While Yi Sa and Ding Yudie were still recovering, Zong Hang busied himself tying up Jiang Jun securely. He also untied the corpses from Yi Xiao and arranged them respectfully side by side, even bowing to them several times.
In this ship’s tomb, there seemed to be no other threats for now. As long as Jiang Jun and Yi Xiao weren’t causing trouble, breaking through the soil again, though exhausting, wouldn’t be too difficult.
But Yi Xiao’s condition was worrying. Knocking Jiang Jun unconscious hadn’t fully brought her back to her senses. Instead, she seemed dazed and confused, mumbling incoherently.
Zong Hang tentatively called her name, then pointed to Yi Sa: “Your sister, do you recognize her?”
She looked at Zong Hang with vacant eyes, her tone gentle: “Jiang Jun, is it confirmed?”
Confirmed what? Zong Hang was bewildered and emphasized: “Yi Sa, ‘wind rustles and wood whispers,’ your sister!”
Yi Xiao’s expression turned sharp: “Coming out to work, why bring her along!”
Zong Hang was at a loss, but Ding Yudie’s eyes nearly popped out as he asked Yi Sa: “Wasn’t your sister dead for many years?”
Where to begin with such a long story? Besides, they were all exhausted like dogs, even sticking out their tongues felt like too much effort. Yi Sa pretended not to hear, organizing supplies while instructing Zong Hang to quickly look around for anything unusual in this nest chamber.
There actually was something – Zong Hang returned shortly, running back to get Yi Sa, saying he couldn’t describe it clearly and she needed to see it herself.
Yi Sa left Ding Yudie watching Jiang Jun and Yi Xiao, following Zong Hang.
After passing through more than ten honeycomb walls, Zong Hang pointed ahead.
There was a large open space in the nest chamber, with a huge Taiji disk on the ground, its head and tail connected. At its center, where the S-shaped curve met, a square bronze plaque was embedded.
The ancestral tablet?
It must be – the tablet’s base was discarded nearby, and upon closer inspection, the tablet was old with several spots worn and shiny from handling the one Jiang Jun had brought down.
Yi Sa tried to pry it out, but it was useless. It was embedded perfectly flush, not even a needle could probe its edges. It wasn’t meant to be removed again.
Zong Hang reminded her: “There’s one above too.”
Yi Sa looked up.
Indeed, mirroring the one on the ground like a projection, there was another huge Taiji disk on the ceiling, with something similarly embedded at its axis – too far to see clearly, but undoubtedly another bronze tablet like the ancestral one.
Earlier, when briefly controlled by Jiang Jun, she had seen a Taiji disk hanging on the wall, but that one was a clock…
So were these two also clocks?
Yi Sa’s brows furrowed.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that there had been an empty slot at the axis, and after coming down, Jiang Jun had removed the tablet from its base and embedded it in the slot – traditionally, after opening the vault, whether successful or not, the ancestral tablet would be returned to the ancestral hall. This time, Jiang Jun had no intention of going back or returning the tablet.
What was the significance of embedding the ancestral tablet in the slot? To trigger certain events? Or were things already happening that she hadn’t noticed yet?
As she pondered this, a woman’s piercing scream suddenly came from the distance.
It was Yi Xiao!
Yi Sa was seriously alarmed. When she and Zong Hang rushed back, they saw Yi Xiao crouched over Jiang Jun, one arm hanging limp like an empty sleeve, while her other hand gripped Jiang Jun’s head, manically smashing it against the ground.
Jiang Jun was awake now, chuckling dryly, his neck rigid in resistance. The occasional successful impacts seemed inconsequential. Ding Yudie tried to pull Yi Xiao away but failed several times. Seeing Yi Sa return, he explained awkwardly: “It happened suddenly, she crawled so fast, I couldn’t stop her…”
Since Yi Xiao had a useless arm, after Zong Hang untied the corpses from her limbs, he had only bound her legs. With Ding Yudie watching, they thought nothing would happen. They hadn’t expected Yi Xiao to be so fierce, able to cause trouble crawling with just one arm.
Zong Hang wanted to help, but Yi Sa held him back: “Wait.”
She listened carefully.
Yi Xiao was mumbling words repeatedly.
