Withered Well

At dawn, the first faint light seeped through the window lattice, and a chill crept into the room.

Xia Dong opened his eyes on the bed and slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

That night, he had slept exceptionally soundly. He had not even dreamed—not of some mysterious, wondrous space, nor of the grand spectacle of ten million white cranes dancing together like last time.

He instinctively reached beneath his pillow.

Sure enough, the two warm, smooth Spirit Stones had turned into a heap of dull, grayish-white powder.

"This time, nothing happened at all..." Xia Dong furrowed his brow and immediately quieted his mind to examine his sea of consciousness.

The mottled Bronze Ancient Bell still hung silently in the darkness, and the crimson writing on its surface had not changed. The "Spirit Root" entry still bore the glaring word "None," while "Martial Arts" remained at "Crane Stance (Limit-Breaking)."

A wave of unmistakable disappointment welled up in Xia Dong's heart.

It seemed that after the Crane Stance had been deduced to the "Limit-Breaking" level and given birth to the Crane Shadow Step, there was simply nowhere left for it to go.

"What a pity." Xia Dong sighed.

The two Spirit Stones had been like two pebbles thrown into an abyss—without even a splash to show for it. They had gone to waste just like that.

As he stared at the heap of powder, brooding over his loss, a short, panicked cry suddenly rang out from the courtyard.

"Ah!"

It was Xiao Hong's voice.

Xia Dong's eyes sharpened. He cast aside his disappointment in an instant, threw on his outer robe, and pushed open the door.

The morning wind cut across his face like a knife.

Winter had arrived. It had not snowed, but the weather was still bitterly cold.

Xiao Hong sat collapsed beside the Withered Well, her face deathly pale. The bucket she had been carrying lay on its side nearby. Pointing at the well, she trembled so badly she could barely get the words out. "M-My lord... There's a sound in the well... There's... there's water!"

Xia Dong hurried over.

There had always been rumors that the Withered Well was haunted.

But it had remained quiet during the past few months, so Xia Dong had not investigated recklessly and risked stirring up trouble.

He leaned over and peered down to the bottom of the well.

A bone-chilling gust of wind, rank with a foul stench, rushed up at him. Far below, a pool of black water had gathered at some point. Its surface was as still as a pond of dead water, yet in the darkness it shimmered with a faint, eerie green glow that made his skin crawl.

Something was wrong.

Xia Dong's qi and blood were now vigorous. But the instant he saw that ghostly glow, a chill shot up his back. Even the circulation of qi and blood in his body seemed to grow sluggish, as though suppressed by some invisible yin energy.

The water at the bottom of the well did not ripple, and for now, nothing eerie had crawled out of it.

"Don't panic. Go start the fire and make breakfast. Don't go near this well again." Xia Dong remained composed as he pulled Xiao Hong to her feet.

Xiao Hong was still terrified, but seeing how calm her young master was, she seemed to find something to hold on to. She scrambled into the kitchen.

Without hesitation, Xia Dong found a discarded stone millstone in a corner of the courtyard.

The muscles in his arms bulged. With his qi and blood surging, he lifted the stone, which weighed several hundred pounds, and strode to the well. With a thud, he covered the opening tightly.

That night, Xia Dong did not sleep.

After nightfall, the temperature dropped to freezing. Lying on the bed in his clothes, Xia Dong stared fixedly at the rafters, listening intently for any sound outside.

In the middle of the night, a grating scrape broke the silence.

"Creak... creak..."

It was the sound of a heavy stone being forcibly shoved across the blue bricks.

Xia Dong's heart jolted. He sprang out of bed, pushed the window open a hairline crack, and looked outside.

One glance was enough to make his scalp prickle.

The stone millstone, weighing several hundred pounds, which he had placed over the well that day, had been pushed off and lay overturned on the ground. A vast, inky shadow was spreading out from the well like a living thing, slowly and silently writhing across the blue-brick floor.

Everywhere it passed, a layer of ghastly white frost formed on the bricks.

