CH 83

Chapter 83: Mother Spider (II)

Stunned, Xuanmin asked, "You've never seen it?"

Now Xue Xian began to doubt himself. "Could it really be a common writing system? I really haven't seen it before. Perhaps someone invented it especially. How do I explain... it looks simple and primitive."

Hearing this, Xuanmin's expression deepened, as though he were contemplating something. After some time, he looked back up at the text on the wall and said, "I can read these characters. It's as though I studied it thoroughly in my youth. But I don't remember who taught it to me."

Someone taught it to him?

Xue Xian recalled what he'd seen in Xuanmin's memories –– Xuanmin had been very short so his angle was low, and the vision itself had been too blurry, so all Xue Xian had been able to see was a white robe cascading to the floor. In the memory, Xuanmin had said something: two or three short, simple syllables, like a name.

Now, Xue Xian wondered... could he have been saying Shifu?

For a brief moment, Xue Xian got a weird feeling. Xuanmin's daily demeanor and habits had not suggested that he'd ever been very close to anyone else at all –– it had seemed far more fitting to imagine him living alone in that little bamboo building amid poisonous fog.

Sometimes, Xuanmin gave off the impression of having been born fully formed, someone with no relationship to anyone or anything else in the world. But now, Xue Xian had to accept that Xuanmin had indeed once been a small child who had slowly grown up into the man he was today, that he had had a father and a mother, had had a teacher, had even had his own disciples... disciples, like that child in the fragmented memories who had looked up and asked Xuanmin who he was. 

All of this made Xue Xian realise that what he knew Xuanmin was only one side of many. And the other sides, even Xuanmin didn't currently know about.

For a moment, Xue Xian zoned out as he pondered all this. When he came back to reality, he saw that Xuanmin was staring at him, having seemingly misunderstood the reason why Xue Xian had suddenly fallen silent.

Those black eyes gazed intently into Xue Xian's. Finally, solemnly, Xuanmin said, "I would never lie to you."

Startled by the statement, Xue Xian broke eye contact and waved his hand dismissively. "I was just remembering something. I wouldn't slander you with assumptions that you're lying. Ordained men never lie. I understand." As he said this, he even winked.

Xuanmin did not respond.

"Speaking of," Xue Xian said, "I need to be honest with you for a second." He arranged his robes and straightened his back so that he looked sincere, and looked up at Xuanmin with an embarrassed face. "Your copper coins aren't very loyal."

"Disloyal?" Xuanmin looked down automatically at the pendant still danging from his fingers, not understanding what Xue Xian meant.

"After I began using the pendant to heal my bones, something strange happened." Xue Xian's tone was a guilty one, but he stopped and thought, It's not even under my control. Why the fuck do I feel guilty?

He paused and force himself to repress the feeling of guilt. Then he said, "Perhaps it's because the effects of the pendant are still in my body, but... it seems to have created some kind of connection between you and me. Some of your emotions and reactions get transferred onto me as well, like with the dragon spit, when you... you know. Well, yes, basically, it's kind of like that."

At the beginning, his words had been very serious, but as he'd gone on, he'd lost track of his words. With that final sentence, Xue Xian had had to slam the brakes. Awkwardly scratching his arms, he waited for the moment to pass.

Xuanmin said nothing.

"That's one thing, but the important part is, when the seal broke on the third coin and you got some of your memories back, I saw some of them." Seeing Xuanmin's grave face, Xue Xian hurriedly added, "But not many! I only saw some really fragmented images, and I didn't hear anything at all. Besides, it was like trying to admire the flowers on a foggy day. It was so blurry––"

He stopped scratching his arms and pointed at the pendant in Xuanmin's hand. "It's that thing's fault."

For a moment, Xue Xian saw that Xuanmin's lip trembled ever so slightly, as though he wanted to ask something –– but ultimately, the monk did not ask it. As Xuanmin gazed at Xue Xian, his eyes did not seem resentful, nor was there any other worrying emotion. Finally, after a long moment of silence, Xuanmin said, "It's fine."

Then he repeated, "In any case, I would never lie to you. If you saw, then you saw."

Xuanmin's complete lack of guardedness against him made the Xue Xian's heart itch. Still, such a connection was hardly appropriate, so he nonetheless said to Xuanmin, "I believe you. But this connection... if you can, it would be best to break it."

"We'll talk about it when we get out," Xuanmin replied, though he did not seem against it.

Then, Xuanmin lifted his hand and pointed at the writing on the wall. "It says that there are two types of spider here. The other venomous insects downstairs are feed for the spiders, and they also help to strengthen the spell. One generation is born each forty-nine years. Someone some time ago had requested for these spiders to be bred, but once the spiders were born, the person had died. So the spiders were sealed away here."

"One generation every forty-nine years. When was the original generation? Who knows how many generations have been born between then and now." Xue Xian frowned. He still couldn't know if the person who had created this cave had been a good or bad person, but based on the fact that they'd been commissioned to do so, it seemed they weren't motivated by some fundamental evil. "What else does it say?"

Xuanmin pointed at the third row. "The venomous spider is trapped inside the spell. You cannot see life until you have seen death."

"All those characters just amount to such a short explanation?" Xue Xian asked, troubled.

"This is the only line that explicitly addresses the Spider of the Same Age," Xuanmin explained.

But that was enough, Xue Xian supposed: all those scribbles looked to be a huge block of text, and if he asked Xuanmin to read it all out in full, he'd probably not even have the patience to listen to it all. Picking out the important parts was wisest. Thus Xue Xian nodded and did not ask more. He tapped a finger against the stone canopy and said, "So that's why..."

"Hm?" 

