Chapter 14:
The Skeletons on the Riverbed
THE MIST INSIDE the passage dissipated. The moment the life swap completed, a chill enveloped everyone. Perhaps the reversal of yin and yang caused by exchanging a life for a life had stirred the three hundred souls within the tomb. A sudden wind bellowed from behind them, followed swiftly by an urgent rustling. At the same time, the sounds of stone statues crumbling and colliding swept over them.
Xuanmin clapped his hand on Lu Nianqi’s shoulder. He was about to say “Let’s go” when something lunged toward them. It brought with it a gust of air carrying the indescribably foul and stifling stench of decay.
The corpses might have struggled to walk while alive, but after being trapped in the tomb for so many years, they were suddenly as swift as the wind. Before anyone could move, a dense mass of people burst onto the stairs. A handful of them might have been manageable, but there were dozens—no, hundreds of yin corpses surging like the tide. There was little anyone could do to stop them, even if they had eight hands.
The passage became unbearably claustrophobic. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Xuanmin grabbed the string of copper coins at his waist, but then grimaced, reluctance in his expression. Was he unwilling to use them, or would it be inconvenient, somehow? Maybe he couldn’t use them?
As more and more corpses gathered, they packed the passage like stinking salted fish, surrounding everyone within. The besiegement slowly compacted as the corpses crouched and braced themselves.
Then, in a relentless black wave, they lunged again toward Xuanmin.
“Bald donkey?!” The rocking of Xuanmin’s pouch was making Xue Xian’s head spin. He could sense the stench of rot fanning around them, though mixed within decay’s metallic smell was a faint, medicinal aroma.
At that second, something in Xuanmin’s hip quivered before radiating intense heat—one far more searing than the heat that had boiled Xue Xian earlier.
Perhaps it was the temperature, or maybe it was something else, but Xue Xian’s heart thumped once and dropped.
The smell of blood grew stronger.
This was bad, bad, bad. How were they supposed to make it out alive?
Of course, Xue Xian was only a golden marble and couldn’t die. Besides, he was a dragon, and their lifespans were practically endless. He’d eventually find a way to safety. The question was actually complete nonsense when applied to him and the long-dead Jiang Shining.
There were only two people here who needed to stay alive: Lu Nianqi and Xuanmin. The first was none of his business, while the other…
Well, they happened to have gone through a series of events together. That was all. Xue Xian didn’t understand why he felt so anxious.
His anxiety persisted anyway, so after racking his brain, he had Jiang Shining give the marble a shove, which gave Xue Xian the momentum needed to leap out of the pouch.
The residual warmth from Xuanmin’s hip still suffused Xue Xian, leaving him with a nameless sensation. It might be that the thing he’d absorbed had finally been digested.
The golden marble fell to the ground with a clatter, and Xue Xian looked up.
Half of Xuanmin’s snow-white robe was stained with blood. The flames between his fingers swayed violently, like a beast struggling to free itself from its chains. The yin corpses teemed around him in a solid formation as they attacked with either gnashing teeth or clawing fingers. Which, Xue Xian couldn’t say.
Through it all, Xuanmin’s expression remained as cold and indifferent as ever, as if it wasn’t just others that he didn’t care about, but himself as well.
Xue Xian didn’t know if Xuanmin had heard him land, but the flame within the monk’s fingers did twitch a little. The golden marble rolled away, speeding madly like a headless chicken, but it also seemed to be planning something.
After darting through the tangle of the corpses’ legs, Xue Xian’s marble slammed hard into the stone wall of the passage.
Boom!
The entire tomb trembled as if struck by a gargantuan weight.
Wait, was that me?! Xue Xian was dumbfounded.
While it wasn’t impossible for the marble to have that much power, Xue Xian had been weaving all over the ground. By the time he crashed into the wall, he hadn’t much momentum left. He’d originally planned to strike it several times, shaking it loose little by little. If he used his full strength, he could blow ten of these tombs to smithereens.
But if it wasn’t his doing, whose was it?
Xue Xian didn’t dwell on it and crashed into the wall twice more.
Boom!
