"Let's go in." By the time Lu Mingfei spoke, he had already followed the water rushing back into the pitch-black cave.
This time, he had remembered to give them a heads-up before acting.
Ye Sheng and Jude Jiqu exchanged a glance behind him, then followed. Ye Sheng had intended to have his junior bring up the rear, but before he could say anything, he had been left behind.
"How does that saying from your country go again?" Jude Jiqu teased. "We're the things that get washed up on the beach."
"The waves behind drive on the waves ahead, and the waves ahead die on the beach," Ye Sheng recited evenly. "The original comes from Qingsuo Gaoyi by Liu Fu of the Song dynasty: 'The waves behind on the Yangtze River drive on the waves ahead; in worldly affairs, the new replace the old.' It's a metaphor for the constant progression of all things."
Cassell College taught entirely in Chinese, but its students and faculty had learned the language in all sorts of places. Online platforms and slang often appealed more to young people like Jude Jiqu. Among the professors, watching China Central Television's nightly news was popular: it aired punctually, and the amount of spoken content was almost always the same, making it suitable for daily practice.
"All right, stop teaching me ancient poetry. Let's catch up with our junior." Jude Jiqu pouted like a child caught fooling around in class and scolded by the teacher.
That little distraction eased some of their tension.
The three swam through seemingly boundless darkness for a long time, until an upward sweep of their helmet lights illuminated a broad, uneven silver mirror. It was the boundary of that endless abyss of water-the surface.
They emerged into a vast chamber. Its walls and vaulted ceiling were all cast in bronze, while its floor was the river water connected to the outside.
They swam toward a nearby stretch of bronze flooring, a bridge spanning the water. Its dry bronze surface stood only a few dozen centimeters above the waterline.
"This city almost looks as though it was built after being flooded. Did he take that into account when he built it?" Jude Jiqu marveled. As she spoke, she slowly surveyed every corner of the chamber, allowing Professor Mans and the others watching the live feed from her helmet camera to see their surroundings clearly.
"There are patterns on the wall." A female operative's voice came over the comms. It was Thelma, Professor Mans's student assistant.
Hearing her, Ye Sheng approached the "wall." "This is Ye Sheng reporting live from the scene. Thelma, those aren't patterns."
Jude Jiqu and Lu Mingfei, who had drawn his sword and held it in his hand, came closer as well. All three tilted their heads back to look.
Countless metal disks covered a towering bronze wall dozens of meters high. Their bronze teeth meshed together into an immense, intricate structure, like the movement of a giant's mechanical watch dropped in front of three ants that had wandered into his home.
"Alchemical machinery. Judging by the scale of this work, this is definitely the city of Norton, the Bronze and Fire King," Professor Mans said. "His sleeping chamber is somewhere in this city. Don't linger."
"Understood. I can sense that the place where the 'Snake' I used for reconnaissance was circling isn't far away," Ye Sheng replied.
Lu Mingfei could hear their conversation. As he followed Ye Sheng, he asked Jude Jiqu beside him what "Snake" was.
"Now you're finally acting a little like a junior." Instead of answering immediately, Jude Jiqu gave him a playful wink. "That's how a junior should behave. Ask your senior when you have questions, and don't charge ahead when there's danger, either. Got it?"
Her Chinese was actually fluent enough for her to use idioms. She must have had a good teacher.
Chapter 24: The Great Hall
"Snake" was Ye Sheng's Word Spirit.
It released several bioelectric currents centered on the user to survey the outside world or transmit electromagnetic information. In low-resistance environments, such as rainy weather, areas densely packed with metal wiring, railway lines, or bodies of water, this Word Spirit possessed an astonishingly vast domain.
The most extreme example was its namesake, who had once used this Word Spirit and an Amplification Coil to detect the Tunguska Explosion in Siberia while he was in America. In other words, amplified by the Amplification Coil, his domain had covered the entire planet. Of course, the extraordinarily powerful elemental turbulence caused by the Tunguska Explosion was also part of the reason he had detected it successfully.
