Trailing behind Ye Baiyi, the few of them circled around within the mountain range, wandering, until they ventured into a patch of woods. Upon entering the woods, Zhou Zishu's whole body tensed inexplicably--he could not put his finger on what hidden treachery was present in this forest, but he instinctively sensed a hint of danger.
Wen Kexing, who had been annoyingly loud this whole journey, shut his mouth at this moment as well. Even Ye Baiyi's expression grew serious; he stopped every now and then, extremely cautious.
Zhang Chengling was the only one who was still unaware of what was going on. He was celebrating internally, because it looked like he could take a day off today. One of his shifu's hands was pulling at his arm--those fingers were long and slender but strong, and Zhang Chengling could almost feel the heat of his palm through the thick cotton of his sleeve. It provided a great sense of security, and Zhang Chengling obediently let himself be led, quietly overjoyed.
Ye Baiyi kept muttering something, and had to stop occasionally to write some calculations on the ground with a small branch. At first, Wen Kexing, very interested in what he was doing, stood beside him and watched for a while, but soon felt like his brain was turning into mush. Dizzied by his own incomprehension, he silently retreated to one side to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Zhou Zishu, and asked him a low voice, "Aren't you going to look at what he's doing?"
Knowing his own shortcomings well, Zhou Zishu replied, "What for? I won't understand it anyway."
Still, he frowned lightly, and too lowered his voice to ask Wen Kexing, "Rationally speaking...among the people I sent here, there were also experts on trap mechanisms and the art of the vanishing door. Why was not a single one of them able to find that Puppet Manor?"
Wen Kexing casually asked, "Didn't you say that someone drew a map?"
Zhou Zishu replied, "Yes, he did. When he took the map he drew and brought people on a second trip to find it once more, not a single one returned."
Wen Kexing cast a grave look at Ye Baiyi's squatting figure, and lowered his voice even more. "If even…have perished here, do you think that this old glutton is reliable?"
Zhou Zishu was about to speak, but before he could even make a sound, Ye Baiyi had stood up and turned his head back at them, saying coldly, "The rest of this journey is treacherous. If you don't wish to die, step in my footprints."
Zhou Zishu scratched his nose. Ye Baiyi cast a look at him and scoffed. "An expert in the art of the vanishing door? If their leader is already this incapable, can his subordinates not be rice bins?"
He turned and walked off immediately once he was done speaking.
The facial expressions of those three which included Zhou Zishu were very odd--anyone who had witnessed Old Senior Ye's appetite with their own eyes, and then heard him call someone a "rice bin" with their own ears would have an odd expression on their face as well.
However, odd expressions were one matter; apart from Zhang Chengling, neither of these two adults were people who could not discern what was important from the trivial, and they immediately followed Ye Baiyi. Zhang Chengling glimpsed that there were more and more carcasses of various animals by the roadside, and felt that this place was gloomy and sinister. After walking for a while, he even saw a few sets of human bones, with the heads all separated from the bodies. They looked very terrifying, and, trembling, he asked Zhou Zishu, "Shifu, the person we're looking for, why does he want to live in a place like this?"
Zhou Zishu turned his head to the side to glance at him, and said, "How would I know? In a vast jungle, there will be birds of any kind."
Zhang Chengling carefully stepped over a segment of human femur, and could not help but ask, "He lives somewhere so isolated, and created so many traps that every step he takes is heart-pounding. What if he gets lost too when he makes a trip out of here? Isn't this like putting a mousetrap under your own bed?"
Finding his words strange, Zhou Zishu questioned, "Putting a mousetrap under your own bed?"
Zhang Chengling said, "One time, when I was a kid, mice got into my room. I couldn't catch them no matter what I tried, so I put two mousetraps under my bed and went to sleep. But I forgot all about them the next morning, stepped on the traps, and got my toes fractured by the mousetraps."
Wen Kexing heard this, and a 'pfft' of laughter escaped him. Zhou Zishu sighed; spotting that Zhang Chengling had nearly taken a wrong step because he was focused on talking, he picked him up and reprimanded, "Shut up and watch your step, do you want to die?"
Zhang Chengling stuck his tongue out, and Zhou Zishu said coolly, "Don't measure others by your own behaviour--in this world, how are there that many people who are as stupid as you are?"
Wen Kexing picked up the topic of conversation, gently and patiently explaining to Zhang Chengling, "There is actually no more than that small handful of reasons as to why a person would want to hide himself. Either this person suspects that there are enemies out to kill him and feels like he has no other choice but to conceal himself in a place where no one can find him in…"
Zhou Zishu cut in sharply, "Like the Ghost Valley?"
