Sinister

Only then did Lan Wangji turn back, though his eyes still averted slightly. At the sight, Wei Wuxian blinked, a sudden urge to mischief stirring in his heart. Just as he was about to tease, a sound of shattering came from the table.

They both rose to look. The teacup and teapot lay shattered across the floor; an Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch lay amid the white porcelain shards and the spreading tea water. The pouch’s surface bulged ceaselessly, as though something trapped inside was desperate to break free.

This Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch, though seemingly only palm-sized, possessed the marvellous power of storing objects, and its inner and outer layers were embroidered with intricate incantations, reinforced by multiple seals. Lan Wangji had originally sealed that arm inside the pouch and pressed it beneath the teacup on the table. Now, seeing it stir restlessly, he recalled that they should play ‘Rest’ together. Without that brief soothing of a nightly duet, no matter how strong the pouch’s suppressing power, it alone could not contain that Ghost Hand.

Wei Wuxian reached for the bamboo flute at his waist, but found nothing. He turned to look: the flute was already in Lan Wangji’s hand. With head slightly bowed, Lan Wangji had been carefully carving it for a while before finally handing it back. Wei Wuxian retrieved it and saw that the flute, having been refined by him, was now much finer in its rough details such as the finger holes.

Lan Wangji said, “Play it properly.”

Recalling their previous duet in the Netherworld Chamber that was so unbearably awful it had roused Lan Qiren from a coma with fury, made him cough blood, and sent him back into a coma, Wei Wuxian nearly collapsed laughing. He thought, ‘It must have been hard for him to tolerate me so long.’ Now, no longer deliberately misbehaving, he solemnly raised the flute to his lips. Who knew, as soon as he played two phrases, that Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch suddenly swelled several times larger and reared upright!

Wei Wuxian blew a note that cracked with a ‘pfft’, and said, ‘What, so used to ugly tunes, it won’t stand for me playing a little better?’

As if in answer, the Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch hurtled towards Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji’s fingers struck a sudden shift in the tune, a sweeping stroke downward; all seven strings vibrated as one, producing a furious roar like a mountain crumbling. The pouch, rebuked by the angry qin sound, tumbled back to its original spot. Wei Wuxian continued playing, unperturbed; Lan Wangji, with a softening wrist, resumed the melody of ‘Rest’, turning it tranquil and serene, gently harmonizing.

Once the piece ended, the Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch finally shrank back to its original size, lying still. Wei Wuxian sheathed his flute and said, ‘These days it has never been so agitated as today; it seems like something provoked it.’

Lan Wangji gave a slight nod, turned to him, and said, ‘And moreover, it is something on your body.’

Wei Wuxian immediately looked down at himself. The only thing extra on him today was one thing: that patch of Curse Mark transferred from Jin Ling.

And the Curse Mark on Jin Ling had been left at the Stone Fortress on Wayfarer’s Ridge. The Ghost Hand had reacted violently to this Curse Mark; could it be that…

Wei Wuxian said, ‘Meaning, inside the walls of the Nie clan’s Saber Hall, there might be other parts of its body?’

The next morning, the two set out together to return to Wayfarer’s Ridge.

Nie Huaisang, caught red-handed the day before and having confessed everything, had summoned his trusted disciples overnight to deal with the aftermath the intruders had left. By the time Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji arrived, he had just directed them to fill in the wall where Wei Wuxian had dug out Jin Ling, inserting a fresh corpse, and was watching the white bricks being neatly laid back, wiping sweat ceaselessly. Who knew that when he turned and saw them, his legs gave way, and he put on a smile: ‘Hanguang-Jun… and this…’

Wei Wuxian waved his hand with a grin: ‘Sect Leader Nie, repairing the wall, are you?’

Nie Huaisang wiped his sweat with a towel, almost rubbing the skin off his forehead: ‘Yes, yes, yes…’

Wei Wuxian, with ten parts sympathy and three parts embarrassment, said, ‘Sorry, but it looks like we’ll trouble you to do it again in a moment.’

Nie Huaisang: ‘Yes, yes… Ah?! Wait!’

Before the words had finished, Bichen left its sheath. Nie Huaisang watched helplessly as the stone brick wall he had just patched split open again.

Destruction is always easier than construction. Wei Wuxian dismantled bricks at lightning speed, immensely faster than their bricklaying. Nie Huaisang, clutching his folding fan, was trembling, so aggrieved that tears nearly spilled, but with Hanguang-Jun standing beside, impassive, he dared say nothing. Lan Wangji succinctly explained the situation to him, whereupon Nie Huaisang immediately swore to the heavens and the earth: ‘Never! Absolutely not! The corpses used in our family’s Saber Hall all have complete limbs—there is definitely no armless male corpse. If you doubt, I’ll tear down the bricks with you to prove my innocence. But after tearing them down, we must fill them back at once, no delay, for this is my ancestral tomb…’

Several Nie disciples joined in; with extra hands, Wei Wuxian withdrew and stood aside to await the results. Half a shichen later, the wall where Jin Ling had been buried had most of its stone bricks removed. Some disciples pulled up their masks, others swallowed secret red pills, to prevent breathing and human qi from triggering Corpse Transformation. In the black earth, an occasional pale hand or a foot with bulging blue veins would emerge, along with tangled, filthy black hair. Every male corpse was roughly cleaned and laid out in rows on the ground.