Before Lu Mingfei and Mans came down, Ye Sheng had used his Word Spirit to survey the water, discovering the Bronze City through the layers of rock beneath the riverbed.
At the time, one of Ye Sheng's "Snakes" had not only entered the Bronze City but also discovered some terrifying presence, circling in place in fear.
The essence of a Word Spirit was the use of mental power to influence the laws of nature within a certain span of time and space.
Anything capable of frightening "Snake" had to be a powerful mind.
According to Cassell College's records, that mind should have been asleep, yet the S-rank now claimed to have communicated with it.
"Do you feel... a little cold?" Ye Sheng asked quietly.
Following the direction indicated by "Snake," he had led Lu Mingfei and Jude Jiqu a long way, passing through several empty chambers and the bronze corridors connecting them. Sometimes they could walk along dry ancient bronze paths; other times they had to dive through narrow, dark passages.
As they neared the location of "Snake," they suddenly realized they had reached an unusual great hall.
They had entered by diving through a half-submerged corridor. The moment they set foot on the hall's floor, a cold, sinister atmosphere settled around them and refused to leave.
Their diving suits not only isolated them completely from the outside but also had independent oxygen supplies, pressure regulation, and circulation systems. High-quality insulating materials kept them from losing body heat even in deep water.
Yet the chill in this hall seemed able to penetrate human technology, like a ghost clinging to their bodies and whispering icy words.
"It may be because of your location. In alchemy, the Pentagram represents five elements, with fire at the lower right. This Bronze City was also built on alchemical principles, rather like ancient Chinese feng shui. The Dragon King's sleeping chamber should be in the lower part of the Bronze City. You're already approaching its deepest point," Professor Mans explained over the comms.
The great hall was magnificent, at least several dozen meters tall, with a bronze pillar in each of its four corners connecting the floor to the ceiling.
Entering from the front, they found several rows of statues on either side, all bowing low, with human bodies and snake heads.
The path between the bowing statues ended at a bronze tree. Its trunk was thick, its ancient roots twisted and intertwined, and its top reached all the way to the ceiling. Its maker had carved its branches and leaves across the ceiling, spreading over half the vault.
Lu Mingfei immediately swept his gaze across the hall's ceiling, walls, and statues, but found none of the lurking enemies or monsters disguised as statues he had been watching for.
In the Lands Between, he had entered many Catacombs with surroundings much like the Bronze City, though they had been far livelier. Monsters could lurk around every corner or even overhead, making them impossible to guard against.
"'Snake' is very close. The place we're looking for is just on the other side of this wall." A pale golden light shone in Ye Sheng's eyes. The closer he came to "Snake," the more distinctly he felt its terror. It crawled and circled uncontrollably, yet dared not leave, like a servant confronted with his emperor.
"Jiqu, point your camera at the ceiling. Norma says those twisted branches and leaves are Dragon Script," Professor Mans directed remotely. "Ye Sheng, Lu Mingfei, search the surrounding area. This is an alchemical city. The king's sleeping chamber may be accessed through special mechanisms and passages."
"Understood."
The three spread out across the enormous hall.
Lu Mingfei held Red Skies with its tip lowered toward the floor, the blade forming a straight line with his arm. It resembled the Fool's Stance among longsword guards, except that he held the sword in one hand.
He strolled slowly among the statues, inspecting these most suspicious objects one by one.
The statues wore ancient Chinese robes and held Chinese-style ivory court tablets. Their heads were bowed in apparent reverence, but those heads were shaped like cobras, with long, slender necks emerging incongruously from their collars.
Walking among them, he kept feeling as though their eyes were watching anyone who passed.
Suddenly, Lu Mingfei truly sensed a cold gaze from behind.
The longsword in his hand had been subtly shifting its angle all along, reflecting an arc of roughly sixty degrees behind him to his right.