Wen Kexing glanced at him and said, "If you want to put it that way...it's also correct."
Zhou Zishu took the chance to question, "So, what sin unforgivable by the heavens and commonfolk did the Valley Master commit back then, to have no other choice but to hide in the Ghost Valley?"
Wen Kexing did not mind his opportunistic interrogation, and simply replied unabashedly, "Me? I, naturally, was a more special case. I didn't commit any crime, and simply entered it cluelessly. Until now, I don't understand how such a good person as I am has coexisted with evil ghosts for so many years. I am truly the unsullied flower that remains pure despite having grown amidst mud, shining with a chaste beauty after clear water washes me clean."
Zhou Zishu smiled without saying anything, treating whatever he said entirely as bullshit.
Wen Kexing sighed. "A-Xu, you really wound my heart--little tyke, do you think I'm a good person?"
He had a good temperament, was highly skilled at martial arts, and even told stories--Zhang Chengling was in such awe of this senior that he was nearly prostrating himself in reverence. Upon hearing this question, he instantly nodded, bobbing his head in a manner reminiscent of a knife dicing garlic.
Wen Kexing was extremely moved. He patted Zhang Chengling's head and sighed, "The child is still the best: he has a conscience and can differentiate between good and evil, he'll remember it when people treat him well, unlike a certain person...sigh!"
Zhou Zishu did not speak--they were all leaders, but those like Gao Chong who led a bunch of people who thought of themselves as the orthodox, or those like himself who led a group of assassins and spies, were different from the Master of the Ghost Valley. Gao Chong only needed to employ the few words "The righteous cause for all under heaven" and those people would trap themselves by operating within certain boundaries of their own accord. On the other hand, those in "Tian Chuang" basically joined to sell their lives to him, and to the Emperor. Behind that organisation was rigorous and immense sovereign power, and from its establishment till today, other than himself, no one else had dared to challenge it.
But the Ghost Valley was different, because within the Ghost Valley was a bunch of fugitives.
They were like a swarm of the wickedest venomous insects that had been sealed in a narrow, cramped container, where massacring one another was the only way to keep surviving. It was a place of a million evil souls; only when one died, could the other live. There were no morals, and no axioms; there was only the survival of the fittest, and only the one mighty and vicious enough to devour them all--that insect which became the king of poisons--could come out into the daylight again.
Wen Kexing disguised himself too well; many times, even Zhou Zishu would mistake him for just an ordinary, talkative man.
To the side, Wen Kexing continued telling Zhang Chengling, "Other than the fear of being hunted down, there's another reason that makes someone hide from others, and it is sadness. In his heart, he knows that he will not be able to lay eyes on the person he wants to see most ever again, so he might as well bury himself in this place. After a long time, he can comfort himself by saying, the only reason why he didn't come look for me is because he has not been able to find me, and nothing more."
He exhaled a light sigh, and continued, "If your shifu's no longer around in the future, who knows, I might want to find a place like this to hide away in. Otherwise, if I go out and see beautiful people milling about the streets, and yet can never find that one beauty who's the best fit for what my heart desires, won't I be very sad?"
Zhou Zishu teased, "I thought you said you intended to live and die with me."
Wen Kexing chuckled as well. "I said so, but you don't believe it."
To the side, Zhang Chengling chimed in, "Just like...just like Yu Boya destroying his qin?"
The expressions of the two men blanked at the same time. Zhang Chengling looked at this one, then looked at the other one, not knowing what he had said wrong. A while later, he finally heard Wen Kexing say softly, "No one else in this world understands High Mountains and Running River, to put it that way, it's correct...but also incorrect."
He looked at Zhou Zishu, but Zhou Zishu avoided his gaze. Wen Kexing did not say anything else, and continued to follow close on Ye Baiyi's heels.
All of a sudden, Ye Baiyi's footsteps faltered. He stopped walking, listening intently in silence, raised a palm to halt them in their tracks and commanded in a low voice, "Be silent."
The hand which Zhou Zishu was grabbing Zhang Chengling with suddenly tightened. Thereafter, the few of them lowered their heads at the same time, sensing that the ground beneath their feets seemed to be shaking. An unknown buzzing sounded, and Wen Kexing immediately shot Zhou Zishu a melancholic look that said "I told you that this glutton was unreliable, but you didn't believe me". However, Zhou Zishu did not have the time to care about him, because at the next moment, a strong surge of energy burst forth from beneath the ground. As if it was going to split, the earth quaked vigorously. The few of them leapt into the air together.
