Chapter 964
The Madam's Meaning
"Thanks."
The little girl grinned, turned and ran away, her braids swinging behind her.
Chu Yang pinned the small yellow flower to the collar of his shirt.
The moon over White Tiger Ridge is white.
It wasn't the usual round moon with a warm yellow hue, but a cold, almost bleak pure white, like a bone that had been washed countless times, hanging in the gray night sky, casting its cold light on the barren rocks and dead trees covering the mountains.
The moonlight shines white on the rocks, white on the soil, and even more eerily white on the crooked, withered branches—the entire mountain appears pale under the moonlight, devoid of any color, like a watercolor painting that has been repeatedly scrubbed until only the original sketch remains.
Below a cliff halfway up the mountain, there is a cave entrance.
The entrance to the cave was small, half-hidden by several clumps of grayish-white thorns. The thorns had no leaves, only dense, sharp thorns, the tips of which gleamed silvery in the moonlight, making it look from a distance like a half-closed mouth full of slender teeth.
Inside the cave entrance was a downward-sloping passageway. The walls of the passageway were unusually smooth, not from artificial polishing, but from the corrosion caused by some sticky substance over the years, giving it a cold white luster similar to bone glaze.
At the end of the passageway was a spacious stone chamber.
There were no torches, no lanterns, no other light source in the stone chamber—yet it was not dark. A faint, white light of unknown origin permeated the entire space, as if seeping from the stone walls themselves, illuminating every detail of the chamber.
The layout of the stone chamber was completely different from that of ordinary monster caves.
There were no animal-hide carpets, no tiger-bone throne, and no mountains of gold and silver jewels. The floor of the stone chamber was covered with a very thin layer of white gauze, beneath which one could vaguely see some intricate runes carved into the ground.
Against the wall stood a bronze mirror. The mirror was more than half a person's height, and the frame was carved from some kind of white bone material. The carving was extremely exquisite—entwined vines, blooming peonies, fluttering butterflies—every detail was lifelike.
A woman sat in front of the bronze mirror.
She had her back to the passageway and was facing the bronze mirror.
From behind, she appeared slender and graceful, with long, jet-black hair cascading down her back to her waist, the strands shimmering with a silky sheen in the pale white light. She wore a simple white dress, the hem of which spread out on the white gauze floor, almost blending into the color of the ground, like a pool of quietly flowing moonlight.
Her face was reflected in the bronze mirror.
It was an extremely beautiful face.
Her features were so exquisite that they seemed to have been drawn stroke by stroke by a painter with the finest brush—her arched eyebrows were like distant mountains shrouded in mist, her eyes were like autumn waters in a cold pool, her nose was high and straight, her lips were thin and moist, and the curve of her jaw was just right, neither sharp nor square, carrying a contradictory beauty that was both soft and sharp.
Her skin was almost translucent white. Not the kind of healthy white, but a cold, pale white that hung between life and death. Upon closer inspection, one could vaguely see the bluish veins beneath the thin skin—if they could even be called veins.
She slowly combed her hair with a bone comb.
The comb moves from the roots to the ends of the hair, each stroke extremely slow and light, as if performing a delicate task requiring immense patience.
A little demon squatted at the entrance of the stone chamber.
It was a gray-furred wild fox that had only cultivated its powers for a few decades and couldn't even fully transform into human form—its upper body barely resembled a human, while its lower body remained that of a fox, with a large gray tail trailing behind it, nervously waving back and forth.
“Madam,” Gray Fox’s voice was thin and shrill, trembling noticeably, “the scout has returned.”
Lady White Bone did not turn around, nor did she stop combing her hair.
"explain."
"Tang Sanzang and his companions, consisting of four people and a horse, left Jujube Blossom Valley three days ago and are currently traveling west along the official road. At their pace, they should enter the territory of White Tiger Ridge in five or six days at most."
The comb paused for a moment at the ends of the hair.
"Four people?"
“Yes. Tang Sanzang, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie, and one more—” Gray Fox licked his lips, “a young human man. Not a monk, dressed in cloth, with a black short sword at his waist. The scout said he was at the very back of the group, and his cultivation level didn't seem high, probably only at the Qi Refining stage.”
Lady White Bone put down the bone comb and gently tapped the bronze mirror frame twice with her slender fingers.
"A human male at the Qi Refining stage, accompanying the pilgrimage team? Interesting. What's his name?"
