BUT CHU WANNING didn't stop, nor turn his head. He couldn't.
Despite gritting his teeth against the pain, tears streamed down his face.
It hurt too much.
But what else could he do? Explain himself? Lash out? After what had happened, how was he to muster up the courage to tell Mo Ran the truth? Was he to pitifully attempt an explanation while Mo Ran mocked and ridiculed him? Did he want to get labeled a worthless pretender on top of a piss-poor copycat?
So he left.
Perhaps the conversation that took place that night between master and disciple under Naihe Bridge, by the waters of the Yellow Springs, might have drifted along the surging waters down the mountain creeks, into the rivers, all the way to the netherworld. If that youth beneath the Springs, gentle as lotus petals, overheard these words, perhaps his heart would ache at the tension between these two.
Mo Ran stood alone by the riverbank. Maybe this was fate, he thought. Chu Wanning had suspected the others, but not him. Their run-in had been a coincidence—Chu Wanning had been patrolling in the backwoods, and after summoning Tianwen to dispatch a minor ghost, hadn't dispersed the holy weapon. It had been hanging coiled at his waist, glittering gold against Chu Wanning's white robes. This vine that could compel truth, this whip that could have wound around the future Emperor Taxian-jun's neck before he ever ascended, had glowed throughout their entire conversation. But Chu Wanning hadn't unleashed it to interrogate him.
So much for Tianwen. Mo Ran trudged up the riverbank. He stepped into the depths of the rustling bamboo forest, into the gloomiest crevices of the night, and let the darkness swallow him up.
After this episode, Mo Ran set about creating chess pieces with a newfound sense of purpose. Two, then four, then ten—an ever-increasing number. He planted them one after another into the bodies of Sisheng Peak disciples, turning them into his eyes and ears, his talons and blades.
Gradually, his initial satisfaction wore off. Mo Ran grew frustrated and gloomy. He was quicker than ever to lose his temper and lash out, forever impatient. This was too slow. These pieces weren't enough. He was afraid of Chu Wanning noticing, so he didn't dare expend all his energy on making Zhenlong chess pieces as he had in that first trial. He made one piece at a time, saving half his energy.
At the same time, he put aside his open hostility; he sheathed his claws and returned to learning cultivation from Chu Wanning. He had concluded after some thought that Chu Wanning was the key to improving his cultivation as swiftly as possible. Chu Wanning could help him build the first stepping stone he'd use to trample over the bodies of the living.
Why look a gift horse in the mouth?
One day, he accidentally overextended himself. As he balanced on the slender tips of a tree's branches, he lost control and dropped like a stone.
In an instant, Chu Wanning leapt toward him, a streak of white robes. He caught Mo Ran but had no hand free to summon a barrier; the two of them tumbled to the ground beneath the tree, Mo Ran landing squarely on top of Chu Wanning as he grunted in pain. When Mo Ran opened his eyes, he saw that Chu Wanning's hand had been scraped in the fall, leaving a bloody gash.
Mo Ran stared at the wound. Cruel excitement welled up in him; already his personality had begun to warp, and he felt neither gratitude nor guilt. In fact, he found this blood quite pleasing—why not shed a little more?
But the time was not yet ripe. He couldn't reveal the malevolent face hidden beneath his mask, so he helped Chu Wanning clean and dress the wound. Neither of them spoke, both lost in their own thoughts. Mo Ran wrapped the snowy white bandage several times over Chu Wanning's hand. At last, he said pointedly, "Thank you, Shizun."
These words of gratitude caught Chu Wanning off guard. He looked up, gazing into Mo Ran's face. Sunlight spilled through the branches, illuminating Mo Ran's features and his dark eyes.
Mo Ran was curious—what would Chu Wanning make of his thanks? Was this errant child finally mending his ways? Was the tension between them finally easing?
But Chu Wanning said nothing at all. He merely lowered his lashes and shook his sleeve down over his injured hand.
A breeze brushed past, and the sun warmed the earth.
In his past life, Mo Ran had never understood his shizun, and likewise, his shizun had gravely misread him.
Time marched on. Mo Ran's spiritual energy grew by leaps and bounds. His innate talent was extraordinary, and the number of chess pieces he could refine with half of his energy multiplied from one, to two, to four. But it still wasn't enough. What he needed was the power of millions of soldiers, enough to crush Sisheng Peak in one blow, enough to grind Chu Wanning under his heel.
Math was not one of his talents. When Xue Meng came to visit him, he beheld the man who would one day become Emperor Taxian-jun clutching an abacus, beads clacking as he calculated sums. Curious, he sidled close. "Hey, what are you working on?"
"Balancing the scales." "What kind of balance?"
Mo Ran paused, eyes shadowed. "Guess," he said with a smile.
"No clue." Xue Meng walked over, picking up the notebook and mumbling as he read, "One…three hundred sixty-five days…three hundred sixty-five…four…three hundred sixty-five… What the heck is this?"
"I want to buy candy," Mo Ran said expressionlessly. "Candy?"
