Huang Siping, Wei Chu, and Yuan Qi saw Xu Ying freeze, staring down into the well with empty eyes, and they all rushed to look. One man, one god, one demon—the moment their gazes met the great blue eye in the darkness, they too went rigid, their minds wiped clean by whatever presence lurked below. That eye possessed a power that seized the soul and refused to release it.
The bronze bell tolled. The sound was like being struck by a physical force. Xu Ying and the others snapped back to awareness and looked down at themselves in horror. Their hands and bodies were covered in blood. They had been hauling on the black iron chains, dragging them upward with desperate strength, Yuan Qi using his tail where the others used their hands. Dozens of yards of chain lay coiled around them, and the links closest to the well were coated in thick, black, rotting blood that stank of putrefaction. Scattered among the chains were the bones of at least a dozen human skeletons.
None of them remembered grabbing the chains. None of them remembered when their minds had been overridden, or what force had controlled their bodies, or how long they had labored. The chains grew heavier with every yard, as though a tremendous weight hung from the far end.
The blue eye had vanished. In its place, the well churned with dark blood that bubbled upward, rising to the very lip of the shaft. Xu Ying and the others released the chains just as the bell tolled again, and the links slithered back down into darkness, the blood receding with them. From the depths rose a soft, beautiful sigh—the sound of a young woman lamenting her misfortune at failing to escape. The lovelier the voice, the deeper the terror it inspired.
Xu Ying peered over the edge. As the blood retreated, he saw what the chains held: a black coffin, descending vertically along the well wall. When it reached the bottom, something opened a triangular mouth bristling with fangs and swallowed the coffin whole, then opened again, waiting. The chains hung from the corners of that mouth like whiskers. Xu Ying's heart nearly stopped. He seized Yuan Qi by the tail and ran.
Huang Siping and Wei Chu were slower to react. The roar that erupted from the well struck them like a physical blow, blood bursting from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. The creature below had failed to expel the coffin, and its rage was apocalyptic. The mountain quaked, threatening to tear itself apart. Even the bronze bell wavered like a candle in a hurricane. Xu Ying and Yuan Qi, though they had gained precious yards of distance, were hurled through the air by the secondary shockwave of the roar colliding with the bell's power.
Outside the temple, the Naihe grew violent. Something massive thrashed beneath its surface, and new shapes rose from the floodwaters—colossal figures, half-seen in the darkness, driving weapons of impossible size against the bell's barrier. The dome of light flickered and thinned under the combined assault, the assault from within and without converging.
Xu Ying dragged his half-conscious serpent companion toward the main hall, every step an agony. His skin wept blood from overstrained pores. Yuan Qi had passed out entirely. Blood ran from Xu Ying's eyes, his nose, his ears, and his heart hammered against his ribs as if trying to escape. He reached the main hall and collapsed, the roar dampened by the temple's walls. For a moment, he could breathe.
A flash of cold light split the sky—a blade of titanic proportions, cleaving a gash in the bell's barrier. The Naihe poured through the breach. Peering outside, Xu Ying saw them clearly now: figures of divine stature surrounding the temple dome, neither fully human nor fully spirit, wielding weapons that dwarfed buildings. Merely looking at them filled his mind with intrusive whispers and an almost irresistible urge to kneel.
A pale, dead-white hand reached through the breach—each finger as long as a man—passing over the main hall. It closed around the bronze bell, trying to tear it from its mount. The bell tolled, and the hand exploded into shredded meat. A severed finger crashed through the hall's roof and embedded itself in the temple door, where ancient script flared to life across the wood, burning the digit to ash.
Another weapon followed: a whip made of human faces, each link a different countenance with eyes closed in stern repose. It lashed around the bell's crown and pulled, tearing the pavilion apart. The bell was dragged upward, away from the well, and the roar from below grew frantic. White silk ribbons shot from the Naihe's surface and plunged into the well shaft, coiling around the chains.
