noveltune Chapter 42: The Ghostly Light of Bone Fragments
Chapter 42: The Ghostly Light of Bone Fragments
As the night deepened and the dew grew heavy, the vibrancy and clamor of the day were finally washed away by the deep darkness. Only a few scattered lights remained in Blackstone Town, flickering in the night wind like the breaths of a dormant creature.
The back hall of the former Demon Suppression Division, which was temporarily used as the Black Stone Guard's office, had newly pasted window paper that still smelled slightly sour from the paste. The hall was empty, except for a few bundles of unopened files and a few pieces of rusted and peeling old armor piled in the corner. In the center, there was only an elm wood square table and two beech wood armchairs, all old items hastily moved from the town mayor's mansion. The paint was mottled, exuding a sense of desolation as if the place had been abandoned.
Su Qingyao sat alone at the table.
The oil lamp was an old celadon dish, filled with a thin layer of rapeseed oil. Two wicks made of twisted rushes burned side by side, the flame small but unusually steady, casting a soft, dim yellow halo on the table and illuminating half of her profile. She had changed out of the medicine-stained shorts she wore during the day and was now wearing a worn, pale white cotton nightgown, loosely covered by an indigo floral jacket. Her long hair was untied, cascading down her shoulders like a waterfall, the ends still damp from her bath, gleaming lustrously under the lamplight.
Before her lay the grayish-white bone fragment brought back from the depths of the wolf king's den, quietly on the spread-out plain silk.
The bone fragment, roughly the size of a palm, was irregularly curved with exceptionally smooth edges. It felt warm to the touch, resembling fine jade rather than dry bone. Its texture was dense; upon close inspection under light, extremely fine, flowing lines could be seen within. Most striking were the densely packed, deeply engraved symbols on its surface. These symbols were not arranged in a regular pattern, but rather distributed in a seemingly chaotic yet subtly ancient rhythm. The lines twisted and coiled, resembling insect script, cloud script, or some long-lost sacrificial inscription. As the light flickered, the recessed engravings seemed to breathe, a faint, neither-gold-nor-jade, ghostly light flashing by so quickly it seemed like an illusion.
Su Qingyao's fingertips hovered about an inch above the bone fragment, not falling for a long time.
The image of her father, Su Yuanshan, uncontrollably surfaced before her eyes, carried by the faint glow of the bone fragment. It wasn't the horrific scene of that final night, with its raging flames and mangled flesh, but rather a scene from long ago, under the lamplight in his study, where her father held her hand, meticulously copying those difficult and strange demonic runes. His fingers were long and steady, his palms calloused from years of holding a brush, and he always carried a faint scent of ink and the bitter aroma of herbs. His voice was gentle and patient, yet whenever he explained something crucial, a hint of heaviness and worry, which she couldn't understand at the time, would flash in his eyes.
"Yao'er, the way of runes is not just about form, but also about meaning, about the resonance with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. The foundation of my Su family's ancestral 'Demon-Slaying Manual' lies in this. Most of the rune formations recorded in the manual are no longer usable, simply because..." The father paused, gazing at the deep night outside the window, and sighed, "simply because the 'spiritual energy' of heaven and earth is no longer what it was in ancient times."
"A flash of inspiration?" The young girl looked up, puzzled.
"Yes. You can think of it as the rhythm of the universe's breath, the foundation of all things' growth. In ancient times, spiritual energy was abundant, flowing like rivers, hence the emergence of great beings who could move mountains and fill seas, and achieve immortality. Later... a great upheaval occurred, and the spiritual energy was 'locked,' or rather, 'suppressed.' Since then, the rivers have become blocked, the spiritual veins have gradually dried up, and the path of cultivation has become a hundred times more difficult." Her father withdrew his gaze, looking at her with a complex expression. "Our Su family has studied this path for generations, hoping to find the source of that 'lock,' the key to that 'suppression.' Perhaps... perhaps we can find a glimmer of hope to allow the spiritual energy to flow again. But this path is too difficult, and too dangerous..."
