CH 76

Chapter 76: Finger, Knuckle, Mole (III)

"This is the spot!" Xue Xian did not need Stone Zhang to guide them anymore –– he was the first to speak.

The more he was healing, the stronger the call of those dragon bones were. The tremor that he felt this time was far more intense than all the tremors from before, to the point where Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven, who had already been seeing stars, immediately collapsed onto the ground. Poor Stone Zhang's foot slipped and he tumbled down a hill.

Thankfully, Xuanmin reached out and grabbed hold of him.

"Sit down," he said matter-of-factly to the two.

With that shake, it was a miracle that the mountain hadn't entirely crumbled and that they hadn't died. Of course they couldn't stand upright.

Guiding the half-blind Twenty-Seven, Stone Zhang sat down by an old tree and tightly hugged its trunk, so that, even sitting, there was no way he could roll down the hill once more. 

Xue Xian tried to close his hand into a fist, but found that there was something wrong with the dragon bone here –– it seemed that some spell was clamping it underground, making it impossible to dig up. It was the same feeling as when he reached out to pick up something that was supposed to be light, but found it impossible and inconvenient, as though some force were purposely keeping it away from him.

If the force trapping the dragon bone at Wen Village had weighed a thousand jin, then this time, the force was the weight of two enormous mountains.

As Xue Xian began to frown, he felt someone come to stand by him.

He turned around, and just as he'd thought, it was Xuanmin.

Perhaps this was an inauspicious year for him –– ever since he'd been maimed, nothing he did seemed to go smoothly. There were very few mortals in the world who could be of any help to him, and he had long learned to rely on himself for most things. He was a man of action, not words, and usually did things efficiently and brusquely, without wasting kindness –– in any case, he feared nothing.    

But after meeting Xuanmin, he discovered that to have someone help him when he was in need saved him a great deal of extra effort. He had always assumed that, as someone who hated owing anything to anyone else and who hated others interfering in his affairs, he would naturally refuse all help from others –– but in reality, the frequent times that Xuanmin came to his aid, he did not feel annoyed. 

Perhaps it was because Xuanmin always came at the right time; or perhaps, after having been half-paralysed for six months, Xue Xian's had become a slightly more agreeable person... Today, he suddenly realised that he had become used to Xuanmin's presence, to the point where he even willingly left Xuanmin some space to be by his side.

And now, as Xuanmin held his copper coin pendant, subduing all the possible obstacles for him, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, it was as though he were stepping into the space Xue Xian had left for him.

This was the first time that Xue Xian, while retrieving his dragon bones, did not have his full attention on the retrieval itself––

The violently shaking mountain was like a colossal beast struggling against a trap, but held back forcibly by Xuanmin, who remained cool and collected as ever. Yet the dragon bone still moved sluggishly through the layers of earth.

"Don't let go," Xuanmin's calm voice said. Instantly, Xue Xian felt another hand clasp itself over his, those warm fingers sending a surge of magical energy through his skin and into his palm.

Suddenly, the dragon bone began to shift at rapid speed.

Xue Xian twitched his fingers beneath Xuanmin's grasp, and, as though coming back to life, began to pull even harder.

There was a deafening howl of wind, and just as the trembling earth began to shake so violently that the old tree threatened to collapse, numerous small pieces of white bone leapt out of three different spots in the mud and flew toward Xue Xian. One by one, as they approached the center of his palm, they were shattered into fine powder by an invisible flame. Lodging themselves into his skin, they then sank into his body and vanished.

But before he could even begin to absorb the bones, Mt. Lianjiang transformed in a very small, very abnormal way.

Four thin lines resembling spider silk shot out of the ground and began to fly out in four different directions: three to their east, and one to the west all by itself.

But in the blink of an eye, those strange lines evaporated into the night like water vapor –– and then all was quiet.

Frowning, Xue Xian looked around, unable to figure out what that "spider silk"-like flash had been.

"Did you get it out? Is the earthquake over? Can I let go?" Stone Zhang shouted ecstatically from the tree, which he was still hugging. "Why are you still standing there looking all vigilant?"

It was this that made Xue Xian suddenly realise that, yes, he had finished retrieving the bones, yet his hand was still clasped within Xuanmin's, that they had, at some point, dropped their hands to their sides, and that, at some point, their fingers had become intertwined.

Xue Xian gulped. How did we get into this position? Why don't I remember anything...

But maybe he was being possessed by a demon who was preventing him from thinking clearly, or some other wicked magic –– the feeling of the back of his hand and the palm of Xuanmin's hand pressed together tightly like this was indescribably intimate, and Xue Xian realised that this intimacy was lingering between them both, and that he actually did not want it to go away.

So it was only after he stared idly at their hands for some time that he finally let go.

Until then, Xuanmin had not moved, perhaps because he hadn't realised what had happened. But as Xue Xian moved his hand away, Xuanmin turned to him.

When Xuanmin looked at someone, his gaze was always quick and casual –– he either looked away or simply looked past, and it was very rare that he would actually rest his gaze on someone. That pair of eyes always seemed calm and cold, but in that moment, for the briefest of instants, there was something else behind those black and deep, endlessly deep eyes. 

The atmosphere between the two became strange and impossible to parse. Off to the side, the oblivious Stone Zhang, who seemed finally to have calmed down, stumbled upright clumsily, as though still not used to a not-trembling mountain.

He stared off into space for a while, then sighed and began to dust off the mud from his clothes with a pitter-patter noise. As he patted himself, he nudged Twenty-Seven who sat cross-legged on the ground and said, "What is it? Is there another problem?"

Twenty-Seven rolled his eyes and said, "How should I know? I'm blind."

