Chapter 14: Encirclement

It was cave crickets again.

Gu Xianwang frowned. “Could they have been chased by the cave cricket swarm and fled into this side path?”

Long Li pondered for a moment before using the tip of her knife to carve a cross into a conspicuous spot at the fork. Noticing Gu Xianwang’s wary glance, she explained, “If the rock tunnel ahead loops back around, they might return here. This mark will let us identify each other and avoid pointless guesswork.”

Gu Xianwang said nothing, deciding for the moment to take her at her word.

“Let’s check this direction first.”

The two ventured deeper into the fork. The path here was even narrower than before, with some sections barely wide enough to squeeze through sideways. After two or three minutes of walking, the surroundings remained utterly silent, suggesting the three had gone quite a distance.

Suddenly, Long Li switched on a high-powered flashlight from behind her, flooding the rock tunnel with blinding light. The beam stretched her shadow into a thin, elongated specter.

“What’s wrong?” Gu Xianwang blinked against the sudden glare, squinting slightly.

By now, Long Li had gained a fair understanding of her Eye Technique. In the dark, Gu Xianwang could discern shapes but not colors, and her exceptional eyesight meant that in pitch blackness or dim light, she fixated on seeing and overlooked other details.

It was rather like an infrared night-vision camera.

Long Li pointed to a jagged rock protruding at waist height beside Gu Xianwang. “Bloodstains here.”

Gu Xianwang recoiled in surprise and leaned down for a closer look.

It was a small smear, like from a scrape, still fresh—likely left when someone running had brushed against the stone.

That meant Senior Brother and the others truly had been pursued by something. Cave crickets, perhaps. Or other insects. Or maybe some creature she didn’t yet know about, beyond bugs altogether.

Gu Xianwang pressed her lips together. “At least this confirms they came this way.”

Long Li traced a circle in the air where she had been standing, her voice low. “It’s more than that. The three of them must have run into their pursuers shortly after entering the narrow path. Panicked and driven onward, they fled into this fork, and right here—” She indicated several faint drops of blood on the ground. “—they were attacked.”

Beneath Long Li’s calm, measured tone, Gu Xianwang could almost visualize the scene. A sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead, which she wiped away with the back of her hand.

Beneath her thick lashes, Gu Xianwang’s eyes gleamed deep and piercing, like shards of ink.

To Long Li’s surprise, her dominant emotion in that moment was not fear, but fury.

She whipped her head back, extending her palm. “Cave crickets are attracted to light, aren’t they?”

Long Li nodded and handed her the flashlight. “Theoretically, yes.”

“Then let’s keep moving.”

