From the tone and inflection, it must be him. Yi Sa and Zong Hang exchanged a glance and paddled over together, though they kept some distance. “Uncle Pan Ling, those people… did you burn them?”
This kind of charred carbonization had to be the work of a flamethrower.
Ding Pan Ling nodded, his voice tinged with bitterness. “Don’t think too much of it. I just couldn’t bear to see them suffer like that.”
Yi Sa’s heart skipped a beat. “They transformed?”
Ding Pan Ling remained silent.
“They must have been transformed after death through grafting. Who killed them? Was it…”
Yi Sa’s gaze fell on the bound Ding Yu Die and Yi Yun Qiao. She remembered that moment during her struggle with Ding Pan Ling when she had briefly glanced back and seen two water streams rushing toward the group by the hanging ropes – those two streams were undoubtedly Ding Yu Die and Yi Yun Qiao.
Ding Pan Ling noticed her gaze. “Let’s not speak of this. Even when they wake up, don’t mention it.”
Yi Sa shuddered, muttering, “Can the Ancestor Tablet make people kill? Back at Hukou, it only made Ding Yu Die paint a picture…”
Ding Pan Ling looked into the water. “This is in the Drifting Cave. This piece is much larger than those three tablets.”
Zong Hang found something strange. “Then… Uncle Pan Ling, how did you regain consciousness so quickly?”
Ding Pan Ling gave a bitter smile. “Because when it pressed against my forehead, I guessed it was the Ancestor Tablet.”
Even though it happened suddenly, the moment that Ancestor Tablet embedded in the Taisui flesh block pressed against him, Ding Pan Ling recognized it and immediately anticipated what would happen.
Perhaps this vigilance and wariness had an effect: previously, no one had ever thought to resist the Ancestor Tablet. During the unlocking of Jin Tang, they would even leisurely wait for their minds to go blank.
But this time was different. In an instant, his hair stood on end as if facing a formidable enemy.
He had no awareness of having used the flamethrower against Yi Sa and Zong Hang, only knew that he was constantly resisting, angrily resisting, his mind feeling like it was being pulled into various shapes by viscous glue, single-mindedly wanting to shake free, violently shake free.
When he suddenly regained consciousness, almost half an hour had passed. Upon opening his eyes, he saw several corpses floating on the water’s surface. Some had heads larger on one side than the other, some had deformed bodies, and some were barely alive, bones protruding through flesh, struggling in agony.
Ding Pan Ling stared at them for a while before resolutely raising the flamethrower.
As the fireball rose, Ding Yu Die and Yi Yun Qiao, submerged in the water, darted to his sides like ghosts, left and right, their daggers stabbing toward his legs.
Ding Pan Ling felt the pain but without thinking, he detached the fuel tank and smashed it down at one of them, then his hand shot out like an iron claw, crouching down to grab the other person by the back of the neck and lift them.
That smash knocked out Ding Yu Die, who would be heartbroken upon waking to find that the delicately crafted butterfly ornament in his hair had been unfortunately flattened.
The one he lifted was Yi Yun Qiao. Ding Pan Ling, being in his prime, was stronger than her. One-on-one was no challenge, and after witnessing the horrific scene and burning people with the flamethrower, the indignation in his chest transformed into pure force. After just two moves, he struck Yi Yun Qiao’s back of the head with his palm, knocking her unconscious as well.
Looking around, he couldn’t see Yi Sa and Zong Hang. He didn’t know they had entered the passage, thinking they had left. Who knew that when he swam to where the rope nets had been hanging, he found the nets dangling but the ropes had been pulled up. After waiting a while and realizing there was no hope, he had to take down the nets, come back to tie up Ding Yu Die and Yi Yun Qiao and had just caught his breath when Yi Sa and Zong Hang emerged from the passage.
When Zong Hang heard about the ropes being pulled up, he couldn’t speak for a long time. Finally, he managed to say, “That’s not what Ding Xi and I agreed on. I said if there was no weight, put it back down!”
Yi Sa took his hand and said softly, “It’s alright, it’s not your fault.”
