Chapter 279: Stay!! Stay!!

Every fallen name dissolved into a thin gray-white silhouette.

Those silhouettes had no facial features, no complete bodies; they paused briefly in midair, then drifted out past the stone corridor.

Some wore rags, some leaned on wooden staffs, some cradled an empty bowl, some still had rope over their shoulders for carrying firewood.

None of them looked back, as if they had finally found the way out.

The black-robed figure behind the stone wall raised both hands, trying to pull those gray-white figures back.

But every time it grasped one, that figure slipped through its fingers.

“Stay.”

“Here is your place.”

“Stay.”

Not a single silhouette answered.

When the last gray-white shape passed through the stone crack, it suddenly halted, turned its faceless head, and nodded slightly toward where Lu Yuan stood.

Then it too dissipated into the darkness outside.

The stone corridor suddenly felt much emptier.

The old items on the little stools no longer shook, the seven clay jars quieted, and only the black jar held down by the soul-reflecting mirror still trembled faintly.

The giant eye inside the stone bell finally revealed a thin strip of gray-white.

That sliver did not look at the people, it looked at the shadow beneath Lu Yuan’s feet.

Lu Yuan understood at once.

“It’s not trying to open its eyes.”

“It’s trying to recognize shadows.”

“What happens if it recognizes one?” Wang Cheng'an asked.

“After it recognizes a shadow, the shadow belongs to it,” Lu Yuan said, “when the shadow is taken, the person outside can still move, but their soul will remain here.”

The moment Xu Erxiao heard this, he hurriedly pulled his shadow back under his feet.

“Why is this thing as sneaky as Iron Abacus?”

“Iron Abacus worked for it,” Lu Yuan stared at the giant eye behind the stone wall, “it existed earlier than Iron Abacus and knows better how to use people.”

The black-robed figure’s form suddenly unfurled.

Its black robe rolled back in strips, revealing the inverted black tree behind it.

The black tree’s roots dug into the stone altar, but its trunk hovered in midair; the gray-white fetal nucleus in the hollow center throbbed up and down.

Each throb opened the giant eye inside the bell a little more.

“The main fetus and the true eye are linked,” Lin Zhaoxuan said, “if the eye fully opens, the fetal nucleus will awaken too.”

“We can’t let them join,” Lu Yuan said.

“What do we do then?” Wang Cheng'an asked.

Lu Yuan didn’t answer right away.

He looked toward the black jar held down by the mirror.

The black paper on the jar had already cracked into pieces, and the exposed jar body was etched with a tight ring of tiny characters.

Previously the mist had been too thick to see them clearly.

Now, with the oil lamp’s flame, Lu Yuan could finally read them.

The characters were not offering names; they were an old set of repeated lines arranged around the jar:

“The eye is the gate, the fetus is the lock, the name is the lure, the shadow is the food.”

Four lines to a ring, rings connected.

Next to the phrase “the name is the lure,” there was an extremely fine notch.

Lu Yuan crouched, pricked the notch with the tip of his blade, and a thin piece of pottery peeled off the jar’s outer shell.

Inside was a rolled black strip of paper.

When the strip was unfurled, it turned out to bear Iron Abacus’s handwriting.

The script slanted, the strokes heavy, as if the hand had been violently trembling when it wrote.

There were only a few lines:

“The main offerings are not in the jar.”

“The jar only collects names for the eye.”

“To sever the true eye, first sever the fetal root.”

“The fetal root is not on the stone altar, it’s on the offering road.”

“At the end of the road, there is an inverted well.”

After reading, Lu Yuan handed the strip to Lin Zhaoxuan.

“Inverted well?” Wang Cheng'an asked.

Lu Yuan looked toward the valley beyond the stone wall.

The red cloth around the altar had been torn halfway to the sky, but a few black threads remained unbroken.

Those black threads ran through the stone bell, through the inverted black tree, and extended deeper into the valley.

One of those threads slanted down from beneath the stone altar.

“It doesn’t connect to a wooden tablet like the other offering lines,” Lu Yuan said, “it connects to an old road hidden at the valley bottom.”

“The offering road,” Lu Yuan said, “the real fetal root is in the mountain, not in this cave.”

“This place is its face and eye,” Lin Zhaoxuan added, “the root is planted deeper.”

“So do we cut the true eye from the stone bell first, or go find the inverted well?” Lin Zhaoxuan asked.

