Chapter 283: The Mother Stele
The figure stood at the end of the stone path, the knife in its hand identical to Lu Yuan’s.
It slightly raised its head, its face still a blank void.
“You don’t need to look higher.”
“I already came down to meet you.”
Xu Erxiao gripped the red cloth tight, Wang Cheng'an held up the broken frame of the abacus, Lin Zhaoxuan and Zhou Heng flanked Song Qinghe on either side to protect her.
No one answered.
Lu Yuan stared at the shadow and first looked at its feet.
There was water on the stone path.
The black water from the inverted well seeped out through the cracks and left wet trails along the way. Yet the ground beneath that shadow was perfectly clean, not a speck of dust clinging to it.
“Don’t look at its face.”
Lu Yuan said in a low voice, “Look at its feet.”
The shadow raised its knife, the tip pointing straight at Lu Yuan’s chest.
“You’ve already seen.”
“Look one more time, and you’ll know who’s real.”
Wang Cheng'an asked, “What’s it trying to do?”
“It wants us to identify each other.”
Lu Yuan raised his hand, signaling everyone not to separate.
“The shadow evil reveals form by borrowing the lamp, it fixes names by borrowing the heart.”
“If we let it sort out who’s real and who’s fake, it can follow our thoughts and swap places.”
“So what do we do?”
“Extinguish the lamp.”
Song Qinghe confirmed.
There was only one oil lamp in the stone chamber.
If the lamp went out, the whole chamber and the surrounding area would plunge into complete darkness.
Since that thing was a shadow evil, darkness might not suppress it; it could even give the thing every advantage.
Lu Yuan noticed her hesitation.
“Not to extinguish it, but to put out the lamp in front of us.”
He picked up a broken bone token from the ground, dabbed some black mud from the stone seams on it, and smeared a ring around the outside rim of the lamp bowl.
Then he formed a “cover lamp” hand seal at his chest.
His left thumb pinched the base of his ring finger, his index and middle fingers together, his right palm covering the back of his left fingers, like one hand clasping a lamp.
“The lamp is the yang eye, the shadow is the yin form.”
“If the yang eye does not open, the yin form does not appear.”
“Oil is life, the wick is the gate.”
“When the gate closes the fire subsides, when the fire subsides the shadow sinks.”
“Cover!”
At the final word, the oil lamp in Song Qinghe’s hand abruptly went out.
The stone chamber fell into darkness at once.
But the shadow did not vanish.
In the dark, the sound of a blade dragging across stone came first.
Scritch.
It was drawing near.
“It’s coming.”
Xu Erxiao lowered his voice.
“Listen, don’t move.”
Lu Yuan stood where he was, his fingers lightly twirling the knife handle.
The blade’s scraping shifted left and right along the stone path, as if seven or eight things were approaching from all directions.
Wang Cheng'an couldn’t help but twitch his foot.
“Don’t move.”
Lu Yuan warned again.
This time, however, the voice came from behind Wang Cheng'an.
“Don’t move.”
It was Lu Yuan’s voice.
Wang Cheng'an’s body suddenly tensed.
The voice behind him went on:
“You moved, it will know you are not me.”
Wang Cheng'an did not turn around.
“Brother Lu, are you in front of me?”
“Yes.”
“Then who’s behind me?”
“Not me.”
No sooner had the words fallen than something behind Wang Cheng'an suddenly lifted a hand, five cold fingers settling on his shoulder.
Wang Cheng'an let out a muffled grunt and swung the abacus frame backhanded.
A dull thud sounded in the dark.
Five blue marks were clawed into his shoulder, but whatever had grabbed him did not release.
Lu Yuan shifted his step and slashed across following the sound.
The blade missed.
The next moment, there was a “clack” from the chamber ceiling, as if something hanging there had moved aside to avoid the strike.
Lu Yuan did not pursue with another cut. He planted his knife into the ground and, using its tip as a pivot, stamped his right foot on the stone three times in succession.
First step, east.
Second step, south.
Third step, north.
After the three steps, he raised his left hand, pinched the second joint of his middle finger, and with his right hand formed a sword seal, pointing to the center of the chamber.
This was the “settle the three gates” in Daoist step talisman.
