Chapter 13 — An Adventure in the Mountain Cave (Part Two)
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
The platform much resembled the divine altars of ancient times used for sacrifice, and also like the place in a sect where important things were kept. In any case, it looked to be of a very distant age. At least in modern times no such building would appear.
Wei Zhao gave it little thought and bounded up the platform in a few strides. At the very top he saw a small wooden box of antique grace, and his heart surged at once. Could this be something like a case for hiding scriptures?
Carefully Wei Zhao lifted the box. The moment it was in his hands, he leapt straight down from the platform and hid himself away, for he had heard that such ancient buildings often concealed hidden traps. Having moved another's treasure, should some device be set off, he would be in deep trouble.
Yet Wei Zhao waited a long while and saw nothing strange happen, and only then breathed a secret sigh of relief. He was in no hurry to open the box. After all, the stone door of the cave would close before dawn, while the box could be opened at home. For now, he resolved to use his scant remaining time to search the cavern further.
Circling past the platform, Wei Zhao found to his amazement that behind it there was yet another stone door, and beside that door stood another small tablet, likewise written in seal script in eight lines of four words each, just like the tablet he had seen upon entering.
Greatly astonished, Wei Zhao hastened to read it with care:
"In five years, when divine skill is first mastered, strike the door with the palm, and you may enter."
"If the wish is unfulfilled and the skill unmastered, wait five years more, and come to try again."
After reading these eight lines, Wei Zhao was lost in fog. What did "in five years, when divine skill is first mastered" mean? Could this box in his hand truly hold some martial manual? And when he had mastered it, he need only strike the door with his hand, and the door would open?
With this thought, Wei Zhao gave the door a casual push, but the stone door did not stir in the least. Then the latter four lines were easy to understand. "If the wish is unfulfilled and the skill unmastered, wait five years more, and come to try again" meant that if he could not push the door open, his skill was not yet trained enough, and he must wait another five years, until the stone door opened again, to come in and try.
Gazing at this door that would not open, Wei Zhao felt an itch in his heart. By all reason, if this first hall already held a manual of divine skill, then the hall behind this stone door must surely hide something still more precious.
Yet Wei Zhao also knew that with his present power he could never open the second door. At best he was only a fated one, and that he had passed the first stone door into this hall was coincidence enough.
Since that was so, Wei Zhao forced nothing further, but holding to his breast the box he had taken from the platform, he walked toward the mouth of the cave. By now the sky was no longer so dark. The east had paled to a fish-belly white, the sign that the sun would rise and daylight would soon break...
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