Chapter 108 — Stealth

Ming Li and Jin Pingyue both frowned slightly, but this was, after all, a rare opportunity. Ming Li said softly to Jin Pingyue beside him, "Let's go in."

Jin Pingyue nodded, but after a glance at Ming Li she said, "I'm very curious about what's happening at the valley entrance. Why don't we make use of the chaos and take a look first?"

Ming Li pondered a moment, then shook his head. "You go. I'll head deeper into Fenxia Valley."

In the darkness Jin Pingyue seemed to pause, then said, "Very well. Be careful."

Ming Li was faintly surprised; those two words, "be careful," coming so abruptly from Jin Pingyue's lips seemed somehow strange. But meeting his gaze, Jin Pingyue merely smiled prettily, and suddenly her figure dissolved into a faint flowing light, gliding silently down the ridge and vanishing into the darkness in moments.

Ming Li frowned, a flicker of sharp light passing through his eyes.

Though Fenxia Valley's history since its founding could not match that of the Canglan Sect or the Devil Sect, it had held this place for over eight hundred years. Slipping in silently through the shadows of night, Ming Li was met by halls and pavilions arrayed in graceful disorder. Their style was rather close to that of the Central Plains, but in the small details—window lintels, eave corners—carvings of fierce beasts appeared here and there, such as were unknown in the Plains. Plainly, over eight centuries Fenxia Valley had been influenced by the rugged local customs of the southern frontier.

At the valley entrance the clamor continued unabated, and the alarm bells that Ming Li and Jin Pingyue found most troublesome had begun ringing without cease. He was now hidden cautiously in the shadow behind a large boulder at the foot of the mountain. On the last infiltration, it was here—a few steps further on—that the inexplicable crisp ringing had erupted.

Now he could only hear the bells ringing in a continuous chorus far off. Three zhang ahead of the boulder lay an open space, and beyond it a plain-looking house that seemed to be the dwelling of Fenxia Valley disciples.

Ming Li drew a deep breath, straightened in the shadows, and looked around. All here was quiet, and set against the distant uproar it seemed all the more deserted and silent. As for the disciples in that house, they seemed already to have been summoned to the valley entrance.

Beneath this oddly eerie stillness, Ming Li walked slowly forward.

One step, two steps…

He walked very slowly, and went five steps in all. Everything around remained as it was.

Yet the look on Ming Li's face only grew graver, for last time it was here—on the sixth step—that the strange ringing had discovered him.

The sharp light in his eyes kindled slowly as he swept his gaze around, and he saw that nothing nearby had changed.

After a moment, he slowly took the sixth step.

"Ding-a-ling..."

Almost at the very instant his foot touched the ground, a crisp bell rang out abruptly ahead of him, carrying far through the deep silence.

Ming Li's body went rigid, alarm and fury surging through him together. The ghostly tricks of Burning Cloud Valley were fiendishly effective, yet he could not discover them at all—truly uncanny.

But tonight was naturally a different matter from the days before. Though Ming Li had tripped some formless mechanism and set off an alarm bell, the distant clamor and sounds of fighting were fiercer still, and in mere moments they drowned the bell out.

Ming Li decided on the spot. Sweeping his gaze around, he rose into the air and skimmed low along the ground to the back of the house ahead—only the bell around him kept ringing without pause, a truly maddening headache.

Just then, the monkey Xiao Hui, who had been lying quietly on Ming Li's shoulder all this while, suddenly gave a low cry. Ming Li started, and turned to glance at Xiao Hui on his shoulder.

Lit by a faint glimmer of moonlight in the night, there before Ming Li's eyes in the shadows, a soft "click-click" sound suddenly came from within Xiao Hui's body, and after that the gray mark on its forehead seemed to deepen in color.

Before Ming Li could react, Xiao Hui—who seemed to have sensed something wrong already—suddenly turned its head, and in its monkey eyes a strange, piercing golden light gradually kindled. Yet behind that gold, faintly mingled, there lurked a thread of eerie red.

"Chee-chee, chee-chee."

Xiao Hui's monkey hand suddenly pointed toward the foundation in a remote corner far from that house.

Ming Li lifted Xiao Hui down and examined it closely. "What is it, Xiao Hui?" he asked in a low voice.

"Chee-chee, chee-chee!"

Xiao Hui cried softly, its hand still pointing in that direction, while the golden gleam in its eyes slowly faded.

Ming Li frowned, then nodded. He set it back on his shoulder, and his body immediately drifted over.

In the dark corner of the foundation wall, a faint smell of moss hung in the air. Under Ming Li's careful search, he soon made a discovery: a small hole about a foot across, hidden at the base of the foundation.

A sharp light flashed in his eyes. He reached out—then suddenly, swift as lightning, thrust his hand into the opening. A moment later a low squeal came from within the hole, which fell silent at once; and almost in the same instant, the bell that had been ringing ceaselessly around them stopped short.

A faint smile touched the corner of Ming Li's mouth. Slowly he drew his hand out, and after a moment there was, gripped in his palm, a strange beast—it struggled twice, then moved no more.

The creature was gray-skinned all over and about three feet long, its body bent in a peculiar arch, back hunched high and head and tail drooping low, with a pair of little black bean-like eyes set in its head. But the strangest thing of all was its extraordinarily long snout, nearly half a foot in length—close to a third of its body—the tip broad and flaring into two great nostrils, so that it looked much like the pigs kept in farmers' pens.

Ming Li was taken aback for a moment, then gave a snort and muttered softly, "No wonder I couldn't slip past no matter what—so there's one of these 'Gray Tuskers' about."

Note 1: *Chronicles of Gods, Demons, and Strange Beings*, "Chapter on Spirit Beasts"—Gray Tusker: long snout, great ears, no neck, long tail; feeds on ants, insects, and grass roots; hides by day and comes out by night; some call it the Earth Pig.

Further note: *Modern Animals*—Earth Pig: a mammal, also called the African anteater; powerfully built, about 140 centimeters long, lacking incisors and canines; like the anteater it uses a long tongue to lap up termites. It lives in southern and central Africa, haunting hills or semi-grassland regions, and is highly skilled at digging. It rests in its burrow by day and comes out to forage at night. Timid by nature, with exceptionally keen hearing, it relies on its sense of smell to find food—more than ten times sharper than a dog's.