The more the mud face tried to entice them, the more Xie Lian became alarmed.
"Everyone stand back, don't go near him, and don't listen to a single word he says."
The crowd broke up and hurriedly moved away. The mud face continued to chuckle, "There's no need to be so mean. I'm a human too; I won't hurt you."
'Oh, you're mistaken, you look nothing like a human!' Xie Lian thought.
Just then, one of the merchants suddenly snuck back to the field, perhaps thinking he must still bring back some herbs for the wounded. He bent down to pick up the bushel of ferns he dropped in fright earlier, but the mud face spun and spotted him, a glint in its spinning eyes.
Oh no! Xie Lian thought, rushing towards the man, "Don't pick that up! Come back!"
But it was too late. The mud face opened its mouth, and a long, blood-red thing slithered out.
What a long tongue!
Xie Lian grabbed the merchant by his collar and backed up, but the tongue that flew out was freakishly lengthy and barged right into the merchant's ear!
Xie Lian felt the body in his hold convulse violently; the merchant's limbs writhed nonstop, and the man let out a short agonizing scream before falling to the ground. That long tongue dug out a large chunk of something bloody from his ear and brought it back to the mud face's mouth. The mud face happily chewed and cackled, his laugh so disturbingly loud it filled the entire palace grounds.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!! SO GOOD, SO GOOD, SO DELICIOUS, SO DELICIOUS, SO DELICIOUS!! I WAS SO HUNGRY, SO HUNGRY!"
His voice was sharp and shrill, both eyeballs bulging and bloodshot, horrid and obnoxious.
This man who had been buried for over fifty years in the grounds of an evil-filled kingdom had already been molded into its soil and became something other than human. Xie Lian loosened his hold on the deceased merchant, his entire arm shaking. He was about to attack the repulsive monster when the mud face screamed again.
"GENERAL! GENERAL! THEY'RE HERE! THEY'RE HERE!"
A deafening cry more savage than beasts blared in the distance.
A dark shadow dropped from the sky and landed heavily in front of Xie Lian. The entire palace grounds quaked in its landing. When it slowly stood up, the crowd was jailed in its enormous shadow.
This 'man' was gigantic.
His face was as grim as steel, his expression ferocious and turbulent, like the face of a beast. A thin layer of armor draped from his shoulders and reached down at least nine feet. Rather than a man, one could say he's more like a walking wolf. Behind him, more and more similar forms appeared. One, two, three... over ten of these 'men' jumped off the roofs of the palace and surrounded them.
Each one of these 'men' was large like horses, built like beasts, and carried a sharp, teeth-filled mace on their shoulders. They might as well be werewolves. When they encircled around the intruders in the garden, it was as if a large steel cage had fallen upon them.
They were the soldiers of BanYue!
These soldiers emanated a black aura, undoubtedly no longer alive. Xie Lian was tense, Ruoye in position ready to attack.
However, when those BanYue soldiers saw them, they didn't rush in to kill. Instead, they raised their heads and roared in crazed laughter, howling in a foreign language. The sound of their words was ghastly, guttural, and heavy in tongue rolling. It was the language of BanYue.
Although it had been two hundred years, and Xie Lian had pretty much forgotten the language, he did review it with San Lang earlier in the General's Tomb, and the words uttered by those soldiers were loud, simple, and vulgar, so they weren't difficult to understand.
He heard the soldiers call the first man 'general'; their conversations filled with words such as 'take them away' and 'won't kill for now,' and Xie Lian took a deep breath to force himself to relax. He said in a low voice, "Everyone, don't panic. These BanYue soldiers won't kill us for now. It seems they want to take us somewhere else. Don't do anything rash; I can't guarantee I'll be able to fight them. We'll figure this out as we go."
It was clear that those soldiers would be hard to fight, each of them thicker than the next; even with Ruoye in hand, suffocating one would probably take a lot out of him, nevermind ten. With mortals with him, Xie Lian couldn't do anything bold and could only remain vigilant and protect them the best he could.
San Lang didn't say anything, and the others had already lost all nerves. Even if they want to do anything rash, they wouldn't know how, and could only nod tearfully. Next to them, the mud face screamed again, "General! General! Please let me out! I detained your enemies, let me go home! I want to go home!"