“East gate will not welcome, south gate will not shine, north gate will not stay.”
“Men walk men’s paths, shadows walk shadow paths.”
“Borrow the mountain as the boundary, borrow the stone as the anchor.”
“Those without roots shall not touch ground!”
When the finger seal finished, three pale phosphorescent points suddenly glowed in the chamber.
The light did not look like flame, but rather like a phosphor seeping out from within the stone.
The three lights landed respectively at east, south, and north, just sealing the directions the shadow might retreat to.
Something on the ceiling fell abruptly.
When it hit the ground, it still looked like Lu Yuan, the knife in its hand already thrust in front of Wang Cheng'an.
Xu Erxiao swung out the red cloth and wrapped it around its wrist.
Wang Cheng'an stepped back with the momentum.
The red cloth stretched taut, but the shadow did not struggle forcefully; instead it slid along the cloth like a pool of black water spreading along the fabric, and in an instant it had reached Xu Erxiao’s hand.
Just as Xu Erxiao was about to loosen his grip, Lu Yuan shouted:
“Hold tight!”
“It’s using your hand to move!”
Xu Erxiao gritted his teeth and wound the red cloth into his palm.
“How do we get it off?”
“Recite the return-route spell backward.”
“I don’t know it!”
“Say it with me.”
Lu Yuan stepped on the middle of the red cloth, left hand forming a seal, right hand pressing on the knife hilt.
“Red cloth leads the road, the road does not lead evil.”
Xu Erxiao repeated after him:
“Red cloth leads the road, the road does not lead evil.”
“The hand is the living gate, the wrist is the death pass.”
“If the evil passes three inches, it goes back to the cloth, not the person.”
“If the evil passes three inches, it goes back to the cloth, not the person!”
On the last line, Lu Yuan struck the knife back down heavily against the red cloth.
A small wooden tile with the character for return on the cloth clicked once.
The black pool on the fabric suddenly detached, fell to the ground, and reformed into a human figure.
Its face still lacked features, but a thin seam had appeared on its chest.
Within that seam was faintly set a black stone shard.
A character meaning “shadow” was carved on the shard.
Lin Zhaoxuan said:
“The stele character is on its body.”
“It is not one of the stele guardians,” Lu Yuan said, “it’s a fragment of the shadow stele, a splinter soul from the stele.”
The shadow evil bowed its head and reached to touch its chest.
“Shadow does not belong to people.”
“People are merely vessels for shadow.”
“As long as you acknowledge that, the mountain will collect your household for you.”
It suddenly spread its arms.
From the darkness around the chamber, five vague human shapes emerged.
Each resembled the people present, but without faces.
Those human shapes did not lunge at the original body; instead they stood behind each person and pressed their palms against the napes of the people’s necks.
Song Qinghe’s breath hitched.
She could not see what was behind her, but she could feel cold air inching into her collar from the back of her neck.
Lin Zhaoxuan said, “That thing is dividing shadows.”
“Not dividing shadows.”
Lu Yuan looked down at the ground.
“It is pulling our shadows up from beneath our feet.”
Everyone looked down.
The shadows that had been clinging to their feet were slowly rising upright,
like black paper being peeled away from the ground.
Once a shadow fully stood, the person’s body would become an empty shell.
“Zhaoxuan, ink-line.”
Lin Zhaoxuan quickly took the ink-line from his waist.
“Where to snap it?”
“Seal our feet, not it.”
Understanding, Lin Zhaoxuan pulled the ink line taut and snapped it across in front of everyone’s feet.
Snap!
The ink line hit the stone and left a straight red streak of cinnabar and black mud on the slab.
Lu Yuan grabbed a handful of salt and scattered it along the red line.
“Feet are the ground’s household, shadow is the root of the person.”
“The red line must not be crossed, yin energy will not rise.”
“Everyone guard your feet, every soul guard your body.”
“If the shadow leaves the body, withdraw!”
When he finished, his right-hand sword seal flicked upward.
The five shadows that had just stood swayed and were pressed back down to the ground by the red line.
The shadow evil emitted a shrill sound, as if many fingernails scraped a coffin lid at once,
and it lunged at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan did not retreat. He met it head-on.
Two blades clashed.
