—He and I are both in the back cave, but you cannot enter.
After her phone fell, Ban Xia pondered this sentence and immediately realized something. She quickly scrambled to pick up her chocolate-bar-shaped phone.
"Are you Xuan Ye? Are you and Chi Lian in the back cave?"
She typed the words on her phone but then froze, completely unsure who to send them to.
At that moment, something even more miraculous happened.
—No, I just happened to be trapped in the cave too. My name is Hu Po.
The phone actually started typing automatically, engaging in a conversation with her, functioning almost like Tencent QQ.
Ban Xia blinked, utterly stunned and bewildered.
The automatic typing on the phone continued.
—This snake demon named Chi Lian is leaking spiritual power. Both he and I are trapped and injured. If you come in, you will certainly die.
—He says he is very lonely and wants to take us all down with him.
—Save me.
After these three lines, the phone fell completely silent, not displaying another word.
Chi Xue leaned over at that moment, looking at her curiously, and finally couldn’t hold back from asking, "Sister, what are you looking at?"
"This... this thing in the cave, something called Hu Po... I don’t know what it is, told me we can’t go in," Ban Xia stammered, completely at a loss for how to explain it.
"How did he tell you? I didn’t hear anything."
"I don’t know either!" Ban Xia grew frantic. "He just said that Chi Lian wants to perish together with Xuan Ye, that both he and Xuan Ye are injured, and that we’ll surely die if we go in."
"Perish together? Why?!" Su Yun, who had been quiet until now, spoke up, her eyes blazing, once again revealing that obsessed expression.
Ban Xia pulled out her phone and read the message to her: "He says he is very lonely and wants to take..." She trailed off mid-sentence, turning to look at Su Yun as if sizing up prey.
"Why is he lonely? According to you, haven’t you been here with him all along? And constantly finding new girls for him?" After a moment, she asked, as if suddenly understanding: "Could it be that he was sincere with you, and because you ultimately left him, he decided to die?"
Su Yun didn’t speak. Her face still wore that obsessed expression, but tears slowly welled up in her eyes.
It seemed the guess was correct—this was indeed a melodramatic, clichéd romance tragedy.
Ban Xia sneered coldly and immediately signaled for You Huang to lift Su Yun high into the air. She then raised her voice: "Hey! I’m talking to you, Brother Chi Lian inside! Your woman is in our hands now!!"
No response. The depths of the cave remained silent and still, with only that salty, fishy scent faintly swirling in the air.
"Your woman has returned, of her own free will. She says she’s realized the one she truly loves is you!"
Change of tactics.
This time, there was a reaction. A low, drawn-out laugh echoed from the depths of the cave—venomous and mocking—but it quickly faded into silence.
Ban Xia grew desperate. With no other ideas, she clutched her head and said seriously to You Huang, "Maybe we should just charge in. If we die, we die; if we live, we live. We can’t worry about it anymore."
You Huang nodded, clearly having wanted to do this all along.
"Wait!" Chi Xue, who was usually clueless, suddenly had an idea. She bit her index finger and quickly drew a talisman on her palm. "Let me see what he’s thinking, what he truly wants."
"You’re insane!""I'm not crazy." Chi Xue said, stepping forward and pressing her palm firmly against the back cave, suddenly shouting loudly: "Chi Lian! Tell me what you're thinking! Master said, no one in this world doesn't want to confide, no one truly wishes to carry secrets to the grave!!"
"He says he has an obsession... just like Su Yun, also a ridiculous obsession..."
After a while, Chi Xue finally spoke, her face beaming with joy: "He didn't resist me, I can read him! Master's words are always right!"
"Less useless talk, find out what he really wants!" Ban Xia widened her eyes.
"He says what he wants is merely an illusion, in life and death, across all lifetimes, it's all an illusion..."
"Ah?"
"He says he was originally a snake, living in a bamboo grove behind a teahouse. For many years before gaining sentience, he listened to the storytelling inside the teahouse."
