Chapter 53: 52. Inscription on the Stone Tablet

52. Inscription on the Stone Tablet

Swish!

Zhou Chang reached out and seized the spearhead thrusting toward him; with a twist of his wrist, he snapped the iron spear clean in two!

Strand after strand of iron thought-silk coiled around the broken half of the spear. At the slightest shift of Zhou Chang's will, the spear instantly reversed its head, pointing straight at Bai Mu's skull!

"Thud!"

At that moment, Bai Mu's knees went weak, and she suddenly dropped to the ground in a kneel!

She kowtowed to Zhou Chang again and again, pleading without cease: "Mercy! Mercy!"

Bai Mu's sudden movement left even Zhou Chang momentarily stunned.

Then, looking down at the kowtowing, begging Bai Mu, he asked aloud: "If it were your daughter kneeling before you now, begging for her life, would you spare her?"

Bai Mu, head lowered, shuddered violently through the shoulders at those words!

The next instant, she scrambled up from the ground and whipped around, running off into the distance!

—But before she had taken five steps, Zhou Chang hurled the broken half of the spear in his hand straight at her back!

"Whoosh!"

The thought-silk coiled around the spear was recalled in a single breath; the broken spear split the air like an arrow loosed from its string, driving into Bai Mu's back and bursting out through her chest in a gory spearhead!

Bai Mu's running body froze mid-stride, then pitched forward onto the ground!

Zhou Chang threw that spear without even glancing at the result; he turned and kicked the iron sword lying on the ground straight at the panicked, fleeing Nalan Rongzhen!

The longsword split the air, its blade piercing through Nalan Rongzhen's skull in an instant!

Blood slowly spread and stained across the two bodies.

The rest had already fled into the surrounding darkness, vanishing without a trace.

Zhou Chang drew in a deep breath; the air was thick with a faint smell of blood.

Then he cast a glance at the corpses on the ground, turned, and left.

……

In the darkness, Bai Xiue followed Zhou Chang forward step by step, her father in tow.

She could not see the expression on Zhou Chang's face ahead of her, so she asked in a small voice: "Wh-where did you go just now?"

"Oh, I went off to find a place to relieve myself."

Zhou Chang turned and glanced at Bai Xiue; his reply was as flat as his expression.

"……"

Bai Xiue pressed her lips tightly shut at his words and stayed silent for quite a while.

She had a gut feeling that Zhou Chang's sudden disappearance earlier was far from as simple as his claim of "going to relieve himself," and she even had a premonition of what he had done after leaving.

But Zhou Chang's response like that left her without the courage to press further.

Moreover, Zhou Chang's avoidance of the earlier matter actually put Bai Xiue more at ease.

She could stop worrying about her mother's life or death, and need not bear the guilt in her heart for it.

"Thank you, Brother Zhou…" Bai Xiue's heart was filled with gratitude toward Zhou Chang.

"No need for thanks."

Zhou Chang halted his steps in the darkness; once again he turned and fixed his gaze on Bai Xiue's delicate little face, saying: "It's just that from now on, not everyone will be able to help you every time. In the end, you must save yourself.

Only by saving yourself can you live up to Heaven's grace in letting you be born into this world."

"Yes, yes!" Bai Xiue hurriedly nodded in agreement.

Zhou Chang smiled; his gaze drifted elsewhere—

The place his face was turned toward was the only spot in the presently pitch-dark Bai Family Graveyard that blazed with light.

On the high slope there, green bricks were neatly stacked into tall walls; within those walls stood a hall whose outer walls were painted a dark red, its eaves jutting out black.

Red lanterns hung beneath the eaves one after another, their candle flames luxuriant and swaying in the wind.

"What place is that?" Zhou Chang pointed at the high walls and deep courtyard on the slope—so unlike an ordinary dwelling—and asked Bai Xiue.

Bai Xiue opened her mouth to speak at his words, then hesitated; she turned instead to look at her father beside her.

As for the origins of that building, Bai's father could explain it far better than she could.

Bai's father, who had been silent until now, lifted his gaze to the building standing alone on the only high ground in Bai Family Graveyard; his eyes were somewhat cold: "That's the Nalan dogs' ancestral hall!"

Once he opened his mouth, he poured out everything he knew in one go: "The Nalan clan—that is, the Nara clan, today's Jingcheng Bai clan of Bai Family Graveyard—after settling here, first paid money to seize that high slope, and every year afterward they raised the walls higher and built up their Nalan ancestral hall.

According to the older generation, that high slope is the most essential feng shui spot in all of Bai Family Graveyard.

It was precisely because the Nalan clan seized that high slope that the Bian-Bai clan fell into decline from then on!

But later, some people of the Bian-Bai clan secretly invited someone to take a look, and the visitor said that for the living, that high slope's position was in fact greatly inauspicious.

