Chapter 13: Ghost Head Bat

Long Li had said “something,” not “someone.” Gu Xianwang’s nerves instantly went taut. She thumbed the flashlight downward, the beam contracting to her feet as she peered intently ahead. Far down the deep tomb passageway, what looked like a massive net was hurtling toward them at speed.

Her hairs stood on end. “Quick, get to the side!”

Yao Cuo reacted swiftly. He shoved the tour guide sideways with his shoulder, then grabbed Ye Chan and yanked her along, slamming them both into a recess in the rock wall. He stretched out his long arms like a shield, guarding them against his chest.

But Gu Xianwang and Long Li were still a few steps away. “Xianwang, fall back to me first!” he shouted urgently.

Too late.

Gu Xianwang glanced at Long Li and saw the short knife already in her hand—she meant to meet it head-on.

What the hell!

Her heart clenched. She suddenly clamped a hand on the back of Long Li’s neck and tackled her to the ground, dropping flat like dodging lightning. A whooshing gust whipped over their heads, those enormous wings nearly scraping the rock wall.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” Gu Xianwang rolled to a sit, drawing her waist knife with a rasp. She shot Long Li a glare and immediately assumed a fighting stance.

The winged creature veered into the flashlight beam, disturbed by the light. It circled twice in the vast karst cave behind them before hanging upside down from a rock pillar, its pitch-black eyes fixed on them.

Only now could they make it out clearly: a huge black-furred bat with a wingspan of at least a meter. Its appearance was downright freakish—a massive head, round belly, and a face shriveled like a skull. Fangs protruded grotesquely from thin lips, like something out of vampire legends.

Ye Chan swallowed hard, still shaken. “D-don’t provoke it yet,” she stammered. “I think… bats this size are called Malayan flying foxes. They’re fruit-eaters. They don’t bite people.”

Yao Cuo kept his voice low. “But we’re in a karst cave. What fruit is there for it to eat?”

Of course there were no fruits—because this bastard wasn’t a fruit-eater at all!

The ghost-head bat hung there a moment longer, then unfurled its wings again, like a vampire shaking out its cloak, and dove straight at Gu Xianwang once more.

Of course it’s me again. Gu Xianwang nearly laughed in frustration. She dropped to one knee, pivoting her right foot sharply to the side, her waist knife’s tip slicing toward the bat’s belly. But the thing was huge yet agile; it twisted past the blade, its claws raking perilously close to her cheek.

The ghost-head bat missed its strike and didn’t press the attack. It glided off into the depths of the tomb passageway and vanished from sight.

Long Li stood and reached to pull Gu Xianwang up. “The one I ran into before was a ghost-head bat just like this.”

That meant there was more than one. They’d appeared on the path Long Li had taken to reach them—and now they were on this path ahead, too.

“Maybe we should find another—”

The word “way” hadn’t left her mouth when Gu Xianwang caught Long Li’s eyes widening in alarm. She whipped around. The tomb passageway seemed even darker now. A closer look revealed it wasn’t mere shadow—it was wings upon wings, fluttering in a dense, overlapping swarm!

“Down!” Long Li barked. She tackled Gu Xianwang, pinning her flat to the ground.

Countless claws scraped over her back. Five seconds. Ten. And still they came.

How many ghost-head bats were there!?

Gu Xianwang knew these things carried who-knew-how-many pathogens. Panic surged through her. Then, abruptly, Long Li sprang up, looped an arm around her waist, and hauled her to her feet. She rushed them toward Yao Cuo, dragging all three together.

“Run forward!”

The ceiling of the karst cave ahead glittered with countless pairs of black, bottomless eyes—like a flock of apocalyptic crows silently chanting a dirge of death.

Long Li held the entrance to the tomb passageway. She fished a high-powered flashlight from her pocket and snapped it on. A blinding white beam like the sun blasted toward the rock cave ceiling. “Go! I’ll catch up!”

Gu Xianwang gritted her teeth, grabbed Ye Chan, and broke into a sprint. Yao Cuo hauled the tour guide along, both men giving it everything they had.

The beam from Gu Xianwang’s old flashlight was fading, its weak spot jittering wildly with their frantic footfalls.

Ye Chan’s lungs felt ready to burst—worse than any university fitness test. She gulped air through her mouth, her head pounding like it was inflated with helium.

Finally, she couldn’t go on. Her calves burned like they might snap. She nearly collapsed, gasping, “Sis… we must’ve… run at least… eight hundred meters by now.”

Eight hundred meters? More like it. Gu Xianwang clutched her chest, fighting to steady her breath. With her stamina, they’d covered over a kilometer. She’d stuck to the main path, not daring to take a side tunnel—afraid they’d lose Long Li if she caught up later.

Yao Cuo wiped sweat from his brow, frowning meaningfully. “Miss Long still hasn’t caught up.”

She knew full well that Long Li hadn’t caught up yet. Gu Xianwang felt irritated—who could escape unscathed from a swarm of massive bats like this, no matter how skilled they were?