Gu Xianwang turned and strode boldly into the darkness rent by the white beam.

~~~

Ye Chan was on the verge of losing her mind.

She had no idea how any of this had happened. It was all too chaotic, an endless nightmare sequence—starting with Jurassic Park, morphing into Resident Evil, or was it Paranormal Activity? She didn’t know! How had everything spiraled to this point!?

Holding her breath, she splayed her body out in the thick muck of the Black Mud Pool, clutching tightly to half a sheep carcass. The animal had been dead for who knew how long, its flesh long since rotted away, filling the air with waves of putrid stench.

Finally stemming her downward slide, Ye Chan craned her neck and strained to peer around. It was pitch black without the flashlight’s glow; she could make out only the vaguest outlines. The pool was enormous, like a small lake, and she was about half a body length from the edge—a sheer rock wall some two meters high. That was probably where she’d fallen in.

The reek was unbearable, a fermented rot permeating everything, like a slaughterhouse abandoned for a full year, half-butchered pork left to fester into oblivion. The stench had thickened to the point of solidity, a half-congealed toxin that seeped into the darkness like jelly, encasing her entirely.

Sinking in the mire sapped her strength completely. With one hand gripping the bloated sheep corpse—which bulged like an inflatable raft—she groped with the other. Disgust was irrelevant now. She swallowed down the bile rising in her throat, splaying her fingers as wide as possible. After frantic scrabbling, her middle finger finally snagged on something.

Elation surged through her. She kicked her legs back in a frog-like stroke, using the momentum to seize it properly with her right hand. It was protruding, curved, icy cold, and slick.

She dragged and shoved forward with her body until, after what felt like forever, she finally inched closer to the rock wall. Ye Chan blinked her stinging eyes, irritated by the acrid fumes, and peered closely at the object clutched in her hand. It resembled a gas mask, its glass visor caked in mud. She wiped it with her fingers and leaned in for a better look—

“Ah!”

A wave of unbearable terror exploded into a scream. Ye Chan clamped down on her lower lip, heart pounding as she glanced fearfully at the towering rock walls enclosing her. Fortunately, those giant cave crickets had vanished somewhere, and the ghost-head bat didn’t seem to be giving chase. Steeling herself, she forced her gaze back down to the wide-open, grayish eyes staring from within the gas mask.

There was no light, and the view was blurry, yet those eyes stabbed vividly into her mind, capturing every chilling trope from the horror movies she’d ever watched: stiff, murky, utterly silent—the eyes of someone freshly dead.

In blind panic, Ye Chan’s hand slipped, her body tilting sideways. She had to slam her palm down on the mask for leverage. Beneath her weight, it sank into the mud, revealing half a shoulder and arm still attached to it.

It was a complete human corpse.

He wore camouflage gear that felt stiff and sodden to the touch. His body had gone fully rigid.

Summoning every ounce of courage, Ye Chan plunged her hand into the black mud and felt along his form. His posture was bizarre—not straight at all, with one arm thrust forward and the other pulled back, as if death had claimed him mid-motion. She groped toward his waist in search of anything useful and felt a metal rod hooked to his belt.

The rod’s end featured a clasp linked to the belt buckle. Ye Chan tinkered with it, found the release, and after a few hard yanks, freed the rod.

It was an outdoor flashlight.

Ye Chan grinned ear to ear and whispered, “Big bro, thanks for the generous drop. I don’t know who you were, but from here on out, you’re my long-lost half-brother. I swear—blegh—”

She didn’t finish. Unable to hold it back any longer, a glob of undigested compressed biscuit crumbs spewed across his mask. Ye Chan spat a couple times and pressed on, equal parts repulsed and fond. “…I’ll honor your legacy and claw my way out of this nightmare.”

Light changed everything—like fire for ancient cave-dwellers, sparking the dawn of civilization. Ye Chan felt invincible once more. She smeared black mud over the flashlight’s lens to dim it, then flicked it on. An eerie arc of light bloomed, illuminating the patch of mud pool before her.

Excellent. Not only did it work, but the battery was going strong.

Ye Chan swept the beam around her surroundings. The sight made her surging confidence crash.

A narrow rock tunnel hemmed in the black mud pool trapping her. The cavern resembled a chamber, shaped like a fat-bellied bottle, with her as Sun Wukong stuffed inside. The pool brimmed with bones from who-knew-what creatures, some half-digested, just like that sheep carcass.

The realization that she’d been thrashing around in this digestive-acid sludge for ages hit her hard. “Urgh—”

