COPPER COINS

Chapter 89: River of Blood (III)

He could feel his own fresh blood pour out of his body, taking all his warmth with it too. He began to feel cold, his vision began to blur, and his mind felt heavy and thick, so that his neck no longer had the strength to hold up his head.
    In that confused state of panic, he suddenly began to remember many, many things, fragmented and disparate memories from bygone times.
    He remembered that all the others who had grown up alongside him in the mountains were now sprawled in the pool of blood as well.
    He remembered the first time he ever met the Great Priest. He was still small, too young to understand things, and had not had any reason to interact with the Great Priest. He had waited until Songyun had been distracted and snuck down from the mountain into the nearest town, where the Taishan ritual procession had been passing through, and, there, he had glimpsed the Great Priest. That day, the streets were full, yet no one dared get too close. He had pushed among the crowd, trying to find a good position from which to see things clearly, but someone had shoved him, and he had stumbled into the street, right into the procession. He had thought he was going to fall face-first on the ground, but instead had seen a white cloud float past his vision and conjure a gust of wind, which had gently blown him upright.
    He had been too young, and had not processed what had just happened to him, instead obediently walking back into the crowd. By the time he'd returned to his senses, that procession had already gone ahead, yet he immediately took notice of the man in white on horseback at the very front...
    The memory was from so long ago that he'd thought he'd long forgotten it. Yet now, he was remembering it again.
    He realised now that, back then, he hadn't been so utterly afraid of the Great Priest -– indeed, he'd even revered him. When had he begun to feel panic, dread, and uncertainty in front of the Great Priest...?
    Following Songyun's orders, he and his brothers had travelled in the shadows for many years, and could no longer remember all the things he'd done. At the beginning, seeing all those human lives perish by his hand, he'd felt overwhelmed by guilt, and, in search of answers, had gone to Songyun about it.
    Songyun had said that everything they were doing, they were doing for the people. Those small preparations were in order to cast a single enormous spell. The spell was called "Bones Buried in the Rivers and Mountains", and, if it was successful, it could not only prevent great disasters, but also ensure a hundred years of peace in the region.
    Songyun had not taught him the most difficult and profound things, so when it came to the specifics of a great spell such as this, he had no idea. He only remembered Songyun saying something that he had always heard the wizard say: In order for great things to succeed, we must make some sacrifices.
    This had made sense to him, so he had remembered it.
    Until today; until he watched the rivers of blood flow ceaselessly, as he realised that the bridge between life and death was a short one now, looming ahead for him. A deep sense of fear came upon him, and his thoughts suddenly became confused and chaotic.
    He suddenly felt that those words of Songyun had been wrong, and that Songyun had missed out on many things. At least... at least they should have asked those people whether they wanted to be sacrifices.
    Then, his mind lurched again, and, in his daze, he realised that Songyun had not been wrong, but...
    He suddenly wondered if the Great Priest, as aloof and detached as he was, was really acting out of love for the people. The hundreds of people laid out here, the bodies trapped beneath the river, and even more people who had become entangled in all of this... had their deaths been worth it? Had their deaths been inevitable?
    But he no longer had the strength to open his mouth and ask all these questions. He could not even take one last look at the Great Priest. He could only feel himself slowly begin to fall asleep amidst the ever-dimming darkness around him, and then... he would probably never wake up again...
    The blood flowing out of the thumbs of these hundreds of sacrifices finally dyed the entire sculpture blood-red. Not a single patch of the sculpture was bare, not even in the back, and it now exuded an evil energy.
    It seemed as though some devious ritual had begun. In an instant, the entirety of Mt. Jiangsong, even Baishi Shore on which the Great Priest still stood, began to tremble, and great red waves began to appear in the sky, rolling toward the shore, yet stopping just before they crashed against where the Great Priest stood, and receding once more.
    It appeared as though two great forces were fighting each other.
    The Great Priest sat down and put his palms together. He began to murmur a prayer, as though he were delivering funerary rites for lost souls, but the words he was speaking were primitive-sounding and full of strange noises, an uncanny language.
    The towers of black stones behind him crumbled and the great waves in front of him rushed toward him, but created a strange arch shape over his head without hurting him one bit.
    At first, the Great Priest looked perfectly fine, but as he finished a prayer, small pricks of blood began to appear all across his clasped hands, looking highly abnormal. There were at least a hundred wounds.
    Yet he did not stop reciting his prayers, as though he felt no pain at all.
    But it was like those pricks of blood were alive. As the Great Priest prayed, the blood began to crawl across the back of his hand, though every bit that they moved seemed to be done with great difficulty.
    The Great Priest still wore his silver mask, hiding his face. But in the blink of an eye, a thin layer of sweat had appeared across his temples, beside the mask –– although he made no noise nor movement, it seemed that he was putting all his effort into his magic.
    Slowly, the blood flowed from the back of his hand into his sleeves and up his arms.
    The wind and waves became more frenzied, and the waves were so large that they seemed to want to swallow the earth whole. In the distance, the little buildings by the river were pummelled mercilessly by the red waves, and quickly collapsed with the sound of crunching and breaking. Another wave hit and washed the buildings cleanly away, into the current.