“Cut the fetal root first,” Lu Yuan said, “the true eye without the fetal root’s supply is just a seeing skin.”

“But to reach the inverted well we must first get past this main cave.”

“Right now it’s using our shadows to replenish names; we have to force it to reveal the root line.”

He raised his hand and pointed to the remaining unbroken black threads.

“Erxiao, bring me the red cloth.”

“Qinghe, lower the oil lamp.”

“Cheng'an and Zhou Heng, guard the left and right.”

“Lin Zhaoxuan, don’t move the soul-reflecting mirror.”

They all shifted into position quickly.

Song Qinghe set the oil lamp on the ground; the flame pressed close to the stone bricks and stretched forward.

When the light lowered, their shadows no longer cast onto the wall but were pulled long, converging toward the bottom of the stone wall.

Lu Yuan took the red cloth ribbon and walked along the salt-line to the front.

He did not lay the cloth over a shadow; instead he looped it around the thickest black thread.

“The return path doesn’t go backward,” he said, “it makes what went out return to itself.”

With that he tied a reverse knot.

The faded fabric suddenly bled a dark red, as if old blood had soaked back into it.

The wooden token with the character for “return” at the ribbon’s end emitted a faint click and slid forward along the black thread by an inch.

The giant eye in the stone bell immediately closed a bit.

The black-robed figure issued a deep roar.

“You mustn’t touch that thread.”

“What does it connect to?”

“Don’t touch it.”

“Who does it connect to?”

“Don’t—”

Lu Yuan pressed his short blade down onto the black thread.

The black thread violently struggled; black water on the ground flowed back and surged toward the stone bell.

The old items on the little stools rattled as if countless people inside the mountain were pounding on the doors at once.

Lu Yuan did not loosen his grip.

“Say it.”

A large portion of the offering names on the black-robed figure flaked off.

One piece flew forward and stuck to the stone corridor floor.

The paper read:

“Name-deliverer.”

Wang Cheng'an glanced, his face darkening.

“Name-deliverer?”

“What is that?”

“Person who delivers names to the offering place,” Lu Yuan said, “they don’t supply people here, they deliver names.”

“They collect names outside the mountain, then bring them here.”

“Once a name enters the mountain, it goes down this line.”

“The inverted well is their final collection point.”

“There are people outside doing this for it?” Song Qinghe asked.

Lu Yuan was silent for a moment.

“There should be,” he said. “But they’re not what we’re looking for right now.”

“Besides us, everything in the mountain is unclean.”

“Cut off the core first, and the outside name-delivery routes will collapse.”

When the black-robed figure heard the word “cut,” it suddenly lifted its head.

The black wooden tablet that covered its facial features finally fell away completely.

Where a face should be was a huge empty hollow.

Inside the hollow was not black but countless layered gray-white eyelids.

They stacked upon one another, slowly folding outward.

“You think cutting can defeat me?”

When the voice came, every little stool in the corridor sounded at once.

“I am in the mountain.”

“The mountain is on me.”

“If you cut the eye, the mountain will close over me.”

Lu Yuan said:

“Then peel the mountain open with it.”

He violently pulled the black wooden tablet free.

The thick black thread was lifted three inches off the ground, and beneath it a ring of white fine nails buried in the stone seam was exposed.

There were nine nails in total, arranged in a skewed eye-shape.

The bone nails Iron Abacus had once set.

But these nine bone nails hadn’t been used to pin down the Malevolent Deity; they were instead entwined by the inverted black tree’s roots.

“Iron Abacus didn’t only leave road ash,” Lu Yuan murmured, staring at the bone nails, “he buried other things too.”

“He wanted to pin the fetal root?” Lin Zhaoxuan asked.

“He tried to pin it,” Lu Yuan said, “but he was alone then; bone nails alone couldn’t hold.”

“Now we have the soul-reflecting mirror, the black wooden tablet, the salt-line, and the ash he left behind.”

“Whether it works depends on this attempt.”

“How do we do it?” Wang Cheng'an asked.

Lu Yuan handed the black wooden tablet to Lin Zhaoxuan.

“Put the black wooden tablet on the center.”

“Zhou Heng, stick the abacus in on the east.”

“Cheng'an, seal the west side with cinnabar.”

“Erxiao, sprinkle salt over the nine bone nails.”

“Qinghe, raise the oil lamp high, illuminate the fetal root.”

They moved at once.

