Withered Well

The morning light was dim, and the chill seeped into the room through the window lattice.

Xia Dong opened his eyes on the bed and exhaled a long, stale breath.

This night, he had slept exceptionally soundly, not even having a single dream. There was no mysterious, strange space, nor the grand spectacle of thousands of white cranes dancing together like last time.

He subconsciously reached out to lift his pillow.

Sure enough, those two warm, lustrous spirit stones had already turned into a pile of dull, grayish-white powder.

There wasn't even a stir this time... Xia Dong frowned slightly and immediately focused his mind to check his sea of consciousness.

The mottled Bronze Ancient Bell remained silently suspended in the darkness, and the scarlet characters on the bell had not changed in the slightest. His "Spirit Root" column remained a glaring "None," and the "Martial Arts" column was still stuck at "Crane Stance (Limit Broken)."

A surge of undisguised disappointment welled up in Xia Dong's heart.

It seemed that once the Crane Stance had been deduced to the "Limit Broken" level and given birth to the Crane Shadow Step, it had reached the end of its progression.

"What a pity." Xia Dong sighed.

The two spirit stones were now like pebbles tossed into an abyss; he hadn't even heard a splash, and they had been wasted just like that.

Just as he was staring at the pile of powder, feeling secretly annoyed, a panicked, short cry suddenly came from the courtyard.

"Ah!"

It was the voice of Xiao Hong.

Xia Dong's eyes sharpened. He instantly cast his disappointment to the back of his mind, threw on his outer robe, and pushed the door open to step out.

The cold wind of early morning scraped across his cheeks like a knife.

Winter had already arrived; although it hadn't snowed, the weather remained bitterly cold.

Xiao Hong was sitting slumped on the ground beside the dry well, her face deathly pale. The bucket she had been carrying had rolled to one side, and she pointed at the wellhead, trembling so hard she couldn't speak. "Y-Young Master... there's a sound in the well... water... there's water!"

Xia Dong walked over quickly.

There had always been rumors that this dry well was haunted.

However, for the past few months, the well had remained quiet, so Xia Dong hadn't ventured to investigate, wanting to avoid unnecessary trouble.

He leaned over and peered into the bottom of the well.

An extremely frigid, icy wind mixed with a fishy stench rushed toward his face. Deep at the bottom of the well, a pool of black water had gathered at some point. The surface was as calm as stagnant water, yet in the gloom, it shimmered with a hair-raising, eerie green light.

Something was wrong.

Xia Dong's Qi and Blood were currently vigorous. But the moment he saw that eerie light, he felt a chill shoot up his back, and the circulation of Qi and Blood within his body felt as if it had been suppressed and sluggish due to some form of invisible yin energy.

The water at the bottom of the well didn't ripple, and for the moment, nothing strange crawled out from within.

"Don't panic. Go to the kitchen and start a fire to cook. Don't go near this well again," Xia Dong said with a calm expression, pulling Xiao Hong to her feet.

Although Xiao Hong was terrified, seeing her Young Master so composed made her feel as if she had found a backbone, and she scrambled into the kitchen.

Xia Dong did not hesitate. He found a discarded bluestone millstone in the corner of the courtyard.

His arm muscles bulged violently. With his Qi and Blood surging, he forcibly lifted the stone mill, which weighed several hundred jin, strode to the well, and with a loud "bang," covered the wellhead tightly.

That night, Xia Dong did not fall asleep.

After nightfall, the temperature dropped to freezing. Xia Dong lay on the bed fully clothed, his eyes fixed on the rafters, listening intently for any movement outside.

In the middle of the night, a teeth-gritting, grinding sound shattered the silence.

"Creak... creak..."

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

Xia Dong's heart skipped a beat. He rolled off the bed and pushed the window open just a tiny crack to look outside.

At just one glance, his scalp went numb.

The stone mill weighing several hundred jin that he had placed over the well during the day had been pushed to the ground. A thick, ink-like shadow was spreading out from the wellhead like a living thing, crawling slowly and silently across the blue brick floor in all directions.

