Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Spirit of the Silver Carp

La Chen waited for a long while, yet still only a band of lowly minions clamored and screeched outside the cavern mansion; the true master never showed his face. He suspected trouble and casually sent out a talisman. The instant it appeared, it shot straight toward the creatures at the gate, and at once a dense storm of lightning sprang into being out of nowhere. Water fed the thunder’s might; even La Chen himself felt his skin tingle and the hairs on his body rise. How much less could a pack of lesser demons endure it? The minions could not withstand the bolts. Aside from a few blackened, overcooked unfortunates, the rest revealed their true forms in panic. A school of fish, shrimp, and crabs fled for their lives, and they were swift indeed, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

La Chen had no mind to care about those little water demons. He only hoped they would not end up as someone’s catch. Seeing no more obstruction at the entrance, he lifted his brass coin sword and carefully stepped into the cavern mansion.

From the outside it had seemed ordinary enough, but once inside he realized this underwater dwelling was clearly something else altogether. The lakebed was dark and lightless. Thus the passageway was inlaid with countless moonstones, illuminating the interior as bright as day. La Chen walked steadily inward along the corridor, his spiritual sense sweeping back and forth, wary of enemies that might appear at any moment.

The passage was about ten feet wide, like a tunnel, though it was entirely paved with lake stones polished to a smooth sheen. And it stretched for more than thirty feet. Suddenly La Chen felt that this did not resemble a mansion at all, but rather a tomb. A tomb beneath the lake.

Beyond the tunnel lay another stone gate, carved with dragon and phoenix patterns and fitted with beast-ring handles. Time had eroded it long ago, and the gate could no longer close properly. La Chen simply passed through it. As he crossed the threshold, he could not help drawing a sharp breath.

It was a large outer court, and the entire court was filled with dense piles of white bones of all kinds of creatures, layer upon layer, so many that he could not tell how many there were. Some of the older bones, long soaked in the lakebed, had already crumbled into heaps of fragments. There were human bones among them, as well as those of various aquatic beasts, and even the remains of pigs, cattle, horses, and sheep. At the far end of the court stood a stone platform. If La Chen had guessed correctly, it must have been a sacrificial altar. The bones beneath it were plainly the remains of offerings.

Blood sacrifice had existed since antiquity. The vital qi and blood of living beings could indeed greatly nourish the souls of the dead. But every benefit had its cost. The souls that received such offerings would, along with their gain, also absorb the resentment born of the victims’ deaths, and thus be transformed into vengeful spirits. They would be fierce beyond measure, yet bereft of reason. In the end they harmed both others and themselves, bringing endless disaster. That was why orthodox traditions had always rejected such rites. Yet here so many living beings had been sacrificed. One could imagine what manner of being ruled this place.

La Chen raised the coin sword in one hand and held a water-escape talisman in the other. If matters went awry, he would flee at once. Drawing the enemy to battle on the surface would give him the advantage of terrain, rather than forcing a life-and-death struggle beneath the water.

Proceeding with utmost caution, stepping over the white bones, La Chen reached the altar. Mystical runes covered its surface. In the center was a stone pit. It was plain that victims were killed there, and a strand of warm blood from the heart was then taken as an offering. La Chen lifted the coin sword high. Whether the altar still remained intact or not, he would never allow such a wicked thing to continue existing. Once such an altar had been steeped in the blood and qi of so many living beings, over time it might well give birth to some evil and accursed thing.

A pale radiance flowed over the length of the coin sword, and it slashed down in a flash. But just as it neared the altar, it struck an immense obstruction. A scarlet glow surged up from the platform, firmly blocking the blade. Within the billowing blood aura, countless figures of weeping and shrieking appeared. They were the condensed resentment of innumerable lives slain upon the altar. Their cries were shrill and mind-stealing. La Chen was caught off guard and instantly lost himself, his spirit slipping away from his grasp.

Fortunately, the copper coins on his person suddenly grew hot, and a stream of cool energy surged into his body, traveling along his meridians straight to his spiritual core. Only then did La Chen wake with a start. A cold sweat had already broken out on his back.

"Such a deep design," he murmured in admiration. It was only because he lacked experience and had rarely encountered a scheme of this sort that he had been so easily deceived.

At once he withdrew the coin sword and leapt backward. At the same time, a talisman flew forth. La Chen formed a sword mudra with two fingers and shouted, "Supreme Lord of Thunder and Response, descend!" The talisman burst apart, transforming into a giant blue thunder orb. Countless tiny bolts crackled across its surface, yet not a trace of lightning escaped. It fell lightly upon the altar, and in an instant, like heaven's wrath meeting the fire beneath the earth, it exploded violently.

A flash of blinding light followed, then a sound like a thunderclap exploding inside the ears. The lake water at the bottom contracted all at once, then turned into a shockwave that swept outward like a hurricane. Countless bones and strands of water grass were instantly reduced to powder. Even La Chen, dozens of feet away, was nearly blown away by the blast; he stumbled back several steps before regaining his footing. His ears rang with a ceaseless buzzing. He had not expected the five-element water thunder to be so fearsome beneath the water, and he could not help but marvel at it.

When the thunder faded, the altar had vanished without a trace, leaving a huge pit in its place. The water below was churned into a muddy haze.

"Why must you be so hostile, fellow daoist?" A gate opens to reveal a man in Taoist robes, with beady eyes, yellow whiskers, and, most striking of all, a mouth so large it took up nearly half his face. He held a whisk in his hand and, though he looked nothing like a human being, he still insisted on pretending to be one, which was quite ridiculous indeed.

"I had scarcely entered the lake and already the storm broke loose," La Chen said with cold sarcasm. "Fellow daoist's hospitality is truly more than I can endure."

He plainly had no intention of showing the other any courtesy. In any case, if he wanted to take back the peach-wood sword, it was obvious a fight would be necessary.

"A little wind and cloud is naturally nothing to a fellow daoist. But you came to my Water-Purity Divine Lord Manor and smashed my belongings. I fear that is hardly the conduct of a guest, is it?" The fish demon calling himself the Water-Purity Divine Lord did not change expression, but his tone had unmistakably turned sharp and heated.

"A mere fish demon, and you dare call yourself a divine lord? Without a dragon king to hold dominion over this lake, any sort of monster or fiend dares to leap out. This outer court is piled high with bones, and your body reeks of blood. Clearly you are no good thing. And yet you dare usurp the title of divine lord? I, as a priest, will take you down!"

As soon as he finished speaking, La Chen flipped his hand seal, and the coin sword instantly transformed into a streak of flowing light, shooting straight toward the fish demon.

"What a shameless Daoist priest! Today I shall eat you alive and make you pay for my altar!" Seeing La Chen strike first, the fish demon also hurled his whisk. The two weapons collided in midair with a series of sharp impacts, then each rebounded.

La Chen caught the coin sword in his hand as it still rang with a metallic hum. His gaze hardened. "Supreme Lord of Thunder and Response, strike!" As the words fell, a talisman flew into the sky and transformed into more than a hundred blue water-thunder bolts of varying sizes. Like a deluge from the heavens, they surged toward the fish demon. At the same time, La Chen’s coin sword once again became a streak of white light, darting within the thunder field, its blade flickering and surging, ready to deliver a fatal blow at any moment.