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Chapter 29: Carved Lock (I)
The dragon quickly disappeared into the clouds, and it was a shame that the storm was so heavy and that the river water was so agitated, for only a handful of people had actually been able to see the beast's silhouette. It was likely that, like the name of Wolong County itself, the incident would become only another myth.
In reality, the mythical Xue Xian had not actually been as at ease as the family, looking from afar, had thought. He had indeed climbed into the clouds –– it was what dragons did, after all, and besides, he had been so overjoyed by the return of his real body that he had not been able to restrain himself –– but, once in the clouds, that tiny issue of his half-paralysis had become apparent again. He could still only move the top half of his body, while the bottom half hung limply behind him. He attempted to turn in mid-air but did not succeed. And then...
Pathetically, he came falling down.
Xue Xian had been separated from his real body for over half a year. In that period, he had perched in the hands of hundreds of strangers, had been trapped with Liu-shiye in his damn compound, and had had to eat dirt and other lost souls when he'd been starving. So much had happened that, now that Xue Xian had been returned to his original body, he felt as though he were wearing a new skin –– he needed to spend a few days breaking it in again.
So as the niezhang vaulted into the air, tipped back his head, and tumbled back toward the river, he found that he was deeply lacking in a certain explosive force. Xue Xian's soul had not fully regained control of his body.
He tried to curl up to avoid injury, but failed at that too. All he could do was try to keep a straight face as he crashed directly into the water.
As the whirlpool died down, Xuanmin had been starting to feel himself float upward, and thought he could see the light of day through the ripples of the water. But then the heavy niezhang fell on top of him...
Rammed into the riverbed by Xue Xian's enormous tail, Xuanmin, who until then had managed to remain awake, felt only a thump against his chest, and subsequently passed out.
Xuanmin: “...”
Xue Xian sputtered, and bubbles escaped from his mouth. “...” Some things really can't be helped. Why don’t you get amnesia again and forget that?
Thankfully, only Xuanmin had been crushed by the falling dragon. Lu Nianqi, along with the lifeless bodies of Shijiu and Liu-laotou that had been dragged out by the current, peacefully bobbed up to the surface.
The savage storm around them had been summoned by Xue Xian's return to his dragon form –– now, it disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. As the rain thinned, someone on shore noticed the strange objects floating on the river and had a nasty fright. The local corpse-diver responsible for this patch of the river soon rowed a rickety boat into the water.
This man had spent most of his life as a corpse-diver, but had never experienced anything like this before. There was an unprecedented number of bodies bobbing up and down in the mist. Some of them had been in the water for who knew how long, and their clothes had all begun to dissolve. Others were fresh, as though recently drowned.
The corpse-diver counted them with his finger: there were nine.
Three of the fresh ones were in a cluster, so perhaps they had been a group. The six others floated more or less separately –– and, strangely, perhaps only a trick of the light –– as he looked out at the six bodies, one of them seemed to point its head toward one of the river islets.
The tiny islets were usually scattered around Gravestone Island and were far smaller than the latter, only big enough for the occasional bird to rest its feet. The corpse-diver did not usually take much notice of them, but now, for some reason, they looked unfamiliar to him –– it was uncanny.
As the corpse-diver hooked the bodies with his pole, he pondered this.
Then, he suddenly realised: "Gravestone Island has disappeared!"
The corpse-diver was a veteran professional. In the blink of an eye, he had collected the two fresh-looking bodies nearest to him and brought them onto his boat. As he flipped them over, he jumped with surprise: he was friends with the boatman Liu-laotou, and as for Lu Shijiu, he had watched the boy grow up. The corpse-diver breathed a sad sigh, and, reaching the hook of his pole back into the water, dragged out the third body.
"What kind of sin..." When he saw that the third body was the skinny little Lu Nianqi, the corpse-diver sighed again. "Lao-Lu's family has died out." [a]
But as he heaved Nianqi onto his boat, the corpse-diver hissed with confusion and mumbled, "This little Nianqi looks... different, somehow. I had just run into him the other day."
Lu Nianqi had always been out and about often –– after all, at home, it was his job to gather firewood and to cook meals –– so the corpse-diver had often seen the boy in the street. All of those who were familiar with the Lu family in the neighborhood were aware of Lu Nianqi's true age. They knew that, after Nianqi had almost drowned and lost his father, he had had a raging fever for several days. Though the fever did eventually retreat, the boy stopped growing after it: strangers often took him to be a child of five or six who happened to have a precocious vocabulary.
The corpse-diver was not a tall man himself, and, as far as he could remember, Lu Nianqi could only ever reach his chest.
But now, he looked at the body on the boat and used his hands to estimate the boy's height. The boy seemed... a bit taller than before.
"How the hell did he grow that much in just a few days..." the corpse-diver muttered, bewildered. But he immediately thought of an explanation –– Lu Nianqi’s dead body had probably simply taken in too much river water, and merely looked larger.
Just as the corpse-diver turned away to find the other bodies, Lu Nianqi nonchalantly came back to life and sat up again.
“Cough, cough, cough––”
Lu Nianqi coughed, and then, with a shout, regurgitated all the water in his lungs. Finally, red-faced all the way to the tips of his ears, he looked up.
The first thing he saw was the terrified corpse-diver falling backwards into the water with a plop.
Nianqi: “...”
At the bottom of the river, Xue Xian could hear the rowing sounds of a boat, and felt unsettled.
After some time submerged, he could finally begin to feel his own body again, and gradually felt himself taking back control.
