Huang Siping, Wei Chu, and Yuan Qi watched Su Yan freeze beside the well, his eyes locked on the bottom. They leaned over to look.
Man, god, and yao met the gaze of that colossal eye. Their own eyes went glassy. They couldn't look away.
The bell thundered. The sound shattered the trance.
Su Yan gasped. Blood covered his hands. He gripped thick iron chains, pulling with all his strength. Yuan Qi had no hands, so his tail coiled around the chains, dragging them upward.
The chains had already come up dozens of yards. The lower sections dripped with black blood, stinking like rotting meat. Human bones clung to the links.
Horror washed over them. No memory of the eye's spell. No idea how long they had pulled. No clue what the chains anchored below.
The chains grew heavier. Something massive clung to the other end.
The eye vanished from the well. Blood bubbled up, thick and dark, frothing toward the surface.
A soft sigh drifted upward. A woman's voice, achingly beautiful, mourning some private tragedy.
The more beautiful the sound, the more their skin crawled.
Su Yan looked down. The blood receded. The chains held a coffin, sinking straight down the well's wall.
The coffin hit bottom.
A triangular mouth filled with needle teeth opened beneath it. The creature swallowed the coffin whole. The chains hung from its muzzle like whiskers.
Su Yan's heart hammered. The creature moved directly below the well's center and opened its mouth again.
He grabbed Yuan Qi's tail and ran.
Huang Siping and Wei Chu didn't understand — until a roar erupted from the well. The shock wave slammed into them. Blood sprayed from their eyes, ears, noses, mouths.
The creature had failed to push the coffin upward. Its rage shook the mountain. Even the bronze bell swayed like a leaf in a storm.
Su Yan and Yuan Qi had escaped the first blast, but the reverberations caught them and hurled them across the courtyard.
Outside, the River of Death went berserk. The water rose higher, and something enormous thrashed within it, hammering the bell-shaped barrier from without.
Inside and out, the attacks converged. The bronze bell dimmed. The protective walls of light thinned.
Su Yan dragged his unconscious companion toward the main hall, every muscle screaming. Blood seeped from his pores, staining his clothes.
He stumbled into the great hall and collapsed. The roar faded enough to let him breathe.
A flash of cold light cut the sky. Some impossibly huge weapon sliced through the bell-shaped barrier, tearing a gap wide open.
River water poured through.
Su Yan forced himself up. Outside, towering figures loomed around the barrier, neither human nor god, wielding weapons the size of towers. They hacked at the light, opening more wounds.
They felt like true celestial beings. Not grass-head gods. Not yao deities. Looking at them filled the mind with compulsions to kneel.
A pale hand reached through the gap in the barrier, each finger stretching several yards long. It passed over the main hall.
Su Yan scrambled to the back. The hand plunged into the pavilion and gripped the bronze bell, trying to tear it free.
The bell rang. The hand shattered. Bloody fragments rained down. One finger crashed through the main hall's roof and pinned itself to the temple door.
Strange symbols blazed on the rotting wood, twisting like insects, burning with impossible power. The finger ignited.
Su Yan stared at the door in shock. Then a whip cracked overhead, wrapped around the bell's handle, and yanked. The pavilion tore apart. The bell flew from the well.
The roaring from below intensified.
Su Yan looked up. The whip's segments were human faces, eyes closed, expressions stern, each one different. The strange weapon carried the bell through the main hall like a flying dragon.
More white silk ribbons shot from the river and dove into the well.
Su Yan's mind raced. "This wasn't an accident. Someone made the River of Death change course. They engineered mass death to suppress the temple's bell and free whatever lies in that coffin."
The bell rang in fury, shattering the face-whip, and shot out of the temple.
Outside, river roar and bell tones merged into chaos.
Su Yan looked up. Shadows crowded the barrier. One celestial figure's head exploded, pulverized by the bell. Another twisted, flesh melting from its bones, then crumbling to dust.
He watched, heart pounding. These beings felt as vast as mountains, as deep as abysses. Yet the bell destroyed them as easily as crushing ants.
