Chapter 74 Wandering Beyond the Heavens

Guan Wen felt as though a fiery dragon was churning back and forth inside his body, tracing a path from the Baihui acupoint at the crown of his head all the way down to the Yongquan acupoint at the soles of his feet. His entire body was enveloped by this dragon, burning his cheeks until they were scorching hot and leaving his lips and tongue parched.

That wave of heat originated from Baoling. During the initial stage of her sleep, her body temperature had risen sharply, transferring the heat to Guan Wen through their physical contact and thereby creating that wild, fiery dragon.

"If only I could hide in a walk-in freezer, gulping down ice water and hugging massive blocks of ice to cool off..." Just as Guan Wen was thinking this, a sudden wave of chilliness washed over him. Baoling's body instantly turned as cold as ice, and cold air continuously poured into him, entangling and battling with the fire dragon raging within his veins.

He clenched his teeth, enduring this cruel trial alongside Baoling. The incessant, ominous hissing of countless snakes flickering their forked tongues echoed in his ears. The glass walls of the cave were not sturdy; he believed that the moment Kaller pressed the mechanism, these walls would shatter or rise, burying them alive in a realm of venomous snakes, leaving them dead without an intact corpse in a horrific tragedy.

"The legendary Avici Hell is probably no worse than this, right?" he groaned through clenched teeth, letting out a long, bitter sigh.

During major crises, one wrong step often leads to a cascade of errors. They had misplaced their trust in Kaller, blundering into the perilous Palace of Summer Days, only to become meat on someone else's chopping block and ultimately trap themselves in a sea of serpents. Every single step had been a trap set in advance, waiting for them to walk right in. By this point, they had lost all initiative and were entirely out of options.

As the alternating waves of cold and heat washed over him for the seventh or eighth time, Baoling shuddered all over. She raised her left hand, groped blindly, and reached toward the white bronze pillar. In an utterly hollow voice, she chanted in a low murmur: "Heaven shatters and earth splits, neither lost nor despairing; the abyss of black and white, neither decaying nor breaking; at the end of mortal life, never parting or forsaking; through the cycle of the netherworld, neither startled nor afraid—by the singular light of the Five Directions' Radiant Edict, pierce the abyss of darkness, redeem the undying soul, seal the unspoken secret, begone, begone, open!"

With her thumb and middle finger, she pinched the handle of the key, while her index and pinky fingers splayed outward like wild goose wings, leaving only her ring finger pointing straight up as she traced the shape of a pentagram in the empty air.

Baoling then turned the key one full revolution counterclockwise. From deep within the white bronze pillar, five consecutive metallic clicks rang out: "Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack."

"What's happening? What's happening?" Kaller called out repeatedly from the mouth of the cave above.

Guan Wen tilted his head back and pressed a forefinger against his lips in a silent hush.

He had already realized that those incantations were the key to unlocking the seal. Baoling had attained sudden enlightenment within the meditation chamber, but the subsequent process of "understanding, digesting, and absorbing" that enlightenment was a complex endeavor that her own mind had to undertake entirely on its own, with no external assistance possible.

Baoling let out a deep, pained groan, rolled over onto her side, and turned her face upward.

Guan Wen immediately noticed that her complexion had turned horrific to the extreme, the skin on her cheeks shifting to an ash-gray hue. Even worse, the center of her forehead—the palace of the spirit—was darkened, and her temples had turned completely deathly gray.

"It's over!" Guan Wen's heart plummeted. That state was a sign of total mental exhaustion; if she did not receive prompt medical treatment, it could very well lead to sudden death.

Human cognitive capacity has its limits, which is why ancient idioms like "racking one's brains" and "searching the depths of one's bowels" have been passed down through generations. Once the "brain juice" is depleted, a person's thought processes collapse, plunging from the very pinnacle of wisdom down into a dark valley, reducing them to a thoughtless vegetative state. Much like the saying that "genius is a neighbor to madness," the dangers of overthinking are akin to walking a tightrope across a chasm or dancing on the blade of a knife; the slightest misstep can cause severe self-inflicted harm and result in irreversible, devastating trauma.

Tilting his head upward, Guan Wen lowered his voice and shouted, "Qingcheng! Qingcheng, help us!"

Gu Qingcheng's face appeared at the cave opening, her eyes filled with frantic anxiety.

"Baoling is fading fast. We have to get up there and find a way to restore her energy. We can't delay any longer, or she'll lose her life before the lock is even opened!" Guan Wen clenched his teeth, struggling to keep his emotions in check. At this most critical juncture, the only person he could still trust was Gu Qingcheng.