At the time, she was naive, only feeling that the stories her father told were distant and mysterious. Until the massacre of her entire family three years ago, when her father desperately pushed her out of the flames, stuffing a blood-stained bundle into her arms, his hoarse voice almost breaking: "Yao'er... go! To Blackstone Town... Canglang Mountain... the spiritual vein is the lock... suppressing the spirit in the abyss... remember... sealing the demon... the truth lies..."
The rest of the conversation was completely drowned out by the sound of the collapsing roof beams and the shouts of the pursuers.
Clutching her bundle, and with her wet nurse risking her life to protect her, she blended in with the fleeing refugees, enduring hardships and hiding her identity along the way, finally arriving at this remote Blackstone Town. Inside the bundle, besides a few changes of clothes and a small amount of silver, was half of the "Demon-Slaying Manual," carefully wrapped in oilcloth with worn and curled edges, and a small bronze seal engraved with the Su family crest, which her father kept close to his body.
The nine words, "The spiritual vein is the lock, the spirit is suppressed in the abyss, the truth of sealing the demon," along with her father's last look at her, filled with endless entrustment and guilt, became the clearest and heaviest nightmare she had in the middle of the night for the past three years.
Now, this bone fragment, imbued with ancient demonic power and runes, lies before us. Together with the words "Azure Wolf Mountain," "spiritual vein," "suppressor," "abyss," and "demon seal" that my father mentioned last, it vaguely forms a jigsaw puzzle that is about to emerge and sends shivers down my spine.
Su Qingyao took a deep breath and finally gently placed her fingertip on the clearest engraving on the edge of the bone fragment.
It was cool and smooth, but a strange, slight tremor ran through her fingertips, as if she were touching not an inanimate object, but the remains of some creature that had slumbered for millions of years and was still dreaming a long dream. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm down, and drew upon the ancient rune knowledge that her father had forced her to memorize since childhood, knowledge that was almost ingrained in her blood.
She took out a small wolf-hair brush from the cloth bag—the handle was her father's old one, made of purple bamboo, as smooth and lustrous as jade—and then took out a celadon box about the size of a thumb, inside which was "developing cinnabar" that she had ground and mixed herself. It was made by mixing rooster blood, cinnabar powder, and the juice of several spiritual herbs, and had a slight effect on revealing the marks on ancient artifacts that contained spiritual energy.
She dipped the tip of her brush in a tiny amount of cinnabar, held her breath, and carefully traced the first symbol on the bone fragment that seemed to form its own starting point.
Where the cinnabar fell, no bright red mark was left. Instead, deep within the engraved bone fragment, as if stimulated by this faint spiritual energy, a more obvious, pale golden light rippled out on its own! The light flowed along the engraved mark like water ripples, illuminating the symbol itself and casting a hazy golden glow on Su Qingyao's fair fingers and focused profile.
She felt a slight tremor in her heart, but her hands became even steadyer. Her gaze followed the flowing golden light closely, and her mind raced to retrieve the obscure and difficult annotations on the edges of the "Demon-Slaying Manual" from her memory, as well as the scattered records on the long-burned fragments in her father's study.
The shape of the symbol, the angle of its turn, the way it connects with other symbols... little by little, it's like groping in a dark maze, searching for a path that has long been broken.
Time slipped by unnoticed in the silence and intense concentration. The flame of the oil lamp dimmed slightly, the wick flickering and bursting with a soft crackling sound. Outside the window, the footsteps of the Black Stone Guards on patrol rose and fell rhythmically. The distant hooting of owls added to the eerie stillness.
Fine beads of sweat appeared on Su Qingyao's forehead, sliding down her temples, but she was completely unaware. Her entire mind was immersed in deciphering the ancient runes. When she encountered something she couldn't confirm or that conflicted with her memory, she would stop and repeatedly compare it with other similar symbols on the bone fragment, sketching and deducing on the scrap paper beside her. Occasionally, she would softly recite a few extremely difficult ancient syllables—transliterations of ancient sacrificial words that her father had taught her, which might correspond to certain runes.