Keeping his hold on Zhang Chengling, Zhou Zishu lightly pushed at a small branch split from the arm of a large tree with his foot to gain momentum, but as though it was fake, that branch immediately snapped once Zhou Zishu tapped it and fell straight down. Silently aghast, Zhou Zishu whirled in the air, hooking the tip of his shoe around the tree trunk. Yet, in the blink of an eye, that great tree also toppled with a crash.
Zhang Chengling buried his face in Zhou Zishu's chest, suddenly recalling an idiom that his tutor had taught him when he was younger--depend on the mountain, and the mountain will collapse; depend on the tree, and the tree will shake.
So it was true...indeed, if one did not listen to the advice of his elders, the miseries he suffered were as innumerous as money spent freely.
The land collapsed; it was like an ominous mouth had gaped in the ground, about to swallow everyone. At the last moment, Zhou Zishu borrowed momentum from the huge tree that had collapsed, and glided out about four to five zhang away. Right as he had just gotten his feet under him, even before he had the time to exhale a breath, his brow furrowed tightly--in the blink of an eye, Wen Kexing and Ye Baiyi had disappeared!
Then there was a sudden nothingness beneath his feet, and he plummeted downwards. Instantly, Zhou Zishu understood why they had all vanished, and in the split-second, he only had time to shield Zhang Chengling with his embrace, the pitch darkness all around him. As if it were alive, the spot where he had missed a step earlier sealed itself back up unnoticed.
He did not know how deep this pit was--Zhou Zishu silently questioned, did this not mean that they were falling to their deaths? Thus he abruptly gathered his qi, and slapped his palm on the rock wall diagonally downwards from them. Using an unknown amount of force, he smashed a crater into the rock wall. Chunks of rock and dirt went flying, but the speed at which they were falling was reduced by quite a bit. Zhou Zishu took this opportunity to kick the wall lightly, demonstrating his expert mastery of that qinggong which left not a single trace.
Except that his figure jerked to a halt for a second, like it had stuck itself to the wall; ultimately, he had overestimated himself a little, and forgotten that his martial ability was long incomparable to what it used to be. Combined with carrying such a big lad like Zhang Chengling, this single strike caused his internal qi to stagnate where it was vital. Not good, Zhou Zishu inwardly thought, but glimpsed the rock wall which he had smashed in quake once again. Before he could react, a sharp blade popped out of a crack in the rock wall, and nearly speared the two of them like candied hawthorns on a stick.
The two people suffered a fright; with no other choice, Zhou Zishu could only withdraw the force he exerted on his leg, and let them continue falling.
Luckily, they were already nearing the bottom at this instant. Zhou Zishu landed on his feet and let go of Zhang Chengling. Thankfully, the small luminescent pearl he had used to illuminate their surroundings when he had fallen into the underground cave with Wen Kexing that time was still on him, and although there was only a weak glow, it was enough for him to see. Zhou Zishu did not know how he had so much affinity for tunnels; he thought, could it be that his luck in life clashed with that of a gopher?
At this moment, Zhang Chengling piped up in a small voice, "Shifu…"
Zhou Zishu shushed him and whispered in reply, "Don't make a sound."
But Zhang Chengling was so frightened that even his voice had changed pitch. "No...shifu, look…"
This time round, he did not need Zhang Chengling to point it out. Zhou Zishu had seen it too--in this narrow, cramped stone chamber, not far away from them, there were two glowing eyes looking back at them.
Zhou Zishu raised the luminescent pearl, and clearly made out the entirety of that thing--it was a gigantic python as thick as a man's waist, flicking its forked tongue as it stared at them predatorily.
Fortuitous events did not come in pairs, and trouble never travelled alone; Zhou Zishu wet his lips, and at this moment, deeply understood what was meant by the ability to even get cool water stuck between one's teeth when drinking.
For some unknown reason, when frightened to the core, Zhang Chengling talked more instead, nattering endlessly by his ear, "Shi...shifu, I...I heard that pythons move very swiftly, it's impossible for an ordinary person to dodge. It...it probably has bad teeth, before it eats people, it always has to flatten them by squeezing them, once...once targeted by an python, the person will be strangled to death, and all their bones will be crushed, their intestines squished into a ball, turning into a sack of only skin and nothing else[23], and then when it feels like it's finally easily digestible, it'll swallow the person whole…"
Zhou Zishu reached out and pressed a hand on the flexible Baiyi sword at his waist, grinding his teeth together as he uttered, "Shut, up!"
Then, amidst Zhang Chengling's desolate howling, that python raised its head and swiftly struck at them.