0p0 Chapter 187 Perilous Exploration in the Deep Mountains
Chapter 187 Perilous Exploration in the Deep Mountains
Chapter 187 Perilous Encounter While Exploring the Deep Mountains
Exploring the incense in the deep mountains is fraught with danger.
The morning mist wove a veil through the forest. Su Yunlan bent down and parted the wild mugwort covered with dew, gently rubbing her fingertips against the dark purple stems and leaves.
When Young Master Xiao approached with the bamboo basket, the jade pendant at her waist suddenly emitted a warm glow, illuminating the fine silver threads on the back of the leaves with exquisite detail.
"It's a silver-veined iris!" The boy's excited voice startled the red-billed blue magpie on the branch. "Fourth Sister-in-law, look! This is just like the one depicted in the 'Heavenly Fragrance Manual'..."
"Hush." Xiao Yuhan's sword sheath was placed between the two of them, and the crisp sound of a withered branch breaking came from behind the moss-covered rocks.
Ten zhang away on the precipice, Wu Xiang, the spice merchant, had his scarlet brocade robe billowing in the mountain wind, turning it into bloody bubbles. The curved swords at the waists of more than twenty thugs reflected the rising sun, gleaming with a cold, venomous light in the thin mist.
Su Yunlan's embroidered shoes crushed half a spider web, and the vibration of the broken silk strings shot up her spine from her toes.
She gazed at the golden monkey ear vines hanging from the cliff face—the very 'Thousand Sounds Lingering' essential ingredient for making Garan Incense. The incense ash that had been corrupted by puppetry last night suddenly surged in her memory, mixed with the chilling smile of the Ghost Face from the Rebirth Pavilion.
&34; Madam Xiao, are you really going to cut off our livelihood? &34; Wu, the spice merchant, turned the jade thumb ring on his thumb, and the gold-inlaid pipe struck the stone wall, sparks flying. &34; I heard you keep a group of medicine people in your inn?
How about we make a deal? You give me three drops of your heart's blood, and I'll give you half a pound of kalanchoe wood chips. &34;
Young Master Xiao suddenly blew a partridge whistle.
The bushes thirty paces away rustled in response, and the boy's left hand, hidden behind his back, suddenly shot up, scattering pine needles soaked in itching powder the night before towards the thug's neck like a shower of petals.
Taking advantage of the moment when everyone was scratching and screaming, Su Yunlan lightly flicked her wide sleeves, and the iron caltrops prepared in her space slipped through her fingers and bloomed into black poisonous lotuses in the pile of withered leaves.
"A mere trick!" Wu the Spice Merchant sneered from beneath his fanged mask, a poisoned silver needle popping from the tip of his pipe.
Just as Su Yunlan was about to dodge, Xiao Yuhan's black cloak, already wrapped in pine resin, shielded her behind him. The silver needles, sent flying by the sword energy, pierced the ancient cypress, instantly corroding the bark and leaving scorch marks shaped like a peacock's tail.
The mountain wind suddenly changed direction.
Su Yunlan smelled the fishy odor of ambergris floating in the air, and the jade pendant suddenly became hot.
She grabbed Xiao Yuhan's wrist with her other hand, and from the depths of the cliff where the golden monkey ear vines were wrapped, came the muffled sound of a mechanism turning, and dozens of crossbow bolts coated with sulfur powder came flying through the air.
&34; Hold your breath! &34;
The bamboo basket thrown by Young Master Xiao Twenty-Three exploded into an umbrella-like shape in mid-air, and Su Yunlan took the opportunity to pull out the improved Rainstorm Pear Blossom Needle from her spatial storage.
As the fine needle, coated with paralyzing powder, pierced the bend of the thug's knee, Wu, the spice merchant, stared in horror at the jade pendant at her waist—the phoenix pattern flowing on it was exactly the same as the totem on the tenon and mortise of the crossbow mechanism.
"Retreat!" The scarlet brocade robe, billowing with poisonous smoke, disappeared into the crevice in the rocks. Xiao Yuhan's sword tip picked up half a tattered peacock feather.
Su Yunlan crouched down to examine the thugs' corpses and discovered that they all had rice-grain-sized beads of garland ash embedded behind their ears, just like the ones on the puppet herbalist.
The mountain fog thickened, obscuring the boy's joyful figure.
Xiao Yuhan silently tightened the rope on the sword hilt three more times. He watched Su Yunlan's shoulder line tremble slightly as she collected the golden monkey ear vine, his Adam's apple bobbed, but he ultimately remained silent.
