Chapter 285: Wishes Inside the Lamp, The Lamp Returns But Not Me

The inverted cave’s stone walls closed in overhead.

Lu Yuan and the four others did not fall to the ground; they were all held up at once by a sticky, slick black membrane, suspended in the middle of the cave.

The black membrane looked like a spiderweb, and also like an oil film that formed at the bottom of a well. After supporting their bodies it immediately began tightening outward.

Seven white lamps hung along the cave’s rim.

Beneath each lamp was a stele.

Some of the stele faces were already showing characters, others remained blank, with only black water constantly seeping from their roots.

The first to light up was the Surname Stele.

There was no complete character on the stele, only a horizontal-and-turn stroke, as if someone was writing the character stroke by stroke across the surface.

With each stroke written, the chains wrapped around everyone’s feet tightened a little more.

“This thing is forcing us to declare our surnames!”

“Don’t say anything.”

Lu Yuan stuck his blade into the black membrane and used the leverage to steady himself.

“The Surname Stele isn’t asking our surnames, it’s writing our surnames for us.”

“As long as it finishes writing, we become property of this mountain.”

Zhou Heng looked up at the stele.

“How do we stop it?”

“Cut off the lamps first.”

Lu Yuan pointed at the seven white lamps.

“The lamps are the stele’s eyes, the stele is the Malevolent Deity’s ledger.”

“If the lamps don’t go out, the stele can keep writing.”

Lin Zhaoxuan scanned the surroundings.

“The cave is suspended, the lamps hang on the rock face, we can’t reach them.”

“If we can’t reach them, let them come down by themselves.”

Lu Yuan took a bone nail from his bosom.

The bone nail was something left by the Iron Abacus. It had blackened with age, but the tip still bore a trace of cinnabar color.

He pinched the bone nail between his index and middle fingers, made a hand seal with his right hand, and pressed his left on the knife hilt.

“A lone lamp shines upon the stele, the stele watches the nameless.”

“The lamp has a foot, the stele has a root.”

“Today we borrow bone for nail, borrow shadow for rope, take the lamp without moving the stone.”

“Lamp, fall!”

After reciting the incantation, he threw the bone nail at the white lamp beside the Surname Stele.

The bone nail did not strike the lamp itself, but drove into the black shadow beneath it.

That white lamp suddenly jolted.

The flame was pulled taut by an invisible force, and from inside the lampshade came a dense sound like fingernails scraping.

“It’s not a lamp,” Song Qinghe said.

“There are people inside the lamp.”

“It’s the shadow that was trapped inside.”

Lu Yuan said, “Then free the shadow.”

He planted his foot on the black membrane, and with the knife tip cut a semicircle across the membrane.

Then he formed the “Open Yin Gate” seal with his left hand: thumb pressing the base of the middle finger, index and middle fingers together pointing forward, fingertips facing down.

“Gate opens a line, qi leaves through a slit.”

“The lamp holds shadow, the shadow holds a name.”

“Not nourished by the mountain, not collected by the stele.”

“Return to a person’s feet!”

He sliced the sword-seal along the semicircle.

“Open!”

The white lamp beside the Surname Stele exploded.

There was no flame, only a great cloud of gray-white shadow spewed from the shade.

The shadow fell onto the black membrane, quickly split into dozens of strands, and crawled toward the cave’s edge.

When a lamp died, the chain at Wang Cheng'an’s feet immediately loosened.

But the Surname Stele also added another stroke.

A voice in the darkness spoke again:

“A lamp extinguished, a name moves forward one stroke.”

The voice seemed to come from all four sides of the cave, and at the same time, from inside each person’s ear.

“The more lamps you destroy, the more names I will write for myself.”

“Then let’s put out all seven.”

Lu Yuan raised his blade toward the second lamp.

“It uses the stele’s characters to press people down, to stop us.”

“We’ll simply outpace it.”

Lu Yuan tossed a shard of a blank Home Stele to Xu Erxiao.

“Erxiao, take this.”

Xu Erxiao reflexively reached out and caught it.

The moment the shard entered his palm, black qi crept up along his wrist.

His face changed; he almost flung the shard away.

“Hold it!”

Lu Yuan barked.

“It’s an empty stele, it can temporarily force the Malevolent Deity’s writing back.”

“What’m I supposed to do with it?”

“Smash the lamp with it.”

Xu Erxiao gritted his teeth and ran across the black membrane toward the cave edge.

The membrane sank with every step; several headless black hands reached up from underneath, clawing for his feet.

