# Chapter 90: What I Have Seen
Because the place was too cramped for it, and because Bai Lian was there, it was hardly convenient to practice the Four Spirit Body-Tempering Art. Once the impulse-channel charge was finished, Jiang Wang turned to the Dao Essence Control Art. Inside the Tongtian Palace, he shifted the strands of Dao essence about, first arranging them into an "An," then into a "Wang," amply entertained by the task.
He could not say how long had passed before a faint murmur reached his ears. Jiang Wang withdrew from his meditation and turned to look at Bai Lian. She gave him a quiet glance.
The voices drew nearer.
"Bloody hell! Stuck doing this same tedious work day after day. I didn't join the Office of Inquiry to be some hunter." That was one voice.
"You'd best keep your voice down," counseled the other.
"The one who could hear us isn't here. What is there to fear?" It was spoken bravely enough, and yet the first voice had clearly softened.
Something stirred in Jiang Wang's mind. A hunter? Did that mean the two men hunted savage beasts here? But he had heard no sound of battle at all. He recalled what Zhao Rucheng had once told him — that someone on Jade Scales Peak had stopped Dou Yuemei from uprooting the mountain. So that person was not here now? The Office of Inquiry... the men on Jade Scales Peak really did belong to the Zhuang court. The savage beasts that had ravaged the Sanshan city domain truly were tied to the Zhuang court!
While these thoughts churned through his mind, the two voices drew ever closer — or rather, they seemed headed up toward the mountaintop. Jiang Wang, obedient to a fault, held himself perfectly still and silent, trying to divine Bai Lian's intent. Even now he did not know what was to be done. But anything that touched on the secret of Jade Scales Peak, on the Zhuang court, demanded that he think his fill.
The footsteps stopped just outside the cave mouth. Two weary-faced cultivators appeared in his line of sight. One stood extraordinarily tall; the other wore a thick, full beard. Each carried something like a birdcage, and they were both staring straight at Jiang Wang and Bai Lian.
They froze. So did Jiang Wang.
"They've seen us!" Jiang Wang said.
"Is that not obvious?" Bai Lian replied.
"Did we not plant the formation disk?"
"Oh, that disk." She waved it off. "It was just too heavy to keep tucked in my robe, so I set it down somewhere on a whim."
"...!"
Jiang Wang choked back his irritation. He had barely drawn his sword when Bai Lian had already drifted out of the cave. Now that she had left the wrapping of beast hides behind, her slender figure could no longer hide the grace of it. Midair, she was a sight unto herself. She reached out both hands and gently pressed them to the brows of the two cultivators.
In truth, both men had reacted at the very first instant — but their Dao arts crumbled before they could fully take form. They seemed to cry out something, yet the sound was snuffed out by some unseen force. The two cultivators slumped to the ground, and Bai Lian bent to pick up the two cages.
"You killed them?" Jiang Wang asked. If he had heard correctly, these two men came from the Office of Inquiry. In a sense, they were one of the transcendent forces that held the kingdom of Zhuang stable. Killing them was the last thing Jiang Wang would have wished to see.
"Merely knocked unconscious. How could I be so foolish?" Bai Lian giggled. "And what if it made you grow to dislike me?"
Jiang Wang had truly no way to meet these feather-light flirtations. All he said was, "What do we do now?"
Carrying the cages in both hands, Bai Lian turned lightly and walked back. She offered one cage toward Jiang Wang. "Take a look — what do you make of this?"
Within that cage were countless tiny beasts, too many to count. Looking closely, every single one of them was moving — none were dead.
"What is this?" Jiang Wang made no effort to hide the narrow vision of a boy from a small town. Not that he had not striven; it was simply that he, unlike those born to privilege, had never lived amid such sights from the cradle. And there was nothing to lament in it — he was already walking down the road to see them.
"A beast cage!" Bai Lian gave the cage a shake, and the beasts within broke into panic, darting about this way and that.
"Just like a storage casket, then — save that what it holds is living beasts?"
The storage casket was an object so rare it bordered on legend. Jiang Wang had never owned one, yet he had heard of them countless times. The wonder of shutting the whole world into a single box had once set his heart racing.
Bai Lian nodded, then raised her hand. "Carry them."
Jiang Wang took both beast cages and held them up before his eyes to study them. "Why would men of the Office of Inquiry be here?" he asked as he did so. "And what would they be doing, catching so many beasts?"
Bai Lian did not answer. She simply turned and walked deeper into the cave.
"Wait — wasn't the Mountain Spider supposed to be sleeping in here?" Jiang Wang asked.
Bai Lian looked back over her shoulder, head tilted. "Now why would the Mountain Spider be sleeping here?"
"Did you not say... this was its lair?"
"Do you believe everything I say?" Bai Lian gave a light snort and turned away. "So easy to fool — one day some demoness will swallow you, skin and bone, without a trace."
Jiang Wang: "..."
He was no fool. It was simply that Bai Lian had saved his life, and had shown him nothing but goodwill, so he had no reason to doubt her — least of all over such a trifling matter. And so, even as he watched two men of the Office of Inquiry make straight for this cave, he had thought nothing of it.
They pressed deeper in. Bai Lian took out a Suspended Bright Lamp and made a small gesture, guiding it to drift in the air before them, lighting their way. The vast hollow interior of the cave unfolded before Jiang Wang's eyes. There was little sign of human handiwork here — merely a tangle of caverns and passages running off into impenetrable depths, like a labyrinth.
Bai Lian, for her part, seemed thoroughly familiar with the place. Without hesitation she chose one passage and went straight in. The two wound their way through turns and switchbacks for a long while, until all at once the space before them opened wide!
This was a vast valley, stretching beyond the reach of the eye. It held trees and stones, flowers and grass — and yet it gave no impression of beauty or quiet, but instead lay heavy on the heart, breeding an unaccountable restlessness in the beholder. Along the valley walls on both sides, many more caves yawned, and they stood in one of them.
Jiang Wang thought to himself that many of the passages they had passed might well lead down here to this same valley.
"Open the cage. Pour them out." said Bai Lian.
"Oh." Jiang Wang had long since studied the thing. He set down the cage in his right hand, hefted the one in his left, aimed its mouth at the valley below, and pulled the door open.
Roars and hisses and screeches and chittering clashed against his ears — a flood of beasts poured from the cage, swelling to their true size the instant they burst free, then tumbling down into the valley, one after another.
These were all common beasts: lions and tigers, bears and leopards, as well as birds and sparrows, foxes and hares. Some of them were gentle by temperament, some savage, but all of them were within the ordinary range.
And the moment they struck the valley floor, something dreadful began. First it was their eyes: almost instantly they ran red. Rabbits' fangs burst forth; little sparrows' claws turned knife-sharp... some swelled to grotesque size, some suddenly sprouted horns.
Jiang Wang watched it all with his own eyes.
These beasts... were turning into savage beasts!
Those mindless savage beasts. Those cruel, ferocious, nightmare things. Those savage beasts that had nearly dragged down the entire Sanshan city domain, and that still ravaged every commandery of the Zhuang Kingdom.
They... had been ordinary beasts all along, transformed!
Captured by men of the Office of Inquiry, and completed their transformation here, in this valley.
This was a monstrous secret — and a brutal truth.