Even Small Changes Can Strike Fear

The sun gradually burned away the mist between the mountains, revealing its merciless, blazing white light.

The shadow of the ancestral hall's roof fell across the front courtyard. Inside the main hall, the spirit tablets of the Wu Clan Stronghold's ancestors stood quietly in rows.

On the offering table at the bottom, besides the incense burner and fruit, stood a wooden rack holding a jade flute horizontally. The flute was mottled green and red, with long, slender silken cords of many colors wrapped around its end.

The old woman who guarded the hall hurried inside, her bamboo flute in her left hand. She snatched up the jade flute with her right, turned, and ran back out.

As soon as she reached the hall's entrance, she looked down from the height and saw several figures racing up the mountainside.

Stronghold Chief Wu's cloak and Wu Tugu's build stood out in particular.

The young outsider was almost level with Stronghold Chief Wu, both moving as swiftly as tigers and leopards.

By the look of it, if he hadn't needed Stronghold Chief Wu to show the way, he could have been even faster.

"She got here this quickly?"

The old woman cursed, glanced to either side, and suddenly ran off to the side.

She had run back to the ancestral hall from the bamboo grove. That route was much shorter than the one from the pit to the hall, which was the only reason she had arrived first.

In a straight race, she was no match for those people.

Stronghold Chief Wu's face was full of anxiety and anger. From a distance, he had already seen the figure on the mountain enter the ancestral hall and come back out, and he couldn't help shouting.

"Granny, what are you doing?!"

His booming voice echoed through the mountains.

At his shout, Chu Tianshu looked over and spotted the old woman. He spread both arms and stamped hard on the ground.

The soil burst open beneath his foot, leaving a small crater, and he shot forward like a hunting falcon.

The ancestral hall stood among the highest places in the entire stronghold.

The old woman had run out of it, but across the broad area nearby, there was little cover in which to hide.

Only to the west was there a cliff face, thick with moss and creeping vines that concealed a large cave.

Relying on her small, thin frame, she slipped straight through the gaps between the vines hanging over the entrance without even looking at them and rushed inside.

Hard on her heels, Chu Tianshu arrived.

He grabbed a great mass of vines, jerked his wrist, and tore the tangled growth apart at its branches. He flung it aside, exposing the cave entrance.

Sunlight flooded into the cave, letting him make out the terrain and rock walls well enough to guard against any traps.

There were no traps, but a rapid, piercing flute note suddenly rang out inside.

Large numbers of flying insects swarmed together from the surrounding rock walls.

Before Chu Tianshu could see what kind of insects they were, a great burst of flame erupted where they collided.

Whoosh!!!

Flames spewed out of the cave.

Chu Tianshu raised a sleeve to shield himself and pushed off to dodge, first retreating diagonally to the left, then veering diagonally back to the right.

In the blink of an eye, he was more than ten meters away.

"What was that?"

Chu Tianshu focused his gaze on the cave again, but the old woman was nowhere to be seen.

There were still many little insects on the rock walls, some taking wing and others settling back down. They came in all manner of strange varieties.

Some looked like tiny, jet-black ladybugs, some like green bees, and some like fiery red ants, though their wings were longer than their bodies.

Even more flightless creatures had been startled by the flames and were scurrying through cracks in the ground: centipedes, house centipedes, lizards, scorpions, spiders...

He looked up and discovered two large characters carved above the entrance, previously hidden by the vines.

"Hidden... Immortal?"

As Chu Tianshu read the two characters, Stronghold Chief Wu and the others arrived.

"She actually went into Hidden Immortal Cave?"

Stronghold Chief Wu caught his breath and hurriedly told Chu Tianshu, "It's very dangerous inside. Don't rush in..."

The Miao people originally had their own writing, but what had been passed down among the Miao in different places was not consistent, so it was not widely usable.

In the Kangxi era, a miscellaneous work called Record of the Minute Things of Dongxi recorded: "The Miao have a script, neither of the ding kind nor of the tadpole kind. Who created it cannot be determined."

