Xuanyuan Hao's hoarse command, yet burning with a desperate will, was like a sputtering spark dropped into a pan of dry tinder; it instantly ignited the blood-borne courage long suppressed within the hearts of the remaining warriors by a suffocating dread. One by one, they let out guttural roars, a primal outpouring of raw, untamed power, and scrambled to heave the massive, fallen stones scattered about by the grotto's violent tremors. These rocks, some with edges sharp as freshly knapped blades, others heavy as small hills, were all hewn from the hardest strata of the Kunlun bedrock. Several warriors even strained together, hoisting the ancient, colossal bones of some long-dead megafauna – relics previously gathered from the mountain depths and piled aside to reinforce the cave's defenses – alongside great, somber, weighty ironwood logs, timbers made preternaturally tough and dense through secret tribal methods of fire-curing and oil-soaking. They summoned every last ounce of strength from their bodies, the knotted muscles of their arms bulging, veins standing out like cords as they strained, great beads of sweat rolling down their foreheads. With all their might, they hurled everything they could find, everything that could remotely serve as a weapon, at that ever-expanding, ominously pulsating, dark-crimson fissure, as if it were a greedily inhaling maw.
CRASH! BANG! CRUNCH! BOOM—!
Boulder after boulder, carrying the warriors' desperate roars and the sound of air being torn asunder, slammed heavily against the edges of the inauspicious rift. Each impact sent up dazzling showers of sparks and a chorus of sickening, grinding noises, like bones being crushed and rubbed together. Some of the more brittle animal bones even shattered in mid-air, turned to powder by an invisible force emanating from the fissure before they could even reach their target.
Yet, the black-fire tentacles already extended from the rift displayed a terrifying strength and an incomprehensible, eerie flexibility that plunged the warriors into utter despair. They were like countless inky-black venomous pythons from some sunless, abyssal realm, coiling and lashing out with bewildering speed, effortlessly piercing the hard stones and heavy bone barricades. In a mere instant, the "obstacles" upon which the warriors had pinned their desperate hopes for even a moment's reprieve were contemptuously shattered, dissolved, or casually swatted aside. Several ironwood logs, timber considered by the tribe to be among the toughest materials known, strong enough for their finest weapons, simply vanished into motes of black ash upon contact with the eerie, dark flames licking from the tentacles. Not even a wisp of smoke arose, as if their very existence had been fundamentally negated, erased by the abyssal fire.
Such attempts at a blockade, in the face of this absolute, unimaginable power, seemed pathetically futile, laughably ineffective. Indeed, rather than achieving any desired effect, their actions seemed only to have further enraged the terrifying entity lurking within the ominous rift, biding its time. The dark-red fissure continued to expand with an inauspicious aura, more and more grotesque tentacles erupting from it like a black, surging tide. Their surfaces even began to exude a strange, cloying sweetness that could muddle the mind, yet beneath that sweetness lay a distinct, nauseatingly thick stench of blood and decay. The abyssal maw seemed poised to open fully, to drag all remaining life in this world into its eternal, unending darkness.
Xuanyuan Hao and all the Feng tribesmen present felt a chill despair rise from the very depths of their souls; the faint spark of resistance in their hearts almost flickered out.
Just then, a sudden change occurred.
A flurry of hurried footsteps echoed from the deep passage behind them, carrying a peculiar, ancient rhythm. Close behind, a chant drifted forth. The voice was aged and hoarse, yet it possessed an ineffable majesty and sanctity, like the first ray of dawn piercing an endless fog, startlingly clear.
Then, supported on either side by several elders, equally ancient, their faces deeply etched with the ravages of time and weather, yet their eyes still gleaming with wisdom and the unique light that comes from ages of accumulated experience, the Feng tribe's Shamaness, and its oldest sage – Nü Chou – appeared. Her steps were somewhat faltering, yet each one was placed with an extraordinary, unwavering firmness as she slowly made her way to this horrific scene, a scene that looked for all the world like the arrival of apocalypse itself.
Nü Chou's turbid eyes, weathered by a lifetime of wind and frost, seemed capable of piercing through all worldly illusions to perceive the brutal, unvarnished truth. Now, her gaze swept clearly over the unfolding horror: the hideous, dark-red rift, continuously spewing forth an aura of destruction; the black-fire tentacles, whipping madly through the air as if mocking all living things; and the great mural of Pan Gu creating the heavens – that sacred tapestry which had once borne the Feng tribe's most ancient wisdom, their faith, their glory, now rent by the fissure, horrifically defaced.
