Chapter 198 — The Labyrinth

Xiao Yichen nodded. "Junior Brother Chang, the most urgent matter now is to find my honored master. With him to take charge of affairs, there is nothing we need fear. Though some great event seems to have befallen this place, my master's Daoist arts are divine, and he is without peer under heaven; no common demon or evil spirit could ever harm him. Take eighty men—no, the more the better; take a hundred and fifty. Search the Peak That Touches Heaven from top to bottom, front slope and back slope alike, and let not the slightest clue be missed."

Deep worry showed on Chang Jian's face; plainly he understood that though Xiao Yichen's opening words had been fair, the weight of them lay all in the last sentence. He hesitated no longer, answered in a low, steady voice, and swiftly marshaled the men and went out. It was plain the number fell short of what Xiao Yichen had named, and most likely he would have to draw more troops from the front mountain.

With that great crowd gone, the Ancestral Shrine at once seemed vast and empty. Present now were chiefly the several elders, Xiao Yichen, Wen Pei, who had followed at Master Shuijing's heels, and last of all the still-unconscious Lin Jinghong.

Xiao Yichen sighed, turned, and bowed to the elders. "Uncle-Masters all," he said in a low voice, "Canglan has met with another great upheaval today, and I have acted on my own judgment. Where I have erred, I beg you to chastise me."

Su Wan and Master Shuijing said nothing. Elder Yang nodded. "Nephew Xiao, there is no need for modesty. You did well just now. What is it that we old fellows should do? Give your orders freely; there is no call for ceremony."

Xiao Yichen considered a moment. "The situation is unclear," he said, "and we must proceed with caution. I would ask you elders to return to your own peaks, so that if anything befalls, each line may have someone to look to it. It is only a pity that this junior brother Lin of Dragon Ridge Peak is still unconscious; otherwise we might question him and likely learn everything, for after all he alone was present."

All frowned, each heavy with his own thoughts. Su Wan, comforted by Master Shuijing, had gradually grown calmer; after all, Tian Buhui was nowhere to be seen, and though she feared for him, there was still hope, and so she was not so tense as before. Listening to Xiao Yichen issue his dispositions one after another, her mind was in a tangle, and she could only pray that no harm had come to Tian Buhui.

It was then that her gaze swept across Lin Jinghong lying on the ground, and suddenly her brows knit, and she gave a low cry:

"Eh!"

Master Shuijing, standing at her side, said in mild surprise, "What is it?"

Su Wan pointed at Lin Jinghong. "There seems to be something in his hand."

All were startled. Xiao Yichen strode to Lin Jinghong's side and gently turned him over, and there, sure enough, in the right hand pinned beneath his body, he clutched a rectangular black wooden tablet. Xiao Yichen reached to take it, but though he pulled, the tablet did not stir; unconscious though Lin Jinghong was, somehow he gripped it fast and would not relax his hold in the least.

Seeing this, all were puzzled. Elder Fan stepped aside, walked a circle around the spot, and suddenly said, "This tablet looks like one of the ancestral spirit tablets."

Master Shuijing peered at it closely and nodded. "Indeed, it is a spirit tablet."

It took Xiao Yichen a long while of patient effort to pry open Lin Jinghong's tightly clenched fingers and draw out the tablet, which seemed to matter so much to him. The others crowded around; as the one who had witnessed this turn of events, Lin Jinghong's fierce grip on the tablet was plainly of great consequence. Yet when they looked, all were struck dumb, and then stared at one another.

The tablet was the same size as the others and likewise lacquered black, but upon its face—still whole, for the most part—there was not a single character.

It was a blank spirit tablet!

Then whose spirit was it that was honored here, in this solemn Ancestral Shrine?

And who had set it among the masters of every generation to share their incense? And having set it there, why had no name been written upon it?

Lin Jinghong had clutched that wooden tablet in a death grip, refusing to let go even in the depths of grievous injury and unconsciousness—what did that mean?

Doubts upon doubts, threads beyond counting, seemed to coil around every heart.

The southern borderlands, the Hundred Thousand Wild Mountains, the Ancient Cave of Demon Quelling.

Legend is a very strange thing. First, the word itself seems to carry no promise of reliability; it is only that certain matters appear to have some reason to be passed down, and so people tell them from mouth to mouth, or some man of letters sets them down in writing and they survive. Second, the longer a legend is handed down, the more distant it grows, and the legend itself tends to change by slow degrees—the people and events of that year gradually lose their true faces. With countless tellers adding spice and the years wearing all things smooth, who still remembers the truth of those days?

And who still cares?

So at last the legend becomes mere legend, like that woman of city-toppling beauty and gentleness, slowly changing her countenance in the passage of time.

After ten million years, would you still know her?

In the darkness, the sinister wind seemed to have stilled; that wild and reckless blowing seemed to belong only to the world outside this ancient cave, and within this dark world all was quiet.

This was the deepest place in the Ancient Cave of Demon Quelling. Here it was that Black Wood had once brought the five tribes' sacred vessels of the southern borderlands and revived the body of the Beast Sovereign. But today the seething, surging demonic aura that had once filled this place had vanished without a trace, leaving only silence—and now and then a low, faint panting.

It was panting, coming from the deepest dark, and with it a faint, uncanny dark red glow kindled in that dark and rather empty-seeming space.

A low growl suddenly rose from the depths of the darkness, from the very place where the panting came, fierce as a savage beast yet thick with unease, and even with a trace of fear that could be made out—baring its teeth, snarling in fury at that point of red light.

The low panting paused, as though something had soothed that strange beast in the dark; the growling sank gradually, and at last died away, and silence returned to the cave. Only that eerie dark red fire still flickered, on and on, flashing without cease.

Then suddenly a woman's voice, pleasing to the ear yet seemingly devoid of feeling, echoed faintly through the cavern: "That Taotie of yours seems never to have taken a liking to me."

The space of this dark place seemed truly vast; the woman's voice seemed to travel far, drifting and floating, hollow and empty—yet by the sound of it, it came from behind that point of dark red fire.

What answered her was a calm laugh. "Pay it no mind. It has never trusted humans."

The woman gave a soft snort. "Oh? So it has already taken me for a human, has it?"

"Hou—" A low roar swept through the air in an instant, and in front of that dark red fire a blaze of flame suddenly flared up. It was a brazier of archaic form, three-legged, thick with rust, of an age beyond reckoning—yet the fire burning in it was still so vivid, vivid as the garments beyond the flames.

Vivid, silken garments.

The Beast Sovereign!

He sat on the ground between the firelight and the shadows of the dark, leaning sidelong against the stone wall of a platform. The flames leaped and danced, lighting his face now bright, now dim; it still bore a trace of that indescribably strange, bewitching beauty, but unlike the time of his first resurrection, his face was now deathly pale—one could well say he looked like ashes.