After an unknown amount of time, as she dipped her pen in cinnabar, her hand trembling (whether from exhaustion or excitement) as she wrote the last few deduced words on the scrap paper, the faint glow of crab-shell blue light was already visible outside the window.
On the plain silk, the eerie glow of the bone fragments had faded, returning to their original warm, grayish-white appearance. On the scrap paper beside them, a few lines of writing were scrambled but clearly defined:
"Seal...the...demon...in...service..."
"The spirit...source...is...the...guide..."
"Earth...veins...transformation...lock..."
"Suppress...the...demon...spirit...in...the...Nine...Nether...Abyss..."
"...The...eye...of...the...Azure...Wolf...is...the...key...hole......"
"The Eye of the Gray Wolf is the keyhole!"
Su Qingyao stared at the last sentence, her breath catching in her throat. Canglang Mountain! Keyhole! This perfectly matched the "Canglang Mountain" clue her father had left behind! What did "keyhole" mean? What was it a "hole" to open? Could the spiritual spring be the location of this "keyhole"? Beneath the spiritual spring, were the "demonic spirits" suppressed in the "Nine Nether Abyss"?
The phrases "the battle to seal the demon," "the source of spiritual energy as the guide," and "the earth's veins as shackles" paint a vivid picture of an ancient and tragic scene. Using the source of spiritual energy as the guide, the earth's dragon veins are transformed into shackles, suppressing a terrifying "demon spirit" in the depths of the Nine Nether Abyss!
This bone fragment is clearly a shard of an inscription that records a shocking secret from ancient times! Why did it appear in the wolf king's den? Did the wolf king obtain it by chance, or... is there another reason?
Su Qingyao felt a chill run from her feet to the top of her head, her heart pounding like a drum. The very secret her father had so desperately sought, the secret that had brought the Su family to ruin, was likely this ancient, sealed-away secret, a secret capable of overturning all understanding!
Just as her mind was racing and her fingers unconsciously tightened, almost crushing the purple bamboo penholder, very light footsteps came from outside the door and stopped in front of it.
"Qingyao, are you still not resting?" Lin Yan's voice came through the door, deep and clear, carrying a hint of night dew coolness, which strangely calmed her turbulent emotions slightly.
She composed herself, quickly folded the straw paper, covered it along with the bone fragments with plain silk, then got up, walked to the door, and unlatched it.
Lin Yan stood outside the porch, dressed in a black casual robe, his hair loose, held in place by an ebony hairpin, a few stray strands falling across his forehead. He was clearly not yet asleep; perhaps he had just finished meditating, the unique, harmonious yet powerful aura of the Profound Realm cultivator lingering around him, like a silent abyss in the deepest darkness before dawn. His gaze fell on Su Qingyao's face, noticing the dark circles under her eyes and the lingering fear in them, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly.
"Brother Lin," Su Qingyao stepped aside to let him in, her voice a little hoarse, "I... have made some discoveries."
Lin Yan entered the hall, his gaze sweeping over the slightly raised area on the table covered by a plain silk cloth, the still-dry cinnabar in the inkstone beside it, and a corner of the unfolded straw paper. He didn't rush to ask questions, but instead walked to the table, picked up a tinderbox, adjusted the nearly burnt-out wick of the oil lamp, and added a small spoonful of oil. The flame brightened again, dispelling some of the early morning chill and the dimness of the hall.
"Sit down and talk." He gestured for Su Qingyao to sit back in her chair, then sat down opposite her, his posture relaxed yet exuding a reassuring composure.
Su Qingyao sat down as instructed, took a deep breath, and unveiled the silk handkerchief, revealing the bone fragments and straw paper beneath. She pushed the straw paper in front of Lin Yan and recounted her deciphering process and results as clearly as possible. When she spoke of "the eye of the Azure Wolf as the keyhole," her voice trembled slightly, and her gaze involuntarily turned towards the direction of Azure Wolf Mountain outside the window, even though all she could see at that moment was a thick darkness.
