Nether Candle Mystic Eyes

"Masters, my name is Meng Changxi, from Kangyang Town at the foot of Phoenix-Cry Mountain. I was caught in a downpour while traveling. Might I..."

Meng Changxi glanced at the warm, inviting campfire and smiled sheepishly.

The monk looked at Zhang Xuan. Seeing him gazing at his nose, his mind withdrawn inward, without offering any response, he nodded and invoked the Buddha's name. "Amitabha. Benefactor, please make yourself comfortable."

With that, he rose and shifted aside, making room for Meng Changxi beside the campfire.

Wiping the rain from his face with his sleeve, Meng Changxi hurried over to the fire with a broad smile and deftly stripped off his scholar's robe.

In a few quick movements, he was down to his close-fitting drawers, revealing a mass of pale, flabby flesh.

Judging by that layer of fat, he did look like a scholar who had never toiled in the fields.

Badly chilled, Meng Changxi shivered and curled into a ball, sitting almost against the campfire.

"Where are you two masters from? What brought you to Phoenix-Cry Mountain?"

The moment he sat down, Meng Changxi found a topic to strike up a conversation, revealing his warm, outgoing nature.

"This poor monk is not from Great Zhou. My travels brought me here..."

As he spoke, the monk glanced at Zhang Xuan. Seeing that he had no intention of speaking, he continued, "This is Daoist Zhang Xuan. We met by chance and agreed to travel together for a while. But you, benefactor—since you live in Kangyang Town at the mountain's foot, why venture into the mountains in such foul weather?"

"Ah, it's all because of my second uncle, who came up here to hunt. He entered the mountains last night and still hasn't come down. The elders at home were worried, so they sent me to look for him."

"Hunting? Would that be Hunter Zhang, who lives at the entrance to town?"

The monk asked with a show of casualness.

Meng Changxi shook his head. "You've remembered wrong, Master. There's nothing but farmland at the town entrance. Only farming families live there."

"Oh, I must have mixed things up."

Zhang Xuan thought to himself that the monk was indeed testing the man.

He glanced at the monk's posture—one leg folded beneath him, the other foot planted on the ground. He had changed to this position after Meng Changxi entered, making it easier to rise at any moment if something unexpected happened.

It seems the monk hasn't entirely let down his guard around Meng Changxi. Otherwise, he wouldn't still be sitting like that.

Fierce winds hurled raindrops against the temple eaves. Zhang Xuan added a handful of dry twigs to the campfire. As the flames danced, the sharp crack of a snapping branch suddenly came from outside.

The temple door was abruptly shoved open. An old woodcutter squeezed sideways through the gap, his straw rain cape rustling, followed by a boy carrying a bundle of firewood on his back. Both brought the chill in with them, soaked from head to toe. Pine needles caught on their rain capes scattered to the floor as they moved.

The boy stumbled while unloading the firewood, his damp cloth shoe leaving a full wet footprint on the blue bricks.

The old man took a piece of coarse linen from inside his clothes and carefully wiped the rain from his grandson's forehead. Half a maple leaf was embroidered crookedly on the cloth. The stitches were crude, but the colors were bright, as though a child had made it.

"Grandpa, I'm not cold," the boy whispered, yet secretly tucked his fingers, red from the cold, into the folds of his rain cape.

A faded sachet hung against the boy's chest, the words "peace and safety" just barely legible.

Unlike Meng Changxi, the old man and boy did not act as though they were already among friends. After meeting the gazes of Zhang Xuan and the others, they merely gave embarrassed smiles, and the old man quietly led his grandson into another corner of the temple. He sheltered the boy from the draft, doing his best to block it with his own stooped back.

Seeing this, Zhang Xuan beckoned to the boy. "You two, the autumn chill is harsh in the mountains. If you don't mind, come warm yourselves by the fire with us."

The boy's eyes lit up, but he did not rise. Instead, he looked at the old man beside him.

The old man affectionately stroked the boy's head, then rose and bowed to Zhang Xuan. "Thank you, young fellows."

"The nights are cold. Have some ginger soup to warm yourselves, young fellows." The old man untied a bamboo flask from his waist and offered it to them. His broad-knuckled hands were covered in cracks like tree bark. Water droplets clung to the outside of the flask, yet when Zhang Xuan took it, his palm felt warmth.

Zhang Xuan's eyes narrowed slightly...

They've been walking through a downpour for half the night. How could this ginger soup not have cooled at all?

With that doubt in his mind, drinking the soup was naturally out of the question.

