She ran with all her might, holding nothing back, until the soil beneath her feet turned from soft to solid, each step landing firmly on stable ground. Only then did Gu Xianwang ease her pace slightly.
At some point, Long Li had fallen behind her.
“Wait up.”
Long Li called out to her, her voice still full of vigor—nothing like Gu Xianwang, who was gasping so hard she needed to breathe through her mouth just to get enough air.
Gu Xianwang propped her hands on her knees and glanced back. “Huff… what about them? Where are the two of them?”
Sara and Ye Chan had taken a detour earlier. In theory, since she and Long Li were running straight ahead, the other two should have been able to spot their backsides. There was no way they could have gotten lost.
Long Li pointed toward a path off to the side. “They’re fine, not lost. They’re over there.”
Through gaps in the bushes, the color of Sara’s jacket flashed past.
That was a relief. Gu Xianwang straightened up and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Moments ago, when the living soil had swallowed her, four earth threads had burrowed into the bandage on her calf—one with its head caught, its lower half wriggling wildly.
Gu Xianwang grabbed the tail of one and yanked hard, pulling it out all at once. The one that had dug deepest had bitten into her flesh; when she extracted it, its head was red, but it quickly turned black. The entire thread shriveled up, as if all its moisture had been drained away.
Afraid Long Li would notice, she turned her back to block the other woman’s line of sight and swiftly tossed the desiccated thread to the ground, grinding it into the dirt with her heel.
Guilty hearts make cowards; having done it, Gu Xianwang inexplicably let out a breath of relief. But in the next instant, as she looked up, she froze.
The woods ahead resembled a scorched forest. Every tree was withered and dry, their trunks half-charred in shades of gray-black, stark and barren.
Yet they weren’t fully carbonized. Higher up on branches like those of pine trees hung countless desiccated bones, dangling like the clappers of bells. A breeze set them clinking and rattling against one another.
From the neck up, those bones were encased in round black jars of some unknown material—like rusted copper—that completely enveloped the skulls.
It was too bizarre; Gu Xianwang found herself momentarily speechless. At minimum, a hundred such skeletons dangled in this burnt pine forest, all stark naked, none having fallen. That suggested the bronze kettles were custom-fitted to each head.
“Yelang Head-Sheathing Burial,” Long Li murmured as she came up beside Gu Xianwang.
“Is this some kind of cemetery?”
Did this world really have a burial rite that involved hanging people from trees?
Long Li shook her head. “No. These were probably slaves.”
She pointed at one of the bronze kettles swaying from a branch. “True nobles didn’t use this design. The Yelang people believed the head was the gateway for the soul. For nobles, sheathing the head was meant to leave a portal intact, so ancestors could remember their path home and bless the clan. That’s why those kettles had openings.
“But these are sealed tight, with no outlets at all. The purpose is the exact opposite—to trap the souls inside.”
“Trap the souls? Why?”
Long Li advanced slowly into the Hanging Corpse Forest, craning her neck to peer into the gaps between the kettles and bones. “I don’t know. But I suspect it has something to do with the God Eye.”
The God Eye that the Gu Witch had been worshipping? Gu Xianwang had a sudden realization. “Is this part of the altar?”
After studying the scene for a moment, she added, “Have you noticed? These bones are all different shades, and they all seem… deformed somehow.”
Long Li hummed in agreement. “The color variations come from deaths spanning different eras. As for the deformities—Old Dog’s surveillance report from before mentioned the Gu Granny in the Abandoned Village living with a young man, whom we guessed was her son, born simple-minded. We figured the Ancient Stockade had been sealed off for so long that inbreeding must have produced plenty of children with birth defects. It didn’t seem suspicious at the time. But later, in the Karst Cave, we fell right into that bowman’s trap.”
Gu Xianwang understood. “So you’re thinking the really deformed children ended up here…”
“Tch, this village is some kinda twisted,” Sara scoffed. She ducked out from under a tangle of vines and leaves, striding right into the Hanging Corpse Forest.
Ye Chan emerged right on her heels. They both looked unscathed, but the sight had Ye Chan visibly buzzing with excitement. “Holy shit, is this Yelang Head-Sheathing Burial?”
Sara shot her a sideways glare. “What, got someone you know in one of those?”
“Bullshit. You do.”
Their interruption jogged Gu Xianwang’s memory. “How far is the spot where we fired the signal flare from here?”
Long Li’s expression darkened. After a moment, she finally spoke. “The gunshots this morning rang out right here.”
Sara spat in disgust at the words, cursing their rotten luck. “That Old Fox really is a pervert. He can sleep like a baby in a forest like this?”
This morning? Gu Xianwang swept her gaze over the surrounding treetops, but she saw no trace of the black-feathered mynas. If her memory served her right, she had heard their harsh cawing almost immediately after the gunshots—the distinctive cries they made when attacking in force.
Ahead lay Living Soil Forest, and behind them loomed Hanging Corpse Forest. Neither looked like a place where anyone could safely settle.
Even more puzzling, the myna flock had stopped trailing them after they entered Living Soil Forest. Had the mountain folk called them off, or was there something here repelling the birds?
“You’re sure? Or maybe the shots came from somewhere nearby.”
Long Li glanced up at the tallest cliff face and shook her head. “Positive. Right here.”