Lin Zhaoxuan pressed both hands on the black wooden tablet; as soon as the tablet touched the central bone nail, the entire black thread trembled violently.

Zhou Heng shoved the abacus hard into the stone seam.

The abacus was cracked; the wooden frame jammed against a bone nail and the beads rolled one by one but did not fall to the ground; the black thread absorbed them, turning them into a string of tiny gray beads.

Wang Cheng'an scattered cinnabar along the west side.

The cinnabar hit the ground and forced the black water to part in a circle.

Xu Erxiao nearly emptied his whole bag of salt beside the bone nails; when the grains fell they made countless delicate crackling sounds.

Song Qinghe raised the oil lamp high.

The flame finally illuminated the fetal root.

It was a gray-white flesh root hidden deep within the inverted black tree.

It extended from a crack in the mountain wall, its surface covered with a thin black membrane, and beneath the membrane many tiny points of light moved slowly.

Each point of light was an un-opened eye.

“See the root,” Song Qinghe said tightly.

Lu Yuan scooped the black ash of Iron Abacus into his palm and fiercely rubbed it onto the blade.

The knife edge immediately took on a layer of grayish-white light.

This was not Iron Abacus coming back to life.

It was his technique and records being used one last time to sever the root.

The black-robed figure lunged forward suddenly.

It did not step through the wall, but a sheet of black shadow squeezed out of the stone seam, turning into countless hands that groped for Lu Yuan’s back.

Wang Cheng'an turned and blocked them, flinging a handful of cinnabar that scorched the black shadows back, but they reemerged from both sides.

“Cheng'an, protect the lamp!” Lu Yuan barked, “Don’t worry about me!”

Wang Cheng'an snatched up the abacus and struck at the black shadows several times.

Zhou Heng rushed over and stretched a salt-line across between them. The black hands recoiled from the salt-line like from red-hot iron and shrank back into the seams.

Xu Erxiao grasped the remaining half of the red cloth ribbon, wound it around a black hand, and yanked hard.

The black hand was pulled out of the crack a bit, revealing overlapping faces underneath.

“Brother Erxiao.”

“Save me.”

Xu Erxiao went pale but did not let go.

He gritted his teeth and wrapped the red ribbon tightly around the black hand.

“You are none of ours.”

The wooden token with the character for “return” shone again.

When the black hand was struck by the red light, it instantly turned into a wisp of black smoke and rolled back along the ribbon into the stone wall.

The giant eye in the stone bell shuddered.

The slit of opened eyelids finally revealed a true black.

That black was not a pupil.

It was a bottomless hole.

From within the hole came a low voice:

“You want to sever the fetal root.”

“Then first bring a person to take its place.”

As soon as the words fell, something grabbed Xu Erxiao’s shadow from beneath his feet.

He slid back, his knees slamming hard into the stone steps.

“Erxiao!”

Wang Cheng'an reached to pull him, but a black thread wrapped around his wrist.

The thread didn’t choke tightly, instead it rapidly wrote a character on the back of his hand.

“Eldest Son.”

Wang Cheng'an’s face changed.

Two characters also appeared on Zhou Heng’s hand.

“Old One.”

A faint gray mark appeared across Song Qinghe’s shoulder.

“No Name.”

All three had their identities written on them at once.

The Malevolent Deity no longer tried to coax names from their hearts; it forcibly stamped them.

Lu Yuan’s eyes chilled.

“It can’t hold.”

“So it’s beginning to snatch names.”

He raised his knife and first struck at the shadow beneath Xu Erxiao.

The blade hit the ground; the shadow split with a reply-like sound.

Xu Erxiao’s body lightened and he rolled forward two steps.

Lu Yuan turned and slashed at Wang Cheng'an’s hand.

Clang!

Just as the blade touched the two characters “Eldest Son,” an invisible force repelled it.

Wang Cheng'an grunted in pain, and the characters on his hand sank deeper.

“Brother Lu, I can’t cut it!”

“It’s not about cutting,” Lu Yuan said, “you say it yourself.”

“Say what?”

“Say you are not what it wrote.”

Wang Cheng'an gritted his teeth and shouted at the big gray eye:

“I am not the Eldest Son!”

The characters on his hand did not disappear.

“Say it again.”

“I am not the Eldest Son!”

“Again!”

“I am not the Eldest Son!”

On the third shout, a crack appeared across the characters on Wang Cheng'an’s hand.

