Chapter 435 – A New Gravekeeper; Xue Ning Enters the Coffin; First Glimpse of Hell - Part 1

The frozen tundra, before the entrance to the Deathless Tomb.

A massive tide of crows surged like a black ocean, the beating of their wings blended into a thunderous roar that crashed against the ears like waves on stone.

Sheng'er stood quietly with her dark hair falling loose, hands folded before her, as still and proper as a porcelain doll.

Waves of crows swallowed her silhouette, lending her an eerie, almost sacred air.

These crows, creatures born from Yin energy, flourished in the deathly frost that could freeze a martial artist solid in moments. They reveled in this icy wasteland as though it were a warm spring breeze.

They rose and fell like tsunamis, poured through the forbidden maze of ghost-blue ice, swept to the Yin–Yang twin-fish gate at the labyrinth's end, then went skittering among the 6,974 round sockets that each cradled a hanging coffin.

Nothing could hide now.

The 0~1s Li Yuan had glimpsed took on full shape. They had pallid skin, white-filmed eyes, long narrow bodies without a trace of gender, brows or hair, and blue-ice crystal blades clutched in their hands.

Sheng'er faltered when she saw their faces. To her, every crow was an eye; she’d long since learned to look at the world through tens of thousands at once. So she saw those eyes...white, every one of them.

That meant the 0~1s were jade husks.

No one knew a daughter better than her father. Li Yuan caught the change in her at once. “What did you see?”

“Papa,” Sheng'er said softly, “there are so many jade husks hidden in the Deathless Tomb. They look worse than dead, with no spark of intelligence left. They’re just...”

Li Yuan understood. She was grieving for her own kind. He turned to the Gravekeeper.

“Start explaining,” he said. “Explain it well, and I promise I won’t leave the corpses of your gods to rot in the open. I’ll swear a deadly oath, if you like.”

Pinned by Naran’s stare, the Gravekeeper had lost every advantage the Deathless Tomb granted her.

𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The cold here weakened none of them, not Naran, not Sheng'er, and not Li Yuan.

Yet she showed no fear at Li Yuan’s threat. After a moment’s thought, she asked instead, “And how do you know... that opening the coffins won’t enrage the gods themselves?”

Li Yuan replied coolly, “Even if they are furious, here in this place... they’re just like any other corpse. What could they possibly do?”

“You can try,” she said.

The Gravekeeper smiled, even though her limbs were dislocated and she should have been in unbearable pain.

A glimmer of something unreadable flickered in her eyes as she said with eerie cheer, “Jen’gal Yuan... You’ve stormed through the Deathless Tomb today, but if you leave, the divine burial ground still belongs to us.

“How do you know the only pieces we have are the Wolfmother and the jade servants?”

“We’ve endured a very, very long time. Did you think those were all our cards?”

“Jade servants?” Li Yuan echoed.

“That,” the Gravekeeper said, “is to answer the little lady’s question.”

She looked to Sheng'er, a heat almost too faint to notice roaming behind her gaze.

“They’re jade husks,” Sheng'er said. “Anyone can see that.”

“Child,” the Gravekeeper replied gently, “jade husks come in many breeds. Those ones are a special kind, the closest thing to ghost servants.”

She sighed, then fixed her gaze on Li Yuan. “There’s a saying among mortals. When a tiger wanders onto the flatlands, even dogs dare nip at it; when a dragon swims the shallows, shrimp make sport of it. That’s us. The jade servants you saw are a special breed of jade husk. If they walked the outer world, each one would be a monster in its own right.

“The Ice Folk you know, were they not our arrangement as well? Ice Folk are born of Yang; jade servants are creatures we make directly. Do you know what life means? Do you know the secret of Yin and Yang? Kill me and you only destroy a Wolfmother’s borrowed body. I couldn’t care less.”

Meanwhile, the slaughter within the Deathless Tomb raged on. It was utterly one-sided.

The hairless

people

called jade servants fought with ghost-blue ice blades against the crows. Their skill was formidable; even beneath a sky black with wings they could cut down hundreds.

But numbers could overwhelm skill. Soon the 0~1 readouts of the jade servants winked out one by one, the telltale sign that they were dead.

The crows swept the tomb again and again. Only when they had picked every shadow clean did Sheng'er turn to Li Yuan. “Papa, the Deathless Tomb is secure.”

Li Yuan looked to the Gravekeeper.

Her expression didn’t change; not a flicker of panic. She even said, “Jen’gal Yuan, breaking this body does nothing. Peasant girls like this, there are always more. The Wolfmother line won’t end. If I were you, I’d keep this body and interrogate it. But be careful, I lie. Even words squeezed out under harsh questioning aren’t worth trusting.”

Li Yuan studied her. “What do you think I should do?”

“You are...unusual,” the Gravekeeper said. “Once again you’ve proved you are fit to work with us. So, let’s return to the negotiating table.”

“How?” Li Yuan asked.

“The remaining 800 empty coffins, I can give them all to you. After all, I’ve learned the new generation has betrayed us. The push for the Grand Union of Yin and Yang has their fingerprints all over it. We old ones have been discarded by our juniors. So there’s no need to reserve the empty coffins for them.

“Jen’gal Yuan, you and I must join hands and stop the unification. I was not lying when I said if Yin and Yang are made one, the Deathless Tomb will never see light again. No one will ever return. And the unification will shower the traitors with benefits. As they rise, we fall. No one will be able to break the game.”

“Your juniors?” Li Yuan asked.

“They live in the Eastern Sea’s lands of plenty,” she said. “You dwell on a barren continent. Where they live, Yin and Yang are balanced from birth, rich and abundant. Anyone can cultivate normally. But where you stand, the two forces are compressed, and that compression breeds a violent middle belt, an abandoned zone. If I’m right, everyone among your people who can cultivate will run into...problems. All sorts of them. These problems can’t be fixed because this place was never meant for cultivation in the first place. So you and your people were born enemies to the cultivators in the Eastern Sea’s lands of plenty. Do you see it now? We should be allies.”

The Eastern Sea, rich and easy? The Great Zhou, barren and destitute?

Li Yuan said, “Fine. If it’s as you say, I’ll move to stop the Grand Unification of Yin and Yang Unification. But from today on, the Wolfmother does not set foot in the Deathless Tomb.”

He turned to Naran. “Can your people form a tomb guard?”

“No problem,” Naran said at once.

At the same time, Li Yuan watched the Gravekeeper out of the corner of his eye.

She looked utterly at ease, as if none of this touched her at all.

He couldn’t read her. Was she truly indifferent, or only playing at it? He couldn’t linger here all day and night. Even a tomb guard under Naran wouldn’t solve every issue, unless he found a stronger Gravekeeper to replace the Wolfmother and keep the tomb under a constant gaze.

Just then a far-off rustle gathered into a wave, wings, thousands of them. The crows flowed back into Sheng'er’s long hair one by one.

She was no longer the child who understood nothing.

Listening quietly as her father bargained with the Gravekeeper, she said, “Papa, let me stay.”

“You?” Li Yuan turned, surprised.

“This place feels...right to me,” Sheng'er said. “I want to stay a while. I can help.”

“It’s dangerous,” Li Yuan said. “I won’t be at ease with you here.”

“I’m not a little girl anymore.”

In the end, Sheng'er won him over. She had, undeniably, grown up, and the outer perimeter would have the new tomb guard and Naran watching it.

Brother and sister, holding the Deathless Tomb together. It was doable.