CH 61

Chapter 61: Spider of the Same Age (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 and said, "Someone came, then left."

Xue Xian scoffed.

Obviously! Anyone could figure that out.

But... someone came?

"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?"

To come in here was definitely not a matter of accident; and to survive the poisonous fog and make it back out alive 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..."

He 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 Twenty-Seven.

Assuming that he wanted to ask whether his divinations or correct, or that he wanted him to do another divination, Twenty-Seven began to speak, but saw that Xue Xian quickly looked away again.

The dragon 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 singsong voice made its way back to them: "Let's check out this place first. 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 be going? I could catch up on them even if I took a nap first."

The group sighed. There were always those who could fly, yet loved to bully those who could only walk.

Xue Xian zoomed ahead. Apart from overgrown weeds, there were no obstacles on the road –– the poisonous fog had probably been the man's main defense against visitors. Thus, Xue Xian soon arrived in front of that three-story building inside the hollow.

Xue Xian hated depending on others, and generally he didn't owe kindness to a great deal of people. Xuanmin was a special case –– no one had ever done that much for him –– but he was also a mortal, and Xue Xian was holding his precious pendant, so he did not mind going ahead without him.

He'd originally intended 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 he'd save the mortals' the effort of walking all the way in and back out again.

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

Why did this damn building have to have three whole 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 we list so many of the building's shortcomings is because... well, a certain dragon in a wheelchair had used the wind to push himself all the way here, and now he had to use the wind to lift him up all those stairs. 

Just as Xue Xian wheeled himself to the front door, planning to search the premises, he discovered that the damn door was very narrow, and his wheelchair was rather 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. What kind of bullying was this?*

So when Stone Zhang, Twenty-Seven, and Xuanmin finally arrived at the building, what they saw was Xue Xian sitting in front of the door 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..." Twenty-Seven said. The kid was fearless.

"Why not?" Stone Zhang asked idiotically.

Before Twenty-Seven could respond, Xuanmin gave the dragon a mild look and then began to walk up the stairs. 

The two said nothing more, and scurried after him.

Xuanmin had not asked Xue Xian why he was sitting still. The monk went straight into the building and peered into every room, then walked up those small, crooked stairs. Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven 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, and had quickly searched every corner of the bamboo building.

And yet, they found nothing.

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

Xue Xian watched angrily as the group walked up and down the building.

"There really is nothing," Stone Zhang mumbled.

But Twenty-Seven 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 crow fly out from the crown of a tree.

Twenty-Seven 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."

But then he added, "You make it sound like that crow is magical, and is leading people away on purpose." Stone Zhang was a coward, but it meant that he was highly sensitive, so that whenever he heard about something, he would thoroughly investigate all its possibilities, rooting it all out. "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."

Twenty-Seven 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?"

Twenty-Seven was sick of listening to the man's voice. He rubbed his ear. "I didn't. It's my instinct."

If anyone else started talking about instinct, Xue Xian would immediately boot them out. But it was different with Twenty-Seven –– he had a physicality 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?"

Twenty-Seven rolled his eyes. Could he just summon instinct whenever he wanted? There are always people who, knowing that others don't dare to beat them up, insist on being unreasonable.

Finally, Twenty-Seven did lift his finger and point. "Here."

The room he was pointing at was the one closest to Xue Xian.    

Great. He 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 in every single drawer. There's no one there!"

"The room inside," Twenty-Seven said.

The design of the 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 –– platforms held up by bamboo scaffolding. It was this platform that they were now standing on. 

But the rooms did not have doors leading from the platform. To get into the interior room, one had to go through that first room by Xue Xian, and then take another staircase.

That was the room that Twenty-Seven 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 sighed. These young'uns loved to make all sorts of stupid jokes, and you couldn't even scold them for it.

As he grumbled to himself, he followed Twenty-Seven into the room, but couldn't help but take a look back.

If Stone Zhang didn't know about Xue Xian's true form, he would call him "Little Brother Xue" –– but Xue Xian was a dragon, and you couldn't just go ahead and call a dragon your brother. Calling him Great-Grandfather made more sense than that, but to actually call him Great-Grandfather was a bit weird. Jiang Shining called him Sir, as though he were his ancestor, but that came with all sorts of connotations –– and if you weren't familiar with Xue Xian and tried to call him Sir, he'd probably kill you. So as Stone Zhang turned around to call out to Xue Xian, he had to stop, for he did not know how to address the dragon.

He'd wanted to ask why Xue Xian wasn't coming in. In the end, he turned to Xuanmin and said, "Master, why aren't you coming in?"

It was a bit nerve-wracking for only he and Twenty-Seven to head in. After all, Twenty-Seven insisted that the man they were looking for was in there.

Xuanmin calmly said, "I'm coming."

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

"What are you doing?" Xue Xian shouted.

He had gotten so used to the joy of being able to zoom about on his own, and now he had to be carried again. Xue Xian wanted to vomit in anger.

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

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

Although Xuanmin did not reply, it was Twenty-Seven 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, perhaps even hotter than it had been last night, but his palms were cool and comfortable. Plus, although he was emanating heat, there was not a bead of sweat on him.

For his body heat to be so abnormal had to have been caused by Xue Xian's dragon spit. So Xue Xian began to feel guilty, and decided to be quiet. But even if this was because of the dragon spit, how could Xuanmin be behaving so differently from last night? If it wasn't for the fact that Xue Xian was in his arms, he would never even have noticed that Xuanmin was burning up.

As he pondered this, Xue Xian 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 he was acting so weird all morning. Never mind a bit of saltiness in his tone, Xue Xian thought. If I was feeling so damn uncomfortable, I'd bury everyone around me in salt.

Now Xue Xian really decided to settle down and let Xuanmin carry him 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 sleeve, 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, and it was impossible to guess where the man might be hiding.

Of course, Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven did not actually flip through the books one by one. They had avoided 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 notes. The content didn't matter –– what was important was the calligraphy.

The characters were thin but stable, and the curves in some of them were highly unique. It was a 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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* Some very poignant observations on the lack of accessibility for disabled people in our society.