As all this registered, Nü Chou's face, a roadmap of deep wrinkles like the bark of an ancient tree, instantly turned a deathly white, devoid of any living color. Her withered lips trembled uncontrollably. Her eye sockets, already deep-set with age, now seemed to recede further, becoming two bottomless black pits. Her eyes, first filled with an unprecedented terror, an incredulous horror, then saw these emotions settle, transforming into a profound… an endless sorrow. It was a sorrow born of grim fate, as if she had long foreseen some terrible truth, a truth sealed away for countless ages, that once revealed, would bring about an inescapable, annihilating doom.
"Heaven scarred… Earth laments… Kunlun weeps blood…" Nü Chou's voice, like the first icy gust from an ancient, frost-sealed tomb, trembled with a heart-stopping quaver, each word laden with chilling import. "The ancient… the forgotten taboo… has finally… been touched…"
She murmured to herself in phrases that even Xuanyuan Hao could only half comprehend, words that seemed to hail from an era far more distant than Pan Gu's creation, from a time of unformed chaos, the very dawn of existence – ancient, forbidden words and prophetic warnings.
Yet, she quickly forced herself to a semblance of calm, wrenching herself free from the overwhelming shock and grief that threatened to consume her aged soul. She knew, better than anyone, that at this moment, the tribe's final destiny perhaps rested entirely upon her frail, flickering candle of a life.
She gently pushed away the two elders supporting her. Her body, though gaunt, still stood with the unyielding resilience of an ancient pine that had weathered a thousand storms. Though she swayed for a moment, she moved with extraordinary resolve to a relatively safe distance before the terrifying rift. Her eyes, still sharp and bright in the dim grotto, like two ancient swords capable of piercing all illusion, now fixed unwaveringly upon the constantly writhing, expanding darkness of the fissure, as if to see through it, to comprehend fully the terrifying entity that lurked behind it, sneering in silent malice.
Suddenly, Nü Chou drew a deep breath, her entire withered chest heaving with the effort. She began to chant, her voice rising in a unique melody, exceedingly ancient, its syllables complex, filled with an indescribable sorrow and an aura of stark, deathly solemnity.
The syllables of her chant were obscure, difficult to grasp, imbued with the most primal, arcane power, as if belonging not to this age but to the primordial wilderness. Her voice was like an oracle delivered from the nine heavens, yet also like the deep groan of the earth's dragon-veins. It seemed to directly commune with some unknown, unimaginably powerful, ancient entity of this world, and at the same time, it felt as if she were using her very life and soul to awaken the most ancient, the final, guardian spirits of the Huaxia ancestors, those who had long slumbered in the deepest core of the Kunlun Mountain Range.
Her sorrowful and sacred chant reverberated throughout the mural chamber. As she sang, her trembling hands reached for an ancient wooden box tucked into her sash. From it, with absolute reverence, she drew forth, one by one, several mysterious cords. They were of varying colors and lengths, their materials also exceedingly peculiar. This wooden box was no ordinary container. It had been meticulously carved from the very heartwood of an extraordinary spirit tree, one said to have been struck by lightning over ten thousand years yet remained unburnt, a wood fabled to ward off all evils. Its surface was covered with countless tiny, intricate, ancient carvings in a mysterious spiral pattern, as if chronicling the very laws of creation and destruction, the cyclical turnings of the cosmos.
The instant these cords emerged from the ancient box, they released a strange, delicate fragrance. Though faint, it possessed the power to instantly dispel some of the surrounding yin-cold, abyssal miasma, bringing a sliver of clarity to the minds of those who inhaled it. It stood in stark, vivid contrast to the nauseating, evil stench continuously billowing from the rift.
