[Revised TL] 61 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 61

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Chapter 61: Tongshou Spider (I)

With the dense fog gone, all the things that had gone unnoticed beneath it were now revealed.

Xuanmin scanned the inconsistent patches of grass along the path and said, "Someone was here, then left."

Xue Xian scoffed.

Obviously! Anyone could figure that out.

    

But... someone was here?

"What ordinary person would dare come here? Do they have a death wish?" Stone Zhang said, perplexed. But as he said this, he realised what the important part of Xuanmin's sentence had been. "Wait... came then left? They left, alive?"

    

No one would ever stumble into here by accident. And then to survive the poisonous fog and make it back out alive? That meant that this was no ordinary person.

"Could there be another group of people looking for him?" Stone Zhang said, clicking his tongue. "This is a really difficult place to get to. How many people did this guy piss off? But if these people went in then came back out, that means they did what they came here to do. They either killed him, or took him away, or he was never here in the first place..."

    

Stone Zhang wasn't stupid –– he just liked to ramble. In that moment, his mouth had been enough for the four of them, and he'd said what they were all thinking.

So Xue Xian glanced at Lu Nianqi.

    

Assuming that Xue Xian wanted to ask whether his divinations were correct, or that Xue Xian wanted him to do another divination, Lu Nianqi began to speak. But he noticed that Xue Xian quickly looked away again.

    

Xue Xian summoned another gust of wind, leant back into his chair, and began to roll at high speed onto the path. Within the blink of an eye, he was already four or five zhang away.

His distant voice made its way back to them. "Let's check out this place first,” Xue Xian said in a lazy tone. “If he's not here, then we'll go track down the group of people that just left. Humans only have two legs, and if they're on a horse, that's only two more legs. How fast could they possibly be going? I could catch up on them even if I took a nap first."

Everyone else: “...” 

Does it feel good to bully people who can only walk, when you’re the only person that can fly?

    

Xue Xian zoomed ahead, fast as lightning. Apart from overgrown weeds, there were no obstacles on the path –– the poisonous fog had probably been this person’s main defense against visitors. Thus, Xue Xian soon arrived in front of that three-story building inside the mountain hollow.

    

Xue Xian hated depending on others, and in general there were not many people who were powerful or capable enough to be of much help to him anyway. Xuanmin was a special case, but Xuanmin was still a mortal, and Xue Xian was holding his precious pendant, so he did not mind going ahead without Xuanmin.

    

Xue Xian had originally intended to arrive first so as to get a general impression of the hollow, and inspect everything that could be inspected. That way, if there were any traps ahead, he could quickly get rid of them. Equally, if the man really wasn't here, then Xue Xian would be able to save the mortals the effort of walking all the way in and back out again.

So as he rolled his wheelchair toward the building, he thought he looked very threatening and fearsome. However...

    

Why did this building have to have three fucking stories? Each staircase spiralled this way and that, and the bamboo steps were thin and frail, and connected in a way that meant one really had to use one's whole body to climb up them...

The reason why Xue Xian took notice of all the building's shortcomings is because... Well, a certain someone in a wheelchair had only been able to get here by borrowing the power of the wind. And now that he wanted to get from the ground floor to the first floor, he again had to summon the elements to help him. However, all this was easy for someone like Xue Xian.

    

Xue Xian wheeled himself to the front door of the first floor, planning to search the premises. But he discovered that the damn door was too narrow, and his wheelchair was too wide. If he tried to force his way in, he'd destroy the door; and if he destroyed the door, the entire building would likely collapse. There was nothing he could do...

Apparently, this damn door had been constructed just to piss him off. This was straight-up bullying! [a]

    

Thus, when Stone Zhang, Lu Nianqi, and Xuanmin finally arrived at the building, what they saw was Xue Xian sitting by that door on the first floor with a blank expression on his face.

"What's wrong? Is he really not here?" Stone Zhang asked, sensing that Xue Xian was unhappy.

Xue Xian glared at him coldly. Startled, Stone Zhang wondered what he had done wrong, and covered his mouth so as not to speak.

"I don't think he's searched it yet..." Lu Nianqi said. This kid was fearless.

"Why not?" Stone Zhang asked idiotically.

Before Lu Nianqi could respond, Xuanmin gave the zuzong a mild look and then began to walk up the stairs. 

The two said nothing more, and scurried after him.