Ding Pan Ling also smiled slightly. “Ding Xi wasn’t reliable to begin with. He probably pulled it up directly the first time when he felt no weight – it’s not your fault, I know you two don’t get along. If you had a choice, you wouldn’t have worked with him.”
Zong Hang clenched his fists but could do nothing about it. He had thought those words before entering the cave would change Ding Xi’s mind, but indeed, one can never truly know what someone like Ding Xi is thinking.
Now, there was no way up, was there?
He looked around the vast dome chamber, suddenly feeling empty, dejected, and desolate.
Ding Pan Ling had the same thought: “I was just thinking, if we really can’t get up, we must do something even if it kills us. I can’t come here only to lead people to their deaths without accomplishing anything.”
Yi Sa immediately nodded: “I think so too. Even if it takes a pound of my flesh, it must lose a pound too, otherwise, it’s too frustrating.”
Ding Pan Ling laughed heartily: “Sa Sa, among the younger generation, I think highly of you. Your temperament is like mine. In the future, if you could take over my position, that would be great, it’s just a pity…”
It’s just a pity, there might not be a future.
Even if there was a future, with her remaining days, she wouldn’t be able to take over this position.
Zong Hang looked at Ding Pan Ling, then at Yi Sa, realizing for the first time that this Three Families background was indeed different from his own.
They carried a kind of accumulated jianghu spirit that wasn’t noticeable normally, only revealing itself at the end of the road.
Yi Sa remembered something: “Uncle Pan Ling, you should go look inside. The Ancestor Tablet and the Taisui seem to be two different things.”
Ding Pan Ling walked through several mucous chambers, including those Yi Sa hadn’t visited, and roughly understood the cross-sectional structure.
Just this layer alone had soft Taisui about ten meters thick on the outermost layer, with hexagonal mucous chambers inside, seven in total, perfectly arranged with six surrounding one.
The darkest chamber, completely brownish-black with various bones scattered about, was right in the center. Among those surrounding it, apart from the scorched chamber containing spore sacs, the others all had grape-like clusters, mostly purple-red in color, with only one chamber being as light as water grape color.
Ding Pan Ling pointed at the scorched chamber: “This one was truly meant as a decoy, to be sacrificed. It seems it didn’t want people to know the truth. Even after getting into the Taisui’s belly, it still prepared a scapegoat for itself.”
He returned to the completely brownish-black chamber: “This should be from the earliest batch, and it’s the ideal state it wants to achieve.”
Yi Sa gestured at the pile of bones on the ground: “Something seems to have happened here.”
Ding Pan Ling nodded: “Although it’s an uninhabited area, over so many years, one or two people must have passed through, plus some animals – there are mostly animal bones here, probably prey captured when the ground opened. This person…”
He crouched down and used the flamethrower nozzle to push the skull around, suddenly asking Yi Sa: “Do you remember Jiang She Hu?”
Of course, she remembered, could it be him?
Yi Sa asked in surprise: “Didn’t he return to his hometown and die of natural causes?”
Ding Pan Ling knew she had misunderstood: “He did go back, and his story was recorded in the family genealogy, along with a drawing – it looked like a person with the back of their head opened, but the brain was different from others, remember? I’ve been wondering what exactly he drew. If he had only seen the Taisui wrapped in breathing soil, why would he draw it as a human head?”
Yi Sa found it inconceivable: “Could it be this person?”
Ding Pan Ling said: “It’s not impossible. On these trips down to the Drifting Cave, we always entered the water through the passage, but Jiang She Hu didn’t encounter water, instead seeing a white light, and waking up back on the surface. This experience was unusual, to begin with, and the only scene he remembered was so bizarre – could it be that he actually entered the cave and saw some things, but because of the Ancestor Tablet’s influence, everything became blurry, so even though he could draw it, he couldn’t explain what it was.”
After speaking, he raised his arm and swung the dagger at one of the hanging cords.
