novelraw Chapter 115 A Book with An Eye
Chapter 115 A Book with An Eye
For no clear reason, the blood-red eye flashed across my mind—the very same one that had opened in the heavens just before I blacked out.
A stabbing pain split through my skull, sharp as if a swarm of insects were gnawing at some buried corner of my memory.
“Ah—!”
I clutched my head. Light and shadow twisted before my eyes, and from somewhere distant came a low, droning chant—countless nameless voices whispering over one another.
“Unseen, unsaid, all returns to the void…”
The sounds and images spiraled together into a wrecking whirlpool. I couldn’t hold myself upright. Darkness swallowed everything as I collapsed straight to the ground.
The last thing I heard was Hua and the man in red calling out at the same time:
“Bro!”
Then all went silent.
Flames rose to the sky. Fire surged like a tide, staining the world in red.
I saw Lian alone atop a high platform. His robes whipped in the heat, yet invisible chains held him fast. Fire writhed around him like a living beast, desperate to consume him. Above, a colossal eye hung in the sky, its crimson pupil cold and all-seeing, fixed on Lian with a gaze that could pierce bone.
It said nothing, yet its pressure filled the world—an unspoken command crushing down.
“Yield.”
“Kneel.”
“Offer.”
The whispers thundered inside my skull, a twisted mix of agony and temptation, as if a thousand threads were trying to bore into my very marrow.
Lian gritted his teeth hard enough to draw blood. Pain contorted his features; sweat streamed down his cheeks. But his eyes remained clear and defiant. He resisted with every fiber of his being. His nails dug into his palms, blood dripping through his fingers, but he never bowed.
“Lian!”
My heart lurched. I tried to rush up the platform to reach him.
But the moment I stepped forward, an overwhelming force slammed into me from all sides—an invisible barrier shoving me back. I threw myself against it, reaching out. My fingertips nearly brushed his sleeve, but all I caught was scorching air.
The next instant, the platform beneath me shattered with a roar. I plummeted into the inferno below. Fire surged up to engulf me, the heat burning my vision raw. The only sounds were screaming winds and the explosion of collapsing stone.
I jerked awake.
A faint scent of incense ash lingered at my nose. A wisp of smoke drifted through the air—what remained of a stick of incense burned to its end. It curled lazily upward, as though still tethered to the dream’s monstrous eye.
I gasped for breath, sweat cold on my forehead. When my sight steadied, I realized I was lying inside Senior An’s residence—the familiar wooden cot, the low rafters unchanged.
Beside me, Hua sat up slowly, rubbing his forehead. His face was pale, eyes unfocused.
He muttered, “What… what the hell was that? I swear just now I was in the schoolhouse… teaching the children? No, no… then I was at the bridge…”
A chill went through me. So it wasn’t only me who saw visions.
But then a harder thought struck—how could a hallucination be shared?
I quickly asked, “Senior An, where were we just now?”
Senior An took an unhurried sip of tea. “I thought you’d already figured it out.”
“The silver box. We were inside the silver box?” Hua shot to his feet, unusually rattled. “That man in red… was that our Sect Master?!”
Realization struck me next—Hua, the schoolteacher; the man in red, Lian. But why did he look like he remembered nothing? Was that really Lian?
Senior An sipped his now-cold tea again, not even lifting his eyelids. “My duty was merely to help you enter the box and glimpse its workings. What you saw inside—and who you met—that is your own fortune. Nothing to do with me.”
My irritation spiked hard. I cursed him in my heart and didn’t bother holding back my tongue. “That’s a hell of a thing to say. Lian’s your junior—don’t you care at all what happens to him?”
He didn’t even bother getting annoyed. Instead, he gave a lazy smile, like watching a child throw a tantrum. “Within bounds, there is its own heaven and earth. Young friend, please.”
So he was kicking us out? Just like that?
I stepped forward anxiously. “It’s not just Lian! Liu and Jiu are missing too! Those two kids came with Juan, and the owner of the Spring-Come Inn threatened Juan—said if he didn’t smash that damned jar, he’d never see Liu and Jiu again. But now the innkeeper’s vanished too!”
Juan bobbed his head over and over, his face drained of all color.
Only then did the old master An let his smile fade. His expression cooled, and he said slowly, almost lazily, “Perhaps you should go back and take another look.”
