In the stone chamber, everyone exchanged uneasy looks. Outside, the storm raged across the sky, and the tremors from the giant python came steadily closer.
Only Mu Qingyan was still thinking about the matter at hand. He asked Qian Xueshen, "Do you have any Snow-Scale Dragon Beast saliva left?"
Qian Xueshen said guiltily, "No. My father and uncle didn't have much left from what they collected as boys, and I put all of it in that apricot-yellow jade bottle."
Mu Qingyan turned to Cai Zhao. "You really hid the rest of the saliva near the snow hut?"
Cai Zhao gave a rueful smile. "Yes. It's in the ice wall behind the hut."
"Then forget it," Mu Qingyan said. "Even if the python's movements didn't shatter that wall, the hot spring water has washed it away by now."
"Stop poking at everyone's sore spots," Cai Zhao said, genuinely pained.
The Snow Maiden began to hurry them. "You should go. You can't stay here."
After all the commotion, they had only avenged the Tao family. Qian Xueshen was full of remorse. He gritted his teeth and said, "If there's no other way, I'll go with you. Whether they flay me or chop me up, I'll swear to the world that the other man is an impostor!"
"Swear to what?" Cai Zhao snapped. "Besides having people covet your Body-Changing Art, what else would you end up with?"
Mu Qingyan's expression was cold as he pressed on. "Miss Xue, you said earlier that twenty years ago it was the Snow-Scale Dragon Beast that recognized Heroine Cai Pingshu as a descendant of Luoying Valley. How did it recognize her?"
The Snow Maiden considered briefly. "Heroine Cai was wounded then. The Snow-Scale Dragon Beast followed the drops of blood she left and found her. It was already exhausted, yet it clung to a girl it had never met. That is how my master concluded that Heroine Cai was descended from the ancestors."
"So that's how it was." Mu Qingyan let out a long breath. His narrow eyes flicked toward Cai Zhao, and he drew a razor blade, thin as a cicada's wing, from his sleeve. "I'm going to cut one of your fingers and drip the blood onto this shell."
Cai Zhao stared at him. "Will that... work?"
"My father once said that ancient spirit beasts are often bound to their masters by shared feeling, and that comes from the beast fixing on its master's blood. The ancestors of Luoying Valley rescued those two Snow-Scale Dragon Beasts, and they depended on each other for many years. They must have recognized that bloodline long ago."
Cai Zhao was quite willing. "Fine. It's only a cut on a finger. Let's try it." She set the Yanyang Blade and the big egg on the stone table, took the small silver blade with a clean motion, and drew it across the index finger of her left hand.
Everyone watched intently. A drop of bright red blood fell onto the milky white shell and instantly spread into two or three short red threads, like cords sunk into the shell. A moment later the shell gave a soft crack.
The Snow Maiden had spent a full twenty years tending that egg. It was the first time she had heard such a sound, and she let out a startled "Oh?"
Cai Zhao felt a stir of hope and squeezed out a few more drops. The red threads on the shell grew longer and gradually wound all the way around it. Cracks, soft and loud by turns, came without pause. At last the shell split open along the thickest, longest red line, and the creature inside shifted about, whimpering.
Dragging strands of sticky egg fluid, a plump little beast squirmed its way out of the shell.
First came two soft little horns, no bigger than mung beans. Then swollen eyelids and a round head. There were two translucent fleshy wings at its sides. The whole creature was only two or three palms long, and only a row of gleaming white scales along its back showed it was no ordinary puppy.
It braced its stubby limbs on the stone table and wobbled forward, sniffing until it found Cai Zhao, then stuck out a tiny pink tongue and licked and licked.
Cai Zhao had seen her younger brother Cai Han born, and had held him and played with him. She was practiced at this. She slid both hands under the cub's front legs and lifted it like a baby. The little beast struggled to open its amber eyes, blew two spit bubbles, then grinned at Cai Zhao. It was a goofy, adorable grin, and a long string of drool fell from it and soaked the table.
The Snow-Scale Dragon Beast saliva everyone had gone through such hardship to find was now available in any quantity.
"Is this really a Snow-Scale Dragon Beast?" Qian Xueshen was the first to doubt it. "My father and uncle told me the ones they saw as boys were magnificent and mighty." The lump of flesh before him, supposedly an ancient cub, looked sillier and cuter than the little mutt he had kept as a child.
The Snow Maiden's face showed nothing. "My master handed this egg to me himself. There is nothing false about it."
Cai Zhao set the cub down carefully. "Maybe it'll be magnificent and mighty when it grows up."
Everyone's eyes fell on the stone table. The plump, tender cub blew two more bubbles, looking like a lump of meat jelly.