"The best candy from Moonlight Confectionery is one copper apiece. If I saved one copper every day, I could buy three hundred sixty- five candies in a year. If I can save four coppers a day, that would be…" He lowered his head, counting on his fingers, but he couldn't arrive at the sum. Shaking his head, he returned to clacking on the abacus beads. "That's a thousand…"
Xue Meng was far nimbler at mental math. "One thousand, four hundred sixty candies," he offered.
Mo Ran looked up, his smile brightening. "You did that awfully quickly."
Xue Meng wasn't used to praise from Mo Ran. He blinked, then burst into laughter. "Of course. I've been helping Mom measure out medicines since I was little."
Mo Ran pondered in silence a moment. He grinned. "I can't figure it out. Do me a favor and help me out?"
He had rarely been in such a good mood since Shi Mei's death. As Xue Meng watched him sitting there with the sun at his back, a wave of pity rose in his heart. He nodded and pulled a chair beside Mo Ran. "Okay, go ahead."
"If I saved enough for ten candies a day, how many would I have in a year?"
"Three thousand, six hundred fifty. You don't need the abacus to calculate this one—that's too easy."
Mo Ran sighed. "What about more? Fifteen…" He reconsidered; maybe making that many chess pieces was too much. Mo Ran amended, "Twelve a day. How many would that be?"
"Four thousand… Four thousand, three hundred eighty."
"If I wanted five thousand, how many more days would that take?" "You'd need…" Xue Meng scratched his head, struggling with the question. "Why do you want so much candy? It's not like you could eat them all."
Mo Ran lowered his lashes, hiding the darkness in his eyes. "Sisheng Peak's thirtieth anniversary is next year. I want to give everyone a piece of candy, so I need to start saving today."
"That's what you're thinking about?" Xue Meng was stunned. "Mn." Mo Ran smiled. "Are you surprised? You'll get one too."
"I don't need one." Xue Meng waved his hands. "I don't need candy from you. Here, I'll help with the math. Let's see how long it'll take for you to buy five thousand candies."
In the shade of the flowering trees by the window, Xue Meng took up the abacus and earnestly helped Mo Ran do the calculations. Mo Ran watched with a cheek propped in his hand, eyes flickering. After a spell, he chuckled and said, "Thank you."
Xue Meng scoffed, too engrossed in his task to pay Mo Ran much mind. His eyes followed those black abacus beads flicking past his fingers, like black chess pieces piling up one by one.
How was Xue Meng to know his calculations weren't for candy, but for human lives—the number of souls it would take to topple Sisheng Peak. Nor could he know it was the sight of him sitting by the windowsill and lending a hand that caught at the last wisp of kindness in Mo Ran's heart. It was on account of this lingering sentiment that Mo Ran refrained from making Xue Meng one of those five thousand pawns.
When Xue Meng wrote down the final number, Mo Ran shook his head. "It's going to take that long? That's too much."
"Why don't I lend you some money?" Xue Meng asked. Mo Ran smiled. "No thanks."
After Xue Meng left, Mo Ran sank into thought. As he rifled through his scrolls, a plan took shape in his heart. This was the plan that would become a prototype of Taxian-jun's Shared-Heart Array.
That night, Mo Ran refined ten chess pieces. They were imperfect and unfinished. He hadn't put much into them, so they couldn't control the living; even corpses with some power would prove difficult.
Taking these chess pieces in hand, Mo Ran set off down the mountain toward the outskirts of Wuchang Town. He hummed as strode along, and soon arrived at his destination: Crane's Return Hill. Folktales had it that when a person died, a crane would take flight, winging them into the heavens. Commoners clung to this beautiful illusion, but in frank terms, the hill was a graveyard. The dead of Wuchang Town were buried here, their bones laid to rest in the dirt.
Mo Ran wasted no time. He stalked between rows of graves, his gaze raking across the names on top. Presently he stopped before a gravestone with fresh fruit and steamed buns arrayed before it, its inscriptions still stark. He extended a hand, fingers curling into a fist. Earth cracked, and the ground parted to reveal a simple coffin lying within the sandy soil.
Owing to an experience he'd had in his youth, Mo Ran had no fear of corpses, nor any veneration for dead bodies. He hopped down from the mound of dirt and summoned his holy weapon, prying open the lid and kicking it aside.
Moonlight shone down on the face of the deceased. Mo Ran craned his neck, studying the corpse as if judging pork at a butcher's. It was an old geezer, freshly interred, his face shriveled and sunken within his burial clothes. The graveyard wasn't in the best location, and his family hadn't the money to embalm him, so the coffin stank profoundly. Some of his flesh had already begun to rot, writhing with maggots.
Mo Ran frowned, ignoring the stench as he slipped on a pair of chain mail gloves. He grabbed the old man's neck and lifted him out of the coffin. The corpse's head lurched stiffly forward. Eyes cold, he reached out with a lightning-quick flourish and planted that Zhenlong chess piece into the old man's chest.
"Behave, behave." Mo Ran patted the corpse's cheek almost tenderly, then backhanded it hard across the face. "Why so glum?" he asked with a grin. "Stand up straight, sweetheart."
The defective black chess piece couldn't take control of a strong corpse, but it was more than capable of puppeteering a skinny old geezer. The corpse twitched to life, limbs creaking. Those tightly closed eyelids stretched open to reveal rheumy pupils.
