Wandao 013
Three miles east of Niupu Village lay a jagged cliff, beneath which stretched a forest choked in shadow and silence—an untamed place where few dared treads. Local lore whispered of a chasm at its base, connected to the veins of the earth, wherein lay the skeletal remains of ancient demonic insects. None who entered ever returned whole, and in time, the villagers named it the Juechong Cave—the Deathworm Hollow.
Now, under a sky shrouded in restless clouds and the lingering scent of thunder, Wan Xiaochuan and his companions followed Xiang Chengdao into the gaping maw of that forsaken ravine.
Mist curled through the trees like forgotten breath, and the ground was slick with moss and decay. Beneath their feet, fractured bones lay half-buried in the loam, silent testaments to long-faded carnage. Wan Xiaochuan's eyes remained wary. One hand gripped his sword, the other held aloft a jade talisman etched with wind and thunder sigils, its faint glow a sentinel against shifts in ambient qi.
Close behind him came Lin Qixian. The pouch of spirit insects at his waist shivered faintly, drawing a furrow to his brow. "Qingli is restless," he murmured. "The ground qi here… it's as though remnants of its kin's souls still linger."
"Proceed with care," Xiang Chengdao uttered coldly, vanishing ahead into a grass-veiled tunnel.
The entrance yawned, black as ink and heavy with a bone-deep chill. They pressed forward, talismans casting halos of light that barely pierced half a hundred feet ahead. The walls bore the claw-trails and burrowed paths of bygone insects, crossing in patterns like ancient scripture. At times, a whispering wind passed through, carrying with it a tremulous hum—neither quite insect cry nor mere breeze.
Wan Xiaochuan moved with measured steps. Suddenly, his foot sank into a patch of slick mire. Before he could lift it—
Phut!
A husk of a long-dead insect burst from the sludge, its claws like iron hooks lunging straight for his face!
"Look out!" Lin Qixian barked, flicking a sleeve. A streak of azure light shot forth—a Talisman of Spirit Binding. In a flash, the insect corpse froze mid-air. Wan Xiaochuan's sword flashed backward in response, wind and thunder qi coiling into one—
"Wind-Sever, Thunder-Smash!"
The chamber rang with thunder. Sword-light danced like chained lightning, cleaving the corpse clean in two. The acrid stench of char clung to the air as steam rose, rousing other slumbering remains embedded in the surrounding walls.
"That noise—it may rouse the deeper brood!" Xiang Chengdao's voice cut sharp through the cave's gloom. His sword unsheathed with a whisper of steel, and with a sweeping motion, he unleashed the technique Starwheel Slash. The blade carved through the dark like a rising moon, shattering the stone wall in a crescent arc and driving back the things that squirmed beyond sight.
The tunnel twisted, and then widened without warning. They emerged into a spacious stone chamber. At its heart coiled the corpse of a monstrous insect, easily five hundred feet in length, sheathed in black-brown scales. Though its skull lay crushed, a noxious aura still clung thick to the air.
"This is… the remains of a Diyu Bone-Eater!" Lin Qixian gasped. "A beast of ten millennia past—said to feast on the souls and marrow of cultivators!"
Wan Xiaochuan stepped closer, a ripple shuddering through his sea of consciousness. A faint wave of divine sense spilled from the husk—as if some fragment of will still be festered within.
"Don't touch it!" Xiang Chengdao shouted—but too late.
Wan Xiaochuan's fingertip brushed against a scale.
Wumm—!
The stone chamber quaked. Rings of inky sigils rippled outward from the corpse. Wan Xiaochuan stiffened where he stood, eyes rolling white as though his soul had been yanked into void.
"He's been drawn into its remnant spirit!" Ruan Ni's voice rang out from within the Wind-Thunder Sword, edged with fear.
Lin Qixian's voice trembled. "We must anchor his mind—quick, have him grasp the sword!"
Ruan Ni's form shimmered into partial manifestation. She glided behind Wan Xiaochuan, pressing slender fingers to his back. "Wind and thunder, draw the soul—return through the reversed current!"
A deafening resonance burst through the chamber. Qi of wind and thunder surged from the cave's ceiling, a spear of lightning piercing the corpse's heart. A shadow screamed as it was torn from the husk.
Wan Xiaochuan staggered back three steps, head thrown upward as he gasped for breath, sweat cascading like rain.
"It was a fragment… of lingering will," he whispered. "It sought to make my divine sense its nest…"
Lin Qixian pressed a qi-restoring dan into his hand. "Did it leave anything within you? Has anything… changed?"
Wan Xiaochuan closed his eyes in inward reflection. A long pause. Then he shook his head slowly.
"No. But I saw… memories. Echoes from before it was bound into a demonic puppet. Something… about a long-lost art of insect manipulation…"
Xiang Chengdao's gaze darkened, unreadable. After a moment, he said, "We may have stumbled into a place of great peril. Yet if you can master that forgotten art… it may yield unexpected fortune."
From the depths of the cavern, the wind still whispered cold and relentless.
As Ruan Ni's form faded back into the sword, her voice lingered soft upon the air: "Xiaochuan… you've begun to hear the voices of the past."
And that voice… echoed in his sea of consciousness, long after the silence returned.