Even Mu Qingyan was silent for a long while. Finally he said, "Perhaps we should leave. From the look of it, this one won't be magnificent or mighty any time soon."
The words had barely left his mouth when the chamber shook violently again. The python was clearly close now. Through the open stone window, the familiar thick smell of blood drifted in on the wind.
Just as they were about to move, the cub on the table suddenly reared up. Its dull, swollen eyelids snapped open and a low growl rumbled in its throat.
Mu Qingyan thought to pick it up, but as soon as he reached out, the cub bared its teeth at him, fierce and menacing. He had to say to Cai Zhao, "Carry it to the window, quickly!"
Cai Zhao understood. She carried the cub to the window at once, so that it could hear the commotion outside and smell the python.
The stench of countless corpses and rotting flesh hung over the ridge, and with a hissing that made the heart quake, the python crept closer. The cub, strangely, grew excited. Its wings snapped fully open, the bright scales along its spine rose one by one, and it lifted its neck and roared. The roar was not loud, but it was low and deep, like a horn sounding from beneath the earth.
Others might not have noticed, but Mu Qingyan knew that the inner structure of the ear differs between humans and beasts, and that beasts can hear sounds humans cannot.
The cub held its thin, short neck rigid and kept roaring. The foul air seemed to freeze in place.
After twenty years, a terror carved into the python's blood was awakened again. That roar came from a natural enemy that had devoured countless of the python's kind since ancient times. In its presence, the once-rampant python race could be skinned and have their sinews pulled out with ease, and then be eaten alive.
No one knew how long they waited. The tremors beneath their feet faded, and the air returned to its former cold, clean chill.
"Did that big snake... leave?" Cai Zhao couldn't be sure. She looked down at the cub in her arms. "It only roared a few times, and the snake just ran off?"
Mu Qingyan glared at the lump of flesh in the girl's arms. "Do you know what a natural enemy is? It is a nemesis that can slaughter an entire race, generation after generation, no matter how many generations they breed. Like our Cult to your Beichen Six Sects."
Cai Zhao said, "...Whatever makes you happy, big brother."
The Snow Maiden judged that the python would retreat into the mountain's depths again. With the danger over, they prepared to leave.
Mu Qingyan was suspicious by nature. Even if the cub was truly a Snow-Scale Dragon Beast, he could not be sure its saliva would really break the Body-Changing Art.
At his insistence, Qian Xueshen sat and circulated his qi for the span of an incense stick, then took out the silver needles he kept hidden against his skin and turned Mu Qingyan into a leering, middle-aged man with a heavy, brutish face, like a butcher.
Cai Zhao thought: ...This is petty revenge.
Mu Qingyan's displeasure showed. He turned a cold stare on Qian Xueshen, who pretended not to understand.
After Mu Qingyan took the saliva, his whole body went ice cold as if he had died. A moment later he returned to his true form.
Cai Zhao was delighted. "So it's real!"
What does a newborn baby have the most of? Drool.
The plump little dragon beast cub grinned stupidly, drooling away with a stream of pfft sounds. The Snow Maiden fetched a half-foot-tall jade bottle from the inner room for Cai Zhao to collect it in. "If it's only to break the Thousand Faces Sect's art, a tiny amount is enough. I don't know how many people you intend to test, but a bottle this size should do."
Cai Zhao caught a detail in her words. "A tiny amount is enough? What's the least someone must drink to be forced back to their true form?"
The Snow Maiden shrugged. "I don't know. But my master said that years ago someone poured one small cup of saliva into a twenty-jin jar of wine, and the forty or fifty people at the banquet all reverted to their true forms."
"What?!" Cai Zhao was astonished. "It works in wine. Would it work in water too?"
"Of course," said the Snow Maiden. "Why else do you think the Thousand Faces patriarch withdrew from the jianghu at his peak? If a Snow-Scale Dragon Beast needed only to spit into a water jar, everyone who drank from it would be exposed. With a flaw that large, how could the Thousand Faces patriarch hold his place? He had no choice but to retire."
Cai Zhao and Mu Qingyan exchanged a look. Qian Xueshen understood at last. "So that's why my sect only dared to come out again after the Snow-Scale Dragon Beasts were confirmed gone from the jianghu for good."
Mu Qingyan gave a mocking smile. "In fact, the Beichen Patriarch foresaw long ago that the Body-Changing Art broke too many taboos and would sooner or later make them targets of everyone. Before he died, he revealed how to counter it, and it was really to protect them. A pity..."
Cai Zhao sighed. "A pity that for all his skill, even the Beichen Patriarch could not foresee human greed. The Thousand Faces Sect could not escape disaster in the end."
