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Chapter 24: Skeletons Beneath the River (I)
As the hallway turned black, their footsteps halted.
Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi gasped, felt the air block itself in their throats as they forced themselves not to make a sound.
A gust of chilling winter wind blew its way across the open doors, bringing with it the strange smell of humidity and rot mixed together. The cold seeped into their bodies.
Even Xue Xian, dazed and boiling in the pouch, felt the change, though to him, this cool breeze was nothing to complain about. But such a relief was as useless as scooping water out of a boiling pot just to pour it back in –– it did not make Xue Xian feel any better. After the yin wind passed, Xue Xian felt just as hot again.
Ordinary people would long since have gone insane in such heat. Xue Xian wasn't immune: rocking back and forth inside the pouch as though in a dream, he idly wondered how he might be able to extract himself from the pouch, even if just for a moment of fresh air. At this point, he no longer cared about face –– irrationally, all he wanted was for Xuanmin to reach his cool hand into the pouch and give him some relief.
Because his mind was slipping, this zuzong could no longer stay quiet –– he muttered to himself incessantly. He was probably expressing all the thoughts that were running through his mind, but, because of his confused state of mind, everything his speech was slurred, like that of a senile grandmother. The words came out as a long string of repetitive gibberish.
With the yin wind blowing out the light, Jiang Shining and the others had turned rigid as coffins and fallen deathly quiet.
Naturally, Xue Xian's nonsensical mutterings emerged from the pouch and crept mysteriously into their ears.
"What's that noise?" Lu Nianqi stammered, trembling. "Where is it coming from?"
“Dashi, can we light another flame?" Jiang Shining asked anxiously.
The sudden blackness had swallowed any and all signs of the others' presence. Jiang Shining felt utterly alone.
Folk say that, in the quiet of the night, one's own senses begin to play tricks on us –– sounds from far away are mistaken for being close by, and it is impossible to actually tell where things are.
When Xuanmin had first heard the strange voice, his hand had automatically shot to another talisman, but he had stopped when he’d realised that the eerie sound was coming from his own pouch.
What was the niezhang up to now?
Frowning, Xuanmin tilted his head to listen. He found that the demon [a] was in fact repeating the same phrase over and over again –– “bald donkey.” The words came out in such quick staccato that he sounded like a furiously buzzing hornet.
Xuanmin: “...” What did I do?
Exasperated, Xuanmin decided to ignore Xue Xian and took out another talisman to light.
As soon as the small flame rose, there was immediately another hooo noise as it vanished.
"Stop wasting your time. It won't light," Lu Shijiu said dully. With a grunt, he pushed the doors to the tomb fully open.
In contrast to the all-consuming blackness of the hallway, the tomb chamber now seemed to shimmer with a weak glow.
The light was as dim as a gentle layer of frost on coal –– but enough to allow them to estimate the silhouettes of others.
Without so much as a word of warning, Lu Shijiu strode into the chamber. Xuanmin patted the still-muttering little lord [b] in his pouch and said to Jiang Shining, "Stay close." Then he, too, walked inside.
Afraid of being left behind, Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi followed suit.
As they stepped through the door, Lu Nianqi felt something beneath his foot, as though he had stepped on a small pebble. He stumbled slightly, and then there was an ear-splitting noise behind him as the heavy stone doors slammed shut. The sound was so startling that Lu Nianqi felt it in his bladder, and wished he could drop everything and run.
Despite the faint glow inside the tomb, it was still too dark to see anything –– not even how large the tomb chamber was, nor what was strewn beneath their feet, nor what resided in the ceiling––
"Hold on. Are those holes in the ceiling?" Jiang Shining suddenly said, pointing upwards.
Holes in the ceiling
the ceiling
...ling...
...
As his words echoed across the walls of the chamber, Jiang Shining froze. His finger still stiffly pointing upward, he was too afraid to even move his neck..
Lu Shijiu quietly hushed him, then said in a low voice, "Be quiet."
