Chapter 268: It's over... It really came out... |
The four words dropped, and Lu Yuan's body hair stood up all at once.
"You also have a name."
It did not come from inside the altar, nor from the thin face's mouth. It felt like it slipped in from a cold breath behind his ear, pressed against his skin and burrowed inward.
In that instant, the first thought that struck Lu Yuan was not "evil," but something far more deadly:
It wasn't trying to scare him.
It truly knew who he was.
The moment that thought landed, Lu Yuan immediately held his breath halfway, pinched the blood spot in his palm with his left hand, and forced his mind to clamp down.
Evil things are not best at brute force, but at lures.
First they tell you, "I know you."
Finally they make you doubt yourself until you can't even stand.
But Lu Yuan wouldn't give it that satisfaction.
He rubbed his brow with his other hand, and the yellow talisman under his forehead warmed faintly, the leftover embers of Qingming still smoldering.
Lu Yuan replied coldly:
"Knowing me also depends on whether you have the right number of lives."
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the split hand at the altar mouth shoved up violently, and the entire yellow cloth bulged into an unnaturally high hump from below.
The hump first looked like a person's back, then a head, and finally an outline of a brow bone slowly pushed out.
Song Qinghe sucked in a breath, nearly throwing the lamp in fright.
"Don't move!"
Lu Yuan barked, but his own gaze remained fixed on that black wooden tablet.
The tablet's root had been half-exposed by Zhou Heng's digging, and the binding-name rope underneath had already snapped.
But beneath the broken rope there was another, finer layer of black thread, densely wound like a spiderweb into the earth, disappearing into who-knows-where.
Only then did Lu Yuan understand why Iron Abacus had repeatedly tried to stop them earlier.
This was not simply an altar root.
This was the name-vein of the entire feeding ground.
If it were severed completely, everything that relied on names to find paths and borrow bodies would come pouring out from every corner.
But if it kept going as it was, the evil god in the altar would slowly extend an eye, a face, a hand—piece by piece.
Either way, it was a deadlock.
Lu Yuan felt a chill deepen inside him.
At times like this, you must not be led by the enemy.
An evil trap that appears sealed on both sides often hides the true key at the one spot it least wants touched.
He glanced at Song Qinghe.
Her face had gone pale. Her right hand steadied the oil lamp, and the back of her left hand was singed red by the heat, but she bit her lip and kept silent.
The light reflected in her eyes showed fear, but no chaos.
Lu Yuan nodded slightly, and turned his voice low and steady toward Song Qinghe:
"Qinghe, don't tilt the lamp, lift it one inch toward the altar mouth, don't let it slip into shadow."
Song Qinghe complied without delay, raising the lamp half an inch.
The instant the light brightened, the face under the yellow cloth twitched, as if afraid of the light, or as if the light revealed what it truly was.
Lu Yuan then looked at Wang Cheng'an and Xu Erxiao.
These two no longer looked like they were merely stabilizing the basin.
Wang Cheng'an stood to the left, just blocking a slanted shadow line from the altar's side.
Xu Erxiao held the right, the salt-line at his feet laid neat and tidy; his expression was grim, but he had not faltered.
Lu Yuan noted it inwardly and committed it to memory.
These two really were improving. Used to be he feared they'd mess up at a crucial moment; now, in the midst of the trap, their courage held and their hands stayed steady. They could already hold a corner.
"Chengan."
Lu Yuan said in a deep tone:
"Go pick the brightest shard from that broken mirror over there, wrap it in yellow paper, don't let it reflect on people anymore."
Wang Cheng'an answered at once:
"Got it, Brother Lu."
Then Lu Yuan looked to Xu Erxiao beside him:
"Erxiao, hold the salt-line. If black qi crawls out, just patch it, don't ask me."
Xu Erxiao replied crisply:
"Understood, Brother Lu."
Lu Yuan next fixed his gaze on Iron Abacus.
The man was ashen, his shoulders pressed by Lin Zhaoxuan; he looked like his bones had been emptied.
But he did not dare collapse, because every movement that face in the altar made felt like a line on his body being tugged.
"Iron Abacus."
Lu Yuan asked:
"Can you still tell the truth?"
The man's lips trembled as he nodded with difficulty: "Ask."
Lu Yuan pointed at the black wooden tablet:
"Whose names are on this tablet?"
Iron Abacus closed his eyes briefly as if unwilling to answer, but finally forced out a bitter laugh:
"There are living people, and there are the dead."
"There are travelers who went into the mountain, carriers who work on the roads, outsiders who came to borrow a path."
"And... those I once hired to press the altar years ago."
Lu Yuan's expression darkened:
"You also wrote down the names of the living?"