That made no sense. Gu Xianwang had assumed Old Dog and his group had been spotted and attacked by the flock first, just like them—firing back in self-defense before fleeing. But if the birds hadn’t come anywhere near Hanging Corpse Forest, what exactly had they been shooting at?
Ye Chan spoke up abruptly. “Did any of you hear anything?”
Aside from the wind, Gu Xianwang hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. “Like what?”
Ye Chan’s face scrunched up in discomfort as she rapped her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Voices. A ton of voices, all jabbering at once. It’s driving me nuts.”
She plugged her ears and dropped into a squat, as if the clamor were deafening her. “Haven’t you heard it yet? They’re all yelling now. My head’s gonna explode!”
Gu Xianwang and Long Li exchanged a startled glance. Gu Xianwang knelt and turned Ye Chan’s shoulder toward her. At some point, the blood-flecked spots in her eyes had fully formed, morphing into serpentine pupils just like A Yan’s.
“God Eye,” Gu Xianwang said. “It must be resonating with something in this forest.”
Sara peered around uneasily but spotted nothing amiss. Still, the air carried a strange spiciness, like someone had dusted it with pepper—irritating and sharp in her throat.
Charred pine, maybe? No, not quite.
Before she could dwell on it, Ye Chan wrenched free of Gu Xianwang’s grip. Her face twisted in fury as she snatched a rock from the ground. “Shut the fuck up already! Can’t you be quiet for one second?”
She hurled the stone into the branches with savage force—
Clang! It struck the Bronze Kettle dead-on. The impact reverberated through the attached deadwood, snapping it in two with a sharp crack. The kettle, white bones and all, plummeted straight down. The three women yanked Ye Chan aside just in time.
The Bronze Kettle hit the ground with a heavy, muffled thud—not the hollow ring of an empty vessel. Before anyone could get close, the tightly fitted copper panels on either side burst apart, exposing a narrow seam. Clearly, it hadn’t been forged as a single piece but pieced together from two halves.
Sara clapped a hand over her nose and stumbled back several paces. “What the hell? They smashed a goddamn sauce jar or something?”
Even without her keen senses, Gu Xianwang caught the sour, spicy stench wafting out—uncannily like the fermented vats back in Sichuan-Chongqing.
She fixed her eyes on the slim gap. The rust coating around it had flaked away, but the kettle showed no signs of being bashed open. Instead, a low buzz swelled from within. Moments later, a pair of dark blue antennae poked out from the seam.
The instant Long Li spotted them, she seized Gu Xianwang and Ye Chan, hauling them back at a dead sprint. Ye Chan seemed dazed, stumbling along without much resistance.
By then, the flying insects were pouring out, wings humming as they took to the air.
Sara recognized them immediately: crimson bodies, golden abdomens, dark blue antennae and wings—hornet-like in shape and size.
Horror flooded her voice. “How the fuck are there Marrow Bees here?”
Gu Xianwang sensed the unnatural rigidity in Long Li’s grip. “What are Marrow Bees?”
Long Li’s gaze turned icy as she fixed it on Sara. “How do you know what Marrow Bees are?”
Sara froze, panic flashing across her face. “I-I didn’t… I mean, I heard Boss mention them once.”
Gu Xianwang couldn’t parse the sudden tension, her attention fixed on the thumb-sized Marrow Bee as it circled the Bronze Kettle twice. Four or five more of equal size soon followed.
“Are these things poisonous?”
Long Li didn’t pursue the matter with Sara any further and said in a low voice, “Marrow Bees have habits similar to hornets. These are guard bees, and this Bronze Kettle should be their nest. They’re not really venomous bees.”
No poison?
“Then why are you all so wary of them?”
Sara wanted to speak but couldn’t. She swallowed hard and slowly backed away, shifting her feet.
“Because Marrow Bees will self-detonate.”
Gu Xianwang: ?
It was also a suicide attack, but while hornets merely delivered poison stings, Marrow Bees actually self-detonated?
“Self-detonate… what happens?”
As the buzzing grew closer, Long Li’s voice dropped so low it was almost inaudible. “A Marrow Bee’s explosive will trigger spontaneous human combustion.”
Gu Xianwang blinked, and she instantly understood what had happened to this Burnt Forest.
She silently reached out, clamped her hand tightly over Ye Chan’s mouth, and whispered, “So, how can we avoid alarming them?”
Sara truly didn’t know. She’d only seen an old video clip. That clip showed a Ghost Ship covered in nests of these things. The segment the Boss had shown her only captured Marrow Bees attacking people—a mere twenty seconds or so—but it had become her nightmare. The screams of that squad still echoed clearly in her mind even now.
Long Li shook her head. “I don’t know. Marrow Bees’ attacks have no fixed pattern.”
If they were hornets or tiger-head bees—those kinds of carnivorous bee species—they would usually attack proactively when people approached their nests. But earlier, they had stood in the Hanging Corpse Forest for so long without a single Marrow Bee flying out from the Bronze Kettle. It wasn’t until Ye Chan smashed this one down that she alarmed the Marrow Bees inside.
Gu Xianwang suddenly remembered that Long Li had once speculated these Bronze Kettle corpses were related to the God Eye—and Ye Chan happened to have a God Eye on her body.
She watched the swirling red shadows rising into the air, and a deadly premonition suddenly arose in her heart.
“Marrow Bees—are they Gu Worms?”
