The Beauty’s Head Upon the Glazed Pool
Since the creature had already seen him once, Zheng Nanlou found a patch of damp ground, scooped up some mud and smeared it over his face, covering most of what his features would have shown.
Once that was done he drew a deep breath, then burst out from behind the shrubs where he had been hiding and ran off in one direction without a backward glance, as though trying to flee while the creature was unaware.
The creature was alert enough. Its blundering about like a headless fly stopped all at once, and that hideous face swung toward the direction in which Zheng Nanlou was running, its hollow eyes fixed on his retreating back.
Almost in the same moment it howled and lunged after him.
Zheng Nanlou could feel the reeking breath behind him coming closer and closer, near enough now to blow against the back of his neck. And at that moment he deliberately pretended to slip, nearly falling flat; he forced himself steady again, but the movement had plainly cost him a breath.
That very brief check gave the creature its chance, and it thrust a twisted forelimb at him at once.
At the last instant, as the claw was about to lay his back open, Zheng Nanlou spun around with the iron sword already clear of its scabbard, and met those blade-like talons.
There came a “clang,” a great sound like metal crying against metal, rolling out through the wood, and the rush of air it raised nearly laid the surrounding trees flat for a moment.
The shock split the web of Zheng Nanlou’s hand, and blood ran down the hilt drop after drop; his already ordinary iron sword gave off an overburdened hum as it shuddered, and there was no telling how much longer it would hold.
He was driven back several steps into an old tree behind him. The rotted trunk snapped, and the flying splinters blurred his sight, and even so he could see that the body of rotting flesh and broken bone had not taken the slightest injury.
Zheng Nanlou glanced out of the corner of his eye toward the cave. Lu Zhuobai’s figure had long since vanished into the dark.
He swallowed a mouthful of bloody foam, unconcerned, a smile spreading slowly at his brows, and the tip of the iron sword in his hand flared with a sudden, stinging brightness in the thin daylight.
“Come,” he said, with a touch of provocation.
The creature roared again and charged.
Zheng Nanlou spun aside, and his edge drew across its flank; still not a drop of blood showed.
After that came what looked like a fierce and tangled fight.
His sword forms were showy, but every one of them was deliberately half a beat slow, so that he seemed genuinely riddled with openings because his body arts were poor.
The creature duly seized on a gap, its head snapping up to slam straight at his heart.
Zheng Nanlou went along with it and feigned being too slow to dodge; he angled his body a little and let the head strike his right shoulder unhindered. He raised his voice on purpose and cried out in pain.
Then, clutching his shoulder, he staggered backward, dropped to his knees as though he could no longer hold himself up, drew a few labored breaths and promptly “fainted.”
At that the creature broke off its assault, came to his side and seemed to look him over carefully.
Most likely to make certain of his condition, it bent closer still, and that odor of rotten flesh mixed with blood and incense grew thicker, heavy enough to turn the stomach.
Zheng Nanlou forced the nausea down and went on playing an unconscious wounded man, even drawing his breath out long and faint.
As though it finally believed him, the creature suddenly opened its mouth, took hold of his clothes, then tossed its head and flung him onto its own back.
And carrying him so, it plunged into the dense wood.
It was a jolting ride the whole way.
Zheng Nanlou kept his eyes shut, but could still feel the creature racing through the trees, and through the corpse stench pressed almost against his nose he caught the faintest trace of grass and wood.
A turn to the left, a slope downward, water to wade……
He set the route down silently in his mind, until the creature stopped.
He was flung off again, and his body came down hard on a mass of uneven, hard things; something sharp drove into his back, and even then he clenched his teeth and made no sound at all.
Only when the creature moved away did he ease his eyelids open a crack.
He lay now inside an enormous nest of dead branches and vines, walled about so closely that not a breath of air seemed to pass, like a cage formed by nature itself.
A few wan threads of sunlight seeped in through the sparse gaps and cast a little mottled shadow on the ground.
The creature stood with its back to him, and those lumps of rotting flesh were twisting in an extremely eerie fashion, the iron chains knocking together with a “clanking,” as though something inside were struggling to get out.
With a “ripping” sound its whole body was forced open, and it slumped to the ground like a shed snakeskin.
And out of that disordered heap two burly men stood up.
They were bare above the waist, their muscles knotted, their exposed skin covered over with incantations he could not read, which gave off a faint sheen in the dimness of the nest.
One of them, probably stifled for too long, let out a long breath at last:
“Damn it, this ‘hide’ gets harder to use by the day.”
