COPPER COINS

Chapter 82: Spider Mother (I)

Could it be that surviving insects had made their way up the spiral staircase?
    Xue Xian looked down around his feet but couldn't see anything crawling around –– and that minuscule tremor suddenly stopped, as though knowing that he was looking for its source.
    Frowning, Xue Xian glanced at the staircase, then realised that something was wrong. "When we were burning the tunnel, we were doing it quite quickly and were bound to have missed some of the insects. But how come it's so clean and quiet in this chamber, with no sign of any bug? Even if those centipedes can't climb up the staircase, there are also the moths that can fly, and the horde of ants. Why have none of them followed us up here?"
    Xuanmin was reading the text on the wall again, his gaze gliding solemnly across those strange markings, slowly –– as though he could read what they said. Without turning to face Xue Xian, he replied, "Perhaps they're afraid."
    He had guessed the same thing as Xue Xian had. This chamber didn't even have a barrier, and the only thing between it and the endless mass of insects below was a narrow staircase, yet the difference between upstairs and downstairs was as though these were two entirely separate world: a sea of insects in one, not even a bug's antler in the other.
    The only explanation was that the bugs somehow feared coming here –– even without a barrier, they would not dare come up.
    Spider of the Same Age... Spider of the Same Age... and those cobwebs on the staircase... Xue Xian suddenly realised exactly what it was that the insects downstairs were afraid of, as well as what might have made that slight sound beneath his feet.
    Perhaps because it had seen that Xue Xian hadn't moved for a while, but, soon, the tremor beneath his feet became brave again.
    The noise that it made was almost imperceptible. If it weren't for Xue Xian's acute hearing, the trembling would be totally silent. Still crouching, Xue Xian put his arm on his knee and leaned in to listen. He found where the noise was coming from, then reached out and pressed it with his finger.
    He didn't put a lot of strength into his hand –– if it indeed was what he was looking for, then if he pressed too hard, he might accidentally kill it.
    As he'd expected, beneath his fingertip was a small, bead-like thing, smooth and brittle, as though slightly more pressure would crack its shell. Xue Xian recalled that, beneath the bamboo building at Dustpan Mountain, as he'd broken the Heart Demons spell, he'd heard something roll onto the floor. He smirked and said, "I found something good."
    Because he normally never encountered anything that was a threat to him at all, Xue Xian did not have the caution and instinct that ordinary people had –– he was not afraid of poison nor of being attacked. So whenever he wanted to touch something, his hand always moved faster than his brain.
    They say that if you walk along the river every day, you cannot have dry shoes. In the instant that Xue Xian finished speaking to Xuanmin, as the tail end of his sentence still resonated gently in the stone chamber, that marble-like thing beneath his finger suddenly retaliated.
    All Xue Xian felt was something pricking his skin and the strange feeling of his blood being drawn. Next, that brittle marble began to expand –– just one mouthful of blood was enough to make it twice as large as it had originally been.
    Then, from the same puncture, some kind of liquid entered his flesh.
    If it wasn't for the fact that this marble was a highly rare and fragile thing, Xue Xian would have immediately killed it after it'd bitten him. But it was far too precious –– so Xue Xian rolled his eyes and grimly picked the marble up from the ground.
    Xuanmin turned and saw that Xue Xian was scowling at something in his hand. He asked, "What did you find? A spider?"
    "Yes." After an extended battle with the slippery marble, Xue Xian finally managed to scoop it into his palm. In order not to let it roll away, he cupped it with both hands.
    Now that he had it in his palm, under the soft glow of the lanterns in the wall, he was able to see that this fragile thing really was a spider: it had a head and a body, exactly eight legs, and thorns on its side as fine as hair.
    The reason why he couldn't see those details earlier was because the spider's color and pattern was exactly the same as the stone tile on which it had been standing. If it simply laid there without moving, humans could look as hard as they wanted and would never notice it.   
    And now that it was in Xue Xian's palm, its color was changing before his eyes: soon, it looked as though it were a part of his hand. Its camouflage skills were impressive indeed.
    Xuanmin had only asked to ask –– he hadn't expected Xue Xian really to have caught a spider. Surprised, he now strode over to the pool and warned, "Is it really a spider? Be careful. You must never, under any circumstances, let it bite––"
    Before Xuanmin could finish his sentence, he noticed that the finger Xue Xian was using to press down onto the object in his palm was already tipped with a green-black color, and that the stain was travelling up his finger toward the rest of his hand. In the blink of an eye, it reached his wrist.
    It was not a pretty sight: Xue Xian's hand looked like it had been blackened by fire and then had vegetable juice poured all over it; or like the claw of a black-boned chicken.
    Seeing that Xuanmin was coming over, Xue Xian looked over at him innocently and helplessly, and laughed. "You spoke just a little too late."
    Xuanmin stared at his hand.
    "Ow––" Xue Xian hissed in pain.
