Staggering Journey (1)

Spring thunder rolled, pouring down from the vault of heaven. Between heaven and earth, mountains and seas, something like a dragon seemed to move.

By the time the thunder gradually subsided, it was already afternoon. A fine rain began spreading once more, and the few wild birds sheltering in the ruined temple finally lost patience, beating their wings and leaving to forage in the rain.

It was roughly then, as a black crow took flight, that Zhang Xing gradually regained awareness. But awareness was all he regained. His head felt as though someone had stuffed five pounds of flour and three pounds of water into it, clanging and sloshing into a single mass of paste. His eyes seemed to ache, too.

His eyelids were heavy and his thoughts muddled, but Zhang Xing still struggled instinctively to recall something of the cause-he seemed to have ended up this way because a fake Daoist at a tourist attraction had swindled him.

But why would being swindled by a fake Daoist leave him in this state? That made no sense. Had he been drugged?

Self-reflection arrived almost instantly and of its own accord. Evidently, he was an old hand at it.

He remembered now. A fake Daoist outside a tourist attraction had conned him into buying a Compass supposedly possessing the same powers as Captain Jack Sparrow's in Pirates of the Caribbean. Yet this supposedly limited-edition Pirates of the Caribbean Compass had been engraved with "As heaven moves with vigor, the gentleman strives ceaselessly to strengthen himself; as earth bears all with its yielding nature, the gentleman sustains all through abundant virtue"... While studying this supposedly divine artifact blessed by Laojun, which had cost him fifteen yuan and was said to point toward his heart's desire, he had lost focus and fallen straight into a well, in broad daylight, in a tourist attraction bustling with people.

No wonder his head felt as though it was going clang, clang. Water really had gotten into it.

That damned fake Daoist, that ridiculous souvenir, that bogus tourist attraction without a safety railing-he was definitely going to report them to the National Religious Affairs Commission and expose them online. He was a major influencer on Bianhu, damn it, with fifty thousand followers gifted to him by the platform...

But before those jumbled thoughts could go anywhere, a distinct slapping sensation struck his face, hard enough to hurt.

Zhang Xing forced his eyes open with all his strength and saw a blurry figure looking down at him. He hurriedly tried to speak, only to find his voice hoarse and his throat painfully dry:

"D-doctor... there's nothing seriously wrong with me, is there?!"

"There's plenty wrong with you!" the figure overhead blurted out. His voice was rough and booming; he plainly had no medical ethics, and seemed to have bad breath as well. "Doctor, my ass. Where would you find a doctor in a ruined temple out in the wilderness? Young Zhang, I suggest you get yourself moving. Once those Dongyi bastards catch up, I, Du Meng, am neither your kin nor your friend. There's no reason I should carry you!"

Zhang Xing's mind was a tangled mess, his throat dry, painful, and itchy. All he could do for now was force his eyes wide open. Through the haze, he saw an enormous head facing him. The man was tall and broad, with slightly reddish skin, a full beard, a crooked topknot, bulging eyes, and a huge, gaping mouth that sprayed spittle everywhere. He was genuinely frightening.

Zhang Xing visibly froze at the sight. Yet after swallowing, his first reaction was peculiar: "Whoever you are, brother, why aren't you wearing a mask?"

The bearded man flew into a rage and yanked Zhang Xing off the ground. "What mask? What do you mean, whoever I am? Young Zhang, if you keep playing dumb, I'll..."

His curses stopped abruptly. Both the bearded man, carried away by anger, and Zhang Xing, dizzy from being shaken, sensed almost simultaneously that the ground beneath them had suddenly begun trembling.

"What's this, an earthquake?" Poor Zhang Xing was still too dizzy and muddleheaded to understand what was happening.

"Who gives a damn whether it's an earthquake or some god, devil, or ghost? Either way, we can't stay in this wreck of a temple." With a certain alarm and uncertainty, the bearded man set him down, then turned to gather things up, breathing heavily.

Dumped on the ground, Zhang Xing had now realized something was wrong. He struggled to raise his head and look, only to see the bearded man kick over a fire, sending up smoke and a sizzling sound as water met flame. Then the man casually tossed him a filthy, old-fashioned helmet that looked like a television prop.