Water flooded the hall from every direction. Su Yan hauled Yuan Qi up and leaped through a hole in the roof.
Below, in the back courtyard, Huang Siping stood on his steel blade, the weapon driven into the ground. The river licked at his feet. Blood streamed from every orifice. Despair twisted his divine face.
He and Wei Chu had reacted too slowly to the well's roar. By the time they recovered, the river had already trapped them outside the main hall.
The water touched his left foot. Flesh dissolved instantly, leaving white bone.
The river climbed his leg. Total submersion wouldn't take long.
On a dead willow tree, Wei Chu fared no better. The rotted trunk barely held him. He too had sacrificed a leg. But the tree swayed, roots loosening. When it fell, the river would take him.
Worse, he stood lower than Huang Siping. Even if the tree held, he would die first.
Su Yan's eyes found the well. White silk ribbons wrapped the chains, pulling upward. A black coffin rose from the depths, reaching the well's mouth.
"They're doing it," Su Yan thought. "The bell was lured away. The coffin is free."
Then sunlight touched his face.
He looked east. The sun crested the horizon. The River of Death thinned. The raging flood faded, ghostly and translucent, then vanished entirely.
Su Yan stared at the distant riverbed. It too faded, leaving only scorched earth and dead trees in a dry channel.
Bones lay piled on the riverbank.
"The bell? The giants?"
He searched the empty sky. The bronze bell was gone. The celestial attackers had vanished without trace.
The back courtyard held no water. Even the campfire burned normal orange again.
Su Yan steadied himself. The pavilion had collapsed. The well lay silent.
A girl in white sat on the well's edge, her back to him, combing long hair with slow strokes.
She turned. Her eyes met his. She smiled, and for one perfect moment, the world felt kind.
Sunlight touched the courtyard. The girl vanished. Only the coffin remained, standing beside the well, chains scattered nearby.
Then the coffin lifted, snapped its chains, and shot into the sky, gone.
"Whatever was sealed down there is free now."
Su Yan remembered her face. "Beautiful. Father and Grandfather would have loved a daughter-in-law like her. Pity she's a ghost."
A thud echoed behind him. Wei Chu had fallen from the willow, unconscious. His right leg was nothing but bone.
Huang Siping jumped down from his blade, staggering. His left shin was also stripped to the bone. The yao god's face stayed hard. He made no sound against that agony.
Su Yan faced the rising sun. He cycled his Grand Unity Daoyin Art. Specks of golden light swirled in the air, drawn into his breath like a miniature storm. Thunder rolled inside his body. His qi and blood blazed like a small sun, burning away the night's wounds.
The river crisis had passed. Now the real danger returned.
Huang Siping drew a long breath. He too began circulating his own breathing art, gathering essence of the sun. His injuries were far worse, and he had lost a leg. But he was a yao king. His qi and blood remained formidable. If he stabilized, he could strike like lightning and kill Su Yan first.
Both of them sat in silence, healing, racing to recover enough strength to strike first.
"You could have run, Su Yan." Huang Siping's voice stayed level. "You're quick. You dodged the well's roar, took lighter wounds. I lost a leg. You could have escaped."
Su Yan faced the sun. The storm of light particles around him intensified. He stood like a mountain overlooking an abyss, immovable.
"A friend lies unconscious. How could I abandon him?"
Huang Siping's eyes narrowed. His grip tightened on his blade. "Friend? You call a snake yao friend? You forgot — you're a snake catcher. Snakes and catchers are natural enemies. Yao have killed your kind. You've killed theirs."
"That doesn't stop us from being friends."
Su Yan roared. His foot slammed down. He dropped from the roof into the back hall, crashing through the floorboards. Qi and blood flooded his body. An elephant-shaped battle aura coalesced behind him. He shouldered a copper pillar and swung the thousand-pound weapon at Huang Siping.
This fight had to end fast. Kill the yao god, carry Yuan Qi, and run before more enemies arrived.