I opened my mouth to press him further, but Hua yanked me by the sleeve and bowed, cutting me off. “Many thanks for your guidance, Senior An. We’ll take our leave now. We would not dare trouble you further.”
I was practically boiling. Getting dragged out like that, I nearly exploded on the spot. All the curses I wanted to spit ended up rolling in my chest, condensing into one useless line: “You actually called him Senior? He washed his hands clean of the whole mess and acted like none of this concerned him—how does that count as senior anything?”
Hua had the nerve to grin, utterly unfazed. “Easy, Gong. He gave us a hint.”
“What?” My mind went blank, full of question marks.
Only then did Hua tuck his smile away. He lowered his voice. “These past few days, I noticed there’s a large bookstore in Crane Ridge City. Remember what the red-robed man—the one who should be our Cult Leader in the silver box mentioned—said? That scroll he got came from a bookstore. Senior An’s remark just now—‘Within boundaries, a world exists’—that was a clue. Books hold their own worlds and rules. If we want to find Lian, we start with that bookstore.”
Somehow, I have to admit Hua might be right on that. Still, part of me resisted. “But… Lian—”
“That’s exactly why we go,” Hua cut in, unusually serious. “Otherwise we’ll lose even this one lead.”
I clenched my teeth. “Fine. Then we go.”
Juan, however, fidgeted at the side. “I… I think I’ll head back to the ruined temple first. Since Senior An said so, maybe Liu and Jiu will be there.”
Hua and I exchanged a look and nodded.
The bookstore proved to be a truly massive place—its storefront wider than the three teahouses beside it combined. Yet in broad daylight, with a lively street full of people who couldn’t speak but still came and went, the bookstore alone felt oddly deserted.
I pushed the door open. It wasn’t empty, though.
Behind the counter sat a clerk, stiff as a puppet, his eyes darting nervously. I walked up, planning to ask if any new miscellany had come in. Instead, he shrank back as if he’d seen a ghost. He waved his hands frantically—as though we were flies—and scuttled to the corner. Oddly enough, he didn’t throw us out; he simply refused to come near us, refusing to acknowledge our existence entirely.
With no choice, Hua and I split up, searching through the rows of shelves on our own.
The shelves towered above our heads. The smell of damp, decaying wood mingled with old paper, making the place feel less like a shop and more like some dim, breathing cavern.
I bent down, flipping through a few volumes. Unease gnawed at me. I lowered my voice. “Do you remember what Lian said in that silver box? Something about an eye on the cover?”
Hua was sifting through a stack of thread-bound books. He nodded and whispered back, “I remember. But if you do find that book, don’t open it in a rush.”
The gravity in his tone only made the itch worse. I couldn’t help wondering—was that eye merely drawn there, or would it actually be looking back at me?
We searched for ages. My eyes blurred from all the scanning, but we didn’t find a single damned book with an eye on the cover. My stomach tightened. Had we misunderstood Lian’s words? Or was the mysterious book itself nothing but a decoy? The shelves ended up a mess, my sleeves covered with dust—effort wasted.
Nothing else to do but head back.
As we approached the door, I caught sight of the clerk still huddled in the corner. He risked a quick glance at me. The moment I turned my head, he snapped his gaze down, stiff as a wooden post pretending to be even more wooden. I muttered inwardly, How terrifying do we look, exactly?
Outside, I gestured at Hua, meaning: Are we really that scary?
Hua’s face stayed cold, giving me nothing. As if this entire strange behavior had been expected from the start.
As we passed the Spring-Come Inn again, I noticed its doors were tightly shut.
Puzzled, I asked the umbrella vendor next door. Only then did I learn the innkeeper had marched out with a huge group of people days ago and never came back. Ever since, the inn had stayed closed.
What happened? I couldn’t help glancing again at the dust-coated doors.
When we returned to the ruined temple, Liu and Jiu were already back, crouched by the fire, warming their hands.
What neither Hua nor I expected was Juan stepping forward with a solemn expression, holding something with both hands.
A book.
Juan said it had been handed to him by a middle-aged stranger, who specifically entrusted it to him to pass along to us.
I took it into my hands and saw the cover—sure enough, there was an eye painted right on it. The eyeball seemed almost alive, staring so sharply that my palms broke out in a cold sweat.