Chapter 133 — Resurrection

The darkness spread without end, and only the wailing of the cold wind grew more shrill. The shaman walked through the black corridor of the Ancient Cave of Demon Suppression like a spirit bound for the ninth hell.

The ancient cave grew broader with every step, yet the darkness around him deepened all the more. Walking this cold and dreadful path, the shaman could even have shut his eyes and gone on.

For how many years had he wandered here alone? And now, at last, he would change his own fate with his own hands.

Perhaps the fate of countless souls in the world as well.

The cold wind howled—there, just ahead of him!

A faint glimmer suddenly kindled before him. Faint though it was, in that expanse of pitch-black it stood out unmistakably.

The shaman halted.

The glimmer twinkled gently in the dark, flickering in and out, as if summoning, as if tempting, as if yearning, as if mocking…

The wind stirred the hem of his black robe, just as it had through all those bygone years, and he gazed at that place.

How many years ago had he stood here just so? But in those days there had still been a brother at his side, and before him a figure that, frail as it was, seemed able to blot out heaven and earth.

And now there was only his lonely shadow.

"My lady…" He bowed his head slightly and murmured the words.

Then he drifted forward, hurling himself toward the glimmer with the resolve of a moth to flame.

The glimmer blazed forth, and the cold wind in the ancient cave suddenly turned violent. What had been a single point of light slowly spread outward, gradually illuminating its surroundings.

On the uneven ground lay rotting white bones everywhere—the bones of men, and of beasts. Under the glow, the immense cave walls and their hard rock revealed countless dense, crisscrossing cracks, as though something had torn them open by force—a sight to make the heart quail.

In the darkness, a voice echoed softly from the deepest heart of that glimmer, cold as ice.

"You have returned…"

The last note lingered long, reverberating between the rock walls of the ancient cave.

The shaman said nothing. He merely stood within that light a moment, then stretched out his arm from his black robe—and in his hand was unmistakably the black staff set with bone jade.

"ROAR!…"

A roar burst forth like sudden thunder, seething through the ancient cave. The surrounding darkness recoiled in an instant, and deep within that faint radiance a blinding light flashed out, like the countless tentacles of a demon, crying and howling toward the shaman, toward those two sacred relics.

Even the cave walls, ancient beyond reckoning, began to tremble, great stones and small falling together.

The shrill, whistling cold wind now sounded like a heavy, yearning gasp.

"…Do you still remember what my lady looked like?" The shaman gazed at the blinding light clawing and posturing before him and suddenly said this, quietly.

Within the fierce glare, the flickering light seemed to freeze for an instant.

The shaman's black robes snapped and cracked in the violent wind.

Even his voice seemed to drift and waver: "Her stone image still stands at the mouth of the cave outside…"

Deep within that radiance there was no sound at all—only the shifting, stretching beams of light, casting the shaman's figure bright and dim by turns.

The shaman said no more. Slowly he drifted upward, into the depths of the light.

An open flat expanse suddenly appeared. It was utterly unlike the outside: the hard rock walls were mostly intact, but upon the ground lay great bones, and mostly whole ones—thirteen of them, by a careful count.

These thirteen skeletons, of varied shapes and reeking of demonic aura, formed a ring at uneven intervals, all facing inward with their backs to the outside, as though guarding something. In their black, hollow eye sockets there seemed to lurk a cold gaze.

As the shaman's figure suddenly appeared and drew near that strange ring, there came a sudden, teeth-grating "creak, creak" amid the cold wind—and several of those white skulls began to turn, slowly swiveling toward the shaman.

In that dreadful moment when the heart nearly stopped, the shaman seemed utterly unconcerned with these fearsome skeletons. His gaze, from first to last, was fixed on a single place.

The very center of the ring formed by the thirteen skeletons.

A life-sized skeleton lay quietly upon a white jade platform barely three inches high. Unlike the skulls around it, this human-shaped skeleton was draped in silk—and after untold ages, under the glow, the silk's color was still vividly bright.

And all the light and radiance around them, even the howling cold wind, issued from this skeleton.

The shaman drifted slowly closer to it.

The light swirled, the eerie beams now long, now short, as though somewhere unseen a pair of eyes were watching him.

Around him, all thirteen skeletons suddenly gave out their "creak, creak" at once, as if rising together from the dead; their skulls turned, and their deep eye sockets fixed upon the shaman's figure.

The next instant, that sheet of silk leapt into the air and floated aloft.

As if in a silent, muffled roar, a dazzling light blazed out from beneath the silk, hurtling in all directions like an arrow loosed beyond all stopping.

With a "whoosh," the shaman even felt that light, surging with a boundless demonic force, rush past his ear.

A violent wind, mingled with a grim, cold laugh, began to echo through the ancient cave.

The thirteen skeletons suddenly raised their heads as one and howled at the sky!

Beneath that eerie atmosphere, the shaman slowly settled down before the white bones. In the white light, it was very clear that this life-sized skeleton had five broken places: the right hand, the left ankle, the throat bone, the skull—and its entire spine was gone.

Now, mirrors in the light the bones gave off, a white pearl rested at the right hand, a jade disc at the left ankle, and where the throat had broken, a round ring was set.

The shaman slowly drew the bone jade from the black staff, bit by bit, then gently laid it upon the skeleton's skull. At the very center of the forehead there was a small broken hollow, and the bone jade fit into it precisely.

In the darkness, something like a voice called out from far away.

The shaman's body suddenly trembled; he swayed, and the light mirrored in his eyes like two burning white flames.

Whose soul and body were those flames consuming?

He seemed to cry out softly, but no one could hear what he said. The next instant, he laid the black staff at the center of the white bones, where the spine should be.

Suddenly, everything went still.

The howling cold wind ceased, the dazzling white light vanished, and the darkness surged up like the silent, rolling waves of a boundless sea, drowning all!

Who was it, waiting in silence in the dark?

That deepest darkness—or the dawn of illusion?

Everything fell calm, like a desolate stillness unchanged since the beginning of time. The white bones ceased their cries and fell silent.

A sound, in the deepest place of darkness and silence, quietly arose!

"Thump!"

"Thump!"

"Thump thump!"

…

It was the sound of a heartbeat, brimming with new vitality. All around was still pitch-black, but like a thing of magic, the heartbeat grew steadily louder, and slowly, a murmuring of flowing water began.

No—not water, but rushing blood, surging forth from the heart, dancing wildly in the darkness with endless joy and irresistible momentum.

After countless ages of slumber, after endless cold, warmth once more!

Who was it, softly panting in the dark?

The surging sound grew fiercer and fiercer, like the cry of a imprisoned soul gathering a thousand years of resentment; every drop of reborn blood carried madness and defiance!

Gradually, strange sounds rose all around; the solid rock walls shook once more, and those white bones in the darkness cried out again, greeting the demon reborn.