Chapter 51 — The Black Stone Cave
劍問蒼天 · Page 6 of 6
They drew near. How long it had been since any light had shone in that dark place, none could say; when the golden glow of Shi Tou's Demon-Breaking Staff lit the little hollow, they all saw together what was inside: a rat the size of a palm, which had made its nest in the hollow, now staring wide-eyed at these three uninvited guests.
Shi Tou shook his head and drew back. He exchanged a glance with Zhang Qingyue and Bili behind him; 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.