Stone Zhang frowned. He thought the boy was behaving in a bizarre manner. Xue Xian, who was stepping away from Xuanmin, also detected something off in Twenty-Seven's tone, but as he glanced at him, that teenage boy had the audacity to look pointedly at Xue Xian's fingers, and then pretend to be blind and look away into the distance.

Xue Xian cleared his throat. "What was that thing just now?" he asked as he turned back to the topic at hand. He walked over to the edge of the mountain and looked around. Then he pointed out three different directions and said, "That's where the thing went, right? One went into the river and disappeared. One went beyond the river. And––"

Suddenly, something seemed to occur to him. He frowned.

"Huizhou Prefecture, the river, Anqing Prefecture," Xuanmin said. He seemed to have read Xue Xian's mind, or else had simply happened to come to the same conclusion at the same time. As he listed the locations, he too pointed out in three directions.

Those three names together did not mean much to Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven who had joined the group halfway through, but to Xue Xian and Xuanmin, the connection was clear.

"The Liu compound, Gravestone Island, Wen Village," Xue Xian said, narrowing down the locations that Xuanmin had listed. Then, the two met eyes.

At Officer Liu's compound in Ningyang County, Huizhou Prefecture, Xue Xian had found the golden marble containing his physical body; in the tomb beneath Gravestone Island on the river, he had found the first piece of his stolen dragon bone; and the second time he'd found a bone, it had been in Wen Village, Anqing Prefecture; and today, on Mt. Lianjiang, was the third time.

Although they had encountered Stone Zhang in the meantime and he'd had a dragon bone sword, he had found the bone here on Mt. Lianjiang, so it counted as part of that last batch.

Those spider silk-like lines had come out of Mt. Lianjiang, and the three eastern places seemed to have flown to places where Xue Xian had found parts of his body. So the western line... must have gone to the final location.

Twenty-Seven said, "Those thin threads. I saw it too. Clear as day."

That sentence changed things.

Twenty-Seven's eyes, influenced by Nineteen's life exchange spell, were dulled to ordinary things, making him half-blind –– but when it came to spiritual, qi, and magic-related things, his vision was extremely sensitive. If he had seen those spider silk lines as clear as day, then that meant that those lines had belonged to one of the three categories.

Xuanmin fell silent as he pondered this. Then he guessed, "A great spell."

Xue Xian was stunned. "Spell?" 

But before Xuanmin had to explain, Xue Xian understood. Originally, the golden marble and the dragon bones had all been placed at the center of different feng shui designs: the "Direct the River into the Sea" design at the Liu compound, the "Hundred Soldiers Push the Flow" design on Gravestone Island... They had focused entirely on those individual designs at each location –– had even been distracted by these spells –– which suggested another possibility ––

What if those previous spells had only been the surface? What if the locations of the golden marble and the bones came together to constitute a bigger, broader spell?

Xuanmin did not have full access to his memories, so could not immediately guess what this great spell might be. But he thought for a while, then said, "Some excessively large designs need the spells to be awoken."

"Awoken?" Xue Xian asked, frowning.

"First, you find the right locations and place the magical items there. Once you have all four, they come together to create a bigger spell," Xue Xian explained. "Once the real spell has been laid down, the individual items no longer matter."

Like how a gardener might prop up some scaffolding when planting ivy beneath a courtyard wall, so as to help the ivy climb up. But once the ivy has grown enough and is steady, then the gardener can take the scaffolding away without affecting the health of the plant. 

As Xue Xian listened, he cast his mind back, and indeed found many unresolved questions ––

The wizard who had helped Officer Liu build his "Direct the River into the Sea" design had clearly known what he was doing, but if he really was an expert, why would he put a real dragon's golden marble into some tiny, insignificant family spell, and for a lowlife like Officer Liu? 

And at Wen Village, he had also been confused as to why the spell there had been laid so haphazardly –– it could hold back some jianghu wizards for sure, but to Xue Xian, extracting the bone had been a piece so easy that it had been as though the spell had been inviting him to break it.

As was the one on Mt. Lianjiang: even Stone Zhang had managed to take a bone away.

If it was as Xuanmin had said, then these strange inconsistencies would make sense. It also explained why the tremors caused by retrieving his body parts were becoming increasingly strong –– at the beginning, the effect on their surroundings had been almost nonexistent.

As there were less and less bones in the spell, it was like taking away the last of the scaffolding from the ivy: they couldn't help but react.

"So that means––" Xue Xian finally said, his face set. "The great spell has successfully been cast."

That was why it had been so easy to retrieve the magical items used to awaken the spell.

And based on where that last spider silk-like line had flown, they needed to head west. But they couldn't know if that was a location used for awakening the spell, or an actual part of the great spell.

Xue Xian was a very straightforward person. Since the line had already told him where to go, of course he had to go and check it out.

But just as he planned to fly into the sky again, someone interrupted him.

Xuanmin put the copper coin pendant back into Xue Xian's hand and said, "It would be best if you absorbed the new dragon bones right now, so that unexpected things don't crop up later."

In other words, it was to prevent Xue Xian from succumbing to the sweltering heat mid-journey, which would result in unpredictable complications.

Xue Xian agreed with Xuanmin's logic, but as he accepted the pendant, he felt complicated emotions appear –– after a few uses, he and the copper coin pendant... more accurately, he had inserted himself into the connection that had already existed between the pendant and Xuanmin, and his presence was becoming ever stronger. If he continued like this, he couldn't imagine what the connection would evolve into.

Suddenly, he remembered something and looked at Xuanmin. "This pendant... and also, earlier, when you added your magic to my palm. There is no way a mortal can have that much raw power. Did you take some kind of pill that can strengthen someone's magic ability?"