With his voice suppressed to a bare whisper, the echoes died down too.
Xuanmin looked up and saw that the ceiling was indeed pierced with seven tiny holes.
He reached into the void to feel the air, then said, "Not holes." If these were holes, the yin wind would not have blown in such a direction.
"Night pearls." Xuanmin studied them some more, then added, "There are seven, corresponding with the Big Dipper." [c]
A flash of understanding crossed Jiang Shining's face. Those seven circles were indeed not holes, but rather night pearls arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper.
The cold, white glow of the night pearls was far dimmer and creepier than natural daylight, and cast itself down faintly from above.
"Someone hung seven night pearls, but the tomb is still so dark. That means the ceiling is extremely high..." Jiang Shining muttered.
"That’s obvious from the bounce of the echo," Lu Shijiu said. "The path ahead is quite difficult. Be careful. Don't step on the wrong stone, and definitely don't fall off."
Lu Nianqi had just extended his foot to take a step, and now he quickly yanked it back. "Wait. What do you mean, don't step on the wrong stone? What do you mean, don't fall off?"
"Especially you,” Lu Shijiu said, then added, "Don't look down."
Lu Nianqi: “...”
What kind of instructions are those? If I can’t look down while walking through this pitch dark cavern where you can barely see your own hands in front of you, how am I supposed to make my way through? I can’t take a single step!
In the time it took for them to have this conversation, everyone’s eyes had slowly begun to adjust to the darkness, and some parts of the tomb began to emerge into their line of sight.
They were standing on a stone platform suspended in the air. It was wide enough to fit two rows of people, but narrow enough that if Lu Shijiu and Xuanmin, who stood to the front of the group, took one more step ahead, they would fall into the void.
You're a ghost. You can't die twice, Jiang Shining told himself over and over. Finally, he gathered the courage to take a single step forward and fall in line behind Xuanmin, over whose shoulder he could see some of what lay ahead, which was... a massive crater, over which swam faint ripples of light. The light meant that the crater was filled with water, though Jiang Shining could not tell how deep the pool was, nor where the water was coming from. If he fell in, he had no idea whether he'd be able to come back up.
The strangest part was that circular objects floated intermittently across the water, like heavy melons... Jiang Shining could only see their outline, and could not tell if they were made of stone or some other material. As he cast his gaze across the pool, he counted more than a hundred of them, as though they were here to establish an array. [d]
And, in the black water in front of Lu Shijiu, there was a series of separate, narrow stone steps, each of which seemed to lead further into the chamber. The steps rose and fell in an uneven manner as they reached into the darkness, like meihuazhuang pillars. [e]
This was their only path forward.
Jiang Shining peered further, and found that he could not see where the steps ended.
How long is this path?!
His knees buckled as he turned to stare anxiously at Xuanmin.
As Xuanmin observed their surroundings, there was a slight furrow to his brows. It was unclear what was going through his mind –– apart from the slight knitting-together of his brows, there was little else Jiang Shining could see on Xuanmin’s face.
Lu Shijiu spoke again. "My eyes can only see qi, so the tomb doesn't bother me. You must follow closely behind me. You cannot walk too slowly."
Calmly, he took the first step.
Liu-laotou followed. He had spent his whole life rowing boats, so his back was deeply bent, and his silhouette had a depressing oldness to it. Seeing that such an old man was not making a single noise –– he seemed not to be even breathing –– Jiang Shining felt that he, too, had nothing to fear.
Xuanmin waited for Lu Shijiu and Liu-laotou to cross the first three steps, then went.
All Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi could do was follow.
It was already terrifying just to look down from the edge, let alone to actually step onto the path. Jiang Shining couldn't help but peek down, and saw that the path was high-up and incredibly narrow –– he could fall at any time, right into that murky, uncertain water that lapped at the pillars around one zhang beneath his feet.
At the sight of this, there was a weng–– knock in Jiang Shining's mind. He felt light-headed.