Lin Yan listened quietly, his gaze sweeping over the powerful yet undisguised excitement in the handwriting on the draft paper. When he heard phrases like "the battle to seal the demons," "the transformation of the earth's veins into locks," and "suppressing the demon spirits in the Nine Nether Abyss," a sharp glint flashed in his eyes, but he quickly calmed down.
After Su Qingyao finished speaking, the hall fell into a brief silence, with only the occasional popping of the lamp wick.
"This bone fragment," Lin Yan began slowly, his fingertip hovering above it, sensing the faint, ancient fluctuations emanating from it, "if it is truly as you translated, its origins are probably far more complex than we imagined. Why would such a thing be in the wolf king's lair? Did it find it itself, or... was someone deliberately placed there?"
He paused, seemingly considering his words, then looked up at Su Qingyao with a deep gaze: "Regarding the origin of the Blood Crystal Stone, I recently sorted through the fragments of the Wolf King's remaining memories and discovered some oddities."
Su Qingyao immediately sat up straight.
"In the Wolf King's memory, it was initially just an ordinary wolf leader in the Canglang Mountain with a little intelligence. Although it was stronger than its kind, it was far from reaching the later Profound Realm and did not know anything about the blood crystal refining method." Lin Yan's voice was calm, but it carried a kind of calmness as if peeling back layers. "Until about twenty years ago, a mysterious 'person' found it."
"A person?" Su Qingyao held her breath.
"Hmm. A person whose face is covered, and whose appearance cannot be clearly seen." Lin Yan's gaze seemed to pierce through the void before him, recalling those fragmented and chaotic memories. "That person always came and went very secretly, and his aura was also very well concealed. The Wolf King's memories of his appearance and figure are very vague. But there are two things that the Wolf King remembers very well."
He paused, as if trying to capture the clearest fragment of his memory: "First, there were that man's eyes. When he looked at the wolf king, he spoke words of encouragement for its cultivation, promising it power and authority, but in those eyes..." Lin Yan narrowed his eyes slightly, repeating the emotions the wolf king sensed, "They were full of cold mockery, undisguised disdain, and a kind of... condescending indifference, regarding all things as ants."
Su Qingyao felt a chill run down her spine. A mysterious person who taught demons how to refine stones using the essence of living people, yet whose eyes were filled with extreme contempt for humans (and even the demons they cooperated with)...
"Secondly," Lin Yan continued, "it's that person's hands. Every time the Blood Crystal Stone is handed over or 'guidance' is given, the Wolf King notices that those hands are unusually white, with long, slender fingers and distinct knuckles. They are even... so white that they seem almost inhuman, like they are carved from the finest cold jade. In the dimly lit nest, they occasionally gleam with a very faint, cold luster."
Hands so white they seemed inhuman...
Su Qingyao's pupils suddenly contracted! In the last few years of his life, her father, Su Yuanshan, would occasionally gaze intently at ancient books or his own calculated sketches. Once, when she brought in tea, she overheard him muttering to himself, one line of which was: "...hands like cold jade, eyes harboring mockery...could it really be 'them'?" At the time, she didn't understand his meaning and asked him about it, but her father's expression changed drastically. He sternly rebuked her for not mentioning it again and quickly changed the subject. Now, thinking back...
A terrible association, like a cold, venomous snake, coiled around her heart.
"Before my father's accident," Su Qingyao's voice trembled uncontrollably as she gripped her sleeve tightly, "he had ventured alone into the Canglang Mountains multiple times, ostensibly to gather herbs and explore ancient sites. He once casually mentioned that he suspected someone in the mountains was secretly performing some kind of evil ritual, possibly related to the lost 'Blood Refining Technique.' He also said… he used the description 'hands like cold jade, eyes harboring mockery,' seemingly pointing to some extremely secretive force or entity he suspected…"
She raised her pale face and looked at Lin Yan, her eyes filled with shock and indignation: "Brother Lin, do you think... the mysterious person who taught the Wolf King Blood Crystal Stone tempering method, and the person who may have discovered the secret back then, leading to the massacre of the Su family, could they be... the same person? Or even... the same person?"
