CH 84

Chapter 84: Mother Spider (III)

Tongdeng... Tongdeng...

When Xue Xian heard the name, he was stunned too, and a strange, unplaceable sense of familiarity rose within him. As though he had heard that name somewhere before...

But that made no sense. If he really had heard it before, then why couldn't he remember anything about it?

Xue Xian didn't have a poor memory, but he had lived very a very long life, and most of the people that he met made no impression on him at all. Despite this, anyone that he had spoken to he would be able to remember for quite a while, and whenever something sounded familiar, he was quickly able to realise why it sounded familiar.

But this time, it was as though everything associated with the name were shrouded in mist. It seemed so close by, yet he could not get to it.

After some time, Xue Xian suddenly realised that it wasn't the word Tongdeng that was familiar –– it was because he'd heard someone say it...

But where...

Frowning, Xue Xian nudged Xuanmin. "Do you really not remember anything?" he asked.

Xuanmin shook his head. "The memories I've been able to get back don't mention that name."

"Those memories are really missing just the right bits of information," Xue Xian said, annoyed. He crossed his arms and absent-mindedly scratched his chin as he scanned the text on the wall again. "Those who invent their own writing system are usually remote clans that live apart from mainstream society. Plus, this Spider of the Same Age is a venomous insect, so that clan must be one with the ability to do witchcraft. Perhaps they come from Nanjiang*..."

According to Old Qu, he had heard the legend from his ancestors. For someone to be his ancestor, they had to have lived at least a couple hundred years ago.

Two hundred years ago; Nanjiang; someone that he seemed to know; someone whose name was familiar to Xuanmin... What kind of person would that be?

Xue Xian's train of thought began to stray as he tried to remember all the people that he had met around two hundred years ago. But nothing seemed pertinent, and there seemed to be no relationship between those four criteria at all. No one matched them.

If he couldn't find anything, then that must mean that he had missed some key points.

But as he couldn't come up with anything, Xue Xian finally waved his hand and swept the matter out of his mind. As his hand moved, it suddenly stopped in front of his face and his gaze fell on his ring finger, which he examined intently.

"What is it?" Seeing that Xue Xian was staring at his own finger, Xuanmin assumed that he had thought of a clue.

But Xue Xian only shoved the ring finger in front of Xuanmin's face and said, "Look. I have a mole now."

The finger was too close to Xuanmin, so he took a step back to look at it: Xue Xian's finger, which had previously been unblemished, had suddenly become marked by a minuscule red mole. "Did that come from the spider?" Xuanmin asked.

"Yes." Xue Xian squinted at it admiringly, then jutted his chin out to gesture at Xuanmin's neck. "It looks quite similar to the mole you have on your neck, near your jawline. I wonder if I'll start growing blood vessels out of it now, like you do."

Xuanmin paused, then said, "I don't think it will for the time being. After all, the mother spider hasn't bitten anyone yet."

Until the mother spider sank her fangs into someone, that "same age" would remain between Xue Xian and the son spider, and he would not be bound to anyone. 

Xue Xian poked that little red mole on his finger and said, "What if I killed the spider right now?"

"It can't die." Xuanmin tapped the writing on the wall. "Before the spider has bitten a second person and the spell has been cast, the spiders are bound to you. As long as you live, they live."

Those two motherfuckers. He really couldn't do anything about them, it seemed. Xue Xian was furious. "So now I have to keep these spiders as pets? Spiders who can live thousands, even tens of thousands of years, now that'll be a rare sight. After a few times getting struck by lightning with me, maybe they'll even become intelligent."

Xuanmin shook his head. He had nothing to say.

"Is there nothing on here about how to cure it?" Xue Xian asked unhappily. "That's the reason we came all the way here."

"Yes," said Xuanmin.

Xue Xian's eyes gleamed in the dim light, as though washed.** "Really? Tell me. I don't mind if it's hard –– as long as it gets rid of that thing on your neck."

Xuanmin said in a straightforward manner, "The spell is broken upon death."

Xue Xian was stunned. What the fuck?