A lone goose cried out from the cliff top, and amidst the flurry of petals, the purple bamboo tube tied to Su Yunlan's wrist with a red rope suddenly emitted wisps of smoke, which condensed into half of a tattered map.
(End of this chapter) The warmth of Xiao Yuhan's palm seeped into Su Yunlan's wrist bone through the rope wrapped around the sword hilt. She looked at the black-clad figure blocking her way and suddenly remembered the old scar on his lower back that she had glimpsed three days ago when she was taking a medicinal bath.
The arrow wound, which should have pierced her kidney, now undulated beneath her clothes with his sword-wielding movements, like a lurking beast, making her throat tighten even more than the golden monkey ear vines hanging from the cliff.
&34; Watch out on the left! &34;
Xiao Yunlan's reminder was mixed with the clanging of metal clashing together.
Three poisoned crossbow bolts grazed the silver clasp binding Xiao Yuhan's hair, and the mud splattered from the decaying leaves at his feet stained Su Yunlan's embroidered shoes.
She instinctively reached out to grab him, only to find that Xiao Yuhan had already turned and pulled her into the shadow of his cloak. The wind stirred up by the sword energy swept past her ears, severing a strand of her flowing black hair.
"Don't get distracted." Xiao Yuhan's voice was like a blade soaked in snow water, cutting through the thick fog and the stench of blood.
His left hand remained in a guarding posture, while his right hand, with the sharp edge of his sword, precisely deflected a scorpion-tail dart hidden between the fingers of one of the henchmen.
Su Yunlan smelled the scent of agarwood emanating from his sleeve. It was a calming incense she had personally prepared that morning, now mixed with the smell of sulfur and blood, which gave rise to a kind of tenderness that made people tremble.
The fanged mask of the spice merchant Wu flickered in and out of the shadows of the trees: "Madam Xiao, do you know why kalanchoe is more valuable than gold?" He suddenly flung out his gold-inlaid pipe, and his jade ring slammed against the mechanism: "Because this fragrance can corrode bones—just like those drugged people in your inn's cellar!"
The moment the purple mist exploded, Su Yunlan's jade pendant was so hot she could barely hold it.
Young Master Xiao's partridge whistle changed its tune, and the boy staggered and bumped into the ancient cypress tree behind him, his bare neck instantly covered with spiderweb-like red spots.
Su Yunlan reached into the air and pulled out a jade porcelain bottle. The antidote pill that he flicked out from his fingertip was still in mid-air when Xiao Yuhan smashed it into dust with his sword sheath.
The medicinal mist, carried by the mountain breeze, rushed towards us.
Su Yunlan suddenly understood the tension in his jawline—the poisonous fog dissolves upon contact with water, and the clothes of Young Master Xiao, which had just been stained with morning dew, were hissing.
She suddenly ripped off the red rope around her wrist, and the map formed by the condensed smoke in the purple bamboo tube suddenly unfolded. The incomplete lines and the medicinal powder floating in the air actually outlined the shape of the Big Dipper.
"Three steps to the Xun position!" She dragged Xiao Yuhan and crashed into the strange rocks protruding from the cliff face.
A tremor of meshing mechanisms came from beneath the humus soil, and the once rock-solid mountain suddenly collapsed, creating a narrow crevice just wide enough for one person to pass through.
The spice merchant Wu roared as he chased after them, his voice mingling with the rustling of gravel: "You think you can survive by escaping into the forbidden area of the dragon vein?"
Darkness enveloped the three of them like thick honey, while the tinderbox lit by Xiao Yuhan's sword illuminated the moss on the wall.
Su Yunlan stroked the slippery moss and found that it was arranged in a strange spiral pattern, which completely overlapped with a mark on the purple bamboo tube map.
Young Master Xiao suddenly groaned, and yellow fluid seeped from the back of the boy's hand as he scratched his neck.
"It's a Garan Wood Gu." Su Yunlan dipped her finger in the saliva from his wound and brought it close to her nose. The stench of dragon's saliva mixed with the unique scent of corpse silkworms from the Rebirth Pavilion. "Boss Wu mixed Gu eggs into the spices; they will hatch when they come into contact with blood." As she spoke, she took out an ice jade box from her spatial storage and used a silver needle to prick the back of Xiao Yuhan's hand, which had been scratched by monkey ear vines the previous night. Sure enough, she saw half an inch of red thread moving under the skin.