As the helmet landed in his hands, some whitish, viscous liquid spilled out.

Meanwhile, the seventeen or eighteen exhausted soldiers inside the temple also scrambled up in panic. Some supported one another, others struggled along alone, all fleeing outside regardless of everything else.

Zhang Xing himself, despite being the first to shout about an earthquake, felt no panic at all, his brain being a mass of paste. Dazed, he tapped the helmet, discovering that this thing, apparently used as a cooking pot earlier, was far harder and heavier than he had imagined. Only then did he notice that he, too, wore ancient armor like everyone else... Its arm sections were missing, but the torso unmistakably displayed the features of chain mail, and two polished armor plates on his chest were covered with considerable grime.

That was bright armor. Sui or Tang?

Was it the Sui or Tang?

Had he traveled back to some chaotic point during the Sui or Tang dynasties? Whether it was the three campaigns against Goguryeo, the fall of Sui and founding of Tang, or the An Lushan Rebellion, none seemed like a good time to be a soldier.

Propping himself up where he lay, Zhang Xing seemed to have grasped something. He looked around, hoping to gather more information, but quickly failed, for another unmistakable tremor soon reached him.

"Move! Crawl if you can't walk! If you can't even crawl, I'm leaving you!" The bearded man put on his helmet, picked up a long saber with a short handle, and rested it on his shoulder. Leaving everything else untouched, he turned straight toward the building's dilapidated doors, muttering as he walked. "That defeat at Fallen Dragon Shoal taught me one thing: never throw away a perfectly good life for nothing! Never mind the old and young waiting at home-even the customs of us Hongshan people demand that fallen leaves return to their roots. Even dead, our ashes have to be scattered back home!"

Zhang Xing could no longer worry about whether this was acting or a hallucination brought on by general anesthesia. His head was so terribly heavy that he simply could not manage such fine logical reasoning.

Thus, it was hard to say whether he obeyed the man's instructions or acted on an instinct to survive and investigate when he put on the helmet that had just been used to cook porridge, then tried to stand by leaning on the statue's pedestal.

But as soon as he rose, Zhang Xing found that his legs were terribly weak. He could barely support himself, and they trembled uncontrollably.

And right then, something stranger happened. He distinctly felt a peculiar, icy presence, something like a current of air, surge out from his chest and abdomen, then flow toward his legs along something like channels, as though his body were instinctively trying to help him stand this way... Yet that very cold current, with its intense chill, sharply stimulated his legs and brain, making him drop straight back down onto his backside with a thump.

"Mother of mine!"

Everyone else had long since fled. The bearded man had gone out as well, but had run back alone, just in time to witness this. He grew even more exasperated. "The squad commandant told you ages ago to abandon that Northern Wasteland barbarian method from your hometown and follow the proper path of the Three Radiances and Four Sovereigns the army gave you. But you couldn't bear to give up that little bit of Ice True Qi you'd cultivated, and you wouldn't listen. Now look at you! Can't even walk, can you? What a waste of your cultivation talent. If I had it, I'd have become a mess leader long ago..."

Zhang Xing understood even less now, damn it.

He had just tried to make sense of something as bizarre as traveling back to ancient China, very likely the turbulent Sui-Tang era. But what was this now? A martial-arts version of the Sui and Tang? Or the Sui and Tang of the historical romance? In that case, should he go pledge himself to Li Yuanba ahead of time?

But this time, there really was no time to think.

Another distinct tremor came, as though all heaven and earth were about to overturn. Dust began showering from the ruined temple.

At the temple doors, the bearded man stamped his foot and darted back inside. Bracing himself with the butt of his long saber in one hand, he used the other to flip Zhang Xing, who was clinging to the wooden statue, bodily over and hoist him onto his shoulder. "I must've owed you a debt in my last life!"

Slung over his shoulder with his head hanging down behind him, Zhang Xing caught sight of an object where he had originally been lying. A jolt went through him, and he hurriedly shouted, "Hey, um! Dudu-Brother Du, right? Let me bring that thing! It's my family heirloom!"