Yi Sa gasped and instinctively stepped back two paces, expecting fluid to splash everywhere when the cord was cut, but nothing happened. Not only did the cord not break, it made a clinking sound as if the blade had struck something very hard.
Zong Hang was stunned and blurted out: “Impossible, I touched it, and it was soft.”
Ding Pan Ling’s expression was very grim. He gestured for them to step back, then back further, before raising the flamethrower and saying: “My fuel is almost exhausted, it won’t produce a large fireball.”
Indeed, the nozzle spat out a small flame that enveloped the cluster directly in front of them. The flame did catch, but Ding Pan Ling quickly discovered that this burning was only due to the fuel.
He pushed it with his dagger, and the small flame fell to the ground, making the mucous membrane below sizzle, but that cluster, apart from being somewhat charred, showed no other changes. When struck with the dagger, it made a bang-bang sound, feeling no different from hitting a tablet.
Ding Pan Ling pressed his lips tightly together, and after a while said: “This thing isn’t afraid of fire or blades.”
Then he instructed Zong Hang: “Please help me out, let me step on you to get up a level.”
Zong Hang complied, lowering his body, waiting until Ding Pan Ling stepped on him before slowly rising to lift him up – only then did Ding Pan Ling discover that the mucous membrane on the ceiling was different from the walls: it was filled with brownish-black duct-like vessels connecting to different hanging cords.
He avoided those brownish-black ducts and used his dagger to break an opening above, then pulled himself through. Zong Hang first helped Yi Sa up the same way, and then the two of them worked together to pull him up.
This layer also had seven mucous chambers similarly filled with hanging clusters. The difference was that the chamber clustered in the middle had brownish-black ducts running through all six sides of its mucous walls. Ding Pan Ling had mostly figured it out and pointed it out to them: “The Ancestor Tablet flows down through these ducts from top to bottom, injecting into different hanging cords, then merging into those clusters. The bottom layer we were just in only had them on top, not around the sides.”
Standing on just one layer of mucous membrane felt precarious. After examining this layer, Zong Hang repeated the process, and they all climbed up another level.
The mucous membrane above this layer was no longer translucent, and above that seemed to be the Taisui. It appeared these mucous chambers totaled three layers, twenty-one chambers in all. The consoling thing was that none of them showed obvious signs of being missing or emptied – the supposed mass migration to Lake Poyang hadn’t begun yet.
But Ding Pan Ling felt they should still go up because there were still hanging cords above, which meant the Ancestor Tablet was still up there.
The three chose the outermost mucous chamber, avoiding the ducts above. After cutting through the membrane, they began cutting through the Taisui flesh blocks. Since this mountain of flesh had completely settled, the Taisui had stopped growing – perhaps it was already near its end, and after suffering the fire disaster, its death had been hastened.
After cutting for a while and exhausting the last of Ding Pan Ling’s fuel tank, they finally broke through the Taisui wall about a meter thick.
This was a space inside the Taisui, about two or three mucous chambers large. It should have been completely sealed, but a section had just collapsed, leaving one side open. Standing at the edge looking down, they could see the flesh mountain-like Taisui slope, the water below, strangely deformed corpses floating on the water’s surface, and two people tied up against the rock wall.
Zong Hang finally saw the complete form of the Ancestor Tablet.
Its overall shape was like an irregular stone connected to a concave funnel. The funnel mouth was nearly two meters in diameter, narrowing toward the bottom. While the outer surface remained hard, the inner surface was melting from top to bottom, converging in the funnel – the Ancestor Tablet substance in those ducts below must have flowed down from here. The funnel still contained about half a pool of glossy brownish-black semi-gelatinous liquid.
Ding Pan Ling stared for a while, instinctively reaching for the flamethrower before remembering he had just used it up and discarded it. He called to Zong Hang: “Burn it.”
Zong Hang responded with a grunt, pressed down the nozzle, and flipped the switch. His fuel could still last a while, and the flame tongue gushed out impressively.
But after spraying, apart from the fuel’s combustion, it seemed to not affect the Ancestor Tablet.
Ding Pan Ling burst into laughter, growing more desperate as he laughed.