Among them was a cord of pure black, dark as ink, yet within its strands, tiny, mysterious flecks of dark gold starlight faintly glimmered. Upon closer inspection, its material was extraordinary. It seemed woven from the mane of a long-extinct, primordial beast of chaos and all-consuming hunger – perhaps the 'Hundun' or the 'Taotie' of ancient legend – mixed with countless fine particles of volcanic crystal, polished like the hardest black scales of the Taotie itself, capable of devouring all things. This cord had been further tempered in earth-heart black flames, refined for a full eighty-one days. Its appearance exuded a heart-stopping aura of abyssal emptiness and the stillness of death, as if it could draw all light and hope into itself. This, then, symbolized the end of all things, the final return to stillness, and… the most profound, inauspicious omen.
There was also a cord of verdant green, so vibrant it seemed to drip with life, radiating a rich, vital energy. It looked as if freshly gathered from a primeval forest just after the first rains of spring, its surface still dewy with the moisture of morning, carrying the clean, invigorating scent of the millennial Jianmu, the ancient Sky-Tree. This cord's weaving was also wondrous: its main fibers were from a divine grass blessed by Jumang, the ancient god of Eastern Wood and Spring; intertwined with these were also the roots of the 'Undying Herb,' said to grow beside the Jade Pool in the immortal realm of Yaochi, capable of reviving the dead. It represented the unceasing flow of life, the growth of all things, and… the spark of hope that could never be extinguished, even in the deepest, most desperate abyss.
And then there was a cord of braided crimson, the most striking, and the most ominous of them all. It was the color of fresh blood. One legend said it was dyed by the very tears of blood shed by the mythical Phoenix bird at the crucial moment of its rebirth in fire; another claimed it had been repeatedly soaked for forty-nine days in the heart's blood of the Three-Legged Golden Crow, the sun-steed of Xihe, the ancient Mother of Suns, only then finally perfected. Not only this, but from its end, a few strange feathers were carefully tied with threads of gold. These feathers were long charred and curled, yet from their edges, tiny, inexhaustible wisps of divine fire-aura still emanated – they were rumored to have fallen to the mortal realm by chance from the chaotic sea of fire beyond the heavens, the very tail feathers of the mythical Bi Fang, the one-legged divine bird said to be able to incinerate all creation with its fiery breath! The instant this crimson cord appeared, it radiated an absolute, scorching heat and an aura of destructive malevolence, so intense it caused the very souls of all living beings to feel a searing pain, unimaginable.
Nü Chou's hands, by now, were as withered and bony as an eagle's talons, seemingly stripped of all flesh. Yet, these very hands, at this moment, displayed a dazzling, almost supernatural dexterity and an unshakeable steadiness that utterly belied her aged appearance. She took these cords, each imbued with an infinity of symbolic meaning and mysterious, primordial power, and with a strange rhythm that no outsider could comprehend, a rhythm that seemed to move in perfect synchrony with the breath of the heavens and earth, the turning of sun and moon, she began to expertly and swiftly weave them, pass them through each other, tie them in intricate knots before her chest. Every movement was steeped in the most ancient ritualism, and possessed an ineffable, arcane cadence, as if capable of affecting the most fundamental laws of the cosmos.
This, then, was the Feng tribe's most anciently passed-down, most arcane, most powerful, and by the same token, most perilous spirit-communing divination art – the "Warning Sacred Knot"!
It was said that this Sacred Knot could directly commune with the inscrutable will of Heaven's Dao and the very tracks of destiny. It could only be woven by the Great Shamans of the tribe through successive generations, those whose spiritual cultivation was profound, who could directly communicate with the spirits of heaven, earth, and ancestors. And it could only be attempted at a critical historical juncture when the tribe faced annihilation, at the cost of burning a great portion of their own heart's blood and vital essence, even sacrificing a part of their lifespan, using their own intrinsic connection with the tribe's collective fate-fortune through the ages as a conduit. Not only could it clearly divine the tribe's fortune, auspice or calamity, life or death, in the time to come, but it could even, amidst a future shrouded in endless karmic veils, filled with countless variables and bewildering mists, point out for the entire tribe a single, albeit most arduous and painful… path to survival!
Seeing Nü Chou begin to employ such an ultimate, tribe-fate-defining secret art, the few ancient elders nearby, men of great standing within the tribe, also forcibly suppressed their own fear and unease, and each began to act. They took up several key positions within the mural chamber – some corresponding to the tracks of the sun and moon, some echoing the serpentine coil of the Kunlun dragon-veins, others facing towards the gaze of the divine bird carved upon the tribe's totem pole – as if forming a simple, yet subtly resonant invisible field of power, one that connected with the surrounding mountain's spirit-aura, attempting to channel and amplify the heaven-and-earth energies that Nü Chou invoked with her spell.
