Iron Bull taucht wieder auf

Kapitel 255

“Mr. Feng, look here—” She stopped and pointed to a screen.

A slender man dressed entirely in black spun rapidly forward, simultaneously unleashing countless strange hidden weapons from his head, hands, arms, legs, and feet. His back abruptly appeared on the screen, with a vibrant, eight-legged, seven-colored spider embroidered beneath each of his shoulder blades.

The video is repeated on a loop and is estimated to be about three minutes long. However, apart from the jagged, rocky cave walls, all that is shown on the screen is himself.

"'Phantom Spider' Tang Wang? He's said to be the master of the Tang Clan in Sichuan who can launch the most hidden weapons in an instant?" I recognized the man's identity at just one glance.

On the adjacent screen to the right, a short, wiry man with eight gleaming steel needles between his ten fingers leaps off a cliff and charges forward with thunderous, relentless force.

"This one, Mr. Feng should also recognize, right? 'Death Needle' Tang Po, who was once ranked thirty-fifth in the Tang Clan's 'Hall of Fame' in Sichuan. He and my ninth grandfather Tang Wang were always inseparable and fought side by side. However, they have both passed away long ago, and only unfounded legends about them remain in the martial arts world."

I couldn't help but frown: "These fragments should all record real events. Could it be that the experts from the Tang Clan of Sichuan are here for the legendary treasure?"

Tang Xin stretched out her finger and stroked the screen, gently shaking her head: "Mr. Feng, do you know why the leaders of the Tang Clan throughout history always dreamed of unifying the martial arts world and dominating the land? In life, what people are most passionate about are fame, fortune, money, and power. They already have enough money, and the only way to go further is to seek the power to rule the world. I have personally witnessed that the Tang Clan's underground treasure vault is piled up with an inexhaustible mountain of gold, enough to pay for even if every Tang Clan disciple lived a life of extravagance and madness for a hundred years. What my ancestors wanted was the whole world beneath their feet."

In the nearly five-hundred-year history of the martial arts world, the Tang Clan of Sichuan, as one of the main characters with a clear banner and unwavering ambition, has always made its appearance, waving the banner of testing swords against the world. Therefore, the seniors of the martial arts world often lament that the martial arts world without the Tang Clan is not a complete martial arts world.

"Miss Tang, it's too early to judge the good and evil of the Tang Clan in Sichuan. What I'm more concerned about is who these two Tang Clan experts are fighting against."

Beyond the two screens, I made an even more astonishing discovery. The upper left screen displayed a tall, dark-skinned Indian man with a dozen or so colorful bamboo whistles hanging around his neck, his eyes fixed intently ahead. When I stood in front of that screen, my gaze met his.

"Snake King Kuntisa?" The thought of his name sent a chill down my spine, and goosebumps immediately rose on my skin.

Kundisha was the uncrowned king of northern India, skilled in witchcraft, snake manipulation, poisoning, and spellcasting. He was not only an object of worship for ordinary people, but even several powerful local rulers were wary of him and willingly offered him annual tributes. If the screen were high enough, I guess you could see the writhing cobras beneath him, as that was his signature image; whenever he sat cross-legged in meditation, he would command hundreds of cobras to form a cushion on the ground.

Tang Xin followed and bowed to Kuntisha with her palms together.

I'm certain that what's shown on the screen are all scenes of masters fighting each other, but what's the point of hanging these clips on the rock wall?

“Mr. Feng, let’s go forward. It’s always a good thing to have the opportunity to witness the magnificent scene described in Du Mu’s ‘Ode to the Epang Palace’.”

It was clear that Tang Xin didn't understand anything about this place; the bewildered expression on her face as she stared at the screens spoke volumes.

As I continued forward, the scenes displayed on the screen became increasingly bizarre, because I discovered that all the masters had one thing in common: their martial arts were all characterized by "poison," including strange schools from Mexico, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, Iceland, and other places.

What are all these experts skilled in using poison doing together? Or rather, what have they done in the past, and who are their enemies? From beginning to end, I didn't see a single enemy; on each screen, there was only one person fiercely attacking forward.

“Mr. Feng, there is something I should apologize to you for. As a gift of apology, I will offer you that set of ‘The Yellow Springs Scripture’. Anyway, I don’t need it anymore.” Tang Xin smiled gently, and she seemed to have completely changed compared to when she was with the tiger.

Fifty paces away was the bright cave entrance; in another minute I would see the legendary Epang Palace. My heart was filled with a mix of excitement and unease. The "apology" she spoke of must have been referring to the "book theft" incident she had inexplicably provoked in the Egyptian desert, which had thrown the camp into chaos.

