Chapter 26: 阴鸷第六 4

Lan Wangji said, 'I would hear it in full.'

He had only to seat himself there, and those courteous words carried a force very nearly that of a threat, so Nie Huaisang, dragging his feet, began to confess.

He said, 'Hanguang-jun, you both know our Nie family differs from the other Cultivation Clans. Because our founding ancestor was a butcher, the other houses cultivate the immortal sword, while our house cultivates the Blade Dao.'

This was common knowledge, no secret at all. Even the Qinghe Nie Sect's family crest was a ferocious beast-head, half hound and half boar. Nie Huaisang went on, 'Because our way of cultivation differs from the others, and because our founding ancestor came from a butcher's trade, bloodshed could not be avoided. The Nie Clan Sabres borne by each generation of our clan leaders carried an extremely heavy malevolence and killing intent. Nearly every clan leader fell to qi deviation and died a violent death, his body bursting. And their volatile tempers had much to do with this as well.'

Take, for instance, Nie Huaisang's eldest brother, Nie Mingjue. This young cultivation chief was sworn brothers with Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao: Chifeng-zun, decisive and swift, dignified in measure; Zewu-jun, gentle as warm jade, noble of character; Lianfang-zun, smooth in every dealing, cunning and keen. The three swore brotherhood during the Sun-Striking Campaign, each with fine tales passed down, and were later named together by the clans as the Three Venerables. Yet Nie Mingjue, at the very height of his glory, fell to qi deviation at an important grand assembly and died with his blood bursting forth, and many in attendance that day were wounded as he chased and hacked at them in his frenzy. A lifetime of renown, brought to such an end. Nie Huaisang must have been thinking of his eldest brother, for his expression sank a moment before he spoke again. 'While these clan leaders lived, the restlessness of their sabers could still be suppressed by their masters. But once the master died, with no one to govern them, they became deadly weapons.'

Wei Wuxian raised an eyebrow. 'That comes rather close to the heretical path.'

Nie Huaisang said quickly, 'It isn't the same! The heretical path is heretical because it demands the lives of men. But our family's sabers demand not the lives of men, but those of resentful ghosts and Fierce Spirits, of demon-beasts and monsters. They spend their whole existence slaying such things, and if none are left to slay, they turn to haunting on their own and throw the household into uproar. A Saber Spirit acknowledges only one master and cannot be wielded by another. And we descendants cannot simply melt the sabers down. For one, it would dishonor our forebears; for another, melting them would by no means be certain to solve the problem.'

Wei Wuxian offered his verdict. 'Grand old lords.'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Aren't they just. The Nie Clan Sabres that followed our ancestors through bramble and thorn in their search for the Way were grand old lords from the very start.'

He continued, 'As each generation's clan leader cultivated more deeply than the last, this trouble too grew worse with each generation, until our family's sixth-generation clan leader thought of a method.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'You mean building the Cannibal Fortress?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'No, no. Though there is a connection, that method wasn't conceived at the start. This is what the sixth-generation clan leader did. For his father's and grandfather's sabers he had two coffins made and dug a tomb. In the tomb he laid nothing precious, but set out several hundred corpses on the very verge of Corpse Mutation.'

Lan Wangji frowned faintly, and Nie Huaisang, frightened, said at once, 'Hanguang-jun, hear me out! These corpses were not killed by our family! They were gathered with great pains from all over, and no few of them bought at heavy cost! The sixth-generation clan leader said: these Saber Spirits wish to battle Evil Spirits, so let them be given Evil Spirits to battle without end. These corpses on the verge of transformation, buried together with the saber coffins, were meant as funerary offerings for the Saber Spirits. The Saber Spirits would suppress the corpses' transformation, while at the same time the corpses would ease the Saber Spirits' hunger and frenzy, holding the present balance, each checking the other. By this method alone were several generations of descendants able to buy their peace.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Then why was it later raised into a Stone Fortress? Why bury the corpses inside the walls? And you said it has eaten people?'

Nie Huaisang said, 'Those questions are really one and the same. It did... eat someone, I suppose. But that was not intentional!!! Our sixth-generation clan leader cultivated the Sabre Tomb, which is to say he made an ordinary sort of grave, and the generations after him followed his example. But over fifty years ago, this grave was dug up by a band of tomb robbers.'

Wei Wuxian let out an 'Oh,' thinking to himself: now that is truly breaking ground over the head of Taisui himself, the year-god whom no mortal should ever provoke.

Nie Huaisang said, 'An undertaking as large as building a tomb, however cautious and discreet, is bound to leak word. That band of tomb robbers made inquiries far and wide and grew convinced there was a great tomb of a former dynasty up on Xinglu Ridge; they had long since scouted the spot and came prepared. Among that rabble were one or two men of genuine skill and uncommon gifts, and they actually managed to read the bearings true, break the maze, and find our family's Sabre Tomb. They sank a robber's shaft and entered the tomb. Being in their trade, they had seen plenty of corpses and did not fear the dead within; but as they rummaged about for gold and gems, breathing right beside the corpses, every one of them a young or strapping man brimming with yang energy. Bear in mind that those lying within were all corpses on the very verge of turning! Jin Zhu was not there, but the danger was just as real.'

'You can well imagine what happened. On the spot, more than ten corpses turned fierce.'

'But this gang of robbers was skilled and bold and fully equipped, and they managed, in a frantic scramble, to beat every one of the transformed walking corpses to death a second time. After a fierce fight that left the ground strewn with shattered corpse-pieces, they at last sensed the peril of this tomb and made ready to withdraw. And it was just as they were withdrawing that they were eaten!'