Wang Cheng'an grabbed the remnant frame of the abacus and smashed the black hands away one by one.

“Left, Erxiao!”

Xu Erxiao dodged aside and dove beneath the second white lamp.

From inside that lamp came a woman’s sob:

“Don’t touch me...”

Xu Erxiao didn’t stop.

He slammed the blank stone shard heavily onto the lampshade.

The white lamp shattered.

A gray-white shadow burst out and brushed Xu Erxiao’s face.

Everything went black before his eyes; voices of many people seemed to speak simultaneously in his ears:

“You have no name.”

“You were picked up.”

“You were born to remain in the mountain.”

His knees buckled and he nearly fell.

Lu Yuan shouted through the membrane,

“Erxiao, listen to my voice!”

“I’m listening!”

“What’s under your feet?”

“The black membrane!”

“What’s in your hand?”

“A stone shard!”

“Where are you standing?”

“The mountain’s belly!”

“Who are you?”

Xu Erxiao bit his tongue, then snapped his head up.

“Xu Erxiao!”

The shout reverberated through the cave.

“I am a disciple of the Profound Gate, a junior brother of Brother Lu!”

“Not something that belongs to the mountain!”

Light blazed from the shard.

The second white lamp went out.

The gray shadow that had rushed out of the lamp halted midair, as if nailed by that declaration. After a moment it condensed into a wisp of white mist and settled back at Xu Erxiao’s feet.

Wang Cheng'an looked at Lu Yuan.

“That works?”

“A name doesn’t have to come only from blood,” Lu Yuan said. “A name a person recognizes for themselves can also stand on the ground.”

“Move, quickly!”

By the third lamp, Lin Zhaoxuan had arrived.

He did not use a weapon. Instead he looped the ink-line around his wrist, holding the line in his left hand and forming the “Bind Lamp” seal with his right.

“Ink follows the vermilion gate, the line locks the shadow lamp.”

“A lamp does not light a person, it only shines upon a stele.”

“Evil qi in the lamp returns to the lamp belly.”

“Bind!”

The ink-line snapped out and wrapped around the lamp’s pole.

Lin Zhaoxuan gave a hard yank.

The third white lamp did not go out; instead it plunged downward, the flame rushing straight at his face.

Song Qinghe threw her oil lamp.

The two lamps collided midair.

Song Qinghe’s oil lamp shattered, but the oil did not spill; it coalesced into a dark-red flame that clung to the white lamp.

All the lamps’ flames turned black.

Lin Zhaoxuan reeled in the ink-line.

“Drop!”

The third lamp crashed into the black membrane; the shade shattered.

The shadow that escaped didn’t scatter, but condensed into a kneeling humanoid shape, hands covering its face, repeatedly whispering,

“I don’t want to stay here...”

Song Qinghe glanced once and immediately said,

“Don’t touch it.”

“It’s not a living person.”

Lu Yuan nodded.

“It’s just a thought left behind after being trapped too long.”

“Thoughts can be released, but cannot be carried off.”

As the three white lamps went out, the black membrane at the cave’s center began to loosen.

A huge black face pressed down out of the darkness.

It had no features, only a horizontal fissure running across the rock wall.

The fissure opened and vomited a rank wind.

“You took my lamps.”

“So use your own eyes to shine.”

The black wind rolled toward them.

Lu Yuan raised his hand to shield his face; his sleeve was sliced through by the wind in an instant.

Zhou Heng was blown off the membrane and slammed toward the cave edge.

Wang Cheng'an lunged and grabbed his waist.

“Don’t let go!”

“I’m not letting go!”

“I meant you, don’t let go!”

The two slid downward together.

Lu Yuan stabbed his knife into the black membrane, then flung the Red Cloth to wrap around Wang Cheng'an’s wrist.

“Zhaoxuan, Qinghe, go to the fourth lamp!”

“Erxiao, protect them!”

“And you?” Song Qinghe asked.

“I’ll go look at its face.”

Lu Yuan drew his blade and walked toward the center of the cave.

The black membrane churned under his feet as if he were stepping on living things.

The black face drew closer.

There were no teeth in its fissure; instead, rows of upright steles stood within it.

Each stele was engraved with a blurred human name.

The names kept shifting.

Some became “Father.”

Some became “Home.”

Some became “Surname.”

Others weren’t from any human script at all.

“You are not a god,” Lu Yuan said.

The black face hesitated.

The wind in the cave abruptly stopped.

“They who feed me call me god.”

“Those who fear me call me lord.”

“Those who enter my mountain call me eye.”