The opponent’s blade was formed of shadow, its edge thin and it slid along Lu Yuan’s knife as it descended.
Lu Yuan rotated his wrist, used the spine of his knife to pin the enemy’s wrist, and with his left fingertip dipped in cinnabar he quickly drew the character “stop” on the black stone shard at its chest.
The shadow evil froze suddenly.
But its skull continued to thrust forward, its mouth splitting open and nearly reaching Lu Yuan’s face.
“You don’t have a shadow either.”
“You are not from here.”
“Your shadow will eventually return to where it came from.”
Lu Yuan applied force with his wrist and pushed it back to the ground.
“That’s not for you to deliver.”
He raised his knee and drove it into the shadow evil’s chest.
The shadow’s body bent backward and the stone shard at its chest became even more exposed.
Lu Yuan took the chance to thrust his knife tip into the seam between the stone shard and the shadow body—not piercing through, but levering outward.
Clang!
The black stone shard was pried out.
The moment the shard left the body, every shadow in the chamber vanished at once.
All that remained under their feet was the darkness left by the extinguished lamp.
Without the shard, the shadow evil began to collapse.
But the shard did not fall to the ground.
It hovered in midair, the carved character for “shadow” slowly turning on its surface.
A sharp, thin voice came from the shard:
“The stele must not be destroyed.”
“Destroy the stele, the shadows disperse.”
“When the shadows disperse, the mountain takes them.”
Lu Yuan caught the shard but did not smash it.
The shard in his hand was icy cold, and inside it seemed countless tiny footsteps running back and forth.
“The Iron Abacus was right.”
Lu Yuan said, “The stele cannot be destroyed, nor can the characters be forcibly erased.”
He laid a sheet of yellow paper on the ground.
Then he placed the stone shard on the paper and drew four short cinnabar strokes at its four edges.
One to the east, one to the south, one to the west, one to the north.
With each stroke he recited a line:
“East returns the walking path.”
“South returns visible form.”
“West returns the gate.”
“North returns the old ruler.”
When the four cinnabar lines were done, Lu Yuan clasped his hands into the “return shadow” seal.
Left fingers together, palm facing down, right thumb pinching the tip of the middle finger, index and middle finger extended, gently tapping the left palm three times.
“Shadow shall not be master, form shall not be guest.”
“People have their bodies, shadows have their places.”
“If the stele bears no name, names return to old places.”
“Souls have return paths, evil has no excuse.”
“Return!”
He pressed his right hand onto the shard.
The character “shadow” on the shard instantly faded.
At the same time, each of the five shadows reappeared out of the darkness and stuck back to their owners’ feet.
The shadow evil’s ruined body emitted a low groan, turned to a layer of black ash, and seeped into the stone seams.
The shard landed on the yellow paper.
The character “shadow” was empty.
From the direction of the inverted well came the sound of water.
The black water dropped an inch.
The red glow on the ninth “life” stele dimmed a notch.
Lu Yuan put away the blank stone shard and turned his gaze to the chamber ceiling.
A stair of stone leading upward had appeared there without anyone noticing.
Old wooden stakes were driven along both sides of the stair, each festooned with rotted white paper strips.
The strips rattled in the mountain wind and made faint noises.
On every paper slip, the same character was written:
“Mother.”
Lin Zhaoxuan looked at that stairway.
“This is the next trial?”
“Yes.”
Lu Yuan wiped the black ash off his knife.
“The shadow stele is now empty, the mountain will immediately fill the root.”
“The next stele will not send another stele-soul.”
Wang Cheng'an asked:
“What will it be then?”
Lu Yuan looked up.
At the top of the stone steps, the sound of a wooden door opening came.
Then a woman’s voice spoke softly from the darkness:
“Child, it’s time to come inside.”
Lu Yuan tightened his grip on the knife and was the first to step onto the first stair.
“It’s the evil exaltation that guards the mother stele.”
“It will use a living person’s life breath to remake a womb for an empty shell that has no mother.”
“From now on, no one touches the white papers in the woods, and no one enters that door.”
Xu Erxiao, Wang Cheng'an and the others followed.
After they had climbed just over thirty steps, the stone chamber behind them slammed shut with a roar.
Looking back, the way they had come had become a complete stone wall.