What was she supposed to do? She’d simply chosen the best option available in the moment.

Gu Xianwang wasn’t just irritated; she was furious. She couldn’t tell if she was angrier at that reckless little organization leader or at herself for actually buying into her nonsense.

After a moment, she gritted her teeth and spat, “I’ll go meet her.”

She whirled around to charge back into the fray, but before Yao Cuo could even try to stop her, Ye Chan suddenly brightened.

“Hey, I hear footsteps. Is that Sister Long?”

Gu Xianwang froze and peered deep into the tomb passageway. A brilliant beam of light suddenly flared in the distance, then traced an eerie arc behind her. It was a clever tactic—Long Li was running while luring the bat swarm. As the lead bats closed in, she unleashed the blinding flash, scattering them before swinging her knife like a hunter on the prowl.

Even so, the black fog of ghost-head bats showed no sign of thinning.

“Run! Keep running!” Gu Xianwang shoved Ye Chan and the tour guide toward the narrow path on the right. “Senior Brother, go that way!”

With that, she spun and bolted into the tomb passageway. She locked eyes with Long Li across the distance. No words passed between them, but as they crossed paths, Long Li dropped low, thrusting her flashlight out from under her armpit. The beam swept across like a barrage of bullets. Three ghost-head bats lunging at her recoiled mid-air, hovering in stunned suspension. Gu Xianwang seized the opening, slashing her waist knife horizontally through their heads before turning tail and sprinting away.

Now that she’d rendezvoused with Long Li, Gu Xianwang held nothing back. She sprinted at full tilt, like a hundred-meter dash, dragging her into the narrow path. The passage was jagged and uneven on both sides, barely wide enough for one person. They squeezed through single file, the heat from their frantic run quickly dissipating into the air.

Panting heavily, Gu Xianwang glanced back at the crevice’s mouth—and nearly yelped in fright. The ghost-head bats were relentless, clawing at the rock walls and craning their heads to squeeze inside.

They couldn’t fly in, but those bats had claws.

Goosebumps prickled across Gu Xianwang’s skin. She clutched the rock wall and hurried deeper. After a while, Long Li’s silence started to bother her. “You… you’re not hurt, are you?”

Long Li’s face was inscrutable, her tone even. “I’m fine.”

Not able to glance back, Gu Xianwang pressed, “How fine?”

Long Li watched her legs pumping furiously, ponytail a tangled mess—she was a disheveled wreck, yet stubbornly demanding details. It was almost endearing.

“Now that you mention it, it stings a bit. Can’t see it properly here; I’ll patch it up once we’re out.”

“You got bit?” Gu Xianwang frowned, taking it at face value. “Cave bats like these carry all sorts of germs. I’m worried the meds I have won’t cut it.”

So earnest.

Long Li chuckled. “I’m fine.”

Gu Xianwang bristled. “Well, are you or not?” This woman was infuriating.

Long Li paused thoughtfully before replying, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

As if she got to pick.

Gu Xianwang clamped her jaw shut and trudged onward in silence for a few minutes before halting abruptly.

“What is it?”

“…A fork.”

Gu Xianwang’s expression soured. By now, they should have caught up to Yao Cuo and the others. Had this split in the path thrown them off?

She scrutinized both branches. No marks on either set of walls. She was stumped.

Long Li patted her shoulder. Gu Xianwang shuffled forward a couple steps. After inspecting it, Long Li frowned. “This is odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“Since we entered this narrow path, we haven’t run into any danger.” She paused, her voice turning grave. “The same should hold for them—they had no reason to panic. So why would all three forget to leave a mark?”

Inexperience? Gu Xianwang wondered. That might explain Ye Chan and the tour guide, but not Senior Brother, the seasoned veteran. Short of a desperate flight for their lives, he would never neglect to leave her a sign.

Or perhaps some sudden crisis—an injury, someone collapsing. Even then, Senior Brother would hunker down and wait rather than push ahead blindly.

From the moment they three had entered the narrow path ahead of her and Long Li, at most three minutes had elapsed.

How had they vanished into this cramped rock tunnel in a mere three minutes?

After eliminating all other possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Gu Xianwang crouched down and groped through the rubble at the base of the rock wall.

The stone was slick and damp, jagged in places. Her fingertips traced inch by inch until she sensed something odd—those fine particles she had mistaken for sand were distributed strangely in every nook and cranny.

She pinched a few between her fingers, stood, and held them out for Long Li to see.

They were black, the size of coarse sand grains, slightly oval.

Long Li’s voice had lost some of its earlier cheer: “These look like droppings from some kind of insect.”

She tilted her head and scrutinized the crevices in the surrounding rock walls for a moment before asking abruptly, “Have you heard the idiom ‘a spider’s thread and a horse’s track’?”

Gu Xianwang followed her gaze, a foreboding premonition stirring in her heart. “What do you mean?”

“The ‘horse tracks’ in that phrase don’t refer to actual horses. They mean traces left by stove horses—like these.”

Her hand pointed to countless faint leaping marks, barely visible, that extended deep into the side passage.