Seeing the BanYue soldiers, the mud face became hysterical, screaming and crying, blabbering nonsense, with some BanYue words mixed in, no doubt learned from the many years he spent buried here. The massive nine feet man they called 'general' seemed to have found the squirming mud face deeply disgusting and swung his mace towards him, smashing his face into a bloody mess, the teeth of his mace piercing his brains. When he pulled up his mace again, the entire body was pulled out with it, fulfilling his wish of "let me out!"
However, the body that was unearthed was not a full human body but a chilling skeleton!
The merchants screamed in fright. The mud face, having crumpled off the mace all bloody, seemed to have frozen in fear too after seeing his own body, "What's this? WHAT'S THIS?"
"It's your body," Xie Lian reminded him, seeing that the mud face was numbed in disbelief. This man had been buried in the desert for over fifty to sixty years; his body fertilized the ShanYue ferns and cleaned him of his flesh with only bones remaining.
"How can this be?" The mud face cried, "My body isn't like this! THIS IS NOT MY BODY!!!"
His cries were trilling, but Xie Lian only thought him tragic and terrifying, shook his head, and turned away. Next to him, San Lang laughed mockingly, "Is it only now you're not used to your body? What was that thing that came out of your mouth earlier? You didn't think that odd?"
The mud face countered immediately, "That wasn't odd! It was just... a tongue a bit longer than average!"
"Yea. Sure. Just that much longer, maybe. Haha." San Lang's voice was full of ridicule.
"That's right!" The mud face cried, "It's only just that much longer! It's all because I spent decades trying to live off of insects, forcing my tongue to extend. That must be how it came to be like this!"
Perhaps he was indeed still human when he was first buried and did his best to survive by swallowing insects with his tongue. However, he became less human over time, and his tongue grew longer, eating more than just insects but worse things. Having been buried for so long, he couldn't see his own true form and couldn't accept nor believe that he was no longer human. The mud face kept trying to assure a non-listening audience, "There are other people who have long tongues, not just me!"
San Lang laughed again. Watching him, Xie Lian could feel chills listening to him laugh. Xie Lian thought that sometimes when this boy smiles, there's a certain cruelty hidden beneath the skin, a coldness that could rip off flesh.
"Do you think you're still human?" San Lang asked.
Hearing the question, the mud face became agitated, "Of course, I'm human! I'm human!" The mud face screamed and tried to move his white, boney limbs at the same time, as if trying to crawl away. Finally unearthed, he was mad with joy, cackling, "I'm going home! I'm going home! Hahahahahah–"
Crack.
The BanYue 'general' seemed to finally have had enough of this monster's shrills and crushed his bones in one step, killing any more of his "I'm human!"
After trampling the mud face, that 'general' roared to the others. Then, the BanYue soldiers all raised their maces and growled to Xie Lian's group, and started herding them out of the palace.
Xie Lian walked up front with San Lang still following close behind. Despite being ushered by ruthless BanYue soldiers, the boy's step was still light and casual, as if taking a stroll. Xie Lian had been meaning to find opportunities to talk to him, and after a while when the BanYue soldiers went back to conversing amongst themselves, Xie Lian talked in a low voice, "Those BanYue soldiers call their leader 'general.' I wonder who it is."
As expected, San Lang had answers to all of his questions. "When the Kingdom of BanYue fell, there was only one general. His name, translated to Hanzi, is Ke Mo."
"Ke Mo?" Xie Lian wondered at the odd name.
"That's right," San Lang said. "Apparently it was because he was awfully weak when he was young and was often bullied. He rallied and built his strength training with large stone mortar plates, and got his name thus."
Xie Lian rubbed his forehead and thought, "So he's a hulk..."
San Lang continued, "Legends have it that Ke Mo was the strongest warrior in the history of BanYue, nine feet tall and extremely powerful. He was a loyal supporter of the Guoshi."
"Even after death? Is he taking us to the BanYue Guoshi now then?" Xie Lian asked.
"Perhaps," San Lang replied.
If there were more BanYue soldiers there, how could they escape? Who knows how Nan Feng, who had lured the other two away, was doing? The ShanYue fern was now in their hands, but how were they going to deliver the ferns to the wounded within twenty-four hours?
All they could do now was go with the flow and adapt to any situation that arises. Xie Lian walked and mulled and noticed that General Ke Mo had been leading them to a remote place at the far end of the fortress. When they stopped and Xie Lian looked up, a colossal wall stood before him like a giant.
Their destination was the Sinner's Pit!
Although Xie Lian had lived in the BanYue area for a time, he rarely entered town and had never gotten near the Sinner's Pit. Seeing it this close, Xie Lian's heart started pounding.
