Cao Ya was unafraid and even had the leisure to think, but everyone else felt their scalps prickle.
"Fuck! Everyone, grab your weapons! Nobody go down there! What the hell is coiled up in that snow?" Ye Cheng shouted.
"Stop yelling. Keep your fucking voice down. You want to wake it up?" Fatty had spotted the thing below too. He packed some snow beside him into a ball and threw it at the back of Ye Cheng's head, cursing under his breath.
Cao Ya climbed down too and examined it closely. Following the claws upward, he saw something black and as thick as a bucket coiled in the snow, its shape half-hidden. Its segmented body was covered in scales, some buried beneath the snow and some exposed. At first glance, it looked like a large hibernating snake, but on closer inspection, it resembled a centipede.
The thing lay against the rock, utterly motionless. There was no telling whether it was dead or alive. Neither its head nor its tail was visible, so they couldn't tell how long it was either.
Pan Zi insisted on coming down too. Ye Cheng and Monk Hua kept shouting, infuriating Fatty.
"Stop yelling. It's fake, just a sculpture." Cao Ya pressed his palm against the stone carving's head and curled his lip. "The king of Eastern Xia had trash taste. This thing is hideous."
Cao Ya's movement startled everyone. Only when the thing remained completely still did they let out a breath.
"Fuck, thank God it's fake. Scared the life out of Lord Fatty. I thought a centipede-snake had crawled out of somewhere." Fatty was visibly relieved.
Wu Xie laughed and scolded him. "Fatty, you ignorant bastard. A snake is a snake, and a centipede is a centipede. Where did you get 'centipede-snake' from?"
"Hey, Comrade Innocent, what do you think this thing is, then?" Fatty retorted.
Wu Xie examined it carefully and had to admit that Fatty had a point.
What the fuck was this thing, anyway? It didn't look like a snake or a centipede.
Chen Pi A Si, whose eyes had gone unfocused and who was on the verge of passing out, visibly changed color when he saw the carving. Unsteady on his feet, he called for Monk Hua to support him and take him over to the sculpture so he could reach out and touch it.
Cao Ya concentrated and probed it with his senses.
Just then, Fatty spoke in disgust. "Is this a dragon or what? Cao Ya's right. It's ugly as hell, and it looks like it's radiating evil."
Monk Hua said, "Don't spout nonsense when you don't understand. This is a Hundred-Footed Dragon, not a Coiled Dragon. All the early dragon carvings of the Eastern Xia Kingdom looked like this. In earlier times, ancient dragons took wildly different forms. Some even had pig snouts. There's nothing strange about it."
Cao Ya chuckled.
Monk Hua grew a little angry. "You disagree?"
"If this thing is a dragon, then I'm its ancestor." Cao Ya patted the sculpture, then suddenly applied force. With a crash, the coiled Hundred-Footed Dragon sculpture broke apart, and its upper half, including the head, rolled away in a spray of snow.
Everyone stared, dumbstruck, looking as though their entire understanding of life had been overturned.
"Fuck, that thing must weigh several tons at least... Cao Ya, you weren't this much of a beast before. You taking something?" Fatty was astonished.
On their previous tomb expeditions together, Cao Ya had been impressive, but still within the bounds of what Fatty could accept. This time, fuck, he wasn't even human anymore!
Even the usually unruffled Poker-Face couldn't help casting repeated glances at Cao Ya.
"Badass!"
Wu Xie and Pan Zi exchanged a look and raised their thumbs in unison.
Chen Pi A Si and his men were somewhat dazed, as though they had never imagined anyone like this could exist. They looked at Cao Ya as if he were an alien.
Shunzi was groggy and slow to react, so he didn't show much of a response.
"Huh, do you guys smell something?" Wu Xie suddenly sniffed.
"It's coming from in here." Cao Ya pointed at a fissure in the mountainside. He pushed half of the coiled stone dragon down, revealing a rocky opening behind it that a person could barely squeeze through. The edges looked like torn rock strata, with no signs of artificial excavation. Wafts of sulfur were drifting out from within.
Everyone perked up. The hot spring Shunzi had mentioned should be in there.
Fatty turned up his flashlight and reached inside to look, then turned back. "It's nice and warm in there, but the angle's awkward. I can't light up much. There seems to be writing on the rock wall inside, too."
"What does it say?" Wu Xie asked eagerly.
Fatty narrowed his eyes and looked carefully, then shook his head. "Can't read it. Fuck knows what it says."
As he spoke, he tried to crouch and squeeze inside, but Fatty really was too fat. The opening clearly wasn't suited to him. He tried several times and still couldn't get through.
He was about to take off his coat and try again when Cao Ya stopped him.
"Don't waste your energy. Stand back." Cao Ya took the lead, bracing both hands against the rock walls as he walked in. Rock dust fell all along his path, and everyone watched the fissure widen.
Fatty tried walking in again. This time, he could pass through freely.
"Fuck, Cao Ya, what kind of martial arts do you practice? You've got internal energy, right?" Fatty exclaimed. Faced with this sight, none of them could help letting their imaginations run.
Everyone's face was filled with shock, and they cursed under their breath.
What normal person could carve out a passage like that?
The others followed, slipping into the fissure.
Chen Pi A Si had originally wanted to leave one of his men outside to provide backup if anything happened, but Ye Cheng said that with Cao Ya being such a badass, what could possibly go wrong?
Chen Pi A Si thought that was fair enough, so he simply had everyone follow them inside.
This fissure had opened during a shift in the mountain. Once inside, they discovered that it sloped steeply downward. It was pitch-black and seemed extremely deep, probably reaching into the mountain's interior.
Cao Ya led the way at the front, and rock dust kept falling as he walked, the passage widening before their very eyes.
The others followed behind in amazement. Suddenly, they felt that, whatever else happened on this expedition, getting to see someone as incredible as Cao Ya had already made the trip worthwhile.
"I suppose this is what a peerless master from a martial arts novel would look like," Wu Xie said in wonder.
He felt that this trip to Changbai Mountain was even more extraordinary than his visits to the Seven-Star Lu Palace, the Xisha Undersea Tomb, or the Qinling Sacred Tree.
If Cao Ya had accompanied him on those earlier trips, would he have needed to fear the bizarre things in those tombs?
"Fuck, Fatty, you knew a master like this and didn't tell me sooner?" Wu Xie couldn't help complaining.
Fatty was frustrated too. If he'd known Cao Ya had become this formidable, he would have brought him along no matter what.
He'd never been this powerful before.
Thanks to Cao Ya's display, nobody felt particularly tense anymore. Fatty and Wu Xie even had the leisure to chat and shoot the breeze.
"I know martial arts. Fatty, Wu Xie, if you want to learn, I can teach you," Cao Ya said with a hearty laugh.
Practicing martial arts was no simple matter. Without the ability to endure solitude or the necessary aptitude, it was difficult to achieve anything.
He himself had relied on his other selves from other worlds.
Fatty and Wu Xie had clearly thought of that too. Both said they weren't cut out for it. If they had to practice forms every day and couldn't do anything else, they might as well be killed.
In the end, though, they still asked him to teach them a few simple moves once they left Changbai Mountain. Being able to handle seven or eight people would be enough.
"Fuck, you call that simple?" Ye Cheng, one of Chen Pi A Si's men, grumbled. That would already qualify them as experts, wouldn't it?
He gazed at Cao Ya in astonishment. Martial arts really existed in this world?!
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