THE FIRST DAY AFTER entering the mountain range passed without incident, but on the second night, while everyone was meditating or resting, a mishap occurred.
One of the cultivators went into the forest in the middle of the night to relieve himself. As he was emptying his bladder, he felt an itch on his leg and looked down to see an enormous mosquito perched on his thigh, swollen with blood. He crushed the mosquito with a quick slap, then added out of habit, "Fuck off, goddamn bloodsucker."
Ominous rustling rose from the forest around him. Panicking, the cultivator abruptly remembered Nangong Si's warning. Without even bending to pull up his pants, he broke into a sprint, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Help! Shizun! Help me!"
This cultivator was a disciple of Jiangdong Hall and one of Huang Xiaoyue's attendants. His desperate shout was like a boulder crashing into a still pool, sending up massive waves. The travelers roused from their slumber to see the terrified Jiangdong Hall cultivator hurtling toward them from out of the trees. He was simultaneously sprinting and sobbing, ass out, dick swinging. At his heels hissed a horde of at least a hundred black snakes, several already wrapped around his ankles.
"My disciple?" Huang Xiaoyue gasped. "Don't go over there!" Nangong Si cried.
The disciple wailed as he ran, but more and more snakes slithered over him. Finally he stumbled and toppled to the ground. "Shizun!" he howled. "Shizun, save me!"
Huang Xiaoyue was about to rush to him when Nangong Si spoke up: "Those snakes are made from the evil dragon's whiskers. For each one you kill, two more will take its place, and they'll never stop chasing you. If that doesn't scare Huang-daozhang, then be my guest."
Nangong Si's words frightened Huang Xiaoyue out of his wits. He quickly found an excuse to justify his cowardice. "We must keep the bigger picture in mind, the bigger picture." He looked on as his own disciple was swallowed by a tide of snakes. The man writhed in anguish as they pulled him down, covering him until all that was left was a black mass that sank slowly but surely into the earth. As the roiling snakes dispersed, all that remained was a pool of blood, without a scrap of bone or gristle.
After that, no one uttered a single unnecessary word during the last day of the journey. Everyone understood that the more they spoke, the more likely they were to slip up. Xue Zhengyong cast a silencing spell on both himself and Xue Meng, as the two were constitutionally incapable of not speaking their minds. Heaven forbid they mumbled "damn mutt" in passing and ended up snake fodder before one could blink.
The group traversed the Panlong Range with increased caution. Late at night on the third day, they finally arrived at the base of Mount Jiao— Rufeng Sect's heroes' tomb.
Mount Jiao's barrier was different from Mount Huang's. The jiao dragon abhorred deception, and thus its barrier had no masking spells—the travelers could see the mountain clear beyond it.
Looking up, Jiang Xi asked, "So this is where Rufeng Sect buries its warriors?"
Nangong Si's features were silvered with moonlight. "It is," he replied after a beat.
Mount Jiao had once been a demonic dragon. Rufeng Sect's founding leader had defeated the creature and formed a blood pact with it, after which it had transformed into a great mountain to guard centuries' worth of Rufeng Sect's heroes and treasures, as well as its ancestral temples and memorial halls. Nangong Si had come to this mountain with his father every winter solstice to sweep the tombs and pay respects to his ancestors for as long as he could remember. Each time, he'd look up at the endless white marble steps winding to the peak, the path lined with members of the shadow guard. Their green robes fluttered in the breeze as they saluted the sect's young master. His ears would ring faintly with the calls of the kneeling crowd as he made his way to the top. There, at the highest ancestral temple, he would meet his father, already preparing the sacrificial rites.
"Nangong-gongzi, now's not the time to mope," a voice interjected. "The battle's right around the corner—open the barrier quickly so we may pass through and destroy that monster."
Nangong Si looked over his shoulder and found the speaker was none other than Huang Xiaoyue. In Rufeng Sect's glory days, a man like Huang Xiaoyue wouldn't have dared speak with such impertinence even if Nangong Si had struck him ten times across the face. But now, Huang Xiaoyue had no qualms running his mouth in sight of Nangong Si's ancestral tomb. Nangong Si swallowed down his anger, gritting his teeth so hard his molars began to ache.
"Everyone, stand back," he called out before stepping up to the gate alone.
A pair of tomb-guarding statues shaped like lions rampant flanked the gate. Carved of spiritual stone, their toes alone were the height of a five- year-old child, and their heads bore three faces, some kindly, others stern. In each raised paw was a different weapon, and vambraces encircled their arms. Such tomb guardians usually featured bulging, alert eyes, but strangely, the eyes of all these statues were closed and their brows knit. It was a disconcerting sight.
Nangong Si drew an arrow from his sleeve and, without batting an eye, pricked his fingertip. He sketched a spell array on the statues in his own blood, then intoned, "I, Nangong Si, of Rufeng Sect's seventh generation of descendants, pay my respects."
An earth-shaking rumble answered.
"The statue!" some naïve soul among the onlookers exclaimed. "Its eyes are open!"
Mo Ran looked up from within the crowd. If not for the urgency of the situation, he would've said to that excitable cultivator, It's not just the one statue—it's both of them. On either side of the gate, the tomb guardians' eyes had snapped open—their irises shone amber, pupils slitted like a snake's.
"Nangong Si." The left statue spoke, its voice a deep drone. "Dost thou remember the seven taboos of Rufeng Sect?"