By the late Qing, the legend had become this: when the Miao migrated southwest long ago, an elder of the clan forgot to bring the Miao writings and sent his eldest daughter-in-law back for them. But she heard her child crying and hurried to pick the child up, forgetting the writings. From then on, the Miao script was lost.

Thus, when most Miao strongholds needed to read or keep records, they used Chinese writing as well.

Hidden Immortal Cave had been named by an old scholar from the Miao stronghold long ago. An ordinary outsider who saw the name might think it was some wonderful place.

In fact, the old gentleman had played a word game, following an old habit of scholars: giving a dangerous place an elegant name to conceal its true one.

The true meaning of "Hidden Immortal" was "Hidden Minute Things."

It meant that countless insects laid eggs and lived in the cave, while fungi scattered spores and reproduced there, all of them minute things.

The cave was more than two li long. At its widest, it was several dozen paces across; even at its narrowest, it was seven or eight paces wide.

There was no other way out, only this one entrance.

Every year after the winter solstice, the Wu Clan Stronghold waited for the coldest days, when the skies were cloudless and Yang Qi was instead stronger.

Only then would the clan chief lead a few of the stronghold's sharpest warriors and Gu women inside, fully armed and thoroughly prepared, to catch insects and gather mushrooms.

They took these outside to make Gu, medicine, poison, and liquor, putting them to many uses.

But that time had not yet come, and with the old woman hiding inside, playing her flute to agitate and influence the insects, the danger was no small matter.

"Some of those venomous insects produce a flammable acidic oil. Others can create extremely tiny sparks by striking their claws together."

"They're harmless enough apart, but if the flute drives them together, they'll burst into flame in midair."

Stronghold Chief Wu's expression was grave. "And the deeper and darker the cave gets, the more poisonous the mushrooms growing there become. If they ignite in those places, I'm afraid they might set the fungal spores alight and produce poisonous smoke."

"Even half a breath of it could poison a person, driving them mad and making them talk nonsense."

Chu Tianshu said, "I saw two flutes in her hands. One was mottled green and red, like jade. That was the Rainbow Cloud Flute, wasn't it? So why has this old woman suddenly made such a move?"

At that, Chu Tianshu narrowed his eyes.

"Is she in league with someone outside?"

Stronghold Chief Wu frowned in thought. "Probably not. The men who go out to gather information are my most trusted brothers. The hall guardian hasn't left the stronghold in decades, and she doesn't care about affairs outside."

Anger still burning on his face, Wu Tugu shouted straight into the cave, "Granny, why did you have to break the rules our ancestors left behind and ruin our contest?"

"You're an elder of the stronghold, yet you've brought shame on us like this?"

His voice was like thunder, loud enough to carry into the depths of the cave, even louder than the stronghold chief's earlier shout.

A voice came from deep within the cave, echoing repeatedly off the stone walls.

"What are you shouting about?!"

The cave's shape carried the old guardian's voice. Though it was no longer very loud by the time it reached outside, it was still intelligible and full of irritation.

"I sent the Great Acid Mosquito to strike precisely to protect our ancestors' inheritance. That mosquito only makes a person's muscles and bones ache and reduces their strength a little."

"Otherwise, after you and Zewa lost two matches in a row, could you have stopped them in the third?"

"But even after I helped, you still lost. And that old muddlehead of a stronghold chief actually identified the mosquito I raised and brought people to find me. You're the ones bringing shame on the stronghold!!"

Wu Tugu was even angrier, so furious that he stammered, saying "you" seven or eight times in succession.

"Granny, wasn't it simply that you didn't want the Rainbow Cloud Flute lent out?"

Stronghold Chief Wu raised his voice. "If that's all it was, there was nothing shameful about it. You could simply have told me you opposed it. Why did you have to strike from the shadows and then take the treasure into the cave?"

A cold voice came from inside.

"You few made the decision without asking me a word beforehand. Would it have done any good for me to come to you afterward? I know you people don't take an old woman who guards the ancestral hall seriously at all!"

