Chapter 14: 14 Playing the Pig to Devour the Tiger

◎This junior is Mingzhu, eldest disciple under Daoist Master Guining of Rizhao Mountain.◎

In truth, Mingzhu had nearly given out the moment he dropped Zhou Fuxue. He had feared heights since childhood; falling from such a height was pure torment. If not for the single thought of protecting Zhou Fuxue anchoring his mind, he would have rolled his eyes back and fainted long ago.

After hanging from the sword hilt for a quarter of an hour, Mingzhu’s gravity-scrambled brain finally recalled that Zhou Fuxue still carried his Body-Protection Charm—and he released his grip without ceremony, letting the boy fall free.

But no sooner had he let go than regret hit him.

“I… don’t think I have a Body-Protection Charm…” That was his last thought as he fell. His weakened fingers slipped uncontrollably open, that terrifying weightlessness seized him again—and then he crashed heavily onto the ground.

Fortunately, they had already fallen most of the way down. Mingzhu’s landing only knocked him out briefly before he scrambled back up, entirely unaware that the ground was littered with rusted scrap blades several finger-joints long, edges facing up. He had landed on his back, and those rust-eaten but still razor-sharp edges had stabbed into his body indiscriminately, very nearly carving him into a sieve.

He didn’t feel much pain at the moment—but it was Zhou Fuxue whose eyes went red first.

Mingzhu sighed over how troublesome children were, reached out, and pulled the red-eyed boy into his arms, murmuring, “Don’t cry. It’s nothing serious. Nobody’s dying. Right now the priority is getting out of here.”

Zhou Fuxue scrubbed hard at his eyes. “I’m not crying.”

Mingzhu said helplessly, “Fine, fine, you’re not crying. Senior Brother’s crying, happy? Cried myself half to death.”

Having briefly soothed the prickly child, he took Zhou Fuxue’s hand and was about to retrace their path to find Ming Fuhua when a voice drifted eerily from behind them.

“Since you two have come… do not think to leave.”

The voice was icy and steeped in malice. Zhou Fuxue shuddered all over, unconsciously tightening his grip on Mingzhu’s arm.

Without turning around, Mingzhu gave a small sigh and murmured to himself, “Ah. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy.”

Zhou Fuxue looked up at him, stunned.

Mingzhu raised a hand and covered Zhou Fuxue’s eyes before slowly turning around. His pale face still wore that casual, indolent expression as his lips curved into a smile. “This junior has merely stumbled into your honorable territory by accident. If I’ve offended you, Senior, I beg your forgiveness. Might you lift your merciful hand and grant us a path to live?”

Anyone dwelling in the Abandoned Sword Tomb was bound to be a great villain steeped in crime. The man before Mingzhu was cloaked in a black robe, tall and powerfully built, wreathed in clinging black Malicious Qi—even his features could not be made out clearly. A Long Halberd rested in his grip, its blade mottled with dried blood. One look was enough to know he was ruthless to the bone.

Hearing Mingzhu’s words, the man chuckled darkly. “The Abandoned Sword Tomb has not tasted fresh flesh and blood in how many years? With Living Souls, we may return to the world of men. Did you truly, naively believe I would let you go? Spare me your apologies. Leave your lives, and that is enough.”

Zhou Fuxue shuddered at that poison-laced voice. In the darkness he could not see, every blade on the tomb’s walls began to glow faintly—and then countless blood-soaked Undead came crawling out of them on all fours, a seething, skin-crawling horde.

Their faces were vacant, blood-tears streaming from their eyes, and they all shuffled slowly toward the two, mouths droning in unison: “The blood of Living Souls.”

Mingzhu gazed upon that scene straight out of purgatory—the sight that should have terrified him out of his wits—yet his expression didn’t change. He simply sighed softly. “Senior, such unreasonable behavior wounds this junior’s heart. How about this instead: I’m thick-skinned, tough, and my life is cheap—I can stay. But my junior brother is still so young. Show mercy and let him go. How about it?”

