Chapter 43 — The Blooddrop Cave

Zhang Qingyue had not expected such a violent reaction from Bili, and it startled him. He pointed at the cave ceiling. "There are some red stones up there…"

Bili came over at once and peered carefully at the ceiling. Through the veil of water droplets she could indeed make out seven red stones, each about half a palm's breadth, set into the rock of the ceiling. In grain and texture they were no different from the stone around them; only their color set them apart.

Seeing Bili so tense, so utterly absorbed in the ceiling, Zhang Qingyue felt his own curiosity stir. He rose and looked that way too, and saw the seven red stones scattered crookedly across the ceiling, arranged in what looked like a strange, lopsided shape—like an old-fashioned spoon.

It was the color above all: he could not guess how many years the water in this cave had washed over them, yet they remained as crimson as blood. Even the crystalline droplets, when they ran across those red stones, took on a blood-red hue and fell away as though the ceiling were weeping drops of gore. Yet once the droplets had passed beyond the stones, their former clarity returned.

As he watched, he suddenly heard Bili murmuring beside him, chanting under her breath: "Blooddrop Cave, Blooddrop Cave, blooddrop… ha!" Her face lit up with delight, and she brought her right hand down hard on Zhang Qingyue's shoulder. His face went white at once—the force of that blow was truly no light matter.

Zhang Qingyue was furious and was about to demand an explanation, but the woman only smiled at him radiantly, entirely unconcerned, her face alight with excitement. "So, you wicked old Blackheart, you went and built the Blooddrop Cave in a place like this! No wonder we searched dozens of times over eight hundred years and never found it." Zhang Qingyue was astonished, but as he turned it over in his mind, he recalled that on their first meeting Bili had demanded to know about the "Blooddrop Cave," and understanding broke over him at once. He gave a cold snort. "Devils and heretics!" Bili was in far too good a mood to take offense; she only smiled sweetly and said, "Devils and heretics I may be—so what? I ought to thank you for helping me find this place!" The more unwilling Zhang Qingyue felt, the more beautiful her smile grew, and from some deep place in his heart an inexplicable anger rose up in him; he felt he had unwittingly done the demon cult's sorceress an enormous favor, and if his elders ever learned of it, punishment was certain.

But no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than it struck him that he could not even get out of this place, let alone worry about the future. His spirits sank at once, and he sat down without a word.

Bili, meanwhile, was overjoyed, paying no attention at all to Zhang Qingyue's inexplicable expression. The demon cult had a history of immense antiquity, its ranks riddled with countless factions and splinter sects, rising and falling through the ages.

Eight hundred years ago, the Refining Blood Hall, the lineage to which the old Blackheart belonged, had been hailed as the foremost faction of the demon cult, mighty in strength and thick with masters; Blackheart himself was an elder ancestor of the cultivation path. But as the years turned and fortunes shifted, and after repeated clashes with the righteous sects, the Refining Blood Hall had dwindled and been supplanted by others.

In the present age, four great factions stood abreast within the demon cult: the Soul-Luring Sect, the Myriad Venoms Gate, the Hall of Longevity, and the Nether King Sect. Yet for sheer renown, none could match the Refining Blood Hall in the day of its glory.

And among the demon cult, for eight hundred years, there had always been a legend: that after the great war between the righteous and the demon cult, though the chief leaders of the Refining Blood Hall had all fallen in battle, many of their secret treasures and ritual implements had been hidden deep beneath the ancient lair of the Refining Blood Hall, the Cavern of Ten Thousand Bats, in a secret place known as the Blooddrop Cave.

Over those eight hundred years, who knew how many of the demon cult had slipped in secret down into the Cavern of Ten Thousand Bats; they had even ransacked the Vale of Death Spirits from end to end—and all had come away empty-handed.

Young as she was, Bili had already become a person of consequence within the Nether King Sect, one of those four great factions, and on this expedition into so perilous a place as the Vale of Death Spirits she carried the weighty charge of the Nether King Sect's master. Now the very thing that countless elders over eight hundred years had failed to do, the very place they had failed to find, lay before her own eyes—how could she not be overjoyed? For a moment she quite forgot that she stood in a deathtrap.

Joy in her heart, Bili fixed her gaze on the ceiling, then sprang lightly upward and reached out carefully to touch the red stones. They felt icy to the hand, but otherwise no different from the stone around them. She tapped them gently, and there was no response. By now her expression held a measure of tension alongside the excitement.

She went on to pull, tap, pry, strike, and wrench—she tried every trick she knew, and touched every one of the red stones. But all was as before; nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

Watching from below, Zhang Qingyue felt a surge of satisfaction and could not help laughing. "I don't think this is the Blooddrop Cave at all—you must have guessed wrong!" Bili had no choice but to drop back to the ground, and she shot him a furious glare, though doubt stirred in her heart as well. Could she truly have guessed wrong?

Over the next two hours, Zhang Qingyue sat on the ground and watched the girl in water-green robes—brows knit, pacing to and fro, deep in thought, now and again springing up to try some new scheme against the red stones, and every time returning empty-handed.

As he watched, his stomach suddenly gave a rumbling growl; he was hungry. He reached into his robes for the dry rations he carried, only to find them gone—most likely lost when he fell into the water earlier. At once he was inwardly cursing his luck: hungry now, with nothing in this cave to eat, and the little pool before him clear as could be—so clear that not a single small fish or shrimp was to be seen in it.

As the pangs of hunger grew heavier and harder to bear, Zhang Qingyue, at his wit's end, could only cup up some clear water and drink it down—which did not help in the least.

He sighed bitterly. It seemed he was doomed to starve to death here.

Bili, by contrast, felt no hunger at all; her whole mind was fixed on those seven red stones. But after all her effort she had gained nothing, and she sank down dejectedly—though her eyes still rested on the red stones, staring blankly.

Watching her from the side, Zhang Qingyue could not help reminding her, "What's the good of staring at that? If we don't think of a way out soon, we'll likely starve to death here first." Bili stirred, as though only now remembering that there was a young disciple of the righteous path beside her. She turned and glanced at him, then said suddenly, "Are you hungry?" How could Zhang Qingyue bear to lose face before her? He tossed his head at once. "No." "Gurgle, gurgle"—his belly, as if to spite him, gave two loud growls right after he spoke.

Bili could not hold back a "pfft" of laughter. Zhang Qingyue's face flushed crimson with embarrassment; he wished he could crawl into a crack in the floor.

After a laugh or two, Bili took out a portion of dry rations from her robes and held it out to Zhang Qingyue, saying gravely, "I think you'd better hurry up and help me think how to open this Blooddrop Cave!" Zhang Qingyue gave a cold snort, turned his head away so as not to look at the rations, and declared flatly, "You think a portion of dry rations can buy me off? Not a chance!"