Iron Abacus looked like he'd been stabbed, his face even grayer:
"I didn't write them. It wanted them."
"At first it only wanted dead names, said it used the dead to press the yin."
"But later it wasn't enough, so it began to ask for living names."
"It said living names have qi, they can nourish its eye faster."
Hearing this, Lu Yuan frowned: "It asked for them itself?"
Iron Abacus nodded, voice hoarse and bitter:
"There was one time the altar wasn't fed enough, so it called names in the night."
"Whoever it called would grow drowsy. Those who slept would either be missing the next day, or come back altered, not recognizing the road."
"After that, the altar keepers couldn't refuse to record names, so they kept adding people."
By now Lu Yuan's eyes had gone cold as ice.
"So this place is not a shrine for a god."
"It's a trap to capture people."
Iron Abacus did not dare speak further, only lowered his head more.
Lu Yuan stopped pressing him and returned his gaze to the altar mouth.
Under the yellow cloth, the thin face bulged more clearly; the brow and nose ridge were almost fully formed, like skin being pushed out from the inside.
But the strangest thing was the hand.
The split-palmed hand did not withdraw; it slowly extended outward.
Its fingertips probed the altar rim bit by bit, as if testing the threshold, testing the outside wind.
Suddenly Lu Yuan felt something wrong.
It wasn't trying to force its way in.
It was searching for a "road."
"Chengan!"
Lu Yuan shouted:
"Bring that shard here, put it three steps from me, point it at the black tablet behind the altar!"
Wang Cheng'an acknowledged and acted immediately, quickly raising the shard wrapped in yellow paper to the back of the altar.
The mirror's angle caught half of the black tablet.
Almost instantly, Lu Yuan saw in the reflection not wood or soil but a very thin white line.
The white line extended downward from the tablet root, like a vein threading through the soil layer, densely branching in all directions.
Deeper under the earth's bottom, there was another shadow.
Like a half-open eye.
"Found it."
Lu Yuan said softly.
Zhou Heng looked puzzled: "Found what?"
Lu Yuan replied: "The true root it borrows paths from."
"The black tablet is just a roster, the real gate is on that eye below."
Iron Abacus suddenly raised his head, horror all over his face:
"You can't touch that eye!"
"That's the Earth's Eye!"
"If you touch the Earth's Eye, the whole mountain will awaken!"
Lu Yuan gave him a cold look: "Then let it awaken."
"Better that than letting the thing in the altar slowly look everyone over."
"Do you think we came here for a stroll?"
"To sightsee?!"
Iron Abacus went pale at those words, opened his mouth, but still dared not stop them further.
Lu Yuan already had a plan.
The true key in this trap was not the altar or the tablet; it was the Earth's Eye borrowing names.
All the offerings had been for the root under the earth, not for the face in the altar.
The black altar was merely a skin covering the eye; the black wooden tablet recorded who it should see, and the binding-name rope kept the name-vein from running loose.
Now the rope was broken, the eye would open by itself.
He swiftly took three talismans from his bosom, pressing one in his own palm, one to Wang Cheng'an, and one to Xu Erxiao.
"Listen carefully."
Lu Yuan spoke very quickly:
"When I lift the tablet, no matter what you hear or see, don't look back."
"Chengan, guard the right side. If anyone calls your name, don't respond."
"Erxiao, if the left salt line breaks, you seal it with cinnabar; don't stop."
"Qinghe, keep the lamp shining on the ground, don't lift it toward the altar mouth."
"Lin Zhaoxuan, if my gesture falls, pin Iron Abacus down; don't let him die here."
"Zhou Heng, follow me and dig out the tablet root."
Zhou Heng swallowed and nodded: "Understood."
Wang Cheng'an tucked the talisman into his clothes, palms sweaty, but still nodded steadily: "Just tell us what to do, Brother Lu."
Xu Erxiao bit his teeth and whispered: "I won't turn around."
Lu Yuan glanced at them; surprisingly, their resolve steadied his own heart and eased the tension a fraction.
But the next moment, the altar's motion suddenly escalated.
That face seemed to be shoved from inside; the yellow cloth flapped outward with a crash as a black slit tore open at the altar mouth.
There was no soil or wood in that black seam.
Only an eye.
An eye larger, more solid, and closer than the one seen in the mirror before.
A gray-yellow sclera, a pupil so dark it seemed fathomless, and along the pupil's edge a ring of faint dark-red lines like blood vessels, or like curse scripts.
When that eye opened, every shard of mirror in the room trembled at once.
Song Qinghe's hand shook and the lamp flame tilted half an inch.
Lu Yuan's heart dropped.
Bad — it used that flicker of light as a reference.
Sure enough, the eye turned slightly toward Song Qinghe.
She felt a blow to the back of her head, her vision blackened, and her body swayed.
