Chapter 39: In the Mourning Mountains

Chapter 39: In the Mourning Mountain

Because of the darkness, their lack of adaptation, and perhaps fear as well, nearly everyone with a torch had lit it upon entering the cave, hoping to illuminate the path ahead. Yet the torchlight scattered poorly, smoke and dust hung in the air, and the cave’s uneven floor meant that only a limited area could be seen.

Zhang Sanlu and Old Yao conferred for a moment, then turned and called for several torches in the group to be extinguished, planning to alternate their use later. Zhang Sanlu also reasoned that if the air inside was poorly ventilated, fewer torches would help conserve oxygen. Since he couldn’t hold a torch and be prepared for danger at the same time, Old Yao took the lead, holding the torch at the front.

The cave felt incredibly deep. Zhang Sanlu guessed they had walked nearly a hundred meters when suddenly Old Yao, right ahead of him, gave a startled sound.

Zhang Sanlu hurried forward and found that the passage suddenly bent sharply. The turn was so abrupt that it formed a nearly acute angle with the path they’d followed in; the bend was tight, almost as if the cave corridor had folded upon itself.

After the turn, the group proceeded another hundred meters, only to encounter another large bend, this time nearly a right angle. Zhang Sanlu did some rough calculations in his mind: with these two sharp turns, if they kept going, they would end up nearly parallel to where they had entered. Since he’d noticed only one entrance in the previous cavern, it seemed likely the end of this tunnel was a dead end. The cave’s many twists and sharp angles were a true testament to nature’s uncanny craftsmanship.

A little farther on, Zhang Sanlu noticed the cave walls on either side suddenly vanished. He raised his torch to peer ahead, but the end was lost in a vague, impenetrable blackness—a vast, dark space loomed before them.

For a moment, Zhang Sanlu wondered if they had circled back to the original cave entrance. But he saw not the faintest glimmer of light, and upon recalling the large stone plaza at the mouth of the cave, he remembered that everyone had thoroughly inspected it—there had been only one passage, with no sign of another way back.

Now, seeing nothing but utter darkness ahead, it was certain this was not the same place. The previous twists, changes in elevation, and slopes must have brought them to a different, hollow cave.

The group, already growing restless from the cramped tunnel, strode eagerly into the cavern, sweeping their torchlight back and forth, anxious to survey this new space.

As Zhang Sanlu moved forward, casting his gaze around by torchlight, he suddenly noticed Old Yao, just ahead, shudder violently.

Zhang Sanlu’s heart clenched. It was the instinctive reaction of someone encountering a sudden shock in such an enclosed and pitch-black place. Instantly, his hand found the hammer strapped to his back—a tool more useful against evil forces than the short sword at his waist.

All these thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant.

Guo Qi, following closely behind Zhang Sanlu, paid no heed to Old Yao’s abrupt halt and walked forward a few more steps. When his torch swept the space ahead, he abruptly froze as if his soul had left his body, uttering a low, breathless gasp—an involuntary, sharp intake of breath, the kind a person makes when suddenly chilled to the bone. He could no longer speak.

Within a few heartbeats, the entire group, Zhang Sanlu included, had entered the cavern. The torches swept across the chamber. With a clang, someone dropped their axe or torch to the ground. Then followed cries of shock and the muffled barking of dogs.

“Ah—!”

Some, after a moment of stunned silence, broke out into hoarse, desperate screams, their voices echoing endlessly in the dark cave. Zhang Sanlu felt his heart pounding wildly; he forced himself to swallow, striving to calm down.

“Immortal master… Daoist lord… this… this…”

Everywhere the torchlight reached, nothing could be seen but a sea of white bones. In this cavern, whose true size was still obscured by darkness, the ground was piled high with human remains, bleached and ghastly.

This chamber was certainly larger than the previous one, but its full extent was hidden in darkness. Yet most of the floor, as far as the torches could illuminate, was covered in bones—too many to count. The flickering light revealed not only twisted arms and legs, but also heaps of skulls stacked into small mounds, and even the bones of children. In this space, time itself seemed to have stopped. The cries, struggles, and pleas for help that once filled this place had long been swallowed by the darkness, dissolved into endless silence.

Some of the skeletons looked relatively fresh, while others had yellowed and blackened—who could say how many years they had lain there? Even in two lifetimes, Zhang Sanlu had only seen such scenes in photographs depicting the aftermath of war. Compared to the cave where Master Tongxuan refined his human pills, this was a horror on an entirely different scale.

“Ghost fire… ghost fire…”

The sheer volume of corpses lent a strange odor to the air, and in the darkness beyond the torchlight, faint blue phosphorescence seemed to flicker.

Under such circumstances, Zhang Sanlu believed that the sudden terror—or rather, the shock—was something no one, however brave, could suppress. The only difference was that some people exposed their fear completely, while others managed to regain control, their minds snapping back to clarity after a momentary blank.

For Zhang Sanlu, the shock of seeing so many bones far outweighed his fear. Having faced true horror before—the kind that chills the soul as if staring into the abyss—he understood that these remains themselves could do him no harm. What they brought was only the innate human terror of confronting death.

For those who had walked the edge of death, or seen true terror, this was nothing—like Old Yao, standing just ahead.

After the initial shock of entering the cave, Zhang Sanlu quickly turned his attention to observing everyone’s reactions. In moments of intense fear or astonishment, a person's truest self was revealed, stripped of all pretense.

“Stop shouting,” Old Yao barked suddenly.

“They’re just bones. When you’re dead, you’ll look just the same. What’s there to be afraid of?” Guo Qi shouted, his voice louder even than Old Yao’s, though Zhang Sanlu sensed from his tone that he was far less composed than he pretended.

“What is that?!”