Her voice ricocheted off the walls, echoing and amplifying as it climbed to the chamber’s ceiling. Suddenly, a crevice a dozen meters overhead stirred. Chunks of mud and grit rained down, stinging her eyes. Ye Chan shook her head clear and spotted a faint beam of light filtering from above. Looking closer, she saw the bottle truly had a mouth—a distant narrow opening no bigger than a pinhole.

Her eyes went wide. “Holy crap, it’s open! I knew heaven wouldn’t abandon the righteous. Hahaha…”

She barely got out two laughs before the soil around the hole loosened further, as if someone outside was digging. Ecstatic, Ye Chan bellowed, “Anyone out there? Help! Save me!”

Whoever it was must have heard; the dirt started cascading faster. Before long, the hole widened to the size of two cupped hands—big enough for a head. Ye Chan watched the light dim, as though someone had thrust half their head inside to peer down.

Terrified they might miss her, she hastily wiped the lens clean, cranked it to high beam, and aimed upward.

Like a spotlight piercing a darkened theater, the brilliant light unveiled the belated star of the show. Ye Chan nearly burst into tears. She knew this “star” all too well—the ghost-head bat from which she’d only recently escaped!

Its skeletal face poked from the hole, followed by its rotund body. Then its freakishly long wings unfurled, and it spiraled down the walls in a lazy coil.

Air-to-ground advantage? What a joke. She was still mired in the mud, helpless to budge. This was straight-up bullying.

Ye Chan screeched wildly, swinging her flashlight around like mad. The beam stabbed through the chamber like a spear. She flailed about, and that massive Ghost-Head Bat seized the moment to dodge the light pillar and dive straight for her head. Ye Chan didn’t know where she found the strength, but she hoisted her own brother up with one hand and used his gas mask to solidly block the strike.

Borrowing the force of the impact, she lunged toward the rock wall. The Ghost-Head Bat seemed dazed from the collision as well. It flew up, slammed into the stone wall a couple more times, then wobbled away to hang from an upside-down cluster of stone crystals on the ceiling.

All of a sudden, a truce settled in. The Ghost-Head Bat glared down, scratching at the fur on its forehead with its claws.

Ye Chan panted a few times, her frantic heartbeat gradually steadying. She pressed herself tightly against the edge of the Black Mud Pool, her hands groping desperately for purchase. The more she felt around, the stranger it seemed. The rock surface was uneven, but the raised parts had smooth edges, as if they had been carved. The texture was odd too—hard, yet with a faint give, almost like some kind of tough flesh if she concentrated.

A spark of realization hit her—yes, muscle. The sort with an extremely low body fat percentage.

Wait… flesh?

Her heart lurched. She shoved her brother behind her to shield her back and shone the flashlight on the rock wall.

In the beam’s glare, she spotted a faint dividing line higher up on the section of wall she was pressed against. The two sides reflected light differently, like distinct materials. The patch she had been grabbing resembled corroded metal, a dull greenish-black, covered in crude carvings. Half were buried in the black mud, half below it, impossible to make out clearly.

They looked like writing—or maybe pictures.

As an archaeology graduate student, Ye Chan was well-versed in bronze inscription murals and the like. She had joined her advisor on digs more than once. Her research focus was niche: a branch of ancient myths that delved heavily into oracle bone script translations and pictographs.

Philology was another one of her specialties, niche though it was.

This was right up her alley. Curiosity flared, chasing away several layers of her fear. She eagerly traced the carvings on the wall with her fingers.

Damn it, the camera! Why hadn’t she brought it?!

Before she could figure out what the carvings depicted, a long antenna brushed across her face. Her concentration shattered; she snapped irritably, “Knock it off.”

Then she realized something was wrong. Her neck stiffened as she tilted her head up just a bit. There, on the wall beside her head, hung a palm-sized stove horse, its black bead eyes fixed on her hand as if it wanted to join the examination.

“…Holy shit…”

That giant cave cricket twitched its tail, letting out a faint “hee hee hee.” Then the Black Mud Pool behind her erupted with that eerie giggling from all directions.

She didn’t dare turn around, but the image formed in her mind anyway. This mud pool… it couldn’t be these giant cave crickets’ feeding trough, could it?!

Ye Chan swallowed hard. Heaven itself wants me dead! Wolves ahead, tigers behind—this was forcing her to slit her own throat at Wujiang!

In the midst of this dire strait, the Ghost-Head Bat overhead seemed to sense mealtime. It flapped its wings excitedly and dove toward a stove horse bobbing on the mud’s surface—

In that instant, Ye Chan squeezed her eyes shut. But suddenly, Gu Xianwang’s voice echoed from higher up the rock wall: “Senior Brother! Ye Chan! Hei Wa! Are you down there?”