Chapter 194 — Footprints

Up ahead, Xiao Hui went plop and tumbled off Ming Li's shoulder, landing on the ground. Yet it showed no sign of pain; instead it shrieked aloud, waving its arms and stamping its feet, convulsed with laughter—now clutching its belly, now pounding the earth, now sprawling on its back with all four limbs in the air and its tail lashing. In short, it laughed as wildly as a monkey possibly could.

The more Jin Pingyue watched, the angrier she grew. She was just about to erupt when Xiao Hui suddenly leaped up, chattering "tsk-***" at her and pulling an enormous grimace. Then it dropped to all fours, darted back in two swift bounds, scrambled up onto Ming Li's shoulder, and settled itself there again, turning to look back at Jin Pingyue with a smug air and pulling yet another face.

Jin Pingyue's fury mounted; she seemed even to tremble. She bit her pearly teeth, raised her hand as if to strike—and in the warm sunlight a pale violet glow bloomed at the edge of her palm, strange and uncanny.

But the hand stopped halfway, suspended in the air. Beneath the figure of the man ahead, a faint azure radiance seemed to gather at his own hand as well.

Jin Pingyue's pupils contracted.

After a long moment she stamped her foot, lowered her hand, closed her eyes, and drew a deep breath. Her chest rose and fell several times, and her color returned to its usual composure. Ahead, the azure glow at Ming Li's hand slowly faded, and his figure, amid the shrill cackling of the gray-furred three-eyed monkey, grew distant.

Jin Pingyue steadied herself. A trace of anger still smoldered within her, yet somehow her face felt a little warm. She had always turned heads and toyed with hearts—that had ever been her forte. Who would have thought that today she would be made such sport of by a monkey?

She gave a little snort, put the matter from her mind, and was about to go on when her brow suddenly furrowed, as though something had occurred to her. She turned and walked slowly back. In a short while she had reached the spot where the fruit pit Xiao Hui had spat in provocation had landed.

The pit was an ordinary one from a wild mountain fruit, nothing strange about it. But now that pit had sunk entirely into the ground, with only a bit of its hard shell showing above the surface. And this scorched, uncanny mountain peak was not like the rest of the Ten Thousand Wild Mountains—there was no soft earth here, only hard rock everywhere.

With the force of a single spit, Xiao Hui had driven the fruit pit into solid stone.

Jin Pingyue's brow slowly knitted. She rose to her feet and looked toward the direction where Ming Li's figure had vanished. Gusts of yin wind blew from that quarter, and on the wind there still seemed to linger the shrill, eerie cackle of the monkey Xiao Hui.

Softly, as though murmuring to herself: "How is it that even this monkey has such cultivation, advancing so swiftly? This man—just who is he—"

The vast black forest had welcomed new visitors once more. Only this time, the guests numbered far more than before. A party of more than a dozen wound through the jungle, pressing on among giant trees of dense foliage and thorns tangled with creeping vines.

Only, apart from the fact that they had met none of the savage beasts they had expected, this stretch of the journey went unexpectedly smoothly.

The few at the very front of the column were no ordinary folk. Lu Xueling's brows drew faintly together and she said nothing, but Zeng Shuyan could not hold back and said to Li Xun, "Senior Brother Li, this—this place seems a little off."

Li Xun halted, swept a glance around them, then looked at Zeng Shuyan. After a moment's thought he turned back and called loudly to the Fenxia Valley disciples, "Everyone rest here a while. We'll press on shortly."

The company answered with a rumbling assent; plainly, a march like that was no light matter for anyone.

Once the others were settled, Li Xun and Zeng Shuyan walked a little ahead and drew near Lu Xueling as well. Lu Xueling frowned and stepped back. Li Xun's face darkened, but Zeng Shuyan, quick as ever, at once cut in to smooth things over: "Senior Brother Li, you've noticed it too, haven't you?"

Li Xun nodded, his gaze falling to the ground beneath the three of them. In the dense thicket of thorns, blurred but still discernible, were the faint prints of thorn branches broken and trodden underfoot.

"Someone passed through this forest before us—and not long ago, either," he said with certainty, and a worry he could not conceal surfaced on his face.

Zeng Shuyan considered this. "Could they be fellow disciples of yours, Senior Brother Li?"

Li Xun shook his head. "Impossible. Ours is the only company from Fenxia Valley to go deep into the Ten Thousand Wild Mountains. The finest of the valley's younger generation are mostly here. No one else would have come in."

Zeng Shuyan frowned. "Then it's strange. By what Valley Master Yun said that day, this news should never have leaked. Could another sect have learned of it and entered the Ten Thousand Wild Mountains as well?"

Li Xun hesitated, then shook his head anyway. "I don't think so. For one thing, the matter is indeed still secret—known only to our two sects." He coughed lightly and lowered his voice. "The Beast Sovereign is the true author of this calamity. If others were to shove us down the well and snatch the profit, then the blood our two sects shed on Canglan Mountain would have been—"

Zeng Shuyan reached out a hand, his face all smiles, and clapped Li Xun on the shoulder. "Senior Brother Li speaks my very mind—truly, great heroes think alike, ha, ha ha!"

As the two of them exchanged smiles, a cold snort suddenly came from beside them, and from Lu Xueling's lips at that. Both started and turned to look. Zeng Shuyan asked in a low voice, "Senior Sister Lu, what is it? Did we say something wrong?"

Lu Xueling gave him a cold glance, turned her head away, and sneered, "What a repulsive face!"

Zeng Shuyan was dumbstruck, unable for a moment to make out her meaning—whether she cursed him or Li Xun, or simply both. He turned to Li Xun, and the two stared at each other, both embarrassed, at a loss for what to say.

After a moment, Zeng Shuyan, being the thicker-skinned of the two after all, gave a hearty laugh, pretended he had heard nothing, and said to Li Xun, "Senior Brother Li, since the news has not leaked, and it isn't any other disciple of your Fenxia Valley, then for such traces to be here, I fear there's something very strange about this."

Li Xun frowned, clearly vexed that his thinking led nowhere, and was about to speak when Lu Xueling, who had just turned away in front, said coldly:

"The Beast Sovereign!"

Zeng Shuyan and Li Xun both started, astonishment on their faces. After a while Zeng Shuyan nodded slowly; though hesitant, he said, "What Senior Sister Lu says is rather fanciful, but on closer thought, it's actually quite possible."

Li Xun's expression, however, differed from Zeng Shuyan's. He seemed to want to speak and stopped, hesitated a while, then shook his head. "Never mind. Let's go on a while and see. Wild guessing here does no good."

With that he said to the two of them, "Rest a little yourselves. I'll go back and look in on the junior brothers."

Zeng Shuyan nodded. "As you please, Senior Brother Li."

Li Xun added a few more words of caution, then turned and walked back.

Once Li Xun was well away, Zeng Shuyan turned his head toward Lu Xueling's back and suddenly smiled. "Senior Sister Lu, were you cursing me just now?"

Lu Xueling gave a cold snort, neither admitting nor denying it; from the look of her, she leaned rather toward yes. Zeng Shuyan smiled bitterly, pondered a moment, then walked slowly to her side and lowered his voice. "Senior Sister Lu, there's something I must ask you."

Lu Xueling glanced at him, slightly taken aback—Zeng Shuyan's face was now utterly serious and grave, wholly unlike his usual self. "What is it?"