The instant he turned, he raised his sword horizontally beside him and lowered his center of gravity into a cutting stance. Then a crescent of sword light slashed out like a silver moon!
Lu Mingfei had once performed this combat skill with a long blade. It was blindingly fast, covered an enormous area, and could turn a battle around in an instant. Though he now held a straight sword, the Elden Lord's command of distance no longer required him to pursue greater reach. Precision alone was enough.
A snake-faced statue had been eerily following behind him. The instant they faced each other, Red Skies' sharp tip swept across its solid-silver eyes, leaving a cut a finger deep.
The gaze he had felt came from the solitary, savage silver glint of those eyes against the dark bronze surface, as though they had blinked.
Whatever means the statue used to move, it now stood silent. Two trails of thick, black "tears" flowed from the wounds across its eyes, winding down its bronze cheeks and through the gaps between its scales.
Bang! A heavy report thundered through the hall-a gunshot.
Lu Mingfei thrust his sword sharply along a short, straight line, piercing the strange statue's throat. He stepped forward and kicked it hard into the pooled water spilling from a distant corridor, then immediately hurried toward the gunshot.
A hair-raising sound rose from all around the hall, like someone grinding two rusty pieces of metal together right against their ears. Now that sound was magnified hundreds, thousands of times. Tens of thousands of bronze gears on the surrounding walls began to turn slowly. A tremendous tolling reverberated through the cavern, rust flaked off the bronze gears, and their teeth meshed with a clattering rattle. Every snake-faced statue moved at once, raising its ivory court tablet, bending its slender neck, and tilting its head toward the vault, as though performing an ancient rite of worship.
Lu Mingfei darted between the statues. In the gloom, his helmet light illuminated one grotesque face after another. Every snake-faced figure's eyes gleamed silver, like ghosts surging toward him along the road to the underworld.
Chapter 25: A Story
Lu Mingfei reached Ye Sheng and Jude Jiqu.
A wisp of smoke still curled from the muzzle of the SSP-1 in Ye Sheng's hand. He stood behind Jude Jiqu, restraining her in a wrestling hold. Not far from them stood another eerily mobile snake-faced statue. A bullet had blasted a huge opening in its head, yet what remained of its mouth was actually smiling.
"What happened?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"It may have been the Dragon Script." Ye Sheng pointed at the vault. "Jiqu took pictures in succession, which amounted to reading the Dragon Script in a particular sequence. That can trigger 'spirit vision' and make you lose control of your mind."
"I cut the signal cable, and I activated something..." Pale-faced, Jude Jiqu looked toward a bronze lever on a nearby wall.
The signal cable connecting her to the ship had been severed. One end hung at her waist, while the other lay cut on the floor.
"Jiqu most likely activated the Bronze City's mechanical systems. It now knows someone has infiltrated the king's sleeping chamber. Defensive installations may awaken." Professor Mans's voice was grave. "Prepare to withdraw. This infiltration has become a direct invasion, and that's beyond your capabilities."
"No, Professor," Ye Sheng said. "My 'Snake' doesn't sense danger. It's still circling there. We still have a chance."
Before Professor Mans could consider that and reply, the changes in the Bronze City ended on their own. The gears that had just been spinning furiously stopped dead, and every rumbling sound vanished without a trace. If not for the piles of bronze corrosion shaken loose along the edges of the walls, it would have seemed like a dream.
"What happened? Norma has detected that the vibrations stopped," Professor Mans asked.
"I think we've found the sleeping chamber," Ye Sheng reported over the comms after a moment of silence.
The wall behind the bronze tree had opened. Beneath the corrosion accumulated over long ages, it had appeared to be a single piece, but it was actually composed of countless bronze blocks. The largest were several stories tall, the smallest only a few dozen centimeters across, like a densely packed, irregular Rubik's Cube.
Now, after a complex sequence of mechanical movements, some of the blocks had shifted aside, exposing a doorway more than ten meters tall.
