Chapter 48: Thief

The fire coals were thoroughly doused with water before nightfall. Before even a wisp of white smoke could rise, Yao Cuo smothered them completely with a handful of dirt.

Two or three pounds of fish couldn’t possibly fill the stomachs of three people, but after barely drinking enough water to feel sated, they set most of the grilled fish aside to dry for future hunger—ten whole strips now laid out on clean stone slabs to air-dry overnight, which should keep them good for at least another day or two.

Once people had eaten their fill, drowsiness inevitably set in, especially after days of unrelenting tension. Right now, Yao Cuo felt as if he’d pulled two all-nighters and then thoroughly steamed himself in a sauna; his entire body floated in a euphoric haze.

From beyond the cave ceiling came the raucous chattering of weary birds returning to their nests. His dark circles rose with his gaze as he rubbed his face vigorously, took a swig of vodka to steel himself, and finally spoke. “Um, Miss Long, I’m not the type to keep things bottled up inside. I’ll just say it straight.”

“In the underground palace, we only made it out alive thanks to you remembering the password. Enemy or not, logically and emotionally speaking, I, Yao Cuo, owe you my life. I won’t forget that debt.”

He cleared his throat here, took another pull from the vodka—perhaps feeling a bit off somewhere—and glanced at Gu Xianwang. “Xianwang is my junior sister. She has a bright future ahead of her. She ended up here for reasons of her own, so… so—”

Long Li listened quietly until he reached the words “reasons of her own,” then arched an eyebrow. “So? You want me to go easy on her? Or not compete with her?”

After fumbling for words for a moment, Gu Xianwang simply snatched the bottle back from Yao Cuo. The stainless steel cap clicked shut, and she twisted it tight with deliberate slowness.

“No ‘so’ about it. I’ll settle my own debts. No one knows yet if Long Li and I are after the same thing. Even if we are,” she raised her eyes to meet the other woman’s gaze, “it’s just four words: may the best one win.”

Yao Cuo, of course, could see the situation clearly. Begging wouldn’t work, and fighting was out of the question—especially with Gu Xianwang’s injuries. If they’d been even a fraction unluckier in the underground palace, just a fraction, things would have turned out very differently.

He let out a bitter laugh and scratched at the stubble on the back of his neck. “Fine, forget your senior brother stuck his nose in. Miss Long, don’t take it to heart.”

Long Li’s expression remained neutral. “In my position, I can’t make any promises to you. As for Xianwang, since she made that choice, she’ll bear the consequences—whether she can handle them or not, teeth broken and blood swallowed. That’s on her. As for others, if you’re willing to stick around, do so a little longer. If not, look away early. That’s respect.”

“What belongs to me, I won’t yield. I trust she feels the same—and you do too. So there’s no need to bring it up again.”

Yao Cuo blinked in surprise. He wondered when Long Li had switched to calling her by name, and was equally startled that Gu Xianwang didn’t seem to mind. To him, his junior sister divided her life into concentric circles of trust: from strangers to colleagues to master and senior brother, with family at the core. Different people were granted different levels of access—how much they knew, how close they could get, all of it carefully measured.

Who could call her by her name without drawing her ire? In Yao Cuo’s mind, only those on the inner side of the master-senior brother line.

He ventured cautiously, “You two… are already pretty close, huh?”

Long Li replied calmly, “Not bad. Friends who got to know each other after a fight, I suppose.”

“Cough.” Gu Xianwang suddenly choked on a breath, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Anyway, with Captain Long’s personal integrity, things shouldn’t come to a fight to the death. Relax, Senior Brother—you must be exhausted. Go to sleep!”

The deep forest night was thick and still; even the wind whispering through the pit cave felt faint. Yao Cuo was usually sharp and decisive in the field, but when it came to Gu Xianwang, he turned into a nagging old mother hen. After a few more words, seeing she had no interest in engaging, he rolled over in the time it took to flip, and consciousness slipped away.

With nothing but his snores filling the air, Gu Xianwang and Long Li sat facing each other in silence.

After a long moment, Gu Xianwang asked, “Still keeping watch?”

“Mm. We’re close to the altar, and the mountain folk rarely venture inside, but with Yuzi’s whereabouts unknown, better to stay vigilant. One less mistake that way.”

“What do you think Yuzi was trying to do by separating us?”

Long Li said, “She put me into the underground palace, perhaps because I carry the name of the Long family members. She might be wary of me, or testing me; most likely, she prefers to kill the innocent rather than let the guilty go. But you two—I really have no clue about you yet.”

“Your meaning is, she didn’t really betray us?”

“Actually, whether it’s true or false doesn’t matter. What’s important is what she really wants. Her knowledge of the sinkhole can’t be faked. The tunnel under the leech pit is very new, dug just in the last few years. She’s been lurking here, so she must have her own purpose.”