"The scriptures are with Song Jiu. I left them in Cairo's Old City, at the Ostrich Bar on Street 52 in District 3. You are the first person he has ever admired, and I believe you two will get along very well. Mr. Feng, the scriptures contain many profound and ancient prehistoric treasures, enough for you to study and savor for a lifetime. Does this show my sincerity?"

I sighed softly, "Thank you, but the scriptures should be left to Tiger, after all, he risked his life to retrieve them from the Japanese ambush."

If Tang Xin were to disappear, the scriptures would be Tiger's only solace, and I don't want to take even that right away from him.

"The world's treasures belong to the virtuous. Mr. Feng, giving the scriptures to the tiger would be precisely what harms him. Only a peerless master like you could properly handle those materials."

Tang Xin turned her head and stared at me, her gaze becoming cold and calm.

I forced a lighthearted smile and said, "Okay, I accept your apology. Thank you."

After walking about ten more steps, a strong mountain wind swept over them, billowing and rustling Tang Xin's fox fur coat. The wind carried a rich, intoxicating fragrance of camellias.

I couldn't contain myself and rushed forward a few steps. Before I even reached the cave entrance, a towering gray eaves suddenly appeared below my eye level, with iron bells and copper chimes ringing incessantly in the wind.

"Mr. Feng, take your time, don't go out of the cave!" Tang Xin warned loudly. After only a few words, I was already standing at the cave entrance, and the view suddenly opened up before me. A few hundred steps away, there was a vast ancient building, its white walls and gray tiles exuding an indescribable sense of neatness and precision.

The cave entrance is located halfway up the mountain, with a narrow, zigzagging staircase carved into the rock wall that leads down to the open space below.

Standing here overlooking the palace, you can only see the front half near the stone wall; the many pavilions and towers behind it seem to be submerged in a light veil of mist.

The building's red doors were tightly shut, and it was quiet and deserted.

"This is the Epang Palace, Mr. Feng." Tang Xin pointed downwards, further preventing me from going down the steps.

I slightly lowered my body, and suddenly gathered my strength from my dantian, shouting loudly towards the opposite side: "Sulun, Sulun, I'm here, we're here—" Amidst the echoing sound, a slender shadow suddenly appeared in the distant mist, and in the blink of an eye, it stopped on the roof eaves.

"Who's coming from the other side?" I asked in a low voice. In any case, it couldn't be Suren, because her lightness skill wasn't that advanced.

"What? There's someone there?" Tang Xin asked in surprise, raising her hand to shield her brow bone as she looked ahead.

Instead of blue skies and white clouds, the sky above us was a hazy gray, and we couldn't see anything, just like being in London, the "Foggy City," in winter.

The person opposite is faintly visible in the mist, standing firmly at the highest point of the ancient building despite the strong mountain wind.

“I can’t see anyone, Mr. Feng, are you seeing things? He said that in this world, besides us, there is only Tang Qing. If it really is her, there will be a life-or-death battle soon—” Tang Xin observed for a few seconds without moving, and finally breathed a sigh of relief and slowly shook her head, “Fortunately, she didn’t come. It’s probably just your imagination.”

Volume Five: The Millennium Labyrinth

Part 1: Deep Underground

— Chapter 7 — Who am I? —

I was absolutely certain that I was not mistaken, and when that person leaped up and changed her position, I was even more certain of her identity: Dragon Witch, also known as Tang Qing, the Tang Clan master who had suddenly disappeared from the martial arts world.

"It's Tang Qing, right there on the highest eaves to the left. She's observing us. Can't you see her?" I turned to Tang Xin. She took a step back in shock: "Mr. Feng, your eyes are glowing green! Is something wrong?"

From her two dark eyes, I could clearly see two green spots shimmering in my own eyes. This was because the effects of the giant snake's gall had been preserved for a long time, giving me a keen perception that surpassed that of ordinary people.

"No problem, but I'd like to go down and take a look." I pointed to the large, flat open space in front of the ancient building.

Regarding the whereabouts of my elder brother Yang Tian and Su Lun, perhaps the omnipotent Tang Qing can give me some clues. In our several meetings and encounters, some longer and some shorter, I have become acutely aware of this.

"No, he said this place is a death zone where two energy clusters clash and fight. Rushing in will only make us victims of the energy war." Tang Xin gripped my arm, refusing to let go.

The open space below the rock face was about thirty meters square, paved with flat, smooth bluestone blocks, extending to the foot of the rock wall on both sides, with no path leading away. Superficially, this vast complex of buildings lacked even a single main road suitable for vehicles and horses.

The visible part of the palace is fifty meters long and more than seventy meters wide, with layers upon layers of pavilions that cannot be fully counted.

"I have to go down, someone is still waiting for me to rescue them--" I tried to break free from her, and Tang Qing was slowly waving to me in the mist.

