[Revised TL] 63 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 63

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Chapter 63: Tongshou Spider (III)

But there was something strange about that breathing noise... It was so faint that it sounded like the person was about to die, yet the rhythm of the breaths was extremely steady.

After three soft inhales and exhales, the sound stopped, and did not emerge again.

    

"That might be the man we're looking for. He stopped breathing... He couldn't've just died, could he?" Xue Xian muttered, frowning.

His damn wheelchair was still outside, and he could not move by himself, so all he could do was sit on the desk and watch. But Xuanmin, standing beside him, did not hesitate and began to walk swiftly to where Xue Xian was pointing.

   

For some reason, ever since they'd been plunged into this basement area, the lantern on the table had become much dimmer. The flame was only a small, bean-sized thing, extremely vulnerable-looking, as though it might go out any second. Naturally, the room had darkened too.

    

From what they could see, this was a square room with stone walls, about the same width as the room they'd fallen from earlier — though without being able to see where the walls ended, they could not be sure of the room’s dimensions.

    

Xuanmin's silhouette quickly disappeared from the glow of the lamp. Because his steps were always so utterly silent, in that moment, it seemed as though he had been entirely swallowed by the darkness, never to return.

    

Something made Xue Xian's heart squeeze. It certainly wasn’t fear: in all the years he'd lived, he'd never known the feeling of fear, and he wasn't about to begin now. It was more like he'd sensed something was amiss...

In that instant, the mechanism above their heads suddenly began to hum again.

As Xue Xian looked up, he saw a massive black shadow come down upon them. With a clang, it locked itself into the wall and became the flooring of the room above, and this stone room's new ceiling... They were trapped here.

    

“...” If it weren’t for the fact that Xuanmin had amnesia, Xue Xian would demand, Did you build this place just to mess with people? We haven't even gotten out yet, and you've sealed the exit. What are you playing at?

And if it weren’t for the fact that this was Xuanmin's home, Xue Xian would blast that new ceiling to pieces!

    

But Xue Xian was used to all kinds of mysterious and scary situations. Ultimately, a roof sliding shut was a mere annoyance, and nothing too major. Let it be –– once they found the man they were looking for, they'd have all the time they needed to figure out how to escape that ceiling.

    

So Xue Xian looked away from the ceiling and gazed back into the darkness.

But in that moment of distraction, he felt as though something had changed. Something was missing...

    

Right, it was far too quiet. Even Stone Zhang had shut his huge mouth–– hold on!

Where was Stone Zhang?!

    

Frowning, Xue Xian looked around him. In the dim lantern light, there was nothing to see at all. Where had Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi gone?

"Bald donkey!" Xue Xian shouted blindly into the dark. "Stone Zhang and that kid, Lu Nianqi, have disappeared."

    

For a moment, he feared that even Xuanmin had vanished, too.

Thankfully, Xuanmin's calm voice came floating in from some pitch-black part of the room. But what he said was not reassuring at all: "The person hiding here has also disappeared."

    

"You didn't find him?" Xue Xian's brows furrowed further.

Xuanmin's white robes emerged from the shadows. He walked over to the table, picked up the lantern, and returned once more to the place where Xue Xian had heard the breathing.

    

The lantern was on its last legs. It strained to emit just a tiny bit more of the lingering light, casting a weak glow ahead of Xuanmin's steady steps. The light did not reach very far –– it could only create a circle around Xuanmin's feet, which made it seem as though it were his white robes that were casting the light.

As Xuanmin walked, the place where Xue Xian sat grew ever dimmer, until he was absorbed into the darkness.

    

From the blind spot where he now sat, Xue Xian watched as Xuanmin stopped walking and held the frail lantern flame up, shining it on that corner. At the long end of the stone room, under the light Xuanmin cast, the corner could now be clearly seen.

Indeed, there was no one.

    

Xue Xian's hearing had never been wrong before. He was sure that the breathing noise he'd heard earlier had come from that area. Besides, the breathing he'd heard was on its last legs; just like the lantern flame that Xuanmin held in his hands, the person in the room sounded like he might die any second. 