The stone tomb shook again. Debris rained down from the ceiling, cloaking Xue Xian in dust. He didn’t have a mouth at the moment, but he sputtered a few times anyway before he rolled back and turned to Xuanmin. Other than him, the only one capable of doing this to the tomb was that bald donkey.
Sure enough, through the mass of razor-sharp claws, Xue Xian saw Xuanmin using his bloodied finger to trace around the edge of his coins, soaking them with blood. Perhaps it was Xue Xian’s imagination due to the dim lighting, but Xuanmin’s five coins, usually so dull, seemed to shine with a faint, oily sheen, as if they’d been polished by the blood.
Suddenly, Xuanmin pressed his thumb down on one of the coins, and crimson blood gushed out, bathing the copper surface once more.
Boom!
The whole hallway shook as if caught in an earthquake. The tremors sent Xue Xian spinning all over, until he was on the verge of spewing the water inside his marble.
As if he was performing a prayer of sorts, Xuanmin placed one hand on the copper coins while the other held the flame to his chest. Splatters of blood flew around him. His eyelids lowered, and his lips moved soundlessly.
A deafening explosion echoed throughout the tomb. Debris flew and dust swirled, the ground groaning as it neared collapse.
Then, icy water poured in through the cracks in the rubble, submerging them all.
The new water was freezing, but it felt nothing like the stagnant water from the cave’s pool. Instead, it possessed a crisp, invigorating chill, reminiscent of the first breath of the north wind during winter.
This was genuine river water!
Xue Xian fell into the water, thinking with a strange calmness, That bald donkey stole my plan. He really blew up the tomb…
However, before he could finish his lament, he realized that Xuanmin’s explosion had not only destroyed the tomb—it had blown apart the entirety of Fentou Island. Rubble mixed with mud and trees rained down upon them, along with a massive army of yin corpses, forming a mighty avalanche.
Xue Xian was watching this in stunned silence when he felt river water surge beneath him. It seemed the tomb’s collapse and the destruction of the Flow of a Hundred Soldiers array had sent the river into turmoil, summoning another massive maelstrom. There were now countless eddies around him, all being drawn in one direction.
The group found themselves tossed about by the maelstrom along with the shattered rubble and yin corpses, and eventually they lost all sense of orientation.
In his intense dizziness, Xue Xian felt a surge of rage. Whatever had been absorbed into the golden marble really had been digested, and now it stirred—as wrath flashed through him, the heat he’d absorbed from Xuanmin’s hip rampaged through the marble, until his entire body throbbed with pain, like the liquid in a blister yearning to burst from the confines of his flesh.
In an instant, dark clouds gathered in the sky, and a blinding light slashed downward. Answering thunder rumbled like a stampede of horses, rolling from the heavens and pounding into the river below. Torrential rains followed, churning up a mist that shrouded the entire river, making it impossible to see anything within.
Moments later, a faint, clear whistle echoed from the riverbed, and a massive shadow flickered within the dense mist.
With a sweep of its body, the whirlpool pulled down toward the riverbed, dragging with it countless yin corpses and debris. The currents twisted like water dragons as they dove into the muddy depths below.
If six feet of earth were enough to bury one person, then what about sixty fathoms of river mud? Could that lay those three hundred souls to rest?
By the riverside, a child who hadn’t rushed to shelter from the rain peered over the courtyard hall, a plum branch in hand. He stared blankly at the distant river and sky. As his parents came dashing over to grab him, he turned to them.
“Dragon!” he cried.
The couple turned to look without thinking and glimpsed a long shadow flickering within the haze. It rode over the clouds and thunder, then leaped into the vast river entirely. “Heavens, it really is a dragon…”
The dragon had climbed into the clouds, but the heavy mist and thunderstorm meant only a scant few had sighted it. With time, it would probably fade into legend, just like the name of Wolong County itself.
In reality, the great legend Xue Xian hadn’t been as untrammeled as that family of three perceived. While he had indeed ascended with the clouds and thunder, that was in his dragon’s nature. In the exhilaration of regaining his true form, he couldn’t help expressing his joy. However, once he broke through the clouds, his paraplegia reared its head again: He could only move his upper body. His lower half, instead of aiding him while turning, became a long, cumbersome burden.