Whummm —
Behind Qin Mu a wheel of light turned behind the Buddha's head, blazing brilliance spraying in every direction, sweeping even that eerie fog from the air. Thump, thump, thump — dried corpses dropped from the air, scarcely room to set a foot!
Besides the mangled ones were skeletons, flesh gone, clad in loose, wide robes like official court attire. The fog cleared, the air turning bright and clean. Yet the song went on, farther away, still mournfully beautiful, laden with endless grief.
Qin Mu dispersed his qi, and the Buddha's figure faded.
"How can so many bodies be hidden in this hall? They do not look like ordinary men..." He studied them with a slight frown. There were too many, and none had rotted, which was strange. Even the Yong River Dragon King's carcass outside had decayed to bone long since; how could these have survived?
"There is one possibility: these corpses came in after the Cataclysm of the Great Ruins. Like me and Hu Ling'er, they found the road to the dragon palace, then entered this great hall."
His brows twitched as he looked ahead, where deep in the hall the fog still lay thick. "Something in this fog killed them and turned them into what they are!"
His scalp prickled. He gripped the staff. The Khakkhara deserved its name as a treasure worth a whole city; merely by pouring his qi into it, it had burst with astonishing might. Bringing it along had been Grandma Si's idea; so solicitous of his safety, she had changed into all manner of forms to shield him in secret. "Grandma must have worried herself sick..." A pang of guilt touched his heart before he roused himself. "The source of this fog should lie within this hall, and its peril with it!"
At that moment the fog from the hall's depths rolled toward him, creeping to his ankles, then rising. The dried corpses on the ground, swallowed by the fog, slowly began to twist and rise in grotesque postures. Higher and higher the fog climbed until it passed over his head; the dried corpses floated up within it, vanishing as it thickened.
"Whatever phantom plays such tricks? Khakkhara!"
Staff in hand, Qin Mu strode forward. After a dozen or so zhang the song drew near once more. He struck the ground with the staff; Buddha-light blazed, scouring the fog away while corpse after corpse toppled in another rain of thuds.
"You little bald donkey..."
A voice suddenly sounded in the hall, enough to make one's hair stand on end — yet it spoke but a single phrase, and Qin Mu and the little fox doubted their ears.
Qin Mu at last saw the source of the fog. At the center of the palace stood an ice sculpture, and from it the fog issued. Within the ice lay a young dragon, placid, a broken sword thrust through its breast, the blade in its very heart. Between the great dragon pillars, an enormous green dragon slowly swam through the air, as though it had no true body and could pass straight through the pillars.
The song came from that green dragon, its gaze never straying from the frozen dragonling, its eyes brimming with fondness and grief, grieving as if mourning a child that had gone.
It was a dragon's soul. The soul of a dragon.
It might be the Dragon King of the Yong River, or his consort. It was a mother, and the frozen dragonling must be her child. She must have met the Cataclysm of the Great Ruins; when disaster loomed, her child fell to a mortal wound. Loving it too dearly, she froze it in ice and perished herself in the catastrophe; yet her soul still wandered the hall, guarding her child, humming a lullaby, hoping to wake him.
"You little bald donkey, look over here!"
The voice came again. Qin Mu hurriedly followed it and saw that besides this block of mystic ice there stood another, hidden behind the ice that sealed the dragonling, the two joined.
Sealed within it was an old man in purple robes with white brows. His garments looked to be official attire — a blue robe with a dark skirt embroidered with the nine emblems, a pendant of golden jade, a sword at his side, a nine-tasseled sacred crown — frozen in the very act of taking something. One hand leaned on a black banner, the other reached into the second block of mystic ice, gripping a green pearl the size of a chicken's egg. Within it coiled a tiny green dragon.
"Could this pearl be what froze the old gentleman in the ice?"
Blinking, Qin Mu went up and studied the old man in the ice, and noticed something strange. As his body moved, the old man's eyeballs moved too, within the ice!
"It was indeed he who spoke!" A shiver ran through him. He turned to the bodies strewn about, and a possibility struck him.
This old man must have been the first to discover the dragon palace. He had found the pearl in the mystic ice and, moving to take it, been frozen there by it. He must have lived shut up in the ice a long while, and the reason he never died was surely this: with the black banner he leaned upon, he had killed every martial artist who entered and drained their vital essence and blood, which was why the dead dried into husks!
Frozen to this day, his power to wield his cultivation must be slight — and carrying the Khakkhara into the palace, shielded by the staff, Qin Mu had not perished under the black banner's eerie might, and so escaped with his life.
"So it's the Khakkhara of that old bald donkey of the Great Thunderclap Monastery — no wonder it holds off the fog's strange power."
Unable to part his lips, the old man nonetheless moved his throat: "You are no bald donkey of the Great Thunderclap Monastery. Why do you bear that old donkey's staff?"
Qin Mu answered truthfully: "Because I won it by defeating his disciple."
"Won it?" The old man laughed from his throat: "How could that old bald donkey honor a wager he lost? How old are you?"
"I'll turn twelve this autumn."
The purple-robed elder praised him: "At twelve you could defeat that old donkey's disciple — truly remarkable."
Qin Mu blinked: "Senior, why are you sealed in the ice here?"
The old man chuckled: "That is a long story, and must begin at its beginning... Don't leave! Come back!"
Qin Mu halted, reluctant. "Senior, I'm in a hurry to get home and have no time for stories."
The old man coughed. "To make a long tale short — I was roaming the Great Ruins with my disciples when I chanced upon this place. Seeing so many dried corpses, I knew the dragon pearl was at work, slaying all who came here and draining their vital essence to keep the frozen dragonling alive! Being a cultivator, I could not stand by, so I resolved to take this pearl and end its harm. Alas, I was one move too short, and never guessed it was the dragon-god's own; so it froze me here! And not one of my disciples escaped; all were drained by this pearl, given over to keep the little dragon alive!"
Hu Ling'er, still hidden in his arms, raised her head and whispered: "Master Qin, do you believe his story?"
Qin Mu hesitated. His own guess ran quite contrary to the old man's tale. In the old man's version, the dragon mother, to save her child, had used the pearl to harm men, and the old man, championing right, had fallen victim to it. Qin Mu's guess was that the old man, frozen between the dragon pillars, had used wicked arts to devour the essence of the martial artists who found their way there, to keep himself alive.
Truth be told, both were possible. But which was true?
Qin Mu surveyed his surroundings, and as the fog pressed in all about, he at once struck the Khakkhara hard upon the ground!
"Thus have I heard!"
Behind him the Buddha's figure reappeared, and the voice of Brahma thundered: "All beings, from beginnings without beginning, bound to birth and death in ceaseless succession, because they know not their constant true heart and cling instead to delusion. Because these thoughts are not true, therefore there is turning — turning — turning — turn —"
"The Buddhist arts of the Great Thunderclap Monastery truly have their skill," the old man praised.
"How shall I address you, old senior?" asked Qin Mu.
The old man said: "This old one is Gu Linuan, Guardian of the Hereditary Prince of the State of Yankang, an official of the first rank. If you free me, then once you reach the State of Yankang, I promise you wealth and honor beyond your every wish!"