Chapter 225

The Bai clan group blasts a new path and fans out through the inheritance, reporting back one decoy hall after another, each holding its own seated skeleton and bone book. By the eighth, Bai Clan Leader has more than seven of the huge books piled in front of her. Tie Dao Ku reasons out the pattern: Grey Bone Scholar built many such halls so a Gu Master would mistake any one of them for the whole inheritance, while the true path should be hidden among them. A messenger finally finds the eighth hall with its skeleton smashed and its Gu missing, and the group races there, finding two more tunnels branching from it. They split to search both, and Bai Clan Leader, Tie Dao Ku, and most of the elders follow the stairway marked Flesh Sac Secret Chamber. They smash the door down to find the chamber empty but for its countless still-laughing mouths, and Bai Clan Leader leaves a few behind to guard the one tunnel out before the rest follow her through it. ^{ch. 225}

Earlier, in that same chamber, Fang Yuan had woken Bai Sheng and Bai Hua by kicking them. Bai Sheng curses him and shields his sister; Bai Ning Bing, who bristles at being called a beautiful woman with a scorpion’s heart, slaps him three times, and three more when he keeps cursing her. Fang Yuan silences the twins by seizing Bai Hua by the collar, pinching her cheek, and threatening to cut off both their tongues, then sets them to knocking the wall’s teeth, ten pairs to a mouth, needing at least five struck in the right order to win whatever Gu waits inside. Bai Hua’s luck holds: she wins a one-use Footless Bird Gu that can carry a flier thousands of miles, then later an Iron Bone Gu. Bai Sheng wins a Jade Bone Gu, which hardens a Gu Master’s skeleton permanently but can kill the weak willed with pain when used, and Fang Yuan tries to trade it for Bai Ning Bing’s Flesh-bone Gu; she refuses. Bai Sheng’s next knock opens a full tunnel instead of a mouth. ^{ch. 225}

Fang Yuan knocks the twins out again and carries them into the new passage, arriving with Bai Ning Bing at the largest hall yet, over two square kilometers around a bone pyramid. Atop it sits a carved beast skull taller than half a man, shaped like a lion or a tiger with its fangs shut tight. ^{ch. 225}