Zhou Fuxue jolted, yanking Mingzhu’s hand from his eyes. “Senior Brother—”

But before the words left his mouth, his gaze swept over the scene of ten thousand ghosts seething around them—and his whole body went rigid, his legs buckling as he nearly collapsed.

Mingzhu caught him and muttered, “I told you not to look, but you had to look.”

The man sneered. “How about this: everyone stays.”

With that, he raised the halberd slightly and brought it down on the ground with a muffled boom. The giant sword hanging at the center shuddered with a violent hum, and the entire cavern shook to its foundations.

Mingzhu gripped Zhou Fuxue’s shoulder and leaned to his ear, whispering, “In a moment, you go back the way we came. If you’re scared, don’t look back. Your Senior Sister Fuhua will come down for you soon.”

Zhou Fuxue: “And you?”

Mingzhu winked at him, insolent and shameless. “Your Senior Brother is going to beat every last one of them back to their graves. It’s going to be very bloody. Children shouldn’t watch—nightmares, you know.”

Zhou Fuxue: “…”

Even in a scene crawling with ten thousand ghosts, Zhou Fuxue felt an uncontrollable urge to punch this big-talking Eldest Senior Brother square in the face.

Behind them, the man seemed to snort coldly. The Long Halberd struck the ground again, and from its blade’s tip, several black mist-like cords erupted, slashing down mercilessly at the insolent fool. At the same moment, the blood-soaked Undead had closed in, rotting hands reaching for Mingzhu.

Mingzhu scooped up the stunned Zhou Fuxue and dove aside, just barely evading. The black cords crashed down where they’d stood—seemingly weightless, yet striking with the force of a thousand pounds, blasting the solid rock into a massive crater, dust exploding everywhere.

Mingzhu darted a glance sideways, then hauled Zhou Fuxue up and fled back the way they’d come, sighing and groaning as he ran. “I told you Master is a jinx—nothing good he says ever comes true, but every bad word does! Why did he have to bring up the Abandoned Sword Tomb right before we left, huh? ‘Treacherous at every step,’ he says… Whoa, that almost hit me! Well, congratulations, Master, you got your wish! Crouching over a firewood pile, my—AAH!”

Zhou Fuxue: “…”

Mingzhu hadn’t made it more than a few stumbling steps before the mangled Undead swarmed after him, surging in alongside the black cords.

Zhou Fuxue’s voice cracked: “Senior Brother, watch out!”

Even in this deadly peril, Mingzhu found the leisure to tease, “So the little bastard finally worries about me once. Wasn’t a waste raising you.”

As if he couldn’t see the death-bearing Undead at his heels, he sprinted at full speed back to the narrow passage. Then, with one hand, he hoisted Zhou Fuxue and hurled him mercilessly inside—and with the other, he raised his palm high and slammed a fire-wreathed Red Lotus strike into the cliff wall above the passage.

Amid a world-shaking roar and flying dust, Zhou Fuxue landed inside the passage as an enormous boulder—shaken loose from the wall by Mingzhu’s palm—rolled precisely into the mouth of the passage, plugging the narrow opening completely.

The aura of the man with the Long Halberd turned utterly sinister in that instant. Through clenched teeth, he ground out, “Nothing but a Spirit-Veinless waste!”

In the moment the boulder fell, the last thing Zhou Fuxue saw was the swarm of rot-fleshed Undead, claws bared, engulfing Mingzhu completely.

Time passed—how much, none could say—before Zhou Fuxue, head still ringing from the rockfall, finally stirred awake. His mind was chaos when his eyes first opened; only after a while did his thoughts barely cohere.

He pieced together, step by step, everything that had happened before he blacked out. The memory cut off at the image of Mingzhu swallowed by the swarming Undead. He sat on the ground with hollow, staring eyes—then suddenly jolted as if startled awake, groped through the darkness to the boulder sealing the passage, and pushed at it with every ounce of strength he had, trying in vain to move that impossibly massive obstruction.

Through gritted teeth he strained against the rock, while despair flooded his heart. Mingzhu is such a coward—he screams at skeletons and withered bones. Facing those horrifying Undead all alone right now—how terrified must he be?

