# Chapter 89: Jade Scales, Once More
White Lotus led the way up the mountain, and Jiang Wang followed behind with gritted teeth.
A colossal mountain spider, monstrous and grim, crawled right past them — and paid them no mind at all.
"Apart from when they are desperately hungry, these fierce beasts generally do not attack one another," White Lotus remarked, before tossing off a joke that was not particularly funny. "Probably because they all know their own meat is simply too unpalatable to eat."
Now that they had entered a place ringed by fierce beasts, White Lotus's voice had dropped, though not quite to the point of real caution — perhaps none was needed.
Jiang Wang said nothing. He observed carefully the fierce beasts they encountered along the way, and found that, indeed, not a single one attacked them on its own.
"You can talk. These beasts can't understand you anyway. They'd just think you're hollering." White Lotus asked, "What are you thinking about?"
"I'm wondering — why has no one ever thought of such a simple trick? There are so many clever people in the world. Especially — both the last two lords of Sanshan City were men of their generation's excellence."
"There's only one reason." White Lotus's laugh sounded at his side. "Because there are even more clever people who stop others from thinking about such things. Sun Heng and Dou Yuemei were both fine people, certainly — but they never understood what fierce beasts truly are, and never had the chance to truly learn."
"These clever people you speak of — who are they? Why do they do this?"
"I cannot give you an answer. Because the true answer lies in your own heart." White Lotus's tone shifted, turning light again. "All right, this way."
She seemed to know Jade Scales Peak well. The little path she chose had noticeably fewer beasts.
Just then, from a boulder ahead came a low beast's roar. It was a cat-like fierce beast, small in frame, not even fierce in appearance.
"This poor little fellow has probably just claimed this turf for its territory," White Lotus explained to Jiang Wang. "Too bad — going around would be far too inconvenient."
As she spoke, her figure suddenly moved.
Jiang Wang was still watching her afterimage linger before him when she had already planted a dagger into the forehead of that cat-like fierce beast.
The blood welled and trickled out; the beast's roar snapped short.
"In a place like this, it's best not to use Dao arts, because the beasts are generally sensitive to them. Some fierce beasts that practice Dao arts, in particular, would take you for a rival fighting over territory. Kick up too much of a fuss, and it could turn into real trouble."
White Lotus explained as she casually flung the corpse of the beast far away. "Like this. The other beasts won't take it for an intrusion by outsiders, but merely an ordinary slaughter among their own kind. Left lying here, a famished beast will still come and eat it."
"You seem... to know beasts very well." Jiang Wang said.
"Mm. If you, at about this height—" She measured with her hand at belly level, considered, then lowered it a little. "About this high, were thrown into a mound of fierce beasts, you too would come to know them well."
"What is it?" She suddenly leaned close to the silent Jiang Wang. "Scared you stiff, little brother?"
Jiang Wang said nothing.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk." She shook her head. "Don't look at your elder sister with that sort of compassion. Living in this world as we do, which of us is the more pitiable, truly, cannot be told."
"Emotions like compassion do not demean a person. A heart of pity is what every normal person has; it is a positive emotion, one that makes people a little more tolerant, a little more understanding with one another." Jiang Wang paused. "My father told me that, when I was small."
"Not bad — you know how to cherish a fair lass." White Lotus gave a light humph. "But if, beneath your elder sister's veil, you saw a face hideous to look upon, would you still have compassion?"
"What I pity is the little girl who was floundering in fright amid a mound of fierce beasts. It has nothing to do with what she grew up to look like."
"I was not floundering in fright at all." White Lotus muttered under her breath, then raised her voice. "Walk faster!"
Jiang Wang was startled by the scolding, but he had no choice but to quicken his pace.
In all fairness, the scenery of Jade Scales Peak was quite lovely; every tree and rock, flower and blade of grass, had something worth looking at. Were it not for the fierce beasts one could find almost anywhere, this would have been a place where crowds of sightseers wandered.
At the last great purge battle on Jade Scales Peak, Sanshan City had thrown in nearly the full strength of its domain, had even called in no small number of outside reinforcements — and yet had only managed to stop at the mountainside.
Now Jiang Wang, following White Lotus, two people and two people alone, passed the mountainside with ease and pressed on toward the summit.
Ahead, a great boulder jutted out from the mountain's flank, forming a natural high terrace.
White Lotus stopped there.
Jiang Wang followed her to beneath this "terrace," only to discover that beneath the great boulder there was a cave, as if formed by nature itself. It ran deep and dark, with no end in sight.
White Lotus stepped into the cave, then stopped right at its mouth. She took off the pelt, spread it on the ground, and sat upon it.
"Sit. What are you staring at me for?"
Jiang Wang did the same. No sooner had he sat than he could not help asking, "What are we doing here?"
"Waiting."
Jiang Wang had come to notice that whenever he had a genuine question to ask her, White Lotus became sparing with her words. But when he had nothing he wanted to say, she kept needling him.
Jiang Wang fell silent. Seen from this angle, wisps of cloud and mist wound about. At this hour the sun hung high, piercing through ten thousand miles of mountains and rivers; and as far as the eye could reach, the mountains hid among the clouds and mist, so beautiful it was hard to take in.
Jiang Wang drew back his gaze and was studying the cave surrounding him up and down when White Lotus explained, "This is the Mountain Spider's nest."
Jiang Wang could not help but peer into the cave. "Then where's the spider?"
"Sleeping inside."
"And what happens when it wakes?"
White Lotus looked at him as one would a simpleton. "Why, we kill it, of course."
Perhaps she found talking to an intellect like Jiang Wang's too tedious, for she drew from within her robes an object like a formation plate and set it flat before her.
"From now on, do not speak, and do not move."
This formation plate was probably inscribed with some sort of concealing-and-sound-killing array.
Jiang Wang wondered to himself, and indeed made good on the words — he neither moved nor spoke, but sat cross-legged with his eyes shut, beginning his impulse-channel charge.
Throughout this period of cultivation, the White-Bone Lotus on his spine had brought him no ill effect. Were it not for this sudden visit from White Lotus, he might well have slowly forgotten the matter entirely.
If any change was worth mentioning, the greatest change within the Tongtian Palace was not the second Celestial Star-Dou Spiral, so close to completion.
It was his Dao Meridian True Spirit.
It was common knowledge that a Dao Meridian True Spirit, as it darted through the Dao Spirals, would gain a measure of growth and strengthening. But before the great Zhou Heavenly circulation was completed, there was almost no visible change to be seen. And before the Heaven-Earth Gate was opened, a transformation of essence was hardly to be met either.
Yet Jiang Wang's Dao Meridian True Spirit — that earthworm — had become dotted with glints of starlight, and its body had clearly grown a size larger. Though the quantity of Dao essence it swallowed and expelled had not changed, his impulse-channel cultivation had visibly become far easier.
Moreover, Jiang Wang had a faint sensation that his Dao Meridian True Spirit had drawn a trifle nearer to that black candle — though he could not be entirely certain.
Jiang Wang had always been something of a cultivation fanatic; the moment he entered a cultivation state, he easily lost himself in it. And so he failed to notice that, at the very moment he began his impulse-channel charge, the look in White Lotus's eyes as they rested on him had changed.
It was a look of dreamy, entranced fixation.