Chapter 23: Chapter 23
Slither!
Something long and sinuous squeezed its way through a crevice in the rocks. The creature that writhed and crawled forward was a serpent, but not the sort one would commonly encounter.
Its long tongue flickered in and out as it slithered along the ground. The serpent had no eyes or ears whatsoever. And yet, even in the darkness, it managed to find its way.
Where a stone lay in its path, it circled around. Where a ditch appeared, it crossed over. Thus the serpent crawled ever onward toward its destination.
Its goal was a narrow crack in a rock on the opposite side. The serpent inserted its head into the fissure. Next came the turn for its long body.
As the serpent drew its body taut to build momentum—
Suddenly, an immense force clamped down on its body just below the head. Startled by the sudden pressure, the serpent raised its head,
Crack!
With a sickening crunch, the serpent’s head was torn clean off. Its body, its life eviscerated in an instant, thrashed madly. But the calloused hand that held the body was utterly unmoved.
Munch, munch!
In the darkness, someone was chewing on the serpent’s head.
It was a man whose face was entirely concealed beneath a mane of tangled hair and a beard that grew to his chest, making his features impossible to discern.
The man was completely naked, with not a shred of clothing upon him. Perhaps because he had not seen sunlight in a very long time, his skin was deathly pale.
But unlike his pallid complexion, the man’s body was extraordinarily well-developed. His muscles, as though twisted from iron wire, were clearly defined, and his joints jutted out like hammers, large and small, hammered into place.
Crunch!
As the man bit into the serpent again, the muscles across his entire body writhed independently, like separate living creatures. Immense power radiated from every one of them.
The man consumed the entire serpent over the course of nearly half a watch. From head to tail, not discarding a single bone or scale, he devoured it all, stuffing it into his stomach.
He wiped his mouth with his hand, smearing away the serpent’s fluids, and rose to his feet. Then, in the darkness, his eyes blazed with a fierce light.
Like a predator scanning the darkness for prey, his pupils were wide open, capable of detecting even the faintest glimmer of light.
The man took a step.
His gait was utterly distinctive.
Thump, slide! Thump, slide!
When his right foot struck the ground, his left foot dragged lightly behind. The peculiar rhythm and cadence this created gave his walk an almost alien quality.
Emerging from the narrow cave, the man arrived at a vast underground cavern. The ceiling of the cavern, large enough to house several hundred people, was studded with night-luminescent pearls that emitted a faint glow.
The man swept back the hair that had been covering his forehead and face. The pale visage of one long denied sunlight was revealed beneath the dim light of the pearls.
Beneath a straight forehead lay jet-black eyes, and lips pressed firmly together in a way that suggested they would not轻易 part under any circumstance. The man’s features were profoundly striking. This was none other than Dam Ho.
More stoic, more rugged, thus had he endured, still surviving within the Thousand Gold Demonic Prison.
He did not know how much time had passed. It might have been several years, or perhaps longer still.
Dam Ho believed at least five years must have elapsed, for his growth had ceased at some point, and his body no longer grew.
That growth had stopped was, in itself, proof that he had become an adult, even if his exact age was unknowable.
Dam Ho’s gaze turned to one side of the cavern. Time had passed, yet an enormous volume of earth and boulders the size of houses still blocked the entrance.
Dam Ho traversed the rubble and crossed to the other side. There too, a small cave opening had been carved.
Without hesitation, Dam Ho entered the cave.
The cave was exceedingly narrow and dark. But darkness posed no obstacle to Dam Ho.
It was a path he had traversed hundreds, thousands of times over. He remembered every loose stone on the floor, every stalactite hanging from the ceiling.
The cave twisted and turned in an endless labyrinth. Dam Ho walked patiently through the seemingly eternal darkness.
After some time, his destination finally appeared.
It was a modest space, no more than two rooms in size. Within it stood a bookshelf carved from stone. Upon the shelf were arranged approximately twenty or so volumes.
Dam Ho opened a weathered chest beside the stone bookshelf. A faint light seeped out. Inside was a night-luminescent pearl the size of a child’s fist.
Dam Ho held the pearl in one hand and with the other drew a volume from the stone shelf. In the dim light, the title was revealed:
Three Strikes Cannon Shadow Fist.
That was what was written on the worn, tattered cover.
Dam Ho flipped through the volume with a practiced flick of his fingers. He could no longer recall how many times he had read this old text.
It must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Perhaps more. But what mattered was that the entirety of the Three Strikes Cannon Shadow Fist was contained within his mind.
This space was called the Myriad Demon Archive.
In ages past, it had been a place where the Demonic Cult imprisoned its prisoners. But after the Demonic Cult’s cultivators entered the Thousand Gold Demonic Prison, it had been repurposed as a repository for martial arts texts.
Before Dam Ho’s arrival, hundreds of martial arts volumes must have been stored here. But when the Demonic Cult’s people departed, they took most of them.
What remained were only those texts deemed insufficiently important.
The Three Strikes Cannon Shadow Fist, the Demon-Splitting Kick, the Broad Compression Palm, all were martial arts that had been abandoned in this manner.
Since the Thousand Gold Demonic Prison was to be destroyed, there had been no risk of their leakage to the outside world.
Dam Ho recalled the joy he had felt when he first discovered this place.
Time crawled in this place. It was irrational, but a single day felt like ten to Dam Ho.
The mere fact that there was something to read, something to occupy his time, was reason enough for joy. From that moment on, whenever time permitted, he came to the Myriad Demon Archive and immersed himself in the texts.
