CH 91

Chapter 91: Peace for a Hundred Years (II)

Those innumerable shafts of lightning struck deep ditches across the surface of the pebble shore, out of which countless cracks began to emanate, some snaking all the way to the river and beneath the water, others headed for the foundations of the mountain. There came the faint, dimmed noises of cracking and breaking from within Mt. Jiangsong that seemed to spread across hundreds of li, a harrowing warning of what was to come.

As the enormous waves came crashing toward the mountain, some seemed to erode the rock on the mountain itself, causing broken boulders to hurtle down, intermixing with the confusion of the heavy rain and light fog.

Finally, this great wave finally receded into the river, revealing a vast hole created by its impact –– and in the middle of that deep ditch, charred black and grey by the fires of the lightning, Zuhong sat cross-legged, his palms clasped together, focused on his prayers.

But the bronze bell that had been protecting him had been pulverised, and his white monk's robes were covered in holes and tears, sticky with fresh blood that seeped out all across his body.

As Zuhong prayed, he tried to suppress his coughs, but could not stop thin streams of blood from leaking out of his lips –– he appeared to have been gravely wounded by the attack. But those dots of blood on his face continued to creep toward the life pressure point on his forehead, appearing urgently close to completing his spell.

But the attack from Xue Xian seemed to have affected the dots of blood –– they had paused in their climb for a while, and were now moving much slower, in fact appearing to require a great amount of effort, as they had been when they'd first appeared on Zuhong's hands.

Zuhong coughed again, choking on his prayer. Unable to finish speaking, he opened his eyes. Somehow, despite the state he was in, he appeared not to have lost any hope, and to still have something up his sleeve. An ordinary opponent would hesitate at this moment, and not recklessly rush into another attack, in case it was all a trick.

But his opponent was not ordinary –– it was Xue Xian.

As Zuhong raised his face to look out, he saw that, beneath the oppressive layer of black clouds in the sky, there stood a man in black, his body covered in crackling lightning, with flashes of light rebounding above his head, illuminating his deathly pale skin and elegant brow. He emitted an dark and perverse aura, and there seemed even to be an air of evil in the curve of his smirk.

Most importantly, in the depths of his pupils, there was a streak of bright red.

It had happened; this was evidence –– what they called zou-huo-ru-mo, walking through fire to enter evil: when malicious hallucinations took over one's body and soul.*

No matter whether one was a mortal practicing magic or a heavenly mythical creature, one was always at risk of ru-mo, entering evil. Perhaps one might begin practicing the wrong kind of magic, or accidentally become trapped in a spell, or take the wrong magic medicine, or have suppressed tyrannical energy for too long –– all it took was a spark, and in the blink of an eye, one could have entered evil.

No matter how one entered evil, the outcome was always the same: terrifying, ruthless, violent –– for the original person was no longer in control.

Zuhong had only just gotten a glimpse of him when countless more bolts of lightning came crashing down onto the monk. As he gritted his teeth through the burning agony of the attacks, Zuhong concentrated all of his magical energy on creating a protective layer within his body and staving off the most lethal effects of the lightning.

And that completely unravelled-looking man in black began to walk casually down into the ditch, still accompanied by that cluster of savage rain and lightning. From the great height at which he stood, he looked down at Zuhong, then suddenly tilted his head to the side and laughed. "I hear that you're the one who maimed me?"

The man in black stared at Zuhong for some time, then crouched down and watched as the lightning he'd summoned continued to pummel the monk. Calmly, he added, "I'm still a sympathetic person, you know. All the bones in your puny body don't add up to half a bone of mine, but I'll still call it a fair exchange. Since you extracted bones from my body, I'll just extract your bones from yours..."

As he spoke, he raised his hands and pinched his fingers together in anticipation. Those slender, pale fingers were beautiful, and did not look at all like they'd ever been violent. But they clustered together into a tight fist, as though gripping something invisible, and the man in black, expressionless, began to pull that invisible thing back.

Zuhong grunted and his clasped palms trembled, the fingers of his left hand sliding down to clutch his right fist.

He felt as though the man in black had pierced through his flesh and reached into his bone, and was slowly pulling them out of his body. The pain was unimaginable and unbearable.

