Chapter 22 (2/2)

Wei WuXian asked again, “Then where is he right now?”

The strings paused for a moment, then replied. Wei WuXian hurried to ask, “What did he say?”

Lan WangJi’s face was solemn, “It said, ‘Right here.’”

Wei WuXian was dumbfounded.

“Here” probably referred to this stone castle. But, before this, they searched through the whole place, and hadn’t seen Jin Ling. Wei WuXian spoke, “It can’t lie, right?”

Lan WangJi, “I am here, so it cannot.”

Indeed, it couldn’t. The person inquiring was HanGuang-Jun. Under his control, the spirit who came was unable to lie, and had definitely been answering the truth. Wei WuXian proceeded to search around this room, looking for any mechanisms or secret rooms that he had missed. After a thinking for a moment, he played a few more phrases. However, after he received the answer, his expression changed slightly. Seeing this, Wei WuXian asked, “What did you ask this time?”

Lan WangJi, “How old he was; where he was from.”

Both of these questions were attempts to find out the identity of the spirit. Wei WuXian knew that he definitely received some sort of an unconventional answer, “How was it?”

Lan WangJi, “Fifteen, from Lanling.”

Wei WuXian’s expression changed as well.

The soul that “Inquire” had found was Jin Ling?!

He listened intently. Amid the noise that seemed to have bombarded here, there really seemed to be a few weak shouts coming from Jin Ling. They were faint, however, and indistinct.

Lan WangJi continued to ask. Wei WuXian knew that he was asking for the precise location, so he stared fixedly at the strings of the guqin, waiting for Jin Ling’s answer.

This time, the answer came a bit slower. After he finished listening, Lan WangJi spoke to Wei WuXian, “‘Stand at where you are, face the southwest, and listen to the strings. After each note is played, walk forward one step. When the sound stops, it will be right in front of you.’”

Without saying a word, Wei WuXian turned toward the southwest. Behind him came seven notes of the guqin, so he walked seven steps forward. However, nothing had appeared in front of him.

The notes continued, but the pause between them grew longer and longer, and he also walked slower and slower. Another step, and another, and another…

After the sixth step, the guqin finally silenced. No more notes sounded.

And, before him, there was only a wall.

The wall was made of grey-white rock bricks, pieced together tightly. Wei WuXian turned around, “… He’s in the wall?!”

Bichen unsheathed. Four streaks of blue light swept past, and a neat pound sign had been carved onto the wall. The two went forward to take apart the bricks. After removing some of them, a large sheet of black dirt was exposed.

It seemed that the stone castle was made to be double-layered, filled with dirt between the two layers of hard rock. Using his bare hands, Wei WuXian dug out a large chunk of dirt. Surrounded by the coal-black dirt, there was a human’s face, eyes tightly shut.

It was the missing Jin Ling!

Having his face enveloped in dirt, as soon as it appeared, air poured into Jin Ling’s mouth and nose. He immediately started to cough and breathe. As Wei WuXian saw that he was still alive, his heart finally calmed. Jin Ling really did almost die. Or else, “Inquiry” wouldn’t have caught the still-alive soul that was about to leave his body. The good thing was that only a short while passed after he was buried into the wall. If it took them any longer, he would have suffocated to death.

The two hastened to dig him out of the wall. However, who knew that, as if dirt clung onto a carrot being pulled out of the ground, the moment Jin Ling’s upper body emerged from the dirt, the sword on his back caught on something else and dragged it out.

It was the ashen bone of a human arm!

Lan WangJi laid Jin Ling flat onto the ground and felt for his pulse. Wei WuXian, on the other hand, took up the sheath of Bichen, and skillfully started to poke around in the dirt, following the length of the bone. After a short while, a complete skeleton appeared before their eyes.

This skeleton was the same as how Jin Ling looked, buried inside the wall in a standing position. With ghastly pale bones and pitch-black dirt—the contrast was distinct yet glaring to the eye. Wei WuXian dug a bit more through the ground, and broke away a few pieces of bricks on the side. After some more rustling around, sure enough, he found another skeleton nearby.

This one hadn’t decayed completely yet. There were still some flesh on the bones, and long, messy hair on the skull. From the ragged clothing in the shade of a watered down red, he could tell that this was a woman. However, she wasn’t standing, with her skeleton bending down. The reason of this was that there was a third skeleton beside her, squatting down by her feet.

Wei WuXian stopped digging further.

He took a few steps back. The noise in his ears was as wild and turbulent as tidal waves.

He could almost be sure of it. The inside of this stone castle’s thick walls was packed with human corpses.

Above, below, southeast, northwest; standing, sitting, lying, squatting…

Just what on Earth was this place?!

Translator’s NotesSword: Although this was translated as a “sword”, the Chinese character of this is different from that of a sword’s. The character used here means “knife.” The difference between a “sword” and a “knife” is that the first attacks by stabbing, while the second attacks by slicing or chopping. However, they both look like a “sword” in Western standards.

Inquiry: The literal meaning of this is “to ask a spirit.”