The boatman silently cursed the two Japanese for having nothing better to do than tour Lake Taibai in the dead of night. He was full of complaints, yet had no choice but to attend to them carefully...
His eyes suddenly widened. He had distinctly seen the tall, thin Japanese man throw a lit explosive into the lake.
His face drained of color, and he shouted from the stern, "Have you lost your minds?! If you disturb the Lake God, he'll come up and overturn our boat!"
"If the boat capsizes, we'll all die!"
The next moment, a moth, invisible in the darkness, flew into the boatman's open mouth as he shouted. Before he could stop himself, he swallowed it.
The moth's poison rapidly spread through his throat. It felt as though a steamed bun had suddenly begun swelling inside it. Within seconds, that fleshy lump had blocked his throat completely... he could no longer breathe.
The boatman's vision went black, and he toppled into the lake.
Only then did the explosive thrown into the water detonate, sending spray ten feet into the air.
"Hmm, looks like you'll be the first little snack for that Lake God you mentioned..." Togo smiled cheerfully as he watched the boatman slowly sink.
Suddenly, a tremendous impact struck the bottom of the boat, making it lurch violently.
It had come!
Miss Abe summoned her shikigami, the Demon Horned Imperial Guard, and slit her wrist, offering an onmyoji's blood in exchange for the spirit's martial prowess.
Chapter 32: Divine Tomb
In the legends of Chinese culture, gods were unique beings.
Sometimes they were mysterious, like the Queen Mother of the West, whom people described as half human, half beast, with an elixir of immortality hidden away.
Sometimes they were powerful, like Xingtian, who kept roaring his fury at Heaven even after his head was cut off.
Sometimes they were humorous, like Jigong, who wandered the mortal world playing games. Though an arhat incarnate, he spent every day joking and fooling around.
Sometimes they were almost unimaginably weak, like the Kitchen God. A simple piece of malt candy could glue his mouth shut, leaving him unable to speak.
But... dead gods... were truly rare.
Deep within the underwater cavern, Cui Jiuyang stared at a stone tablet in utter bewilderment, overwhelmed by the sheer absurdity of what he saw.
"Tomb of the Jishui Qingyuan Water God"
The large characters carved into the tablet told everyone who came here that a god lay quietly within.
Even his great-grandfather had probably never seen anything like this!
Otherwise, why hadn't he written about it in the Record of All Under Heaven?!
So gods could die?
Ninth Lady swam around the stone tablet, then returned and gestured to Cui Jiuyang, indicating that there was something behind it.
Ninth Lady pulled Cui Jiuyang behind the tablet, where he discovered a pit. It was pitch-black inside, and all he could make out was what appeared to be a pile of objects.
Not daring to approach rashly, he extended the glowing Lotus Pod in his hand to illuminate it. The things in the pile gleamed and reflected the light like precious treasures.
He examined them carefully. Once he finally saw what they were, a chill ran down his spine.
They were... countless scales, fragments of back armor, shells, and severed jointed limbs...
These things seemed to have been taken from living aquatic creatures. They had been here for who knew how long, yet still looked so fresh. It was unlikely they had been shed naturally.
And judging by their appearance... all of them had been taken from immensely powerful aquatic demon beasts.
Carp scales as large as a palm, fragments of back armor five inches thick, enormous crab claws covered in spikes... all piled into this pit.
Mama Liu swam around the tablet just then. She, too, was startled by the contents of the pit, though she seemed familiar with what they were.
Unlike Cui Jiuyang and Ninth Lady, who kept well back, she swam straight into the deep pit.
From inside, she gestured for the two of them to wait, then began rummaging through the pile.
When Mama Liu emerged, she held three things.
A black pearl the size of a pigeon's egg, a fragment of turtle shell as large as a wok, and something that had not come from an aquatic creature: a long-shriveled section of white lotus root.
She handed the black pearl to Cui Jiuyang and the white lotus root to Ninth Lady, then held the turtle-shell fragment against herself. It covered her chest, waist, and abdomen perfectly. Apparently, she had kept that one for herself.
Neither Cui Jiuyang nor Ninth Lady understood why, but seeing Mama Liu's serious expression, they each tucked away the... treasures, for lack of a better word, that she had found.
The three circled the tablet again, still unable to understand why these pieces of aquatic creatures had been piled into the pit.
Finding nothing else nearby, they continued swimming deeper inside.
As they swam, they gradually sensed that something was wrong...
The farther they went, the less the water felt like water... it was thick and resistant, as though they were swimming through transparent syrup. Moving their arms and lower legs grew difficult, then more difficult still.
All three began to feel uneasy. If we keep going and it keeps getting thicker, won't the three of us end up stuck here?
A god's tomb really is dangerous. We haven't even seen the burial mound yet. We've only passed a stone tablet, and already we've encountered something unlike anything we've ever seen...
