Volume One, The King's Decree Chapter Ninety: Two Grave Robbers

Outside the walls of Everjoy City, dust and smoke roiled in the air. On a hillside beyond a narrow stream, a furtive young man of short stature was laboring over a shovel, digging a pit with all his strength until he had buried his whole body beneath the mound of earth.

“You all fight your battles. I’ll do my work. Once I dig through here and let that great thing out, Everjoy City will be in for some excitement,” the youth muttered to himself. He soon worked his way deep below the ground and broke into an underground passage.

For generations, the farmers living near Everjoy City had no idea that beneath this ordinary-looking hill lay a vast tomb. The tomb’s gate alone stood nearly seventeen meters high. The youth, map in hand, paced before it and carefully matched the patterns on the page against the carvings on the gate.

“This is it. They really knew how to pick a burial place. They even foresaw that the Iron Dynasty would make this land its capital and laid their plans in advance. It’s time to let the light shine on them.”

He put away the map and began to stride back and forth according to some mysterious pattern, scattering white powder from his hand over the ground until it formed a magic array.

“By imperial command, open, Gate of the Nether King!” As the array took shape, the youth chanted and pointed at the sealed stone doors before him. The two slabs of stone rumbled at once and slowly opened inward.

Perhaps because they had not been opened for so long, the whole place shook violently as though mountains were collapsing and the earth splitting apart, throwing the youth off balance. He fell hard and was buried under a fresh layer of falling soil.

“Damn it, is that big stone going to come down too? Ow!”

He had just clawed his way out of the dirt when another rock crashed down on his head and buried him again.

The commotion inside was inaudible to anyone on the hill outside. The peasants laboring in the fields only saw fish suddenly leap high from the pond and then vanish beneath the water.

When the youth, filthy and disheveled, finally smashed the stone aside and crawled out, the passage before him was already open. Bitter gusts of cold air swept through him, making him shiver uncontrollably.

“I should have worn more clothes. There are too many restless shades here. It’s freezing.”

Though this was his first time in the place, his movements showed he was very familiar with it. After the long corridor, he did not pause at the forked passages that followed. He chose the leftmost tunnel at once and ducked inside.

Along the walls of the corridor stood marble murals carved with exquisite skill, apparently recording some ancient cultivation art long since lost to the present age. The movements depicted were complex and profound.

Curious, the youth stopped to study them for a while, but in the end he could not discern their meaning and could only shake his head.

“This technique is truly excellent. Too bad the Iron Dynasty wiped out the entire line. Such a pity. The living are not as formidable as the dead no wonder it was lost.”

Before the Iron Dynasty was founded, the tomb had belonged to the site of a once-glorious sect. Because it had resisted the rise of the dynasty, it was leveled in the successive wars. Even now it had never seen daylight again, and the Iron Dynasty had deliberately buried that history from the world.

The once-powerful sect had transmitted cultivation methods entirely at odds with the dynasty’s creed, methods that pursued the crooked path of life and death and were not accepted by orthodox powers such as the Langya sects. Taking advantage of the change of regimes, the dynasty had buried that sect beneath the dust of history once and for all.

And the youth was the sect’s final ember, the keeper of all its secrets. He had come here today to restore the sect to the light and strike at its old enemies.

“You all left too soon. You hid underground and cultivated in silence for hundreds of years, while my family could only bend and scrape in the Sword Mountain of Langya, living for generations in fear and anxiety. I remember this debt clearly. I’m here to reclaim it for my ancestor.”

The original sect had stood where the hill now rose. Over the passing years, mountains and rivers shifted, and the vast sect became nothing more than a phantom, replaced by the common folk whose forefathers tilled the land, now managing this place in orderly fashion.

The tunnel at the end led to a subterranean palace carefully constructed by the sect. Only one who possessed the opening array could enter the gates, and only by choosing the correct branch in the paths beyond could one arrive at the palace that buried the sect’s secrets.

Above, the sky was filled with sun, moon, and stars, though all were represented by various wondrous objects in their place. Looking up, the youth clicked his tongue in wonder.

“If I hadn’t come from above, I’d really have trouble telling this is underground. You old fossils, if you’ve slept enough, then wake up and hear me out.”

The palace exuded a cold, lonely stillness. Neatly arranged rows of stone coffins surrounded the youth as soon as he stepped inside. Only a single straight path led to the highest steps at the center, where a crystal chair stood upon a crystal coffin. The light of the entire palace seemed to radiate from that chair.

“The treasured chair meant only for the sect master still has no one fit to sit in it. I’m saying it again: the founding ancestor who created this kind of cultivation art, was he human or a ghost?”

With a very awkward hand seal, the youth began chanting an ancient incantation.

Even if someone stood nearby with ears pricked, they would not understand a single word. It was too profound, too obscure; anyone ignorant would think he was merely muttering nonsense.

As the chant continued, responses slowly rose from the coffins around him, one wave mounting upon another, until the entire subterranean palace echoed with that lingering melody.