The harder Zhou Fuxue pushed, the more desperate he grew, but the rock sealing the entire passage didn’t budge a hair. At last he gave up, kneeling on the ground with his head buried in his arms, murmuring, “Senior Brother…”

He remembered how, when Mingzhu had gripped his wrist, Mingzhu’s own hand had been trembling uncontrollably—clearly terrified out of his mind. And yet he had forced himself to look calm and in control, and flung Zhou Fuxue out of danger at any cost.

All around was pitch darkness. The ground seemed to tremble faintly.

On the other side of the boulder, after sending Zhou Fuxue to safety, the first wave of Undead had surged at Mingzhu like storm clouds and rain, slamming his slender figure straight to the ground.

The man with the Long Halberd sneered. The black cords slowly retracted. Without so much as a glance at the dead-man-walking waste, he turned to leave.

Then—a searing heat surged from behind him. He whipped around, and from the spot where the Undead had piled onto their prey, a wall of crimson flame erupted like a lotus in full bloom, incinerating that heap of dead flesh to ash in an instant.

The flame’s heat was so intense that the Undead trailing behind halted mid-step, trembling violently on pure instinct—too terrified to advance.

The enormous Red Lotus unfurled, its petals parting and drifting down like flowing sleeves to reveal the figure at its heart.

Mingzhu stood tall amid the Red Lotus as if cloaked in living fire, his ink-black hair stirring without wind. His smile bloomed like a flower—yet on him, Rizhao Mountain’s plain, elegant robes carried an eerily demonic, bewitching aura.

His lowered hand still trembled faintly—but not from fear.

At last, the man’s face darkened. “Who are you?”

Mingzhu extended his hand, and a scarlet tongue traced lightly over the Red Lotus Mark on the back of it. His peach-blossom eyes curved into a captivating arc as he chuckled, “I keep forgetting to introduce myself. This junior is Mingzhu, eldest disciple under Daoist Master Guining of Rizhao Mountain.”

“Rizhao? Guining? Heh.” The man gave a cold laugh at the name. “Blood Lotus Flame… and that looks like the Red Lotus Sword. And your surname is Ming… What relation are you to Mingzhao?”

Mingzhu’s eyes curved all the more beautifully. From his sleeve, he drew that exquisite little knife—the very one Mr. Dao had called “Kuayu” during morning lessons at Rizhao Mountain.

“Mingzhao?” He tilted his head, shedding his usual devil-may-care frivolity—though the indolence was carved too deep into his bones to fully leave. His eyes drooped lazily, the red tear-marks beneath them looking as if they would drip blood at any moment. “He’s my enemy. What, you know him?”

The Long Halberd in the man’s hands began trembling uncontrollably, shaking so violently he nearly lost his grip. With no time to answer Mingzhu’s question, he barked furiously at the quivering weapon, “Behave yourself!”

The halberd kept trembling regardless.

Mingzhu suddenly laughed. That face of his was simply too stunning—merely standing there, he exerted a pressure that made the heart stutter.

“I’m afraid it can’t behave itself,” Mingzhu said mildly. At the same moment, the “Kuayu” he’d been idly toying with in his hand let out a clear, ringing hum—and with a flash of red light, a long sword of flowing radiance leapt into Mingzhu’s palm.

The man froze, the black-mist-shrouded face flushing an ugly shade of green. “Impossible! You’re nothing but a Spirit-Veinless waste! How could you have a Natal Artifact Spirit?!”

Mingzhu laughed softly. His slender fingers brushed over the ancient carved scabbard as he replied airily, lids drooping over long lashes, “Oh, now that you mention it, I remember—my Ninth Junior Brother wanted some spirit-infused implements to research something called the Wind Arising from the Hollow Cave. That Long Halberd of yours actually looks rather fine.”

The halberd trembled harder still.

Mingzhu drew the Kuayu Sword with fluid ease, tilting his head with a smile. “Kuayu—fetch it for me, would you?”