“What right have you to deny that?”

“Because a god does not hide behind offerings.”

Lu Yuan gripped his blade and stepped forward.

“You only borrow corpses, borrow steles, borrow lamps, borrow people’s names to open your eyes. You don’t even have a whole body; what right have you to call yourself god?”

A low vibration echoed through the cave.

“A body is only a vessel.”

“A name is only a door.”

“You are the offerings.”

“Then why don’t you come down and take us?”

Lu Yuan pointed his blade at the black face.

“Are you locked by something, or are you simply too afraid to leave?”

The fissure in the black face slowly contracted.

Its seven eyes all rolled at once.

One of those eyes fixed on the missing shadow beneath Lu Yuan’s foot.

The ragged edge of the missing shadow immediately split, and a black thread crawled out, winding around the top of his foot.

Lu Yuan looked down and pressed the knife blade down.

The black thread was cut.

“It fears the Living Stele,” Lu Yuan said. “Asheng remains in the well, so you cannot get out from here.”

The black face suddenly reared back a yard.

At that moment, everyone finally saw clearly.

Behind the black face was a massive, thick black root.

The fetal root stretched from the deepest part of the cave, passed through the black face, and extended down toward the inverted well.

The root was perforated with countless small holes.

Each hole contained an eye.

There were old eyes, child eyes, beast eyes, and others that could not be identified.

All those eyes opened together and looked at Lu Yuan.

“You want to save what’s in that well?”

“I want to sever your feeding line.”

“That child will die.”

“That is your most common line.”

Lu Yuan said coldly,

“Call what you would harm unsalvageable, and no one dares touch your root.”

The voice from inside the black face dropped lower:

“You have already broken three steles.”

“Break three more, the mountain root will collapse.”

“If the mountain root collapses, the Hundred-Li Frozen King will sink.”

“Villages, roads, rivers will be swallowed by black water.”

“Then more will die.”

Wang Cheng'an had just been pulled back onto the membrane; hearing this, he panted and said,

“Now it’s started scaring people again?”

Lu Yuan did not look back.

“What it says may not be entirely false.”

“But it ties the mountain root to itself.”

“If we only destroy the steles, the mountain might indeed fall.”

“So we must first peel out the remaining feeding lines, then sever the root.”

The black face said,

“You cannot do it.”

“Then try.”

At that moment, the fourth and fifth white lamps went out simultaneously.

Lin Zhaoxuan and Song Qinghe both stepped back.

Only two lamps remained at the cave’s edge.

One stood beneath the Voice Stele.

One stood beneath the Wish Stele.

“The Voice Stele and the Wish Stele cannot be extinguished together,” Lu Yuan suddenly said.

“Why?” Zhou Heng asked.

“Voice summons people, wish holds people.”

“If the voice is cut, the wish becomes an empty shell; if the wish is cut, the voice runs wild.”

“We must cut the voice first, then seal the wish.”

He looked at Lin Zhaoxuan.

“Zhaoxuan, go to the Voice Stele.”

Then he looked at Song Qinghe.

“Qinghe, guard the Wish Lamp.”

“Do not extinguish it.”

Song Qinghe nodded and stood beneath the final lamp.

Lu Yuan and Lin Zhaoxuan moved toward the Voice Stele together.

Suspended before the Voice Stele hung a copper bell.

The bell had no clapper, yet it sounded continuously.

“Lu Yuan.”

“Xu Erxiao.”

“Wang Cheng'an.”

“Lin Zhaoxuan.”

“Song Qinghe.”

“Zhou Heng.”

With each name spoken, a black shadow from the cave’s depths answered.

Those answering voices drew nearer and nearer, like someone in the dark imitating their names over and over.

Lin Zhaoxuan raised his hand to cover his ears.

“Don’t listen.”

“Covering your ears won’t help,” Lu Yuan said. “The voice comes from the stone.”

He handed Lin Zhaoxuan two bone nails.

“Nail both sides of the copper bell, keep it from vibrating.”

Lin Zhaoxuan took the bone nails and ran along the membrane to the Voice Stele.

The copper bell suddenly began to spin on its own.

The bell’s sound coalesced into a black thread that shot straight for Lin Zhaoxuan’s throat.

Lu Yuan slashed and cut it away.

The black thread split under the blade, and from within came the cry of a child.

Lin Zhaoxuan took the chance to drive the first bone nail into the bell frame.

“Deafen the heavens!”

He drove the second bone nail into the stele’s base.

“Muten the earth!”