The three hesitated, but a sound like muffled thunder came from behind them...
Had the cave collapsed again?
Before their alarm could subside, the rumbling behind them came again and again.
Cui Jiuyang failed to recognize that the sounds resembled explosions or gunfire, but Mama Liu and Ninth Lady had witnessed war. They immediately realized that someone was using firearms on Lake Taibai.
Their first thought was: Has Fifth Master Yang come to rescue us? Is he using firearms against the giant Lake God turtle for our sake?
They could scarcely believe their own conclusion, yet could think of no other explanation.
But... a collapse soon followed.
All three could clearly see cracks spreading along the stone walls from the direction of the entrance, with streams of tiny bubbles escaping through them...
The booming outside continued, while the cracking sounds inside the cave grew more frequent.
It seemed the bluestone walls of the cave would not hold much longer.
There was no time left to think. The passage behind them was about to collapse.
Never mind that the water ahead was merely thick and difficult to move through. Even if it were an impenetrable wall, they would have to find a way past!
Otherwise, wouldn't it be a terrible waste to be buried alive here when the ceiling fell?
The three struggled forward, but the resistance kept increasing. After a long while, the cracks in the walls were already more than three fingers wide, yet they had advanced barely ten feet.
Loose stones finally began falling in the cavern behind them.
Anxious, Ninth Lady was about to put on the Nuo Mask again, but Mama Liu caught her hand and shook her head.
Mama Liu swam quickly forward, overtaking Cui Jiuyang. Then she opened her mouth and swallowed a great gulp of water, closed her eyes, pressed her palms together, and folded her legs beneath her, gathering her strength.
Veins bulged from her neck to her face. Her complexion shifted from white to red, then from red to purple, with green beginning to show through the purple...
Bulges kept appearing across her body, as though something were moving inside her.
Then suddenly, as though time itself had stopped, every strange change vanished.
At that instant, Cui Jiuyang and Ninth Lady sensed an immense yet gentle... soul awakening within Mama Liu.
Brown markings began appearing along the swollen veins on Mama Liu's body. Her eyes slowly enlarged and bulged outward, her hands and feet grew broader, and a thin membrane gradually formed between her fingers.
When the transformation was complete, Mama Liu turned around, giving Cui Jiuyang and Ninth Lady a fright!
Mama Liu now resembled a humanoid frog. The usual smiling warmth in her eyes was entirely gone, replaced by calm detachment.
Cui Jiuyang realized... the being before him at that moment was not Mama Liu, but Toad Boy, attendant to the Old Mother of Mount Tai!
A true god with a divine seat on Mount Tai!
She was gentle, yet utterly indifferent.
She looked around. Her gaze did not linger on Ninth Lady at all; she merely gave Cui Jiuyang a couple of appraising looks.
Then she bowed three times toward the depths of the water, seemingly paying her respects to the deceased Qingyuan Water God, before swimming onward.
Miraculously, after Toad Boy passed through it, the water that had been so thick they could barely move became no different from ordinary water. It even held a trace of warmth.
Cui Jiuyang and Ninth Lady followed behind Toad Boy, swimming swiftly onward.
The rumbling collapse behind them drew closer and closer.
Suddenly, it felt as though they had passed through a barrier...
The space before them opened up.
The water was gone.
Chapter 33: Divine Palace
What appeared before Cui Jiuyang and Ninth Lady was less a burial mound than a magnificent divine residence.
It was an immense space, with no ceiling visible overhead and a vast lake below.
The three stood at an entrance cut into towering stone walls, with a stone platform projecting into empty space beneath their feet.
Blue-black stone steps wound down from the platform, leading straight toward the distant... majestic palace.
From afar, the palace displayed carved beams, painted rafters, and sweeping, upturned eaves. Blue-black dominated its colors, accented here and there with indigo and gray-black. It was solemn and imposing, inspiring not the slightest irreverent thought.
The palace stood on a bluestone platform rising from the center of the enormous lake. Nine waterfalls cascaded around it, sending clouds of mist swirling upward.
The entire palace shimmered in and out of view amid the haze, as though floating among the clouds. It was truly the work of a god.
Cui Jiuyang could not resist pinching his thigh to make sure he had not drowned in the water and that everything before him was not a hallucination in his final moments.
This was the Qingyuan Water God's tomb?
People were always talking about living like immortals. Today, he had finally seen what that meant.
The god here had long since stopped living, yet still had a place this grand. If the god were still alive, wouldn't it be something else entirely?
When Cui Jiuyang and Ninth Lady finally turned back, recovering from their shock, they discovered...
Mama Liu was gone.
This was only a stone platform thirty feet square, connecting the entrance in the cliff to the steps leading to the palace. They did not even have to raise their heads; a single glance took in everything. There was nowhere anyone could hide.
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