MDZS - In Cinemas Now! Starring WWX and LWJ

Chapter 22 - Contentment

The noise came from all around them. It was an ocean of whispers, rustles, and giggles, from in front and behind, above and below. The voices involved both male and female, old and young, loud and quiet. Wei WuXian could even hear a few fragmented sentences, but they came and went, not allowing him to catch any specific words. It really was too loud.

The audience groaned again as they were assaulted yet again by on onslaught of noise. How could Wei Wuxian bear to listen to this all the time, and even try to listen for words in this garbled mess?? 

Sizhui's face was scrunched up, but seemed the least affected out of all the Lan disciples. He tried to listen for the fragmented sentences that Senior Wei mentioned, but perhaps it was an acquired skill with demonic cultivation, because he couldn't concentrate at all through the wall of noise. Though he did hear something about 'kill' and 'revenge' and - perhaps - 

Wei WuXian continued to press on his temple with one hand, and used the other to grab a palm-sized Compass of Evil from the Qiankun Bag. The pointers on the compass shakily spun two times, then started to spin faster and faster. A few moments later, it spun madly around!

"Oh." Wei Wuxian said as he suddenly recalled the details of what they discovered. "Now I understand why it did that! I'm glad it wasn't my compass that was faulty, haha."

"What do you understand?"some older cultivators asked sourly. "We still don't understand over here, care to explain?"

Wei Wuxian ignored them. If they weren't going to ask nicely, and were too dumb to figure it out themselves, he certainly wasn't going to waste his breath on them. 

Last time, on Dafan Mountain, it had already been strange when the Compass of Evil didn't find the direction. This time, it went as far as to spin all by itself, without pausing for a single moment. This situation was even more unbelievable than the pointers not moving at all! The foreboding shadow in Wei WuXian's heart grew denser.

He called out loud, "Jin Ling!"

With a start, everyone suddenly remembered that Jin Ling was currently missing in this creepy place. Sizhui silently reassured himself that since Jin Ling was completely fine now, Senior Wei and Hanguang Jin must have solved everything. He did hope though that his friend hadn't gotten into too much trouble.

Jin Ling was feeling uncomfortable with all the side-glances directed at him. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the attention (as a general rule, the more attention he got, the happier he was), it was just that the majority of the glances were worried and pitying. It felt a bit humiliating to be the helpless damsel in distress needing to be rescued by the seniors.

The two had already walked for a while inside the stone castle, but they hadn't seen anyone. Wei WuXian had shouted a few times, without receiving any reply. The first stone rooms were all empty, but, as they went in deeper, in the center of one of the rooms, there was a black coffin.

"...a coffin?! So this is a tomb?"

"But whose coffin is it?" The cultivators speculated amongst themselves, immensely enjoying the thrill of the drama. 

"I say, it must be someone important - why else would they build these stone buildings around them?"

"Maybe it's someone really evil, like Wen Ruohan, that's attracting the man-eating monster!"

It was quite odd for a coffin to appear here. However, the wood used was a deep black, and the shape was also crafted in a skilled way. Seeing this, Wei WuXian had an exceptionally strong affinity toward it. 

"Oh, of course the Yiling Patriarch has an affinity with coffins and corpses. After all, he's always digging them up. How disgusting!" Sect Leader Shan said spitefully.