At the top of the stone steps appeared a wooden carved lintel typical of beyond the Great Wall.
Thick snow sat on the roof and a dim yellow light glowed through the papered window.
An iron pot stood before the door. There was no water inside, but it steamed white vapor.
Bells hung under the eaves.
They did not ring in the wind.
Instead, they moved on their own along with the whimpering cries of a baby, rocking by themselves.
“Wah…”
The wooden door slowly opened.
Inside sat a woman wearing a white cotton jacket.
She faced away from them, holding a crude cradle in her arms.
Inside the cradle there was no infant—only a segment of wood bound with red thread.
The woman gently tapped the wood and hummed a lullaby from the borderlands:
“Sleep now, sleep now, snow falls high in the hills.”
“Sleep now, sleep now, there is no home outside.”
At the last line she slowly turned her head.
Her face bore three mouths.
All three mouths opened at once:
“Who will be the child’s mother?”
The snow in the courtyard suddenly sank.
Eight pale hands reached up from beneath the snow to grab at everyone’s ankles.
Lu Yuan planted his knife into the frozen soil before the threshold and barked:
“Everyone stay on the stone steps!”
“Don’t step into the snow!”
They pulled their feet back at once.
The hands grasped nothing and the nails scraped a harsh noise across the steps.
The woman holding the cradle stood up.
She did not descend the steps; she stayed in the doorway and quietly watched Lu Yuan.
“You’re not coming in?”
“The mother stele must not enter the house.”
Lu Yuan said.
“The house belongs to humans, the stele belongs to the mountain. Since you used a house to perform your method, you have already lost the mother’s place.”
All three mouths of the woman laughed together.
“You are wrong.”
“There is no person in this house.”
“So whoever enters becomes the child’s mother.”
Lu Yuan pinched a cinnabar nail and handed it to Lin Zhaoxuan.
“Nail it in the right corner of the door.”
He handed a second to Song Qinghe.
“Nail it in the left corner of the door.”
He took the last one himself and stood in the middle of the threshold.
“Mother protects life, not nurtures evil.”
“We won’t enter the house. First we’ll force it to spit out what’s inside.”
Lu Yuan raised his hands into a seal.
His fingers interlaced, thumbs pressed together, then they opened outward together.
“Open the fetal gate.”
The woman’s three mouths abruptly stopped laughing.
“You dare!”
Lu Yuan drove the cinnabar nail into the threshold.
“Open!”
The lamp inside the wooden house instantly turned a ghastly white.
Black water seeped from all the seams—floor, walls, roof, every gap in the wooden boards.
The black water gathered at the woman’s feet and slowly lifted the wooden fetus from her arms.
The red thread on the wood snapped on its own.
Inside were faces of paper stacked together.
Each paper face bore the single character “mother.”
Lu Yuan glanced and said:
“The true mother stele is not on the woman.”
“It’s in the wooden fetus she holds.”
The woman hugged the wood tighter and her figure rapidly swelled.
Her cotton jacket split as black tree roots burst from her sleeves and collars and drilled into the four walls of the house,
and the three mouths intoned a strange rustic birthing chant together.
As the song rose, those on the steps felt a pressure in their chests, as if something inside their bellies tried to push outward.
Xu Erxiao went pale.
“What is this technique?”
“Borrowed fetal song,” Lu Yuan said, “Covering your ears won’t help, the sound has entered the body.”
He pressed his palm to his own chest, his left hand forming the “protect heart” seal, his thumb pressing the middle finger, his index finger extended, pointing to the front of the lower chest.
“If the heart fire does not fall, the spleen earth will not sink.”
“Fetal cries enter the ear, not the bone.”
“An outside chant is a guest, what burns within is the master.”
“Hold!”
Everyone followed his motion and pressed their hands to their chests.
Lu Yuan added:
“Don’t breathe along with its rhythm.”
“Each of you count seven breaths: long inhale, short pause, slow exhale.”
“If qi does not fall into confusion, the body will not bear something for it.”
Seeing the birthing song failing, the woman suddenly flung the wooden fetus onto the stone steps.
It crashed down and split into eight petals.
Eight paper people crawled out, with long thin limbs and heads each marked with the character “mother.”
They rushed up the stone steps toward them.