How could such a frail, dying person escape from under their noses?

Xue Xian hadn't been paying attention earlier: with the sudden drop in the flooring and that breathing noise, he had completely forgotten that Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi even existed. Now, he wondered whether they hadn't come down with him and Xuanmin at all. Were they still stuck upstairs?

So they’d disappeared, and now the hidden man had also vanished...

Xue Xian understood what this meant. Of course he did: if he still hadn’t known what was going on after all that, then the head stuck at the top of his neck would have absolutely no use apart from making him look taller.

    

"He’s trying to hide, so he’s playing us," Xue Xian said, jutting his chin out at Xuanmin. "Have you checked the whole area? Is there any flaw?"

It really was inconvenient not to have the wheelchair anymore –– now he needed to bother others for every little thing. Although Xue Xian did not doubt Xuanmin's intellect, it was disheartening to have to sit on that table in the darkness, waiting for others to report back to him. Xue Xian couldn't sit still. He gripped the table beneath him and, with a push, lifted it up with himself still on top.

    

Soon there was a loud crash as the table, and Xue Xian atop it, clattered heavily onto the floor next to Xuanmin.

Despite the commotion, Xue Xian still sat peacefully on the table. The gust of wind he'd summoned to bring him here continued past him and hurtled toward the corner of the room, brushing past Xuanmin's white sleeve. When Xue Xian halted the wind, the stone room fell silent again.

    

Xuanmin held the lantern and watched Xue Xian with what looked like resignation, though he said nothing. He shone the light onto the corner again, not letting a single cobweb escape their attention.

"There's a drop of blood here," Xue Xian said, pointing at a tiny nook near a crack in the wall. 

Xuanmin inspected it. Then, as though having suddenly remembered something, he turned and shone the light on the opposite corner of the room, saying, "Here too."

    

He gestured at Xue Xian to wait, then strode confidently over to that other corner and studied the bloodstain there. When he was done, he looked back at Xue Xian from across the darkness and said, "An array."

    

Xue Xian understood. "Indeed. He couldn't escape, so now he's trying to trick us. What kind of array?"

Xue Xian naturally did not know as much about arrays as Xuanmin. He rarely needed to use them, and would obviously not be able to guess what kind of array someone had created just by a few drops of blood on the floor. When it came to that, he had to rely on the bald donkey.

    

"It's not a violent array. It's more to buy time," Xuanmin said as he came back over with the lantern.

"With a stone room like this, it's hard to set a violent trap. So in what way does the array buy time?" Xue Xian asked, frowning.

"This array is called Nine Rings," [a] Xuanmin calmly said as he placed the lantern back onto the table. "It is unbreakable."

"…Why not?” Xue Xian asked. “Does that mean that once we're inside, there’s no way out?"

    

"Most arrays have eight doors. Although they are difficult to get ahold of, once you find the correct door, you can leave," Xuanmin said slowly. "But Nine Rings has no door. No matter how powerful the person being trapped is, there is no exit. It is often used by people who need to make an escape. After one shichen, the array undoes itself."

“...” Xue Xian was so furious that all he could do was laugh. "If we have to wait an entire shichen to get out of here, even a boiled duck will have flown away by the time we’re out."

He had no patience to sit around here for that long. As he spoke, he raised a hand.

"Wait!" Xuanmin warned with a frown.

But it was too late. The tiny stone room was suddenly illuminated by purple and white bolts of lightning that knocked into the four walls around them with terrifying power. As the lightning bolts hit the walls, they exploded with a deafening roar. 

    

This zuzong had clearly run out of patience. Seeing as there were no doors to a Nine Rings spell, he had decided to use brute force. He would not stop until they broke out.

But the array was far too cunning. Not only was the thunder that Xue Xian summoned unable to cause even a fissure in the walls, it had instead made the situation worse: with each strike, a red-hot fire burst out and rushed across the stone so that, in the blink of an eye, they had become surrounded by pillars of raging flame.

The flames quickly billowed and began to lick hungrily at Xue Xian and Xuanmin's sleeves.

