◎”Return… my… give it… back!”◎
Ming Fuhua shouted, “Lu Qingkong, bring the boat over there!”
But Lu Qingkong threw caution to the wind. Standing on the bow, he rummaged haphazardly in his sleeve and pulled out an exquisite whip and a small crossbow. As the Long Kite came shrieking at them again, he used the crossbow to launch the coiled whip straight onto its beating wings.
Mingzhu: “Fu-Fu-Fuhua!”
The whip landed on the Long Kite’s wing, quivered once, and then black cords like vines erupted from it, alive and hissing as they surged up the creature’s withered bones, winding tight.
The Long Kite let out a hoarse screech, its two massive wings tangled in the dense cords, quickly losing its balance in midair and crashing down toward the boat.
Having already lost one wooden wing, the boat was flying crooked and wild. Mingzhu was nearly flung out several times, shielding Zhou Fuxue and Younu in his arms, gripping the gunwale for dear life, one hand clamped over his mouth like he was about to vomit.
Ming Fuhua, thrown off balance herself, saw the Long Kite’s enormous bulk bearing down on them with unstoppable momentum. In desperation, she flung out a hand and poured forth a surge of Spiritual Power, erecting an Ice Wall before them to try to blunt its charge.
“Lu Qingkong!”
Lu Qingkong’s eyes burned with fevered excitement as he watched the struggling Long Kite, still finding the leisure to mutter beside them, “A Long Kite… a Long Kite. A wind-riding creature seen perhaps once in a century. The Flying Kites of Shishen Kingdom were built from their bones—even their dead skeletons can travel a thousand li a day. Imagine one that’s alive.”
Still murmuring, he manipulated the boat’s arrays, steering it slowly toward a platform not far away.
But the Long Kite was simply too massive—it smashed straight through Ming Fuhua’s Ice Wall. Though its momentum lessened, the restraints on its body only drove it into a greater frenzy. Its hollow eye sockets fixed dead on them; it shrieked at the sky, determined to crush these tiny ants with its very body even with its last ounce of strength.
Ming Fuhua: “Lu Qingkong, faster, go faster!”
Lu Qingkong was unhurried. “Already as fast as I can.”
Just as the words left his mouth, the boat reached the platform’s edge and Lu Qingkong leapt ashore, eyes still locked on the roaring Long Kite, his face lit with a jarring, feverish thrill.
Standing at the platform’s edge, Ming Fuhua reached out a hand to Mingzhu. “Quickly, we’re here.”
Mingzhu, legs like jelly, hurried over with the two little ones in tow. He had just delivered Younu onto the platform when the Long Kite’s shriek sounded behind him. With no time to look back, he rushed to shove Zhou Fuxue up next—and suddenly, Lu Qingkong remarked airily from the side, “Oh, time’s up.”
In the next instant, the ground vanished beneath Mingzhu’s feet. The boat’s array dissolved, the vessel shrinking back into a tiny Wooden Boat—and Mingzhu and Zhou Fuxue plummeted together into the bottomless abyss.
The Long Kite, its strength spent, couldn’t move its wings at all. It slammed headlong into the cliff face and fell alongside them.
“Brother!” Ming Fuhua watched Mingzhu drop from before her very eyes, her face draining to a terrifying pallor. With almost no hesitation, she shoved Younu aside and leapt off after him.
Lu Qingkong clung to the platform’s edge and peered down. A moment later, he and Younu—the only ones left on the platform—stood staring blankly at each other, neither knowing what to say.
Younu’s lips trembled. She tugged gently at Lu Qingkong’s sleeve, hiccupping, “They… they fell. The mountain’s so high. W-will they be all right?”
Lu Qingkong had that same insufferable attitude with everyone. He impatiently shook off her hand and snapped, “You’re asking me? How would I know?”
Already frightened, Younu crumbled at the harshness. She bit her lower lip and held it in for a long moment—but couldn’t hold it. Suddenly she burst into loud, heaving sobs.
Lu Qingkong: “…”
Lu Qingkong had absolutely no idea how to comfort a child. Driven helpless by her wailing, he could only put on a cold front and threaten her, “Stop crying. Cry again and I’ll throw you down too!”
Younu cried even louder.
Lu Qingkong: “…”
For the first time in his life, Lu Qingkong encountered a situation that couldn’t be solved with a cold face. He stood frozen for a long while before forcing himself to soften his voice. “D-don’t cry.”
Younu had nearly cried herself into convulsions, her face streaked with dirty tear-tracks, the hands rubbing her eyes trembling faintly.
Lu Qingkong paused—and then it dawned on him: with the other three’s fates unknown and only a surly senior brother who only knew how to snap at her for company, what she needed most was not a useless “stop crying.”
Lu Qingkong knelt down lightly beside her, pulled her hands away from her face, and said stiffly, awkwardly, “Don’t be afraid.”
Younu froze.
Kneeling on one knee, Lu Qingkong was about the same height as the slender girl. He wrapped an arm around her and stumbled through his consolation: “Senior Sister Fuhua is very capable. She’ll s-surely bring those two back safe. Let’s go find what you need in Hundred Swords Mountain first, and they’ll come looking for us. All right?”
