The Cauldron Falls

At midnight, a crescent moon hung askew in the sky. A few stars flickered in and out of sight, reflected in a cold pool at the foot of the mountain. Cicadas chirped now and then, lending the poolside an even deeper sense of quiet.

A caravan rolled slowly along the path at the foot of the mountain, its wheels rumbling and breaking the stillness of the moonlit night.

There was something unusual about the caravan: its guards seemed to be all women.

A light curtain was drawn up at one of the carriage windows, revealing a young girl with a tender yet pretty face. Her bright, sparkling eyes lingered curiously on the pool before she suddenly asked, "Master, Master, is that the Tripod-Asking Pool?"

Her voice rang out, crisp as an oriole's song, startling the roosting birds into a flurry of wings.

Beside the girl sat a young woman whose face was veiled in gauze. She had been leaning back with her eyes closed, dozing. At the girl's question, she opened her eyes a crack and cast a hazy glance out the window. With a faint sigh, she answered, "That's the Tripod-Asking Pool."

The girl asked curiously, "Wasn't this supposed to be a sacred pool, with people guarding it all the time? There isn't a soul in sight."

"A sacred pool? That's just something people say." The young woman smiled scornfully. "There used to be guards. When the cauldron fell and formed the pool, the water absorbed the spiritual energy that spilled from the World-Suppressing Tripod. Soaking in it helped with cultivation, and the royal family claimed it for themselves. But more than a thousand years have passed, and the spiritual energy is gone. It's just an ordinary pool now, so the royal family no longer bothers with it. It's been abandoned for nearly a hundred years."

The girl seemed reluctant to accept it. "There's really no spiritual energy left at all?"

"None." The young woman glanced at her, amused. "You just saw the pool and felt like taking a bath, didn't you?"

Her thoughts exposed, the girl grinned. "You know me so well, Master. We've been on the road all day and night. I feel all sticky..."

"Your cultivation has long since left you untouched by worldly grime. How could you feel sticky?"

The girl's eyes spun mischievously, and her smile took on a bewitching edge. She leaned against her master and cooed, "I feel sticky because I've been longing for a man..."

The girl was no more than thirteen or fourteen, still very much a child. Yet in that instant, her bearing changed, a hint of her potential to bring ruin to kingdoms emerging. The seductive charm in her simply did not belong at her age. Nor was that something an ordinary young girl should have said. But the young woman only laughed helplessly, not the least bit annoyed. "All right. You're just naturally particular about cleanliness. Hmm... let's rest for a bit, then. I'll go with you."

Anyone who saw them would have known these two were anything but respectable.

The caravan came to a halt, and the female guards scattered, quietly securing every path leading to the pool. The master took the girl by the hand, and the two stepped barefoot out of the carriage. Beneath the moonlight, their sleeves fluttered as they drifted toward the pool, two graceful figures gliding through the night like a dream.

Their gauzy veils fell onto the grass. Two exquisite bodies, as pale as white jade, slowly stepped into the water. A day on the road might not have tired them, but the cool water against their skin still drew a comfortable sigh from both master and pupil.

"Master..." The girl gently stroked her jade-white arm and asked in a low voice, "The Nine Cauldrons have kept the world at peace for a thousand years. Can we really achieve our goal?"

"The cauldrons are nothing but dead things. If they were truly so reliable, the great sects wouldn't have grown so powerful that they've become a burden today." The young woman replied coolly. She lifted the veil from her face and casually rinsed it in the water, revealing a face of peerless beauty.

In truth, this so-called master was still young. Her jade-like face made her look no older than twenty-six or twenty-seven, though she possessed a mature charm her pupil lacked. She had weathered the jianghu's trials of blood and fire and shouldered the burden of managing a sect. And she came from the Demon Sect. Heroic spirit, noble bearing, mystery, and bewitching charm blended perfectly within her, forming an utterly distinctive presence.

The girl looked at her with admiration. "Master, you're so beautiful. I bet a lot of men went crazy over you back then."

"Heh... Men are a wretched lot. They only go crazy over what they can't have. So remember this, Chan'er: feelings are toys. You can play with them, but never take them to heart. Otherwise, you'll be the one who goes crazy."

Chan'er was clever, but she was still very young, and the lesson only half made sense to her.

"Besides, there are people beneath us to seduce men. You and I carry the weight of the sect; you don't need to get personally involved in that sort of thing." The young woman smiled faintly and ran a hand over her pupil's smooth, jade-like chest. "If anyone lays eyes on you, gouge them out. That's what you should be doing."