Separated by a distance of ten meters, they locked eyes vertically, each reading that irreplaceable trust in the other's gaze.

Baoling had fallen asleep in his arms, entrusting her very life entirely to him—another form of life-and-death trust. If he were to betray that trust, he would find no peace for the rest of his days.

"Is the lock picked? Why is the white bronze pillar still motionless? Never mind all that, unlock it first, and as soon as you're done, I'll let you out—" Kaller cut in impatiently, shoving Gu Qingcheng aside.

Guan Wen panicked. "She's practically dying! How are we supposed to unlock it now?"

Kaller's face was contorted with a greed so profound it defied description. Reflected in Guan Wen's eyes, he looked no different from the venomous snakes raging around them.

"Hehe, Guan Wen, this is your last chance—"

Suddenly, a short blade appeared against Kaller's Adam's apple.

"Bastard, let them out right now!" It turned out that Xiao Huo had secretly managed to slip out of his handcuffs amidst the chaos, snatched a short knife, and taken Kaller hostage.

This sudden turn of events only inflamed Kaller's ferocity. Gritting his teeth, he roared, "Unlock it first, then let them go, or we all go down together!"

Xiao Huo tightened his grip, the edge of the blade slicing into Kaller's skin as a string of blood beads silently welled up, rolling off and falling into the heap of snakes below.

"Are you really not afraid to die?" Xiao Huo asked in a deep voice.

"Even if I die, I'm taking two people down with me to pave the way. Within a thirty-kilometer radius outside this estate, it's all Dragon Society people. If I die, you won't survive either. If you don't believe me, go ahead and try killing me!" Kaller was utterly fearless, completely unfazed by the short blade.

Amidst their exchange, the snake pack, stimulated by the smell of human blood, grew frenzied, slamming against the inner glass walls from all directions. Suddenly, the inner glass wall emitted a sharp cracking sound as a half-meter-long fissure split across its surface.

Gu Qingcheng let out a gasp of dismay: "Oh no!"

In an instant, everyone at the mouth of the cave held their breath, too terrified to make a sound.

"The green mountains retain their makeup, the flowing river stretches east in leisurely steps. A talented woman should ascend the Lingyan Pavilion, failing to break a formidable foe proves one is no hero... I knew this westward journey would surely end in shattered bones and broken bodies, but I had no choice. In truth, while mortals cannot choose when they are born, they can decide how they die. Death is the easiest part; once the decision is made, there is no turning back. This time, bidding a final farewell to Chang'an, I am off—" In her sleep, Baoling coughed violently, her body curling into a tight ball like a stranded little fish.

Guan Wen gently patted her back until she finally grew quiet once more.

She extended her right hand, gathering all ten fingers around the keyhole, pinching the key between the sides of her thumbs while her other eight fingers flared outward like a water lily blooming to its absolute limit.

As she twisted the key in reverse, she softly hummed an ancient, rustic melody.

Guan Wen listened intently. She was singing: "The evening sun shines on the empty rock, gathering lotuses in the twilight glow. The wind rises making the lake hard to cross, lotus flowers are abundant yet still unpicked. Oars move and lotus petals fall, boats shift and white gulls fly. Lotus stems twine around wrists, water chestnuts tug at garments from afar..."

That was "Lotus-Picking Tune," an old Yuefu poetry title from the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and one of the seven pieces of the "Jiangnan Diversion" composed by Emperor Jianwen of the Liang Dynasty, Xiao Gang. The entire poem flowed with lyrical grace, depicting the beautiful scenery of Jiangnan.

"By imperial decree, open the mysterious Yin-Yang Treasure Vase Seal! Yin and Yang give birth to one another, flowing endlessly; Yin and Yang restrain one another, mountains crumble and seas part... Begone, open!" Baoling uttered a sharp shout, and the white bronze pillar suddenly split down the middle into two halves. A dark, cyan-black object the size of an adult's palm was plastered tightly against the right-hand half.

"The lock is open! The lock is open! Give it to me, give it to me—" Kaller screamed.

Guan Wen picked up the object and examined it briefly, realizing it was a turtle shell inscribed with ancient oracle bone script.

Oracle bone script is the earliest and most systematic form of ancient Chinese writing yet discovered. It primarily refers to the oracle bones of the Yin Ruins, also known as "Yin Ruins script" or "Yin covenants." Originating from the Yin Ruins in Anyang—present-day Xiaotun Village in Anyang, Henan—these were characters inscribed on tortoise plastrons and animal scapulae by the royal court of the late Shang Dynasty (fourteenth to eleventh centuries BCE) for divination and record-keeping.

