a journey into immortal cultivation

Chapter Eight: The Stone Orb

His face drained of color, he gritted his teeth and stood, taking stock of his surroundings. He was in a small natural cave; sunlight slanted in from the mouth, and the floor was strewn with the bones of birds and beasts.

In the wall behind him yawned a fist-sized black hole. It was pitch-dark within—no telling how deep. A quick reckoning yielded an answer: the sudden suction from moments ago must have come from this very hole; the carcasses littering the floor were likely creatures dragged in and dashed to death as he had nearly been.

The pull seemed to come and go at random. It had surged up precisely as he fell—which was what had saved his life. Enduring the pain in his right arm, Wang Lin started toward the cave mouth—when the bones on the ground skittered of their own accord, sluicing backward. Without a word he rolled into a corner.

In that instant an unimaginable suction roared from the small hole in the wall. Bones clattered and slid, vanishing one after another into the opening. Larger pieces flattened against the rock as if glued there, plugging the hole.

Even so, the pull raged on. A bird, caught from the sky outside, was snatched through the cave mouth and smashed against the wall with a crack, blood spattering.

After roughly an hour, the suction ebbed. Wang Lin stared, aghast, at the bird’s mangled body, and did not move. He sat quietly where he was and began to count the time.

Half an hour later, the pull returned. So it went, cycling several times. Wang Lin fixed the pattern in his mind: the strange suction lasted one hour, then ceased, only to return half an hour later.

Seizing a lull, he hobbled to the cave mouth and looked down—then gave a bitter smile. A forest lay below, outcrops like fangs among the trees. The cliff was sheer. With his arm injured, climbing was out of the question. It was dozens of zhang to the bottom; a leap would be death.

His bundle of rations, left on the mountaintop, had not come down with him. Food was now the first problem. He thought a moment, calculated when the next pull would come, then backed to the corner and sank against the wall.

A day slipped by; the light faded. Wang Lin could feel his body weakening by degrees. His arm had gone completely numb. Think as he might, he could only sigh. “Stay here and I die. Jump, and I die for certain. Hah…”

He looked at the bird’s ruined body in the corner and hesitated. Then, with a hard swallow, he went over, picked it up, and brought it to his lips. A reek of blood and musk struck his nose. Wang Lin sighed once—and took a great bite of raw meat.

He scarcely chewed, swallowing almost whole. His stomach clenched and heaved, and a wash of warmth rose through him. He wolfed down half the bird in short order, gagging between breaths, then lurched up and drew great lungfuls of air until the nausea passed.

Tossing the remains aside, he slid down with his back to the wall. His thoughts tumbled—from his parents, to Fourth Uncle, to the sneering faces of the kin, to the cold eyes of the black-robed examiner at Hengyue.

In a daze, his gaze snagged on the half-eaten bird beside him. He jerked and snatched it up. There, in the torn flesh, lay a bead the size of a baby’s fist, red as blood. Wang Lin pried it free, astonished.

How could a bird have a bead in its body? His heart thudded. He remembered a miscellany he had read at the village school—a “Classic of Mountains and Seas,” full of myths—that claimed aged beasts sometimes formed a neidan, an inner core.

And if a man ate such a treasure, it said, he would gain mighty strength, lengthen his years—some even spoke of severed limbs regrown.

He had scoffed at it then. But he had seen immortals with his own eyes now. Perhaps there was truth in those old tales.

His pulse pounded. If this were truly a neidan, wouldn’t eating it heal his wounds at once? Wouldn’t leaving this place be easy? Might he not even gain entrance to an immortal sect—at least pass the trial of perseverance without fail?

Yet in his hand the bead felt hard as stone, nothing like food. Frowning, he wiped it clean with a strip torn from his clothes.

It was a gray stone pearl, etched with five tiny white clouds—old-looking, worn by time. Disappointment washed through him. He bit at it on a stubborn impulse—stone, through and through. Stroking the bead, he gave a rueful laugh. “Tiezhu, you’re dreaming. What kind of luck is that—that the random bird smashed at your feet would carry an inner core?”

He sighed. Outside, it had grown fully dark. Bone-tired, he curled in the corner and drifted into sleep, leaving the stone pearl lying by a pile of beast bones.

It was autumn. The earth shed its heat quickly, most of all in the mountains. Cool seeped steadily into him as he slept, and he hugged himself tight. The night passed swiftly.

At dawn, sunlight slanted in and spilled across the cave floor. Beads of dew welled on the stone pearl at Wang Lin’s side—glittering threads that swelled and ran, trickling over the nearby bones.

In a short while, Wang Lin stirred. His arm was still swollen—if anything, worse. He sat there, weighed by dejection.

“Am I to be trapped here for life?” he murmured. His eyes drifted—and lit on the beads of dew shimmering on a bone. Parched, he carefully lifted it and tipped the gathered droplets into his mouth.

The dew was sweet—surprisingly pleasant. Perhaps it was fancy, but a gentle warmth spread through him. Most of all, his injured arm began to prickle and itch; the swelling seemed to ease. He rubbed his eyes and looked closer—and joy flared. The puffiness had indeed gone down. Concentrating, he searched for more bones with dew—but found none.

Puzzled, his gaze returned to the stone pearl. Staring hard, he saw minute droplets budding on its surface. He recalled that the bone with dew had lain right beside it. He picked the bead up with trembling hands; his heart hammered. After a breath’s hesitation, he rolled the pearl over his injured arm, smearing its moisture evenly across the swollen flesh.

Coolth seeped into him in fine threads. Wang Lin did not so much as blink, eyes fixed on his arm. After a long moment, delight broke across his face. The swelling had melted away as if by magic. He flexed; though there was still a twinge or two, the arm was no longer a hindrance.

“This stone pearl… it’s a treasure!”