After a while, he said: “See? After all this effort, finding it doesn’t help. It’s not afraid of flooding, not afraid of burning. Even with more fuel, even if we could burn this flesh mountain, those already-formed Ancestor Tablet spores would still do what they’re going to do. We can’t affect it at all.”
Ding Xi lay on the ground pad, roughly covered with a sleeping bag.
Outside, the wind howled, and it seemed snow had started falling again.
Ding Xi couldn’t sleep. He lay with one hand behind his head, staring at the tent as it occasionally billowed in the wind.
Honestly, he had hoped it would be Zong Hang coming up, or Ding Pan Ling, or even that irritating Yi Sa…
Heaven truly meant to make things difficult for him – why did it have to be Ding Chang Sheng?
At the time, when he asked about the others, Ding Chang Sheng had replied gravely that they were all dead.
He explained that he was useless, and only thanks to everyone’s protection and sacrifice was he able to grab the pull rope, becoming the only survivor. He told Ding Xi to rest early, saying this was a major event and they needed to head back early tomorrow morning to quickly contact the Three Families’ people and make further plans.
He didn’t share specifics, but Ding Xi was used to this – for major matters, Ding Chang Sheng wouldn’t consult with him anyway.
But…
Ding Xi sat up in the darkness.
He remembered when passing by Ding Chang Sheng, he had noticed a hole in the back of his clothes. Though it had been soaked in water, the edges of the hole seemed stained with blood.
Something felt off.
After a while, he retrieved some eyedrops from his bag, put two drops in his eyes, then unzipped the tent door and went out.
Before sleeping, he had turned off all lights except one camp light. Now snow had accumulated, covering that light, making even its glow somewhat eerie.
Ding Xi softened his footsteps, walked to the side of the large tent, held his breath to listen, and then grabbed the heavy curtain door, slipping inside in one swift movement.
The tent was thick; once inside, the sound of wind and snow became distant. Ding Xi stood quietly for a while until he heard Ding Chang Sheng’s steady breathing, then let out a sigh of relief.
Strange – he knew Ding Chang Sheng’s capabilities well enough, why was he being so cautious?
He surveyed the tent’s interior, his gaze falling on the bed.
Ding Chang Sheng was sleeping soundly, facing the wall. At the foot of the bed lay a bundle of his removed clothes.
Ding Xi crept over and touched them – indeed, they were cold and wet.
He quickly gathered them up and silently retreated.
Once outside, he walked a few steps to the camp light, crouched down, wiped away the fine snow accumulated on the lamp, and shook out the clothes to examine them.
First, a bundle of unwrapped bandages fell out, the blood on them diluted by water.
Ding Chang Sheng was injured? It wasn’t apparent – he spoke with such vigor and walked so nimbly.
He looked at the clothes again.
His heart suddenly clenched.
He hadn’t been mistaken – holes were penetrating both back and chest. Ding Xi was too familiar with this kind of penetrating wound.
But how could someone with such severe injuries be up and about immediately, unless…
A diagonal shadow flickered at his side. Ding Xi jerked his head up, but before he could call out “Who’s there,” a lasso suddenly wrapped around him from behind and yanked hard.
The force was tremendous. Caught off guard, Ding Xi fell backward. Knowing he was in danger, he dug one hand into the ground to steady himself, but just then his back erupted in pain. Looking down, he saw a bloody blade tip protruding from his lower abdomen.
Ding Xi gritted his teeth and reached back with one hand, grabbing the person’s hair, intending to flip them over. But the person pulled out the knife and stabbed again.
With this withdrawal, blood truly gushed forth. Ding Xi fell forward, one hand pressed against his abdomen, desperately trying to stem the bleeding.
Footsteps sounded beside him, the thin snow compacting with soft crunching sounds.
Hot blood flowed between his fingers as Ding Xi used all his strength to lift his head and look.
He saw Ding Chang Sheng, barefoot, wearing only the shirt and pants he had slept in, with a strange expression, as a drop of blood fell from his slanted knife tip.