First, he tried to move his head. As his neck swivelled, he noticed a sunken stone lock lying a few zhang away. The lock was enormous, perhaps half the size of a coffin, with a square bottom that looked extremely heavy. Its top was pointed, with a hole, and through the hole was a thin metal chain, which itself seemed to be tied to something else located above it.
As Xue Xian followed the chain up, he saw that it was attached to some kind of ragged cotton wad, and at the top of the cotton wad was a bunch of black algae...
Wait, no, it wasn't a cotton wad, nor was it algae!
Xue Xian suddenly remembered that, on their way to Gravestone Island, Lu Nianqi had been frightened by something in the water. The boy had said that he'd seen a black mass float by, and had thought it was hair. But, he’d said, it had to have been algae, because if it was the hair of a dead body, then the corpse would be floating at the surface of the water, not half-sunken in that way.
Xue Xian studied the stone lock and the chain, and understood why the body had not been floating normally. Its ankle was tied down, so that the entire corpse stood stiffly vertical at the bottom of the water.
He swung his head, and the river water moved accordingly. With the current, a snapped chain unsnagged itself from somewhere and came floating by.
Xue Xian had probably broken the chain while frolicking in the tempest earlier.
He inspected the item, then contemplated the facts for a very long time. When the top half of his body finally regained enough mobility, he twitched a front claw and reached for the chain, to wind it around his arm.
And... found only water.
Xue Xian: “...”
Exasperated, Xue Xian glared down at his claw. He had become used to his human-shaped body being able to reach for whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted to –– and had forgotten that, in comparison, his dragon claw was a lot shorter.
Basically, the zuzong had failed in his task, because... he couldn't reach the chain.
Something inside Xue Xian rejoiced. Thank the heavens his companions were either unconscious or nowhere to be found at the moment –– if they'd seen what had just occurred, he could go ahead and just die of humiliation! Especially if that annoying bald donkey had seen it!
The zuzong reared his dragon head and began to move the dirt around the riverbed. It was like this that the paralysed bottom half of his body was able to slither its way off of Xuanmin's chest.
Xuanmin's finger twitched –– he seemed to be coming back.
As Xue Xian's sharp claw finally grabbed onto the chain, it was akin to a knife meeting a block of tofu. The sturdy-looking chain was slashed clean by Xue Xian's claw. The bottom part of the chain sank to the bottom of the river to join the stone lock, and the top part, trailing after the corpse to which it was attached, began to ascend.
"Huh –– I need to figure out my strength again," Xue Xian mumbled to himself. He still wasn't used to his dragon body. Even moving his upper body to reach for the chain had taken significant effort. He felt as though he had just climbed up a tall pagoda while carrying a thousand-jin weight. His very hands were soft.
He spiralled back to the bottom of the river, where his heavy dragon head thumped into the riverbed –– it was the least effortful way of getting right where he wanted to be. Slumped there, Xue Xian stared intently at the large stone lock.
After having inspected it from all sides, he now forced himself to swallow down his pride and raised his stubby claw to swipe at it, flipping the lock over.
The bottom side of the lock revealed itself.
Someone had carved a circular design in the corner of the smooth stone surface.
From his time wandering around the human realm, Xue Xian had learned that many stonemasons liked to stamp a unique design onto their products. If possible, they would leave a large print that would be useful advertisement; if there was not enough space, they would make a small mark somewhere inconspicuous. It was a tactful move –– most people would not be able to recognise it as a signature.
Xue Xian knew that nobody would do all this to a bunch of corpses just for fun –– there had to be some kind of purpose to this. Thinking back to the ‘Hundred Soldiers Push the Flow’ design back at the tomb, he was certain that these standing corpses had to be related to that.
The bald donkey had blasted everything in the tomb to smithereens, so there were probably no clues to be found there anymore.
Xue Xian tapped the riverbed with his claw, deep in thought. He decided to become one of those people that couldn’t mind their own business. [b] So, with a sway of his long body, he towed the current and used it to push the lock toward shore.
The current surged powerfully. Curling himself around the still unconscious Xuanmin, Xue Xian followed the current’s momentum and let it drag him to shore.
The width of the river was only really enough for him to swish his head or his tail, so he reached the bank in the blink of an eye, clutching Xuanmin and the lock.
He jiggled his body, and soon a large wave pushed Xuanmin and the lock onto dry land. Then, still floating in the waves, Xue Xian twitched his head and transformed into a human, and then ––
Immediately turned back into a dragon again.
Xue Xian: “………”
Fuck! No clothes!
When Xue Xian had made himself that paper body, he had naturally painted clothes for himself that he could wear even in his human form. But now that he was back in his real body... This was awkward.
He dunked his head back into the water, furious and humiliated. He allowed himself to sink back to the bottom of the river. He wanted to die.
A moment later, a tiny black worm of only a few cun long emerged from the water... Wait, no, it was a dragon. It peeked his head out of the water and swam across the waves and parked itself on the riverbank. It looked up to the sky, breathing out a long, heavy sigh. Then, silently, it wiggled to Xuanmin's side and crawled up his sleeve. Like a string bracelet, it curled itself around Xuanmin's wrist.
As the cold, slippery thing touched his skin, Xuanmin opened his eyes.
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The author has something to say:
For those who didn’t see ~ I’ll say it here again. The update time will now be 8pm every evening. The morning schedule was way too easily messed up by class and other stuff [emoji]
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[a] Lao: see glossary.
[b] The Chinese phrase here is “someone who has eaten too much and is feeling full”, often colloquially used to describe people who have nothing better to do / who are bored and who thus seek things out.
This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!
Xuanmin and his super monk lungs
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