"Qinghe!" Zhou Heng cried.
Lu Yuan stepped forward in a single move, slapped his soul-suppressing talisman onto the lamp handle, and snarled: "Look down, don't stare!"
Song Qinghe bit her tongue and forced the dizziness down, forcing her gaze away from the altar mouth.
But in that split second, the altar eye had recorded her clearly.
"It recognized a second living eye."
Iron Abacus muttered, despair marking his face:
"It's choosing people... it's choosing people..."
Lu Yuan's voice was cold as he said: "If it chooses, it still depends on whether I allow it."
He finished, then suddenly stepped to the black tablet.
He put his foot on the loosened soil in front of the tablet that Zhou Heng had dug at.
"Zhou Heng, go!"
He shouted.
Zhou Heng had been waiting for that command and immediately drove his digging stake hard into the soil, prying where Lu Yuan had indicated along the thin white line.
With a crack, another slender bone nail was exposed under the tablet root.
The bone pin was black all over, its tip pointed down, made from polished animal bone and hammered deep into the earth's vein.
"This is an eye-sealing nail."
Lin Zhaoxuan recognized it at once, his voice deep: "It suppresses the Earth's Eye."
Lu Yuan was blunt: "Pull it out."
He said it, then reversed his short saber in his hand, the blade-back pressed against the bone pin's side, and he pried with force.
The bone pin did not budge.
The altar eye seemed to sense the action; it shrank suddenly, then opened violently.
All the mirrors in the underground chamber simultaneously erupted a white mist, within which countless faces emerged.
Men and women, old and young, expressionless, all turning toward Lu Yuan.
Xu Erxiao's scalp tingled and he almost let go. Fortunately, Wang Cheng'an grabbed his arm and hissed: "Hold steady, don't be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," Xu Erxiao said with clenched teeth, but his hand trembled: "It's just disgusting."
Wang Cheng'an gritted his teeth and whispered: "Even if it's disgusting, hold on."
Lu Yuan heard them, didn't look back, and gave a silent approving nod.
At that moment, the names on the black wooden tablet suddenly lit up again.
Not one or two, but a cascade.
As if someone dragged a spark down the letters, whole rows of names flared into a glaring white in the dusty soil.
Every time a name lit, the eye at the altar mouth opened a bit more, and another ring of dark, blood-like veins appeared in the sclera.
"We can't let it keep calling names."
Lu Yuan muttered.
His mind raced as he yanked hard on the copper-needle line in his hand, then wrapped it around the bone pin at the tablet root.
"Chengan!"
"Give me the cinnabar!"
"Erxiao, fill the salt line, don't leave a gap!"
"Lin Zhaoxuan, press Iron Abacus' neck down, don't let him catch a breath!"
"Qinghe, light the lamp on the tablet root, not the altar eye!"
Everyone moved at once.
Wang Cheng'an spat open the cinnabar packet and scattered it at Lu Yuan's feet. The crimson powder struck the ground like a bright, stinging dust.
Xu Erxiao repaired the salt line with lightning hands, gritting his teeth: "Brother Lu, it's done!"
Lin Zhaoxuan pressed his palm on Iron Abacus' neck and shoved him further down. Iron Abacus was already close to collapse; the pressure cut off even half his struggles, leaving only short, rapid breaths.
Song Qinghe kept the oil lamp as low as she could and turned the light onto the black tablet root, revealing the full form of the beast-bone eye-sealing pin.
Lu Yuan seized the moment and shouted sharply as he twisted the short saber; cuffed with cinnabar, the blade wedged into the bone pin's side seam.
"Open!"
He barked, and his hands surged with force.
The bone pin finally loosened a fraction.
And that fraction caused the altar eye to shrink violently.
Then the whole altar felt like it had been pushed up from below; the yellow cloth tore open with a snap.
A mass of black qi spewed out of the fissure straight into the air.
Within the black qi, half a body became visible.
Neither man nor beast.
It was too thin, too elongated, shoulders swollen and bones high, as if draped in a thin layer of human skin that continually pulsed underneath.
Most terrifying of all was its head.
The head's features were barely discernible, only a thin face plastered to the forehead; the pair of eyes on that face still turned slowly.
It was finally coming out of the altar.
Iron Abacus emitted a wail that was part cry, part laugh on the floor:
"It's over... It really came out..."
But at that moment Lu Yuan smiled.
Not a relieved smile, but the cold arc of someone at the edge of ice.
"Good timing."
He grabbed the last copper-coin black thread and yanked it hard outward, shouting:
"If you want to open your eye, I'll block your road first!"
"If you want to recognize names, I'll sever your roster first!"
"If you want to borrow a body—"
"I'll make you borrow an empty one!"
