Chapter 108 — Stealth

In the night, Fenzia Valley was loud with clamor, and after all this while figures were still hastening toward the valley mouth. From the look of it, the situation there had not only failed to calm but seemed to be getting worse.

Ming Li and Jin Pingyue both frowned slightly, but this was, after all, a chance that came once in a thousand years. Ming Li then said softly to Jin Pingyue beside him, "Let us go in."

Jin Pingyue nodded, but after a glance at Ming Li she said, "I am very curious about what is happening at the valley mouth. Why do we not take advantage of the chaos and have a look first?"

Ming Li pondered a moment, then shook his head. "You go. I will go deeper into Fenzia Valley and take a look."

Jin Pingyue seemed to pause in the darkness, then said, "Very well. Then be careful."

Ming Li was slightly taken aback. Those two words, "be careful," coming suddenly from Jin Pingyue's lips, seemed a little strange, but Jin Pingyue met his gaze and only gave him a radiant smile. All at once her figure turned to faint flowing light and slid noiselessly down from the ridge, vanishing into the darkness in a moment.

Ming Li frowned, a keen light flashing through his eyes.

Though Fenzia Valley's history as a sect could not match that of the Canglan Sect and the Demon Sect, it had held this place for over eight hundred years. Ming Li slipped in quietly amid the shadows of the night, and before him rose halls and pavilions in graceful disorder. Their style of building was rather close to that of the Central Plains, yet in small details, such as window lintels and eave corners, carvings of fierce beasts appeared from time to time, such as the Central Plains did not have. Clearly, over these eight hundred years, Fenzia Valley too had been influenced by the rough customs of the southern borderlands.

At the valley mouth the clamor still went on, and the alarm bells that Ming Li and Jin Pingyue usually found most troublesome were ringing without pause. He was now carefully hidden in the shadow behind a great rock at the foot of the mountain. On his last secret incursion, it was just a few steps beyond this point that the strange clear ringing had suddenly sounded.

Now he heard only the bells ringing in a confusion far off. Three zhang in front of the great rock was an open patch of ground, and beyond that a house of ordinary style, which looked like the dwelling of Fenzia Valley disciples.

Ming Li drew a deep breath, straightened in the shadows, and looked around. Here all was quiet, and set against the distant uproar it seemed all the more empty of human voice. As for the Fenzia Valley disciples in that house, they seemed to have been summoned to the valley mouth already.

Beneath this somewhat strangely uncanny stillness, Ming Li walked slowly forward.

One step, two steps...

He walked very slowly, and went on until five steps, and all around was as before.

But the look on Ming Li's face only grew graver, for the last time he had been here, it was on stepping out the sixth step that the strange bells had discovered him.

The keen light in his eyes slowly kindled, and he swept his gaze around, yet saw that nothing nearby had changed.

After a moment, he slowly took the sixth step.

"Ding-a-ling..."

Almost at the very instant his foot touched the ground, a crisp bell rang out abruptly ahead of him, carrying far through the deep silence.

Ming Li's body went rigid, alarm and fury surging through him together. The ghostly tricks of Burning Cloud Valley were fiendishly effective, yet he could not discover them at all—truly uncanny.

But tonight was naturally a different matter from the days before. Though Ming Li had tripped some formless mechanism and set off an alarm bell, the distant clamor and sounds of fighting were fiercer still, and in mere moments they drowned the bell out.

Ming Li decided on the spot. Sweeping his gaze around, he rose into the air and skimmed low along the ground to the back of the house ahead—only the bell around him kept ringing without pause, a truly maddening headache.

Just then, the monkey Xiao Hui, who had been lying quietly on Ming Li's shoulder all this while, suddenly gave a low cry. Ming Li started, and turned to glance at Xiao Hui on his shoulder.

Lit by a faint glimmer of moonlight in the night, there before Ming Li's eyes in the shadows, a soft "click-click" sound suddenly came from within Xiao Hui's body, and after that the gray mark on its forehead seemed to deepen in color.

Before Ming Li could react, Xiao Hui—who seemed to have sensed something wrong already—suddenly turned its head, and in its monkey eyes a strange, piercing golden light gradually kindled. Yet behind that gold, faintly mingled, there lurked a thread of eerie red.

"Chee-chee, chee-chee."

Xiao Hui's monkey hand suddenly pointed toward the foundation in a remote corner far from that house.

Ming Li lifted Xiao Hui down and examined it closely. "What is it, Xiao Hui?" he asked in a low voice.

"Chee-chee, chee-chee!"

Xiao Hui cried softly, its hand still pointing in that direction, while the golden gleam in its eyes slowly faded.

Ming Li frowned, then nodded. He set it back on his shoulder, and his body immediately drifted over.

In the dark corner of the foundation wall, a faint smell of moss hung in the air. Under Ming Li's careful search, he soon made a discovery: a small hole about a foot across, hidden at the base of the foundation.

A sharp light flashed in his eyes. He reached out—then suddenly, swift as lightning, thrust his hand into the opening. A moment later a low squeal came from within the hole, which fell silent at once; and almost in the same instant, the bell that had been ringing ceaselessly around them stopped short.

A faint smile touched the corner of Ming Li's mouth. Slowly he drew his hand out, and after a moment there was, gripped in his palm, a strange beast—it struggled twice, then moved no more.

The creature was gray-skinned all over and about three feet long, its body bent in a peculiar arch, back hunched high and head and tail drooping low, with a pair of little black bean-like eyes set in its head. But the strangest thing of all was its extraordinarily long snout, nearly half a foot in length—close to a third of its body—the tip broad and flaring into two great nostrils, so that it looked much like the pigs kept in farmers' pens.

Ming Li was taken aback for a moment, then gave a snort and muttered softly, "No wonder I couldn't slip past no matter what—so there's one of these 'Gray Tuskers' about."

Note 1: *Chronicles of Gods, Demons, and Strange Beings*, "Chapter on Spirit Beasts"—Gray Tusker: long snout, great ears, no neck, long tail; feeds on ants, insects, and grass roots; hides by day and comes out by night; some call it the Earth Pig.

Further note: *Modern Animals*—Earth Pig: a mammal, also called the African anteater; powerfully built, about 140 centimeters long, lacking incisors and canines; like the anteater it uses a long tongue to lap up termites. It lives in southern and central Africa, haunting hills or semi-grassland regions, and is highly skilled at digging. It rests in its burrow by day and comes out to forage at night. Timid by nature, with exceptionally keen hearing, it relies on its sense of smell to find food—more than ten times sharper than a dog's.