Xiao Yuhan watched silently as she administered acupuncture to him.
The firelight illuminated his drooping eyelashes, casting butterfly-wing-like shadows on his angular face.
Just as Su Yunlan's silver needle was about to pierce the Quchi acupoint, he suddenly spoke: "If I lose control..."
"Then let me protect you." Su Yunlan inserted the poisoned silver needle into the rock crevice, watching the moss wither instantly, and chuckled. "Fourth Young Master, have you forgotten that the snow wolf you brought back from the Northern Frontier was tamed by me?"
A foul stench suddenly filled the narrow, dark passage.
The exclamation of Young Master Xiao caught in his throat as the tinderbox illuminated a dense array of amber-colored dots in front of him.
Those were hundreds of ghost-faced bats hanging upside down from the cave ceiling, their eerie patterns on their wing membranes exactly matching the tattoo on the back of Wu Xiangshang's hand.
Su Yunlan touched the jade pendant at her waist, and the warm jade suddenly became scorching hot—the direction of the phoenix pattern was perfectly synchronized with the frequency of the ghost-faced bat's wing flapping.
Close your eyes!
Xiao Yuhan's sword wind swept across, carrying the tinder, and Su Yunlan took the opportunity to throw out the improved beast-driving pill.
As the explosion shook the stalactites off the cave ceiling, she dragged the two of them into a side passage that suddenly appeared on the right.
The swarm of bats, reeking of foul odor, was blocked behind by falling rocks, but the sound of flowing water came from ahead.
"It's an underground river." Xiao Yuhan's sword tip lifted a purplish-black petal floating on the water's surface. "These datura flowers shouldn't bloom in winter."
The moment Su Yunlan's embroidered shoes touched the damp riverbank, the red rope around her wrist suddenly taut.
Fresh blue smoke seeped from the purple bamboo tube, drawing a giant tree with twisted branches on the cave wall. The missing part of the tree crown was exactly where the map was incomplete.
She bent down and picked up a black stone with sharp edges, and found specks of sap from golden monkey ear vine on it—this plant, which should grow on cliffs, was found deep underground.
The faint sound of bells could be heard from the opposite bank of the underground river.
Suddenly, Young Master Xiao convulsed all over, and scale-like patterns appeared on his neck, which was being eroded by the Gu poison.
Su Yunlan inserted the last three antidote needles into Xiao Yuhan's Tianchi acupoint, and turned her head to meet Xiao Yuhan's watery eyes.
The rope binding the hilt of his sword had somehow come loose, revealing the love knot woven from her hair on the inside.
"Carry him on your back." Xiao Yuhan bit the tinderbox between his teeth, his sword cleaving through the driftwood entangled in water plants. "I'll clear the way."
Amidst the ripples spreading across the water, Su Yunlan caught a glimpse of stark white bones floating at the bottom of the river.
The skeletons all had wooden beads around their wrists, and their empty eye sockets all turned in the same direction as the water flowed.
As she leaped to the other side, using the foothold Xiao Yuhan had created, the twenty-third young master Xiao in her arms suddenly murmured: "...Mother said that the incense needs to be mixed with human blood to awaken the spirit..."
The bell stopped ringing abruptly.
Moonlight streamed in through a crack in the rock above, illuminating the bronze door hidden by vines in front of it.
At this moment, Su Yunlan's jade pendant emitted a clear and melodious sound, and the mottled phoenix pattern on the door seemed to respond to the call and began to flow slowly.
Xiao Yuhan's sword tip hovered in mid-air as he gazed at the wisps of blue smoke seeping from the crack in the door—mist of the same origin as the Purple Bamboo Tube Map.
&34; Wait. &34; Su Yunlan pressed down on his sword-wielding hand and took out a silver toad used for testing poison from her spatial storage.
The jade toad turned a strange indigo blue as soon as it touched the bronze door. Suddenly, children's laughter came from inside the door, startling the night owls that were perched among the vines.
Blood began to seep from the scales on Young Master Xiao's neck, and the boy tore off half of Su Yunlan's sleeve in excruciating pain.
The falling fabric was swept towards the bronze door by the night wind, and upon touching the blue smoke, it transformed into gray butterflies that fluttered away.
Su Yunlan stared at the phoenix pattern on the gray butterfly's wings, then suddenly pressed the purple bamboo tube close to the crack in the door—the incomplete map spun wildly, eventually pointing to the way they had come from.
(End of this chapter)