Chapter 53
## Chapter 53: Cold Pond Inscription
pain.
It wasn't a sharp tearing sensation, but a deeper, pervasive pain, like the slow cracking of aeons of black ice deep within the bone marrow. Amidst this boundless chill and crumbling sensation, consciousness gradually recondensed, like scattered ice chips struggling to refreeze.
Gu Linzhi struggled to open his eyelids, which seemed frozen.
My vision was initially a blurry, shaky blur of dark green light and shadow, then gradually came into focus. The first thing that caught my eye was a low, rough rocktop covered in slippery moss, dripping with water. The air was thick with indissoluble moisture, the sweet smell of humus, and a strange, cold fragrance that penetrated deep into my bones.
He found himself lying on a simple "bed" covered with thick, dry moss and unknown soft grass, covered with a half-worn, river-smelling straw raincoat. The softness and relative dryness beneath him were completely different from the icy cold river water and the muddy and filthy dock before.
Where is this?
He tried to turn his neck, and his bones made a slight creaking sound. His whole body felt as if it had been crushed by a heavy hammer, and it hurt everywhere, especially under his left ribs. The place that was hit by the masked man's cold palm power was now like a spring that continuously released cold poison. The cold numbness had spread to most of his chest, and every weak breath was accompanied by a needle-like pain and a heavy stagnation.
He's still alive. Who pulled him out of the sea of blood and corpses at the Dragon King Temple? Was it the masked crossbowman who appeared last? Or...
He glanced around with difficulty. It was a naturally formed cave, not spacious, but dry and airy. The entrance was obscured by dense vines and dangling aerial roots, letting in only a faint ray of sunlight and the gurgling of water outside. In the corners lay a few simple pottery jars, fishing gear, and bundles of dried herbs. In the center, a small campfire burned quietly, a dark clay pot perched above it. Something was boiling inside, emitting a rich, bitter medicinal aroma.
Beside the campfire, a hunched figure, with his back to him, was pounding herbs in a stone mortar with a stone pestle. It was the mysterious old boatman.
It was indeed him.
Gu Linzhi's heart beat heavily in his cold chest. This old man, like an omnipresent ghost, always appeared at the most critical moment, pulling him out of despair, but also pushing him into another deeper mystery.
He seemed to have noticed Gu Linzhi's awakening, and paused slightly in pounding the medicine. He didn't turn around, but simply said in his hoarse, old voice, "You're awake. Drink the medicine."
He used a wooden spoon to scoop out half a bowl of thick, inky, steaming medicinal juice from the pottery jar, set it aside to cool, and then continued to pound the medicine with his head down, as if whether Gu Linzhi woke up or not had nothing to do with him.
Gu Linzhi struggled to sit up, but it aggravated the injury under his ribs. A violent coughing made his eyes go black and he almost fainted again.
The old boatman finally turned and approached. His face, wrinkled and etched by the wind, remained expressionless. His cloudy eyes took in the faint blue blood oozing from Gu Linzhi's ribs and shook his head. "The cold poison of the 'Nether Palm' has mixed with your original poison... and it's penetrated deep into your bones. This herb of mine can only keep you alive, it can't cure the root cause."
He picked up the bowl of medicine and handed it to Gu Linzhi's mouth. A strong bitter smell rushed into his nose.
Gu Linzhi looked at him and didn't drink immediately. Although he was weak and dying, his cold eyes still showed scrutiny and vigilance.
"Why...save me?" He asked the question that had been lingering in his mind for a long time in a hoarse voice.
The old boatman's cloudy eyes stared at him for a moment, and an extremely complex and indescribable emotion seemed to pass through the depths of his eyes, like pity, and like mockery, which eventually turned into a calm silence.
"I've been entrusted with this task." He simply uttered these four words and passed the medicine bowl forward. "I'm doing this to be loyal to the man I'm entrusted with."
Who entrusted this? Su Wanwan? The masked crossbowman? Or… the Yunze Society?
Countless questions swirled in Gu Linzhi's mind, but he knew he wouldn't be able to extract any further information from the old man. He hesitated no longer, took the medicine bowl, and, enduring the nauseating bitterness, drank the entire bowl. A searing warmth flowed down his throat, temporarily dispelling some of the chill that had penetrated deep into his bones, but the source of the cold poison beneath his ribs remained as cold and hard as iron.
"Where...is this?" Gu Linzhi asked breathlessly.