The doorway stood wide open, with nothing but darkness beyond.
Once they all shone their flashlights toward it, Professor Mans could also see the entire doorway through their cameras.
"Continue the operation."
Ye Sheng and Jude Jiqu both drew their guns, while Lu Mingfei held Red Skies. The three walked slowly into that unsettling darkness. Fear came from the unknown, but now the opposite was true: every piece of information pointed to the being beyond that doorway, yet the more they knew, the more frightened they became. Within lay the shadow cast over human history, the eternal, undying ruler, the prototype of gods in countless religions-or, to use his more official designation, Norton, the Bronze and Fire King.
The doorway led into a corridor. Based on their exploration so far, another chamber connected to the great hall should lie ahead.
Countless luxuriant branches and leaves, twisted and tangled together, were carved into the corridor's walls, floor, and ceiling. It was as though the crown of the great bronze tree in the hall had grown not only across the wall but into the corridor behind it.
That made this less a corridor than a gap in a tree's crown leading to some tree house.
"Don't look at those leaves," Jude Jiqu said softly, lingering fear on her face. "They trigger spirit vision."
"As long as you don't read them in a regular sequence, you'll be fine." Ye Sheng took Jude Jiqu's hand and gently reassured her.
Lu Mingfei's gaze sharpened, and Red Skies suddenly thrust toward the space between Ye Sheng and Jude Jiqu. Someone stood in front of their clasped hands, his face carrying both pity and mockery.
"Brother, you summoned me again."
Red Skies' sharp tip stopped a few centimeters from Lu Mingze's eye. Lu Mingfei checked his strength and withdrew the longsword.
Throughout it all, Lu Mingze's expression never changed, as though he had no fear whatsoever of being run through.
"Am I experiencing spirit vision?" Lu Mingfei asked.
He looked at Ye Sheng and Jude Jiqu. Time seemed to have stopped for them, frozen at the moment the young man's gaze met the girl's. Under the tangible weight of death and disaster, something like firelight still seemed to flow in their eyes: each other's reflections, and something like the end of all things.
"They're going to die." Lu Mingze's voice was low. "Why, brother? The world is so beautiful. Why choose the cruelest path... You won't be able to bear it."
Lu Mingfei looked down the corridor into the endless darkness.
"Let me tell you a story." His eyes flickered, as though he could see a filthy, bedraggled figure through that darkness. "There was someone destined to become a savior. But he was a timid, cowardly fellow. Death and pain frightened him into hiding in a dark, damp corner of some ruins, unable to move forward. For a nobody, the reality and fate of an entire world were simply too vast-so vast that they drove him to despair."
Lu Mingze's expression grew intent. He stared at Lu Mingfei without blinking.
"In that world, souls were immortal, but bodies rotted and went through cycles of rebirth." A trace of pity for the story's protagonist appeared in Lu Mingfei's eyes as he spoke. "So that man drank filthy water from foul ditches and ate fruit meant for livestock feed. Somehow, he survived, and he wandered around those ruins for a long time."
"Until one day," he narrowed his eyes, "he met someone else."
Lu Mingze sensed the shift in his emotions and realized that the turning point in the protagonist's fate had arrived.
"The other man was a wretched fellow dressed in rags. All his hair had fallen out, and his cheeks were little more than a layer of skin stretched over a skull. He didn't look alive, yet all four of his limbs were intact, and he wandered the road with a rusty longsword in his hand. That coward was actually quite perceptive. He immediately realized there was a fundamental difference between them. The pitiful fellow before him was already dead. During who knew how many cycles of rebirth, his soul had twisted, decayed, and dissipated. What remained was a rotting corpse that couldn't die because the law of death was missing. The coward was terrified. He ran like a madman until he reached a swamp. In the black standing water, he saw his own reflection. He looked no different from the monster he had just met-except that he hadn't completely lost his soul yet."