"The scouts couldn't find out his name. They only saw that Sun Wukong spoke to him quite casually, like...like a friend."
"Sun Wukong's friend?" Lady White Bone's lips curled slightly—it was an extremely faint smile, almost imperceptible, but on that pale face, even such a minor change in expression was as clear as a stroke drawn on a blank sheet of paper.
"Any other news?"
Gray Fox hesitated for a moment.
"Yes. The scouts said they did something in Jujube Blossom Valley—they helped the local Earth God get rid of a snake demon that was entrenched in the earth's veins. The snake demon was severely injured by Sun Wukong and escaped. Then they cleansed the evil energy in the cave and repaired the earth vein nodes."
Lady White Bone finally turned around.
Her gaze fell on the gray fox. Its eyes, like icy pools, held no warmth in the pale white light, resembling two black gems embedded in ice.
"The ley line nodes were repaired? Who repaired them? Sun Wukong?"
"No. The scout said it was the human man who directed it. He had Pigsy use water-attribute spiritual energy to cleanse the cave, while simultaneously using some kind of bead to expel evil energy from within. Finally, the Earth God repaired the node. The entire plan was devised by that human man."
The stone chamber was quiet for a few moments.
Lady White Bone stood up.
She stood up very quietly, the hem of her white dress falling silently back to its original position as if lifted by an unseen wind. She walked to the other wall of the stone chamber—on which hung a painting.
The painting is on silk and is quite old, with slightly yellowed edges. It depicts a landscape—not by a famous artist, with rough brushstrokes and hasty coloring, looking like a perfunctory work by some third-rate painter.
But Lady White Bone wasn't looking at the painting itself.
Her gaze fell on a line of small print in the lower right corner of the image. The print was written with an extremely fine pen, the characters neat but lacking strength, as if it were written by someone who was not very literate.
The small characters contained a limerick. The content wasn't important. What mattered was the person who wrote it—a scholar who happened to be passing through the area during her lifetime.
That was a very, very long time ago.
So long that she almost forgot what she looked like when she was alive.
"Ah Yin." She called out Gray Fox's name, her gaze still fixed on the painting.
"exist."
"What do you think that human man's background is?"
Grey Fox shook his head.
"I don't know. The scout said he looks like an ordinary person, with pitifully low cultivation. But Sun Wukong is quite attentive to him, deliberately slowing his pace to wait for him. Zhu Bajie also listens to him. Even Tang Sanzang—the scout said Tang Sanzang calls him 'Chu Yang,' not 'benefactor,' but by his name."
Lady White Bone's eyelashes trembled slightly.
"Did Tang Sanzang call him by his name?"
"Yes. The scout overheard a couple of sentences of their conversation—Tang Sanzang called him 'Chu Yang,' and then asked him if his shoulder injury had healed. The tone didn't sound like he was speaking to a stranger; it was more like… a master asking his disciple."
Lady White Bone slowly turned around, walked back to the bronze mirror, and sat down again. She gazed at her reflection; her pale and delicate face remained expressionless in the pale light.
But her mind was racing.
Tang Monk's flesh.
That is the most precious elixir in the world. It is the physical body of the reincarnation of Jin Chanzi, the culmination of ten lifetimes of cultivation. One bite can add five hundred years to one's lifespan, and consuming the entire body can grant immortality.
She cultivated on this White Tiger Ridge for countless years. Becoming a spirit from bones is the most difficult path of cultivation—without flesh and blood, without spiritual roots, without the innate bloodline of the demon race, relying solely on a skeleton to absorb the thinnest death energy and moonlight in the world, condensing her soul and magic power bit by bit.
This road is too slow.
She needed a catalyst. A catalyst that would allow her cultivation to undergo a qualitative change.
The Tang Monk's flesh was that opportunity.
The problem is that Tang Sanzang has Sun Wukong by his side.
The Monkey King. The one who wreaked havoc in the Heavenly Palace. The one who, five hundred years ago, even 100,000 heavenly soldiers and generals couldn't stop him.
She wasn't unaware of her own limitations.
With her current cultivation level—late Foundation Establishment, barely touching the threshold of Golden Core—she wouldn't last three rounds against Sun Wukong in a direct confrontation. This isn't an exaggeration; it's the truth. She had seen Sun Wukong fight monsters; when he was king of Flower Fruit Mountain, she was just a pile of nameless bones in a desolate grave. She had heard far too many of those rumors.
So from the beginning, she had no intention of engaging in a direct confrontation.