'The number of corpses placed in the tomb was strictly controlled, not one more, not one fewer, just enough to keep the balance with the Saber Spirits. Now this band of robbers went in and made a great mess; had they merely triggered the transformation, that would have been manageable, for once they left, the Saber Spirits would exert their force and suppress it again. But they had to go and beat the corpses into pieces, losing more than ten all at once. To keep enough Malevolent Corpse specimens to hold the Saber Spirits in check, the Sabre Tomb... it... had no choice but to seal itself shut, trapping them alive within, so that these men would themselves fill the gap they had made...'

'With the Sabre Tomb destroyed, the clan leader of that time began to seek another method. He chose a fresh site on Xinglu Ridge and, rather than build a tomb, raised in its place a Sacrificial Blade Hall; and to guard against tomb robbers coming again, he hid the corpses within the walls to deceive the eye.'

'And this Sacrificial Blade Hall is the very “Cannibal Fortress” of the rumors. That band of tomb robbers had come to Qinghe Town disguised as hunters; they went up Xinglu Ridge and never came down again, and with no bones to be found, some spread the tale that they had been devoured by a monster of the ridge. Later, when the stone fort was finished but the new maze not yet set, someone happened to pass by and saw it. Luckily none of the stone forts were built with doors, so he could not get in. But once he came down the ridge, he told everyone he met that there stood a strange white fort up on Xinglu Ridge, and surely a man-eating monster dwelt inside. Our family thought it no bad thing to blow the rumor up larger, so that no one would dare go near that region, and so we embellished it and conjured up the legend of a “Cannibal Fortress.” But it truly does eat people!'

Nie Huaisang drew from his sleeve a handkerchief and a white stone about the size of a garlic bulb. The handkerchief was for wiping sweat; the white stone he held out, saying, 'You two may wish to look at this.'

Wei Wuxian took the white stone and, looking closely, found amid the powdered stone a small white something showing through, looking like... a human finger-bone.

His heart went cold and clear. Nie Huaisang, having wiped away his sweat, said, 'That... the young Master Jin Ling... blew a hole open in the wall by some method or other. A wall that thick, and he could still blast it open, so he must have been carrying no few magic treasures, no, that isn't the point... What I mean is, the place he blew open happened to be the earliest Sacrificial Blade Hall our family ever built on Xinglu Ridge. Back then we hadn't yet thought of facing both sides with stone brick and packing earth between to seal off the yang energy and keep them from transforming too readily; we simply poured the corpses straight into the mortar. So the young Master Jin Ling blasted a hole, but never noticed that he had also shattered a skeleton buried in the wall. Not long after he went in, he was drawn into the stone fort's wall, taking the place of the corpse he had shattered... I go to Xinglu Ridge regularly to look things over. Today, the very moment I arrived, I saw this. I had just picked up a stone when a dog came and bit me, ai... the Sacrificial Blade Hall is much the same as our family's ancestral grave; I really am...'

Nie Huaisang grew the sadder the more he spoke. 'Ordinary cultivators, knowing this is our family's ground, would never go on a Night Hunt anywhere near Qinghe Town. But who could have known...'

Who could have known he would be so unlucky: first a Jin Ling who never kept to the rules fixed his sights on Xinglu Ridge, and then these two, Lan and Wei, came following the direction the ghost-seeking hand had pointed. He went on, 'Hanguang-jun, and you, this one... I have already said it, you absolutely must not let this get out. Otherwise...'

Otherwise: the Qinghe Nie Sect was already half-dead as it was, and should such a thing get out, Nie Huaisang would become a sinner for the ages, with no face to meet his ancestors below the earth. Small wonder he would rather be the secret laughingstock among the clans than apply himself to cultivation, and shrank all the more from ever whetting the edge of his Nie Clan Sabre. For if his cultivation came to fruition, his temper would grow daily more violent, until in the end, like his eldest brother and the forebears before him, he would die in a frenzy with his body bursting, his saber going on to haunt the mortal world after his death and throw the whole family into uproar; better, then, to accomplish nothing at all.

Nor was there any solving it: from the very first ancestor, the Nie family had come this way, and were the descendants then to repudiate the path and the foundation their forebears had carved out? Each of the Cultivation Clans had its own strength, and just as the Gusu Lan Sect excelled in music, so the ferocity and overwhelming killing power of the Qinghe Nie Sect's Saber Spirits were the very reason it could stand alone among them. To forsake the ancestors' teaching, begin again from nothing, and seek some new path, who could say how many more years it would cost, with no certainty of success. And Nie Huaisang dared even less to betray the Nie family and turn to cultivating some other Way. And so he could only be a spineless good-for-nothing.

Were he not the clan leader, living out his life as he had at the Cloud-Deep Unknown Place, drifting the lake all day to paint his fans, idling about and teasing the birds, he would surely be far more at ease than now. But his eldest brother having passed, however unequal to it he felt, he could only shoulder the family's burden alone and stumble forward.

After Nie Huaisang took his leave with a thousand exhortations and a thousand pleas, Wei Wuxian sat in a daze a while, then suddenly noticed that Lan Wangji had come over again, knelt on one knee before him, and was earnestly rolling up his trouser leg. He said hurriedly, 'Wait, again?'

Lan Wangji said, 'Dispel the curse first.'

For Hanguang-jun to half-kneel before him in this posture twice and thrice in a single day, grave though the man was, Wei Wuxian truly could not bear the sight of it. Wei Wuxian said, 'I'll do it myself.' In a few quick motions he rolled up the trouser leg, and there the Malicious Curse Mark spread across the whole of his calf, climbed past the knee, and crept up his thigh. Wei Wuxian looked it over and said offhandedly, 'It's reached the top of my leg.'

Lan Wangji turned his head aside and did not answer. Wei Wuxian said, puzzled, 'Lan Zhan?'