This was the first time in Lu Qingkong’s life he had ever consoled anyone gently. His ears burned red as he spoke, and through gritted teeth he thought, If she keeps crying after all that, I really am abandoning her.
Fortunately, Younu was a sensible child. At Lu Qingkong’s words, she clung to them like a lifeline, nodding furiously. “Mm! Senior Sister will definitely be fine!”
Lu Qingkong let out an unnoticeable breath of relief, stood, and walked on with red ears, mumbling, “Come on. Let’s head in first.”
Younu bounded after him. She too was broad-hearted and never held grudges—two sentences of comfort from Lu Qingkong had wiped the slate clean, and she’d even filed him away as “a good person who knows how to comfort people.”
Utterly unafraid of the chill radiating off him, she scampered up to his side, blinking. “Senior Brother, can I hold your hand?”
Lu Qingkong instantly retracted his paw into his sleeve and said coldly, “No.”
Younu’s head drooped in disappointment.
Lu Qingkong walked a few more steps, then suddenly decided his earlier words had been too harsh. After thinking it over for ages, he extended a pinky finger backward toward Younu, saying stiffly, “Just… just h-hold on, then.”
Younu pounced on the offer with a whoop, her soft little hand closing around Lu Qingkong’s slender pinky as she tilted her head up and beamed at him. “Thank you, Senior Brother!”
Lu Qingkong immediately jerked his head away, his ears so red they nearly bled, and marched into Hundred Swords Mountain practically stepping on his own feet.
The entrance of Hundred Swords Mountain was a withered skull like a great beast with its fangs gaping wide, pitch-black within, an eerie wind howling through the opening from time to time—deeply unnerving.
Lu Qingkong, eccentric by nature, had always feared nothing in heaven or earth—oh, except that he now perhaps had one new fear: his Little Junior Sister’s tears. From that sleeve of his, a treasure chest in itself, he drew a white Spirit Stone mounted on a base carved with dense arrays. As his thumb swept across it, the stone poured forth a soft glow, illuminating their surroundings.
Younu lavished wild praise on anything novel to her. “Wow! Senior Brother, this glowing Spirit Stone is amazing! Did you carve the runes on the base yourself? It’s so tiny, how did you carve them? That’s incredible!”
Lu Qingkong felt not one shred of pride at her admiration—if even a pretentious waste like Mingzhu could earn Younu’s rapturous praise, then clearly her compliments were watered down beyond salvage. He wanted none of it.
Hand in hand with Younu, Lu Qingkong walked slowly into the cave mouth. A dank, cold wind rushed at them, enough to make both shiver despite the blazing sun overhead.
Unflinching, Lu Qingkong led Younu through a narrow passage—and then the space suddenly opened up before them, as if they had stepped into another world entirely, the very air around them transformed.
The first thing to meet their eyes was an enormous greatsword plunged into the ground, so huge it nearly pierced the sky—a god standing tall between heaven and earth, looking down imperiously over this vast space. Even bound as it was in thick, densely-wrapped Chains, it could not conceal that overwhelming sword-aura. A single glance was enough to fill the heart with both dread and reverence.
The thick Chains were etched with thousands upon thousands of dense Formation Arrays—arrays from who knew how many ages past. Rust had eaten away parts, flaking off in places, yet they still faithfully glowed purple and white, locking this sinister sword firmly within Hundred Swords Mountain.
And the endless cliff walls around them bristled with weapons of every kind, half-buried in the rock. The blades caught and reflected the purple-white light from the central Chains, flooding the whole space with brilliant, shimmering radiance.
Lu Qingkong, a Crippled Spirit Vein who could cultivate nothing—no different from being Spirit-Veinless entirely—stood there facing that boundless sword-aura and felt his knees weaken with the urge to fall to them.
Younu, by contrast, gazed at the giant sword standing at the center with nothing but curiosity and awe in her eyes—not a trace of terror.
Then she spotted something, and suddenly grabbed Lu Qingkong’s hand and ran forward, calling cheerfully, “Senior Brother, Senior Brother, come look!”
Lu Qingkong nearly stumbled headlong—though, thanks to her tug, he was also snapped out of the sword-aura’s grip, his frozen body suddenly able to move again.
What had caught Younu’s attention was a massive Stone Stele standing at the giant sword’s foot, carved with the three flying, sweeping characters “Hundred Swords Mountain.” But whether it was Lu Qingkong’s imagination or not, the single horizontal stroke on the character for “hundred” seemed… odd.
His hand rose unconsciously toward it—but before he could even touch it, the character warped and twisted, instantly morphing into an eerie human face. Its mouth gaped wide, and a hoarse voice rasped out: “Give… give back… khh… khh…”
Younu: “AAAAHHH!”
Lu Qingkong: “…”
Lu Qingkong snatched his hand back and staggered several steps before steadying himself. For all his courage and eccentric temperament, a human face suddenly appearing out of a stone still wrung an involuntary shudder from him.
Only at the sound of Younu’s terrified scream did he steady himself, reclaiming the composure befitting a senior brother and shielding the girl behind him.
The face kept gaping and working its mouth, spitting out fragmented, senseless words.
Lu Qingkong drew a deep breath, patted Younu’s arm, and forced himself to take a step forward. Only then did the face manage to string together a complete sentence.
“Return… my… give it… BACK!”