— Give Jiang Jun back to me!
— Jiang Jun, come out!
— Jiang Jun, it’s me, Yi Xiao.
Was this person Jiang Jun? Ding Yudie had said that when Jiang Xiaoguang was killed, he hadn’t fought back with full force, constantly calling Jiang Jun’s name. Could it be that before going underwater, Jiang Jun, like Yi Xiao once was, could communicate normally with people? Was his current state due to being controlled or possessed?
She lowered her hand, and Zong Hang understood, going to help Ding Yudie pull Yi Xiao away.
During her desperate struggle, Yi Xiao suddenly saw Yi Sa’s face and froze, seeming confused. Zong Hang, still hopeful about the sisters’ reunion, asked her: “Do you recognize her? She’s Yi Sa.”
Yi Xiao mumbled: “Wind rustles and wood whispers…”
Zong Hang’s heart leaped with joy.
But she continued like reciting: “Sa comes first, Xiao comes after, if I had known there would be two daughters, I should have given Yi Sa’s name to the elder…”
As she spoke, her body suddenly started trembling, and she desperately turned her face away, muttering neurotically: “Don’t see Sa-sa, I won’t see Sa-sa.”
She still wasn’t fully conscious. Yi Sa looked down at Jiang Jun.
She had worried that if Jiang Jun woke up, Yi Xiao would be controlled again, becoming an unaware puppet machine, but not.
Earlier, seeing Jiang Jun’s deformed large head, she had only thought it ugly. But from another perspective, could the large head indicate greater brain capacity or extraordinary mental power? Some people with special abilities could move furniture or bend spoons with just their thoughts – was Jiang Jun’s mental power used to control people?
His brain was like a mainframe computer, transmitting information through touch to establish connections and control others, but this control needed time: last time, she hadn’t been controlled because the connection time was too short.
Moreover, this control was one-time: when his head was severely hit and he lost consciousness, it was like the mainframe being forcibly shut down. When he awoke and rebooted, had these connections disappeared? Could it be understood this way?
Yi Sa called Ding Yudie over: “Count to five in your head like a second hand, and if I haven’t gotten up myself, pull me away, understand?”
Ding Yudie didn’t understand.
“Get up from where? Pull you away from what?”
Yi Sa didn’t answer. She pressed her hand against Jiang Jun’s face, pinning his head to the ground, then bent down, bringing her forehead close.
Just a bit more information, even fragments like last time would be good.
Where their foreheads touched, it was ice-cold and hard as iron. Nothing else happened, and then Ding Yudie pulled her up, asking: “What are you doing?”
Jiang Jun laughed, his gaze cunning and hateful, as if saying: I’ve figured out your intention, it’s useless.
It was useless indeed. This transmission was one-way: if he didn’t initiate it, her forcing contact wouldn’t work.
Yi Sa shoved Jiang Jun’s head aside, not wanting to look at his face anymore.
Then she asked Zong Hang and Ding Yudie: “How rested are you? Can you climb?”
They couldn’t delay anymore. They had food now, worst case they could go back for more military rations, but having no water was the real problem – their throats were practically smoking.
Ding Yudie nodded: “As long as there’s no interference, we can climb slowly, and rest in the honeycomb cells when tired. But these two people, what do you plan to do with them?”
Yi Sa hesitated: “Let’s… leave them both. Tie Jiang Jun tightly, and Yi Xiao… loosely.”
Zong Hang was stunned: “Yi Sa, she’s your sister.”
Yi Sa’s face tensed as she shouldered her organized supplies: “What else can we do? Carry her? How would we climb? Let’s leave her here for now, maybe later… we can come back.”
Having said this, she walked toward the honeycomb wall without looking back and began climbing.
Zong Hang hesitantly picked up his supplies, glancing at Ding Yudie.
Ding Yudie hadn’t moved either, looking helpless.
Zong Hang asked him quietly: “What should we do?”
Ding Yudie sighed: “It’s too difficult. If it were just some stranger, that would be one thing, but it’s her sister, her sister. Leaving her here doesn’t seem right… Yi Sa can’t easily suggest taking her, bringing her would endanger us all…”
They both looked up at Yi Sa climbing higher.