In that moment, it occurred to Zuhong to take a gamble. The first thing that that man in black had done upon appearing at Heishi Shore was to save Xuanmin from Zuhong's spell –– he appeared still to care deeply about Xuanmin. Of course, the man in black was happy to see Zuhong in pain –– but would he feel the same about Xuanmin?

No one would want their companion to suffer. If he could make the man in black hesitate for just a moment...

He only needed one chance...

Zuhong knew what he needed to do. Hoarsely, he eked out, "My fate is connected with his. If I die, he won't have long to live either. As long as he lives, I can't die. All of the fleshly pain that I feel, he feels too. Knowing this, are you sure you want to continue?"

Zuhong could see Xuanmin, still standing on the peak of Mt. Jiangsong. Xuanmin's right hand clenched into a tight fist, and there was a slight sense of emotion on his face –– if it weren't for the fact that Zuhong knew Xuanmin well, he would not even be able to notice the pain that Xuanmin was feeling.

Why was Xuanmin suppressing it? What for? 

Perhaps others would be puzzled, but Zuhong knew all too well. He had always known Xuanmin's personality all too well, but had never revealed this.

The reason why Xuanmin continued to uphold such a cold, detached face, seemingly without a hint of pain, was so that he would not interrupt the man in black's revenge. And when it came to revenge, that needed to be done by the person himself –– no one else could interfere or help.

The man in black, hearing Zuhong's words, glanced over at Mt. Jiangsong, and a sense of confusion and doubt flashed through his eyes. Just as quickly, the evil expression returned to the man in black's face and he sneered, "Who is he? Am I supposed to know him?"

He looked back at Zuhong and scoffed. He clenched his fist again, gripping onto that invisible thing, and tugged.

Xuanmin's body froze stiffly in agony. He gazed solemnly at Xue Xian, then closed his eyes.

******

After Xue Xian had left the valley, he had headed straight for the "Mt. Jiangsong" that he had heard the wizard Songyun mention. But he had never in his long life experienced such a profound, inescapable sense of sadness, which had refracted across his body as deep pain, mixing in with the grudge of his maiming, and the tyrannical fury that he'd kept within him all those six months as he'd searched for the man responsible. He had felt ripples of pain interject into his heart, over and over and over.

That pain had felt so much worse, and so different, from the injuries he usually sustained during his catastrophe periods. As his spine throbbed with an aching reminder of his maiming, increasing until he could no longer bear it anymore, he suddenly felt something deep within his consciousness shift.

It was as though a great fire had swept from the core of his heart into his brain, and had stretched below him to consume his arms and legs too, and that the fire had then died, and left nothing but condensation, and emptiness.

It was ru-mo: he had entered evil.

And immediately, with the connection entailed by the copper coin pendant, he had seen some of Xuanmin's new memories. Those visions flashing into his mind had awakened him from his stupor for only a brief moment –– and then he'd plunged back into evil, driven by the raw sense of anger that he'd kept inside him all those months.

In that brief moment of consciousness, his body had instinctively dived onto Heishi Shore to rescue Xuanmin, and as his evil emotions surged back into him, he had lost control and flung Xuanmin in the general direction of Mt. Jiangsong.

And when he had heard Zuhong's words and looked back over at Xuanmin, he had again felt a sudden sense of confusion, as though some memories had suddenly flooded back into him, but something else had also prevented him from hesitating. So he had calmly looked away. 

But for some reason, somehow, when he was extracting that second bone from Zuhong's body, he couldn't help but glance back at Mt. Jiangsong again.

Now, he saw Xuanmin with his head bowed, standing there, and an inexorable sense of sadness welled up in his heart, as vast and as troubled as the red river behind them. It felt alien to Xue Xian, as though it had been brought up by some strange connection between them, something out of his own control. 

These emotions were irritating him. He forced himself to look away again, then brought countless more bolts of lightning down onto Zuhong.

Zuhong's body was so burned and bloodied that his once-pristine white robes were now a mess of red, brown, and black. He was unrecognisable.

Xue Xian stared at him for some time, then couldn't help but look back at Xuanmin once more. As he caught sight of Xuanmin, he suddenly saw that a patch of fresh blood was blooming across Xuanmin's chest –– he was really feeling the effects from his connection to Zuhong.

