Chapter 51 — The Black Stone Cave

In the darkness, the Heartbreak Flower in Bili's hand slowly began to glow, its gentle white light illuminating some five feet around her. Zhang Qingyue looked about and saw that the surrounding rock walls were all of that strange stone, black as ink, hard as iron, and bitterly cold.

This Black Stone Cave was much like the Ten Thousand Bats Grotto on Kongsang Mountain that day: once past the entrance, the path plunged straight down into the earth, and the slope was even steeper than the Ten Thousand Bats Grotto's. Whether the villagers had dug it or it was simply so by nature, he could not tell.

The three walked on for a time and had already gone deep underground, yet all around was utterly silent, with no sign of any living thing—unlike the Ten Thousand Bats Grotto, with its countless dread blood-sucking bats. As Zhang Qingyue walked, his thoughts could not help drifting back to the scene of their first descent into the Ten Thousand Bats Grotto, and from there, naturally, to the days he and Bili had been trapped together in the Blood-Drip Cave beneath the Dead Spirit Abyss.

Just then, Bili, walking ahead, suddenly stopped short and gave a soft cry. Zhang Qingyue, thinking some danger had appeared, rushed forward in alarm and came to stand beside her. Bili stared a moment, then turned to look at him.

There was no longer any path ahead.

A sheer cliff lay across their way, and below it all was blackness. Yet far off, deep in the dark, there seemed to stir several points of light, flickering like will-o'-the-wisps. Zhang Qingyue gave a start, and in his daze half thought himself back before the Dead Spirit Abyss.

But this place was plainly far inferior to the Dead Spirit Abyss—in sheer space alone it was smaller by a hundredfold. Zhang Qingyue frowned and looked back at Shitou. Shitou had by now reached the edge of the cliff as well; he glanced down, pondered a moment, and said, "Brother Zhang, it seems we have no choice but to go down."

Zhang Qingyue nodded and said, "Brother Shi, take care of yourself."

Shitou's face was grave. "You too." With that, he pointed a spell sign, and the golden Demon-Breaking Staff rose before him. He leaped onto it, drew a deep breath, and slowly descended.

Zhang Qingyue turned and glanced at Bili, but this time he said nothing (no doubt having just been snapped at), then summoned the Black Iron Staff and followed down.

Behind him, Bili suddenly smiled, and her smile was full of delight.

Three orbs of light—gold, blue, and white—slowly descended from the cliff, and all around was still that black rock. Nothing else was amiss; still no sound came from anywhere about. There was but one oddity: the deeper they went, the more the temperature around them seemed to rise.

They descended some distance more, and by the light of the three artifacts Zhang Qingyue gradually made out his surroundings. There was no path onward from the cliff, only a whole face of sheer rock, jagged and grotesque. The place where the three of them were seemed, on the whole, like an ancient well enlarged a thousandfold, plunging straight down.

Suddenly Shitou, at the very bottom, cried sharply, "Careful!"

Zhang Qingyue and Bili were startled and hastily took guard. There, on the rock face not far below, was a small stone hollow, and within it two small, deep, glinting eyes were gazing at them.

Shitou gestured to them, then slowly edged closer. Zhang Qingyue and Bili both held their breath and watched intently.

Closer now—how long had it been since light had shone in this dark place, they could not guess—and when the golden glow of Shitou's Demon-Breaking Staff lit the little hollow, together they saw what was within: a rat the size of a palm, which had made its nest in the hollow and now stared wide-eyed at these three uninvited guests.

Shitou shook his head, drew back, exchanged a glance with Zhang Qingyue and Bili behind him, and the three smiled wryly, then continued their descent.

Yet what came next was something they had never in the least expected.

One point, then two, then three... lights glimmered in the darkness, some bright, some dim, flickering faintly all around them, above and below, before and behind, kindling slowly to life. And out of that darkness came what seemed like countless low, heavy breaths, and something like a soft growling from the depths.

Though above the Black Stone Cave the land seemed barren, utterly devoid of life, here beneath the cliff, deep in the earth where no daylight ever reached, countless creatures bred and thrived in a way that defied all expectation.

It was as if the darkness had lifted its veil of ages from before their eyes. With a strange quickening of the heart, they traced the way from that rat hole downward, and the stone wall began to show more and more holes, great and small, until at last there was one every few feet. And in those holes dwelt creatures of every imaginable kind: from tiny mice and bats to black apes and leopards standing as tall as a man. How they hunted their prey in the ordinary course of things, no one could guess.

And these were only the beasts they had seen before and could put a name to. A little farther down, their jaws dropped at the sight of crabs clinging to the rock, though crabs were creatures of the water, and these had four pincers besides; then a fetching creature they could not name, a six-legged civet cat; then a two-horned monster with the stripes of the character 'wang' on its brow but the shape of a pig. And so on and on, beyond all counting.

Countless eyes, gathering like a sea of faint light, fixed upon the three figures within the glowing halo.

The more Zhang Qingyue looked, the more astonished he became, and he could not help thinking that if his old friend Zeng Shuyan, whom he had come to know on Canglan Mountain, were here now, a man so fond of collecting rare and wondrous creatures, his mouth would surely be split in a grin from ear to ear.