The bearded giant, the one called Du Meng, was impatient, but still bent into a slight crouch, letting Zhang Xing reach back from his shoulder and seize something from the floor. Only after Zhang Xing said he had it did he hurry outside.

Leaving aside his attempt to escape on the bearded giant's shoulder, Zhang Xing's soul was already reeling as he clutched that object-the reason could not have been simpler: it was the very Compass he had bought before falling into the well.

The Compass was convincingly made, with an antique shape and an attractive appearance. About half the size of a palm, it was convenient to carry, yet had cost only fifteen yuan. The two lines of simplified Chinese engraved on either side profoundly embodied the breadth and depth of Chinese manufacturing.

But now, especially after that cold current had circulated through his legs in an orderly fashion, making itself thoroughly felt, how could Zhang Xing fail to recognize that this thing could cost him his life?

It was the chief culprit behind his present predicament!

It was also the straw he could clutch to save his life!

In the language of certain high-end webnovels, it could simply be called the golden finger of his transmigration... No, the golden Compass!

Yet what drove Zhang Xing to despair was that, with the copper-plated Compass in his hand, its needle merely drooped downward, motionless... Was this thing single-use? Or did it need charging?

Out here in the wild mountains, with water in his brain, a pair of chronically chilled legs, and an earthquake to boot, where was he supposed to find a power bank? And how would he charge it? With True Qi?

At that thought, disregarding the exquisite sensation of his recent electric-shock treatment, Zhang Xing immediately tried to activate the so-called True Qi. Sure enough, it responded freely, as though it were part of his own body, flowing easily along his arm and filling the hand holding the Compass.

Unfortunately, it did nothing.

While he despaired, Du Meng had already carried him to the temple doors, only to encounter a third powerful tremor. With one foot stepping outside, Du Meng stumbled and almost flung the man off his shoulder.

Just then, Zhang Xing suddenly remembered what might have been the most frequently used incantation in all China, one that seemed entirely appropriate, and blurted it out:

"Taishang Laojun, swiftly, swiftly, as the law commands!"

His shout coincided perfectly with a jolt that nearly tossed the acid out of his stomach. Unfortunately, the Compass needle still only swung with inertia and gravity.

Zhang Xing was nearly in despair.

But in the next instant, as Du Meng straightened again and walked through the temple doors, the needle of the Compass in Zhang Xing's hand suddenly sprang up against gravity, pointing straight behind Du Meng and ahead of Zhang Xing.

Zhang Xing went blank for a moment. Then his brain immediately began racing, reasoning through how to use this "golden Compass," and he soon understood what was happening.

"Go back!" With bile nearly jolted out of him and his throat hurting terribly, Zhang Xing shouted with all his strength from Du Meng's shoulder. "Back into the temple!"

"What nonsense are you talking?" Du Meng kept struggling forward through the dead branches and fallen leaves outside the temple, scolding him with his head lowered. "If a big earthquake really comes, hiding inside the temple would be asking to die! Even staying on the slope isn't safe! We have to get down to the open ground on the main road at the foot of the mountain! Why else do you think everyone's running?! With my temper, if you shout again, I'll dump you here and find my own way!"

"Go back at once!" Frantic, Zhang Xing could only roar at the top of his lungs, mixing in some deception. "My family heirloom is guiding us! It seeks good fortune and wards off disaster-it's manifesting its power to show us the way! So many of our brothers died, and only the two of us escaped here. Do you think that was sheer luck? Listen to me one more time. Our lives are tied together now anyway. Why would I lie to you?"

At those words, Du Meng stopped abruptly in the bare woods, hesitating as the others fleeing ahead grew farther and farther away. A moment later, as the ground shuddered again, he lowered his head and roared as though venting his frustration. Still, he turned around and, head down, carried the man back the way they had come.

The tremors grew more frequent and more violent, while the drizzling rain made the ground terribly slippery. Du Meng ran with all his strength, falling who knew how many times. When he reached the entrance, the earth beneath his feet suddenly heaved straight upward, opening a visibly widening fissure. Forced to leap forward with all his might, he rolled bodily through the temple doors, the fall leaving him dazed and reeling.