The other reassured him: “We won’t be using it much longer. We’ll have that thing open soon.”
At that the first one laughed. “I didn’t think your scheme would really work. We keep watch here, and we actually catch someone.”
“Of course. Jiangzhou is far off and hard to reach, but the Xie family has a legitimate young master right there in the Hidden Snow Sect. We only had to put out word that the Thousand Peaks illusory realm was opening, and with young master Xie’s disposition and cultivation he was bound to come and take a look. All we had to do was sit here in the Sunken Sword Abyss and wait by the stump for the hare, and he would deliver himself to our door.”
So it was clear to Zheng Nanlou: they had indeed come for Xie Heng.
“Hey, boss. Do you reckon eating these cultivators’ flesh really raises your cultivation?”
“There’s plenty of it, so try some and find out.” The one called boss sneered. “Once we get that thing, you can eat as much as you want.”
Just then one of them turned around, and Zheng Nanlou shut his eyes at once.
The man came over and crouched down beside him, coarse fingers pinching his chin and turning it from side to side:
“Smears himself up like this and thinks we can’t tell. The ones who come out of these orthodox immortal sects really are…… innocent.”
Zheng Nanlou’s heart tightened and he almost sprang up on the spot, but he forced that flutter of alarm down and went on playing at being “unconscious.”
If they had known all along that he was not Xie Heng, then why bring him here?
“Even if he isn’t, he’s got Xie Heng’s blood on him, and that’s enough.” The other snorted. “And whatever was in that cave, he must be the one who got it.”
“Who knows. He may turn out more useful than that Xie Heng.”
“A man who walks up to your door, you’d be a fool not to take.”
So they had meant to catch Xie Heng, and then found him the more useful of the two? Zheng Nanlou thought.
And at the same time a suspicion rose in him. Lu Zhuobai had followed behind that creature for so long. Had he truly seen no sign of any of this?
Or had he known it all already, and pushed him out here on purpose?
In that case, what was he really after?
Before he could untangle the thoughts crowding his head, Zheng Nanlou felt himself hauled roughly up; the wounds on his shoulder and back hurt piercingly as they pulled, and still he kept his eyes closed, quietly reckoning out a new plan.
These two looked skilled enough, and they knew the ground here; in a straight fight he could not possibly win. But if he played along with their scheme, he might yet learn what they were really here for.
And that thing of theirs did not sound like any ordinary object.
Just as he was about to be dragged out of the nest, a shrill whistle came from somewhere far off.
The two of them stopped short, their faces changing. “This is bad. Someone’s broken in!”
So they climbed back into the creature’s shell, dropped Zheng Nanlou and went out, sealing the nest up tight again as they left.
Only after they had gone did Zheng Nanlou finally open his eyes. He worked his limbs, stiff from lying slack so long, and then caught an unusual smell of blood.
Unlike the rot that hung about the creature, this smell was too fresh.
He looked around him and found, in the shadow behind him where the light did not reach, a low table.
It was plainly a stand carved from a single block of green jade, and by now foul blood had soaked it through until it was black. Several pools of half-congealed blood lay on its surface, and in that liquid, without a ripple in it, was reflected what the dish at the center of the table held……
A pale human head.
Like a lotus in full bloom on a stretch of water steeped in blood.
A beauty’s head upon the glazed pool. (note)
Only this head had been so twisted by the wretchedness of its dying that nothing of the living face remained, and there was no telling whether it had belonged to a man or a woman. There was only the long black hair hanging loose, small beads of blood still gathered at its ends.
And that face, turned toward him, still held the shock of the last moment before death, as though in disbelief, or in refusal to accept it.
Blood was still seeping slowly from the severed neck, the thick dark red winding down along the grain of the table like so many red snakes crawling.
On the pieces of flesh scattered around it, tooth marks were plainly visible; some had been gnawed down to bare bone, others still held sinew and gave off an unnatural blue-purple color.
In the end Zheng Nanlou could not hold it in. He turned his head, bent over and was sick.
Back in Huaizhou he had heard an older rogue cultivator, who had knocked about the world in his early years, say that people in certain out-of-the-way places firmly believed a cultivator’s flesh and blood held spiritual energy, and that eating it lengthened life and raised cultivation. He had not believed it then, taking it for an absurd country tale, and had never imagined that one day he would see such a horror with his own eyes.
After bringing up a little sour, bitter bile, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and when he raised his head a cold light like ice had gathered in his eyes.
He stared at the eyes of that head, which had not closed in death. He did not know this person; but now, he thought, he was going to get to the bottom of this.
Call it saving his own skin.