Chapter 35 Depressed Water

It took some time for that train-like sound to quiet down—it was a sound that made people feel a great sense of sadness, as if some creature from ancient times was wailing at me—but at that moment, I suddenly received the heavenly gift.

This was a very good clue, because it seemed to indicate that once my attention was extremely focused on one of my five senses and I entered a state where my mind started to wander, the heavenly gift would immediately swoop in and affect me. If my attention was moderately focused and my consciousness was closely connected, however, it wouldn’t be as easy for the heavenly gift to act.

This time, the heavenly gift didn’t erase my memory, but gave me an idea. This sudden, inexplicable epiphany made me realize that the water was flowing. The water in the ground below my feet was flowing through the rock crevices all around me, and for some reason, it was producing a strange train-like wailing sound.

Like a person guiding the way, that section of water roared deeper underground. There were various ways to live underground, but water was indispensable. No one ever said that those who reached the end of cultivation wouldn’t need to drink water.

After all, even immortals had to absorb the wind and drink the dew; it wasn’t like they didn’t eat anything. So, this water vein would definitely flow down along the crevices leading to Jade Lake.

At that time, I didn’t realize that this idea was given to me by an outside force; I just thought that I had a flash of inspiration on my own. I also didn’t realize that I had lost my bronze piece.

Since I thought that this path would follow the water’s route, then as long as I followed the direction where the sound had come from, I should be able to find my way back.

With this idea in mind, instead of entering that second stone gateway, I turned back and began looking for a fork in the path.

In that passage, apart from the original path, there was also a very small hole that was only large enough for one person to crawl through. After using my flashlight to look inside, I saw traces that seemed to indicate people had been living there—a lot of protrusions that could be grasped by hand had been carved into the ground.

I climbed in and stuck to the cave wall, discovering that I really could hear the sound of water.

Before that train-like sound passed by, there was also the sound of water flowing through the rocks, but it wasn’t as majestic.

I struggled to crawl through that extremely tiny cave for about three days.

My current self had forgotten these three days of despair, but the message I left for myself in these sutras was: Remember that here, crawling in the dark for three days is pretty standard.

What I really needed to worry about was crawling forward in a place like this for a whole year.

The mountain here was like a huge piece of wood that had been eaten into a network of tunnels by termites, and we were the little termites inside.

It may take a whole year to climb to Jade Lake.

This was how the alchemists here lived. They crawled along the countless mountain crevices like worms, regardless of how difficult the process was. Their predecessors also raised clams here for food, which helped create a possibility of survival in this place.

Everyone, with great faith and perseverance, went to Jade Lake, which they thought was the end.

I didn’t know if it was because they were affected by the heavenly gift, or if the darkness and abyss gave them some kind of obsessive mental disorder.

Whatever the case, I highly suspected that these people who kept going deep below the Kunlun Mountains were the ones who caused the black soft-bodied things in the rock strata to be disturbed, which resulted in a series of problems such as sacrifices.

During those three days, I climbed to such a state of near madness that I didn’t even think I needed the heavenly gift. I was completely out of my mind by the pure torture of this hopeless progress.

In the later stage, the passage was so narrow that I almost got stuck between the rocks above and below me. I couldn’t move at all, nor could I even turn around. This didn’t happen in intermittent sections of the passage; it was more like ninety percent of the passage was so narrow that I couldn’t turn around at all.

In order to crawl more smoothly, I stopped eating (defecation was also a very big problem) so that my body would start to lose weight, but then I started to lose a lot of muscle mass and my physical strength also weakened.

It was around the third day when I saw a small stone gateway at the end of the passage, and I immediately broke out in a cold sweat.

I thought I was climbing back so I shouldn’t be seeing a stone gateway, but now I suddenly found one in front of me. This stone gateway was very small, almost like it was a decoration that had been built for this passage.

This showed that I was moving forward.

I was moving towards Jade Lake. When I climbed over and took a closer look, I found that it said: This way. Gate Thirty-Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Three.⁽¹⁾

Seven gates were missing.

As I was moving forward and crawling in the dark, I somehow got turned around by the heavenly gift.

I immediately broke out in a cold sweat, only now realizing that I had lost the bronze piece. At that moment, the air was very stuffy, my lungs felt like they were being compressed, and I suddenly felt extremely suffocated.

But I had no choice now.

I had a mental breakdown for more than an hour before I pulled myself together and climbed through the stone gateway. After climbing through, I saw that there was a crack in the stone path up ahead.

I could climb over this crack—although it was very deep all around, it was only about as wide as a palm—but when I turned my head, I saw that the corpse of an alchemist had been shoved into the crack. It looked like it was practically stuck in there, but I could see that its face was very twisted and sinister.

I knew that this corpse had undergone a transformation, but it occurred so long ago that the zombie had already completely decayed.

I also saw that the rock in this crack had turned black, just like that huge spot we saw before. Moreover, there were black veins coming up from the rocks below and stopping right where the corpse was at.

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Author’s daily message:

Corpses can attract black veins. I wonder if you remember?

<Chapter 34><Table of Contents><Chapter 36>

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TN Notes:

(1) NPSS didn’t use Arabic numerals (33,993) so I didn’t either.