"Thank you, sir. It's cold in the mountains. Better save it for the child."

Meng Changxi, who had just reached out for the ginger soup, froze with his hand in midair, displeasure crossing his face.

The Monk nodded. "Amitabha. The Daoist is right. Save it for the child."

Seeing Zhang Xuan's earnest expression, the old man stopped insisting. He took the bamboo flask back and held it out to the boy. "Gouwa, drink."

The firewood crackled. The boy cradled the flask and sipped, tiny beads of water still clinging to his eyelashes.

When he saw Zhang Xuan looking over, the boy immediately bowed. "Thank you, Daoist Brother." Beneath his wet, tousled hair, the tips of his ears were bright red.

Zhang Xuan smiled and nodded in return, thinking that he was indeed a well-mannered child.

After sitting beside the campfire, the old man took off his straw rain cape and spread it beside the flames, revealing a patched jacket of coarse cloth underneath. Then he lowered his voice and told the boy, "We'll go home once the rain stops. Your mother must be worried sick."

The boy was silent for a long time before suddenly speaking with a hint of tears in his voice. "Grandpa, are we never going to make it home?"

A few sparks suddenly burst from the fire, masking the old man's stiff reply.

Just then, Zhang Xuan stretched and said sleepily, "Monk, I'm going to take a nap. Wake me when the rain eases. We'll set off right away."

The Monk was briefly taken aback.

Though he had not known Zhang Xuan for long, he considered himself a good judge of character.

Zhang Xuan was cautious and meticulous; countless small details made that clear.

When Meng Changxi entered the temple earlier, Zhang Xuan had been visibly more tense than the monk himself.

Yet now, with strangers so close to him, Zhang Xuan was actually closing his eyes to sleep?

Before the Monk could speak, Meng Changxi said with a smile, "Go ahead and sleep, Master. We'll keep our voices down."

The old man beside them seemed to want to say something, but hesitated...

The boy said nothing. He merely lowered his head and fiddled with the little wooden horse he carried with him. Clearly, it was a treasured possession.

Zhang Xuan gave Meng Changxi a slight nod, then let his eyelids droop. Propping his head on his hand, he fell into a deep sleep beside the campfire.

Yet the moment he closed his eyes, he silently recited—

[Inner Landscape]

Zhang Xuan had caught the scent of danger.

When the old man removed his straw rain cape earlier, Zhang Xuan had faintly glimpsed a dense ring of stitches around his neck in the firelight, with traces of blood seeping from the ends of the threads...

Considering the headless corpse in the black coffin and the Headless Clay Idol in the ruined temple, Zhang Xuan suspected...

Neither the old man nor the boy is alive!

To be safe, Zhang Xuan decided to use today's opportunity to ask a question.

Having entered the [Inner Landscape] once before, Zhang Xuan was noticeably calmer this time.

The blood moon hung overhead, surrounded by pitch darkness.

Standing upon the surface of Ink Lake, Zhang Xuan did not rush to ask his question. Instead, he paced back and forth, ripples spreading in rings beneath his feet.

"The strange flow of water outside the temple, that ghostly thing lurking in the shadows, the eerie Headless Clay Idol inside the ruined temple..."

"The old man, the boy, and Meng Changxi..."

Zhang Xuan weighed everything in his mind, his brow furrowing ever more tightly.

"Damn it, why do I keep running into ghosts?"

Zhang Xuan was growing irritated. Wasn't the Celestial Master's Mansion supposedly the foremost power of the righteous path? By all rights, the world for a hundred miles around should have been bright and clear, without a trace of demons or evil spirits. How had things ended up like this, with either Chang Ghosts or black coffins everywhere? And now this ruined temple in the desolate mountains was even more sinister!

He cursed inwardly, then made his decision.

"Celestial Master's Ordination, is there any way to give me the ability to seek good fortune and avoid danger as I am now, helping me escape peril safely?"

He did not ask what his current situation was. That would have been pointless, offering not the slightest help with his present predicament.

Zhang Xuan directly asked the Celestial Master's Ordination to provide a way out of danger!

The moment his words fell, the viscous crimson on the blood moon began to writhe, gathering into a line of small characters:

—By expending one question opportunity, the revered inheritor may activate "Nether Candle Mystic Eyes" for twelve hours!

—Discern all things, seek good fortune and avoid danger, shun calamity and embrace blessings!

"The revered inheritor? Nether Candle Mystic Eyes?"

Zhang Xuan murmured the words, his brow tightly furrowed.