    At the same time, a golden thread as thin as lightning was swimming across the faraway sky as quick as thunder. Before anyone could react, the thread had gone toward the northeast, had landed somewhere with an enormous noise, and then gone to the southwest, and was now headed here.
    As the thread passed Dongting Lake and Mt. Wanshi and made its way to Daze Temple, the Great Priest saw a faint golden light appear by his feet. And those droplets of blood from his hand had crawled up his arms and were now at his neck.
    It was a terrifying sight: a pure-looking monk, covered in dots of blood all across his neck, and, as he continued to pray, that blood was steadfastly climbing up to his face.
    In the instant that the blood reached his chin, a new circle of blood appeared on Heishi Shore.
    A light flashed amidst this circle and two people appeared within it.
    One wore a white monk's robe and appeared to have recently stepped out into the common realm: he was very handsome, yet appeared very cold –– so cold that he inspired fear and terror, like an infinite void hidden beneath a frozen tundra. He was roughly holding a second man by the collar.
    That second man was covered in blood, and his previously grey robes were full of mud and in tatters. All the visible parts of his skin, from his arms to his neck and even his face, were severely scratched, as though he had been tortured by something invisible and manically scratched himself to a pulp.
    This bloodied man was none other than the wizard Songyun, from the valley.
    And the person who had captured him was Xuanmin.
    Xuanmin's face was still ice-cold, but his black eyes seemed to have some new emotion in them, something fierce and dark like a storm, and terrifying.
    As the wizard Songyun stepped onto Heishi Shore, he saw the Great Priest sitting with his palms clasped, and suddenly cried out in shock.
    "You're not –– You––" Songyun suddenly lurched, wanting to escape from Xuanmin's grasp, but Xuanmin, with a blank face, moved his hand to clutch the wizard's neck rather than his collar.
    "You––" Songyun had greatly suffered in the Cave of a Hundred Insects, or else he would not have been defeated so easily and ended up in this desolate state. With his neck in Xuanmin's hands, he spoke slowly and with pain. "You're the other–– Ah––"
    Before he could finish his sentence, Xuanmin tightened his grasp –– though it had not been because Xuanmin was paying attention to what Songyun was saying, but that he had seen the spell on Heishi Shore, as well as the drops of blood across the Great Priest's neck.
    Back at the valley, when the fourth seal had been broken, Xuanmin had regained another portion of his memories. Those fragmented memories had still been too all over the place, as confusing as if they'd come from a different world, and not something ordinary people could immediately process.
    Before he'd gotten those memories back, Xuanmin had suspected that his relationship with Xue Xian had not been as straightforward as they'd both thought. He'd started to feel that the person he'd been looking for had in fact been Xue Xian all along.
    But it had only been a feeling, and he had continued to have doubts.
    But when he'd seen himself calculate a dragon's catastrophe date in his own memories, he'd felt as though his entire person had been plunged into an infinite darkness, down and down, never to see the light again.
    Xuanmin had been the one who had maimed Xue Xian. What words could resolve that? So Xue Xian had left without turning back, and Xuanmin could not chase after him –– he could only watch as that long shadow rose into the skies and then disappeared into the clouds, without another trace.
    He would probably never see him again.
    But no matter whether Xue Xian wanted to see him again, he had to repay his debt. So he'd captured Songyun and immediately drawn a spell to transport him to where the dragon bones were buried. No matter what he'd done in the past, he now had to completely clear this debt once and for all.
    A bone for a bone.
    If he caused a disaster, he would suppress it. If he cost people their lives, he would repay it.
    But as he finally arrived at Heishi Shore, he realised that things were far different than he'd imagined. That monk in the silver mask sitting across from him, praying –– he'd seen the man before.
    When he'd been a child, this monk had punished him by making him copy sutras in the freezing snow, and this monk had also brought him indoors, had given him a small heater to help him warm up again, had lectured him on moral lessons, had tucked him into bed, had made sure, when he left, that the door was shut tightly.
    A very long time ago, he'd called this monk Shifu. But he had not called him that for a dozen years or more.
    Although his memories were still unclear and full of gaps, Xuanmin could remember that, many, many years ago, the first time he had ever called this monk Shifu, the monk had been silent for some time, and then waved his hand dismissively and said, "We are but old friends meeting again. I cannot be your Shifu."
    He had not understood what the monk had meant, and then he had stopped thinking about it.
    Now, he remembered a great deal, but not much of it was related to this monk. When he first laid eyes upon the Great Priest, sitting there, praying, he'd intuitively felt a strange, complex emotion surge forth –– he didn't know what it was, but he knew for sure that it was not an emotion a disciple should have been feeling toward his master.
    In that moment, Xuanmin frowned, and then he understood––
    Because this "Shifu" who looked just like him was sitting next to a great spell, and this spell was not one to save lives nor to save the world, but a life exchange spell, one whose only aim was to bring the monk fortune and virtue.