Her approach has never been to fight head-on.
Her method is deception.
Change, disguise, feigning weakness, seduction. These were the strategies she had rehearsed countless times day and night. She didn't need to defeat Sun Wukong; she only needed to deceive Tang Sanzang.
As long as Tang Sanzang trusts her, as long as Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong have a falling out, as long as that instantaneous rift appears—she can remove Tang Sanzang from Sun Wukong's protective circle.
She had rehearsed this plan hundreds of times. Every step, every line, every expression was meticulously designed. She appeared three times—as a village girl delivering food, as an old woman searching for her daughter, and as an old man searching for his wife—each appearance building upon the previous one, with only one purpose: to make Tang Sanzang believe that Sun Wukong was indiscriminately killing innocent people.
But now there's an additional variable.
The human man named Chu Yang.
His cultivation level is only at the Qi Refining stage—not worth mentioning.
But he could make Sun Wukong slow down, make Zhu Bajie obey, make Tang Sanzang address him by his name, and devise a complete plan to cleanse the earth's veins of evil energy.
This person is not simple.
“Ah Yin.”
"exist."
"Send two more scouts out. They don't need to follow too closely, just keep a distance. I need to know how far they travel each day, where they rest, and what they say. Especially that guy named Chu Yang—report back everything about him, from his relationship with Tang Sanzang to his relationship with Sun Wukong, down to the smallest detail."
Gray Fox responded and was about to turn around when Lady White Bone called him back.
"There's one more thing. Go and fetch Xi Shu."
The gray fox's tail twitched.
"Xi...Xi Shu?"
"Can't you understand me?"
The gray fox shuddered, dared not ask any more questions, and shrank its neck as it ran away.
Lady White Bone was left alone in the stone chamber once again.
She gazed at her reflection in the bronze mirror, then stretched out her right hand and slowly stroked her cheek.
When her fingertips touched the skin, she could feel that beneath that "skin" was emptiness—no flesh, no bones, only a shell formed from condensed spiritual energy. If she withdrew the spiritual energy that sustained it, this exquisite and beautiful face would collapse in an instant, revealing the true face beneath—a skeleton radiating a faint white light.
She did not accept it.
She continued to stroke her cheek, her fingertips lingering for a moment on her cheekbone.
"Five or six days..."
She murmured to herself, her voice very soft and faint, like the faint sobbing of the wind blowing through an empty cemetery.
A moment later, a series of hurried footsteps echoed through the passageway, accompanied by a soft rustling sound—like some small animal moving quickly.
A short figure appeared at the entrance of the stone chamber.
It was a huge rat spirit—about three feet tall—that had completely transformed into human form, wearing a tight-fitting gray-black short suit, with a leather belt around its waist, from which two curved short daggers were clipped. Its face still retained obvious rat features—a pointed snout, long whiskers, and two small, restless eyes.
Xi Shu was one of the few capable henchmen under Lady White Bone. Not because of its high cultivation level—it was only at the late stage of Qi Refining—but because it had two abilities that other demons could not match: first, it was extremely good at stealth and eavesdropping; second, it had an amazing memory, able to repeat a conversation word for word after hearing it only once.
“Madam.” Xi Shu bowed slightly at the door, revealing two long, thin front teeth in his pointed mouth.
Lady White Bone did not turn around.
"Xi Shu, I have a task for you to complete."
"Please speak, Madam."
"Tang Sanzang's party will enter White Tiger Ridge in five or six days. I need you to intercept them on the road ahead—not to kill them, but to follow them. Mingle among them and listen to their conversation. There's one thing I especially want to know—"
Her fingers slowly traced the frame of the bronze mirror.
"How much does that human man named Chu Yang know?"
Xi Shu blinked his little eyes twice.
"How much do you know? What does Madam mean—"
"What I mean is—did he know that there was a White Bone Demon waiting for them ahead?"
Xi Shu was stunned for a moment.
"How could a human at the Qi Refining stage possibly know of the lady's existence beforehand?"
Lady White Bone finally turned her head and glanced at him.
Those emotionless eyes appeared exceptionally deep in the pale white light.
"A human at the Qi Refining stage who can command the Monkey King's obedience, who can have Tang Sanzang address him by his name, and who can devise strategies in Jujube Blossom Valley that even Foundation Establishment cultivators couldn't conceive of—do you really think such a person is just an ordinary Qi Refining cultivator?"
Xi Shu's back tensed involuntarily. (End of Chapter)