Lu Yuan followed the crack with a knife and sliced it open.

The gray mark scattered into black ash.

Zhou Heng mirrored him: “I am not the Old One!”

Song Qinghe guarded the oil lamp: “I am not No Name!”

The identity marks on all three shattered at once.

Only the shadow beneath Xu Erxiao still had half of itself pulled into the stone wall.

Lu Yuan turned to him.

“Erxiao, you’re not a runaway.”

“What am I then?”

Xu Erxiao froze.

He looked at Lu Yuan, then at Wang Cheng'an; his lips moved for a long time but no answer came.

He had always been called Erxiao.

No one had ever asked who he wanted to be.

Lu Yuan didn’t urge him; he simply held his blade between the black thread and the shadow.

“Decide yourself.”

“A name is not given by others.”

“You must recognize it yourself.”

He seized the shadow at Xu Erxiao’s feet.

“I am Xu Erxiao.”

“My name, I recognize it myself!”

The black thread let out a sharp sound.

This was the moment Lu Yuan had waited for.

He slid the blade into where the black thread and shadow joined and plunged upward fiercely.

The shadow came free from the black thread.

Xu Erxiao threw his head back; Wang Cheng'an grabbed him.

At the same time, the nine bone nails lit up simultaneously.

Salt, cinnabar, black ash, the soul-reflecting mirror, the black wooden tablet, and the remaining force of Iron Abacus’s old abacus converged in the stone seam into a narrow white line.

The white line ran up along the fetal root.

The inverted black tree’s roots began to contract.

The gray-white fetal nucleus at the altar center gave a dull sound and cracked on its surface.

The crack revealed no blood or flesh.

Only a smaller, darker eye.

It had just opened when the oil lamp’s flame shone on it.

Song Qinghe’s lamp flame suddenly flared.

The small eye, as if seared by a branding iron, retracted into the fetal nucleus.

“Now!” Lu Yuan roared.

He gripped the knife with both hands and struck the thickest part of the fetal root with a single cleaving blow.

The blade pierced the black membrane.

A biting coldness burst from the fetal root, and the entire corridor was coated in frost.

Buried in that cold was a bellow not quite human:

“You cannot sever me!”

Lu Yuan did not relent.

The first strike split the root halfway.

The second blow met a powerful resistance.

Lu Yuan’s arm tingled; his hand bled at the base of his thumb.

Wang Cheng'an, Zhou Heng, and Xu Erxiao all dove forward and pressed down on the back of the blade together.

“Brother Lu!”

“Harder!”

“We’ll help press!”

The blade kept descending.

The black wooden tablet shook violently.

The mirror’s surface filled with cracks.

The giant eye inside the stone bell slowly opened again, the dark gaze fixed on Lu Yuan.

“Lu Yuan.”

“If you cut the fetal root.”

“Your name will become the new root.”

Lu Yuan looked up at the giant eye.

“That depends on whether you have the ability to remain.”

He yanked out the last bone nail from his waist, bit his fingertip, and smeared blood on the nail’s tip.

This bone nail was not left by Iron Abacus.

It had earlier been pulled from the underground true Eye Bed.

At that time the nail had been soaked by the black air in the eye fetus; Lu Yuan had left it untouched. Now it was just right to pin the severed fetal root.

“Bone nail into root, old accounts turn to ash.”

“Salt seal the mouth, cinnabar cut the name.”

“Soul-reflecting mirror enlightened, black wooden tablet pacified.”

He drove the bone nail hard into the split fetal root.

“Sever!”

When he cried that word, the fetal root finally broke apart.

There was no loud crash.

Only a faint “pop,” like a water bubble bursting.

Then all the red threads snapped at once.

On the altar in the valley, wooden tablets toppled one after another.

Cracks on the stone bell widened rapidly; the giant eye inside was assailed by countless gray-white names; its eyelid trembled.

The inverted black tree in the main cave lost support and split down the middle.

The gray-white fetal nucleus rolled out and struck the altar edge.

It did not shatter.

Instead it split neatly into two halves.

One half resembled a dried shell; the other half exposed a deep black hole.

From that hole came soft, thin laughter.

“You think severing the root is cutting me?”

Lu Yuan stared at the half fetal nucleus.

“I know.”

“This only forces you out of the mountain.”

“You have no offering lines left.”

“What do you use to live?”

“The names remain.”

Voices rose from all directions.