Some of these corpses had turned to white bones, some were in various stages of decay, some still quite fresh, in all manner of states, yet every single one had all four limbs intact. Not one male corpse missing a left arm was found.

Nie Huaisang said cautiously, ‘Is just this wall enough? Do we need to tear down more? No need, right?’

Indeed it was enough. The Curse Mark on Jin Ling was extremely dark; the thing that left it must have been buried very close to him, definitely not beyond the scope of this wall. Wei Wuxian squatted down beside the row of corpses. After pondering for a moment, Lan Wangji said, ‘Fetch the Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch?’

Taking the left hand out of that Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch and letting it identify for itself here would be a good method. However, if it got too close to other parts of its body, it might excite it and trigger a more dangerous situation. And this place was very special, dense with yin energy, multiplying the danger many times over, which is why they had cautiously chosen daytime. Wei Wuxian shook his head, musing, ‘Could this arm not belong to a man? No, I can tell a man’s hand from a woman’s at a glance… Then could its owner have three arms?!’

He had just been amused by his own idea when Lan Wangji said, ‘Legs.’

At his prompt, Wei Wuxian then remembered that he had overlooked: the Curse Mark only covered the legs. He blurted: ‘Take off their pants! Take off their pants!’

Nie Huaisang was utterly horrified: ‘Why would you say such shameless words in front of Hanguang-Jun!’

Wei Wuxian: ‘What’s shameful about it? We’re all men. Help me take off the corpses’ pants. Leave the female corpses alone, only the male ones!’ So saying, he reached his wicked claws towards the waistband of a corpse on the ground. Poor Nie Huaisang had not expected that after confessing all yesterday, today he would have to strip the pants off corpses in his ancestors’ Saber Hall, and male corpses at that. He felt that after death, every ancestor of the Qinghe Nie Sect would give him a big slap, smacking him into being born disabled in his next life, and he couldn’t help tears streaming down his face. Fortunately, Wei Wuxian’s move was intercepted by Lan Wangji. Nie Huaisang was just about to exclaim ‘As expected of Hanguang-Jun’ when he heard him say, ‘I’ll do it.’

Wei Wuxian: ‘You? You’re really going to do this kind of thing?’

Lan Wangji’s brow seemed to twitch faintly, as if enduring something, and repeated, ‘Don’t move. I’ll do it.’

Of all the shocks Nie Huaisang had received that day, this moment was the greatest.

Lan Wangji, of course, would not actually use his hands to pull off the corpses’ pants; he merely used Bichen’s sword qi to gently slice open their clothing, revealing the skin beneath. Some clothes didn’t even need cutting, having long been tattered. After a short while, he said, ‘Found it.’

Everyone hurried to look at the ground. On the corpse beside Lan Wangji’s white boot, each thigh bore a faint line circle. The flesh-coloured fine thread stitches were dense. The skin colour above and below the lines had a subtle difference. Clearly, the legs of this corpse and its upper body did not belong to the same person.

Those two legs had actually been sewn on!

Nie Huaisang was already flabbergasted. Wei Wuxian asked, ‘In the Nie Clan, who selects the corpses used for saber sacrifices?’

Nie Huaisang, in a daze, said: ‘Generally, each generation’s clan leader selects and stockpiles them during his own lifetime. My eldest brother passed away early; he hadn’t stored enough, so I also helped him choose some… As long as the corpses had complete facial features and limbs, I kept them. For the rest, I don’t know either…’

Who exactly had slipped this corpse in by muddying the waters was impossible to ask him clearly. From the corpse suppliers to the internal members of the Qinghe Nie Sect, there were countless suspects. I'm afraid only by finding all the limbs and piecing together the body and soul can we know what really happened.

With great effort they finally separated the legs from the half-length male corpse. Wei Wuxian, as he placed them into a new Evil-Sealing Qiankun Pouch, said to Lan Wangji, ‘This fellow seems to have been torn apart by five horses. Not only dismembered, but his parts scattered everywhere, one piece here, another there. How great a grudge must that be? Let’s pray he wasn’t chopped too finely.’

Although when they parted this time, Nie Huaisang still said ‘See you again,’ seeing the terror on his face, he probably never wanted to ‘see you again’ in this lifetime. The two left Wayfarer’s Ridge and returned to the inn. Once in a safe place, they took out the three parts for careful comparison. Sure enough, the legs and that severed left hand had the same skin tone, and if placed near each other, they reacted strongly, trembling ceaselessly as if trying to connect, but unfortunately missing a section of body in between, they had no way to join. They undoubtedly belonged to the same person.

Apart from that this was a tall, long-limbed, strongly built man of exceptional cultivation, everything else remained unknown, bewildering. Fortunately, that Ghost Hand soon indicated the next direction: southwest.

Following its guidance, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji made their way to Liyang.