A Faint Glimmer Flitting Past
The crisp snap of breaking bone burst through the cave and carried on into the pitch-black depths ahead, where it seemed faintly to echo.
Xie Heng’s cry of pain never made it fully out of his throat before the pain nearly took him into a dead faint. He collapsed limply on the ground like a beast laid out for slaughter.
To watch a man usually so arrogant reduced to such a state in front of him might, for some people, have been a pleasure. In Zheng Nanlou’s eyes it raised no ripple at all.
In a life these cultivators would think as brief as a mayfly’s, he had lived through far too many moments of this kind. Set against those, being trodden underfoot hardly counted for anything.
And yet Zheng Nanlou had never felt shame over it, or bitterness.
Because he knew perfectly well that every one of those “debts” owed to him he had collected back, one item at a time.
Nearly everyone who had ever abused him ended up the way Xie Heng had, paying a fitting price for what they had once done.
With one exception.
That man stood too high, and too far away from him; with what he was capable of now, he was not yet able to repay all the grinding and the pain he had endured.
But the reason Zheng Nanlou was still Zheng Nanlou, and had not died without a sound like the other abandoned children of his kind, was that he had never learned how to give up.
He could be a viper lying low in the grass, or a vine waiting its chance in the shade of a tree, but never a lamb for anyone to trample.
He had always been very good at waiting.
Even if the high towers fell and heaven and earth were hung upside down, so long as he lived he would see that day come.
Paying no further mind to the barely conscious Xie Heng, Zheng Nanlou turned and left the cave.
The speech he had made a moment ago as a passing rogue cultivator, to lower Xie Heng’s guard, held no small amount of nonsense, and yet some of his real suspicions were buried in it too.
He had no interest in whether the disciples who looked down on him lived or died; but if they all came to grief here, he doubted that he alone could find his way out of the Sunken Sword Abyss.
He would have to think of something.
He came out through the two clumps of shrubs, and before he had set foot back among the dense trees, Zheng Nanlou already knew something was wrong.
The smell of blood here was a little too thick.
Not the ordinary smell of blood, but something mixed with incense and a reek like a corpse, as though someone had steeped fresh blood and long-rotted flesh together in a jar of spices to blend a strange stench no one could bear.
He held his breath without thinking, and could still feel that smell boring into his nose; once inside it turned into an eerie sweetness that clung directly to his lungs, until his head began to ache with it.
Zheng Nanlou took a small, testing step forward, and before his foot had come down, a thick cloud of bloody mist burst out of the lush green wood.
Scarlet waves of it rolled outward and swallowed the light all around in an instant. The rotten, sweetish reek came at him head-on and wrapped him up as though it had substance; for that moment his sense of smell seemed to have been stripped from his body by force.
He hurriedly made a seal and steadied himself, then looked up to see the monster no one could name walking slowly out of the depths of the bloody mist.
Its body seemed even more twisted than before. Several of the iron chains had been torn loose, and a few lumps of rotted flesh hung slackly off to one side, smeared with blood spattered on from who knew where. Drops of it rolled down and left the wild grass beneath its feet mottled.
Zheng Nanlou was surprised that the thing had appeared here so quickly, but he was in no hurry to fall back. He raised the iron sword in his hand, as ordinary as a sword could be.
The monster reared its forelimbs as though to loose a howl the way it had before, but he gave it no such chance, springing forward in a sudden bound.
Even without spiritual energy his movements were startlingly quick, and in a blink he stood in front of the creature.
The iron sword cut a fierce arc through the air, driving straight at its face.
The monster swung a claw up to block, but the edge in Zheng Nanlou’s hand turned abruptly, the thrust becoming a slice, and opened the flesh where its shoulder met its neck.
Not a drop of blood seeped out.
Only a shriveled, lifeless layer of blue-white flesh curled back, showing the tangled jumble of bone underneath.
He turned his body aside from the creature’s counterblow, brushing his fingertips lightly over it as he went; the feel was cold and hard, without the least warmth in it.
Just as he had thought.
As though he had struck only to confirm that one thing, Zheng Nanlou pulled back at once after the blow landed; but the movement had dragged at the injury on his chest and slowed him by a breath.
The monster’s claws grazed his shoulder and tore the black cloak clean apart, laying bare the plain white robe beneath, on whose cloth a dark red was already faintly seeping through.
He clenched his teeth and retreated three full paces, then turned back to the monster with a cold laugh; his breathing was a little ragged, but the hand holding the sword was steady as rock.
In truth he also knew that he had only had the advantage of surprise, and that if he stayed locked in a fight with this creature he would come off worse sooner or later.