The mud-yellow walls had a set of stairs along the outside, and while climbing up to the top, Xie Lian scrutinized the pit and tried to look over the depths until he finally understood why his heart was pounding. It wasn't that this was a place of torture and cruelty, and it wasn't his worry over everyone getting pushed in. It was feeling the palpitations of a very powerful array at work.
There was a strong array drawn around the entire Sinner's Pit, and this array only has one purpose – to prevent the fallen from ever surfacing!
That meant even if a rope or a ladder was set down into the pit, whoever tried to climb up from the bottom would get cut off halfway through and get thrown right back into the bottom. Xie Lian impassively used the wall as support to climb up the stairs but was really feeling up the make of the wall. He found that although it looked like the wall was built with mud or concrete, it was actually a much stronger stone, probably enforced with a layer of magic.
When they reached the end of the stairs and came to the top of the pit, standing along the wall eaves, the only word to describe the sight was 'awe.'
The entire Sinner's Pit was formed by four encircling great walls. Each wall was about 30 feet in length, twenty feet in height, and four feet in thickness. At the very top of each wall, there was nothing, neither gazebos nor railings. Within the enclosure was a deep abyss without a bottom in sight, and with the growing night, there was only blackness and a chilling smell of blood wafting in the air coming from below.
No one dared look down while walking along the railingless eaves that are tens of feet above ground. After a while, they could see the pole that stood in the center, and atop the pole hung a corpse. It was the same one they spotted earlier. The corpse was of a small, black-clad girl, tattered and head bowed.
Xie Lian had known that this pole was used especially for hanging criminals that deserved shame and humiliation. Usually, the prison guards would strip the criminals of their clothing and hang the body naked. The criminals would die from starvation or dehydration, and after death, the corpse would be left to flail in the wind, burn under the sun, and rot in the rain. When the corpse had rotted completely through, it would fall into the pit itself, an exceedingly ugly sight.
The corpse of that girl didn't seem to be rotten, so it must've not been long since she died. Perhaps it was a local girl that the soldiers captured. To do such a vulgar thing to a young girl, Xie Lian felt thoroughly disgusted. A-Zhao, Tian Sheng, and the others' faces turned white seeing the sight and paused in their steps, afraid to go forward. Ke Mo didn't bother pushing them onwards either but turned toward the pit and howled.
'Why is he howling?' Xie Lian wondered, but his question was soon answered.
From the bottom of the dark pit came a chain of growls in response to the howling. It was like the roars of beasts, bellows of tsunamis, wails of monsters, hundreds and thousands of cries exploding in the ear. The walls trembled with the noise and made those standing on the eaves lose balance. Xie Lian could clearly hear the sounds of rocks and debris falling within.
Only criminals get thrown into the Sinner's Pit. Were those the souls of the dead answering Ke Mo?
Ke Mo howled again, and Xie Lian paid more attention to listen. This time, Ke Mo wasn't making meaningless noise, and it wasn't curses either. Instead, it was encouragement. Xie Lian was very sure he heard the words: "My brothers."
After howling, Ke Mo turned to the soldiers watching Xie Lian and the others and roared another command. Xie Lian understood. He had said, "Just throw in two and detain the rest."
The others might not have understood what was being said, but the actions of those soldiers were not hard to guess, and everyone looked pale like ghosts. Xie Lian saw that a couple couldn't even stand up right anymore, shaking from fear, and stepped forward. He said in a small voice, "Don't worry. If anything happens, I will go forward first."
Xie Lian thought if they must all fall, then he might as well be the first one to check things out. It couldn't be worse than venomous snakes and beasts or menacing ghosts. He couldn't die from falling, he couldn't die from poison, he couldn't die from bites, and he couldn't die from getting hit. As long as it wasn't some pool of corpse-dissolving water, his body shouldn't be damaged too horribly.
Besides, he had Ruoye with him. Even if he might not be able to escape from the array, he could still use it to catch the others that'd fall after him. Ke Mo had said "Detain the rest," meaning that most others should be temporarily safe. After all, it wasn't easy hunting for prey in the Gobi desert, they should savor the moment instead of eating everyone in one go! Xie Lian cleared his thoughts, but next to him, someone else couldn't hold their breath any longer.
Ever since they reached the top of the Sinner's Pit, besides San Lang, who looked like nothing was out of the ordinary, everyone else was shivering in fear, especially A-Zhao. He must've thought that if he was to die, he'd go down fighting. He closed his fists and charged towards Ke Mo!
