Chapter 106:
A Pool of Wine Among the Earthly Meridians
SENSING DANGER, the peony yao had shifted into their human forms: the beautiful girls accompanying Wan Jue the night before. The magnificent sight of more than a hundred women’s tender, lily-white bodies paired with the cloying fragrance of the peonies set Li Jinglong and Hongjun’s heads spinning.
Hongjun held his knives ready between his fingers but couldn’t seem to throw them. “Uh…”
Li Jinglong’s mouth twitched. “Are you hard?”
“No!”
“Then why are you just standing there?!”
Li Jinglong called on the heart lamp as the flower yao rushed toward him; a bright flash of light sent the girls flying. He drew the Sword of Wisdom from the sheath he carried on his back and slashed out in a wide arc as the flower yao screamed and scattered.
“I… It just feels wrong to hurt them!” Hongjun cried. He really couldn’t find it within himself to throw his knives into that sea of soft bodies. The guilt of spilling their blood was too much for him to bear.
Exasperated, Li Jinglong cried, “Use your pentacolor sacred light!”
At the reminder, Hongjun hurriedly raised a barrier, expanding it outward to push the screaming flower yao away—but there were simply too many of them, relentlessly throwing themselves at him and Li Jinglong.
“Cut the roots!” Li Jinglong shouted.
Hongjun’s knife carved through the stems of a clump of peonies, and a few of the girls vanished in a chorus of bloodcurdling screams. Hongjun flung all four of his knives toward the plants, slicing through them like cabbages. Agonized cries echoed through the garden as more and more yao suffered the same fate.
Standing amid the flowers, sword in hand, Li Jinglong suddenly noticed that one of the girls was frozen in place, desperately shaking her head at them without a sound.
Li Jinglong stilled Hongjun’s hand at once. Recalling his knives, Hongjun looked at Li Jinglong in confusion. Li Jinglong grabbed his hand. “Follow me!”
Wide slashes of his sword opened a path through the flower yao. He sprinted after the girl, who hurried out of the garden, making for the wooden hut the monkey yao had emerged from. Li Jinglong called for Li Bai, still engaged in battle with the monkeys behind the hut. “Taibai-xiong!”
Li Bai dashed over with his saber raised only to find Hongjun and Li Jinglong chasing a naked girl, with several dozen women in a similar state of undress hot on their heels. Shocked, he exclaimed, “What’s this?!”
The gaggle of flower yao ran to Li Bai instead, emitting fragrant fumes that instantly lulled him into a trance.
“Crap!” Hongjun cried. “Taibai-xiong likes girls!”
Li Jinglong motioned for Hongjun to keep following their quarry. Then he turned, took a pinch of oblivion pollen from a pouch at his waist, and scattered it into the air. Li Bai sneezed and instantly came to his senses, rendering the flower yao’s enchantments useless. Taking no chances, Li Jinglong slung an arm over his shoulders and dragged him away.
Belatedly noticing there was something strange about this yao, Hongjun called out to the slender girl in front of him, “Wait! Where are you going?”
After leaving the garden, the girl had clothed herself in a buttercup-yellow brocade robe embroidered with blooming pink flowers. She glanced back at Hongjun before slipping into the wooden hut.
The trio bolted in after her. Li Jinglong shut the door hard and latched it behind him, locking the crowd of flower yao outside. Kneeling, the woman opened a hidden door in the floor to reveal a flight of stairs, which she rapidly descended.
“Come quick!” the girl said. “There’s no time!”
“Follow her,” Li Jinglong said. “She’s on our side.”
As the three men filed in behind her, Hongjun asked in surprise, “You can talk?”
“I’m Xiangyu,” the girl said softly. “I didn’t dare say too much out there where the monkey yao could hear me.”
Hongjun suddenly remembered what Wen Bin had said about Xiangyu, whom they’d gone to the House of Peerless Beauty to find.
“Thank you for saving Wen Bin,” she said, lifting the hems of her yellow skirts as she hurried down the stairs.