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

There really is a ghost!

He made a decision without a second thought—run!

Although his Qi and Blood were vigorous, he was far from reaching the legendary realm of "Qi and Blood Smoke Signal" that could incinerate yin entities. Using a flesh-and-blood body to fight such an unknown, eerie thing head-on would be pure folly.

He had stayed tonight just to see what was going on so he would have some understanding. That way, if he encountered similar dangers in the future, he wouldn't be caught off guard.

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

His figure flashed as he activated the Crane Shadow Step. Like a wisp of light smoke, he swept out of the main room and lunged toward the east wing room next door.

"Bang!"

Xia Dong shattered the door bolt of the east wing with a palm strike, intending to hoist the still-sleeping Xiao Hong up and jump over the wall to escape the small courtyard.

But just as his hand touched the door frame.

Clang!

Deep within the sea of consciousness, that silent, mottled Bronze Ancient Bell began to tremble without warning.

A chime, distant, desolate, and carrying an absolute majesty that transcended all things, exploded deep within the soul of Xia Dong.

Xia Dong discovered with horror that the originally cold and dim winter night had suddenly changed. The crescent moon overhead, previously obscured by dark clouds, suddenly spilled down an exceptionally bright and pure silver moonlight, illuminating the entire courtyard as if it were broad daylight.

Accompanying the ripples of the bell's toll, that bright moonlight underwent an inconceivable qualitative change—it was no longer cold, but instead radiated a scorching heat, as intense and masculine as the midday sun!

This incredible, scorching moonlight seemed to possess a consciousness of its own, gathering entirely upon the writhing shadow in the center of the courtyard.

Hiss, hiss, hiss.

As if boiling molten iron had been poured onto snow, that vast, hair-raising, viscous shadow rolled and boiled violently under the illumination of the moonlight, rising in bursts of foul-smelling black smoke.

"Ah!!!"

An extremely shrill, sharp, non-human scream that seemed capable of piercing one's eardrums erupted from the black smoke, exploding directly inside Xia Dong's mind.

Xia Dong could tell that this scream carried extreme fear and despair.

In just two or three breaths of time, the shadow that had spread across most of the courtyard was forcibly "shone" into total evaporation by this miraculous, scorching moonlight, leaving not even a trace behind.

The bell's toll subsided, and the moonlight instantly returned to its original, cold, and dim state.

The courtyard returned to silence once more, with only the rustling of the cold wind brushing against the withered tree branches.

Xia Dong stood at the doorway of the side room, watching all of this with suspicion and uncertainty.

He walked slowly to the center of the courtyard and looked down into the dry well. The heart-palpitating, faint, ghostly green light at the bottom of the well had completely vanished, replaced by clear well water.

Through the moonlight, he could now even see the general outline of the well's bottom.

Just then, ripples stirred once again in his sea of consciousness.

On the body of the Bronze Ancient Bell, the scarlet characters twisted, and at the very bottom, a new line of text slowly emerged:

[Yin Evil Pill: Two]

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

He opened his right hand to see two pills, each only the size of a soybean, pitch-black as ink, with a faint, chilling luster shimmering on their surfaces, lying quietly in his palm.

A strange aura, extremely pure and although cold, devoid of any sense of evil, was slowly emanating from these two pills.

"Is... is this that ghost from the well?"

Xia Dong was both shocked and delighted.

It seemed that although the Bronze Ancient Bell had not continued to deduce cultivation techniques after absorbing the two spirit stones, it had silently accumulated spiritual power.

When it encountered this evil spirit, it had treated it directly as material for alchemy, forcibly refining it into this so-called Yin Evil Pill!

"I wonder what level that ghost was; it was utterly defenseless before the Bronze Ancient Bell."

The scene of the Bronze Ancient Bell transforming moonlight into scorching sunlight surfaced in Xia Dong's mind, and he remained somewhat shaken.

This could be called reversing Yin and Yang.

Even though he already knew of the many extraordinary aspects of the Bronze Ancient Bell, this feat of instantly refining a ghost still caught Xia Dong by surprise.