These two cunning bastards weren’t using Sara as bait at all—they were clearly using them as bait!
Gu Xianwang’s blood surged upward, her mind roaring with the sound of rushing rapids. Just as the fungal wall was about to swallow her whole, she abruptly flipped onto her back in midair. She swung her waist knife at the mycelium snaking toward her ankle. But the mycelium was slippery and resilient as water; the blade couldn’t sever it. Instead, it slithered along the edge of the knife, wrapping both her and the weapon into a tight cocoon.
“Old Dog.” Long Li’s voice came low and sharp, laced with hostility. “Leave the Gu poison.”
Chak had already leaped down into the cave mouth. Old Dog, gripping Yao Cuo, halted in the sunlight and glanced back at them. After a brief hesitation, he shrugged off his backpack and hurled it toward Long Li from a distance.
“Sorry.” His voice was rough and gravelly. He ducked his head with those words and hurried after Chak.
Long Li snatched the backpack out of the air and set it aside. She rushed to the fungal wall. The thick white expanse stood smooth and unbroken as a sheer cliff face now, with no sign of Gu Xianwang anywhere.
Gu Xianwang’s knife had slipped from her grasp. She was utterly submerged in the white filaments. No matter how she clawed and tore at them, she couldn’t force even the smallest gap. It felt like sinking into quicksand—one struggle only drew more mycelium squeezing in from the sides.
The air inside the fungal wall was thin and stale. Her consciousness began to blur. In her daze, she flashed back to a moment from her childhood: trapped in her room, wrapping herself layer upon layer in silken bedding to eke out a fragile sense of safety. Back then, she had longed to shut the world away. Now, she yearned only to break free.
Gu Xianwang’s eyes fluttered half-open. She watched in horror as the mycelium burrowed into her wounds like leeches, especially the gash on her shoulder that had torn open again in the fight. Blood welled up steadily, stirring the filaments into a frenzy. They seemed poised to sprout fangs and drain her dry.
The sensation was like being sewn up without anesthesia. She wondered if this was how Guan Yu had felt during his bone-scraping ordeal. The mycelium pierced her like countless icy needles, slithering along her veins deep into the muscle. Gu Xianwang desperately wished she could black out right then.
“I… am I that irresistible to you?” she hissed, her voice raw and guttural. Shackled by layers of restraint, she shook as she lifted her wrist to her throat. She seized a fungal tendril as thick as three fingers and yanked it free from her flesh with gritted teeth. Blood coated the root as it came loose, but Gu Xianwang didn’t see how the mycelium along that root was swiftly blackening, rotting away.
Gu Xianwang clamped her palm over the wound and craned her neck to scan her surroundings. Nothing but endless white, like the foggy depths at the heart of glacial mist.
Was this where she died today?
Suddenly, something stirred behind her—faint, almost imperceptible, like a hand caressing her back through the covers in the dead of night.
It began with a palm, sliding from her waist up to her shoulder. Gu Xianwang shuddered and barked, “Who’s there?!”
The instant she spoke, the hand vanished, retreating like a spectral thief into the shadows to lie in wait for her to drift off again.
Gu Xianwang went rigid, pinned in place like sleep paralysis, able only to swivel her neck a little side to side.
After a long moment, just as she convinced herself it had been a hallucination, the probing touch returned. This time it brushed the nape of her neck, her ear, her throat. A face materialized, swathed in mycelium like a grotesque mask.
The face had hollowed eye sockets, each a perfect egg-sized void. Its mouth curved in a subtle smile that stretched nearly to the ears. The face tilted upward, as if inhaling the world’s most exquisite aroma, lost in rapturous bliss.
“Hoo—hoo—”
A faint itch tickled her earlobe, like breath ghosting over her shoulder.
Every hair on Gu Xianwang’s body stood on end. She strained her limbs with all her might, desperate to burrow forward. But before she could budge, arms snaked around her waist, locking her in an iron grip. Through the mycelium, an icy, rigid body pressed flush against her back. The figure embraced her from behind, its gaunt, bony face nuzzling her hair with the intimacy of long-lost lovers.
“…Sis…ter…” A murmur echoed in her skull, faint as a whisper.
Gu Xianwang went numb all over. Through clenched teeth, she spat, “I’m not! Don’t go mistaking family!”