So he did not linger over the battle, but withdrew the way he had come, all the way back to the mouth of the cave.
Wounded, the monster was clearly enraged and came after him; but at some distance from the cave mouth it stopped short, as though wary of something, its forelimbs scraping restlessly at the ground, never daring one step nearer.
Zheng Nanlou raised his brows slightly and glanced back with some thought at the pitch-dark cave behind him, murmuring:
“Interesting.”
And he stepped into it once again.
Assuming Xie Heng would still be senseless, Zheng Nanlou was in no rush to hide who he was.
But no sooner had he walked into the cave than the figure lying on the ground stirred and turned its head toward him.
At the sight of him, the man, whose mind had been slipping, forced up a measure of clarity again and got two words out with difficulty:
“It’s you!”
Zheng Nanlou did not panic. The cold at the bottom of his eyes vanished in an instant, and in its place rose exactly the right amount of shock and concern.
He came forward quickly, crouched down beside Xie Heng, bent his head to look over his injuries, and asked as though he knew nothing at all:
“Senior brother Xie, how did you come to be hurt like this?”
Xie Heng might not be clever, but he was not entirely a fool; the sight of this did not take him in at once, and he ground his teeth and asked back:
“You turn up here like this, and you don’t know who wounded me?”
Zheng Nanlou only said blankly, “Am I supposed to know something?”
He lowered his head as though the words had stung him into helplessness, and his voice grew weaker:
“After we were scattered in the wood just now, I…… I did not know what to do, and could only wander about. I lost my way without meaning to, and it was no easy thing to find this place. When I came in, all I saw was you, senior brother.”
Only then did he raise his eyes, which at a sudden glance in the dim light looked to be filmed over with water:
“I have explained many times. Why does senior brother still suspect me?”
He pitched his voice very soft, so that it sounded nothing at all like the mysterious figure in the cloak, and held himself in a cowering posture, until even Xie Heng began to waver, unable for the moment to tell whether the acting was masterly or the innocence real.
Seeing that Xie Heng said nothing, Zheng Nanlou went on: “Whatever senior brother thinks of me, these injuries cannot be left as they are. Let me tend to them for you.”
And with that, without waiting for an answer, he leaned forward, took hold of the broken ankle, and deliberately bore down on it.
Caught unprepared, Xie Heng let out an agonized scream.
Only then, as though he had come to his senses, did Zheng Nanlou snatch his hand back, seemingly frightened by the reaction, his voice beginning to tremble:
“Did I, did I hurt you?”
The pain blackened Xie Heng’s vision, and the little alertness he had forced up scattered again. His lips quivered twice as though he wanted to say something, but in the end no sound came; his head lolled and he fainted once more.
Watching him lose consciousness again, Zheng Nanlou let that alarmed, concerned expression slide from his face like a mask.
He did nothing further, only stood up; and then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught what seemed to be a faint glimmer flitting past in the deep darkness ahead.
The point of light was very faint, flashing once through all that dark like a firefly and gone in an instant.
By the time he turned his head and looked hard in that direction, there was nothing but heavy black, as though that moment of brightness had been a trick of his eyes.
He thought it over, then left the unconscious Xie Heng where he lay and walked toward the depths of the cave.
The further in he went, the heavier that damp cold grew, climbing his spine and sinking into the marrow, until the blood in his body seemed close to freezing.
The darkness thickened as well, bringing a pressure that all but closed around his throat and forced his heartbeat to slow along with it.
There was no telling how long he walked, long enough that Zheng Nanlou began to think he would be trapped in this murk for good; and then the way ahead changed abruptly and opened out.
A pitch-black deep pool lay still at the end of the cave, its surface like a mirror, without the least ripple.
And in the roof of the cave directly above it there happened to be a narrow crack, through which a thread of daylight leaked down and fell exactly on the water.
The point of light that had appeared just now must have been the faint glow this pool threw back.
Zheng Nanlou looked around him, but could see only bare rock walls and find nothing at all out of place. Still, something struck him as strange, and his gaze settled once more on the pool.
It is usually water like this, calm and giving no sign of its depth, that unsettles a person most, because there is no knowing what lies hidden beneath the surface.
He walked to the edge, put out his right hand to test it, and stirred the surface lightly.
Ripples spread out soundlessly from his fingertips.
All at once a thin, faint blue light spread along the ripples as well, as though something had leaked down out of his hand.
Zheng Nanlou went still, and looked down at his own hand.
At some point a little blood had gotten onto that finger, and by now most of it had been washed away by the water.
He realized that this was not his own blood, but……
Xie Heng’s blood.