The gray ashes of those identity tablets burned on both sides of the corridor were suddenly swept up by wind and gathered toward the half fetal nucleus.

“As long as someone remembers a name.”

“As long as someone speaks a title.”

“As long as someone passes the mountain foot.”

“I can grow back.”

Lu Yuan’s face didn’t change.

He looked at the black jar.

“So this is its true basis,” Lin Zhaoxuan murmured, “the offering names aren’t only to feed it.”

“They also leave it a road to rebirth.”

“Yes,” Lu Yuan nodded, “but it forgot one thing.”

“What?”

“Names can be remembered.” And they can be changed.”

Lu Yuan walked to the half fetal nucleus and lifted the black jar.

“They thought if names were stored in jars, once left they would forever belong to them.”

“But these names have already been separated from identity tokens.”

“Now they are ownerless names.”

He looked toward the gray-white silhouettes in the corridor that were gradually dissipating.

“Ownerless names cannot directly feed the Malevolent Deity.”

“Someone has to re-recognize them.”

Song Qinghe understood.

“So we must return the names?”

“Not all of them,” Lu Yuan said, “some names are so shattered even the original owners can’t be found.”

“But those that can be delivered off the mountain — send them out.”

“Those that can’t be sent — burn them.”

“As long as they’re not left in the offering place, the Malevolent Deity has no food to be reborn.”

Wang Cheng'an looked toward the stone door outside:

“But the mountain is so big. How do we get all these names out?”

Lu Yuan flipped the black wooden tablet over.

The black dot on its back had already cracked, revealing a faint white trace.

“Follow the severed offering lines.”

“The offering lines originally sent names in.”

“Now reversed, they can send names out.”

He turned and looked toward the end of the stone corridor.

There the black wall had split open more than halfway, revealing a stone path downward.

The stone path had no steps, only ringed white bone prints spiraling down.

From the bottom, water sounds were faintly heard.

“The inverted well is ahead,” Lu Yuan said, “with the fetal root cut, the inverted well will be exposed.”

“We’ll follow the inverted well down and send the remaining offering names back to the surface.”

“Then we’ll find its true body.”

Xu Erxiao looked at the half fetal nucleus.

“Shouldn’t we smash this first?”

“If we smash it, the names will explode out,” Lu Yuan said, “it will scatter the jar’s offering names into us.”

“Then no one could tell who they are.”

“Seal it first.”

Lu Yuan took out the last yellow paper and stuck it on the fetal nucleus.

There were no characters on the paper.

He dipped the blade tip in blood and wrote only a single character: “Quiet.”

As the character was placed, the laughter inside the fetal nucleus immediately softened a few degrees.

Wang Cheng'an and Zhou Heng together dragged some rubble to press the fetal nucleus at the altar edge.

Xu Erxiao circled salt around it.

Song Qinghe kept the oil lamp shining on Lu Yuan’s hands.

Lu Yuan laid the cracked abacus across the fetal nucleus and finally put the black wooden tablet on top of the abacus.

“Iron Abacus,” he murmured, “this account you kept, I’ll finally settle it for you.”

“People are already dead; don’t let them use your name to work anymore.”

A white trace on the black wooden tablet flashed.

The fetal nucleus at last fell thoroughly silent.

Deep within the stone bell the giant eye still had not closed.

It looked at Lu Yuan as if its gaze could pass through the stone wall and land in his heart.

“You will come for me.”

“I know.”

“You will walk to the deepest part of the offering place.”

“I know that too.”

“Your name will be waiting there.”

Lu Yuan lifted his eyes.

“Then wait.”

“Wait for me to go in and burn your names too.”

He turned and walked toward the stone path.

Wang Cheng'an followed. As they passed the abacus pressed under the fetal nucleus, he paused.

“Brother Lu, this Iron Abacus thing...”

“Leave it here.”

“Just leave it?”

“He stood guard his whole life,” Lu Yuan said, “in the end let his abacus guard this false eye.”

“This isn’t him coming back to life.”

“It’s the thing he left behind, no longer balancing accounts for the Malevolent Deity.”

Wang Cheng'an nodded, said nothing more.

They entered the stone path.

Just after their first step down, a muffled sound came from the wall behind them.

The gray-white giant eye shut.

All the little stools in the corridor went dark at once.

But just before the blackness fully descended, Lu Yuan saw something through the cracks in the mirror’s shards.

