Chapter 31: Langhuan Fudi

Zhao Ti slid down the cliff face; the rope was made of whale sinew, extremely tough and sturdy, fit to serve as the torsion cord of a ballista, and even two or three more people hanging on it would hardly snap it.

The short sword, however, could shear through iron like mud, and once driven into the rock wall it held his body steady; thus he retied the sinew rope midway, and after roughly an hour he arrived beside the great fissure in the cliff.

Zhao Ti examined the fissure carefully and confirmed it could be climbed down, so he struck the rock wall hard, swung his body lightly, and dropped into the gap.

Then he rested a moment, and from there, using both hands and feet, slowly made his way down toward the valley floor.

The valley was quite deep, and even the fissure was still some distance from the bottom; but the further down he went the more the slope tilted, no longer a sheer perilous cliff, and eventually it was just a hillside with no more danger, and in no great while he entered the valley.

At this moment he heard the thunderous roar of a great waterfall on the slanting opposite side, far louder than from above; a great lake lay there, gleaming like a green mirror in the night, with camellia bushes growing all around, swaying gracefully — a scene of otherworldly purity.

Zhao Ti looked against the light of the waterfall and saw a stretch of stone wall smooth as jade, and thought to himself: this must surely be the Wuliang Jade Wall; since he had found this thing, the entrance to Langhuan Fudi would be easy to locate.

Then he turned back to search for the sour-fruit thicket from his memory; before long he spotted a large patch, pushed it aside, and discovered a slab of stone, lustrous white as jade, similar to the one by the waterfall.

Zhao Ti nodded — this must be the place where Wuyazi and Li Qiushui had once practiced their Cultivation Technique; the moon had cast the shadows of the two onto this stone wall, which were then reflected onto the great stone wall by the waterfall, and the people of the Wuliang Sword sect, seeing it, had taken it for the immortal shadows upon the jade wall.

Now the moonlight was just rising; Zhao Ti fixed his eyes on the stone wall below, and saw a faint sword-shadow appear upon it — cast by the moon shining into a hole in the cliff face to the west and reflected out.

Following the slanting direction the sword-shadow pointed, he saw a great boulder, walked over and pushed it; under his hands the moss was slick and wet, and he estimated it weighed a good one or two thousand jin.

Zhao Ti thought for a moment, tore away all the vines around it, then bent down and cleared the mud and sand beneath, and pushed again; the boulder slowly turned, like a great door, and after revolving only halfway a cave-mouth over three chi tall was revealed behind the rock.

He suppressed his feelings at this point, took out his fire-starter and a candle, lit them, and walked in.

After going some ten-odd steps, he saw a metal door studded with bowl-sized nails; knowing it could not be bolted inside, he pushed hard and the door swung open.

Inside, a place was unusually bright; coming closer he saw crystals set into the wall, with fish and shrimp swimming past — it was the bottom of the lake, and the water's light was being led in.

Zhao Ti continued his inspection: the chamber had a stone table and stone stools; on the table were combs, hairpins, bracelets and the like; on the walls, here and there, were set no fewer than thirty-odd bronze mirrors; using their reflections to search, he discovered a crack in the wall at the southwest corner.

He went over and pushed hard; sure enough, it was a door, with stone steps leading down; going down and seeing another door, he pushed it open and was suddenly dazzled by a blaze of light before his eyes.

He saw only a lady in palace attire, long sword in hand, the sword-tip pointing straight at him.

Zhao Ti looked at her, and suddenly smiled faintly.

The beauty was a jade image carved from Bai Yu, yet life-sized; a pair of eyes gleamed with a luminous light, radiant and spirited, her complexion like congealed cream.

He saw the maiden as looking some eighteen or nineteen years old; at the tips of her brows and the corners of her eyes there lingered a touch of girlishness, yet she was inexpressibly charming and approachable, a peerless beauty of a hue rarely found in the world.

Moreover, her eyes were carved from black gemstones; the longer one looked, the deeper they seemed, with a faint flow of light within; her gaze was always fixed on him, and wherever his eyes turned, hers seemed to follow—as if brimming with joy, yet also as if filled with grievance, sorrow, and a longing for something.

Zhao Ti's heart gave an involuntary leap, then the corners of his mouth quirked upward, and he murmured to himself: "Should I call you Li Qiushui, or Little Sister Li, or Li Qiushui before the age of twenty?"

The gemstone light in the jade image's eyes shifted, as if she had understood his words, with a sense of melancholy.