Before she had finished speaking, she sensed something and abruptly looked up at the sky.

Ten-odd zhang overhead, the air twisted strangely. Then thunder crashed and fierce winds swept through. A hole appeared amid the lightning, and a human figure suddenly fell out of it.

The instant the figure emerged, the gale and thunder vanished together. Everything was like some strange, fleeting illusion.

The master and pupil stared blankly as the figure came tumbling down with a scream. Just before he hit the water, the man seemed to notice someone by the pool. His eyes lit up, and he shouted, "Help!" Then he plunged into the pool with a splash and sank, bubbles gurgling to the surface.

The two looked at each other, staring for a long moment at each other's snow-white chests above the water. Then they both turned toward the spot where the man had fallen, their eyes glinting with murderous intent.

Only a few ripples remained where he had gone under, bubbles burbling up from below.

Xue Mu was an operations manager at a music talent agency in China. He had launched and produced a girl group that flopped. Most people probably hadn't even heard there was such a flop group in China, but Xue Mu had made a name for himself in the industry. He was one of the people on the cutting edge of the idol-making boom. He had plenty of money, too, and spent his spare time with paid dates and starry-eyed young women who let him sleep with them. All in all, he lived a pretty comfortable life.

As a hobby, Xue Mu liked to hunt for antiques. That day, he had bought a bronze fragment no bigger than a fingernail. He spent all night studying it without figuring out what it was. Then he accidentally cut his hand, and in a flash, he vanished from his home.

He had read plenty of novels in his spare time, so the idea of transmigration wasn't unfamiliar to him. The moment he was flung into the air above a strange, desolate place, Xue Mu knew he'd been caught up in an inexplicable transmigration.

Heaven knew he'd never wished for anything like this. He'd finally been close to getting somewhere with a young actress he'd been pursuing for days, and now he'd been transmigrated. What the hell?

And he'd realized something else... Transmigration didn't come with any sort of location setting. If you were lucky, you might appear in a beauty's bedchamber. If you were unlucky, you might wind up in a cesspit and drown. As for appearing in midair, like he had now, he couldn't tell whether he was lucky or not. At least there was a pool below, so he wouldn't die from the fall.

His mind was spinning with these pointless thoughts when he reached the water in the blink of an eye. Only then did he notice two women beside the pool. Were they... bathing?

He hadn't even made out their faces before he managed to shout, "Help!" Then he crashed heavily into the water. It turned out that in wuxia films, people who jumped off cliffs into water survived only because the movies lied. Falling from at least thirty or forty meters up and hitting the surface was like taking a blow from a sledgehammer. The impact nearly dislodged his internal organs. He spat out a mouthful of blood and passed out on the spot.

Without someone to save him, he really would have died in the water.

A jade-white hand slapped the water at the pool's edge. A column of water shot up and lifted him out of the pool, then the current carried him steadily over to the two women. It was a feat of supernatural skill.

"Strange. Such a strong poison is spreading..." The two women had been glaring murderously, ready to gouge out an eyeball for fun. But as Xue Mu drifted closer, they both furrowed their brows and sealed the pores across their bodies with their inner power.

A strange poisonous miasma emanated from the man. Even with their extensive knowledge of poison, honed within the Demon Sect, they couldn't identify it.

Chan'er stared at Xue Mu's short hair and murmured, "He's a monk? Could he have been poisoned with some new venom developed by one of our fellow practitioners?"

The young woman placed her slender fingers on Xue Mu's wrist and carefully examined him. Her eyes filled with even greater astonishment. "How strange..."

"What is it, Master?"

"This man's body is riddled with at least a thousand kinds of toxins, from his skin to his internal organs and right down to his vitals. Many of them are airborne, and I've never heard of them... In other words, if he went to an ordinary town, he'd be a source of plague. Within days, he could turn a hundred li into a dead zone."

Chan'er gaped. "But he's still alive?"

"Even Young Master Zhao, who takes testing poison as part of his daily routine, would probably be long dead if such strange toxins had seeped into his vitals. But this man is not only alive, he's healthy. He was merely injured internally by the impact just now."

Chan'er thought back to the man's bizarre entrance, and unease crept into her heart. "Could he be even more powerful than Young Master Zhao? But how could someone that powerful injure his lungs just by falling into a pool?"

The young woman withdrew her fingers from Xue Mu's wrist, her eyes clouded with incredulous confusion. "That's the strangest part... He doesn't have a trace of cultivation. He's just an ordinary man!"