Yuan Qi had a Mud Pill Secret Repository too.
Su Yan rushed to him. "Stop healing. Sense the cave's energy—find your Mud Pill!"
Yuan Qi followed the energy inward. Minutes later, he gasped. "I have one! Does that mean... I'm actually human? A snake in human form?"
Su Yan couldn't follow that logic. "Yuan Qi, your family lived in Qinyan Cave for three hundred years. Did you ever wonder where the healing energy comes from?"
Yuan Qi didn't know.
"I'll show you the source." Su Yan led him to the stone wall and opened the hidden chamber.
Yuan Qi stared. He'd lived there a hundred twenty years and never known about it.
"Follow the energy upstream."
But the skeleton was gone.
Su Yan's blood ran cold. Either the Zhou family ancestor had taken it, or the skeleton had walked away on its own.
Yuan Qi suggested tracing the energy backward. He reopened his wound and followed the flow. "Deep water... dark... touching something smooth, huge, with serrated edges... like a giant shell. Wait—another one below it... and another beside it..."
Su Yan looked at Yuan Qi's scales. Each was bowl-sized, layered, serrated.
"Those are scales," Su Yan whispered. "Bell—pull him back! There's something massive at the cave's bottom!"
The bell rang. Its echo mapped what lay below.
Stacked scales, each two to three yards wide. Then the scales ended—and an eye opened, pupil dilated, watching Yuan Qi's consciousness.
"Run!" the bell screamed.
Yuan Qi snapped back to his body. "My books—"
"Your home is about to vanish! Move!"
Su Yan sprinted from the Mud Pill Palace. Behind them, the pool rose in a perfect dome, something massive pushing upward. They ran across the stone bridge as the water chased them.
A low, thunderous groan shook their organs.
They leaped into the water and swam. Behind them, the inner cave flooded completely. The mountain itself trembled.
Outside, the sorrowful old man sighed. "This time, I'll force the tea down his throat."
He paused. Prefect Zhou Heng approached on foot, leading a procession of powerful figures. Zhou Heng was enormous, wheezing with every step, yet he walked with desperate care.
He didn't dare use any technique. The person behind him walked on foot like a commoner.
Only one person commanded such deference: the Zhou family ancestor.
The ancestor was a youth with black hair and white brows, handsome despite his centuries.
The old man and the youth locked eyes. The old man's sorrow deepened. He didn't approach the cave.
The youth sat down. "Old friend."
The old man accepted tea from the pot. "Your lifespan runs short. This can't be a small matter."
They stared at each other.
In the cave, Zhou Heng saw Su Yan and Yuan Qi running toward him. He grinned—then saw the flood behind them, the mountain-sized thing filling the passage.
Zhou Heng turned and ran faster than anyone imagined possible. The Zhou family experts followed.
The cave exploded. Water erupted from the mountain. A dorsal fin rose—a peak in its own right—cutting through stone and earth.
The white-browed youth leaped to intercept. "Lady Yu, protect the young master. I'll face this thing."
An old woman—Zhou Yupo—cackled and flew after Su Yan. "The Zhou family means no harm!"
She threw a silk handkerchief. It expanded to cover a hundred acres of forest.
Su Yan ran beneath it. The trees grew larger—or rather, he shrank. The handkerchief's nuo art reversed the Bean-Soldier technique, compressing him to the size of a bean.
Su Yan jumped onto Yuan Qi's back. "Faster!"
The mountain began to fall.