    

Xuanmin did not ask Xue Xian why he was sitting still. Instead, Xuanmin went straight into the building and peered into every room on the ground floor, then walked up those small, crooked stairs and checked the first and second floors. Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi didn't want to stand around, nor did they want to hang out with Xue Xian outside, so they simply followed Xuanmin up and down. In no time, they had searched every corner of the bamboo building.

And yet, they found nothing.

Never mind a shadow of the person –– without Jiang Shining in their group, there was not even a sign of a ghost anywhere in the building.

    

Xue Xian watched angrily as the group paced in front of him.

"There really is nothing," Stone Zhang mumbled.

But Lu Nianqi said decisively, "He's here."

    

As he said this, a sudden sound of something knocking against the leaves rushed in from the forest outside, making them all pause.

"Perhaps he was hiding in the woods, and now he's gone?" Stone Zhang ventured, looking out into the thicket.

    

Without the fog to block their vision, it was easy to get a panoramic view of the forest, and also easy to track the origins of the noise. The group looked in that direction, but only saw a black crow fly out from the crown of a tree.

Lu Nianqi said, "Perhaps the earlier group of people thought the same thing as you."

Stone Zhang was stunned. "You mean they searched the building and found nothing, and then heard a sound in the forest, and... Perhaps. That does sound plausible."

    

But then Stone Zhang added, "You make it sound like that crow is spiritual, [b] and is leading people away on purpose." Stone Zhang was a coward, but it meant that he was highly sensitive: whenever he heard about something, he would thoroughly investigate all its possibilities, rooting out an explanation. "Hmm... Maybe it really is like that. Think about it. The fact that the bird could survive in the fog suggests the fog isn't actually poisonous. But is that possible? No. So that means there's something special about the bird."

    

Lu Nianqi wasn't one to chat, so he didn't respond to Stone Zhang. Instead, he calmly repeated what he had previously said: "The person we are looking for is definitely still here."

"How do you know?" Stone Zhang looked around the building. "Did you do another divination? How come I didn't see you do it?"

Lu Nianqi was sick of listening to Stone Zhang’s voice. He rubbed his ear. "I didn't. It's my instinct."

    

If anyone else started talking about ‘instinct’, Xue Xian would immediately tell them to get lost. But it was different with Lu Nianqi –– he was physically, fundamentally uniquely attuned to magic, so his ‘instinct’ was also bound to be special.

Xue Xian glanced at the boy and said, "So can you instinct a little more, and tell us what room he's in?"

Lu Nianqi: “...” 

You think I can get instincts on command? You insist on being unreasonable just because you know that none of us here can actually take you in a fight. 

Finally, Lu Nianqi lifted his finger and pointed. "Here."

The room he was pointing at was the one on the first floor that Xue Xian was still sitting in front of.    

Great. Xue Xian still couldn't get in.

"All there is in that room is a table and two chairs," Stone Zhang said, frustrated. "And a wooden closet. I looked everywhere, even in the drawers. There's no one there!"

"The room inside," Lu Nianqi said.

    

The design of the bamboo building was very unique –– clearly, the person who had constructed it was very cultured. Only half of the building had rooms, whereas the other half had been made into a series of large balconies held up by bamboo scaffolding. The balconies combined with the roofs of the rooms to create platforms on which people could walk. It was the first-floor platform, above the ground floor, that they were now standing on. 

But the room in question did not have a door leading from the platform. To get into the interior room, one had to go through that room next to Xue Xian, and then take another staircase downstairs to the ground floor.

That was the ‘inside’ room that Lu Nianqi meant.

Still frustrated, Stone Zhang said, "But we searched that room too. It's also just got a bookcase and some books. Should I go back and flip through every single page of the books to check if he's hiding in there?"

Xue Xian tapped impatiently at the armrest. "Let's do that."

Stone Zhang: “...” 

Kids these days love to make all sorts of stupid jokes, and you can’t even scold them or beat them.

    

Although Stone Zhang grumbled to himself, he followed Lu Nianqi into the room. Before he went in, he couldn't help but take a look back.

If Stone Zhang didn't know about Xue Xian's true form, he would address him as ‘Xue-xiao-xiongdi’. But Xue Xian was a dragon, and you couldn't just go ahead and call a dragon your brother. He was more like your great-grandfather. But to actually call him ‘great-grandfather’ [c] was a bit weird. Jiang Shining, for instance, called Xue Xian ‘zuzong’, but a word like that came with all sorts of connotations. If you weren't familiar with Xue Xian and tried to call him ‘zuzong’, he'd probably kill you. So, in that moment, as Stone Zhang turned around to call out to Xue Xian, he had to stop himself midway, for he did not know how to address Xue Xian at all.