He read, and read again.
Eventually, he had memorized every word without a single error, and after that, he read them once more, searching for hidden meanings. Thus had he perfectly committed the martial arts texts to memory.
Yet Dam Ho began reading the texts once more, beginning with the Three Strikes Cannon Shadow Fist.
In the darkness, Dam Ho’s pupils dilated wide.
After a considerable time, Dam Ho emerged from the Myriad Demon Archive.
The place he headed next was a cave even more foreboding than the Myriad Demon Archive. The cave was so narrow and oppressive that a single person could barely squeeze through.
Whooo!
A wind blew from the far end of the cave.
Like the whisper of a demon, the wind was at once intense and cold, sweeping over Dam Ho’s entire body.
Though he was naked and unprotected, one would have expected him to feel the chill. But no change came over Dam Ho’s expression. He appeared as one who had lost all human emotion.
At the end of the cave, broken fragments of rock lay scattered in every direction. They had not fractured naturally but had been shattered by artificial force.
The one who had broken the rocks was Dam Ho himself.
Dam Ho recalled that day, though he could not pinpoint when it had been.
The day when all his Hunger-Quelling Pills had run out, when he had not eaten for days beyond counting.
His hunger had driven him to the brink of madness. He had wondered if he would simply die like this. He had been so ravenous that he would have torn off his own arm to eat, if he could.
He had to find something.
Driven to the edge by starvation, he scraped the nameless moss from the walls and ate it. Thus did he cling to life, desperately searching for anything to sustain himself.
Through that agonizing effort, he discovered this place. He felt a breeze seeping through the rocks that blocked the cave’s interior. Behind those rocks lay an empty space.
Dam Ho broke the rocks. A new space appeared. And it was that very space that now lay before his eyes.
It was a considerable area, roughly ten rooms in size. Water filled the entire space.
It was far too vast and deep to be merely a pool formed by water dripping from stalactites. Water was flowing in from somewhere, and since the level was maintained, it must also be flowing out.
Dam Ho studied the pool carefully. To his amazement, luminous fish swam within.
They were so transparent that their bones were visible, and the bones themselves glowed with an eerie light. So bizarre were these creatures that Dam Ho would not have believed it had he not seen them with his own eyes.
Dam Ho plunged into the pool.
The water was cold enough to numb his bones. The biting chill felt as though his skin would peel away, and his heart pounded like a drum.
But Dam Ho endured every ounce of pain and waded through the depths. The monstrous fish scattered in all directions at his arrival. But they could not evade his hands.
Moments later, Dam Ho emerged from the pool with a monstrous fish clutched in his hand.
The fish flopped in Dam Ho’s grip. He tore it apart on the spot. There was nothing here with which to light a fire.
Cooking was a distant dream he could not afford. That he could eat something at all, even raw, was reason enough for gratitude.
Dam Ho devoured every part of the fish except its head. For a moment, he gazed at the head with a wistful look.
He did not know how long the monstrous fish had lived here, or how it had come to dwell in this place. What mattered was that it had evolved to be perfectly suited for survival in this environment.
Toss!
Dam Ho hurled the fish’s head into a clear area at the edge of the pool. And he waited with patience.
Moments later.
Skitter, skitter!
A faint sound suddenly echoed through the subterranean space where the pool lay. Then, from a crack in the rock, something crawled out.
A strange gleam lit Dam Ho’s eyes.
It was a peculiar insect, resembling a scarab beetle…
The difference was that, like the monstrous fish, it emitted its own light.
The beetle latched onto the fish’s head and began gnawing at the flesh.
Crunch, crunch!
In the enclosed space, even the smallest sound was amplified enormously.
Dam Ho sat with his knees drawn up, watching the beetle. His presence did not disturb it in the least; the creature remained wholly focused on its meal.
When the beetle had eaten a sufficient amount of flesh, something else emerged from a crack in the rock.
In that instant, a slight smile curved Dam Ho’s lips.
What appeared this time was not a beetle but a mantis. The mantis, too, glowed with its own light.
The mantis was another species adapted to the darkness. Upon its arrival, the beetle emitted a hostile glow and fixed it with a threatening stare.
Dam Ho watched the standoff between beetle and mantis with keen interest.
This subterranean world was endlessly fascinating.
The monstrous fish emitted light to lure insects, and the insects came here even knowing it might mean their death. That was the secret of the fish’s survival.
On occasion, when the fish died, it became food for the subterranean insects once more. Food was scarce, and competition among the insects was fierce.
What captured Dam Ho’s attention above all else was the confrontation between the beetle and the mantis.
The mantis attacked with its sickle-shaped forelimbs, striking at the beetle. The vicious precision of its strikes resembled that of a master swordsman.
Without a single feint, the mantis’s forelimb flew toward the beetle’s neck alone.
In that instant, the beetle tilted its body slightly. The mantis’s forelimb deflected off the beetle’s carapace-like shell, its attack brushed aside at an angle.
The mantis stumbled, its attack having missed. The beetle then rammed it with its massive body.
The mantis flapped its wings and retreated momentarily.
The standoff resumed, and then the attack came again.
The mantis’s forelimb swept out once more, sharp and lethal. This was no simple strike to be deflected as before.
Flutter!
In that instant, the beetle flapped its wings.
The wingbeats were so swift that they were imperceptible to the human eye. The mantis’s forelimb was sent flying.
Dam Ho’s eyes blazed in the darkness.
‘The ultimate shield…’
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