Mu Qingyan had made his name on nerve and daring, and even a beast as ancient and monstrous as this one couldn't shake him. He grabbed Cai Zhao's arm, ready to pull her away from the cracked opening, but she planted her feet and refused to move, her face taut with worry. "Qian Xueshen is still down there!"
"He wanted a death match, and now he's got one. What does that have to do with us?" Mu Qingyan asked.
"You're just going to stand here and watch him die?"
Mu Qingyan looked ready to knock her out cold and carry her off. "We need to go, now, before we end up down there with him."
"Go on ahead. I'll meet you at the bottom of the mountain." Cai Zhao didn't wait for an argument. She wrenched her arm free and ran toward the crack in the ice.
Mu Qingyan was left standing there with empty hands and nothing to say. "...You don't even believe that yourself."
The broken mouth of the ice cave dropped away into darkness, bottomless as far as anyone could tell. Cai Zhao knelt at the edge and looked down into the black. A huge spar of ice rose from the middle of the pit, and coiled on top of it was the python, roused from its sleep and clearly furious. Its emerald eyes had gone wide and glinted with a cold, murderous light.
Duan Jiuxiu and the others were scattered across the ice walls below, clinging at different heights. Duan Jiuxiu himself was closest to the bottom, having fallen fastest and farthest.
The great snake lay coiled in the dark ice, its eyesight clearly poor. It swung its massive head slowly from side to side, hunting by scent for whatever living thing had disturbed its rest. Cai Zhao flattened herself against the cave mouth and didn't dare move.
While everyone below held their breath, the snake's head swept in a half circle and stopped, aimed squarely at Duan Jiuxiu.
Cai Zhao's mind raced. When Duan Jiuxiu had cut off Zhou Zhiqin's head earlier, the blood must have splashed him, leaving a scent trail the python couldn't ignore. A grim satisfaction rose in her. It seemed heaven kept its own accounts after all.
The snake's head drifted closer, and a chill swept through the cavern. Sweat beaded on Duan Jiuxiu's forehead. He cursed Zhou Zhiqin and Cai Zhao under his breath, then, with a snap of his wrist, sent a coil of ox-tendon rope flying, catching sight as he did of Qian Xueshen hanging less than two feet below him, watching with open relish.
Fury flared in Duan Jiuxiu. He risked his right arm, letting half the coiled tendon fly loose, and lashed it around Qian Xueshen, hurling him down into the gap right in front of the python's jaws. The great beast was already opening its mouth wide over the abyss, its two fangs as thick as tree trunks.
Seeing Qian Xueshen about to be ground between those teeth, Cai Zhao didn't hesitate. She leaped from the wall, sending her silver chain snapping out to yank him clear of the snake's mouth, and in the same motion swung with all her strength, striking the python hard across the side of its neck.
Duan Jiuxiu used the opening to scramble down the wall like a lizard, but a shadow of swaying cloth appeared just above him, and a cold voice cut through the air. "Elder Duan. Time to fall."
The kick caught him square in the chest, numbing half his body, and he dropped straight into the dark below. Even so, he managed to curl the fingers of his good hand into claws and dig them into the ice, slowing his fall.
Cai Zhao had Qian Xueshen's collar in her left fist and drove her knife into the wall with her right, sliding down after them both. Mu Qingyan, having just finished kicking Duan Jiuxiu loose, caught a glimpse of the hem of her robe flaring as she dropped.
He let out a satisfied sigh. He was, he decided, not merely an admirable man but something closer to a bodhisattva of mercy, saving the suffering wherever he found them. Someone really ought to put his statue on an altar and burn incense before it daily. Pleased with the thought, he jumped down after her. On the way, he spotted Qinong and Hu Tianwei scrabbling for purchase on the ice wall, so he flicked his long sleeve and swept the two of them off along with everyone else.
The python was an ancient and terrible creature, its scales harder than iron plate, impervious to ordinary blades. But the Sun Knife was no ordinary weapon. Forged and tempered under the blazing sun itself, it was uniquely suited to cutting a beast that lived and thrived on cold.
The blade bit deep, and the python thrashed in agony, its long tail cracking through the air like a whip. Each strike shattered the ice walls around them, sending down a rain of jagged blocks that forced all six of them to keep low, unable to stand straight.
In the shuddering cave, Qinong and Hu Tianwei were thrown to the ground. Mu Qingyan hauled Cai Zhao up by force. Only Duan Jiuxiu managed to stay off the floor, dangling from a jut of ice by his length of ox tendon.