One elder, his hair and beard a torrent of white, his forehead deeply tattooed with several ancient totemic symbols in a dark red mineral pigment – their patterns perhaps symbolizing the winding of mountains, the might of thunder, or the claws of some tribal guardian beast – tremblingly drew forth nine pure black, mysterious ovoid stones from an ancient, well-worn hide pouch he kept close to his body. These stones had been polished smooth by his constant touch over many years, each the size of a pigeon's egg, yet shockingly cold to the touch. It was said these were 'Xuanming True Baleful Stones,' gathered from beside the 'Eye of Xuan-Water' in the deepest part of Mount Kunlun, each imbued with a trace of the original cold-baleful energy of the Northern Xuanming Sacred Beast. He muttered under his breath, chanting an ancient spell in a proto-language lost to the tribe for hundreds of years, one connected to the movements of the stars. At the same time, following a mysterious pattern of positions and numbers that secretly corresponded to the celestial track of the Big Dipper (or other constellations revered by the tribe) high in the northern sky, he carefully placed these nine Xuanming True Baleful Stones, one by one, upon the cold, yellow earth before him. With each placement of a stone, it seemed as if the thick, solid Kunlun earth beneath their feet let out an almost imperceptible, yet exceedingly heavy, mysterious tremor, as if it were achieving some ineffable, arcane resonance with the eons-old, slumbering telluric will of Mount Kunlun.
Another elder, wielding a ghastly white bone staff – crafted from the entire spinal column of an ancient python that had cultivated for ten thousand years beside Kunlun's Jade Pool before failing its celestial dragon-transformation trial, its top inlaid with an adult-fist-sized, unknown thunder-attribute crystal that pulsed with a ghostly blue-violet luminescence and occasionally crackled with tiny arcs of electricity – now used the staff's end. With a unique, strange rhythm imbued with the ancient mysteries of "Three Powers, Nine Revolutions," a rhythm that seemed to mimic the sounds of wind, thunder, and flowing water, he gently, rhythmically, tapped it against the cold, hard rock wall beside him. It produced a low, ethereal, yet strangely penetrating sound: thrum… thrum-thrum… thrum… The sound seemed not to strike lifeless, cold stone, but rather the very heart of some ancient being, one coeval with this old heaven and earth, now slumbering for countless eons. He sought, with this special sound, imbued with life's most primal rhythm, to awaken it from its ageless sleep and its oblivion by the world of mortals, devoutly praying that it might, in this terrifying hour of impending doom, bestow even a sliver of its pity and divine aid upon these small, insignificant children it had once sheltered.
For a time, the entire mural chamber was filled with a symphony of interwoven sounds. On one side, the ever-expanding, dark-red rift, from which the demonic tentacles lashed out, striking the rock walls with sickening, wet cracks; accompanying this was the ragged, terrified, and utterly suppressed breathing of all the surviving Feng tribespeople. On the other side, Nü Chou's sorrowful and desolate ancient chant echoed, like a cuckoo weeping blood. The few elders intoned mysterious spells in nearly forgotten proto-tongues, their voices low and solemn. And the pale white bone staff, tipped with its thunder-crystal, struck the cold rock wall, its ethereal and desperate reverberations sounding again and again, each note seemingly an attempt to commune with the spirits of this land, this heaven.
The air was thick with an indescribable, absolute oppressiveness, suffocating, almost enough to crush all reason and hope. Yet, intertwined with this oppression was another strange sensation… that which comes only before the true arrival of apocalypse, when small, fragile mortals attempt, with all their being, one last, most desperate, and all-sacrificing gamble with the unknown, mighty spirits of the unseen realm – a feeling of insignificance, yet also of an immense, sacred solemnity. At this moment, all eyes were fixed, unblinking, upon Nü Chou's withered hands. Those hands, like fleeting butterflies, were weaving the final destiny of the tribe. And in every heart, a tiny, yet incredibly desperate spark of hope simultaneously ignited – could these Nine-Hued Cords truly shake Heaven and Earth, and divine for them that one, slim chance of survival?!