Where Immortals Once Walked

“Grab the blood vessels... Uh, I mean the vines, and climb down!” Keeping his back to the rock, He Lingchuan edged downward along the wall. He reached out a hand and retracted it at once. “Right. Gloves first!”

The moment his bare skin brushed the stone wall, pain lanced through his palm as if it were being seared over open flame, followed by a prickling numbness.

A slick layer of slime now coated his hand.

He hurriedly dusted on some medicinal powder. White froth hissed up where it touched the skin. Only after he rinsed his palm with water from his flask did the pain ease a little.

That slime was acidic and poisonous; whatever it was, it was definitely not friendly to humans.

Patrolmen always carried gloves when on assignment; they were standard issue. Everyone put theirs on, and this time their hands were fine as they grabbed the “vines” and descended.

The squad slid down the wall for more than three meters before realizing they were standing inside a massive cavern. At the bottom of which lay a murky, viscous pool.

Every so often, a bubble would break the surface. A single look was all it took to tell you the liquid down there was trouble.

Willow said suddenly, “Look in the pool!”

She leaned out as far as she dared and stretched the bundle of glowgrass toward the water. In its light, they saw that the surface was not calm at all. Things churned below, constantly rolling against one another.

What are those pale, reddish shapes?

One of them happened to turn over just then, giving everyone a clear view as to what it was.

It was a person.

Strictly speaking, it was the upper half of a corpse—everything below the breastbone or sternum was gone. What remained of the flesh was peeled back and hanging, unable to cover the exposed ribs.

Half of the corpse’s face had liquefied, while the other half still clung in strips. The corners of the mouth were warped into a grotesque arc, as if the corpse were smiling at them. As for the eyes, they were simply missing, leaving two cavernous pits.

One of the newer patrolmen who had just joined the squad promptly leaned over and retched.

Everyone else swallowed hard against the surge in their throats. Skinny slapped a hand over his own mouth.

Severed limbs and shattered bones lay everywhere at the bottom of the pool, jumbled together in obscene heaps.

Clearly, every human a ferry-crossing ghostspawn caught ended up dumped here to be digested.

From where they stood, the sight was monstrous and ghastly. It was like they were met with the sight of the legendary Hell of the Pool of Blood[1].

Doorboard muttered, “Just how many people has this thing eaten?”

They had dealt with their share of man-eating monsters before, but nothing that feasted like this.

The young patrolman’s nausea only worsened, and he just could not stop gagging. Doorboard opened his mouth, about to tell him to keep his center of gravity up, but then something flickered on the rock behind the boy.

“Look out!”

Unfortunately, it was too late. Clinging lower down on the wall, right where the boy stood, a figure thrust itself out and slammed into him with brutal force. He pinwheeled his arms, but he still ultimately toppled toward the pool.

Thanks to his reflexes, however, as he fell, he grabbed for whatever had shoved him, and he managed to drag it in with him.

It was the ferry-crossing ghostspawn from before.

With a dull sploosh, both hit the water.

The splash was oddly low, kept down by the pool’s thick, viscous surface.

The patrolman thrashed wildly, screaming in pure agony.

He Lingchuan had only brushed the wall when his palm felt as if it were burning. In contrast, the man was submerged. He could only imagine that the pain the young man was suffering had to be ten times worse.

When he burst back up, his hair, face, and clothes were all smoking faintly white.

The ghostspawn had parted from him the moment they hit, slipping away into the depths amid the chaos. This was its domain. The corrosive pool did it no harm at all—if anything, it probably nourished it.

Prey had already fallen in, so there was no need for it to keep fighting. All it had to do was wait for the humans to be dissolved.

Sooner or later, they would all be rich, tender feed.

The instant the young man went under, Doorboard had yanked a coil of rope from his belt and tossed it down. “Grab on!”

But the man’s eyes had flooded with the corrosive water; his vision had already turned milky white. He could not see the rope at all, and the sheer, skin-flaying pain left him completely panicked.