    Frowning, Xuanmin reached out, wanting to take that venomous thing away from him. "Does it hurt?"
    "No, not that," Xue Xian replied as he grimaced, seeming to want both to laugh and to cry. As he rubbed his pinky and ring fingers, he pushed Xuanmin's hand away, saying, "This thing is slippery as hell and impossible to catch. No need to let you take it. I've already been bitten anyway. But I need you to help me... I can't move my hand, and it's getting so itchy that I think I'm going to go insane. Help me scratch it, quickly, hurry..."
    Xuanmin sighed.
    An itch is an unbearable thing, and far worse than mere pain.
    The damn spider venom really was quite strong. Only a few drops had been injected into Xue Xian's body, but his entire hand had already turned green and the venom seemed intent on spreading up his arm and into his shoulder. If it went all the way up to his face, then that would be a sight.
    And the itchiness, which originated in the bloodstream but affected the entire flesh, made one paralysed with anxiety –– someone with a lower tolerance level would long have begun sobbing and rolling around on the floor, wishing they were dead.
    Xue Xian frowned as he put all of his effort into resisting the itch. His feet seemed to begin to float from the ground, and the rims of his eyes began to feel hot, a layer of moisture rising up from them. He took a step toward Xuanmin, wanting to ask him again to help him scratch the itch, but his feet were unsteady and he stumbled.
    Seeing that Xue Xian could not even walk anymore, Xuanmin rushed over, picking him up in his arms and bringing him to the stone canopy. He tried to pry open Xue Xian's fingers, but the dragon's claws were tighter than anything, and the spider marble was completely trapped within.
    Xue Xian leant back against the wall and sprawled his legs diagonally across the canopy, looking floppy and uncomfortable. He said, "Hurry. Scratch me. My hand, my hand."
    Normally, dragon blood destroyed all poison, so most poisonous substances did not affect Xue Xian –– most wounds would become inflamed or bruised quickly, but would then heal just as quickly.
    Thus it seemed that this spider's venom was immensely powerful. If even Xue Xian couldn't resist it, it was impossible to guess what state ordinary people would be in by now.
    Naturally, Xuanmin wasn't going to go ahead and scratch with abandon: some types of venom would become worse after being scratched. Xuanmin glanced at the patch of green that had already reached Xue Xian's shoulder joint. He took out two talismanic papers, sliced open a fingertip, and scrawled something on one of them.
    As he stuck that talisman onto the side of Xue Xian's neck, the venom suddenly stopped there.
    He stuck the second one on the back of Xue Xian's black-boned chicken claw. Then, he gently took Xue Xian's chin in his hand and pushed his face to the left. With that movement, the sinews in Xue Xian's neck tensed and the curve of his collarbone became clear.
    Xuanmin looked down and peeled the right part of Xue Xian's collar aside. He reached out his index and middle fingers, which faltered for a while before ultimately sliding into the crook of Xue Xian's neck, where Xuanmin measured his pulse. He pressed his thumb on a spot under Xue Xian's collarbone and, unhooking his copper coin pendant from his hip, he began to run his other hand against the coins while pushing, hard, into Xue Xian's skin.
    Xue Xian wheezed.
    As Xuanmin pressed into his collarbone, he felt something flow slowly into his body and slowly make its way through his veins, assuaging all the electrifying sensation in the skin that had been infected by the spider's venom. With that, a huge chunk of the unbearable itchiness subsided –– and Xue Xian's dragon blood was able to destroy the rest of the poison, so that, after a while, he began to feel much better.
    Lethargically, Xue Xian sat up. Xuanmin stood back up too, but not before Xue Xian kneaded the back of his hand against Xuanmin's hand, relieving the last hints of itchiness. Taking his hand away now, Xue Xian gestured with his chin at the stone wall against which he'd been leaning and said, "You were looking at this for ages. Have you figured something out? Is the thing in my hand really the Spider of the Same Age?"
    He'd learned his lesson after being bitten by the spider. He shifted his grip on the marble and brought it closer so Xuanmin could see.
    But now, some shift seemed to have occurred in the spider –– although its color was still merged expertly with that of Xue Xian's skin, it now had a blood vessel running across its surface.
    As he saw this, Xuanmin frowned and looked up at Xue Xian seriously. "It took your blood?"
    Xue Xian fidgeted and said, "When it bit me, I gave it blood, and it gave me venom. Kindness demands reciprocity."
    Xuanmin didn't deign that with a reply.
    "Does the text really discuss the Spider of the Same Age?" Xue Xian was asking now, pointing at the text again with a pursed mouth. "What does it say? Where did this thing come from and why couldn't we find it before? And what does it mean for the spider to have blood in it now. Am I already linked with it?"
    He paused after all those questions, but decided to add one that had been sitting inside him for a while now. "The text is completely illegible. In all the years I've been alive, I've never seen such writing before... How come you can read it?"