What kind of spell was this? All about the digging and not about what you actually bury. It made no sense!

Xue Xian glared at the scrawling text on the wall with contempt, and he glared in particular at that signature at the end, as though he could pierce through the name and glare at the person who had bred these spiders too.

He was also disappointed that he himself could not read the writing, so that he could fully analyse the text and see if he might find some clues as to how to break the spider spell. But then it occurred to him that Xuanmin was meticulous and patient, and that he'd probably already gleaned much more from the next than Xue Xian would've been able to anyway. Xuanmin wouldn't miss anything. Besides, the monk's own life was at stake.

Xue Xian got the feeling that he'd gotten the short end of the deal. Before they'd even found a way to cure Xuanmin, he'd gone and given his own life too.

"Whatever," Xue Xian scoffed. "Since there's no sign of a cure here, it's a waste of time to stay here any longer. In any case, I now have both spiders. Maybe somewhere down the line we'll be able to figure something out from them."

It seemed that they had now reached the end of the line when it came to the Spider of the Same Age –– but that group from the funeral stop who had come here and then left, they could certainly try to track down again.

Xue Xian thought about it: from it was the hip ornament he'd found, to the corpses, to the mirror spell by the black pool, everything had to be connected to that wizard.

Back when he'd asked Lu Nineteen to divine his golden marble, Nineteen had said that the wizard had been meditating in a dragon cave in the Shu region. Could it be that the wizard had travelled all the way to here in the meantime? What had made him hurry to Langzhou from the Shu region?

This was impossible for Xue Xian to deduce –– they would just have to find that wizard and ask him.

Thankfully, one thing about Xue Xian was that he travelled extremely fast. No matter how powerful that wizard was, he had only been gone for a short time, and Xue Xian was confident that he could find him. Besides...

"That man can't be far," Xue Xian said. He walked back to the pool of black water and inspected the streaks of blood across the floor.

"Hm?" Xuanmin finally stopped staring at the text on the wall and came over to Xue Xian, looking down as well.

"Look––" Xue Xian pointed at some of the more distinct fingers of the handprint. "The handprint is so chaotic. It seems that there were multiple struggles here. Earlier, when we'd first seen it, we'd assumed there had only been one fight. But if you look closely, all of the blood marks are confined within one space, and all of the handprints seem to come from one person. So... it seems that someone cast the spell, drew out a pair of spiders, got bitten and experienced immeasurable pain, and then made all these marks."

Not even dragon blood had been a fair opponent against that spider venom, so what could a mortal without dragon blood do? Plus, this person had bled all over the floor –– how healthy could they be now? How could they heal so quickly?

The longer Xue Xian inspected the blood marks, the more he felt he understood what had happened here. He looked at that one, chilling handprint on the white stone tile, then at the blood stains all around it, and thought for a while. Then, with a swish of his black robe, he knelt down and crept close to the surface of the water, closed his eyes, and listened.

"I know where he is," Xue Xian said, suddenly opening his eyes.

Xuanmin met his gaze, then looked at the pool, and understood. "He left via the pool."

"Indeed." Xue Xian sat up and beckoned at Xuanmin with his finger. "We're chasing after someone. Naturally, the shortcut is best."

Xuanmin looked at that black water that had stagnated in that pool for god knew how long, and said nothing.    

"Don't worry. I hate fire, but I'm very much at home in the water." Xue Xian stood up and dusted himself off, then reached his hand out to Xuanmin.

As he held Xuanmin's hand, Xue Xian absent-mindedly took one last glance at the carved text on the wall. Suddenly, he remembered something and asked, "Right. Didn't you say earlier that there are two types of spiders? One is the Spider of the Same Age... what about the other type? Could it be the one that Old Qu was muttering about... the spider where, once you're bitten, you can connect three lives?"

Xuanmin's head was slightly tilted down, but his eyes looked up at Xue Xian. "You want one?"

Xue Xian shook his head. "Not that. What do I need it for? Just one of my lives is far longer than three humans' put together. Besides, does being bitten by that spider feel particularly good or something? I was just asking, since you just glossed over it."

