CH 79

Chapter 79: Cave of a Hundred Insects (I)

After a brief moment of faltering, Xue Xian suddenly stood up straight and pulled Xuanmin's hand away from the wall to look at it.

This was probably the first time in his life that he was acting with what people called the greatest of care. Although he was well aware that Xuanmin was not like ordinary mortals, nor did he have a paper body that threatened to rip apart with any strain.

The jagged surface of the stone wall had injured the entire back of Xuanmin's hand –– some of the damage was deep, and other parts had merely been scratched, but overall it looked mangled, and blood immediately seeped across half of his hand. 

It wasn't like Xue Xian had never seen blood, and indeed he had seen injuries a million times worse than this, and experienced worse injuries too. But when he saw the network of cuts and abrasions across the back of Xuanmin's hand, he still felt a prickly unhappiness in his heart, and was somehow upset.

Those times at the beginning, when he'd first met Xuanmin, and had gone out of his way to constantly try and trip up the monk and make his life difficult, now seemed as faraway as a past life, to the point where Xue Xian could barely even remember anymore.

"It's nothing," Xuanmin said. Like Xue Xian, he didn't get fazed by injuries. As he tried to pull his hand away, he reached out his other hand and patted Xue Xian's shoulder, saying, "Did you hit the bones on your back?"

"I'm missing a huge chunk of my spine, so how could they be injured? Stop moving your hand," Xue Xian said nonchalantly. He hadn't thought about his back at all. He pinched Xuanmin's ring and pinky fingers, the only parts of his hand that hadn't been wrecked, and brought the hand closer to his face.

As Xue Xian frowned and lowered his head to peer at the injury, Xuanmin quickly brought his other hand over to block Xue Xian's forehead, preventing him from looking closer. 

"Stop messing around," Xuanmin said, with a hint of exasperation in his tone.

"Mess around how?" Xue Xian asked, confused, as he tried to push against Xuanmin's hand on his forehead. "Why are you blocking me?"

Xuanmin looked at him with those pitch-black eyes and made to speak, then stopped, and decided to say nothing.

Xue Xian blinked, then realised what had happened. "You thought I was going to..." Lick your wound like last time?

Xuanmin's gaze flickered, though he still said nothing, which meant that Xue Xian had guessed right.

"In your dreams!" Xue Xian felt a rush of shame, which quickly turned into anger, but as soon as he caught sight of the blood on Xuanmin's hand, the anger vanished again. He snapped, "I just wanted to look closer so I could think of a way to help with the cuts. Maybe just my dragon breath can heal them, since after all, every part of my body is precious."

Xuanmin did not reply. 

Xue Xian hadn't thought there'd been anything wrong with what he'd said, but for some reason something strange flashed across Xuanmin's gaze, as though he'd just recalled something –– but he quickly recovered.

He yanked his hand back and looked away, then pointed at the path ahead. "It was just a scrape," he said. "It's not even a real injury. Let's hurry up and find those people."

Of course Xue Xian knew that a scrape was completely insignificant to the likes of him and Xuanmin, so he naturally did not insist further on trying to heal it. Besides, apart from dragon spit, he couldn't actually think of anything else that might help Xuanmin heal faster.

So he let Xuanmin take his hand back, and followed the monk down the path.

The two seemed to have been transported to a mountain cave. A stone tunnel wound deeply into the cave, and it was extremely narrow. Its two stone walls were tilted against each other, so that as the walls rose, the space between them became ever tighter until they met at the top.

As Xuanmin and Xue Xian walked in single file, because both were tall, they had no choice but to bend their heads.

"Traces of blood," Xue Xian said as they passed more jagged rocks.

The dark traces had a dull rusted smell and were highly viscous –– they were definitely not fresh blood from Xuanmin's hand. They had to come from the "people" who had arrived here first and who had accidentally scratched themselves on their way in.

Apart from those traces, the scragged, uneven stone floor was also covered in old blood splatters so that, as they stepped across it, they felt an uncomfortable stickiness. 

"Yes," Xuanmin said as he walked ahead. "The layer of blood on the ground is thick. It seems that many people have walked here."

More than one person and many people had different meanings. Xuanmin's tone was solemn –– he clearly had not expected to step into a sludge of blood. 

These streaks had not come from one or two people, nor seven or eight people. Even if the previous group had been constantly dripping half-coagulated blood the entire time they were walking, it would still take at least a hundred people to create such a mud-like texture on the ground.

The spot where Xue Xian and Xuanmin had landed had still had a smudge of daylight, but now that they'd reached the tunnel, that daylight was quickly fading. When they turned the next corner, the tunnel became wider again, but that final trace of daylight was in turn completely blocked, leaving a void of complete darkness before their eyes.

Thankfully, Xue Xian had highly acute vision, and in the darkness, he could at least make out the contours of their surroundings. He took two steps forward, wanting to overtake Xuanmin, but just as he tried to move past, the monk's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. 

Xue Xian was stunned. Do you have eyes on your hands or something? How did you even know I was there?