Lu Yuan did not charge forward to strike. Instead he scattered white salt along the step edges.
“Erxiao, seal left with the red cloth.”
“Cheng'an, press the right with the abacus frame.”
“Zhaoxuan, snap the ink line across the door.”
“Qinghe, oil lamp lights the womb, not the people.”
They immediately moved into position.
Xu Erxiao tied the red cloth to a wooden stake on the left side of the steps and wrapped the other end to intercept the first rushing paper figure.
As soon as the paper figure touched the red cloth, the “mother” character on it began to seep blood.
Wang Cheng'an pressed the abacus frame on the right-side step; as a paper figure crawled past, the beads in the broken frame rolled on their own and made a chaotic clatter.
Each clack slowed the paper figure’s movement a beat.
Lin Zhaoxuan snapped the ink line across the threshold.
The cinnabar line met the black water in the wooden house and made a soft “mouth” sound.
Song Qinghe steadied the lamp to shine on the cracked wooden fetus.
Under the light, the interior of the fetus revealed the outline of a tiny stone stele.
A faint character “mother” was carved on it.
Lu Yuan saw that character and understood the method to break it.
“Don’t destroy the paper people!”
“Drive them back into the wooden fetus!”
“The mother stele’s character is still in the fetus—the paper people are just the outer shell!”
They changed tactics.
Xu Erxiao stopped striking with the red cloth and instead used it to loop and guide the paper figures one by one back toward the wooden fetus.
Wang Cheng'an struck the ground with the abacus frame, shouting “Return to the womb!” with every strike.
Lin Zhaoxuan sealed the sides with the ink line, and Song Qinghe kept the oil lamp steady on the wooden fetus so the light did not stray.
Lu Yuan stood at the front and formed the “collect the fetus” seal with both hands.
Left palm up and slightly cupped, fingers curved, right index and middle finger together, drawing circles over the left palm.
“The fetus is the house, the mother is the gate.”
“If the gate does not open, evil will not be born.”
“Paper returns to wood, names return to the stele.”
“A borrowed mother goes back to the mountain root.”
“Collect!”
The eight paper figures screamed and were driven back into the wooden fetus by the red cloth, the abacus clatter, and the ink lines.
The woman thrashed wildly, and roots from the walls lunged at Lu Yuan from all sides.
Lu Yuan drew his knife and slashed. Each cut severed an oncoming black root.
With every trunk he cut, a portion of the wooden house collapsed inward.
All three mouths of the woman cried out at once:
“You destroyed the house, the child will be gone!”
“The house is not the child,” Lu Yuan said, “and you are not the mother.”
His final stroke drove the knife into the center of the unborn form.
The tip did not hit the stone stele inside; instead it carved the character “return” onto the wooden shell’s exterior.
“Let the mother return to her place, return the fetus to its earth.”
“The evil deity borrows life, today the nursing is cut.”
“Cut!”
The wooden fetus slammed shut.
All three mouths of the woman closed together, the black roots shriveled like vines losing water and retracted into the cracks of the wooden house.
The ghastly white lamp inside went out.
The whole wooden house collapsed inward with muffled cracks of timber,
the snow smoothed over once more, leaving only a half-buried black stone shard in the ground.
The character “mother” on the shard was now empty.
Lu Yuan collected the shard.
From deep within the mountain came a very distant low roar.
The sound was neither human nor beast, but like a vast existence turning over beneath weighty rock layers.
The red glow of the nine “life” steles suddenly dimmed.
In the direction of the inverted well, the black water boiled.
Asheng’s voice came carried on the mountain wind:
“It has awakened.”
Lu Yuan looked toward the deeper part of the Birch Forest.
What had been a stretch of utter blackness behind the woods now lit three oil lamps.
One on the left.
One on the right.
One in the center.
Behind the three lamps, a larger stone door stood faintly visible.
The door bore no guardian painting, no plaque—only a horizontal crack like a closed eye.
Lu Yuan gripped his knife and descended the stone steps.
“Keep going.”
“The shadow stele is empty, the next trial is the home stele.”
No one asked when the Malevolent Deity would appear.
They could all plainly see.
Beyond that stone door lay the true entrance to the main cave,
and the closed slit across the door was slowly, little by little, beginning to open.