Chapter 12 — The Mutation
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 7
How could Zhang Qingyue know that this bead, so plain and unremarkable in appearance, was in truth the Blood-devouring Bead, a thing of the utmost evil whose name shook the world? Its origins were unknown, but its properties were strange: it thirsted for the vital blood of living things. Any creature that came near it would have its essence drained within moments and die, leaving nothing but an empty skin — a truly horrifying object of dark power. More than a thousand years ago it had fallen into the hands of the Black-Hearted Elder, an elder of the Demon Cult, who, because of its power to drink essence and devour blood, forged it into a magical weapon; for a time it swept all before it, and none could count the orthodox cultivators it killed. Its fame spread far and wide, and it became one of the Four Treasures of the Demon Cult. After the Black-Hearted Elder died, the bead vanished, and from that day to this none knew where it lay.
By chance, thirty years ago, the divine monk Puzhao of Fanyin Temple had come upon the evil bead in the Great Marsh of the West. Within ten li of that place the ground was heaped with bleached bones, and no living thing remained; it was a scene of utter desolation, and the air reeked of resentment. Great compassion rose in Puzhao's heart, and he took it up by the power of the Buddha's Dharma. Thereafter, every night without fail, he worked the secret arts of Buddhist demon-subduing upon it to hold its evil in check — for thirty years never once omitting the rite — and he bound it about with the Emerald Prayer Beads, the supreme treasure of the Buddha's teaching, so that their pure and clean aura might withstand the bloodthirsty wickedness within. At last he pressed that vicious spirit down and bound it fast inside the bead, where beneath layer upon layer of Buddha-power it could not see the light of day.
But who could have foreseen the battle at Liumiao Village, where Puzhao was struck again and again by the mysterious man in black until he was all but spent, like a lamp at the end of its oil? The man in black fled, wounded, but Puzhao knew his own hurt was past healing, and he judged that the man would stop at nothing to obtain the Blood-devouring Bead. Having swallowed the Three-Day-Death Pill, he had but three days of life forced upon him. In that extremity he took a desperate course: he gave the Blood-devouring Bead to Zhang Qingyue, and charged him never to show it before others, and to cast it into some deep ravine or off some cliff when he had the chance. Innocent lives might suffer for it, perhaps, but far better that than to let it fall into the hands of that villain.
What Puzhao never imagined was that Zhang Qingyue, remembering his kindness, would keep the thing of evil as a keepsake. With Puzhao's Buddha-power no longer suppressing it, and without the pure aura of the Emerald Prayer Beads to withstand it, the vicious spirit began to gnaw away at the seals. But the demon-subduing arts of Fanyin Temple were no common thing: though masterless now, the many-layered seals held true to their duty and cowed that evil spirit for three full years. Yet as time wore on they could not hold forever; little by little their strength failed, and on this very day they were on the point of being broken, and the bloodthirsty bead about to burst free to work its ruin upon the world.
Zhang Qingyue knew nothing of all these twists and turns, but some vague dread had taken hold of him. In the battle at the grass temple years before, when Puzhao fought the man in black, the swastika mantra had appeared again and again, and young as he was, it had been burned deep into his memory. Now, seeing the state of the bead grow more perilous by the moment, he grew frantic; in desperation he clenched his hand tight around the bead and roused that little scrap of crude Great Brahma Prajna he possessed, pouring it into the bead.