The Night Watcher of Great Jing - Chapter 92

“Are you all right?” Shen Yan reached out to steady Zhao Li as she sucked in a sharp breath, lowering his head to inspect her wound.

Zhao Li shook her head to show that it was nothing serious.

Together, they turned toward Zhang E.

Barely alive, Zhang E knelt curled upon the ground and used both claws to wrench Zhao Li’s long saber out of her body. A gaping wound had opened across her lower abdomen, and a punctured egg slid out of it.

The egg’s contents spilled free. A fleshy grub the length of an index finger curled into a tiny ball. The moment it was exposed to the air, it rapidly shriveled and blackened.

“Ah—”

Watching her child die before her eyes, Zhang E wailed as though her heart were being torn apart.

She knelt in a pool of blood. Above her, the hands of the flayed corpses hanging upside down drooped like red flowers. Watery moonlight poured over the scene, creating a picture that was unsettling yet possessed a strange beauty.

Zhao Li watched as Zhang E seemed to absorb the silver-white moonlight. One after another, weightless tufts of soft white down pushed out of her body.

At the same time, enormous fleshy bulges swelled from either side of her spine, trembling and twisting.

The newly grown down stretched outward as though alive, enveloping Zhang E along with the entire little house.

It happened with astonishing speed. Zhao Li and Shen Yan hurled their lamp oil and Sichuan chinaberry water at her.

The oil caught fire at once, but more down quickly folded over the flames and smothered them. The Sichuan chinaberry water proved extremely effective, eating great pits into the white down like acid.

Unfortunately, the pouches they carried held very little of it.

The down growing from Zhang E’s body had already expanded into a mass the size of a small house. Zhao Li knew they could not stop her transformation here. She shot Shen Yan a look.

“Lord Shen, follow the plan.”

Shen Yan took a handkerchief from his robes and pressed it over the wound at Zhao Li’s ribs. At her words, he nodded and pulled a signal firework from behind his waist.

A point of light shot skyward with a shrill whistle and burst overhead.

Shen Yan casually discarded the still-smoking bamboo tube and reached out to support Zhao Li, but she waved him away.

“It’s not a serious wound.”

“Let’s go!”

At the ambush site, Zheng Lian stood with one foot on the wooden railing of the drum tower, anxiously peering into the distance.

At last, the sharp whistle of the signal firework sounded from afar, and a bloom of light exploded in the sky.

His spirits lifted.

On the watchtower opposite him, Lu Jianxing was already moving.

“Everyone, get ready.”

The dozens of people crammed atop the two watchtowers sprang into action. They picked up water pouches and pig bladders filled with Sichuan chinaberry water.

Wooden wheels rumbled along the broad street as soldiers pushed more than a dozen city crossbows into place, each as tall as a man.

Under the direction of a dark-faced, armored general, the soldiers fitted bolts as thick as a man’s wrist and equally tall into the crossbows’ firing grooves. Thumb-thick hemp ropes reinforced with strands of copper were tied to the ends of the bolts.

Several soldiers worked together to drive tethering stakes into the ground.

In the midst of the tense preparations, a rapid clatter of footsteps came from around a corner.

Lu Jianxing narrowed his eyes. Tan Ying and two Hundred-Household Commanders appeared, the three of them carrying a stark-naked Prince Rui between them as they ran.

He immediately called out, “It’s the group sent to rescue Prince Rui!”

Hurrying forward to meet them, he asked, “Thousand-Household Commander Tan, where are Lord Shen and Thousand-Household Commander Zhao?”

Tan Ying, whose understanding of the world had also just been thoroughly overturned, was pale and short of breath.

“Behind us.”

Lu Jianxing looked at Prince Rui. His head lolled to one side; after all the shocks he had suffered, he had long since fainted.

The instant Lu Jianxing noticed the prince was naked, he averted his eyes. Then something at the edge of his vision made him turn back in alarm to stare at the object dangling from the prince’s navel.

“What is that?”

The thing suggested several unpleasant possibilities, and nausea immediately rose in his stomach.

Tan Ying gave a couple of dry laughs. This was certainly something His Highness would remember for the rest of his life. Still, she held her tongue.

The dark-faced general directing the soldiers in the distance also strode over. He took one look at Prince Rui’s present condition and sucked in a sharp breath.

No one dared say a word. They exchanged glances, silently agreed they had seen nothing, and dispersed to attend to their duties.

Tan Ying carried Prince Rui to Imperial Physician Zhang.

At some point, a bank of dark clouds had covered the moon, leaving the walls and houses of Jiahui Ward as indistinct silhouettes.

Just as Zhao Li and Shen Yan returned to the ambush site, the moon emerged from behind the clouds.

The full moon hung high, bathing the entire world in exquisitely beautiful light.

Holding a hand to her ribs, Zhao Li saw countless luminescent white moths converging on Yang Jian’s home. Viewed from above, they filled the sky like falling snow or drifting petals.

At the center of the gathering swarm, light twisted and spread.

The white down absorbed the moonlight and turned into crystalline silver. It swayed gently in the breeze.

Then a pair of beautiful, blood-red compound eyes suddenly opened within the silver radiance.

Thump. Thump.

The deep, powerful sound carried throughout Jiahui Ward.

It was both a heartbeat and the breath of a fetus.

For an instant, everyone seemed to become part of the same body, their hearts beating in time with that mighty rhythm.

At last, the cocoon woven from silver threads slowly opened.

The countless corpses it had enveloped had all been reduced to white bones, which now hung from strands of silver silk.

At the center stood a body more than thirty feet tall.

It possessed distinctly feminine curves, with a full, fleshy swell at its lower belly. Soft silver down covered it from head to toe.

The creature knelt on the ground, then slowly unfurled its body and stood.

A pair of magnificent red compound eyes gazed reverently at the moon. Its lips parted, releasing an ethereal, beautiful cry.

Then it cocked its head. Its elegantly shaped toes touched the ground.

Against the backdrop of the silver moon, a pair of fantastically beautiful white moth wings spread from its back. They beat twice, scattering sparkling silver dust, and the creature floated gently into the air.

Silver threads streamed beneath it like a sumptuous skirt. The human skeletons hanging from them resembled pale wind chimes.

As the softly glowing creature rose, Zhao Li heard everyone around her draw breath in unison.

Even though she had known what to expect, its uncanny beauty still held her spellbound.

She stared without blinking.

A hand suddenly settled on her shoulder. Zhao Li looked up and saw Shen Yan’s habitually dark, sour expression.

“Stop looking. It’s just a moth.”

“Fine.”

Zhao Li’s distracting thoughts vanished at once.

She could not understand how anyone could remain so unmoved by beauty or be so utterly incapable of appreciating it.

She clapped her hands and shouted, “Bring up the bait.”

Yang Jian was carried forward, bound from head to foot. He still looked much as he had before, except that his belly had grown even larger, and fist-sized objects occasionally swam beneath his skin.

According to Imperial Physician Zhang, the thing before them was less a man than a human-shaped nest for larvae.

Even his brain had been eaten hollow.

All the Sichuan chinaberry fruit was removed from Yang Jian’s mouth, and his entire body was suspended from a tall wooden pole.

Mucus spilled from his mouth. Two soft antennae emerged between his lips.

His throat worked, and a fist-sized white, fleshy grub crawled onto his tongue.

Its two young, tender antennae twitched, giving a cry no human ear could hear.

The swarm of white moths filling the sky froze.

Then every last one of them surged toward the pole.