"Yunmengze. Outside of Huilong Bay." The old boatman took back the medicine bowl and said calmly, "It's not far from the cold pond you are looking for."
Cold Pond! Gu Linzhi's pupils shrank! Su Wanwan's dying words echoed again—"Cold Pond Grass... is thirty miles west of Yunmeng Lake... in Huilong Bay..." This old boatman even knew this?!
He really knew everything! He was like a cold bystander, clearly watching the movements of every chess piece on the chessboard!
"You..." Gu Linzhi wanted to ask again.
The old boatman waved his hand, interrupting him. "Save your energy. You don't have much time... yet." He pointed outside the cave. "The Cold Pond is in the western valley where the mist is thickest. Whether you can find grass and survive the contents depends on your luck."
After saying that, he no longer paid attention to Gu Linzhi, turned around and walked back to the campfire, and continued to stir the herbs, as if Gu Linzhi's life and death was really just "fate".
Gu Linzhi leaned against the cold rock wall, panting violently. The faint warmth from the medicine battled fiercely with the cold poison in his body, bringing waves of icy and fiery pain. He knew the old boatman was right; staying here would only mean death. The cold pond grass was his only, slim hope.
He had to go, even if there was only a one in ten thousand chance.
He stopped talking, closed his eyes, and silently gathered his remaining strength to fight against the pain, waiting for his strength to recover a little.
The only sounds in the cave were the monotonous sound of pounding medicine with a stone pestle and the crackling of the burning campfire.
An unknown amount of time passed. When Gu Linzhi opened his eyes again, he felt as if a faint trace of strength had returned to his body. He struggled, standing up with great difficulty. Every step felt like walking on the edge of a knife, and the cold poison under his ribs was like a heavy block of ice, dragging down his movements.
The old boatman was still pounding medicine with his back to him, as if he didn't notice his actions and had no intention of stopping him.
Gu Linzhi took a deep breath, dragged his heavy steps, and staggered towards the cave entrance, pushing aside the dense vines and aerial roots.
Outside, the sky was dark and a gentle drizzle continued. Before me lay a boundless expanse of swampland, shrouded in thick fog and mist. Tall aquatic plants tangled their roots, muddy puddles dotted the landscape, and the air was thick with the unsettling smell of decay.
In the west, just as the old boatman said, the water vapor was extremely thick, and the white fog was like a real curtain, covering a deep valley, where the Huilong Bay Cold Pond was located.
Gu Linzhi identified the direction, gritted his teeth, and stepped into the dangerous swamp without hesitation, one step deep and one step shallow.
Each step was incredibly difficult. The mud devoured his footsteps, and the icy chill of the swamp seeped up through his soaked shoes and socks. The cold poison under his ribs became more active under the stimulation of the damp environment, and the icy numbness gradually spread upwards.
He lost count of how many times he fell, and how many times he struggled to get up. His consciousness slipped in and out of focus amidst the intense pain and cold. His obsession with finding the cold pond grass, like a single beacon in the darkness, kept him moving forward.
Finally, after passing through an extremely dense and thorny patch of waterweed, the scene before me suddenly became clear!
A vast valley, as if split open by a giant axe, appeared before their eyes. Within it lay a deep, almost lake-like pool! The water was a strange, dark green, bottomless. Visible white vapor rose from the surface. Even from a distance, one could feel the soul-chilling chill that washed over them.
Cold Pond! This is the Cold Pond!
Near the center of the cold pond, a strange patch of waterweed, emitting a faint blue glow, could be vaguely seen beneath the surface, swaying with the waves! Its shape and luster were exactly the same as the cold pond grass Su Wanwan had described and that he had read about in books!
Hope instantly ignited Gu Linzhi's almost frozen heart!
But he immediately discovered that reaching the patch of cold pond grass was a near-impossible task! Not only was the water icy and bottomless, but there was no path to the edge, only steep, slippery rock faces. Even more frightening, deep within the dark green waters, he could vaguely see several long, dark, scaly, terrifying shadows slowly swimming, emitting a suffocating, murderous aura.
Frost Chi! And there's more than one!
Gu Linzhi's heart sank. In his current state, let alone going into the water to gather herbs, even if he approached the edge of the pond, he would probably be torn to pieces by these guarding beasts in an instant!
Is it really going to fail at the last moment?
Just as he was on the verge of despair, his eyes accidentally swept across a steep, vine-covered rock face above the cold pond. There seemed to be an inconspicuous, dark cave entrance?