That large patch of blood was so harrowing that Xue Xian felt the sight pierce past his eyes and into his heart. Stunned, he stared at the sheer redness, and then suddenly croaked, "... Bald donkey?"

Suddenly, Xuanmin opened his eyes. His face and lips were terrifyingly pale, but he kept his voice calm, and said, "Yes." Hands trembling, he took out a talisman and cast a cleaning spell on his robe.

But not even the cleaning spell could stop the relentless flow of his blood. As soon as he'd cleaned his robe, another patch of red bloomed.

The crackling lightning that Xue Xian was summoning came to a stop.

Xue Xian's mind was still plunged in the depths of confusion and chaos. His pupils were pitch-black, yet still with that streak of red.

In the moment that Xue Xian was distracted, Zuhong began to whisper a prayer again –– all he needed was a little bit longer, so that those dots of blood could reach their destination...

Those red dots finally arrived at the life pressure point and began to cluster together ominously. The spell on the shore seemed to respond to Zuhong as the stone sculpture in its center began to tremble.

The spells located on Dongting Lake and at Mt. Wanshi began to react, too, but the officials guarding those spells had long become too dazed and exhausted to notice. In Daze Temple, at the top of Mt. Jiangsong, the spell was also trembling restlessly, and the Chengzi officials guarding the temple had long fainted and were scattered across the floor in piles of bodies. The Taipu and Taizhu were no exception.

The life-exchange spell would soon succeed. Suddenly, that sighing sound appeared within the hall again.

The Taipu, half-unconscious, twitched her finger in response. In her daze, she thought she could hear the Great Priest's voice, yet it was somehow different. As she strained to listen, that voice sighed again, then said, "You get what's coming for you."

Perhaps it was the last flash of a dying life, or perhaps it was something else –– but the Taipu suddenly felt that she had some remnants of strength again. Panicked, she looked at the puddles of blood all around her and things seemed to click into place.    

Pained and exhausted, she put all of her renewed energy into moving her finger. With the last of the blood in her body, she slowly drew a perpendicular line across the streams of blood on the stone sculpture.

She had interrupted the spell. If those guarding a spell suddenly did such a thing at such a time, they would be able to throw the entire spell into disorder. Immediately, Dongting Lake, Mt. Wanshi, and Mt. Jiangsong all simultaneously began to shake.

The dots of blood that were clustering ever closer together on Zuhong's forehead suddenly dispersed again.

Shocked, Zuhong reached up to touch his forehead, but before he could understand what was happening, the blood on the stone sculpture also began to recede downwards again.

To be more precise, it was the blood that he had taken away from the bodies being returned to those bodies again. As the spell was reversed, the flow of the blood toward the sculpture also changed direction and began to feed itself back into the wounded thumbs of the unconscious bodies strewn all along the shore.

And the interruption of this spell reverberated onto the great "Bones Buried in the Rivers and Mountains" spell.

Xue Xian and Xuanmin felt the ground beneath them shift as something deep beneath the ground began to rumble and churn. Soon, the energy simmering beneath the ground became so violent that it threatened to completely collapse.

The ear-shattering trembling sound spread out all across the riverbank, and the red waves of the river suddenly began to surge again, breaking free of all control. Enormous waves began to crash over and over against the shore.

That great spell, which had been intended to secure peace for the land, was, because of the failure of the life-exchange spell, becoming an extinction-level disaster.

All eight hundred li of the mountain range began to tremble, and all two thousand li of the river began to churn.

The flood leapt toward shore and the buildings all around the riverbank began to sink, and the mountains saw hairline cracks run all along their hills, their foundations no longer able to support their great weight. As the prefectures all along the river felt the very earth open up as if to swallow them, the people began to scream and cry, and their wails were blown by the wind all the way back to Heishi Shore.

The nearby village seemed already about to be drowned. The panicked screams became a mass of horror, pouncing back onto them like those gargantuan waves.

The great spell had been disturbed; there would be no peace for the rivers and mountains. The dragon bone that had been buried beneath the ground to anchor the spell also felt the effects of the spell's failure.

In that moment, Xue Xian felt as though countless stones were pummelling him on his back and crushing his vertebrae to fine dust –– but the bone in question was not actually inside his body. And as the mountains around him began to crumble and fall, something within his back that had been under enormous pressure suddenly bent and snapped. 

