◎How does every class of children turn out harder to raise than the last?◎
Zhou Fuxue’s eyes fluttered open groggily. It took him a moment to realize he was hanging in midair, nothing beneath him but a bottomless black abyss—and a hand was gripping his wrist with crushing force, as if hauling him back up.
Zhou Fuxue looked up and met Mingzhu’s peerlessly handsome face.
Mingzhu had one hand clamped on a sword hilt jutting from the cliff wall, the other hauling Zhou Fuxue upward with visible strain. Seeing him awake, a smile flickered across his pallid face, and he said gently, “It’s fine, Senior Brother will pull you up in a second.”
Who knew how long the two had fallen. An icy chill kept rising from the abyss below, making Zhou Fuxue shiver.
Mingzhu kept straining to pull him up, but whether from spent strength or something else, his attempts failed again and again. He managed a comforting tone. “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. I’m here. Your Senior Brother will never let go.”
Strangely, hanging on the edge of a lethal fall, Zhou Fuxue found himself unexpectedly unafraid—as if in any peril, so long as someone reached out a hand to him, giving him something to hold onto, he could face anything without fear.
He nodded obediently. Then, a sweep of his peripheral vision caught it: the hand Mingzhu had clamped on the sword hilt was soaked in blood, the white sleeve stained a spreading crimson, blood dripping steadily downward.
Zhou Fuxue jolted. “Senior Brother, your hand?!”
Mingzhu looked puzzled. He followed Zhou Fuxue’s gaze to his own dangling hand, and at the sight of that blood-drenched palm, he seemed startled too. Then he let out an “owowow,” his face contorting in agony. “It hurts, it kills! My delicate jade fingers are ruined! Senior Brother’s lost another advantage for charming the ladies…”
That instant, theatrical switch was so bizarre that even with his heart full of worry, Zhou Fuxue caught something off.
An injury that severe—he should have noticed it himself. Why did it seem as though he’d only registered it the moment Zhou Fuxue pointed it out?
The two dangled in midair, and soon Mingzhu’s hand began to tremble, losing its strength. Brow furrowed, he said mournfully, “Junior Brother, I’m sorry. Senior Brother might have to let go.”
Zhou Fuxue: “…”
Zhou Fuxue thought he was joking at first—but the words had barely fallen when he felt the grip on his wrist loosen slightly. Mingzhu, who had just sworn never to let go, looked down at him with a bitter smile. “Junior Brother… take care.”
Then his hand opened, and Zhou Fuxue dropped straight into the darkness.
As he fell, Zhou Fuxue’s face was still blank with disbelief. He stared at Mingzhu shrinking away above him, unable to comprehend how someone could swear to protect him one breath, then cast him off so lightly the next.
The lifeline in the abyss had been severed without mercy. Zhou Fuxue went cold all over, his very blood seeming to freeze solid, the pain choking the breath from his lungs.
Tears seemed to spill from his eyes, only to be whipped away into the air by the rushing fall. In the howling wind, all that could be heard was one faint, broken sob.
Just as despair swallowed him whole, a sudden burning heat burst from the point between his brows. Then an enormous Red Lotus bloomed out of thin air, engulfing Zhou Fuxue entirely, slowing his fall until he drifted gently to the ground.
In a daze, he seemed to hear a faint sigh. Then the Red Lotus before him withered and dissolved, scattering into motes of red light that settled around him into illusionary lotus blossoms.
Zhou Fuxue pressed a hand to his burning brow, understanding dawning. That was the thread of Spiritual Power Mingzhu had pressed into his brow on Rizhao Mountain—the “meeting gift,” Mingzhu had said with that devil-may-care grin. Zhou Fuxue hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Who knew it would save his life at the crucial moment?
Did Mingzhu let go of me precisely because he remembered this life-saving charm?
At that thought, Zhou Fuxue’s withered heart bloomed back to life like a dead tree in spring.
He sat up from the ground. The Red Lotuses at his feet had all dissolved, leaving only gray, hazy darkness all around. Even though nothing could be seen in the blackness, the feeling of being beyond anyone’s control bred a creeping dread.
Just as Zhou Fuxue was wondering how to climb back up to find Mingzhu, footsteps suddenly sounded in his ears. Mingzhu came walking slowly toward him, cradling a glowing Palm Lotus in his hand.
Zhou Fuxue started, then rushed forward at once. “Eldest Senior Brother.”
Mingzhu’s face was terrifyingly pale. He managed a weak laugh and reached out to ruffle Zhou Fuxue’s hair, his voice drained. “You didn’t get hurt in the fall, did you?”
Zhou Fuxue shook his head. “I’m fine. What about your hand?”
He could sense that the smell of blood on Mingzhu had grown heavier. He hastily grabbed his hand—and saw the mangled, flesh-shredded palm, nearly down to the bone. “How did it get this bad? Does it hurt?”
The moment the words left his mouth, he realized he’d asked something absurd. This was Mingzhu, who wailed for ages over the tiniest scrape. With his flesh literally torn open, by his standards this should count as a deathbed injury.
Mingzhu pulled off his outer robe and wound it haphazardly around his hand. He looked to be in considerable pain, grimacing through clenched teeth. “When we get back, I’m definitely claiming merit with Master for this. An injury like this—hss—enough to earn me a year’s rest. Oh, right, and since I’m wounded this badly, please stop dragging me to morning lessons every day.”