He reached out and lightly stroked the jade image's cheek, then fell into thought for a moment, and began to look around.

The surrounding walls were carved with many things — mostly passages from Zhuangzi's "Nanhua Jing," and also the words: "Inscribed by Wuyazi for Sister Qiushui — within this cave there is neither sun nor moon, yet it is the greatest joy beneath heaven."

Then he looked at the jade image again, and saw before her two cushions, one large and one small; the small one for kowtowing, the large one for kneeling; inside the embroidered shoes beneath the image there seemed to be embroidered characters — on the right shoe: "Kowtow a thousand times and serve my commands"; on the left shoe: "Obey my orders, die a hundred deaths without regret."

Zhao Ti blinked, reached out and tore open the top of the small cushion, revealing the cattail stuffing, and then an object appeared; taking it out, it was a silk bundle, and the words written on the white silk were the same as in his memory — nothing more than practicing martial arts in Langhuan Fudi, and slaughtering every disciple of the Xiaoyao Sect.

He opened it and saw a scroll of silk; gently unrolling it, the four characters "Beiming Divine Art" were revealed.

Zhao Ti remembered that Lingbo Weibu was at the very end of the silk scroll; flipping further on, he passed over those illustrations of female cultivators practicing — posed horizontally or vertically, charming and coquettish, gazing with affection, lightly feigning anger — whose faces were identical to the jade image's, until he reached the very end of the scroll.

There he saw the title "Lingbo Weibu" inscribed, followed by countless footprints drawn in, annotated with characters such as "Guimei," "Muwang," and so on.

These were all positions from the Book of Changes; he had always studied them in the past, and now the more he looked the more absorbed he became, unaware how much time had passed, whether outside it was light or dark; after a long exhale, he stood up.

He thought that, given his own sword-tournament at Sword Lake Palace, the matter of the Wuliang Sword would likely have deviated somewhat, and he did not know whether Duan Yu could still make his way here.

If he could still somehow get here, then he recalled that originally Duan Yu had wandered outside for two or three days before finding his way into the cave; however, he himself had now opened the great boulder at the cave-mouth, so if Duan Yu truly came, he would probably enter very quickly.

Thinking of this, Zhao Ti tucked the silk scroll into his robe and secured it, then walked around; in the moon-gate doorway on the left there was a stone bed and a cradle, which should have been used by Zhang Liqing as a child; on the wall hung a qin with a broken string — that must have been the one Li Qiushui had torn.

Then he saw, on the stone table to the left of the bed, a chessboard carved with nineteen lines, covered with black and white chess pieces; he thought to himself: could this be the Dragon Subduing Chess Puzzle?

Zhao Ti had left Dongjing without choosing to go to Leigu Mountain to find Wuyazi and have this chess puzzle solved, to receive seventy years of internal energy — that was, in truth, the result of careful deliberation.

First, Wuyazi had transmitted force but not Cultivation Technique — he had not passed down the methods of Lingbo Weibu and Beiming Divine Art; Xuzhu possessed a body full of profound Beiming internal energy, but did not know how to use Lingbo Weibu or Beiming Divine Art.

Secondly, there was a saying in his memory — absurd, to be sure, but considering the Xiaoyao Sect's Martial Arts were boundlessly profound, it still made him uneasy at heart — namely, that after Wuyazi poured his Beiming internal energy into Xuzhu, Xuzhu was in fact no longer Xuzhu, but Wuyazi; though this notion was preposterous, it was still enough to give one pause.

Another point was that, since he had already learned Phantom Yin Finger, he also wished to see what the One Yang Finger looked like, which was why he had chosen to come to Dali.

Zhao Ti then continued forward; there was another moon-gate doorway, with the four characters "Langhuan Fudi" carved on the wall beside it; stepping inside, he found it very spacious, with row upon row of wooden bookshelves — yet not a single book remained on them, only labels affixed, bearing names such as Kunlun Sect, Qingcheng Sect, Penglai Sect, and so on.

He also saw regrets noted, such as: the Shaolin lacked the Yi Jin Jing; Dali lacked the One Yang Finger and Six Meridians Divine Sword; the Beggars' Sect lacked the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms, and so on.

He shook his head, and thought to leave; the secret passage leading out of the valley to the outside world was by the jade image, so to depart he had to go back there.

But just as he had taken only a few steps, from outside there suddenly came, faintly and indistinctly, the sound of footsteps……