The threads brought out by the pendant that had been holding his body together had been utterly spent –– and now, they were gone.

Xue Xian suddenly lost feeling in his legs again; it was as though they had been torn away from him. And it wasn't just his legs, but somehow his five senses had been harmed too, and he felt his hearing become blurred and indistinct, and his vision became blurred, and even his sense of touch became dulled....

Because his bone had been buried at the core of the spell, it was as though he was now one and the same with the mountains and rivers. The pain that the mountains and rivers felt became his pain too, and the turbulence within the mountains and rivers became turbulence within him too.

This all came so quickly, too quickly for him even to react or understand. All he knew was that the sky had suddenly turned black, as though endless black clouds had gathered and were pressing down upon him, about to come down to the ground and envelop him entirely.

Then he realised that this was not the color of the sky darkening –– it was his own vision, vanishing.

The scene in front of his eyes dimmed, and he knew that he was about to be plunged into complete blackness. Automatically, he frantically looked onto Mt. Jiangsong one last time.

That white smudge in his vision suddenly raised its hand and a dazzling golden light emitted from it, sending threads out of the hand that wove themselves into a net and bound the crumbling mountains within them, stopped the oncoming waves...

Xuanmin gripped his copper coin pendant with one hand, ignoring the wounds that had split open all along his palm and the blood that leaked ceaselessly onto his white robes. He focused all of his magic onto keeping the mountains and rivers together, closing his other hand into a brusque fist.

Hong–––

Some enormous force collided against the foundations of the mountain.

The savage wind blew harder and the earthquake became even more frenzied, and the waves above their heads surged and screamed like thousands of war horses. Xuanmin tightened his grip on his pendant and another gush of blood seeped out onto his robes.

Yet he did not even seem to notice –– he continued to pull his other fist.

Honglonglong––

As he tugged at something invisible over and over, finally, something emerged from the depths of the earth –– it was a dragon's bone.

With the magical item anchoring it removed, the entire spell began to implode.

There were only two magical items in the world powerful enough to anchor a spell as vast as this. Zuhong had chosen a dragon's bone. Xuanmin now chose the Buddha's bone.

His entire body began to convulse as he slowly drew out two gleaming white bones from his hip. As the bones left his body, they did not pierce his flesh and seemed to glide through him, but Xuanmin suddenly felt the life force within him begin to evaporate at a terrifyingly quick pace.

His face was as white as a sheet, yet his eyes were as dark as ink.

He slammed his thumb into a copper coin and the mountain range trembled, cracking open and creating a massive canyon beneath his feet. He pushed those two Buddha's bones into the abyss and then brought the mountain back together again, holding it whole.

In that moment, the red mole on the side of Xuanmin's neck extended its blood vessels again and quivered like a dying spider. Then, those eight legs returned into the mole.

The mole began to fade, and finally vanished. Zuhong, sitting cross-legged in the ditch, had lost out on his last chance: as soon as the Spider of the Same Age died, his face quickly grew wrinkles and turned into the wizened face of an old man, and those eyes that had so resembled Xuanmin's began to dim, as though a grey veil had been drawn across them.

He had struggled for years, but he ultimately could not escape death.

Those on their deathbeds always began to think back upon their life, remembering things from so long ago that they'd always thought they'd forgotten. As Zuhong faded away, those lifeless, limp eyes suddenly flickered upwards to the sky and he remembered that, all those years ago, on Mt. Jiangsong, when the saint had brought him home, the weather had also been like this –– oppressive black storm clouds, rain so heavy that it blurred the sky, the river restless and violent, about to drown the mountain itself.

The first time he had met the saint, the monk had looked so pure and divine, as though coated in the soft glow of dawn. 

It was only once the saint had brought him to the secret courtyard that he'd understood: this was the Great Priest. The role of the Great Priest was passed down from generation to generation. The first one had come from Nanjiang, and this saint was the second. And he, the newcomer to the secret courtyard, would one day be the third.

He'd called that saint Shifu, but the monk had always been cold and detached, and hated to speak. So that, in all the years they'd spent together, he'd never said the name Shifu out loud. 

The time it had taken for him to grow from a small child to a young adult had been extremely long, but had also gone by in a flash.