But the feeling of Xuanmin constantly noticing what he was doing wasn't a bad feeling at all, so although he grimaced in irritation, his feet did dutifully slow down and walk side by side with Xuanmin, instead of insisting on going ahead by himself. 

After walking shoulder to shoulder in the dark tunnel for some time, their feet suddenly encountered a set of stairs. In the instant that they took the first step down, the stone walls that had been squeezing them on both sides disappeared, as though suddenly widening in their presence.

Xue Xian froze.

He grabbed hold of Xuanmin's hand, holding back the monk who had been about to take another step, and quickly scribbled a word in his palm: Wait.

Naturally, Xuanmin obeyed and stopped. 

The two lowered the sound of their breathing as they looked all around them.

Normally, if they wanted to be completely silent while moving around, it was not a difficult task. But the tunnel covered in blood that they'd just emerged from had been so sticky that, no matter how lightly they'd tried to step, they could not avoid a small amount of noise. And the tunnel was eerily still, so that even the slight ruffle of their clothes was amplified.

And the soft noises that they made reverberated against the stone walls, creating a chorus of sounds that covered over any other noises in the tunnel.

As soon as they stopped, the soft whispers of other noises began to emerge, worming their way into their ears.

The sound was as light and quick as a dragonfly skidding across water*, but repeated itself in succession, one after the other, seemingly to no end. Perhaps because the noise echoed amid the stone walls, or perhaps for some other reason, the sound came at them from not just one place but every direction.

Whether this was above them, or to their side, or in front of them, that whispering noise gradually became clearer and clearer.

Xue Xian suddenly remembered something and the blood drained from his face. He turned to Xuanmin and said, "Do you still have fire talismans? Light one."

Although he had made his voice as low as possible, his voice nonetheless boomed across the tunnel and returned to them threefold, resonating gloomily among the stone.

As the echo rang out, the whispering noises suddenly stopped, alerted to the new noise, then became manic. As the noise grew frenzied, it seemed even to be accompanied by a buzzing, like... something flapping its wings.

As Xuanmin took out the talisman, he too had a realisation. So he struck it, and in the same sweeping flick of the hand, threw the flame out ahead of them.

Hong––

A massive cluster of buzzing noises rose to a nauseating level.

Countless black shadows emerged from all around them, gathering around that flame. Some of the shadows even brushed past their cheeks, and the wind fanned by those wings carried a humid poisonous smell, as well as some fine, powder-like substance.

Disgusted, Xue Xian shot out a hand and caught one of the shadows as it flew past in the darkness.

But just as his fingers came into contact with the shadow, he spluttered and immediately let it go again. As he twisted his wrists, he could feel that the powder from the shadow's wings had stuck onto his fingers, making them slippery. Scowling, he was about to speak when Xuanmin's cold voice rose from beside him: "Moths."

Indeed –– moths.

Earlier, the bean-sized wisp of flame had been quickly put out by an onslaught of thousands of entranced moths, but the light had been enough for Xue Xian to get an impression of where they were––

It was a wider stone cavern with arched walls and ceilings, like a melon placed on top of a stone block.

There seemed to be some holes along the arched walls, and the countless moths had been perched on the wall or hidden inside the holes or covering the smaller boulders strewn around the room, patiently waiting for someone to come.

Even when Xue Xian was in his dragon form, he hated having little things disturbing his piece –– it wasn't just moths, but any kind of buzzing insect bothered him to no end.

And now that he was in his human form, just the thought of those tiny moths brushing against his face made his expression turn dark and hateful.

The talisman that Xuanmin had thrown out had, while still in the air, been turned into a solid ball of moth dust, and, after some time, following an unnerving pitter-patter noise, dead moths dropped limply to the ground.

At the same time, another horde of moths appeared from all around them.

"What kind of place is this?" Xue Xian grumbled.

"Step back a bit," Xuanmin said as he extracted another match, though this time he unhooked his copper coin pendant too.

Hiss––

A small flame appeared out of the talisman in Xuanmin's hand, dimly lighting his slender fingers.

Hong––

Another deafening chorus of beating wings exploded around them as enormous black shadows in the shape of moths came flying right at them.

Xuanmin ran his hands across the copper coin pendant, then pressed down on a coin with his thumb, releasing a weng sound as metal clanged against metal and an enormous gust of wind blew out of his wide sleeves. The wind blew across the small flame on the talisman, drawing it out until it erupted into a ball of fire that snaked across the chamber like a dragon, setting everything aflame and leaving the charred bodies of dead moths in its wake.

The chamber flickered light and dark as the blazing dragon fought the horde of countless moths. 

Xue Xian watched the moths fall on the ground as quick as rain and, disgusted, averted his gaze.

"Hold on. There's writing on the wall." As his gaze swept around the chamber under the unstable light cast by Xuanmin's dragon of fire, he noticed that the holes in which the moths had been hiding were not random holes –– but carved text.

He pulled Xuanmin over to see, and used his finger to follow the vertical rows of characters until he came upon a certain spot and read out the text there: "Cave of a Hundred Insects..."

Hey –– hadn't he heard of that place before?

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* AAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!