Chapter Ninety-Four: Deadly Lullaby

The gearlike grinding continued for more than a minute before it finally fell silent. Kaleidoscope looked back at us with a smug smile, and in that instant he seemed to carry all the hauteur of a man perched above the rest.

I was left staring at him, utterly baffled. Why was this the mechanism’s anchor point? The pipe that was supposed to represent the trigram for Earth had somehow become the one bearing the anchor, while the one that stood for Wind held it instead. It was baffling. Was there no way it could have been placed somewhere else on the pipe?

I asked at once, “Why is the anchor point of this mechanism here?”

Kaleidoscope smiled and nodded when he heard me. “That’s not hard to understand.” As he spoke, he pointed at the three emblems on the iron pipes. “Look: these three marks are a single horizontal stroke, the Water symbol, and a whirlpool. Only this whirlpool symbol has a center point. Isn’t that obvious enough?”

The moment I heard that, dark lines seemed to crawl across my face. I thought to myself, Was this guy frightened silly? That explanation sounded far too simple. I forced an awkward smile. “M-Master, Uncle Master, you should still try the sound.”

Kaleidoscope smiled and nodded, apparently full of confidence. He stepped up to the pipes, cupped his hands, and once again began listening to the echoes within them in the same way as before. After listening for more than ten seconds, he rose with a smile and flashed us an OK sign.

When Ghost-Face Zhang saw that everything was ready, he looked around and still did not seem entirely at ease with Kaleidoscope’s guess. He lit a cigarette, then turned and looked at Iron Crutch Liu standing behind him. “Be ready. In case this guy gets the mechanism wrong, we’ll need to be prepared.”

With that, he steadied his long saber and drew it in one swift motion. A streak of coldness seemed to cut through the air and strike the ground as though frost had fallen there. Standing there with the saber in hand, he looked as if he had deliberately struck a pose: white hair, blue eyes, a gaze as clear as an autumn pool. Every movement about him carried the aura of a male lead in a martial-arts film, handsome to the point of brilliance. It left the two females beside me staring blankly, as though they’d been struck by lightning and gone into a daze.

“I honestly never noticed he was this handsome,” Black Cloak said in a low voice.

Then she turned to look at me and let out a soft, regretful sigh. “Look at you. How can you compare with Ghost-Face Zhang, Third Master Zhang? Your face isn’t really that much worse, but why do you still look so plain and rustic? Sigh. What a burden it is to be this devastatingly beautiful.”

Seeing the disdain on her face, I shook my head. “Then that settles it. You should go with Third Master Zhang instead. Let me say this in advance: the girl with the influencer face in Fat Xu’s territory may not even agree.”

Black Cloak gave a cold snort and said no more. Seeing her fall silent, I grinned wickedly. “In this day and age, every pot has its lid. Pretty girls are everywhere, but handsome men are rare indeed.”

Just as Black Cloak and I were bickering, Mengya reached out and slapped me. I froze and turned to look at her. Her face was terribly pale, like an eggplant beaten by frost, ugly with worry. I guessed at once that she must have been jealous, seeing me banter with Black Cloak, so I gave an embarrassed laugh. “What’s wrong? Jealous again?”

Mengya gave a cold snort. “I’m not that shallow.” As she spoke, her brows knitted tighter and tighter.

“What is it?” I asked hurriedly.

Mengya steadied herself, her gaze never leaving the three pipes standing ahead of us. After a long moment, she stammered, “Qiu Tong, I... I keep... I keep having a bad feeling.”

“What?” I was startled. Why had I felt nothing? Besides, in a place like this, a bad feeling was undoubtedly no small matter—it was almost certainly a very bad sign. “Then can you tell where exactly something feels wrong here?”

Mengya did not answer, only shook her head faintly.

I turned to look at Black Cloak. To my surprise, the corner of her mouth had lifted slightly. Though I could not see the upper half of her face, it was obvious she was mocking Mengya, thinking her words were only a bluff to seem mysterious. After hearing all that, she did not seem under any pressure at all.

While Mengya and I stood there tense and on edge, Kaleidoscope had already begun playing the ancient xun. Holding the bamboo scabbard he had borrowed from Iron Crutch Liu, he first struck the iron pipe marked with the Kan trigram. At once a resonant hum rose up—deep, loud, and far-reaching, as weighty as the tolling of a bell, though it still lacked the ancient xun’s own lingering, drawn-out cadence.

“It works!” Kaleidoscope said with a smile. He immediately swung the bamboo scabbard in his hand and struck the iron pipe marked with the Kun trigram. Another booming note rang out from afar like a great bell.

Hum... The two immense, reverberating tones echoed around our ears. Though loud, they were not irritating or noisy; instead, they seemed to shake the heart and stir the soul.

After hearing it, Kaleidoscope seemed to grow intoxicated by the music himself, his movements becoming noticeably slower. Only after some time did he strike the third note. With that third sound, the music grew even more enchanting. I was already beginning to feel dizzy, as though I might drift into a half-sleep.

Kaleidoscope’s reaction was even stronger than ours. His steps had already become unsteady. Covering his head, he lurched forward and nearly crashed into the iron pipe, but still managed to strike the fourth note. The dizziness instantly intensified again.

“This is bad!” Ghost-Face Zhang cried, clutching his own head. Clearly, the sound offered him little resistance too. “Kaleidoscope! Kaleidoscope!” he roared, his hoarse voice rasping like a broken washbasin as he screamed the name with heartbreaking force. But Kaleidoscope seemed to have no response. He sank to one knee, head bowed, as though he could no longer lift it. It was as if a thousand-pound burden had been pressed upon him, leaving him unable to move.

“W-what... what’s going on?” I asked Black Cloak with the effort of squeezing toothpaste from an almost empty tube. The music was like a fast-acting sleeping pill; I could barely keep my eyelids up. My whole body felt weak, as though I had been struck by some martial-arts paralytic powder. Every joint in my body seemed on the verge of collapse.

Black Cloak took a moment to gather herself before hearing my question. She shook her head, and the words she forced out sounded as though even her jaw had gone numb. “The... the music... there’s something wrong with the music!”

No sooner had she spoken than Kaleidoscope, gritting his teeth against the numbness creeping through his body, staggered onward and struck the fifth note. A tremendous boom echoed through the tomb passage, deepening the already hypnotic sound and making the ache in my head even worse. It was more intense than before, like being hit over the head with a dull club. I nearly collapsed to the ground. My heartbeat seemed to slow, and the dizziness in my skull was about to send me sprawling into a long sleep right there in the passage. Yet I still forced myself to stay conscious through sheer willpower.

Hum...! Kaleidoscope’s arms went weak, but he still gathered all the strength he had left and hurled the bamboo scabbard forward. It struck true on the sixth note.

With that final resonance, I could no longer endure the music’s effect. I fell to the ground. My eyelids could only barely remain open, and all I had left was a thin thread of awareness that let me keep watching Kaleidoscope ahead.

“Kaleidoscope, hold on!” Ghost-Face Zhang bellowed. Struggling to his feet with trembling hands, he pointed upward. “Look up! Look up! The ceiling is full of crossbow bolts—crossbow bolts! If that reverberation stops, we’re dead. Dead!”