Twilight Boundary-Chapter 408 - 404: Stone Weights Measure the World
"The Yin General! The Yin General who summons ghost soldiers?" Calculation exclaimed.
His words made Hu Ma’s heart tremble slightly. The thought, carefully considered, was terrifying.
But Calculation, so angry he stomped his foot, suddenly refocused. "Never mind him for now!" he shouted. "Quickly, go into the vein and see if there’s anything else inside!"
"Anything else?" the others echoed, still reeling from the earlier panic. They wiped their faces, hands coming away slick with blood. Glancing at each other, they saw only blood-soaked figures, all truly scared witless and breathing erratically.
Hu Ma, however, remained relatively calm. As Calculation spoke, he had already reached the entrance of the mine, peering inside with a strange expression. Just moments ago, the mine had been filled with a bizarre, eerie presence. But after that *thing* had rushed out, the cave no longer held that peculiar, bloody smell. Instead, it seemed like an ordinary mineral vein. Strangely, when the smell of blood had been present, a mere glance inside could fill one’s heart with an uncanny dread. Now that the bloody creature had emerged, looking at the mine actually brought a considerable sense of calm.
Hu Ma wasted no more words. He immediately lit a torch, crouched down, and squeezed into the vein. Under the watchful, breath-held gaze of the crowd, he advanced deeper, bit by bit. The flickering firelight illuminated the stone walls on either side.
Hu Ma hailed from Dayang Village, home to many Meat Cutting Craftsmen. Strictly speaking, however, this was his first time entering such a mine. He observed the stone walls on both sides, noticing peculiar textures of blood and flesh appearing intermittently within the crevices. First, it was a white substance, then green. Deeper inside, a blood-red substance suddenly appeared, all of it clinging tightly to the stone walls like soil packed into rock fissures. The surfaces showed numerous marks of harvesting.
So these Meat Cutting workers just cut away the various Tai Sui Blood and Flesh, bit by bit, and transport it outside? Hu Ma mused.
He continued forward, gradually discovering that as the blood-red Tai Sui became more prevalent, the surroundings turned a deep crimson. The stone walls themselves seemed crystallized, like dried blood and flesh. Further in, strands of golden patterns became visible on both sides—genuine golden Tai Sui. This change confirmed that Zhuang Erchang hadn’t lied about this particular detail.
This is all valuable stuff...
Yet he knew he hadn’t reached the crucial part, so he forced himself to hold back. He slowly inched deeper, feeling he had gone an extreme distance, over thirty yards. Finally, the torchlight seemed obstructed. Looking carefully, he saw a black, mud-like object ahead. The gold threads on the stone walls on either side grew more concentrated as they spread inward, converging on this dark, round object. Within the black material, cold, dim gleams of golden blood could be seen.
Is that what they call the Stone Corpse? Hu Ma’s heart sank as he concentrated his gaze.
He saw that this thing seemed neither bone nor stone and was connected to the surrounding residual blood and flesh. If he hadn’t known beforehand that this object was peculiar, with golden threads entwined around it and remnants of blood and flesh clinging to its surface, it would have simply looked like a common stone encountered during mining.
Taking several deep breaths, he gathered his courage, activated his Death Transformation, and reached out to push it. This push carried the force of a Shousui man, yet the object didn’t move an inch.
He pondered for a moment, then placed the torch to one side, pulled out his saw-toothed knife, and began cutting around and beneath the object. He severed its connections to the surrounding blood and flesh, disconnecting it from the stone walls of the cave.
Only then did he crawl out again. He had people find some strong ropes and wind them together. He then re-entered the cave, wrapped the ropes several times around the stone, tied them securely, and pulled the other end out.
"Everyone, lend a hand!" Hu Ma called out. "Let’s pull this thing out and see what it is! And bring over those few animals from the mine too."
At his command, everyone got busy. Some moved a large wooden A-frame into position and looped the rope around it. Others went to the animal sheds in the southeast corner of the valley to lead out the livestock. Luckily, the animal shed was in a remote location, so the animals hadn’t been bitten by the gu insects during the earlier chaos.
The rope was looped around the wooden yoke a few times and then attached to the animals. A Meat Cutting Craftsman who understood livestock cracked his whip in the air. Four large mules strained in unison, and the rope instantly went taut. However, the mules’ hooves slipped; they couldn’t budge it.
So, they brought more ropes, redistributed the positions, and harnessed the valley’s other two horses, along with the donkey Hu Ma had brought. No one bothered with the dying Master Ma; the horse looked like it was about to drop dead at any moment.
Even with so many animals harnessed and straining with all their might, the ropes stretched taut, and the wooden frame serving as a pulley creaked as if it might fall apart. Still, the thing inside showed no sign of being dragged out.
Seeing this, Hu Ma furrowed his brow. Zhou Datong and others beside him had already rushed forward to help, so he also grasped the rope. Exerting all his strength, he suddenly shouted, "Out!"