"Mr. Feng, don't be impulsive. This isn't the world we're familiar with. There are more mysterious laws of survival here!" Tang Qing's fingers instantly intensified, and the potential of the "Hundred Deaths Divine Skill" was quickly unleashed, tightly locking my right arm.

"She's waving at me, can you see her?" I pointed into the mist. Tang Qing's shadow was like a fleeting ghost, constantly changing its position.

Tang Xin became increasingly confused: "I can't see anything, there's only fog."

I looked up and, in the dim light, I could faintly hear the sound of a zither, its melody extremely ancient and elegant.

"So, did you hear the music?" I asked again.

Tang Xin shook her head again: "Mr. Feng, something strange must have happened. I can't see or hear anything."

I turned back to look at the tunnel. The screens on the rock walls on both sides were gradually going out, and all I could see was the faint white light emanating from the stone surfaces. From the golden egg to here, every change in the scenery was so fast that I couldn't concentrate and think. When the ancient architectural complex of the Epang Palace suddenly appeared beneath my feet, all my thoughts became extremely chaotic.

I saw the square-eyed warrior in my hallucinations. What about him? Could he have had similar thoughts and experiences? Does he even know this? Were the things Tang Xin repeated true? False? Or a mixture of truth and falsehood? What kind of strange change has occurred in Tang Qing, who possesses unparalleled lightness skills and can kill without a trace with a flick of his finger?

The great undertaking of space travel began with the American "moon landing program." Humanity's dream of exploring space is being realized step by step, and advancements in spacecraft development are accelerating exponentially. The latest issue of the authoritative American space magazine *Tomorrow* featured a famous discussion on the perplexing concept of "time reversal."

When a spacecraft reaches a theoretical speed, roughly between the speed of light and five times the speed of light, the Earthlings inside will become disconnected from their fellow humans in a broad sense of time. Simply put, they will exist outside of time and will no longer have any connection to our Earth.

I suspect that the Square-Eyed Warrior was such a person. His spacecraft underwent some kind of mutation, and its speed suddenly increased to an unimaginable level. That's why, during the "time reversal," he unknowingly entered the wrong orbit, his target changed, and he returned directly to the starting point.

The only difference is that the space remains the same, but time has been out of sync for thousands of years, moving from the world of 2007 into the era of Qin Shi Huang's unification of the world.

This hypothesis contains many "fallacies" that cannot be explained by human physics, but it actually happened, which is why there is this strange and vast world beneath the mountain.

"Mr. Feng said that Tang Qing has lost herself, her body is possessed by another mind, and she's a very dangerous person. If it weren't for her sudden attack, I wouldn't have fallen straight down the cliff, a drop of at least several hundred meters—"

I couldn't help but interrupt her: "Miss Tang, have you been to the bottom of the cliff?"

A song once drifted from the mist below the cliff; where there is song, there must be someone. If the singer was Suren, how did she suddenly move from her disappearance location outside the mountains to that place?

"Of course not, he saved me in mid-air, his lightness skill was as good as a bird." She smiled slightly when she mentioned "him".

"How deep is that cliff? Did he mention it?" I pressed.

"That was a place he had never been before. Instrument detection indicated the existence of an immeasurably large magnetic field beneath it, even greater than the energy in the ozone gap over Antarctica."

I let out a long sigh, a hint of disappointment creeping in. If even the square-eyed warrior couldn't explore the area below the cliff, the difficulty of this task was unimaginable.

Tang Xin, who had been staring intently ahead, suddenly sighed and relaxed: "Mr. Feng, there's no one over there."

A gust of wind blew, causing her long hair and fox fur to flutter, reminding me of the time at the Scalpel Villa when Tiger, concerned about her sensitivity to the cold, had the owner re-lay the carpet. That meticulous and gentle care would secretly touch the heart of anyone who witnessed it.

"My father once said that my heart is made of ice and will not be moved by anyone." She pressed down on her fluttering clothes, her delicate eyebrows gradually straightening and rising. "I always thought that the tiger was the one who could melt that ice, but despite his best efforts, he only managed to melt a single drop of water from the entire iceberg."

I really wanted to tell her that Tiger had resolutely turned down the Brunei princess's marriage proposal and rejected the offer from Singapore's youngest female tycoon in order to stay by her side. If Tiger hadn't met her, his future life would have been carefree and unrestrained—but I said nothing. Perhaps it was fate's cruel joke that brought them together, led them to travel together, and ultimately left them with an irreversible ending.

"A cold rain falls on the river as night descends on Wu; at dawn, I see off my guest, leaving the Chu mountains lonely. If friends and relatives in Luoyang ask about me, tell them my heart is as pure as ice in a jade pot." Tang Xin softly recited the poem of her predecessors, and in an instant, her expression was filled with an inextricable contradiction.

