Chapter Thirty-Two: The Key

When the village chief was alive, perhaps he never realized I was deceiving him. Yet, in those flashes of lucidity before death, people often come to understand many things. In that fleeting moment, a person’s entire life unspools before their eyes, sometimes as if observed from the perspective of a bystander. The puzzles of the past, once so tangled, suddenly become clear.

Had the chief not realized my deceit, he would never have harbored such murderous intent toward me. Now, though he may be powerless to act against me himself, he will surely watch as Qiushuang attempts to kill me.

In this moment, I found myself growing calm. With a swift motion, I hurled an iron plough-head at the headless stone statue beside the chief. Sparks flew as metal struck stone, flashing before the chief’s eyes. Only then did I say coldly, “Uncle, tell me, if I were to strike your face with this plough-head, do you think it would send your head flying?”

“If you can’t control Qiushuang, no one will be able to enter the Hidden Horse Cave, and everyone in Matang Village will perish.”

“To save me is to save the village. Refuse, and I swear I’ll take your head before I die.”

The chief was so consumed by hate that he could no longer speak; his eyes were bulging wide with fury. Blood streamed from the corners of his eyes, trickling down to stain the statue’s shoulders a vivid crimson.

A few seconds later, the chief let out a wretched, unwilling howl; but the sound issuing from his mouth was unmistakably that of a horse-driver shouting at his charge.

In the end, faced with the choice between revenge and saving his people, the chief chose the latter.

The moment his voice rang out, I turned to Qiushuang. At the sound of the shout, her body stiffened, then suddenly erupted into a mania, flinging the second-in-command from her back.

Disaster! Qiushuang had gone mad.

Anyone who has raised horses knows: some horses obey a single shout, while others grow only more stubborn and wild the more you yell, even breaking free and vanishing without a trace. Qiushuang was clearly driven into a frenzy by that cry, and spun to charge straight at the stone statue.

The second-in-command, thrown aside, scarcely touched the ground before hurtling back toward Qiushuang. “Hurry—search atop the stone horse for the key! If you get the key, it won’t dare touch you.”

“Don’t bother with the stone men; there’s no key on them.”

Without waiting for his words to finish, he lunged behind Qiushuang and seized her hair. “You, horse driver—use your whip on her!”

Of the two stone horsemen flanking the horse, one gripped the reins in front, while the other held a whip. When I’d been fitting the chief’s head onto the statue, I’d had no time to distinguish which was which, and had simply fixed his head onto the whip-wielding figure.

To tame an unruly horse, the reins matter more than the whip; only by holding tight can you stop it. Lashing wildly with a whip alone only drives a horse mad.

But in that moment, none of us had the luxury of careful tactics; to restrain Qiushuang even a little was enough.

I didn’t see exactly how the chief wielded the whip, but a sharp crack split the air from his direction, and the next instant the second-in-command was hurled away again.

This time, Qiushuang wasn’t planning to let him off; as soon as she flung him aside, she spun and charged after him.

I hadn’t the time to worry about his fate; I rushed at full speed toward the stone horse.

I had no doubt about what the second-in-command had said. From his words, I could guess that when they first came to the Hidden Horse Cave in search of the treasure key, their first targets were the two horsemen statues. They must have believed the key was hidden in the heads of the horsemen, and so smashed them both. Little could they have known that destroying the horsemen would leave the stone horse uncontrollable, leading to their deaths at the hands of its vengeful spirit.

By this reasoning, the stone horse itself was the likeliest place to find the key.

I reached the horse and first grasped its mouth.

Hu Sanqi had once told me that in any place where treasure is hidden in the form of a statue, the mechanisms are almost always found at the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, throat, belly, haunches, or tail—an unspoken rule among master craftsmen.

I searched the stone horse over and over, but couldn’t find even a crack large enough for a finger, let alone a key.

The sounds of the second-in-command and Qiushuang’s struggle were growing fainter—both were nearing exhaustion. The chief’s shouts had no effect on Qiushuang at all.

Desperate, sweat streaming down my forehead, I still couldn’t find the hidden mechanism.

Just as I was running out of ideas, the second-in-command shouted a warning, and a sudden gust of wind swept toward my back. I instinctively ducked low, and above me came a dull thud. When I looked up again, Qiushuang was crouched atop the stone horse, head tilted, staring down at me.

The instant our eyes met, her clawed hands swooped toward my face.

As I arched my back to evade her attack, I ended up lying flat on the ground, narrowly avoiding a fatal blow. From behind, the second-in-command swept in, sliding low to kick my shoulder, sending me rolling beneath the horse’s belly before tangling with Qiushuang again.

Just as I was about to rise, I noticed three dragon scales carved beneath the horse’s foreleg, arranged in the pattern of the character “pin.”

Dragon horse?

My first thought was of a dragon horse.

Hu Sanqi had told me that in legend, horses possess some of the qualities of dragons. Both the “Rites of Zhou” and “The Book of Han” describe horses with dragon scales. According to Hu, a true dragon horse would have scales and even wings, but such creatures vanished in ancient times; in later eras, so-called dragon horses had only a trace of the bloodline, and if any scales appeared, there would be at most one or two, rarely as many as three.

This stone horse was clearly modeled after a dragon horse. Could the three scales be the trigger for the mechanism?

Pressing my fingers together, I pushed on the three scales. Instantly, they sank half an inch into the stone, and a hidden panel in the horse’s belly slid open, dropping a jade sliver the size of a fingernail into my lap.

The key!

I knew I had found the key, but had no idea how to use it.

Hu Sanqi’s voice seemed to whisper in my ear: “Just drip blood on it.”

As I bit my finger and reached for the key, Qiushuang’s hand also darted under the horse’s belly, clawing for my abdomen.

In a desperate moment, I grasped the jade piece in my bloodied hand, my finger pressing onto its surface. Qiushuang’s hand froze for an instant, but her sharp nails still slashed my skin, staining my clothes crimson with blood.