Xuanmin mildly scanned that wall of text, then looked away again. He shook his head. "It has nothing to do with the three lives. The rumors misunderstood. The spider can simply connect fortune and misfortune."

There had been something particular on Xue Xian's mind when he'd asked about a spider that could make a mortal remember everything they felt during three consecutive lives. As for this spider, he had no interest. He listened as Xuanmin described the effects of this new spider, and did not want to ask further, so simply nodded. Then, he grinned at Xuanmin and suddenly pulled at his hand.

Splash––

The two fell sideways into the dark pool, sending water splashing everywhere –– as the black water fell onto the tiles bordering the pool, it made those dried blood stains wet again.

As they descended into the water, an enormous bubble wrapped itself around them and enclosed them inside. They rapidly sank all the way to the bottom and quickly disappeared from the black water without a trace.

The waters in that pool had never seen daylight, and so being inside it felt like being submerged in the darkest winter night. In reality, outside, it was not yet noon.

Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven had not yet arrived at the local town. Instead, they had sat down in the teahouse on the road to the city. The teahouse was not crowded, but was also not empty, which was perfect for these two –– there was no danger, and the tables were quite spaced out, so they did not need to be extra careful when speaking to each other. Plus, they had a good view of the mountain.

"Do you think Master has caught up to the stranger?" Stone Zhang asked. He was sitting right in front of the view, so as he sipped his tea, he stared intently at the mountain path, hoping to see Xue Xian and Xuanmin's silhouettes any second now. "I don't know why, but my eyelid has been trembling all morning. It's stressing me out. But the two are very powerful, and I don't think anyone would be able to defeat them. Nothing could go wrong, right?"

Twenty-Seven didn't have anything to divine, so he simply knocked his bundle of sticks restlessly against the table, as though bored out of his mind –– but that small action revealed how anxious he was, too. But Stone Zhang liked to tremble, and Twenty-Seven couldn't tell him that he was panicking too, or else the stonemason would send the whole table falling over with his shakes. So Twenty-Seven shook his head and snapped, "I don't know. Maybe you didn't sleep well."

The two people sitting at the neighboring table had bamboo sticks with them –– they seemed to be getting ready to climb the mountain, and were taking a break for lunch before the journey. As they ate, their casual conversation wormed its way into Stone Zhang's ears.

"Did you go by the river this morning?"

"I did. I don't know what's wrong with the water. It rose like mad last night. When I passed by this morning, the surface of the river was almost by my feet, and I could watch it rise."

"Right. It's the middle of winter, so why would the river rise? How strange."

"Strange things happen every year. Perhaps it'll go down again tonight. You want to talk about strange? Did you see those two groups of people hurrying through town this morning? One group was in grey, and the other was completely in white. They looked so creepy!"

His friend scoffed. "You're so naïve. I didn't see anyone wearing grey, but I did see the group in white. They're officials from the Ministry of Ceremonies! They're very important people. No need to gossip."

But they suddenly fell quiet –– suddenly, a dozen or so men wearing grey appeared in the teahouse. They looked highly peculiar, and wore masks and plaited bamboo hats. They looked as though they'd stepped right out of a temple or a theatre troupe.

Stone Zhang had been pouring himself more tea, but now he froze.

He heard one of the men in grey say in a low voice, "All eight characters?"

"Yes, it's here," was the response. "However––"

"There's not that many people here anyway. Reserve the whole place," came another voice.

Suddenly, a layer of sweat seeped out of Stone Zhang's forehead. He patted Twenty-Seven on the back, wanting to get out of here away from these strange people, but before he could stand up, he heard a sudden weng–– sound in his ears. It sounded like a hollow piece of bamboo, yet it rattled him so much that his entire vision went black. His knees buckled and he lost consciousness.

---

* Nanjiang could either be a general "southern border" or the south of Xinjiang -- considering that Xue Xian himself is from Guangdong which is at the south of China, it's likely this is the latter.

** Yeah idk sorry it's a weird simile but like?? Better than the dragonfly one amirite