Long enough for him to have been lazy when it came to reading sutras, so that he had spent much time zoning out and thinking of other things, although that had never really made time pass quicker. But then suddenly ten years had passed by, and none of those years had made their mark on his Shifu's face.

Much, much later, he'd found out that his Shifu had had the Buddha's bones in his body, so his life was much longer than that of ordinary people, and he aged much slower.

At the time, he'd been naïve, and had simply admired this. But later, he'd stopped feeling admiration.

Because his Shifu, who had been supposed to live a long and fulfilling life, had died when he, the disciple, had only been about twenty years old. Had died to save some lowly commoner.

So what if Shifu had had the Buddha's bones in his body? He'd still died before his time.

When Shifu had died, he had felt sad, perhaps, or some other emotion, he wasn't sure... he would be standing alone on the highest level of the pleasure pagoda in the secret courtyard one evening, watching the stars, and suddenly remember the previous Great Priest.

And later, also at the foot of Mt. Jiangsong, he had gone and found his own successor –– a small child who also had the Buddha's bones in his body, and who, despite being so young, looked exactly like his own Shifu.

To that child, he had given his Shifu's original Buddhist name: Xuanmin.

Then, that admiration he'd felt when he'd been young had returned –– at first, it had been only a little bit, and as Xuanmin grew up, he admired him more and more.

In the ten or so years that Xuanmin had spent as the Great Priest, he had tried his best to suppress this feeling, had tried to distance himself from the Ministry. But in the end, he had not been able to resist: as he suddenly found himself ageing at a rapid speed, and realised that he would one day crumble into yellow dust, that intense admiration he'd felt for Xuanmin became something sour, like envy.

He'd wanted more.

He'd wanted more...

Those black clouds became heavier and darker, and his eyelids became heavy too. In the final moments of his life, he suddenly looked up at those great red waves coming toward him and heard those sounds of desperate cries that had drifted toward him from who knew where.

This had not been what he'd wanted. He'd wanted to help people, and in the process, get something out of it for himself.

But as he'd gone on, the greed had taken over, and things had gone wrong...

They say that when one is about to die, one becomes kind to others. Perhaps it was some miracle from the spirit of that saint who had saved him all those years ago, but in those final moments, Zuhong remembered the good intentions with which he'd started out. He wanted to repay that debt, in whatever way he could now...

In his daze, Zuhong fumbled for his own copper coin pendant, and smudged a drop of blood. 

And then faint, feeble golden threads unfurled from the pendant and stretched out their fingers toward the nearby village and those waves rolling inexorably over...

But it seemed like it was too late for him to push back the disaster –– the savage wind continued to howl angrily in his ears, the mountain range behind him continue to tremble and shake, and those countless panicked screams and tragic wails continued enmesh with the sound of the wind, and the waves thrashed like a horde of wild horses sailing into the skies... ultimately, though, they did not flood onto the shore.

Because the eight hundred li of mountains and two thousand li of rivers were tightly held together by countless golden threads, woven together into a a net, and the net was pulled taut by Xuanmin's fingers.

And Xuanmin was kneeling in front of Xue Xian.

Xue Xian was still feeling the effect from the dragon bone –– he could not see and could not hear, and sat crumpled there with his arms hanging limply, as still as a statue. His long robes were soaked through, as though drenched by the waves, though the waves had never hit him –– it was cold sweat, and blood, whose color was invisible against the black of his robe...

Xuanmin stifled some coughs, but did not look away from Xue Xian's face. His own cloud-like robe had been dyed crimson by his own blood, and as he raised a hand, it was tinged with a deathly grey hue.

Slowly, he dissolved the dragon bone he'd extracted from the spell and fed it into Xue Xian's body.

Xue Xian's lifeless eyes seemed to move slightly, and a faint gleam of light seemed to appear again.

Silently, Xuanmin reached out to cover his frail eyes, and continued to gaze at him. Then, he leaned in and kissed him.

A coughing fit made Xuanmin double over, but he kept his hand on Xue Xian's eyes. The sound of his coughing became lower and lower, and weaker and weaker...

Zuhong, whose fate was tied to Xuanmin's, finally closed his eyes. His head fell forward, dead.

And Xuanmin's hand lost all strength too, and fell away to the ground, revealing Xue Xian's red-rimmed eyes...

---

* Maybe there is already an English translation for this?? idk