"I would comfort Tiger; he's a carefree and easygoing wanderer who can easily let things go." I couldn't bear to see her melancholy; it reminded me of everything that happened at Fuuki-ji Temple in Hokkaido.

She suddenly shook her head, a silent fear flashing in her eyes: "Mr. Feng, I think this time no one can escape the calamity of fate. Explanations and consolations are meaningless."

"Oh? You mean—" A sharp whistle that seemed to pierce through the clouds and split rocks suddenly came from the depths of the thin mist, which instantly dissipated. At the highest point of the pavilion's eaves, Tang Qing, dressed in black, stood alone against the wind, like a tightly bound flag.

"I had a dream that the Epang Palace was my final resting place, where love and life would die at the same time..." Tang Xin answered hastily.

The shriek rose again, and Tang Qing leaped up, spreading all six arms out at once, like a slender dragonfly gliding forward, landing on the entrance gate of the ancient building.

"This is part of the dream. She is just a puppet. The one who truly possesses destructive power is always hidden in the darkness." Tang Xin released my arm, her wrists trembled, and with a "snap," an exquisitely crafted, ultra-thin crossbow case, as delicate as a book, popped out of her palm.

The cave entrance was about thirty meters above the ground, so Tang Qing had to look up to see us, but she kept her head down and just kept shaking her arms, which looked suffocatingly eerie against the background of gray tiles.

After the mist dissipated, I could clearly see the entire Epang Palace. The palace walls and pavilions stretched forward for at least two kilometers. Compared to the description in "Epang Palace Rhapsody," the complex in front of me could be called a "miniature Epang Palace," but I didn't understand the purpose of building it under the mountain.

"I'm going down now." Tang Xin took a step back.

"Didn't you say that the area below is where energy fields converge, making it extremely dangerous?" I relayed her words. If Tang Qing really launches an attack on us, it will be my turn to defend against it.

"Yes, but this is a death pact. Only one of us can survive; it's either her or me. Among the Tang Clan disciples, our fates are inherently intertwined, with each pair antagonizing the other. Only in this way can the fittest survive and the best bloodline be passed down."

The cold light from the crossbow case illuminated her face; at this moment, she was truly Tang Xin, the prospective head of the Tang Clan, who instilled fear in the world.

"Pray for me--" She held her head high and slowly walked down the stone steps, her initial fear gone.

I followed closely behind her, and we had just descended two steps when the square-eyed warrior's voice rang out from behind: "Don't worry, Tang Qing is just a puppet, her life and death are in someone else's hands. She poses no threat whatsoever. Your presence will only make the situation more chaotic. You must know that the martial arts of the Tang Clan in Sichuan are unfathomable, and she is not as weak as she appears."

His appearances are always silent, undetectable even to my sixth sense.

"Then what's the point of this battle?" I asked coldly, without turning around, my eyes fixed on Tang Xin as she moved forward. Even if she could never become Tiger's lover, I didn't want to see her die like Red Devil and Uncle Wei.

There were more than a hundred stone steps in total. After Tang Xin descended thirty steps, she was on the same plane as Tang Qing, about thirty meters apart, and the two were facing each other coldly.

"Meaning?" The square-eyed warrior sneered. "That question is far less interesting than 'Who am I?' Don't you think?"

"Who are you?" I had already heard Tang Xin's account, but I wanted to get the final confirmation from him.

"You can call me Alpha, or simply 'Afang' like the farmer I met on the first day I stepped out of the spaceship. A name is just a simple symbol; after all, I'm the only one living in this absurd age." He sat down in a corner of the cave entrance, put the golden mask back on his face, revealing only his gleaming eyes, and gazed at the end of the Afang Palace.

Tang Qing slowly raised her head, and the battle began in that instant. Ten red lights suddenly appeared on her hands, which grew to more than half a meter in length. Like Tang Xin, she lunged forward at the same time. "Click-clack, click-clack-clack," six consecutive clicks of the trigger mechanism rang out. Tang Xin's crossbow fired continuously at extremely close range. The sound of the crossbow bolts piercing the air was sharp and whistling, piercing my eardrums.

The Tang Clan of Sichuan is renowned throughout the land for its poisons and hidden weapons. From the late Song to the early Yuan dynasty, they gradually began to emphasize martial arts and weaponry, combining these with their expertise in hidden weapons to develop a unique martial art that integrates the strengths of various schools. Tang Qing and Tang Xin are both outstanding disciples of the Tang Clan; this round of combat was evenly matched, making it a classic battle.

"This isn't a battle between two people, and it never will be. Listen, what else is in the wind?" Alpha reminded me in a deep voice.