This conjecture is too audacious and too terrifying. But all the clues—the ancient seal recorded on the bone fragments, the "blood refining technique" investigated by the father, the mysterious person in the Wolf King's memories, the massacre of the Su family, the sacrifice in Blackstone Town... all seem to be pointing to the same dark vortex.
Lin Yan didn't answer immediately. He remained silent, his gaze once again falling on the grayish-white bone fragment. The records of the ancient war against demons and the current clandestine practice of using living people to refine stones with blood crystals seemed to be separated by an insurmountable distance in time and space. But if the "demon spirits" suppressed in the "Nine Nether Abyss" truly existed, and if the seal on the spiritual veins had truly malfunctioned, then it seemed not impossible that someone (or a non-human) was attempting to use some evil means (such as blood crystals) to achieve some ulterior motive.
"If our speculation is correct," Lin Yan's voice lowered, carrying a sense of impending doom, "then the blood crystal stone involves far more than just Chen Fuhai and Zhao Mang, or even just Liu, the head constable of Qingyang City. Its root may point directly to ancient secrets, closely related to the truth of the 'Demon Sealing War' and the 'Spirit Vein as a Lock'."
He looked at Su Qingyao, his eyes sharp as knives: "Miss Su, besides runes and formations, does your Su family's 'Demon-Slaying Manual' contain any records of ancient wars, spiritual veins, or some kind of... evil magic that uses the essence and blood of living beings as a catalyst?"
Su Qingyao tried hard to recall, then slowly shook her head: "The main body of the diagrams is the principles of array formations and talismans for exorcising demons and suppressing evil, as well as some records of the habits and weaknesses of the demon race. There are very few direct descriptions of the ancient war, only sporadic mentions of 'spiritual changes' and 'annihilation of ancient arrays.' As for evil arts... it seems there are none. But I once glimpsed some miscellaneous books and notes in my father's study that were not inherited from his ancestors. They mentioned some ancient forbidden sacrificial methods, which seemed... indeed required special 'blood sacrifices' to communicate with or awaken something. Those books disappeared later."
The clues seem numerous and chaotic, yet they subtly connect to form a dark thread.
"And there's the inscription on this bone fragment: 'The Eye of the Azure Wolf is the keyhole.'" Lin Yan pointed to the sentence on the scrap of paper. "If the Spirit Spring is the 'keyhole,' then what it 'opens' is a path to the 'Abyss of the Nine Netherworlds'? Or... a portal that seals itself? Is the mysterious person's collection of blood crystals also related to opening this 'keyhole'?"
One question after another arose, like pebbles thrown into a deep pool, creating layer upon layer of unsettling ripples.
Su Qingyao gazed at the gradually brightening dawn outside the window, but the faint light could not dispel the heavy gloom in her heart. She remembered her father's dying words, the figures of her entire family lying in pools of blood, the countless refugees who had silently disappeared from Blackstone Town over the years, and the piles of white bones and scarlet blood crystals in the wolf's den last night…
Hatred, responsibility, thirst for knowledge, fear... a mix of emotions swirled and surged.
"Brother Lin," she turned to look at Lin Yan, her eyes still glistening with tears, but a resolute determination had rekindled within her, "No matter how terrible the secret behind this is, no matter who the enemy is, I will investigate. For the sake of the Su family members who died unjustly, and also to... prevent more people from becoming innocent souls under the Blood Crystal Stone. The Sealed Demon Land, the mystery of the spiritual veins, I must find out."
Looking into the flame that burned tenaciously amidst grief and fear in her eyes, Lin Yan seemed to see another version of himself struggling to survive in dire straits, determined to forge a path to life. He nodded slightly.
Inside the hall, the flame of the oil lamp appeared increasingly faint in the brighter morning light, and finally went out quietly with a "poof".
A wisp of smoke rose and drifted into the golden morning light streaming through the window.