Zhou Fuxue didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “How can you think of such petty things at a time like this?”
Helping Mingzhu to a rock to sit on, he surveyed the dim surroundings. “Where are we? Have we already entered Hundred Swords Mountain?”
Mingzhu set the Palm Lotus aside and reached out casually to grab at the air beside him—his hand closed around a sword hilt crusted entirely in rust. His eyes darkened slightly, his expression turning grave. “No. This isn’t Hundred Swords Mountain.”
Zhou Fuxue looked at him in confusion.
Mingzhu didn’t explain further. He picked up the Palm Lotus and led Zhou Fuxue forward a short distance—and the space suddenly opened up before them, purple-white light washing over the entire cliff wall.
A colossal greatsword was plunged inverted into the ceiling above, its hilt hanging in midair. All around, black sword-aura coiled and surged across the blade, the roar of it echoing through the whole space.
Mingzhu extinguished the Palm Lotus and walked toward the cliff wall—a wall bristling with weapons driven in hilt-first, blades facing outward.
He said softly, “This is the Abandoned Sword Tomb.”
Hundred Swords Mountain had two faces. The front side was open to all, where anyone could search for weapons and win their allegiance. The reverse side lay at the bottom of the bottomless abyss: the giant sword was driven point-up into the rock, and discarded weapons without Artifact Spirits were sheathed hilt-in, point-out—wastes that could never acknowledge a master.
The Abandoned Sword Tomb was where every weapon returned after being cast aside by its master. Most had long since lost their Artifact Spirits, yet their blades still harbored the Undead—all those who had died beneath the steel, lingering without rest.
These Undead absorbed the sinister qi of the giant sword, becoming Fierce Ghosts that haunted the discarded weapons. Should they ever emerge, they would cut down gods and slaughter Buddhas alike—nothing would stand in their way.
Before coming, Daoist Master Guining had warned them over and over never to set foot in the Abandoned Sword Tomb. Yet before they had even entered Hundred Swords Mountain proper, the two of them had, through some twist of fate, tumbled straight into the very tomb everyone dreaded.
Mingzhu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Zhou Fuxue looked at the cliff walls around them, bristling densely with sword points, and his scalp prickled. He tugged at Mingzhu’s clothes, about to speak, when he suddenly felt something sticky on his hand. He raised it—and found it covered in fresh blood.
Zhou Fuxue’s brow knitted. Almost against his will, he looked behind Mingzhu—and discovered with horror that at some point, Mingzhu’s back had been soaked completely through with blood.
Zhou Fuxue nearly lost his voice. “Senior Brother!”
The wound on Mingzhu’s back looked to have been there for some time. Blood ran steadily down, dyeing his robe nearly into a garment of pure red.
Mingzhu had stayed right beside him the whole way, which was why Zhou Fuxue hadn’t noticed the horror at his back until now.
Mingzhu’s face was deathly white, his lips drained of all color. He didn’t seem to understand why Zhou Fuxue was suddenly shouting for him in such a panic, and assumed the boy was frightened. So, mustering his bravest front, he flashed a fearless grin to reassure him. “Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. The reason the Abandoned Sword Tomb sounds so terrifying out there is because the great sword at the center houses too many Undead and Fierce Ghosts. As long as we don’t go provoking them, they won’t trouble us. Let’s head back to where we fell—your Senior Sister Fuhua will probably come looking for us.”
He was still chattering away in consolation when he noticed that the boy didn’t look comforted at all—if anything, his eyes were reddening.
Nothing undid Mingzhu faster than someone crying in front of him. He hastened to surrender and coax, “Didn’t I say it’s fine? Why are you crying? Don’t be afraid. Senior Brother’s here.”
Zhou Fuxue scrubbed hard at his eyes and said coldly, “Can’t you feel the pain?”
Mingzhu immediately clutched his wounded hand and howled, “It hurts! Of course it hurts! It’s killing me! Here, why don’t you blow on it for your Senior Brother? A little blow and the pain goes away.”
Zhou Fuxue: “…”
Zhou Fuxue hated being humored like a child, hated it down to his grinding teeth. He said coldly, “You took such a terrible wound to your back. You’ve practically bled dry. You didn’t notice?”
Mingzhu reached back and felt at his own back—and his hand indeed came away slick with blood.
That obvious bewilderment let Zhou Fuxue seize on the thread at once. Before Mingzhu could even put on an act of agony, he pressed, “You can’t feel pain at all, can you? Don’t lie to me. I’m not a little kid anymore.”
Mingzhu, knocked head over heels by the question and with no idea how to answer, could only sigh inwardly. How does every class of children turn out harder to raise than the last? Now this one’s got the gall to interrogate his Senior Brother. Spoiled rotten, utterly insufferable.
Losing too much blood, his vision swimming in waves, Mingzhu had no energy left for elaborate lies. He fobbed him off casually, “That’s not my blood. I killed someone just now and rolled around in it on the ground.”
Zhou Fuxue: “…”
Zhou Fuxue was so furious his eyes reddened, ready to thrash him within an inch of his life.