This charge looked as if A-Zhao was ready to bring Ke Mo down into the pit with him. Ke Mo was the bigger man, strong like a steel tower, but even he got pushed back three steps from A-Zhao's desperation. He roared in anger and instantly threw the young man into the dark void. Everyone started screaming, and Xie Lian called after him too. "A-Zhao!"
Just then, from deep within the chasm came a roaring cheer and sounds of violent ripping of flesh, like starving beasts fighting for their only meal. It was easy to understand from hearing the noises that the young man A-Zhao would never survive.
Xie Lian did not expect this development and was dumbstruck too. He was suspicious that A-Zhao was a subordinate of the BanYue Guoshi, purposely leading travelers astray to the ruins. He was also suspicious that the one who was here 'fifty to sixty years ago' was him, but the young man ended up being the first to get killed. With this jump, how could he still live? Was he faking his own death? But now that they were all enslaved under the control of the BanYue soldiers, if A-Zhao was the Guoshi's subordinate, he'd have the upper hand and could very well reveal his true identity in glory without doing anything extra and fake his own death. But why would A-Zhao rush towards Ke Mo and die a meaningless death?
Xie Lian's thoughts were in knots again, and the BanYue soldiers began searching for the next victim. Ke Mo sized them up and pointed at Tian Sheng. Another soldier then moved up and opened his palm, ready to push. Terrified, Tian Sheng fell to the ground on his knees and cried, "AH! HELP! DON'T TAKE ME! I'M..."
Without any more time to think, Xie Lian stepped forward and said using BanYuenese, "Hold on, General."
Ke Mo was shocked to hear the words from Xie Lian's mouth and waved his hand, stopping the soldiers. "You know how to speak our tongue? Where are you from?"
"I'm from the Midlands," Xie Lian replied. He wouldn't have minded lying and saying he was also a citizen of BanYue, but with how rusty his fluency was, there was no way he could keep up the lie if he conversed too much. Besides, it was also obvious from his looks that he was a Midlander. Ke Mo's question was only from simple confusion. The people of BanYue also detest liars more than anything; if Xie Lian was found out, the results would be worse.
"Midlands?" Ke Mo questioned, "Descendants of YongAn?"
"No," Xie Lian replied, "The Kingdom of YongAn had long since fallen. There's no more YongAn now."
But, to those of BanYue, all those who came from the Midlands were pretty much the same. They were all relatives of the descendants of YongAn. They were annihilated by the army of YongAn, so the moment he heard where Xie Lian was from, Ke Mo's black face immediately flashed with rage, and many of the BanYue soldiers also started growling, cursing vulgarly at him. It wasn't much more than "vile Midlanders!" and "throw him down," and Xie Lian couldn't care less.
Ke Mo demanded, "Our kingdom had disappeared in the Gobi for over two hundred years. You are not of our people; why do you know our tongue? Who are you?"
Xie Lian couldn't help but steal a glance at the calm boy behind him, mentally hoping that if his lies fall apart later, maybe he could shamelessly ask San Lang to save him. He cleared his throat and was ready to start gabbering nonsense when just then, another series of enraged growls sounded from below.
It seemed that whatever was down in the pit had finished ripping apart A-Zhao but was still hungry for more, using their cries to convey their thirst for fresh blood. Ke Mo waved his hand again, ready to have Tian Sheng thrown over, so Xie Lian spoke up, "General, please take me first."
Ke Mo had never heard anyone request to go first, and his eyes bulged like bells. He asked in disbelief, "You go first? Why?"
Xie Lian couldn't tell him the truth and say because he wasn't scared. He thought for a second and came up with a logical answer, "General, those are innocent merchants. There's even a child!"
Ke Mo sneered, "When your army annihilated my kingdom, did you not think we also had innocent merchants and children?"
The fall of the Kingdom of BanYue was over two hundred years ago, and dynasties in YongAn had changed already, but they were the dead whose time had stopped, and hatred and grudges would not fade with the change in dynasties. Ke Mo continued, "You're very suspicious; I will need to question you. You are not going down. Throw in another one!"
There was no helping it. Xie Lian was ready to jump if all else fails anyway. Behind him, San Lang stepped forward.
Xie Lian's heart lurched, and he turned around. With his arms crossed, the boy was nonchalantly looking over the dark, bottomless pit with an air of intrigue. This wasn't a good sign, and Xie Lian called out, "San Lang?"
Hearing his call, San Lang looked over and smiled softly, "It's fine."