There was some kind of hidden logic to the mess of steps. Lu Shijiu seemed to know exactly which steps to take, and which to avoid. The rest of them simply had to copy him.
But Jiang Shining still didn't feel safe. Lu Shijiu and Liu-laotou were about two zhang ahead of Xuanmin –– could the monk really see which steps the boy was taking?
They tottered forward by seven or eight more steps, then something unnerving occurred to Jiang Shining––
"Why do I feel as though the water level is rising?" Jiang Shining rasped.
"Water?!" Lu Nianqi, who had been walking ahead of Jiang Shining, suddenly froze. "There's water?"
"Don't look down!" Lu Shijiu hollered.
Oh no...
Jiang Shining recalled the boy's warning from earlier, but it was far too late.
He watched as Lu Nianqi suddenly squatted down and laid across the steps on his stomach, clinging to the stone. "I... I can't go ahead. I want to go back. I want to go back!"
Slowly, Lu Nianqi shuffled his body so that he now faced the other direction. He tried to crawl back, but the step he needed to take was occupied by Jiang Shining. In a flash of panic, he landed on the step next to Jiang Shining's foot.
"Don't!" Jiang Shining tried to grab him, but it was too late, and the movement made him lose balance so that he almost fell off his own step.
The stone step that Lu Nianqi had touched shattered and its broken pieces rolled past them, tumbling into the black water.
There was a splash, and a small amount of water sprayed up at them.
Inside the pouch, Xue Xian suddenly felt something deep inside his body jolt up with a peng–– as though a new heart had suddenly appeared inside his chest.
Of course, he was still just a soul in its purest form anchored to a marble, and did not have a physical heart.
In his state of confusion, he muttered something, then fell back into an even deeper daze.
The sound of the stone falling into the water startled Lu Nianqi and seemed to trigger something within him. He began to tremble, and, in a panicked voice, stammered, "I-–"
He was interrupted by the water beneath him, which suddenly began to swell up. Like a corpse coming to life, enormous waves began to rumble forward and surge toward them.
Hua––
With a loud splash, the water drenched them all.
"Peng––"
Another heartbeat! Xue Xian felt as though he had suddenly grown blood vessels, which were now bringing hot, throbbing blood up his spine and into his body.
And then, just as quickly, the feeling disappeared into the hazy, soupy heat.
"Hurry!" Lu Shijiu's voice emerged amidst the sound of roiling waves.
Jiang Shining was holding on tightly to the edge of his stone step. Before he could even react, he felt someone violently thump the back of his neck and, with a puff, turned back into a sopping wet paper man.
He saw that Xuanmin was pinching his paper body in his hand, and, with his other hand, Xuanmin picked up the screaming Lu Nianqi before striding into the darkness.
There was no sign of the waves stopping –– the water continued to rise at a terrifying pace.
Even as the waves lapped across the steps, Xuanmin did not falter. He continued to walk, as steady as he was fast.
"No, we have to speed up!" Lu Shijiu shouted from ahead. "The water is rising faster. It happened much earlier than last time. I don't know if we can make it to the end. Hurry!"
Before he could finish, another great wave crashed into them.
Lu Nianqi had swallowed bucketfuls of water, and his whole body was soaked. His nose was stuffed full of that strange, half-wet half-rot smell. The waves assaulted the group relentlessly –– within the blink of an eye, the water had risen up to their ankles and was lapping at their thighs.
Just as Lu Nianqi wiped a fistful of water away from his face, another wave crashed into him with a vengeance. There was no end to the surging of the water, and he could not fight back no matter how hard he tried. He knew that the water did not care: it would keep rushing into him until it infiltrated every pore of his body and drowned him.
This desperate feeling was all too familiar, and he felt as though it were seven or eight years ago, and he was again that child in the river...
Xuanmin frowned as he glanced at the spasming youth in his arms. The violence of the waves seemed to have set off some traumatic memory –– the burdensome boy began to scream like a madman.