The Snow Maiden filled a whole flask with saliva for Cai Zhao and said it was enough to test over a thousand people.
Cai Zhao's two elders were still missing, their fate unknown, and she did not want to linger.
As they said goodbye, the plump little cub kept rubbing against Cai Zhao, clearly attached to her.
Cai Zhao felt a pang. "It's not that I don't want to take you down the mountain. There are too many bad people out there, and you're safer here. Ah, once I find my master and my father, I'll come up and keep you company."
Mu Qingyan snorted. "Forget it. You sulk for days if there's no scallion in your wonton. Someone this attached to the bustle and comforts of the mortal world would barely last three days on this cold, silent mountaintop, and you talk about living here to keep it company? Ha."
Her weakness exposed, Cai Zhao flushed. She said sheepishly to the Snow Maiden, "When I have time, I'll come up to visit Little Xue."
A faint curve touched the corner of the Snow Maiden's mouth, as if she remembered something. "Your aunt said the same thing to my master when she left, back then."
Cai Zhao froze.
"But my master waited more than ten years, and your aunt never came back. Before he died he wished to see her once more, and never could." The Snow Maiden was always cold and rarely showed feeling, but she could not hide the resentment in these words.
Cai Zhao lowered her head. "...Not long after my aunt left here, the jianghu fell into great chaos. Later she fought a great demon to the death. The demon died, and she was crippled. She lay ill for more than ten years, and she could never have climbed this mountain."
The Snow Maiden's expression eased a little. "I see. Has she recovered well by now?"
"She passed away three years ago."
Before leaving, Cai Zhao urged the Snow Maiden again and again, "If you ever tire of living here, come find me in Luoying Valley."
The Snow Maiden showed a faint trace of mockery. "It's good here. I will never tire of it. People are the root of all evil. I never want to go down to the world below again."
On the way down the mountain, Cai Zhao kept sighing. "I forced Little Xue to hatch for my own selfish reasons. I don't know if that was right or wrong. Now it's the only Snow-Scale Dragon Beast left in all the world. How lonely it will be."
Qian Xueshen thought of himself alone, his sect and family all dead, and felt the same ache. He sighed softly too.
Mu Qingyan said coldly, "Save it, both of you. Snow-Scale Dragon Beasts live very long, two hundred years at the least. In two hundred years the seas become fields, and some of its kind may well turn up in some forgotten corner. By then our grandchildren will be dust. We are ordinary mortals. Let's not trouble ourselves worrying about that long-lived little brat."
Qian Xueshen stopped feeling sad at once.
Cai Zhao thumped Mu Qingyan on the arm, sulking. "You really have no tenderness."
Halfway down the mountain, Qian Xueshen suddenly stopped. "You two go on. I'm not going any further."
Mu Qingyan raised a long brow. "You don't want my antidote?"
Qian Xueshen smiled and shook his head. "That poison was fake, wasn't it? Young Lord Mu, you must have noticed all my shortcomings long ago on this journey. Thank you for always tolerating me." With that, he bowed deeply to Mu Qingyan.
Cai Zhao didn't understand. "But what will you do here? It's nothing but ice and snow, with no one for miles. Why stay?"
Qian Xueshen smiled faintly. "What Miss Xue said was right, and it gave me a lot to think about. Whether it's the Snow-Scale Dragon Beast or the Body-Changing Art, these are things that should never have returned to the world. It would honestly be better if I were dead, but I can't bear to give up this body yet."
"This is where my whole family once lived. Staying here puts my mind at ease. I will raise Xuefeng and Xuezhu's young ones slowly. Little Heroine Cai, Young Lord Mu, meeting you both was my good fortune. There is no banquet that never ends. Let's part here."
"I don't want to go down to the world below either."
Evening was coming, and wind and snow rose again over the mountain. Through the endless drifting flakes, the three said their farewells.
Watching the girl's figure grow distant, Qian Xueshen suddenly called out, "If I meet travelers in trouble in the future, I will still save them!" After saying this, he gathered up the four little white-furred beasts and turned away without looking back.
Two lines of hot tears rolled down his cheeks as he walked, choking, into the wind and snow.
There was something he had kept in his heart and never said to Cai Zhao.
Thank you.
Thank you for saving me more than once.
Thank you for speaking up for me, and for helping me take revenge.
Thank you for always believing I was not a bad person.
Father, Mother, Uncle, Aunt: none of them had done wrong. The wrong lay with the evil men.
The great vengeance was done and he had been given a new life. For the rest of his days, he would guard this snowy ridge.
There is no greater good.