He formed a seal with both hands, index and middle fingers together, thumb pressing the ring and little fingers, palms facing out.

“Where sound issues there is a door, where sound stops there is a boundary.”

“Sounds not of human ears, do not enter my hearing; names not of mine, do not fall upon me.”

“Copper bell close, stone stele close ledger.”

“Close!”

The copper bell stopped turning.

A crack opened across the character for Voice on the stele.

But at that same moment, the Wish Lamp behind Song Qinghe flared to its utmost.

From within the flame, countless hands formed.

Those hands grabbed Song Qinghe’s sleeve, hair, and ankles, inching her toward the wick.

She did not cry out; she gripped the lamp pole hard.

Lu Yuan turned his head.

“Qinghe, don’t extinguish the lamp!”

“I know!”

“Move the lamp to the front of the Wish Stele.”

“How do I move it?”

“With shadow.”

Song Qinghe understood at once.

She stepped on her shadow with her foot, formed the “Guide Shadow” seal with her right hand, held the lamp in her left, and slowly inched forward.

With each step, a hand inside the lamp seized at her.

Her shadow behind her stretched thin, but never left beneath her feet.

“Shadow is the foot, wish is the heart.”

“The heart is not lent, the wish is not begged outward.”

Song Qinghe whispered the chant Lu Yuan had taught.

“Wishes inside the lamp return to the lamp, not to me.”

She placed the oil lamp before the Wish Stele.

The flame shifted from gray-white to red.

The characters finally revealed on the Wish Stele were not the word “wish.”

They were a dense cluster of handprints.

Beneath each handprint was carved a wish.

“Pray for rain.”

“Pray for children.”

“Pray for wealth.”

“Pray for roads.”

“Pray to live.”

These wishes once belonged to living people, but the Malevolent Deity had taken them into its stele and turned them into offerings that fed it.

Lu Yuan looked at the black face at the cave’s center.

“It does not grow on fear.”

“It grows on wishes.”

“The more people desire to live, to return home, to find a path, the stronger it becomes.”

For the first time the black face gave a truly furious roar.

Every eye in the cave opened at once.

The black fetal root convulsed violently, and the seven steles all lifted off the ground and barreled toward the people.

“Scatter!”

Lu Yuan shoved Xu Erxiao aside.

The Surname Stele skimmed his shoulder and smashed into the rock wall.

The Father Stele struck Wang Cheng'an and was checked by Zhou Heng’s short blade.

The red lamp in front of the Wish Stele rocked violently; Song Qinghe was nearly tossed off the membrane.

Lin Zhaoxuan snatched the ink-line and looped it around the Voice Stele, hauling it back.

Chaos reigned inside the cave.

Lu Yuan did not chase the flying steles; he looked instead at the black fetal root.

Each convulsion of the root made the seven steles follow its movement.

The steles were not the core.

The fetal root was.

“Everyone, don’t bother with the steles!”

Lu Yuan shouted.

“Pin the fetal root down!”

They all turned toward the center.

Lu Yuan took out the last bone nail.

It was the third bone nail left by the Iron Abacus, and the shortest of the three.

Three tiny characters were carved on it:

“Nail its eye.”

Lu Yuan pinched the bone nail between his fingers and closed his eyes, listening for three breaths.

The fetal root’s twitches had no fixed rhythm.

But before each twitch, a faint sound of water came from the cave’s depths.

That was the sound of the inverted well.

The root connected to the well.

Lu Yuan opened his eyes and charged to the center.

The black face spat a beam of black light.

Lu Yuan dodged to the side; the beam grazed his chest, burning a large hole through his robe collar, but he pressed on.

When the second beam fell, Zhou Heng swung from the side and deflected it with his blade.

When a third beam came, Wang Cheng'an used the abacus frame to block it, collapsing to his knees from the blow.

“Brother Lu!”

“Give me three more breaths!”

Lu Yuan reached under the fetal root.

There was no ground there, only a shrinking black aperture.

Small eyes carpeted the area around the hole.

Every eye stared at him.

Lu Yuan aimed the bone nail at the aperture, formed the Thunder Seal with his left hand, and used his right in a sword-seal to press the nail in.

“Heavenly thunder does not strike the ground, earthly fire does not burn the mountain.”

“A lone nail does not pin the root, only pins the evil eye.”

“If the eye does not open, the root will not move; if the root does not move, the steles will not shift.”

“With the old bone of the Iron Abacus as lead, with the name of severing accounts as proof.”

“Nail!”

He drove the bone nail into the aperture.

Boom!