"There really is a ghost!"

He made his decision almost without thinking—run!

His qi and blood were vigorous, but he was still nowhere near the legendary level of a "Qi and Blood Smoke Signal," which could burn yin entities to ashes. Trying to fight this unknown, eerie thing with his flesh and blood would be sheer folly.

He had stayed tonight only to see what was going on and get a sense of it. That way, if he encountered something similar in the future, he would not be caught completely off guard.

Now that the danger had truly arrived, there was no need to face it head-on.

He flashed into motion, activating the Crane Shadow Step. Like a wisp of smoke, he shot out of the main room and rushed straight toward the east wing next door.

"Bang!"

Xia Dong struck the latch off the east-wing door with his palm. He meant to hoist Xiao Hong, who was still asleep, over his shoulder and vault the wall to escape the courtyard.

But the instant his hand touched the doorframe—

Clang!

Deep in his sea of consciousness, the dormant, mottled Bronze Ancient Bell began to tremble without warning.

A bell toll, distant and primeval, carrying absolute authority that seemed to stand above all things, boomed through the depths of Xia Dong's soul.

To Xia Dong's shock, the cold, dim winter night suddenly changed. The crescent moon, which had been hidden behind the clouds, abruptly spilled down an exceptionally clear, pure silver light, illuminating the entire courtyard as bright as day.

As the bell's echoes rippled outward, the pure moonlight underwent an unfathomable transformation—it was no longer cold and clear. Instead, it radiated scorching heat, like the blazing sun at noon.

As if it possessed a will of its own, this incredible, scorching moonlight gathered entirely over the writhing shadow in the middle of the courtyard.

Sss, sss, sss.

As though snow had been doused with molten iron, the vast, terrifying mass of shadow roiled and boiled violently under the moonlight, sending up waves of foul-smelling black smoke.

Aaaah!!!

A piercing, agonized, inhuman scream that could have burst anyone's eardrums shrieked out of the smoke, exploding directly in Xia Dong's mind.

Xia Dong could hear the terror and despair in that scream.

In the space of just two or three breaths, the shadow that had spread across most of the courtyard was forcibly "illuminated" into nothingness by that divine, scorching moonlight, leaving not a trace behind.

The bell fell silent, and the moonlight instantly returned to its usual cold, dim state.

The courtyard settled into silence once more. Only the cold wind rustled through the bare branches.

Standing at the east-wing doorway, Xia Dong watched it all, uncertain and shaken.

He slowly walked to the middle of the courtyard and looked down into the Withered Well. The unsettling green glow at the bottom had vanished completely, replaced by clear well water.

Thanks to the moonlight, he could even make out the general shape of the bottom.

At that moment, a new ripple stirred in his sea of consciousness.

The crimson writing on the Bronze Ancient Bell twisted. At the very bottom, a new line slowly appeared:

[阴煞丹:两枚]

Before Xia Dong could react, he felt a slight weight in his palm.

He opened his right hand. Two pills, each only the size of a soybean, lay quietly in his palm. They were pitch-black all over, with a faint, icy sheen on their surfaces.

A remarkably pure and wondrous aura slowly emanated from the pills. Though cold, it carried not the slightest trace of evil.

"Th-These are... from the ghost in the well?"

Xia Dong was both surprised and delighted.

It seemed the Bronze Ancient Bell had absorbed the two Spirit Stones but had not continued deducing his martial arts. Instead, it had quietly accumulated the spiritual energy.

When it encountered this evil yin entity, it had simply treated it as an ingredient and refined it into these so-called "Yin Evil Pills"!

"I wonder what level that ghost was. It didn't stand a chance against the Bronze Ancient Bell."

The sight of the Bronze Ancient Bell turning moonlight into scorching sunlight surfaced in Xia Dong's mind. He was still deeply shaken.

It was practically a reversal of yin and yang.

Even though he already knew the Bronze Ancient Bell possessed all manner of extraordinary abilities, he was still surprised by how it had refined the ghost in the blink of an eye.