"The copper mirror." Xue Xian pointed at the mirror in the corner with his cupped hands and said, "Didn't you say that the spider was trapped in the cave's spell, and that you can't see life until you've seen death? When we first got here, we looked everywhere but found nothing –– perhaps because the spider was still trapped. But after having seen death through the mirror's spell, we could see the life, the solution to that death –– the spider. That explains a lot. Why would the group that came before us cast the mirror spell? Because once they were brought closer to their deaths, they'd be able to draw out the spider."

Xuanmin glanced at the mirror and nodded. He pointed at some text two rows away and said, "This line discusses how the spider comes into effect."

"How?"

Xuanmin shot a helpless glance at Xue Xian's finger and said, "The Spider of the Same Age is actually a pair of spiders: mother and son. The son activates the mother, and it comes into effect once they've both seen blood. The person giving their life gets bitten by the son, and a blood vessel will appear on the son's stomach. At the same time, the corresponding mother spider draws blood from the second person, and the spell is cast. The second person's life becomes tied to the first person: they live while the first person lives, and they die when the first person dies."

Xue Xian gulped.

He suddenly stood up from the canopy and began to look all around him. "Where's the mother spider?"

That son spider had already bitten him. Whoever was bitten by the mother spider would have their lifespan tied to that of a dragon. If he couldn't track down that thing right now, if he just let it be, and then he and Xuanmin left this place, and then someone else came in... now that would be a mess.

If the next person was a kind and good person, then having them live longer wouldn't be a big deal. But if some evil bastard came in, then wouldn't Xue Xian be causing a massive disaster with consequences lasting the next thousand years?

And besides, even if the person bitten by the mother spider was an absolute saint, it still wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. Not everyone could bear with the idea of living practically forever –– it wasn't a feeling that ordinary mortals could handle.

Xuanmin said, "The mother and the son are linked. If you're holding the son, then the mother can't be far."

Hearing this, Xue Xian brought his fingers to his lips to shush Xuanmin. Then he crouched down and pressed his ear to the ground, listening.

These spiders had thin, frail legs, and so made almost no noise at all –– only those with supernatural hearing could barely make it out. Xue Xian listened intently for a while, then suddenly looked up and gestured at Xuanmin, and pointed near Xuanmin's feet.

The venomous spiders were particularly sensitive to the movement of people. If Xue Xian stood up now to go chase after the mother spider, the creature would probably hide again. So Xue Xian blinked at Xuanmin, signalling for him to catch her.

Thankfully, Xuanmin wasn't an ordinary mortal either. Upon receiving Xue Xian's message, the swept up his robes and silently crouched down. He reached out his hand and hovered it gently across the floor, moving it in a circle until he stopped at a certain spot.

The spot was very close to the wall, so Xuanmin had no choice but to shuffle toward it. From Xue Xian's angle, he could now only see Xuanmin's back.

He peered over and saw that Xuanmin's hands had cupped over that spot, and was moving slowly and carefully, seemingly making sure he could not be bitten by the mother spider while trying to catch it. After some time, with a sweep of his sleeve, he finally stood up again.

Xuanmin seemed not to want to let Xue Xian be bitten again, so he kept the spider inside his own palm. He said, "In my pocket I have a small ceramic bottle."

Xue Xian blinked, then realised what Xuanmin had meant. "Oh," he said as he walked over to Xuanmin. He shifted the son spider into his left hand and, with his right hand, he reached out to Xuanmin's waist and paused for a moment. Then he stuck his hand into Xuanmin's pouch.

"... Not the one on my hip," Xuanmin said.

Xue Xian bit the tip of his tongue. Why didn't you say so earlier? Awkwardly, he took his hand out again and reached into the front of Xuanmin's robe.

He suddenly felt a fondness toward the times when he'd rifled around Xuanmin's hip pouch for needles and silver with no qualms at all. These days, his state of mind was different, so that, despite the layers of clothing, touching Xuanmin's waist had felt indescribably strange.

If it wasn't for the fact that Xuanmin's full attention had been on the mother spider and that his face had been extremely solemn, Xue Xian didn't know just how different his state of mind would have become.

"Found it," Xue Xian said as matter-of-factly as he could. He retraced his hand from Xuanmin's chest, and in his palm were two tiny little bottles. They were the size of Xuanmin's thumb and had round bodies, and seemed only big enough to contain some small amounts of medicinal powder –– and thus seemed useful in this situation.

Xue Xian unscrewed one of the bottles, and Xuanmin's fingers twitched as he produced something from his palm and shoved it directly into the bottle. Seeing that Xuanmin now had a free hand, Xue Xian handed him the second bottle and looked down at that first bottle.

He saw that, inside the bottle, there was a spherical spider wiggling about. The color of its body was slowly transforming, and it seemed to be camouflaging against the white of the ceramic. This spider seemed at first to be exactly alike to the one that had bitten Xue Xian, except that its blood vessel was across its head and not its body: it corresponded directly with the son spider.

Without much more thought, Xue Xian shoved the spider in his hand into the bottle as well and capped it, then put it away. As he did so, in the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Xuanmin capping the other bottle too.

For a split second, he had a doubt: When he had given Xuanmin the bottle just now, had he opened it for him? No, right?

But in the time it took Xue Xian to raise his head, Xuanmin had already placed that bottle back into his chest pocket and begun to read the text on the wall again. He was frowning, as though he were thinking about something else now.

"What is it?" Xue Xian did not ponder the bottles further. He gestured at the wall at his chin and said, "Why do you look so serious? Is something wrong?"

Xuanmin reached out and tapped something at the end of the text. "The name signed here..."

"That's a signature?" Xue Xian asked, mystified. "What about it?"

"I know it," Xuanmin said.

"Oh? What does it say?"

Xuanmin paused for some time, then said, "Tongdeng."