It was as though they had returned to that glorious age, when one sect held back millions of Iron Dynasty troops. The war lasted three months, and blood ran like rivers while corpses carpeted the land. None of the sect survived, save for the two elders who retreated into the underground palace.

Gray light flickered in the youth’s eyes. A surge of vital energy poured from them and took the shape of a human figure, drifting onto the crystal chair and settling there with great steadiness.

“Duan Ming, seventy-sixth sect master of Pine Crest Mountain, begs the ancestral masters to descend the mountain and aid us! The Iron Dynasty is already in dire peril; heroes from all over the realm have risen and are besieging the imperial capital. The orthodox powers of Langya and the rest have already arrived beneath the city walls. If we do not avenge ourselves now, when will we?”

That gray figure was none other than the youth’s soul. He knew how to separate the soul from the body and even make it speak.

At his summons, the stone coffins all trembled with life. In the silent palace, it was easy to make out the thud of heartbeats. That pulsing rhythm soon spread from the place where the crystal chair stood, filling Duan Ming’s ears.

Duan Ming did not immediately recall his soul to his body. Instead, seated in the crystal chair, he quietly felt everything before him.

Lying within the stone coffins were the elders and disciples who had died in that final battle. Before death, each had exhausted the last move of their cultivation art by sheer force of will. After dying, their bodies could once more absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and cultivate intelligence again.

From the nearest coffin, a pair of furry hands reached out, violently shaking the lid as a low roar sounded forth. That sound held not the slightest trace of reason.

This made Duan Ming somewhat afraid. He had merely followed the ancestral command and come here at the proper time to awaken the sleepers, but nowhere in the ancestral instructions did it say the occupants of these coffins were monsters.

He hastily returned his soul to his body. Pulling a long sword from behind his back, Duan Ming vigilantly watched the arms constantly reaching out from all around him. Their movements were identical. Soon, one whole body after another crawled from the stone coffins.

A pack of green-haired corpses appeared before Duan Ming. Before he could even cry out, the bottom of the coffins released six-pointed star arrays, and beams of light bound the corpses in place so that they could not move.

“I was scared to death. I only came because the ancestral rule said there’d be no danger; otherwise, losing my life for nothing would not be worth it!” The aura these corpses emitted was no weaker than his own. If they fought, he would surely die without a grave.

“So afraid, and yet you still came to Pine Crest Mountain? Wouldn’t it be better to go home, marry a wife, and have children?”

Another voice appeared abruptly. Duan Ming thought he had misheard. There should not be a second person here besides himself.

“Who are you? Are you one of the ancestral masters?” His voice trembling slightly, Duan Ming tried to find the source of the voice.

“No need to look. I’m right behind you.”

Duan Ming did not turn around. Instead, he sent his sword backward in a probing slash, but he struck nothing. Alarmed, he threw himself far forward.

His right foot was seized from behind.

“You little brat, you’ve got some courage for your age. By rights, I’m your grand-master, and you don’t show the least bit of respect for your elders.”

Upside down, the old man lifted Duan Ming and said irritably, casually tossing him onto the crystal chair.

“The ritual is already complete. It’s fine if your body sits there too. From here on, just watch the ancestors perform.”

“I don’t remember there being any living people left on Pine Crest Mountain. Where did you come from, grand-master?” Duan Ming felt no killing intent, so the knot in his chest eased somewhat. The ancestral records clearly said that after the slaughter at Pine Crest Mountain, only their own line remained. So where had this grand-master come from?

If Willow Xiaoyi had been here, he would have certainly recognized the barefoot old man carrying a hoe. He was the very one who had once buried him in the earth.

“Pah, pah, pah. If I weren’t alive, wouldn’t I have become one of these corpses? With such a vast battlefield, how could there not be survivors? My own ancestors were one of those little fish that slipped through!” The old man said with a rather pleased expression.

He had trailed the people of the Heavenly King Sect all the way here, and upon discovering unusual movement at the old site of Pine Crest Mountain, he followed the trail at once. He had never expected that it would be a descendant of the sect who came here and opened the gate.

The old man had long wanted to come in and look around, but since he was not a descendant, he had no access to the entry method. For decades he had racked his brains and still failed to come up with a way to open the door. Today, by pure coincidence, he had used a little trick and followed his way in.

A deserter still had the nerve to say that. Duan Ming inwardly looked down on the old man by a few notches, but when he spoke, his tone was still courteous. “May I ask the grand-master’s name?”

“My surname is Ouyang, and my given name is Smoke.” Duan Ming thought for a long time and still could not find any similar name among the records in his memory.

Seeing what he was thinking, Ouyang Smoke took a pipe from his chest, lit it at his lips, and took a few quick puffs before explaining, “No need to think about it. Our ancestors changed the name to avoid trouble. It isn’t recorded in the Pine Crest Mountain rolls.”