“Sister… you’ve come. You’ve finally come… to take me away.” This time the voice grew more coherent, piecing together halting sentences.
Gu Xianwang nearly laughed from sheer exasperation. People always shunned her like a venomous snake; she’d never encountered anyone so doggedly determined to latch onto her.
“Miss… I’m not your sister, and I’m no savior either. I’ve got a curse on me—get too close, and you’ll catch it.”
“Fal—Fallen… Fallen God, sister, I am…”
Fallen God? Fallen God Fragrance? Insight struck Gu Xianwang like lightning. She twisted her head as best she could, sniffing at the scent behind her.
In the thin air, there seemed to be a faint cold fragrance, but the scent was utterly muddled—more like the aroma from her own body entangled and mingled with some decaying stench.
She wanted to ask more, but the woman behind her suddenly shifted, her hands sliding from Gu Xianwang’s shoulders to wrap around her chest while her legs hooked around her waist. What was this? Carrying her sister off to the bridal sedan?!
Gu Xianwang felt suffocated, stars flickering in her vision as her limbs went limp. Faintly, she heard the woman’s voice sharpen into a shrill screech, like steel cables being sliced: “No one can take my sister from me!”
~~~
Fire was useless, and blades couldn’t pierce it. Ever since Gu Xianwang had been swallowed into the fungal wall, the so-called Cave Lord had gone as still as death, not twitching a muscle.
Ye Chan was sweating bullets in panic. “Is this fungus like a snake or something? Swallows a person and then freezes—is it digesting her or hibernating?!”
Long Li stared at the fungal wall, her expression grim. Abruptly, she thrust her hand deep inside. This time, the mycelium didn’t lash out. Instead, it coiled tightly around her arm like some fleshy polyp, shoving her back with tremendous force.
Not wanting to provoke it rashly, Long Li pulled her hand free.
Ye Chan gaped at it in aftershock. “Y-you’re not scared it’ll parasitize you?”
Long Li shook her head. “It wouldn’t dare.”
Ye Chan: “???”
What did she mean, wouldn’t dare? Was Long Li toxic or something?
Long Li paced along the fungal wall for a few steps, then glanced back at the two fungus people curled unconscious on the ground. The fungal coating on their bodies had turned a withered gray-brown, slowly rotting away—nothing like Sara, who was still thrashing feebly nearby.
Ye Chan watched as Long Li strode over and brutally ripped the mycelium from them. Moments later, the Gu Witch and a man in standard-issue gear lay fully exposed.
There was a clean through-and-through bullet hole in the man’s thigh. Given the homemade shotgun’s punch, it had to have been fired at point-blank range, yet no blood rimmed the wound. He’d shriveled two sizes smaller, resembling some bedridden old man who’d lingered for a decade. He was clearly gone.
Long Li frowned, hoisted the Gu Witch by the collar, and pinched her philtrum hard. Ye Chan winced—the old woman’s dentures looked ready to pop out from the pressure.
The Gu Witch sucked in a ragged gasp. Her wrinkled eyelids fluttered as she came to.
She might’ve wished she hadn’t. Her cloudy eyes rolled once, then drooped shut again. “…”
“Don’t play dead,” Long Li said coolly. “Doze off again, and I’ll feed you to the Cave Lord.”
The Gu Witch hacked out a couple coughs. Spotting Ye Chan, shock twisted into fury on her face. “You—you wretched girl! Give back my God Eye!”
Ye Chan flinched, momentum lost. “It wasn’t on purpose! I don’t even want the creepy thing. Here, take it—I’ll give it right back.”
Furious, the Gu Witch flailed in midair. “Too late! Way too late! The God Eye’s already rooted!”
Ye Chan rubbed her nose, baffled. Why make it sound like she was knocked up? “Hang on—what even is a God Eye? That gu worm in my eye? What the hell is it? Deadly or what?”
Long Li paid her no mind, dragging the Gu Witch to the fungal wall and pressing her face-first against it. “Your clan feeds the Cave Lord for the gold mine, right?”
The Gu Witch quaked before the wall, too terrified to speak.
Long Li eyed her coldly. “The other man we caught wasn’t your son. He had a God Eye; you don’t. Does your Gu Village still run on slavery?”
The Gu Witch went rigid, neck locking up.
Ye Chan blinked in disbelief. Slavery? In this day and age? For real?
