, but I don’t think you’re the kind of child who’d seek revenge and betray others… Will you tell me what happened
exactly? Why did you open the city gates?”
Banyue contemplated, shook her head, and remained silent. “Then why did you let the snakes out to bite people?” Xie Lian
asked.
This time, Banyue answered, “I didn’t release the snakes.” Xie Lian was taken aback. “What?”
“I didn’t release the snakes,” Banyue repeated. “They ran off on their
own. I don’t know why, but they don’t listen to me anymore.”
Hearing this, Fu Yao grew impatient. Banyue pleaded, “General Hua, I’m not lying.”
Before Xie Lian responded, Fu Yao cut in rudely. “Anyone would say that after being captured. Even if you say it wasn’t intentional, I’ve heard all that before. All those people crossing the pass were clearly injured by your snakes. Show me your hands; you’re under arrest.”
Banyue shut up and extended both arms. Fu Yao immediately took out an Immortal-Binding Rope and apprehended both Banyue and Kemo, then he said, “All right. We’ve accomplished our goal for this trip. It’s all over now.”
Just then, San Lang spoke up. “She had no reason to lie.”
Xie Lian also felt there was a need for further interrogation. He turned to Banyue. “Can you not control any of your snakes?”
Banyue answered, “I can control them, and they’ll obey most of the time. But there are times when they won’t. I don’t know why.”
After some thought, Xie Lian said, “Why don’t you call them out and show us?”
Banyue was kneeling before him. Now, she finally rose to her feet and nodded. Soon, a wine-red scorpion-snake slithered out from underneath a corpse, raised its head, and curled itself on a pile of dead bodies. It soundlessly flicked its tongue at the group.
Xie Lian was about to take a closer look at the snake but saw Banyue widen her eyes, face strange. Xie Lian’s heart dropped and he thought, Oh no.
As that thought crossed his mind, the snake stopped flicking its tongue, opened its mouth, and pounced at him in attack.
It was a sudden lunge, but Xie Lian was ready. He was about to grab for it when boom, something exploded. When he opened his eyes again to see, the snake was already a splatter of guts on the ground, having been thoroughly blown apart. It was a calculated blast too, since none of the venom spilled.
Xie Lian immediately remembered another time when a snake died
like that before they entered the Banyue ruins, but there was no need to say who did it at this point. He hadn’t even had the chance to look at San Lang before a red sleeve flashed before him, barring and separating him from Banyue.
On the other side, Fu Yao said coldly, “I knew she was lying. Did you think that snake would manage to bite him under these circumstances?
Foolish.”
Banyue’s face was already pale when she saw that snake, and when
she heard him, her head shot up. “I didn’t do it. I said there are some snakes that don’t obey me, and that one was one of them just now.”
Fu Yao didn’t believe a single word. “Who knows whether it was disobeying or obeying you?”
“That one wasn’t even called forth by me,” Banyue said glumly. Xie Lian was about to speak when another two wine-red scorpion-
snakes poked out from under a different corpse, flicking their tongues and watching them intently. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth…from the mountains of dead bodies and every corner of the pit, there came innumerable scorpion-snakes!
Everyone stared at Banyue, who was kneeling on top of a pile of corpses, and Fu Yao started spinning a ball of spiritual energy in his palm and shouted at her.
“Make them go away! They can’t all disobey!”
Banyue scrunched up her brows, looking as if she was trying to drive them out. Yet more and more scorpion-snakes appeared, curling and crawling, slithering ever closer. Bites from one or two snakes might not kill them, but from hundreds or thousands was harder to say. Even if they didn’t die, it wouldn’t be pretty. Xie Lian raised his wrist, about to call forth Ruoye, but saw that when the snakes slithered to a certain distance, they would stop and hesitate, forming a weird circle.
It dawned on Xie Lian, and he glanced at San Lang next to him. He was watching the snakes with condescension and immense contempt. The scorpion-snakes seemed to be able to read his eyes and didn’t dare approach. They backed off bit by bit, lowering their heads as they did so, pressing their savage heads against the ground submissively like servants.
But there seemed to be another power controlling them, not allowing them to abandon their attacks and leave completely. Thus, many of the
snakes turned around and slithered toward Fu Yao. Fu Yao swung his hand and a blast of flames burst from his sleeve, killing a circle of snakes and forcing back another.
That wouldn’t last long, however. Xie Lian said, “Let’s get out of here first!”
Whoosh! Ruoye shot out from Xie Lian’s arm and flew upward. But a moment later, another whoosh and it was back on Xie Lian’s arm. Xie Lian was slightly taken aback and raised his wrist, scolding the silk band now rewrapped around it.
“What are you doing back here? The array was released, there’s nothing stopping you anymore, hurry and go!”
But Ruoye remained wrapped around his arm, trembling, as if it had bumped into something terrifying at the top. Xie Lian was about to coax it some more when suddenly, a long rope of something fell. Plop, it dropped on Fu Yao’s shoulder. Fu Yao went to grab it, and his face changed the moment he brought it before his eyes. It was another scorpion-snake that fell from the sky!
This caught Fu Yao off guard, and after getting bitten, he hurled the
snake toward Banyue. Even with her hands tied, she still reflexively tried to catch the snake, and after having caught it, the dark red snake curled itself up around her arm without attacking. Just then, another plop and a second
scorpion-snake landed on the ground!
Xie Lian could guess why Ruoye refused to go up now. Borrowing the faint light of the moon, Xie Lian raised his head and only just barely
saw this sight: hundreds of little wine-red dots were falling rapidly into the Sinner’s Pit.
A snake deluge!
The red dots were coming closer. Xie Lian yelled, “Fu Yao! Fire!
Shoot a stream of fire upward and get rid of them while they’re still in the air!”
Fu Yao bit his palm to break the skin, swung his hand, and a series of blood drops shot out; an instant later they transformed into a screen of fire that jetted up through the pit. Those sweeping flames rose over thirty meters and hung in midair, disintegrating all scorpion-snakes that touched them, burning them to ash, dissolving the snake deluge.
Temporarily safe, Xie Lian let out a breath of relief. “That was good, Fu Yao! Thank goodness for you.”
A spell like that evidently consumed an immense amount of spiritual power, and after one round, Fu Yao’s face was pale. He turned around and
ignited a ring of fire, dispelling the snakes on the ground, and shouted at Banyue, “And you say those snakes don’t obey you? If you weren’t controlling them, why wouldn’t they attack you?”
San Lang laughed. “Maybe it’s because of your bad luck? They didn’t attack us either.”
Fu Yao turned to look at him, his eyes sharp and narrowed. Xie Lian could sense trouble. He’d somewhat established a theory about the current situation but hadn’t yet had time to sort through his thoughts, and Xie Lian didn’t want to see the two of them start fighting now.
“Let’s figure out what’s going on with those snakes first,” Xie Lian said. “Let’s charge out.”
Fu Yao sneered. “‘What’s going on’? Either the state preceptor of Banyue is lying, or the one next to you is causing trouble.”
Xie Lian glanced at Banyue, then at San Lang, and said, “I don’t think it’s either of them.”
His tone was gentle but firm. It was the conclusion he came to after much thought. However, Fu Yao must have thought he was shielding them intentionally, and the face illuminated by the flames was unkind. Xie Lian couldn’t tell if he was angry or laughing.
“Your Royal Highness,” Fu Yao said. “Don’t play pretend when you know the truth. Do you still remember your place? I’m sure you’re already very aware of who exactly that cad next to you is. I refuse to believe you haven’t realized it!”
