I stood, a miserable soul alone in the dark. Gut-wrenching powerlessness and helplessness swelled in me as I felt a tingle in my nose and tears were threatening to burst. Ever since I became a man, this was the first time I had the urge to cry. The first time I felt so alone and forlorn, powerless and weak; and me alone in the shadowy passage with complete blackness around me merely reified this sensation.
I rubbed my nose and calmed myself. I have to think, and sniveling in tears would help me escape this accursed place not one bit. Wait, I thought suddenly. We took the leftmost path at the fork after leaving the main underground palace. That brought us here... I could go back and try the middle and the last path! There must surely be a way out!
With my mind made up, I whirled and retrace my steps back. There was no more need to mosey around.
But to my dismal astonishment, I turned back, I reached another three-way fork! The words from the
IMPOSSIBLE! I almost gasped aloud. A shudder crept down my spine as the name of the deceased registered in my mind. What purpose could she have for coming here?! Then I realized why. No... Surely not... I looked around frantically, searching for the whereabouts of the ghost! The people here were all dressed in mourning garb; ghosts and spirits would find them ripe for the pickings! And my fears were proven true: the ghost found a woman in grieve, bawling loudly like a lamb being slaughtered and stepped into her, possessing her with hardly any difficulty. The woman's body jerked and fidgeted when the ghost took her and her wailing stopped and she collapsed to the ground. Two young men got up from their places beside the coffin hurriedly and they rushed to her. Others came to her aid as well and they helped the woman to her feet. The two young men must be his sons, I mused, Bian Dashou's sons. The two young men called at the unconscious woman loudly, "Aunt!
The band of riders arrived at the burial grounds in no time. But something about the graveyard perturbed me. I looked and only then I realized that Bian Dashou's grave was hardly the only one there. A cluster of tombstones now littered the burial grounds of the Bian Family and the riders were dressed not in the fashion of the Qing Dynasty! Then it dawned upon me: I have been hurled through time again. This was 1934; the night when Bian Dashou's grave was plundered! The brigands acted swiftly. They quickly apprehended the three people living in a hut nearby and had them tied to a tree with their heads covered in black bags. Unlike the unruly bunch they usually were, these marauders worked with order and system. Some began coiling ropes as thick as a boy's arm atop the boughs of the trees and set them alight. The pungent scent of mugwort rose and filled the air around the craggy cemetery grounds while another fired three warning shots into the
I staggered and lurched. With a kick of dust, I flew up into the air before I could fall again. The ground was shaking! There was nothing wrong with me! The terrifying blue flash of light and the shaking of the earth told me enough: it was an earthquake! What else could it be but the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976 and here I was, standing in the Yahong Bridge town near Wu Zhong County, merely leagues away from the epicenter of the quake. The ground's shudder aggravated with fury under me and I began to see people running from their homes to safety like ants abandoning their nests. The Bian Family's burial grounds were just to the west of Huang Xiang River. Looking east at the other side of the river, I saw a little tent erected using some poles and a felt blanket. An old man walked briskly out of the tent hurriedly as I rose into the air, his long white beard waving as he moved towards north along the river's flood embankments. With another few steps,
The ground gave another shudder and the walls of the compound of Uncle Quan's house buckled and fell over the young Uncle Quan! Acting by reflex, I dashed towards him at all speed! The boy was hugging for his life at a tree, lurching wildly as it shook to the violent undulations of the destruction occurring around him. I somersaulted and reached him just in time to deliver a kick at the wall crashing down on him, snapping the wall into half and sending the upper half careening elsewhere. The wrecking din of the falling wall made Uncle Quan looked around. But he saw nothing but the rubbles and debris that once was the wall that ringed the compound of his home crashing down before his very eyes! What remained of his house continued wobbling as if its bedrock was made of jelly and all the walls came coming down like London's Bridge. A surge of iridescent glow flooded from Master Six's direction suddenly. He has recovered! The tremors in the ground softened a
I looked on with admiration and concern. Shang Pei was saving people from death by channeling his divine Qi into these people, the divine aura that he has amassed after years, decades or even centuries of hard work. Saving just a couple of men would hardly put a dent in his magic, but if the numbers pile up, he could just as well see his powers exhausted and spent... Shang Pei and the other men scoured every fissure and crevice for survivors and under the directions of the beggar-like young man, they found almost everyone, even the corpses of those who had died. Morning came brightly as ever, still, none of the men stopped their hunt for anyone still alive. But many too collapsed due to fatigue. I suppressed the urge to help; I could not risk everyone witnessing rocks hovering in the air on their own, or bodies moving on their own as if they had been reanimated. The young lad heaved an easy breath, the first one since the calamity had struck
There has been no lack of stories and fables during my time that many a great paranormal incident traced back to the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976. In truth, no paranormal mishaps took place in Tangshan when the earthquake ended. There were too many people dead and no one had the stomach for more horror stories and tales. I doubt anyone would have had a mind to bother with anything, even if something strange was staring at them in the face. There were also the many volunteers of the magical community who had come to help defend the peace to help sustain the balance between the Underworld and the Mortal Plane. But this was something that no common folk would be privy to. It was the same in Wu Zhong, although the help that came to Wu Zhong merely numbered a handful. But among them, the Triune of Wu Zhong was the most famous. I was crouching on one of the many unkempt fields in Balipu Town, watching as Xie Bingyi struggled on his Flying Pidgeon with the
I watched with shock and awe at Shang Pei's display of his prowess. So this is Shang Pei's magic... He possessed the magic of the manipulation of temperature. One, through the optics of my Spirit Sight I saw, which he wielded with terrifying finesse. Zhu Mei had told me before about this; that Shang Pei's magic was of the Yin and the coldest element, and what I just saw affirmed to this. Shang Pei dusted off the crumbs of frost from his hand and turned back, grinning at Xie Bingyi and Old Man Chen, who stared back at him uneasily. But Shang Pei made no attempt to explain, merely smiling at Old Man Chen. It took almost a few heartbeats before Old Man Chen could recover from his bewilderment; he took the cue from Shang Pei, his hand inched up slowly and he calculated again, working on his magic to divine the position of the enemy. Within seconds, he jabbed a finger towards the north-eastern corner of the factory. "There, the north-eastern face of the factor
The monsters were nearly so close to bludgeoning Shang Pei when his voice thundered like a blasting trumpet across a battlefield. But before they could even graze his overcoat, they fell facefirst into the ground like blocks of ice, smashing into the ground with a crunch before they broke into pieces. I looked more closely, my eyes narrowing into a slit as I struggle to see in the night. The rain was falling like a shower of needles and bolts from the sky, hammering into the assailing horde of black-haired jiangshis, bringing them down while pummeling them into pulps of flesh and meat. The leader of the pack, the huge monster, gave a roar of defiance and fury. A lightning bolt in the distance illuminated the night sky that I almost thought it was morning for a transitory second. But as swiftly as it came, the lightning bolt disappeared just as quickly and darkness pervaded again the sky overhead us. But before the dark of the night devoured the last slive