San Lang took another step forward and was teetering dangerously on the edge. Both Xie Lian's head and heart started pounding, and he called again, "Wait, San Lang, don't move!"
At such height at the brink, the boy's red clothes danced in the night breeze. San Lang glanced at him again with a smile, "Don't be scared."
"You... Come back here first. Come back here, and I won't be scared," Xie Lian said.
"Don't worry, I'm just going to leave for a bit. We'll see each other again soon," San Lang said.
"Don't–" Before he finished, the boy took another step forward, his arms still crossed. Then, with a light leap, he disappeared into the abyss.
The moment he jumped, Ruoye shot out from Xie Lian's wrist, a stream of white flash trying to grab hold of the boy's form. Yet the drop was too swift, and Ruoye returned without even a sleeve corner. Xie Lian fell to his knees at the edge of the wall and yelled, "SAN LANG!!!"
No response. No noise. After the boy jumped, there was not a single noise!
Next to him, many of the BanYue soldiers started yelling instead, all dumbfounded and bewildered. What was with today? In the past, they had to catch their prey and throw them into the pit before they fall, but tonight their prey took turns fighting to jump down themselves, and when held back, they jump anyway??
General Ke Mo yelled to get his soldiers under control. As for Xie Lian, when he saw Ruoye didn't catch San Lang, he didn't take the time to think before taking a leap off the wall himself. But when his body was still in midair, he felt his collar tighten, and he stayed in midair.
Turns out when General Ke Mo saw he also jumped, he stretched out his arm and nabbed Xie Lian by the collar and prevented his fall.
'If you want to join me, that's fine!' Xie Lian thought, and like a snake, Ruoye shot out once more and wrapped itself up the arm of Ke Mo, and roped his body whole. Ke Mo saw that white silk band was unpredictably deadly and spirited, contorted his face and popped his veins, his muscles instantly burst in size, trying to rip apart the fabric tying him down.
Xie Lian was at a standstill with Ke Mo when he saw something peculiar from the corners of his eyes.
The corpse that was hung on the pole suddenly jerked and raised her head slightly. The band of BanYue soldiers also saw the corpse move and started yelling, swinging their maces to attack it. But the black-clad girl somehow untied herself and hopped off the pole, then sped over towards them.
She was like a black wind blowing through the eaves, fast and wicked. The soldiers couldn't maintain their balance and soon were swept into the Sinner's Pit one by one, screaming. Enraged, Ke Mo screamed all sorts of vulgarities at her, many of which were street slangs that Xie Lian couldn't understand well, but he did understand the first words: "It's that bitch again!"
The swearing ceased in the next moment because Xie Lian suddenly pulled and brought Ke Mo to fall into the pit together. Into the inescapable Sinner's Pit!
While falling, Ke Mo roared with such violence, killing Xie Lian's eardrums, he had to call Ruoye back and gave Ke Mo a kick to get the general further away from himself and protect his ears. Then he urged Ruoye to fly upwards to try and grab hold of anything that can prevent him from falling further, or if anything, grab hold of something so that when he falls, it wouldn't be too painful. But the Sinner's Pit was not built to save, and with such a powerful array at work, there was nothing Xie Lian could find to hold.
He thought he was going to crater and flatten like a pancake like many times before when suddenly, in the darkness, there was a flash of silver.
The next moment, a pair of hands lightly caught him. Whoever it was caught him perfectly, as if this person was made just to catch him at the bottom. With a hand across his back to grasp his shoulders, another under his knees to support his weight, the dreadful gravity of the fall was dissolved to nothing.
Still dazed and confounded from falling at such a height, Xie Lian unconsciously held on tight to that person's shoulders and called, "San Lang?"
The pit was filled with darkness; nothing could be seen, including the person. But Xie Lian still called that name. The other didn't respond, so Xie Lian patted and squeezed the chest and shoulders just to make sure.
"San Lang, is that you?"
Maybe it was because here at the bottom of the pit the stench of blood was heavy and disorienting, Xie Lian dazedly continued to feel up the person holding him until he reached a strong, hard Adam's apple. He came to in shock and immediately reprimanded himself, pulling his hands back. What was he doing??
"It's San Lang, right? Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
It took a moment before he heard the boy's low voice from somewhere very close to him, "I'm fine."
For some reason, Xie Lian felt this voice was curiously different than before.
1. Hanzi is the Chinese equivalent of Kanji, recognized as the formal Chinese character writing but originated from YongAn.