Furthermore, on the rock wall below the cave entrance, there seemed to be some unnatural, artificially excavated traces?!
With a thought in his mind, he suppressed his discomfort and moved cautiously and with great difficulty along the edge of the pool towards the rock wall.
As he got closer, he finally saw it clearly. It was indeed a narrow, man-made cave entrance, barely wide enough for one person to pass through. The rock wall below the entrance, though covered in moss, vaguely showed signs of careful polishing, with faint patterns and writing seemingly carved into it.
What shocked him the most was that he saw a familiar mark on the edge of the incision half-hidden by moss!
Those were several marks made up of wavy lines, surrounding an abstract bird pattern!
The Yunze Society's watermark! It matched the mark on the metal fragment and the one the old boatman had hinted at! Could there actually be traces of the Yunze Society here?!
Gu Linzhi's heart began to beat wildly! He ignored the danger and tore away the covering vines and moss with his hands, revealing the marks on the rock wall more clearly.
It seemed to be a simple mural and a few lines of ancient inscriptions!
The mural's content is vaguely discernible: it depicts numerous small figures kneeling beside a vast, icy well (or pond), performing some kind of ritual. And the core of the ritual seems to involve... throwing a living person into the pond?! The style of the mural is primitive, even crude, yet it exudes a chilling sense of primitiveness and cruelty.
The inscription beside it was even more ancient and obscure. It was a long-lost tadpole script similar to the extinction script! Gu Linzhi was completely unable to recognize it.
However, at the very bottom of the murals and inscriptions, someone had seemingly added a few relatively new lines of small, seal-style characters with a sharp tool. These were the only ones Gu Linzhi could barely understand! The words were sunken into the stone, carrying a sense of reluctance and sorrow:
"...In the seventh year of King Jing of Zhou, fire fell from the sky, cold springs gushed out from the ground, and a great epidemic spread across the land of Ze... The shamans offered living people as sacrifices to the lake, begging for an end to the epidemic... Many people died in vain..."
"...My predecessor traveled here and gained enlightenment by observing the pond. He said that this cold evil could not be quelled by sacrifices, but was the result of the condensation of Yin evil in the earth's veins, and needed to be suppressed with the 'Yangyan Stone'..."
"...It's a pity that Yangyan Stone is so rare and hard to come by... Our predecessor passed away in depression, leaving behind a carving. We, the descendants, should keep this in mind..."
The seventh year of King Jing of Zhou? That was the Spring and Autumn Period! The existence of this cold pond and its sacrificial traditions are surprisingly ancient?! Did the "ancestor" of the Yunze Society visit this place? And even left behind a solution to the "Yangyan Stone" evil spirit suppression technique?
Yangyan Stone? Gu Linzhi had never heard of this kind of mineral.
But this inscription undoubtedly reveals several shocking secrets: First, the formation of the cold pond is far older than imagined and is related to some kind of Yin Sha earth vein; second, the "Ice Soul" sought by the Northern Di, or perhaps the Snow Spider Pavilion, is very likely related to the Yin Sha power deep within the cold pond! Third, the Yunze Society has been paying attention to this place for hundreds of years and has been trying to find a solution!
And that bird-shaped water mark firmly binds the Yunze Association to all of this!
All the clues, at this moment, beside this eerie cold pond, on this ancient moss-covered rock wall, seem to point to a deeper and more terrifying conspiracy core!
Did the Beidi tribe seek to harness the Cold Pond's sinister power (Ice Soul)? Was the Yunze Society attempting to prevent or even control it? And was I, the orphan of the Jingbei Marquis, someone whose body needed the Cold Pond Grass to detoxify and who might possess a special bloodline, a crucial pawn in the game between the two sides, a crucial chess piece concerning the power of the Cold Pond, from the very beginning?
Just when Gu Linzhi was shocked by this astonishing discovery and his mind was in a mess——
“Gurgle…”
Without any warning, a series of huge bubbles emerged from the surface of the cold pond behind him!
Then, a long, horrifying black shadow covered with dark green scales, like a demon awakening from the depths of hell, silently broke through the dark green water and raised its ferocious head! Its vertical pupils, like two burning will-o'-the-wisp fires, locked their gaze on the tiny human beneath the rock wall!
The cold murderous intent, like a tangible cold wave, instantly submerged Gu Linzhi completely.
Han Chi was startled...
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