The valley beyond the stone bell was collapsing.

The inverted black tree had shattered into many black root fragments.

On the altar the black-robed figure’s form began to crumble.

Yet below the altar, a thread-thin black line remained, running through the valley, through hollows between peaks, and extending into deeper mountains.

That line did not connect to the altar nor the stone bell.

It led to a well turned upside down underground.

Nine stone steles stood around the well mouth.

Each stele bore a character.

The first eight were blurred; only the ninth was clear:

“Life.”

Lu Yuan paused mid-step.

“Brother Lu?” Xu Erxiao asked.

“Under the inverted well, besides the fetal root,” Lu Yuan said, “there’s also a living entrance.”

“The Malevolent Deity’s true body?”

“Maybe,” Lu Yuan tightened his grip on the short blade, “or perhaps a second life it kept for itself.”

As they descended, the sound of water grew clearer.

The water did not sound like an underground river; it sounded like someone ladling water, drop by drop.

“Splash.”

“Stop.”

“Splash.”

“Stop.”

Each water sound, a little point of greenish light shone along the stone path sides.

The green light revealed names.

Some were carved into bone.

Some were written on bark.

Some were imprinted in the stone.

Some were only a single stroke, as if they had just been written and something immediately tried to wipe them away.

Zhou Heng looked at those names and murmured:

“Aren’t these the ones that came out of the jar just now?”

“No,” Lu Yuan said, “these are the ones that haven’t yet been put in.”

“The inverted well is the last segment of the offering road.”

“Names entering the well count as finally delivered to the true body.”

Wang Cheng'an said, “Can’t I just wipe them all out now?”

“You can’t,” Lu Yuan said, “these names have owners.”

“Forcibly erasing them equals erasing the living person’s root.”

“We must cut the road, then send the names out.”

“But who can receive them?”

Lu Yuan glanced at the soul-reflecting mirror in his hand.

Within the mirror’s cracked face, a pale gray light flowed faintly.

“The mirror can receive.”

“The black wooden tablet can hold.”

“The red cloth can lead.”

“The salt-line can seal.”

“We need to make a counter-delivery road.”

At the end of the stone path a small stone chamber appeared.

The chamber was modest; in its center sat a well.

The well did not open downward; its mouth faced downwards, the well body inverted and hanging from the stone ceiling.

Thick black water clung to the well rim, not falling but rising drop by drop.

From the well’s depths came the “splash, stop” sound.

Nine stone steles were arranged around the chamber.

The character “Life” on the ninth stele emitted a faint red glow.

Lu Yuan stood at the chamber entrance and did not step in.

“Don’t step on the chamber center.”

“This is not the well mouth; it’s an eyelid.”

He looked at the inverted well and spoke in a low voice:

“There is someone in the well.”

The water sound stopped.

From inside the chamber came a soft sigh.

“You finally came.”

The voice was young.

Too young for a Malevolent Deity.

More like a child trapped at the mountain’s bottom for years, never allowed to grow.

Xu Erxiao whispered:

“There’s a person inside?”

“I don’t know,” Lu Yuan said, “but it wants us to think there is.”

A drop of black water fell suddenly from the inverted well.

When it landed in the chamber center, it did not scatter; it formed a wet, glistening eye.

The eye turned once and finally fixated on Lu Yuan.

“You cut my fetal root.”

“You tied many people’s names here.”

“They stayed willingly.”

“Voluntary offerings don’t equal voluntarily being disassembled.”

“They wanted to live.”

“What you gave them was undeath, not true life.”

There was a pause in the well voice.

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand,” Lu Yuan said, “you’re afraid to die.”

“So you stitch other people’s names, shadows, bones, memories into a skin that won’t die.”

“You fed so many not to guard the mountain.”

“But to extend your own life.”

A soft laugh sounded in the chamber.

A strand of black hair slowly dropped down from the inverted well rim.

At the hair’s end hung a tiny copper bell.

The bell did not ring aloud, yet everyone heard its chime.

“Ding.”

In an instant, the shadows beneath Wang Cheng'an, Xu Erxiao, Zhou Heng, and Song Qinghe froze simultaneously.

The characters on the steles began to glow.

“Eld.”

“Est.”

“Son.”

“Peo.”

“ple.”

“No.”

“Name.”

“Life.”

The final “Life” shone blindingly.

In the chamber center, the ground split a thin crack.

From the fissure came countless voices:

“Stay.”