Ding Yudie muttered: “Maybe we should carry her, share the burden between us. We’ll go slower, and rest more often. There’s no one chasing us now, no need to worry about being last.”
Zong Hang quickly nodded: “I was thinking the same thing. Let’s take her with us. Later chances… what later chances would there be to come back?”
Jiang Jun, lying on the ground, had been quiet until he heard this. His eyes suddenly turned cold, his expression instantly becoming terrifying.
Ding Yudie came over to tighten Jiang Jun’s ropes. They really should have been ruthless and stabbed him to death to prevent future troubles, but none of the three were truly cruel people – they’d never killed anyone, not even a dog. Let heaven’s hand leave him to perish here.
Zong Hang was figuring out how to tie Yi Xiao to his back for climbing, trying different rope configurations without success. Ding Yudie caught sight of this and grew anxious for him, looking up to instruct: “Around the shoulder, the shoulder…”
Before he could finish, Jiang Jun suddenly raised his body with all his might, swinging his head like a hammer and smashing it into Ding Yudie’s head.
Ding Yudie didn’t even make a sound before passing out. Before Zong Hang could react, Jiang Jun quickly rolled over, using his spine to sweep his lower body around. Zong Hang lost his balance, falling with Yi Xiao. As he raised his head, supporting himself with his arms, what he saw made him scream in terror.
He watched as Jiang Jun moved with incredible speed, his enormous head swinging forward as he bit into Yi Xiao’s throat.
This… this madman! This monster!
Zong Hang frantically grabbed the fire shovel and smashed it against Jiang Jun’s head. When he finally managed to pull him away with all his might, he saw Yi Xiao’s eyes were fixed and her throat had been torn open. His mind exploded as he screamed: “Yi Sa, Yi Sa come down! Something’s happened to your sister!”
He scrambled over – Yi Xiao’s throat wasn’t bleeding, probably because there was no blood left to bleed, only cloudy fluid leaking out. Her body kept convulsing as she tried to breathe, her throat making hissing sounds as air escaped. Zong Hang covered her throat with his hand, trembling when he heard a crash – Yi Sa had fallen.
She had actually been climbing but looked down to see Zong Hang and the others hadn’t moved. She had been hesitating, caught between advancing and retreating when she suddenly heard Zong Hang’s hysterical scream. Knowing something was wrong, she rapidly descended, jumping the last two or three meters. She landed wrong, twisting her ankle and falling.
She crawled over through the pain, limping and kneeling beside them. Seeing the situation, she was stunned.
Perhaps in a final moment of clarity before death, Yi Xiao became lucid.
Her hand searched upward, grabbing Yi Sa’s collar, saying: “Sa-sa.”
Her voice was strange, each word leaking air, like a balloon rapidly deflating yet still struggling: “Ding Changsheng, the kiln factory, there’s a… black notebook, he thought it was fake, but it’s real…”
She couldn’t continue. Zong Hang was crying now, desperately gripping her throat, his hands shaking, not knowing whether to press harder or softer. Yi Xiao’s chest heaved as she struggled to form words: “Perfect… wrong, I was wrong…”
She could no longer make sounds, but her fingers still had strength, slowly searching upward. Yi Sa’s face was in her vision at first, but then, like a photograph enlarged too much, the pixels gradually blurred and finally shattered.
Yi Xiao’s eyes could no longer see, but her hand still moved upward, touching Yi Sa’s neck, then her face.
Sa-sa, you’ve grown so big, grown up so beautifully.
That time at the lake bottom, when Sa-sa rescued Zong Hang, she had seen it.
She had only watched from afar, not daring to speak.
She thought she was too ugly.
When Sa-sa was little, she would follow her around like a little tail, always watching her apply makeup with admiration. Even when she got into fights at kindergarten and had a chunk of hair pulled out, she would still scream: “My sister! My sister is the most beautiful!”
She wanted Sa-sa to keep that impression.
But now, she regretted it.
She should have talked to her. There was so much she wanted to say, but her strength could only support her in saying the most urgent things, not even being able to call out “Sa-sa” again.
Finally, trembling, she touched Yi Sa’s earlobe.
That hand gently pinched her earlobe once, then fell limply.