The black fetal root contracted violently.

The black face at the cave’s center screamed in agony for the first time.

Seven steles all dropped at once, crashing into the black membrane.

The membrane was struck with seven deep pits.

The chains binding the people snapped one by one.

Only the “Surname” chain remained wrapped around Lu Yuan’s foot.

After that Surname Stele hit the ground, the half-character on its face had almost finished — only the final stroke was missing.

The black face lowered its voice:

“You do not yet have a surname.”

“This last stroke, I will write for you.”

The chain tightened at once.

The shadow beneath Lu Yuan’s foot was pulled entirely off the ground.

In that instant his body lurched forward, nearly dragged into the cave’s depths.

Xu Erxiao rushed over and wrapped his arms around Lu Yuan’s waist.

Wang Cheng'an grabbed Xu Erxiao’s shoulders.

Zhou Heng grabbed Wang Cheng'an.

Lin Zhaoxuan wrapped the ink-line around the last stele.

Song Qinghe held the Wish Lamp high, its light shining on Lu Yuan’s feet.

The five of them braced like a rope, pinned to the edge of the black membrane.

The black face laughed in a low voice:

“No surname, no root.”

“No root, no right to stand here.”

Lu Yuan looked down at the chain and suddenly reached up to take off the black wooden tablet.

“Who said standing here requires a root?”

He shoved the black wooden tablet into the slot in the chain.

The tablet’s crack spread fully open.

Inside was a sheet of paper worn hollow.

It was the empty ledger left by the Iron Abacus.

Lu Yuan bit his finger and pressed his blood onto the blank paper.

The blood did not form characters, it smeared into a blurred ink mark.

“I won’t give you my surname.”

“Nor will I borrow a surname to live.”

“This stroke, write it on the empty ledger.”

He formed the “Empty Name” seal with both hands.

Thumbs pressed together, index and middle fingers extended and crossed into a plus, palms facing the Surname Stele.

“A name given is not an offering; namelessness deserves no ritual.”

“A surname can be a root or it can be a door.”

“Today I will not set a blood surname; I set a deed-name.”

“Lu Yuan stands here, passed through this mountain, cut down this evil.”

“If you want to record me, record the blade.”

“If you want to take me, come take me first.”

“Empty!”

At the final word, the empty ledger inside the black wooden tablet burst into light.

No flames, only vast sheets of white radiance pouring from the crack.

The Surname chain whitened inch by inch.

The black stroke on the stele’s surface faded as if washed by water, finally dissolving into an indistinguishable empty ring.

The character for Surname vanished from the stele.

The chain snapped.

Lu Yuan stumbled back two steps and dropped to one knee.

The seven eyes inside the black face all half-closed at once.

Shadows reformed beneath the five people’s feet.

Deep in the cave, the inverted rock face suddenly split open.

The crack revealed a huge black well.

The well mouth looked downward; there was no water in it, only a swirling void of darkness.

Asheng’s voice came from that black well:

“Lu Yuan.”

This time the voice was no longer distant.

“You have reached the Main Cave.”

“All the remaining steles are on its body.”

Lu Yuan rose and looked at the huge black silhouette crouched before the well.

The black mass was slowly contracting.

After its seven eyes closed, the black face finally revealed an almost human outline.

It had a head, shoulders, and two hanging arms.

Its body remained connected to the thick fetal root.

It rose up from before the black well.

Its height measured some three zhang.

Fragments of stone stele were embedded across its black skin.

Words like “Father,” “Voice,” and “Wish” crawled like worms inside it.

Each step made the cave tremble.

Lu Yuan stood with his blade across in front.

Wang Cheng'an, Xu Erxiao, Lin Zhaoxuan, Song Qinghe, and Zhou Heng lined up behind him.

The black silhouette bowed its head and looked at them.

“You wanted to see my true body.”

“Now you have.”

Lu Yuan said,

“This still isn’t your true body.”

The black mass split its mouth.

“Then come in.”

It opened its chest.

Inside the chest was not bone, but a passage leading down into the depths of the well.

Countless white lamps hung along that path.

Beneath each lamp was a stele yet to be stripped.

“The final trial.”

Lu Yuan tightened his grip on the hilt.

“The Main Cave.”

He took a step forward.

From the black silhouette’s chest came a volley of infant wails.

Outside the cave, the mountain began to collapse on a large scale.

From within the overturning mass, Asheng’s voice whispered so faintly it was almost inaudible:

“Don’t let it swallow the Character of Life.”

“Or it will truly awaken.”