"As a gentleman of Rufeng Sect, I mustn't indulge in greed, resentment, deception, slaughter, obscenity, plunder, or conquest," answered Nangong Si.
Huang Xiaoyue gave a derisive snort. "Doesn't that sound lovely." He wasn't alone—many in the crowd were silently considering that, given the present state of Rufeng Sect, these seven so-called taboos were truly ironic.
The right statue spoke next, its voice like an echo through the ages. "Nangong Si, above are the omniscient heavens, below are the boundless Yellow Springs. As thou wander'st the land, dost thou carry guilt in thy heart?"
"I carry no guilt in my heart."
Nangong Si had memorized these replies in his youth. Every member of the Nangong family, without exception, must answer these two questions before they could enter the heroes' tomb. Rufeng Sect's founder had instituted them in the hope his descendants would recall their ancestor's teachings and self-reflect when they came to pay their respects on the mountain. At that moment, Nangong Si couldn't help wondering—in all those years his father had come here offering sacrifices and honoring his ancestors, had he never felt the slightest twinge of emotion, the slightest trace of regret? Or had he merely treated this question-and-answer sequence as a lock and key, a method to open the barrier and nothing more?
In front of him, the barrier dissolved. The two lions rumbled to life, each bending a knee in a sluggish genuflection. "We humbly invite our master to pass."
Nangong Si stood for a moment, facing away from the crowd. No one—not even Ye Wangxi—could see his expression. Naobaijin whimpered plaintively from his quiver, clinging to the mouth with snow-white paws.
"Let's go," Nangong Si said at last, and stepped over the boundary of Mount Jiao.
Xue Zhengyong lifted his silencing spell. "Do we still have to mind our language here?"
"There's no need," replied Nangong Si. "That only applies to the Panlong Range. It's meant to keep out any who wish harm on Rufeng Sect. By this point, the jiao has determined that those climbing the mountain aren't enemies, so it no longer matters what you say."
Despite his explanation, the group remained on edge as they followed Nangong Si up the mountain in silence. Every quarter mile or so, they came across a pair of zodiac animal statues on either side of the path, one male and one female. First it was two rats, then two cows, two tigers, two rabbits…
Halfway up, where the grade flattened out, the burial grounds of Rufeng Sect's warriors began. Their graves were arranged in ascending order according to merits accumulated in life. This first area held the lowest-ranking graves. An eight-foot-tall stele of radiant white jade stood before them, the words Faithful Souls carved at the top and countless names recorded beneath.
"I heard all the servants of the Nangong family are buried here," Xue Meng whispered to Mo Ran. "Thousands of them, if not more."
He wasn't wrong: the slope was dotted with graves as far as the eye could see.
"If all these thousands of servants are reanimated, what will we do?" Shi Mei asked anxiously. "The Nangong family's servants are all capable. They'd put up a good fight."
Xue Meng clapped a hand over Shi Mei's mouth. " Shh, are you crazy? Quick, take it back, don't jinx us—"
"Too late for that," Mo Ran said gloomily. "Hey, where are you going, you damn mutt?"
Mo Ran didn't answer. Taking swift strides, he broke from the crowd and approached one of the gravestones. He dropped to one knee and carefully looked it over.
Rufeng Sect's heroes' tomb was no ordinary graveyard—there were no burial mounds. The coffins were carved from translucent jade and resembled thick blocks of ice; only the bottoms were buried in the earth, while the upper halves remained visible aboveground. The burial grounds resembled nothing so much as a row of ornamental jade belts, glimmering in the moonlight.
This sort of icy jade was of the same sort as the coffins Sisheng Peak used in Frostsky Hall. It prevented bodies from decaying, preserving them as they were in life. Mo Ran lowered his head and carefully examined the coffin before him. No burial grounds were kept fastidiously clean, and there was a thick layer of dust on the coffin. Through it, Mo Ran could make out the blurry outlines of the corpse's face. Although the features were muddled, based on the corpse's figure, it looked to be a woman. Mo Ran tore his gaze away from her and looked over the outside of the coffin once more. Something about it unsettled him, but what, he couldn't say.
He glanced around—no one was watching. He pressed a palm to the coffin, closed his eyes, and probed the flow of spiritual energy…
His hand spasmed. Mo Ran's eyes flew open, his face pale.
Dark energy was present in this coffin, but only faintly. There was no trace of Zhenlong Chess. Had he been mistaken?
"Mo Ran!" Xue Meng called, already some distance away as he followed the crowd.
"Just a moment," Mo Ran muttered under his breath. He ran slender fingers over the coffin's surface and wiped away the accumulated dust, hoping to get a better look at the woman's face without opening the coffin. But as he worked, something in the corner of his eye made him stop in his tracks.
He realized what was off—it was the dust itself.
There was something wrong with the way dust lay on this coffin.
Aside from the area he had just cleaned, there was dust missing somewhere else. Four short streaks of different lengths marked the side of the coffin.
After a brief hesitation, he reached over to investigate. Four streaks—precisely where someone's four fingers would land if they'd disturbed the dust climbing out.
The rest of the blood drained from Mo Ran's face. Just as he parted his lips to tell everyone to stop climbing the mountain, he felt a draft of cold air behind him.
He turned and came face-to-face with a bone-white complexion. A woman in burial robes squatted behind the gravestone, staring right at him.