"What is your name?" Mo Ran asked. "My name is not mine to say." "Where are you?"
"My location is not mine to say." "How old are you?"
"My age is not mine to say."
Mo Ran narrowed his eyes, weighing the nine remaining chess pieces in his hand. If he made pawns of corpses like these, there would be no need to expend so much spiritual energy making those pure black chess pieces. He grinned, dimples deepening as his face split into a mesmerizing smile. Slowly, he asked the final question. "What do you want?"
"I want to serve as your pawn, sparing no effort, on pain of death." Mo Ran burst into laughter. He was wholly satisfied by this result.
Palming the remaining chess pieces, he made nine more corpse puppets. He chose only freshly buried corpses with flesh that was unspoiled and not eaten away.
These bodies were old and weak, and would topple at the slightest breeze. They had no power, but as Mo Ran watched them, his eyes sparked with madness and delight. He produced a dozen-odd small boxes from his qiankun pouch and opened one. Two crimson bugs curled within, one male and one female. They were biting each other's tails, locked in an inseparable loop.
"All right, you've had your fun. Could you two please give it a rest
—it's high time you made yourself useful," Mo Ran drawled, pulling the two mating bugs apart. He picked up the male insect and turned to the first pawn he'd made, the old man. "Good sir, please open your stinking mouth."
The old man obediently did so, revealing its putrid tongue. Mo Ran tossed the male insect into his mouth. "Swallow."
Without hesitation or resistance, the corpse swallowed the soul-eater.
Mo Ran fed the remaining male insects to the corpses in the same way. "All right, now lie back down and rest."
The next day, Mo Ran refined another ten black chess pieces, all defective, none requiring much spiritual energy. He stuck the female soul- eaters on these pieces and secretly planted them inside some lower-level disciples. Those disciples merely felt some itchiness in their lower back, nothing too alarming. Now Mo Ran had to wait—but he wasn't impatient. Soon the female soul-eaters would lay eggs, hatching larvae in the disciple's hearts that would resonate with the male insects in the corpses.
In this way, two chess pieces that weren't linked at all would become a matched set of parent-child puppets. It was like flying a kite: the feeble corpses had become the kite strings, with one end in Mo Ran's hands and the other in the stronger disciples. Command the corpses with the male insects, and the living pawns containing their larvae would perform the exact same movements as if they were one—this was the meaning of "shared heart."
Mo Ran himself had invented this masterful technique. Those who had attempted the Zhenlong Chess Formation before him had been great zongshi who neither lacked for spiritual energy nor were insane enough to create thousands or tens of thousands of pawns. They had no need for such underhanded tricks.
Back then, Mo Ran, infatuated as he was with dark magic, had no notion that he'd accomplished something terrifying, something no one in the cultivation realm had done in all the years of its history—he had taken a fiendish technique that could level mountains and turned it into something anyone could attempt. Anyone could use it for their own ends.
"Ge!"
A shout from beside him—Mo Ran snapped back to his senses.
Bloody light flashed before his eyes. The vines of the evil phoenix spirit nestled within Mount Huang had multiplied again; they hurtled toward him in a whirl of death. The phoenix was a beast of the air, fast as the wind.
Mo Ran dodged a moment too slowly; a cut opened on his arm, spraying blood.
"Are you okay?!" Xue Meng shouted.
"Don't come any closer!" Mo Ran panted, eyes cold and sharp as he stared at those scarlet vines swaying like tentacles as they readied for another attack. "Go to Shizun, hurry!" he snapped. "Tell him to stop! Tell him to get everyone to stop!"
Blood trickled down his arm as he gripped the corpse's heart and that chess piece tighter in his hand. His mind was spinning, a thousand thoughts vying for his attention. There was no doubt anymore that this was the Shared-Heart Array, employed to much greater effect than he had done in the past life. Despite the improvements, the concept was the same. The larval body would only answer commands if the parent vessel was maintained.
Mo Ran held that Zhenlong chess piece, trembling minutely—not from the pain in his arm, but the coldness and terror crawling up his body. Someone else had been reborn, he was certain now. But did this reborn person know he, too, was a ghost who had clawed his way back to life? If they did, then…
A chill spiked up his spine; despair threatened to engulf him.
Taxian-jun's pale face seemed to swim before his eyes, the imperial bead crown rustling above a malicious leer. He sat high on the dais, staring down from the throne with his cheek in his hand. Cold and mocking, he said, "Go on and run, Mo-zongshi. Where could you flee to?"
Ghostly silhouettes rose like the tide. All the people he'd slaughtered in the past life, all the debts he'd racked up. He saw Shi Mei, covered in blood; he saw Chu Wanning, pale as ice; he saw hanged women dragging their white silk nooses, disemboweled men with their intestines spilling across the ground.
They wanted his life.
"You can't hide forever. Someone else knows—you're merely a shell hiding a despicable soul. You will never be redeemed."
Mo Ran closed his eyes. If the one behind all this knew he'd been reborn, if that person revealed everything he'd done in the past, then… what would he do?
He didn't dare to think.