The cavern dropped more than two hundred feet, a sheer abyss. From where they'd landed, looking up showed only a narrow strip of sky, no wider than a palm. And yet, strangely, the cave itself wasn't dark. The walls glowed faintly, shimmering like moving water.
Watching all this, Duan Jiuxiu thought bitterly that there was no escaping his troubles today. Trapped deep in a python's den with the beast circling, there seemed no way out at all.
"Ahhh!" Qinong's scream tore through the cave, and beside him Hu Tianwei made a strangled, gagging sound. Both their faces had gone slack with a terror beyond words.
By the pale light off the walls, the group realized this wasn't just the python's nest. It was a pit of bones.
The uneven floor was heaped with the remains of animals and people alike. Snow eagles, hares, roe deer, snow leopards, all reduced to scattered bone, showed what the python fed on. Worse were the human remains mixed among them. The ones reduced to bare bone were almost a mercy to look at. Far worse were the corpses still largely whole, preserved by the killing cold of the ice cave even after the python had stripped them.
Qinong had landed on top of a body half devoured, a face with beard and hair still intact staring back up at him, close enough to touch. His courage failed him completely. Hu Tianwei had rolled into a heap of picked-clean bones and promptly vomited, blood and ice crusting his face.
Cai Zhao gripped the ice wall and swallowed down her own nausea. Qian Xueshen had gone pale, but a burning need for vengeance kept him sharp and alert. Only Mu Qingyan seemed entirely unbothered. Believing himself to be offering comfort, he remarked, "This is much nicer than the Cliff of Immortal Worship at Shenjiao. At least it's cold enough here that the bodies don't rot. Fall onto that cliff and you'd be sliding around on slick bone before you even got your feet under you. Slippery rotten brains everywhere. You couldn't keep your balance if you tried."
Cai Zhao's face had gone green. "Please. Stop talking."
The six of them pressed themselves to the wall as best they could until the python's rage finally began to ease and the ice stopped raining down, and only then did anyone dare look up.
The moment the falling ice stopped, the python turned back toward them, jaws gaping. Everyone braced. Then, without warning, Qian Xueshen hurled a small porcelain bottle down at Qinong and Hu Tianwei's feet.
It shattered on the ice, spraying a pale yellow, sticky fluid that splashed both of them. At first they braced for poison, but there was no burning, no pain at all. Even so, the python's forked tongue flicked out and locked onto them immediately.
After a few wild, undirected strikes, the python seemed to fix on Qinong and Hu Tianwei specifically, its huge head snapping at the two of them again and again. Their skill was nowhere near Duan Jiuxiu's, and they came within a hair of being caught. It was only because Mu Qingyan and Duan Jiuxiu struck the python's belly from the side that the two weren't turned to ice where they stood by its freezing breath.
But the python's body was massive, long enough to coil around the pit floor seven or eight times, and soon there was nowhere left for anyone to dodge to.
Cai Zhao dragged Qian Xueshen back with all her strength as he tried to lunge forward again. "Get up top first. He and I will follow."
Qian Xueshen twisted free, his voice bitter. "Save the chivalry. Someone like me isn't worth saving."
"You're not a bad person. You don't have to do this." Cai Zhao's jaw was tight.
Qian Xueshen let out a laugh that came out more like a sob. "Not a bad person? Me? Are you blind?"
"Maybe I was blind," Cai Zhao said, refusing to back down. "But not anymore. Why did you release the white-haired rams on our very first night in the mountains? Why go to such trouble, even letting your enemies slip away, just to plant that bottle of Snow-Scaled Dragon saliva where I'd find it? I understand it all now."
She put herself in his position. The deeper into the mountains the group went, the better it served Qian Xueshen.
That first night, they'd still been close to the base of the mountain. If the white-haired rams had terrified Chen Fuguang and Jin Baohui badly enough, the two cowards might have simply fled back down without a second thought, and everything Qian Xueshen had worked toward would have collapsed.
As for the jade bottle of saliva left with the frozen corpse, that placement had been carefully planned too.
The two white-haired rams had gone after Lantian Yu and Dongfang Xiao. With Hu Tianwei's master and apprentice scrambling to escape, Lantian Yu had held them off, while Zhou Zhiqin had been forced to look after the injured Dongfang Xiao. That left Jin Baohui with no one to lean on but Mu Qingyan and Cai Zhao.
When the cave shook a second time and everyone scattered for cover, Jin Baohui had naturally ended up alongside them.
The frozen corpse itself had been placed there specifically for Jin Baohui to find.
Anyone else might have walked past it without a second glance, but Jin Baohui knew the scent of Snow-Scaled Dragon saliva on sight. It would have caught his attention instantly, and led straight to Mu Qingyan and Cai Zhao claiming it.