That high slope is the core 'Immortal Tower' position within this mountain range's 'Sick Dragon Ascending to the Immortal Tower' feng shui formation!

Legend has it that if a dead person is buried in the Immortal Tower, the tower can carry his corpse straight up to the heavens, raising him from the dead!"

At this point, Bai's father's expression turned somewhat strange: "Actually, the reason the Nalan clan, who had been enjoying wealth and honor far away in Jingcheng, suddenly fled to a bitter, cold place like Qingyi Town, hid their surname, and concealed themselves within Bai Family Graveyard, is rumored to be that Bai Family Graveyard is in fact the tomb of a former Qing-dynasty imperial consort.

That former Qing-dynasty imperial consort is said to have been of the Nara surname; she went to this place secretly on some matter and ultimately fell ill and died here.

At the time the weather was hot, making it inconvenient to transport her body back to Jingcheng, so she was buried on the spot within this 'Sick Dragon Ascending to the Immortal Tower' feng shui formation.

That high slope is actually the burial earth atop that former consort's grave mound."

"The Qing court was always extremely secretive about palace affairs; the management of imperial consorts and concubines in the inner court was extremely strict.

A former Qing-dynasty imperial consort could actually leave the imperial palace, even leave Jingcheng, and come all the way to Qingyi Town?" Zhou Chang frowned; he felt the legends Bai's father mentioned truly stretched beyond common sense.

Bai's father shook his head indifferently: "Whether it's true, who knows? Anyway, that's how the people tell it.

Besides, several hundred years ago the Wen clan ancestor 'Wen Yongsheng' made a special trip to Bai Family Graveyard, paid respects at the Jingcheng Bai clan's ancestral hall, and presented a plaque and a stone tablet.

That stone tablet used to stand at the village entrance of Bai Family Graveyard.

"The plaque may also be hidden in the ancestral hall. The stone stele bears a eulogy and sacrificial text composed by Wen Laozu for the former Qing imperial consort."

"Oh?" Zhou Chang's expression turned surprised. "When I entered the village, why didn't I see that stone stele at the village entrance?"

"I've never seen it either, only heard others say so," Bai's father said. "That stone stele must have been dug away by later generations, or perhaps it was damaged, and has been missing ever since.

But some villagers living near the village entrance say that, when they occasionally get up in the night, they can still see, at the village entrance, the shadow of a stone stele standing there.

If we pass by that spot, we might really be able to see that stone stele."

Zhou Chang gave no response to Bai's father's words. He cast a deep look at the ancestral hall on the high slope and said, "Let's go."

Then he took the first step, walking into the depths of the darkness.

Bai Xiue and Bai's father followed behind, hurrying along.

After walking for nearly a quarter of an hour like this, the entrance to the Bai Family Graveyard village, which led onto that rugged mountain path, appeared faintly visible in the darkness ahead.

Zhou Chang carefully looked around the village entrance, but did not see the stone stele that Wen Laozu had erected.

He shifted his gaze away, becoming all the more convinced that what Bai's father had said earlier was probably just a rumor.

However, when he raised his head to look toward the village entrance again, he suddenly discovered that, on the flat ground that had been completely empty, at some unknown moment, a pitch-black stone stele had risen up. The pale, ghastly moonlight fell upon the stele, yet cast not the slightest shadow before it.

"The stone stele…"

Bai's father's pupils contracted slightly, and he cast a startled glance at his own daughter.

He had never expected that his own casual remark would actually come true at this moment!

Zhou Chang strode quickly to that pitch-black stone stele. On the stele, sure enough, there was a sacrificial text.

The sacrificial text used "Sacrificial Offering to Emperor Shizong Xian of the Qing and the Imperial Consort Empress Xiaosu" as its heading, and the signature was precisely the three characters "Wen Yongsheng"!

The faint moonlight cast upon the three characters "Wen Yongsheng," staining the mottled cracks in the stone shell around the carved characters. Those cracks connected with one another, faintly seeming to form the three ancient seal characters "Grass-Top Dragon."

And when Zhou Chang raised his eyes and saw the first line of the main text of Wen Yongsheng's sacrificial text, his pupils contracted sharply!

Only because upon it was prominently written:

"Alas! From the time when the head of Emperor Shizong Xian was severed and stolen by traitorous ministers until now, more than several decades have passed. Fortunately, blessed by the ancestral temple and the state, the Imperial Consort Empress Xiaosu has at last recovered the head of Emperor Shizong Xian, and they are buried together here…"

Emperor Shizong Xian of the Qing was none other than Yongzheng.

According to what this clumsy sacrificial text claimed, when Yongzheng met his end, his head was not upon his neck, but had been severed and stolen away!

Thereafter, for several decades, Yongzheng's Imperial Consort Empress Xiaosu only finally recovered his head. For reasons unknown, she chose to be buried together with his head in this Bai Family Graveyard!