Chapter 194

“What the fuck is that?” Fatty asked softly. “A tortoise?” I watched silently as the cold firework fell on the shadow. But it was too far away and separated by water, so the light was very dim and I couldn’t see it clearly. From this angle, the spring and the black shadow under the water formed the shape of an eye.

It was probably just a stone in the spring, but Fatty had sharp eyes and was squinting at it. “Can you see the edge?” He asked. “This thing isn’t a whole piece, but seems to be many things stacked on top of each other.”

None of us could see it.

“The exciting moment is coming again, my friends,” Black Glasses suddenly said. “Take out your weapons.”

We opened our backpacks and pulled out our weapons, which consisted of hastily-made maces and spikes made of sharpened branches. We were just like a bunch of primitive people, but it was much better than going in naked. We all looked at each other, a little dispirited. In this state, we wouldn’t even necessarily win a campus fight. If there were zombies down there, they would think we didn’t respect them.

But the temptation of the hot spring was too great, and it was so hard to get here that it made it even more impossible to give up. Poker-Face took the lead and we continued down, slowly getting closer and closer to the bottom of this floor.

The temperature was higher and the air was more humid. To be honest, after living such a harsh period as a savage, this hot spring was just like a five-star hotel suite. It suddenly made me feel tired.

As Poker-Face looked around for a while, I noticed that the floor beneath us was completely rock. Those who built this place back then may have really wanted to create an architectural wonder where each floor was higher than the previous one, but this required a huge amount of manpower and material resources. By the time they got here, I figured they had given up.

Everything here was covered in a thick layer of sulfur. Poker-Face slowly straightened up, which made us think that he was relaxing his guard a little, but he just waved his hand and we went down again.

Black Glasses mouthed at me, “He’s showing off. Don’t disturb him.”

When Poker-Face looked back at him, he gave a thumbs up and made a finger gun gesture. Poker-Face pulled another cold firework out, threw into the water, and then leaned over the edge to get a look.

The rest of us leaned over as well, finally able to see clearly. As the cold firework sank and slowly illuminated the shadow below, we saw that the bodies of countless children were submerged in the water.

These children were all dressed in ancient clothes, their faces were blue and yellow, and there wasn’t any sign of bloating on them. They were just like statues. There was layer upon layer of them, which made it impossible to count how many there were.

“This cult was crazy.” Fatty mouthed as he shook his head.

I sighed in my heart. These children’s corpses ranged from three or four years old to six or seven years old. They had obviously been processed, but some of them hadn’t been done well. We could see that they had shrunk into an empty and strange animal-like skin sac. I looked at the children’s clothes and realized that this pool may be a pill furnace. I didn’t know what kind of insidious spells were used, but pills were probably refined here. (1)

At this time, we also noticed that there were strange white ribbons on these children’s bodies. They had been completely stained yellow by the sulfur and went into the deepest part of the spring.

“What are those?” Fatty asked.

Black Glasses mouthed, “Those may be tails.”

“Tails?” Fatty’s mouth widened in surprise.

Black Glasses said, “Jin Tong Sect was also called Wenxiang Sect (2). It was said that Wenxiang Sect was founded by Wang Sen of Shifokou, Luanzhou, Hebei Province. When he saved a fox, it cut its tail off and gave it to him. The tail had a strange scent.”

Poker-Face turned his head, “No. They were using the children to fish in this pool.”

<Chapter 193><Table of Contents><Chapter 195>

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TN Notes:

(1) Western alchemy is different from Chinese alchemy so here’s a Wikipedia article on Chinese alchemy. Pill furnaces are like old-timey ovens to create pills and elixirs. They fall under “outer alchemy (Waidan)” on the Wiki article. Some pics are here.

(2) Wenxiang can mean “incense smelling”. The only good info I could find is here.