"Ah?"
"This is a story..." After reading for a while, Chi Xue lowered her head: "His story, the causes and consequences, don't sound easy."
Indeed.
This is a story, the story of a red-banded snake, with causes and consequences far from easy.
Long ago, when Chi Lian was still a snake living in the bamboo grove, the neighboring teahouse had storytelling every day. Bored with cultivation, Chi Lian would slither over daily to listen.
There were many kinds of stories - Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Heroes of Sui and Tang - but Chi Lian didn't care for these.
He preferred listening to love stories - Meng Jiangnu traveling thousands of miles to find her husband and weeping down the Great Wall, vowing to stay together through all lifetimes.
So this was the human world, where people were divided into yin and yang, where yin and yang harmonized, where one could grow old together through wholehearted devotion.
That's when he formed an aspiration, one that sounded almost laughable.
To become human, however briefly, and live a life filled with love and meaning.
Thus came the day he cultivated into human form - an elegant, charming, considerate and attentive man.
Such a man naturally had no difficulty finding his woman.
The following year, he met his beloved, named Su Fu, who had a delicate little face with a dimple on the right side when she smiled.
This woman came from a wealthy family and didn't mind his poverty, willing to take him into her household. Soon they selected an auspicious date for their wedding.
Everything was perfect up to this point, and he resolved to love and cherish her forever, to fetch her foot-washing water and warm her bed, just like in the stories.
"I'll treat you well, I promise!"
On their wedding night, he held her, speaking these clichéd words but meaning them sincerely, believing life couldn't be more perfect than this.
Then came intimacy, both feeling shy. He undressed her piece by piece, his hands trembling throughout.
Foreplay... penetration... everything proceeded smoothly. They were tasting forbidden fruit for the first time, both terrified and ecstatic.
In her very first experience, Su Fu reached orgasm. Though she had kept her eyes closed shyly throughout, she couldn't help quietly rejoicing at the end, gently opening her eyes.
"I'll treat you well, forever and always."
Chi Lian was still repeating these words.
But Su Fu's eyes flew wide open, her expression horrified, emitting an utterly piercing scream.
Chi Lian was indeed above her, but his head had passed beneath her neck, coiling upward to whisper sweet nothings in her ear.
He was a snake!
A stinky, terrifying, evil snake!
Su Fu screamed again, her heart and courage shattered, and from that moment on, she never woke again.That night, Chi Lian was utterly distraught. Dragging his half-serpent tail, he held Su Fu in his arms, neither crying nor laughing nor moving, embracing her for three full days and nights.
On the third day, the Su family finally found a Taoist priest to subdue him after searching the entire city.
In his dazed and confused state, and no match for the priest to begin with, he was quickly forced to reveal his true form.
The Su family loathed him to the core and naturally refused to let him go. They asked the priest to confine him in this cave dwelling, where a long nail pinned him down, and the skinning began.
After the skinning came the bone removal, and after the bone removal, the flesh burning. His blood flowed incessantly, nearly dyeing the entire rear cave red.
Yet the Taoist priest remained uneasy, as if he could see his vengeful spirit wandering. Pointing at him, he said, "I need one more thing to suppress his soul, to ensure his ghost cannot emerge to cause harm."
That thing was the Soul Suppressing Nail.
It required an object he had most feared or cherished in life, inscribed with scriptures, and then nailed into his soul's eye.
"One of the young lady's rib bones. I need one of the young lady's rib bones," the Taoist priest finally declared. "The fact that he held the young lady's corpse for three days proves she was his beloved."
The Su family relented, for the sake of eternal peace thereafter, and indeed retrieved one of Su Fu's ribs, handing it to the priest to inscribe with scriptures.
Thus, the Soul Suppressing Nail was driven into his vital point.
Her white bone, carved with curses, pinned his soul, and in this blood-soaked place, they would remain together for all eternity.
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