“N-no… no…”
Long Li studied her, then let go. “I understand.”
The Gu Witch hit the ground and scuttled aside on hands and knees, curling into a ball to kowtow at the fungal wall while muttering feverishly under her breath.
Long Li turned to Ye Chan. “I figure the God Eye is some gu egg hatched in their altar. Back in the village, only the elite get implanted. Once it’s in, they can come and go from this karst cave without the Cave Lord attacking.”
Out here in the deep wilderness, their isolated existence hinged on the gold ore they mined from this rock cave.
“So now I’m…” Ye Chan jabbed a thumb at herself, blinking. “A slave owner?”
“…” Long Li shot her a sidelong look, at a loss for words. “You should have some link to the fungal wall’s core by now.”
Ye Chan swallowed, slapping at her arms and legs. Nothing felt off.
Minutes had ticked by, and Gu Xianwang’s fate inside the wall remained unknown. Long Li cut the delay. “Get close to the fungal wall and try.”
Cold sweat dripped down Ye Chan’s back. With Sister Gu’s fate still hanging in the balance, she steeled herself. “Fine! Heroes have always been romantics, flying into a rage for a beauty—if I die, then I die!”
Trembling, Ye Chan edged closer to the fungal wall. She extended her shaky elbow into the mycelium, and sure enough, it responded to her aura, retreating to clear an inch-wide gap.
“Hey, it actually works!” Delighted, Ye Chan grew bolder. She stretched her arm fully and groped along the fungal wall like she was idly fishing.
Long Li stuck close to her side, her gaze locked unblinkingly on every twitch of the mycelium.
“Stop.”
Ye Chan froze and peered into the indented recess. Nothing seemed particularly special about it.
“Don’t move.” Long Li slipped past her arm, pushing deeper into the mycelium. Her nostrils flared slightly, as if catching a faint scent.
Then, without so much as blinking, Long Li drew her dagger and sliced a deep gash across her own palm. Crimson blood gushed out, splattering the ground. The mycelium couldn’t retreat in time and sizzled violently, belching white smoke amid a stench that was utterly vile.
Long Li thrust her hand straight into the fungal wall. Half her body plunged into the pale fungus as her fingers closed around something slender. She yanked it free with a vicious grip.
Ye Chan yelped in shock. A white cocoon thudded to the ground at her feet. She hopped back but didn’t dare move. “Holy shit, holy shit—what the hell just came out!”
Long Li slung her bleeding hand behind her back. With her right arm, she reached through the rent in the fungal cluster and hauled Gu Xianwang out bodily.
Gu Xianwang’s eyes were shut tight, her breathing seemingly stopped. Fuzzy mycelium enshrouded her body. Long Li carried her aside and laid her on the ground, gently plucking the web-like strands from her face. Leaning close, she checked for breath—thank goodness, she was still alive.
“Ah! Ah—Cave Lord—”
No one acknowledged the Gu Witch’s shriek. Ye Chan pulled back her arm and rushed to their side. “How’s Sister Gu? Is she still alive?”
Long Li nodded. She glanced at Gu Xianwang’s lips, then brushed her thumb over her eyelashes before tapping lightly on an acupoint behind her ear. After several taps, Gu Xianwang curled into herself and dropped to her knees, drawing in deep, ragged breaths.
Long Li reached out to steady her, but Gu Xianwang seized her wrist in a vise-like grip. Her voice was hoarse as she snarled, “I told you, I’m not your sister!”
Long Li: “…”
Ye Chan: “…”
Gu Xianwang was badly oxygen-starved, her mind a foggy mush. Moments later, she squeezed the wrist in her grasp. It felt soft and warm. She turned her head, staring in dazed recognition. “It’s you…”
Ye Chan asked blankly, “Sister Gu, who were you just talking to?”
Gu Xianwang swept her confused gaze around the rock cave. Her eyes fixed on the white cocoon. She staggered to her feet and hurried over, shoving the Gu Witch aside. With her bare hands, she tore at the cocoon clothing. After a struggle, a fully skeletalized head emerged from within.
The hollow eye sockets still stared at her. The cave fell deathly silent, but to Gu Xianwang, it seemed like an auditory hallucination—the voice clung to her like maggots in the bone, eerie and insistent.
“Sister, don’t leave me…”
