“Whoa, there’s a car tailing us too?” Ye Chan cracked open half the car window and stuck her head out to look. “That car—it looks just like the white one that was parked behind us earlier.”
Yes, Gu Xianwang remembered that car’s license plate clearly. It was most likely the vehicle driven by those people who had come to inspect the project. With such a massive commotion in Golden Hook Town tonight, none of the guests staying in the households had woken up. Clearly, something had lulled them all into a deep sleep. They wouldn’t dare toy with the safety of an entire village’s tourists. The most likely explanation was that this eerie ritual could only be performed on a stormy night like this.
Since they had all fallen under the spell, there was no reason these few would be unaffected. It meant they had come prepared, lying in wait for nightfall to make their move. What good could come from them following now? If they really were the grave robbers Yang Baibai had mentioned, it was four against two—and they had three men. Unarmed, she and Ye Chan might not come out on top. Their only option was to shake them off.
She had spotted that old-model Nissan Patrol at the rental shop earlier but had been in too much of a hurry to hear the full sales pitch from the owner. Judging by the price, its off-road capabilities probably fell short of the Wrangler’s. The real issue, though, was that there was only one road. She needed to figure out which way Long Li had gone first. They knew nothing about the Thunder Sundial, so they had no—
No. Gu Xianwang steadied the wheel, yanked the Undying Turtle from her collar, and handed it along with the Ink Jade Plate to Ye Chan. “Hold on to these. We’ll use it to pinpoint Long Li’s location.”
Back in the Yin Vortex, the Undying Turtle had clashed with the Jade Flute Earth Toad. She figured it still recognized that creature’s aura. If Long Li hadn’t tossed the flower, this just might work.
Before she could silently summon the Undying Turtle, the Patrol behind them suddenly started flashing its high beams aggressively. The driver pushed hard, barreling forward as if hell-bent on rear-ending them, tailgating with less than thirty centimeters between the bumpers. The headlights glared right in her face, blinding Gu Xianwang in an instant.
He didn’t stop at the lights—he leaned on the horn relentlessly too.
“Tch.”
That was all it took to ignite Gu Xianwang’s temper. She cracked her eyes open just a sliver, slammed off the accelerator—bam!—and crashed straight into the front grille of the car behind.
Their rented Wrangler might not have a stainless steel spare tire rack, but the front and rear bumpers were reinforced, fitted with a tow hitch like a steel spike. The sheer momentum drove it right into the other car’s emblem, crumpling the hood.
She then floored the gas. The engine roared to life, and after a tense moment, she dragged the crippled vehicle forward, picking up speed. But they weren’t giving up that easily. The trailing car braked just enough to create some space, swerved, and tried to cut into the oncoming lane to slam into her side wheel.
Hah, no more pretending. Gu Xianwang rolled down the window and wiped the rearview mirror. Rain bucketed down, drenching her upper body in seconds, but she kept her eyes locked on the mirror, silently linking her mind with the Undying Turtle.
Ye Chan had never witnessed anything like this. It was thrilling and terrifying all at once. She gazed at Sister Gu with shimmering eyes—whether from fearful tears or adoring stars, it was hard to say. She whispered, “Whoa, the rainy-night Akina Mountain car god!”
Cradling the Undying Turtle in both hands, she stared it down, wondering why it hadn’t budged yet. Did it need more praise?
No time like the present—she had to pitch in. “Oh my god, I used to think the world had no perfection until I laid eyes on you—my dear little emerald divine turtle. You’re so clear and radiant, so perfectly lustrous. You must have a heart of pure crystal. Ah~~ The stars up above fall silent because they’ve seen you; ah~~ The toys down below burst into laughter because they’ve seen you!”
Gu Xianwang: ?
In that split-second distraction, the car behind veered into the next lane and accelerated, squeezing into a tight gap. Gu Xianwang tapped the brakes sharply, dropping speed, and slipped behind them at a cunning angle—reversing their positions. She gunned it and rammed their rear wheel without a second thought—
There was no bone-jarring impact. The driver was no rookie; he whipped into a drift, realigned, and shot forward. Gu Xianwang gave him no quarter, glued to his tail, mirroring every acceleration and brake to block any lane changes or fancy maneuvers.
The relentless high-speed pursuit nearly jolted the divine turtle from Ye Chan’s grasp, but her focused intent had taken hold. The Undying Turtle began to spin within the Ink Jade Plate, coming to a steady stop pointing toward the northwest valley.