Xu Ying understood. The Naihe had not changed course by accident. Someone had deliberately diverted the River of the Dead to suppress the temple's bronze bell and rescue whatever was sealed in that well. Mass death—untold thousands slaughtered—orchestrated solely to free a single coffin. *Who is buried in that coffin? What crime merits such an elaborate prison, and what monster would kill so many to see it opened?*
The bronze bell, now truly enraged, tore itself free of the whip and soared out of the temple. Battle erupted in the darkness. Xu Ying watched from the rooftop as the bell's resonance shattered one divine figure's skull, stripped another's flesh from its bones in an instant, reduced a third to powder. These were beings of such power that merely witnessing them inspired existential dread—and the bronze bell killed them like insects.
The Naihe waters, no longer held back, poured into the temple from every direction and began to fill the main hall. Warden Wei Chu clung to a dead willow tree in the rear courtyard, one leg already stripped to the bone by the water's touch. Mountain God Huang Siping balanced on his blade, planted in the ground like a flagpole, his left foot similarly reduced to bare skeleton. Both men's faces were masks of despair. The water continued its inexorable rise.
Then morning came. The first ray of sunlight touched Xu Ying's face, and the nightmare began to dissolve. The Naihe grew transparent, its waters fading from reality. The divine giants vanished with them. The bell's tolling grew distant and ceased. As the sun rose fully, the River of the Dead retreated to the underworld, leaving behind only the scar of its passage—a channel of dead, blackened forest stripped of all life, littered with bones.
Xu Ying looked toward the rear courtyard. The pavilion lay in ruins. The well was still. And there, at its edge, sat a woman in white, her back to him, slowly combing her long, unbound hair. She turned, and her eyes met his. She smiled—a smile so beautiful that for one fleeting moment, the morning sun and the very flow of time itself seemed blessed. Then the sunlight reached her, and she faded away. Where she had sat, a black coffin stood beside the well, black iron chains scattered at its base. The coffin rose into the air, chains snapping free, and launched itself into the sky, vanishing beyond the mountains.
The prisoner of the well had escaped.
Xu Ying recalled the woman's face. *She was beautiful. My father and grandfather would have approved of such a daughter-in-law. Pity she was a ghost.*
Warden Wei Chu toppled from the dead willow and crashed to the ground, unconscious. His right leg, from hip to ankle, was nothing but gleaming white bone. Nearby, Mountain God Huang Siping leaped from his blade, staggering on a left leg that was equally skeletal below the knee. The wolf demon made no sound, enduring the agony with feral stoicism. His yellow eyes fixed on Xu Ying, who stood atop the main hall facing the rising sun, drawing in the morning essence. Light particles swirled around the boy in a visible vortex, pouring into his body with each breath. Thunder rolled through his meridians. A qi-sun blazed within his core. He was healing his wounds, purging the impurities of the night's horrors.
The Naihe's threat was gone. What remained was the simpler, older danger: a god and a Nuo shaman, both hunting the same boy. Huang Siping steadied his breathing, drawing solar essence into his own wounded body. He was worse off than Xu Ying—internal injuries from the well-thing's roar, and a missing leg. But he was a Demon King, his qi reserves vast. If he could stabilize himself first, he could strike with killing speed. The two of them, boy and wolf, stood in silent, mutual calculation, each gauging the other's recovery.
"You could have run," Huang Siping said, his voice level. "You were quick to escape the roar. With my leg gone, I could not have chased you. Why did you stay?"
Xu Ying faced the dawn, the solar vortex around him intensifying. His posture was mountain-steady, rooted like an ancient tree beside a chasm. "My friend was unconscious. How could I abandon him?"
"Friend?" Huang Siping's grip tightened on his blade. "You call a snake demon your friend? You are a snake catcher—you and snakes are natural enemies! Venomous serpents have killed your kind. You have killed theirs."
"That doesn't prevent us from being friends," Xu Ying said.
He howled—a war cry that was half-human, half-beast—and crashed through the roof of the main hall. The rear wall exploded outward as he shoulder-charged a copper pillar from its foundations and swung the ten-thousand-pound column at Huang Siping like a club. The battle had to end quickly. Other gods and Nuo shamans would arrive soon, drawn by the chaos of the night. There was no time for a protracted fight.