Willow’s eyebrows drew together. She simply raised her wrist and fired a sleeve arrow.

Her aim was impeccable. The bolt punched clean through the patrolman’s left arm, then flared open with a pop and locked in place.

The man screamed again, high and ragged.

Expression blank, Willow braced herself, thumbed the mechanism, and reeled in hard. The line went taut and began to haul him toward them.

The cord of the grappling hook was tough as iron, and the acidic liquid that made up he pool barely chewed at it. As for the hook itself, it was completely unaffected by the liquid.

Apparently, the liquid was not very good at dissolving metal.

Just as she bent her body low to pull harder, a clawed hand thrust out of the rock behind her, reaching to shove her down as well.

She already had one hand hauling the line, the other wrapped around a vine. There was no third party to deal with the attacker.

But after being blindsided once, how could they let it happen again?

Skinny had been ready. The moment Willow bent down, he zipped down the wall. The claw had barely brushed her shoulder when he drove his pickaxe into the back of its hand and heaved.

Years of working together meant they did not need to plan this out loud; all four of them moved on pure instinct.

This creature’s skin was not as tough as its sibling’s. The first blow sent green blood spraying, a few droplets splashing across Skinny’s face. They stung; his brow furrowed, and the skin at the corner of his eye twitched, but he did not turn his head away.

According to the dossiers, every ferry-crossing ghostspawn had different innate traits. They could not afford to underestimate any of them.

Sure enough, the ghostspawn shrieked and hurled itself at him.

To it, any human it knocked down would do. But before it could close, a second set of mechanisms chattered; another sleeve arrow punched into its shoulder and blew through, leaving a bloody hole.

He Lingchuan had fired.

He could afford to be lavish. The custom arrowheads he had bought from Spirit-Nurturing Isle were a cut above the standard issue—harder, stronger, and with much better penetration. Bai Guo might be a shameless merchant, but he had delivered quality goods.

This arrow pierced the ghostspawn’s shoulder and then detonated, the barbs locking deep. The trailing line remained intact despite the creature’s corrosive body fluids.

The instant it struck clean, He Lingchuan yanked the cord back. Having learned his lesson from last time, he was not giving it a second chance to escape.

He and Skinny now had it hooked on both sides, and each man hauled in opposite directions.

Pinned like that, the creature could thrash all it wanted, but it would still fail to free itself.

Doorboard pointed at a cave roughly ten meters away. “Get him over there!”

Strictly speaking, it was not a cave, just a deep recess or a hollow in the walls, but it was big enough to cram four or five people.

The half-blind patrolman was dragged up, his entire body steaming green. His mind was back, but the pain had him shaking.

As for the captive ghostspawn, it was beyond words. It writhed and shrieked, straining every limb. The wall was steep and slick to begin with, and Skinny was not as strong as He Lingchuan; a few times, he nearly lost his footing as the thing heaved against him.

Moments like this made He Lingchuan miss his father’s binding magical artifact, the coiled silk rope. With that thing, it would take two breaths at most to tie up this monster.

Doorboard finally managed to slide down to where the rest were. He was a big man, and he had big gear. He produced two lengths of chain, one set snapping shut around the creature’s legs, the other clamping down on its arms. He Lingchuan let his line go slack as Doorboard hauled his tight. The ghostspawn’s four limbs were now fully bound.

After that, he linked the two chains, further reducing the creature’s range of motion.

For agile, ape-like monsters, this kind of binding was among the best immediate restraints around. It turned out that it worked just as well on ferry-crossing ghostspawn.

Doorboard did not trust the thing not to sink into the wall again, so he simply threw it onto his back.

The ghostspawn squealed, kicking frantically at the rock.

And then the whole cavern started to move, as in really move. It pulsed and kneaded up, down, sideways in a horrible rhythm. It was as if the walls themselves were muscles trying to crush them.