Li Jinglong understood the situation at once. “It was you who dealt with the yao Wan Jue sent to spy on us.”
Surprised, Xiangyu turned to study him. “Your reputation is well deserved, my lord—both intelligent and perceptive.”
True fire burst to life in Hongjun’s palm, illuminating the staircase spiraling down into the ground. They had been descending rapidly for some time, yet he could see no end to the darkness.
“Wan Jue will be here soon,” Xiangyu said. “We must be quick.”
“Where are they keeping the divine kun?” Li Jinglong asked.
“I’m not certain. Perhaps once we get there, you can figure out a way in and see for yourself. Wen Bin… Is he all right?”
Even in the dark, Hongjun could sense the emotions roiling under her question. “Do you love him?”
Xiangyu didn’t answer, leading them down the staircase in silence.
“How did they seize the divine kun?” Li Jinglong asked. “Is there someone guarding wherever he’s imprisoned?”
“I don’t know that either,” Xiangyu said. “My sisters and I used to live on Mount Baima, but the gu apes stole us away along with the monkeys that resided there. They augmented our cultivation with demonic energy. I was the only one who had attained human form before that, so I was safe from their manipulations.”
She pulled to a halt and looked up at Li Jinglong. “Promise me—give him a dose of oblivion pollen. I noticed you have some with you.”
Li Jinglong gestured for her to continue down the stairs. They could now see the foot of the spiral staircase below them, where something was emitting a faint red glow. Hongjun was instantly reminded of the sigils he’d seen in that cave outside Chang’an’s city walls. Sure enough, a yao transportation array had been drawn on the floor of the cavern, deep underground.
Li Jinglong stopped at the bottom and turned to Xiangyu. “Is there anything else we can do for you, aside from that?”
Xiangyu bit down on her lip in thought. “If you kill the gu apes, please save my sisters. Dispel the demonic energy in them and plant them somewhere suitable, if you can.”
“What about you?” Hongjun asked.
“Wan Jue will be here soon,” Xiangyu answered. “I’ll buy you what time I can.”
“Wait!” Hongjun seemed to want to convince her, but before he could get any further, Li Jinglong interjected.
“We need to go. Let’s try passing through this array.”
“Without resonating spiritual devices, we can’t form a connection between here and wherever this goes,” Hongjun said.
“If it’s like the other one, this gate opens in only one direction, so we can enter but not exit,” Li Jinglong said. “Leave one of your knives outside.”
Hongjun stabbed a knife into the cave wall. Li Jinglong directed Hongjun and Li Bai to stand within the bounds of the array while he bent and pressed a hand to the center. Activating the heart lamp, he infused the array with spiritual power.
Just as it had when Hongjun passed through Wu Qiyu’s barrier using a cursed drop of blood, the array glowed brightly. But unlike the instantaneous displacement of that array, this time, the ground collapsed as space warped around them, sucking them in.
With a deep hum and a blinding flash, they found themselves bathed in blue light. They seemed to be still underground, but their surroundings were bizarre: Above them, the cave walls crawled with thousands of glowing blue veins, thrumming with energy that surged in all directions.
Li Jinglong looked around, raising his sword.
“Careful!” Hongjun warned. “This is where all the earthly meridians intersect!”
Earthly meridians, as vast as flowing rivers, crisscrossed the darkest depths of this natural cave. In the center, where the glowing blue veins converged, was a colossal crater filled to the brim with a liquid that smelled unmistakably of wine. A massive kun—over fifty feet in length and twenty feet wide—seemed to be soaking in it.
“The divine kun!” Li Jinglong and Hongjun rushed over.
“What a fine wine!” Li Bai exclaimed. “How much time would it take me to drain such a massive pool?”
“They’re… They’re soaking the divine kun to make medicinal wine?” Hongjun shouted toward the pool: “Your Majesty!”
The great kun, sunk so low only his back was above the surface, did not answer.