That was not all. The greatest upheaval finally came. The earth rumbled, mountains crumbled, and the ground split open. Wails and cries erupted outside amid the thunderous noise. The two men inside the ruined temple had no attention to spare for anything outside, hastily grabbing for whatever they could reach.

Naturally, it was useless-and unnecessary.

For, whether unexpectedly or as expected, though an enormous fissure had opened not far outside its doors, the temple merely shook and shed dust. It did not overturn, nor did it ever collapse.

After an unknown length of time, the upheaval stopped.

Zhang Xing ached all over, his gaze vacant as he dazedly surveyed his surroundings... The wooden statue missing half its head, the dust-covered table, the great hole in the roof, the smoke-blackened roof beams, and the long-ruined bird's nest farther overhead-he missed nothing. Finally, naturally, he looked toward the bearded Du Meng opposite him, only to find the man staring at the Compass clenched in his hand. Not knowing how to explain it, he could only silently consider his present situation.

Soon, however, Zhang Xing, who had just been pondering "the relationship between transmigration and rebirth into a martial-arts Sui-Tang world, the Compass, the earthquake, and the bearded man," realized something else. He and the man opposite him looked outside the temple together, then stood dumbstruck.

Beyond the temple doors, at the farthest edge of their vision, some cylindrical object gleaming with a pale yellow metallic luster was sliding continuously through the cleft in the mountains. Looking closely, they could see what seemed to be overlapping layers on the cylinder as it slid, like scales.

Soon, as the object slid faster and faster, moving farther away and higher up, Zhang Xing suddenly realized that these were not merely like scales. They were actual scales.

And their owner possessed an enormous, serpent-like body of unknowable size and length, gradually moving and unfurling.

But that was not all. As the body slid, a gigantic, scaled bird's talon suddenly stretched out in midair, followed by a second, a third, and a fourth... After those four enormous limbs with qilin-like elbows and eagle talons emerged, the top of a head bearing huge, branching projections like deer antlers gradually appeared amid the massive serpentine body in the distance.

At the sight, though the transmigrator Zhang Xing had already lost his capacity for detailed thought and basic movement, one word still came to him instinctively-dragon.

A dragon had been hidden underground in this mountain valley. Now it had suddenly emerged, causing this natural disaster.

Yet only a moment later, Zhang Xing became confused again. Once the head buried amid that massive serpentine body rose fully and revealed itself, even with great rocks and heaps of earth falling incessantly, he could still see that its face, as vast as a palace hall, looked more like a tiger's.

Its tail rose, and that, too, proved to be a feathered bird's tail, split into three at the tip.

A tiger's head, deer antlers, a serpent's body, eagle talons, a bird's tail, and an immense frame-even before fully unfurling, it loomed like a mountain range... Even if it was a dragon, it was certainly no conventional one.

Of course, if it was not a dragon, what else could it be?

There was no time for Zhang Xing to review his knowledge of biology, mythology, and folklore, untouched for who knew how many years.

In the next instant, the tiger face opened its eyes, the deer antlers lifted proudly skyward, and a single mighty roar sent thunderbolts shooting in every direction. The serpent body stretched and swayed, eagle talons extended on all sides, and the bird's tail swept up and down, stirring wind and clouds everywhere... Then this unquestionably powerful dragon beast extended its body fully in midair, before suddenly soaring upward and shooting like an arrow into the dense clouds at the utmost heights of the sky.

Something even more terrifying appeared. This divine beast had flown into the heavens, splitting the earth and parting the clouds, yet it actually seemed to be battling something above the cloud layer-and the two were evenly matched!

In moments, hailstones the size of washbasins came crashing down. Burning stones swept up rainwater and shot in every direction, wreathed in smoke; there was no telling how far they flew or where they landed.

Inside the ruined temple, the transmigrator Zhang Xing had long since been stupefied by the sight. For a time, only one thought remained in his mind:

Sui and Tang, my ass!

PS: The new book is out. The usual rules apply: the customary slow start. I'll take my time writing; take your time reading.

. Bringing you Exorcising the Dragon: Zhang Xing and Bai Yousi by the acclaimed author Water-Fearing Grenade