She quickly pointed to the left. “We need to find a gap and head down.”
Gu Xianwang glanced at the direction indicated by the Undying Turtle, doing some quick calculations in her head. “Pack up the gear first,” she said. “Grab the essentials—medicine, food, water. Load up as much as you can. And weapons. Sling an axe over your back and tuck a dagger inside your clothes just in case.”
She added, “Hurry!”
Ye Chan nodded and handed the Undying Turtle back to her. She flipped down the passenger seat and scrambled awkwardly into the back amid a chorus of creaks and groans. After a while, she finally selected two equipment packs she absolutely couldn’t leave behind.
She hefted them. Together, they had to weigh at least fifty pounds.
“Report! Gear prepped and ready! Should we use the rest to chuck at them?”
Gu Xianwang sighed. “…Ye Duoduo, ease up on the gaming lingo. Buckle up.”
The rain hammered down on the car roof like relentless drumbeats. All around them surged a torrent of muddy floodwaters. Gu Xianwang kept her eyes locked on the guardrail to the left of the road. She remembered this spot—they’d passed it that morning. There was an exit here, probably for the mountain folk’s trucks to access the logging roads. It was right in the middle of this straight stretch—
There! In an instant, she killed the headlights. The vast, solemn silence of the mountains crashed over them. Darkness closed in like a prison cell, the only light the fading red taillights of the lead vehicle ahead, now being devoured by the storm. Gu Xianwang cranked the wheel left and slipped through the unassuming gap.
But the side path had long been abandoned. The moment the front wheels hit the ground, she knew something was wrong. There was no time to brake. A massive thud echoed from the undercarriage as the rear wheels slammed into a pothole with no cushion at all. It had been invisible in the daylight—after the bend in the mountain road came an uphill slope, and the junction was overgrown with tall weeds that completely hid a half-meter drop. Their car wasn’t jacked up for off-roading, and that wild rain-slicked chase had flattened the last bit of air in the rear tires. Now they’d smashed down from height, and she could feel the wheels deforming as they picked up speed.
Talk about Murphy’s Law—when it rains, it pours. They wouldn’t get much farther like this. Gu Xianwang’s mind raced. She shut off the engine, yanked the handbrake, and said, “Let’s go. Grab your gear—we’re bailing.”
Ye Chan blinked in confusion. “Wait, we’re ditching the car just like that?”
Gu Xianwang flung open the door. Bean-sized raindrops instantly pelted their faces numb. “With it blocked here,” she shouted over the roar, “they won’t be able to follow.”
Before the words had even left her mouth, a hazy glow flickered in the distance like ghostly will-o’-the-wisps. Their pursuers had noticed something was off and were turning back.
“Move! Now!” Gu Xianwang snatched one of the packs from Ye Chan’s hands, slung both over her shoulders like a yoke, grabbed Ye Chan, and plunged into the underbrush.
The storm and the forest provided some cover for now, but Gu Xianwang couldn’t be sure if their pursuers had any detection gear. Better to keep moving than hunker down. She clutched the Ink Jade Plate in her palm, adjusting their course based on its guidance. The slope they were on was brutally steep, the soil riddled with jagged rocks that made every step treacherous. After several autumn downpours, the ground was blanketed in slick, spongy layers of dead leaves and branches, ready to hide any number of ankle-twisting pitfalls.
They dashed several kilometers through the pitch-black wilds without daring to use a flashlight. Fortunately, Ye Chan had the God Eye on her side. At first, Gu Xianwang led the way, towing her along. But soon Ye Chan found her footing and actually managed to keep pace.
They crested a low ridge, and Gu Xianwang paused atop an exposed boulder to scan their surroundings. Following the Undying Turtle’s direction meant sliding down a near-vertical slope—seventy or eighty degrees at least—into a deep ravine below. It seemed to connect with the flanking mountains, choked with towering, dense trees that hid whatever lay on the ground.
They’d been trudging through the rain for so long that they were soaked to the bone, their shoes squelching with mud and grit, stones jabbing at their feet. It was miserable, and their packs were heavy—Gu Xianwang was hauling nearly forty pounds. What worried her most was the possibility of thick undergrowth or marshy ground waiting below. In a rain-swollen valley like that, drowning was the least of it; getting drained dry by leeches would be the real killer.