Without hesitation, Xuanmin lifted a hand to strike the back of Lu Nianqi's head.
"Peng––"
Another one! Xue Xian was briefly jolted from his daze again. He felt an indescribable feeling well up inside his soul, like something deeply familiar was being drawn out from somewhere far away and rushing into him. It seeped into his nonexistent veins and coursed through his nonexistent body, emanating heat and a sense of swelling.
Fuck...
Xue Xian grumbled. Am I a soaked mantou?
The swelling feeling was unbearable. He felt as though he was pushing at the boundaries of the marble.
"Peng––"
"Peng––"
“Peng––"
As the noise returned, it was so clear now that Xue Xian was no longer the only person to feel it. The others, hurrying down the dark path, heard it too.
"Wh-what is that?" Although Lu Shijiu was familiar with the path, it seemed that this development was new. "Something's knocking against the stone steps!"
Xuanmin faltered, then began walking even faster. "Hurry."
Lu Shijiu was right: something really was knocking against the steps, as though something slumbering within the black water had suddenly been awakened and was hurtling violently into the steps' submerged pillars. With each knock, the whole mess of steps vibrated, and the already fragile path became ever more unsteady. It began to teeter back and forth, threatening to collapse.
"Peng––"
The knocking was becoming louder, and, with it, the entire structure of the steps wobbled. Then, there was a series of crunching noises and, in that instant, not only the steps beneath their feet but also the ones in front of them and behind them, all of them, disintegrated. Before the group could even think to struggle, they were swallowed whole by the water.
As the waves rose over their heads, Xuanmin thought he heard something in his pouch emit a faint sizzling noise, like a spoonful of water sprinkled onto a hot metal plate.
The black water felt like needles pricking their bodies all over –– to even open their eyes was agony.
Beneath the water, Xuanmin blinked and forced himself to keep his eyes open. In the corner of his eye, he saw a strange, smooth thing slither out of his pouch and sink rapidly into the depths, as though headed for the uncertain bottom.
Xuanmin was stunned. Having no arms and legs hasn’t made this one any more well-behaved, has it?
He raised his hand and reached out to rescue Xue Xian.
But just as Xuanmin’s palm came into contact with the marble, he felt a mammoth weight come down onto him, as though he were not holding a marble but an entire mountain range.
Before he could extricate himself, the marble was already dragging him rapidly to the depths.
Xuanmin: “...”
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The author has something to say:
I only did the update after I came home from class, so this one was a bit late. Tomorrow I will put it in the draft box earlier. Sorry =3=
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[a] Musuli uses 妖孽 (yao1 nie4) here, which combines “yao” with “nie” meaning sin/evil (the first character of “niezhang”).
[b] Musuli uses 主 (zhu3), meaning “master” or “lord”. It’s rare for one-character nouns to be used in Chinese because two-character or four-character phrases are seen as more pleasing; here, the straightforward use of 主 is an assertion of Xue Xian’s power and status, done so in a sarcastic or ironic manner. 主 in this case isn’t necessarily saying that Xue Xian is master/lord of something or someone, but more to emphasise his general dominance as a mythical creature –– and his demanding behavior befitting someone of his status; because of this, I used “little lord” in English to steer the significance away from ‘lordship’.
[c] The Big Dipper is called 北斗 (bei3 dou3) in Chinese.
[d] Musuli phrases this as 列阵 (lie4 zhen4), a noun that literally means “rows/array” in a neutral sense. However, 列 can also be taken as a verb meaning “to arrange”, making this phrase “arranging a feng shui design/array” in context.
[e] 梅花桩 (mei2 hua1 zhuang1), literally “plum blossom pillars”, is a martial arts technique also known as 梅花拳 (mei2 hua1 quan2), “plum blossom fists”. The technique is famous for having its practitioners walk on wooden pillars high in the air. Wikipedia and Baidu.
This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!
Is he transforming back to the dragon finally??
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