Stronghold Chief Wu protested, "You were the one who said you liked peace and quiet, and all these years you've never liked getting involved in the stronghold's affairs. That's why we didn't tell you..."

The voice in the cave rose sharply.

"Can those old matters compare to this?"

The old woman shouted, "I don't care about other things, but what is the Rainbow Cloud Flute? It's a real treasure! It isn't a few dead pieces of wood carved with names, or foolishly dancing, singing, and making offerings to a mountain that can't feel a thing."

"Year after year, you do those pointless things and cling to useless customs, yet you're willing to lend out a real treasure just like that?"

"Stronghold chief, clan chief, think about what a stupid thing you're doing!"

"And you even pointed me out! You, you, you're such a disappointment!"

Stronghold Chief Wu's expression immediately turned ugly, while Wu Tugu and Wu Zewa were utterly stunned.

In the stronghold, it was usually the older generations who observed the customs most faithfully.

And the person who guarded the ancestral hall ought to understand those customs best, know the clan rules most clearly, and show the greatest respect for the ancestors.

But what had this old woman just said?

In truth, perhaps it was precisely because she had always guarded the ancestral hall and understood the stronghold's Gu techniques and sorcery that she knew better than anyone that nothing was entrusted to those ancestral tablets.

She also knew better that when people made offerings to the mountain, it did not answer them.

Only the Rainbow Cloud Flute was a treasure recovered from the legends of their ancestors.

There truly was such a flute, and it truly had wondrous powers.

For more than ten years, the old woman had studied the Rainbow Cloud Flute every day and taught herself to make flutes.

The ritual implements she used to perform Gu techniques had all changed from whistles of various lengths to flutes.

Outsiders could never understand how much of her heart she had invested in that flute.

Even the people of the stronghold, who only entered the ancestral hall on holidays to pay their respects to the ancestors' treasure, could not feel the same way she did.

"It seems you really won't understand me."

Deep hatred filled the old woman's voice as she spoke from the cave. "I'm the only one who truly treasures what our ancestors left behind!"

Chu Tianshu exchanged glances with Zhong Jinqiu, Old Yu, and the others behind him. Their expressions were all a little subtle.

They could probably breathe a sigh of relief first.

The old woman was not in league with anyone outside, nor had she laid a chain of plots against them.

This incident was simply the result of her own restless impulse.

That was right, merely an impulse.

If she had any detailed plan at all, she would not have hidden in a cave with no other exit.

But everyone had already made an agreement about passing the trials to borrow the treasure, and the vast majority of the stronghold had agreed, only for someone like this to pop up and disrupt it.

If Chu Tianshu had been a little weaker, he might actually have failed because of her, and he would have been unable to preserve any evidence.

In that case, the important business between the two sides would have been ruined neither by a plot nor by a powerful enemy.

Instead, it would have been spoiled by the restless impulse of a solitary old woman.

Shopkeeper Ma and Cai Shanjun arrived slowly as well and heard what had happened.

"What is this supposed to be?"

Shopkeeper Ma was angry, yet didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Was our business nearly ruined by a reclusive old woman we'd never even met?"

Cai Shanjun, however, remained calm. "How many great affairs throughout history have turned on some inconspicuous detail? When Lord Xinling stole the tally to save Zhao, if one of the King of Wei's concubines hadn't helped him, who knows whether he would have succeeded or failed?"

"Fortunately, Tianshu hasn't lost, and we still have every chance to set this right."

Shopkeeper Ma nodded. "Since this cave has no other exit, at worst we can wait her out for a few days and act when she's too hungry to go on. Or we could get some damp firewood and smoke her out."

Stronghold Chief Wu shook his head. "There are too many venomous insects in the cave. If we smoke it carelessly and they rush into the stronghold, I can't bear the responsibility. As for starving her out, that would work. Even if she can catch insects to eat, she definitely can't last more than a month."

"A month?"

Chu Tianshu said firmly, "No! Is there another way?"