But that wasn't even the worst part –– the worst part was that, with the fire, the temperature in the room shot up and hot air filled the entire room. If the fire kept raging, they would all become steamed buns.

    

In that moment, Xue Xian felt as though he were that small golden marble again, rolling around dazed in Xuanmin's pouch, electrified by the heat emanating from Xuanmin’s hip bones.

Xue Xian’s natural environment was that of the tempestuous skies and the deepest oceans. He loved the cold and he loved water. And what he hated the most was the sweltering heat.

As the fire began to roast them alive, Xue Xian suddenly felt the table beneath him shake. He looked over and saw that Xuanmin was frowning, with his eyes shut tight and one hand gripping the side of the table.

Shit. The effect of the dragon spit had not yet dissipated, so Xuanmin had already been feeling incredibly hot but had been suppressing it all within him. Now, with the flames around them, he was losing control –– perhaps there really was a danger of qi deviation. 

    

Xue Xian didn’t need to give it another thought. He stopped immediately.

The roaring thunder suddenly disappeared, and, with it, the flames spreading across the walls gradually died down. The walls did not even retain black streaks from the burning. Instead, they returned to their previous state –– it was as though Xue Xian had never summoned any thunder at all… Extremely uncanny.

And even though the fire was gone, the hot air was still fucking there, steaming them both alive.

    

Worse, the tiny, flickering lantern flame that had been on its last legs finally keeled over and died. With a small hu––, it disappeared.

Plunging the entire room into absolute darkness.

    

Not only was it so dark that Xue Xian could not even see the fingers on his own hand, but it was utterly silent in the room, too. Every sound began to resound with piercing echoes. Xue Xian's five senses were already far stronger than humans', and now the sensory overload was starting to drive him crazy. Every time Xuanmin breathed, it came out unusually clear and close, and reverberated across the four walls to worm its way into Xue Xian's ear. He felt as though the sound was burying him alive. 

    

The heat was going straight to Xue Xian's head. His reaction time slowed too, so that, for a disoriented moment, he did not understand where that heavy sound of breathing or the ripples of heat were coming from.

"What is going on..." he muttered. He could feel his robes becoming sticky against his skin as sweat began to seep out of every pore in his body, and it distracted him to the point where his speech was becoming slurred.

    

"The array is named ‘Nine Rings’ because..." came the low sound of Xuanmin's voice, which seemed to creep up to the very skin of Xue Xian's ear. "Every time you try to break out using brute force, the pressure felt by those trapped inside doubles. All in all, the doubling can multiply ninefold –– nine levels."

“...” 

So this was the first level: it was already unbearable. By the ninth level, he and Xuanmin would have been thoroughly cooked. Xue Xian tried to think amidst his dizzy state.

He bit down on the tip of his tongue and wondered why this array had to be about fire rather than water. At the same time, he worried about Xuanmin's state –– from the sound of his voice just now, he did not seem well.

They needed an idea...

Never mind everything else –– first, this bald donkey needed some relief. 

Xue Xian forced himself to think. They couldn't get out of the spell, that was for sure, and in the meantime, he didn't have any kind of medicine on him ––

Wait.

    

In his daze, Xue Xian remembered one thing: he was a dragon, so obviously, everything from his body was precious to humans. He could not get hold of his scales or his horns in his state: the room was too small, and if he tried to transform back into his dragon form, he would fill up the entire room. Xuanmin really would die… from being crushed to death.

    

Besides, even if he did manage to obtain a scale or a horn, he couldn't just stuff it into Xuanmin’s mouth –– that stuff needed to be ground into powder, and the process took forever. Apart from dragon scales and dragon horns, other substances that could heal humans included dragon spit and dragon blood...

Right. Blood.

But having learned his lesson from the dragon spit, Xue Xian no longer dared to act so recklessly. He raised a sweat-damp hand and felt around in the dark until he found Xuanmin, then patted him and said, "Dragon blood... Does blood have any annoying side-effects?"

Xuanmin was silent for a time, then said, "No."