The turtle shell was remarkably well-preserved, with both sides covered in densely carved, difficult-to-decipher characters.

"Pull them up, hurry!" Gu Qingcheng's handcuffs had also been unlocked, but she dared not rashly touch the buttons on the bookshelf, lest she accidentally trigger the wrong one and shatter the cave wall, killing Guan Wen and Baoling.

"I said, hand that thing over to me first." Kaller was stubbornly unyielding, completely ignoring the threats of others.

The inner glass wall emitted a second thunderous crash as a dozen long snakes with triangular heads and red-and-green patterned bodies slithered along the perimeter, repeatedly whipping their heads to ram against it. The barrier was now in imminent peril.

Suddenly, a foot above Guan Wen's head, the inner wall burst open to reveal a hole the size of a fist. A gray snake spearheaded the intrusion into the glass enclosure, its body dangling two feet down, its head reared back with its bright red tongue darting repeatedly toward the tip of Guan Wen's nose. When it opened its jaws, its razor-sharp venomous fangs gleamed with a ghostly white light.

Instantly, Guan Wen felt the suffocating threat of death: "It's over, this time there's no escape!"

According to psychologists, moments before death, a person's mind will often conjure up bizarre, anomalous memories. At that moment, Guan Wen realized this wasn't his first time facing the threat of death; once before, the Grim Reaper had already laid its scythe against his neck, confronting him with a multitude of razor-sharp executioner knives.

"Yes, that time, it was that time..." Like a drowning person desperately grasping at a straw, he forced his concentration back to that memory.

"A mountain peak... an eagle... I was bound to a pillar, and the enemy's blade tips were cold, gliding effortlessly through my flesh like winter icicles. Those knives were so sharp, they slipped smoothly past the joints where my bones met my muscle. I couldn't feel any pain, but... but the flesh was being peeled from my body piece by piece, and my body felt lighter and lighter, heavier with fatigue... I saw the executioners swing their arms, and the chunks of meat resting on their palms flew into the sky, prompting eagles to shriek as they dove downward, snatching the flesh in their talons and beating their wings to soar high once more... That was my flesh... that was the flesh carved from my own body..."

Guan Wen suddenly roared in furious rage: "Return my flesh! Return my life!"

In his subconscious, the threat of venomous snakes had faded into insignificance; the agony, terror, and humiliation of being sliced piece by piece completely occupied his brain, making what had once been merely a hallucination feel agonizingly, inescapable real. To a proud and spirited man, physical pain and death were merely bodily injuries, whereas the insults heaped upon one by others constituted a profound spiritual violation that could never be tolerated.

His roar failed to frighten the snakes away. The gray snake lunged forward and backward, hurtling straight at Guan Wen's forehead, its bloody maw wide open mid-air in a grotesque and horrifying display.

With a loud *bang*, Gu Qingcheng fired her gun from the mouth of the cave, a bullet blowing the snake's head apart as foul, damp snake blood splattered across Guan Wen's face. However, the momentum of the bullet did not stop there; it drove downward, piercing the glass floor and punching a finger-sized bullet hole surrounded by a spiderweb of tiny cracks.

Once a venomous snake finds its prey, it will pursue its attack relentlessly until the target is completely devoured.

More snakes squeezed desperately into the opening, seven or eight of them cramming half their bodies through simultaneously, only to jam together, unable to untangle themselves in time.

"Don't be afraid, as long as I'm here, I won't let them crawl into your bellies!" Gu Qingcheng fired four more shots, dropping a snake with every pull of the trigger.

Kaller burst into manic laughter: "Hahahaha, shot well, shot well—every extra bullet hole in the bottom of that cave damages the pneumatic control mechanism a fraction more. Without air pressure, how is the floor supposed to rise back up? Shoot away! Not killing the snakes means death, but killing them means death all the same!"

Gu Qingcheng realized the truth instantly. Snatching a machete from the waist of the nearest enemy, she leaped down and landed beside Guan Wen.

Xiao Huo let out a cry of disbelief: "Sister Gu, have you lost your mind?!"

Gu Qingcheng slashed backward, cutting down a venomous snake plummeting from mid-air, and answered with grim defiance: "Fighting to the death for friends means dying is just dying!"

The choice she made in the heat of the moment was capable of moving others, but it was far from wise. After all, venomous snakes would continue to pour endlessly through the breach, like a war of attrition between two armies, which would inevitably exhaust her strength in the end.

With a furious curse, Xiao Huo dragged Kaller away and vanished from the mouth of the cave.