This place is actually helping the ghostspawn attack?

Everyone shivered in unison and bolted for the hollow.

On the way, one of the patrolmen stepped wrong as the wall surged; it slammed into his brow and sent him tipping backward—

Straight toward the pool.

Fortunately, He Lingchuan was right there. He shot out a hand, grabbed the back of the man’s collar, and hauled him up.

The patrolman’s face had been utterly drained of color. “Th-thanks!”

“Run!” He Lingchuan snapped. “Now!”

They tumbled into the hollow in a heap. As the patrolman who He Lingchuan just saved took over keeping the chained-up creature captive, Doorboard and Skinny gingerly stripped away the burned clothing from the young man who had fallen into the pool and splashed him with medicine.

Doorboard asked, “You holding up?”

“Y-yeah... but my, my eyes. I can’t see anything.” The young man’s whole body trembled. He had gotten a mouthful of the liquid too; his lips and tongue were scorched, and his words came out thick and slurred.

He was only sixteen. If he went blind, what kind of life would he have?

Willow clapped his shoulder. Her tone was steady. “You shut your eyes in time. Once we’re out and get proper medicine on them, you might be fine.”

The young man’s breathing eased a little. He sipped some medicinal powder to rinse his mouth.

Doorboard pointed at him, then looked at Willow, confusion all over his face as he asked, “You serious?”

She cut him a glare and mouthed back, “How would I know?”

If you did not prop someone up in a place like this, what then? Were they supposed to just let him collapse and give up in the middle of a death trap?

He Lingchuan was posted at the edge of the hollow, watching all directions. Suddenly, he said, “The way we came in is gone.”

Everyone looked up. The narrow ledge they had descended from had shrunk to a crack, then slowly closed altogether.

The patrolman gripping the chains glanced toward the sealed rock. “If we can’t see any exit, how are we getting out?”

No way back, man-eating pool below. How were they supposed to leave this place alive?

“If this whole mine really is a body the ghostspawn modeled after a human...” As He Lingchuan said this, no one argued that point anymore. “Then we should be in the stomach right now.”

“Right,” Willow agreed, sweeping her gaze around. “So there should be two exits, one of which is down there...”

They all looked at the pool together and silently agreed that that route was not even worth considering.

“The other exit should be directly above,” Willow added. She tied a bundle of glowgrass to an arrow, drew her bow, and loosed.

The glowing shaft arced up a dozen feet. In its light, they saw that there was no hole overhead, but off to one side, the ceiling sagged inward in a huge fold.

“Is that the cardia?” Skinny muttered. The cardia was the gate where the esophagus met the stomach. He sighed and added, “We’ll have to wait for it to open and then climb up?”

“And even if we manage that,” Doorboard added grimly, “it’ll just be a near-vertical shaft above that. With this ‘body’ in such a foul mood, you really think it’ll just let us scramble out?”

The patrolman with the chains could not help but ask, “Then, then what do we do?”

Everyone traded looks.

Willow stepped closer to the creature. “Can this thing understand human speech?”

Doorboard said, “According to the intel, some can.”

“Panlong City’s paperwork gets more unreliable by the day. What’s that supposed to mean? So some can’t?” Willow snapped her fingers twice in front of the ghostspawn’s face. “Hey, do you understand me? If you lead us out of here, maybe we’ll let you live.”

The ferry-crossing ghostspawn went oddly still.

Hm? Willow’s eyebrows arched. It looks like our luck hasn’t run out just yet.

Then, a heartbeat later, the ghostspawn spat at her.

She flicked her head aside. The green glob missed her cheek and splattered on the rock wall.

1. The Hell of the Pool of Blood—yes, I know it’s a bit of a mouthful—is the official translation for 血池地狱, which is the 13th of the 18 Hells in Chinese mythology, or the 16th Hell in Journey to the West. Note that Diyu (地狱) or Hell in Chinese mythology is different from the Western idea of Hell. ☜