    

"Good, then I'll give you some." Xue Xian breathed out an exhausted sigh as his mind raced. Where should he make the puncture? 

In the darkness, amid Xuanmin's heavy breathing, Xue Xian heard him say, "Really?"

For a moment, Xue Xian froze.

Before his confused mind could even react, he felt his chin be pinched by someone's hand.

    

Xue Xian automatically moved his head toward the direction of the hand. Next, he suddenly felt something brush up against the side of his neck.

Xue Xian's breath caught in his throat. He automatically twitched his fingers, wanting to raise his arm, yet his arm would not move –– instead his hand only gripped the side of the table tighter.

    

There was something within him that wanted to come out. All he needed to do was accept it, and call it forth. And at the same time, another strange, unusual feeling tumbled through the thick soup of his dazed mind, finding no exit nor release.

That feeling of being touched so tenderly on his neck was so overwhelming that it seemed to block out everything else in the world. It was as though something was resting lightly and patiently on Xue Xian’s skin, and only required a little bit more pressure and a little bit of time to pierce through his flesh...

    

"No." At that moment, Xue Xian finally realised what the strange feeling was –– with Xuanmin's aloof, distant personality, if they really were to find themselves in such a situation, Xuanmin would only ask Xue Xian to get away. Xuanmin would never, ever agree so easily to drink Xue Xian’s blood, and would definitely never drink it from his neck.

    

In an instant, Xue Xian's overheated mind became crystal clear. His face turned hard and he pushed away the person standing in front of him.

    

Xue Xian was highly powerful, and, when he was under pressure, he would often lose control of the strength in his hands. With that push, any ordinary person would crash into the opposite wall and shatter the stone to pieces –– but as this person's body slammed into the wall, it made no noise.

    

Instead was the noise of something small, like a pearl, scattering to the floor and rolling to a stop.

With that, everything around Xue Xian suddenly dissipated like smoke. From the uncomfortable heat to the complete darkness, all of it faded to nothing. With a neutral expression, Xue Xian looked around him––

    

He was still sitting on the desk, and the ceiling above him was very high –– the dungeon was not sealed. The lantern on the table had not died yet, either, and Xuanmin stood there next to him with his eyes closed. Even Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi were back, lying on the floor unconscious.

Xue Xian knew what this was: each of them was plunged into their own versions of the array, and had not awoken yet.

    

Xue Xian laughed coldly, then raised his claw and swiped at that dark corner where he'd originally heard the breathing noise.

There was something heavy there, and he dragged it out of the corner towards him. It was a man sitting crumpled on the floor. He was covered in dust and dirt, looked worn and bedraggled, and emitted the pungent smell of fresh blood.

    

"You can start by telling me what array this is," said Xue Xian as he hooked two fingers in the air. The man was lifted up by the throat by an invisible force. "Next, tell me whether you've ever touched a dragon bone. Then you’ll have earned the right to bargain: let me know which way you'd prefer to die."

    

The man was bleeding profusely from his mouth, but he pulled his haggard face into a grin and hoarsely said, "What a shame. If it had only taken you a little bit longer... then I would have succeeded. But no worries. There are still three."

Xue Xian's face turned cold, and he made to move the hand that controlled the man's neck.

But the man spoke again. "You can't... You can't help them. When it comes to Heart Demons, [b] each must break out of their own will. I only need one of them to take a bit longer..." the man paused, then began to laugh. As he laughed, he choked on more blood in his throat, and began to cough so hard that his entire body convulsed.

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The author has something to say: 

These days I will work hard to get my body clock back to normal, and I hope to get updates to you a bit earlier =3= 

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[a] Musuli uses 九连环 (jiu3 lian2 huan2) here, which literally means “9 linked/successive rings/loops”. This is also the name of a traditional puzzle attributed to Zhuge Liang (Wikipedia).

[b] Musuli uses 心魔 (xin1 mo2) here, literally “heart demon(s)”. This is not a term exclusive to magic, but can generally be used to describe the doubts or evils that one may have in one’s heart. 

This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!