    

Stone Zhang had wanted to ask why Xue Xian wasn't coming in with him and Lu Nianqi. In the end, he turned to Xuanmin and said, "Dashi, why aren't you coming in?"

It was a bit nerve-wracking to think that only Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi were going into the room. After all, Lu Nianqi insisted that the man they were looking for was hiding in there.

    

Xuanmin calmly said, "Coming."

He was standing in front of Xue Xian. As he spoke, he took a look at Xue Xian and then wordlessly bent down to pick Xue Xian up in his arms.

"…What are you doing?!” Xue Xian said.

Xue Xian had gotten used to the joy of being able to zoom about on his own, and now he had to go back to the days of being carried. Xue Xian wanted to spit blood.

    

"Don't move," Xuanmin said mildly as he walked them into the room.

Stone Zhang's eyes bulged out. "What..."

Although Xuanmin did not reply, it was Lu Nianqi who said, "I think the chair is too wide to fit into the door."

    

Xue Xian laughed coldly and wanted to say something to scare off the two gawkers. But before he could open his mouth, he realised that something was off: Xuanmin's body temperature was extremely high. It was perhaps even hotter than it had been last night. Yet his palms were cool and comfortable. Furthermore, although Xuanmin was emanating heat, there was not a bead of sweat on him.

    

For Xuanmin body heat to be so abnormal, it had to have been caused by Xue Xian's dragon spit. Xue Xian began to feel guilty and decided to behave. But even if this was an effect of the dragon spit, it was still a different reaction from last night. How could that be? Were it not for the fact that Xue Xian was literally in Xuamin’s arms, he would never even have noticed that Xuanmin was burning up.

Xue Xian pondered this and realised that there was only one explanation: Xuanmin had found a way to repress it, so that others could not detect that anything was amiss.

No wonder Xuanmin had been acting so weird all morning. Never mind a bit of saltiness in his tone, Xue Xian thought. If I were feeling this damn uncomfortable, I'd bury everyone around me in salt.

    

Now Xue Xian truly decided to behave and let Xuanmin carry him downstairs into the interior room.

Just as Stone Zhang had said, the room was extremely basic: all it had were a bookshelf attached to a table and some books, with not even a chair in sight.

    

As they entered, Xuanmin set Xue Xian down onto the table, rearranged his sleeves, and walked away.

The lantern on the table was lit –– Stone Zhang had lit it when he'd first come in. The light illuminated the entire small room. It was impossible to guess where the man might be hiding.

    

Of course, Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi did not actually flip through the books one by one. They ignored the bookcase entirely and were feeling along the gaps in the bamboo on the walls, looking for some kind of secret mechanism.

It was Xuanmin who, looking back at the bookcase, took out one of the books and began to flip it. But as soon as he opened the page, his finger froze.

Because the book he'd opened was covered in someone's annotations. The content of the notes didn't matter –– what was important was the calligraphy.

    

The characters were thin but stable, and the strokes in some of them were highly unique. It was a highly difficult handwriting to forge. But as soon as Xuanmin set eyes upon the calligraphy, he knew exactly how to replicate those twists in the lettering.

Because the handwriting was his.

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The author has something to say: 

Sorry, last night I was going to take a quick nap, but then I got a fever. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been sleeping well and have been doing all-nighters in the past couple of weeks. The fever only came down after I did an IV drip in the morning. I’m going to update this chapter now, and in the evening there will be another one~ This time I won’t be late, kiss!

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[a] Some very poignant observations on the lack of accessibility and consideration for disabled people in our society.    

[b] The Chinese term here is 成精 (cheng2 jing1), literally “to become 精”. 精 can have many meanings, including “goblin/demon” (as the second character in 妖精 yao3 jing1, usually just called ‘yao’) or “intelligent/conscious/sensitive”. In this context, it is used to indicate that an animal has, through some kind of spiritual experience or adjacence to spirituality, become particularly intelligent or sensitive: it might understand or speak human language, be able to perform magic, or be immortal; overall, the animal is no longer an ordinary animal. I have chosen to use “spiritual” in this TL, because, in the same one that one might say “spiritual weapon”, this crow is a “spiritual bird/animal”. 

[c] Musuli uses 祖爷爷 (zu3 ye2 ye) here, meaning “great-grandfather”. 

This chapter was beta'd by Rogue!