Finally, with the addition of this Entering the Mansion Shousui man, the object inside the vein was dislodged. It came out so quickly that the animals were sent tumbling into a heap, several of them looking as if their legs were lamed. Fortunately, this was a blood food mine; some black oil ointment would fix them up. Anywhere else, these animals would have been ruined.
"What is this?"
Having finally dragged the thing out, both the miners and Zhou Datong’s group gathered around curiously, their eyes full of wonder.
Now that it was outside in the ample light, Hu Ma could see its appearance clearly. It was about four or five feet tall, black, and had an irregular round hole at the top. The surface had originally shown golden patterns, but now that it was dragged outside, they had dimmed. It appeared entirely black, seeming neither iron nor anything else, with no discernible special features.
"So it is, so it is..." Calculation had squeezed forward, his eyes practically glued to it. He touched it here and tapped it there for a long time before letting out a low sigh, appearing somewhat dejected. "It’s not some Stone Corpse, it’s a stone weight. This thing was used to suppress whatever was inside..."
The others didn’t understand, and Hu Ma also looked at him a bit oddly. "This thing is called a stone weight?"
"Yes." Calculation waved his hand, his expression somewhat disappointed. He spoke softly, "This was a strange artifact concocted during a grand festival in Shangjing, said to be used for weighing the significance of the world."
"Weighing the world? What does that mean?" Hu Ma listened and couldn’t help but frown, pushing the object slightly. "With just this thing?"
Just moments ago inside, pushing it felt like trying to move something completely unyielding, Hu Ma thought. Yet now that it was pulled outside, it didn’t seem to have that same immense weight. A push still met resistance, feeling heavy, but it wasn’t completely immovable like before.
"It’s just a saying, how could it be taken literally?" Calculation sighed. "Supposedly, an expert wanted to use this concept to suppress something. Just think, if it could ’weigh the world,’ it means this stone weight possessed a weight comparable to the entire world. How heavy must that be? It was by borrowing this immense weight that extremely malevolent things could be suppressed..."
Hu Ma listened, his brow furrowing slightly. "You mean, like that Yin General?"
"Yes." Calculation spoke softly, "That thing is used for war. It’s extremely sinister! Wherever it passes, all living beings die, transforming into ghost soldiers that follow it into battle. No matter how skilled living people are, how could they possibly resist such a malevolent entity?"
"Hence, there are legends that when the True Lord of the World emerges, a Yin General will appear to assist, leading ghost soldiers to help seize dominion over the land."
"Similarly, the emergence of a Yin General signifies the beginning of the Chaotic World. Though... the thing in our mine seems to have been merely unearthed and hasn’t truly formed, so it might not count."
"Leading ghost soldiers into battle?" Hu Ma was startled by his words. He found it hard to imagine such a creature leading countless ghost soldiers in a charge. He suddenly gained a deeper understanding of the powers within the Paths of this world.
"However..." Calculation mused, his brows furrowing deeper. He suddenly cast a suspicious glance at Hu Ma. "Was it just the stone weight inside there?"
"Logically, if there’s a stone weight and it was meant to form a Yin General, there should also be a General Order. The ancestral master said these things would be placed together..." The more he spoke, the more suspicious he became. He suddenly patted Hu Ma’s sleeve. "Is it on you?"
"What nonsense?" Hu Ma was annoyed. He shook his sleeve openly. "I didn’t have time to take some useless thing! Even if I did, I wouldn’t recognize it. If you don’t believe me, go in and check for yourself!"
Calculation could indeed see that Hu Ma didn’t seem to be hiding anything. Moreover, he knew that such an object probably couldn’t be concealed by a mere Shousui man. He chuckled a couple of times. "Why are you getting angry? I was just asking..."
But even as he spoke, he really did muster his courage, took the torch, and ventured into the mine to look around. He returned with a long face. The mine, as Hu Ma had already seen clearly, was long since empty.
"Why are you so disappointed?" Hu Ma patted the stone weight before him. "This thing, if it’s said to weigh the world, isn’t that a treasure in itself?"
"It’s useless. This thing is just a lock. The General Order that controls the Yin General, *that’s* the real treasure..." Calculation sounded dismissive. "Though no trace of it appears to exist. Could the ancestral master have miscalculated? That old fool, always getting things wrong, he’ll never get a decent offering in the afterlife..."
Seeing his disappointment, Hu Ma didn’t interrupt, merely standing silently aside, lost in thought.
Just then, the Meat Cutting Craftsmen, seeing that only a stone weight had been pulled out, began to disperse. Some of them noticed anomalies on the surface of the nearby flesh deposits. "Why are the flesh deposits here so dried up?" they exclaimed in surprise.
Calculation snapped out of his daze and slapped his thigh hard. "Damn that Zhuang Erchang!"