As she hesitated, a blinding sheet of lightning ripped across the sky. Gu Xianwang stood exposed on the rocky pinnacle, a human lightning rod. She ducked instinctively. Two deafening cracks of thunder followed, so close it felt like the sky was splitting open right above them, the ground trembling as if the mountain itself might crack. Ye Chan yelped, her legs buckling beneath her. She toppled backward into a patch of young ironwood saplings, barely waist-high and too flimsy to support her weight. Gu Xianwang lunged down in the nick of time and hauled her back, or she would have tumbled head over heels down the slope.
Gu Xianwang didn’t look back. She grabbed Ye Chan’s hand and bolted toward lower ground. “You okay? Come on, let’s get down that gentle slope first.”
Ye Chan was still panting, her heart pounding from the scare. “Huff… huff… I’m—I’m fine. I can walk.”
Taking a longer detour around the side was safer, even if it meant more distance. It was never wise to trek through mountain forests in a thunderstorm, but if you were already stuck in one through sheer bad luck, staying away from the ridgeline was key. The crests of the ridges were prime spots for lightning strikes.
That bolt of thunder had been a silver lining, though—it let Gu Xianwang confirm that the Undying Turtle’s guidance was dead on. They were closing in on the lightning-scarred spot they’d spotted earlier. Long Li’s talk of the Thunder Sundial might not have been a lie after all. The terrain here created a bizarre magnetic field, especially that one valley that seemed to magnetize lightning. Every jagged flash crashed down in the same place. She suspected the lay of the land acted like a satellite dish, amplifying the unique local field to produce some freakish electrical phenomenon.
That same effect was likely behind the legends of the Yin Vortex and the Yin Soldiers Borrowing the Path.
It was a gentle slope, but going downhill with heavy packs in the pouring rain was a nightmare—like every obstacle had been piled on at once. Even with her God Eye giving her a cheat code, Ye Chan hit her limit after another four or five hundred meters. She slumped against a tree, equipment pack and all, gasping for air. Her calves burned with icy fire, the deep exhaustion where pain just melted into numbness.
“I—I’m done, Sister Gu. Let’s rest. I’m about to collapse,” Ye Chan said. She yanked off her hood, dumping out the pooled water, then scooped rainwater from the leaves to splash her face. “No way those guys catch up. If they do in this slop, I’ll call their boss daddy. This trail’s brutal—uphill kills my ass, downhill murders my calves. Huff, huff—”
Gu Xianwang was winded too, but she could tell her stamina—and even her strength—had improved since Guizhou. She didn’t have the God Eye, so the Forbidden Witch Bone must be reshaping her body, from healing to agility, inching her toward becoming like the Forbidden Witch herself.
Right now, the changes felt like a boon.
But when would she lose her mind entirely and turn into a monster?
Lost in thought, she barely noticed Ye Chan sidle up. “Hey, your wrist is bleeding. Did those tree leaves slice it when you yanked me earlier? That’s a nasty cut.”
Gu Xianwang lifted her wrist and shoved back her sleeve. There it was: a deep gash across the inner wrist. She’d been moving too fast to feel it. Up close, it looked serious.
Pain wasn’t her first worry. What if something sniffed out the strange scent in her blood?
Then again, this was just a regular mountain. She shook her head. “It’s fine. Band-Aid once the rain lets up.”
They huddled together on a rocky outcrop. Ye Chan unfurled the rain tarp from her pack over their heads and sighed. “What’s Sister Long’s deal? Always ditching us. Doesn’t she trust us at all?”
Gu Xianwang’s lips pressed into a thin line. She wanted to let loose a tirade, but she’d save it for Long Li’s face. Distrust or protectiveness, vanishing without a word was bullshit.
Far too full of herself.
Her irritation spiked as, through the rain’s roar, she caught a faint rustle—like something riffling leaves. Gu Xianwang sprang up, eyes sweeping the ground inch by inch. Out hunting in this downpour? Some kind of workaholic critter?
Ye Chan yelped, clawing at her backside. She yanked up a cold, slimy serpent and flung it away. “Holy shit! Snake!”
It snagged on a branch right in front of them. The snake coiled, hovering midair to flick its tongue at them.
Small thing, pattern screamed harmless. Gu Xianwang soothed her. “Easy. Back away slow. It’s not venomous.”
Footsteps crunched from the nearby brush right then. A gravelly Northeast drawl cut in: “See? Told ya the snake was a bust. Can’t spook these two gals.”
A woman chuckled, lowering her monocular. “We’ve got ’em now, right? With you two big shots here, these little misses ain’t gonna give us trouble.”
