Xue Xian was staring up at Xuanmin, observing his every move, so when Xuanmin opened his eyes, he caught Xue Xian’s gaze.
“The amount of trouble you can cause without arms and legs,” Xuanmin said, expressionless. “You truly deserve to be exorcised, evil spirit.”
This bald donkey should just return to being confused!
Xuanmin began to stretch the hand that’d been hanging at his side. He cracked each knuckle one by one, glancing at Xue Xian dispassionately before moving to the next. Only then did Xue Xian understand what the fleshy cushion he’d landed on earlier was.
He forced himself to ignore Xuanmin’s earlier words. Rolling over, the dragon was ready to ask about the spider mole, when he caught sight of a nearby shadow. It was a figure lying sideways—a human-sized stone statue, its head round like a melon’s, though the face was crude and ferocious. That in itself was nothing unusual. Stone statues were common sights in tombs. However, the statue had split open upon crashing to the ground, revealing its contents. And if Xue Xian’s eyes were working…
Inside the statue was a person. A person who’d been dead for a very long time.
Xuanmin had noticed it as well. He turned his head and scanned the area, only to see that there were hundreds of similar stone statues, all lying at the bottom of the hollow.
Abruptly, Xue Xian realized how long these bodies had been soaking in the water, and that all of that liquid was within his marble now. A tremor ran through him.
Xuanmin rubbed his hands and rose, intending to take a closer look at the stone statues, when he heard the sound of splashing at his feet.
Confused, he looked down and saw the motionless marble gushing water, as if it were…throwing up.
The round object wordlessly spewed out a puddle of clear water, which slowly pooled around Xuanmin’s feet. He stared at the marble. When he spoke, his tone betrayed a complicated emotion within.
“Are you going to throw up all the water?”
Xue Xian ignored him and continued to spout like a listless spring.
Xuanmin curled his lips, though his voice was now indifferent. “Will you then bathe in all the water you spat up?”
Xue Xian said nothing, but the marble stopped what it was doing.
“You really know how to disgust someone…” he muttered after a second.
“You’re too kind. I’m flattered.” Xuanmin turned his gaze away and stepped toward a few nearby statues.
After some hesitation, Xue Xian rolled after him, hot on his heels. “Pick me up already! I’m so bloated my head is spinning.”
Xuanmin glanced at the marble that was glistening with water. “After the corpse water on you dries.”
Xue Xian froze before yelling, “If you keep saying such disgusting things, I’ll throw up right on you! Don’t test me!”
“All right, I won’t.” Xuanmin paused in exasperation, but he still picked the marble up. Then he tossed him right into the pouch, refusing to touch him for a second longer.
“How dare you act disgusted by me?” came Xue Xian’s muffled voice from inside the pouch. “You were soaking in the water too! You’re drenched!”
Xuanmin stopped for a moment, then sliced open his fingertip without a word. He squeezed several droplets of blood from the wound and used them to draw a simple rune on his palm. Instantly, all the water on him evaporated. His thin hemp robe dried and once again became light as a feather, and even the water on Xue Xian vanished without a trace.
His goal achieved, Xue Xian was quite satisfied. What brought him even greater satisfaction was that the curious nature of Xuanmin’s hip seemed effective for digestion as well.
Xue Xian could feel the object he’d absorbed from the soil slowly merging with the marble and becoming one. During his earlier daze, he hadn’t even seen what object he was absorbing. Now, he could feel it as it melded into him. The buried thing must have been a part of his body. Perhaps it was a piece of his spine, his blood, or a slice of tendon. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t complete. Nevertheless, as it slowly joined with the marble, a powerful satisfaction surged through him, and some feeling and warmth returned to the area that should have been his spine, which had been hollow for over half a year.
When it came to nurturing spirit, qi, bones, or flesh, there had to be a starting point, akin to how a seed is needed to plant flowers or trees.
Xue Xian had spent the better part of the past six months refining his qi into a cohesive form. After much effort, he’d finally succeeded in establishing a connection within his spine, enabling his upper body to move as it once had. But qi was so different from bone, lacking shape and substance, and he hadn’t managed more. This time, however, he could feel the seed taking root within him.
Outside of the marble, Xuanmin was inspecting the stone statues. There were too many strewn across the stone tiles for him to inspect each one, so he focused only on those that were damaged. They did not all look the same. After examining around ten, he identified three distinct types: those with glaring eyes of fury, those sporting drooping brows as if weeping, and those wearing wide grins of joy.
These three types of statues also contained different types of corpses. The ones within the angry statues had no heads, the ones in the sad statues had no legs, and the ones in the happy statues had no hands.
“Did you figure something out?” Xue Xian asked. “What purpose do these stone statues serve? They look rather sinister.”
“I understand a little,” Xuanmin said with a frown.
Xue Xian was puzzled. “You seem to know about everything. How and why?”
“Perhaps I read it in a book once.”
There were over a hundred stone statues. They clearly weren’t ordinary funerary gifts designed to accompany the dead. Given their careful design, there had to be a purpose to them. Xuanmin recalled a concept like this, although he was unsure of its source. Still, he knew there was a feng shui array capable of reversing one’s fate called “Flow of a Hundred Soldiers.” If executed properly, it could protect someone from all manners of calamities and guarantee a hundred years of prosperity.
It was an exceedingly powerful array, but it had one flaw—it was impossibly vile. Few people could bring themselves to execute it because this array required the sacrifice of three hundred lives: a hundred “fierce generals,” a hundred “suffering commonfolk,” and a hundred “wicked villains.”
The different faces of the stone statues here corresponded neatly with those three groups. The furious statues were the generals, the sorrowful statues were the commonfolk, and the laughing statues were the villains.