"You didn't leave that saliva so we'd kill each other over it with Duan Jiuxiu," Cai Zhao shouted over the roar of the fight around them. "You wanted us to get what we came for and head back down the mountain fast, straight out of whatever trap you'd built!"
Qian Xueshen's face went rigid, and for a moment every word landed true.
Mu Qingyan, leaning against the ice wall, couldn't resist a joke even now. "Come on, Zhao Zhao, you think this one's clever enough for all that?"
"Then why release the rams that first night at all? It scared us, sure, but it did nothing else, and it made us wary of white fur ever since. If he'd waited and let them loose in the second ice cave instead, they might have taken a real bite out of us." A sweep of the python's tail forced Cai Zhao to yank Qian Xueshen out of the way.
Mu Qingyan sidestepped it easily, tossing a chunk of ice at the python as he moved. "Because he wasn't good enough to pull it off. You think everyone gets to plan a masterstroke and land it clean on the first try?"
"You're right," Qian Xueshen snapped, shoving Cai Zhao away and charging straight at Duan Jiuxiu. Five or six paces out, he flung down another porcelain bottle, more yellow fluid splattering across the ice.
But Duan Jiuxiu's skill far outstripped Qinong and Hu Tianwei's. Even mid-fight with the python, he dodged smoothly, taking only a single drop of the fluid, and struck back hard enough to send Qian Xueshen slamming into the wall.
"What is this stuff?" Duan Jiuxiu demanded, staring at the yellow slick on the ice, then at Qinong and Hu Tianwei still caught in the python's coils. Understanding dawned on his face.
Qian Xueshen lay sprawled on the ground, blood at the corner of his mouth, laughing raggedly. "Drawn from a female of the species. Drives the males half mad. Hahaha…"
Cai Zhao turned to look. "There's more to him than I thought." Not just animal instinct at play here.
"Look." Mu Qingyan was staring straight ahead, pointing. "Something's stuck to its neck."
Cai Zhao followed his gaze.
For all its thickness, the python's body was supple enough to fold nearly in half when it bent. Only a stretch six or seven feet below the head seemed stiff, unable to curl the way the rest of it did.
They exchanged a look, understanding each other at once, and split off to flank the python from either side.
Cai Zhao darted to the python's head and sprang into the air, both hands on her blade, and brought it down with everything she had. The gold-red edge sheared clean through a run of pure white scales. The python howled in pain, and she was already whipping her silver chain out and swinging herself clear beneath its writhing body. In the same instant, Mu Qingyan dropped from the wall and struck two open-palmed blows against the base of the python's skull.
The impact landed with a deep, sickening crack, and the massive head was knocked half loose from its neck. Maddened with pain, the python thrashed its head and tail in every direction. Hu Tianwei, caught trying to dodge the tail, took a direct hit and coughed up blood where it struck him. Qinong's nerve broke entirely, and he scrambled toward Duan Jiuxiu, screaming, "Master, help me, please, help me!"
Duan Jiuxiu knew exactly what that scent on Qinong meant. The python was male, and it would hunt that trail to the end. He wasn't about to let his apprentice anywhere near him. "Get away from me!" he barked, and struck Qinong hard across the face with the back of his hand.
Qinong never saw it coming. The blow sent him tumbling out of the air, thin lines of red trickling from his mouth, nose, and ears.
At that moment the python made a strange, wet, gurgling sound. It twisted against the ice wall a few more times, and something slick pushed its way out of its bloodied mouth. Everyone looked down to see a man, soaked through and barely recognizable.
His limbs and spine had gone soft as rope, his skin bleached and swollen, his whole body slicked with python saliva. And yet he was still moving, still able to twist and let out a sound.
Everyone recoiled in disgust. Only Mu Qingyan, unbothered as ever, studied the swollen face and said calmly, "That's Chen Fuguang."
The floor of the cave was uneven, and Qinong had rolled into one of the low points when he fell. When the python spat Chen Fuguang out, he rolled to a stop right beside him.
Chen Fuguang lifted his head slowly, revealing a face and neck eaten raw by the python's stomach acid. Qinong let out a shriek of pure terror. Then Chen Fuguang twisted hard, opened his ruined mouth, and clamped his teeth into Qinong's throat.
His teeth were the only weapon he had left. Everything else about him had already been destroyed.
A wet, choking sound rose from Qinong's throat. His whole body convulsed, and blood poured out around Chen Fuguang's bite.
Chen Fuguang didn't let go until Qinong stopped moving. Then he let out a burst of high, broken laughter, and died where he lay.