Gu Xianwang thought about it. According to Long Li’s words, since the three of them had essentially been thrown into the Death Gate, Sara and the others had likely been left behind by comparison. The current signs didn’t reveal Yuzi’s ultimate goal yet, and whether the tour guide was in her hands was now impossible to judge.

She sighed and muttered melancholically, “How can there be so many mysteries? I don’t even know who that person sealed in the underground palace was, or how they escaped Heaven’s Gate.”

Long Li smiled, rummaged in her bag, and tossed the spare assault jacket to her. “No fire means plenty of mosquitoes tonight. Drape this over yourself and get some sleep quick. Aren’t you tired yet?”

Stealing her lines?

“I’m not sleepy. You sleep first; I’ll keep watch for the first half of the night.” Gu Xianwang slipped on the jacket and simultaneously raised her hand to cut off Long Li’s next words. “If you’re not sleepy either, then let’s rock-paper-scissors. Whoever wins gets to sleep fair and square.”

Long Li conceded with a smile, her eyes curving slightly. “Looks like you’re really confident in your own skills.”

Gu Xianwang propped her cheek and gazed over with a half-smile. “Didn’t you say it yourself? Swallow your broken teeth with the blood.”

Long Li lowered her gaze, originally planning to drop the topic there. She knew Gu Xianwang couldn’t sleep, and she knew the reason for her anxiety: a journey of a hundred miles ends only halfway done. They’d crossed most of the knife mountains and seas of fire, and the altar stood glaringly right before them, yet so many puzzles remained unsolved and so many people unaccounted for. That was why, at this final step, she had stopped.

She would waver, hesitate, fear—it was unavoidable.

Long Li hugged her arms, leaned against the banyan trunk, and closed her eyes. Suddenly, she heard Gu Xianwang say, “Actually, I joined this tour group because of a flyer.”

“Hm?”

“Mm, there was a promotional flyer about a newly opened travel route, sent directly to the nursing home where my mom lives, addressed to her by name. And right before that, I’d just gotten some clues… the photo you saw earlier in the karst cave. That photo covered too vast an area; I originally had no leads at all.”

“Of course, I had my own suspicions too, because my mom’s been in a coma for ten years. Her old connections are either severed or forgotten. Even if any remained, there’d be no reason for someone to suddenly send a flyer like that. I was just starting to get drowsy, and here comes a pillow delivered right to me—how could it be that coincidental? So I had Senior Brother back me up from the shadows while I signed up for this tour group myself.”

“Actually, I—”

Her words cut off abruptly. Gu Xianwang and Long Li both turned their heads simultaneously. The tall fronds of cogon grass beside them swayed unevenly, and the faint rustling of leaves in the darkness died away.

There was no wind anywhere.

Gu Xianwang said vigilantly, “Did you see it clearly?”

“No, I only caught a black shadow—moving really fast.”

Gu Xianwang tiptoed lightly toward the corner of the earlier disturbance. The spot was very close to Yao Cuo, but his snoring hadn’t stopped; he was still sleeping soundly. She had only glimpsed a bit of that black shadow herself too—it definitely wasn’t human, more like some kind of mountain beast.

Logically speaking, an animal that size wouldn’t proactively provoke humans even without firelight scaring it off. Gu Xianwang puzzledly circled the area but found no trace of the thing. She was just about to say forget it when she looked down and discovered—their precious dried fish laid out on the stone slab were missing two!!!

“Our fish!” Her voice wasn’t loud, but from two or three meters away, Long Li could hear the mix of shock, anger, and heartache in it.

Long Li walked over and glanced at the nearby grass impressions. “Maybe some kind of wild monkey.”

“Wild monkey?” Gu Xianwang recalled the thief’s size and agility—it did fit. Monkeys were cunning too, probably not afraid of people, just waiting for them to let their guard down before stealing.

She packed the remaining dried fish into a waterproof bag, stuffed it into the backpack, and handed it to Long Li, leaving just one lone piece on the stone slab. “You go sleep first. The bag will be safer with you. I’ll wait right here and see if that little monkey dares to come steal again.”

They had already fallen this low, yet they were still getting bullied. The hatred of food snatched from tiger jaws—she had to get some revenge tonight no matter what.

…

They waited for more than three hours.

The forest around the cave was deathly quiet beneath the moonlight. Gu Xianwang couldn’t hold out any longer. Propped against her own knees, she dozed off.

Her mind remained on edge, strung tight like a bowstring, so her nap was shallow—fitful and restless. She couldn’t sink into deep sleep, nor fully rouse herself.

All at once, a rustle in the bushes exploded into her ears like thunder. Gu Xianwang bolted upright. Her eyes were only half-open, but her hands were already shooting forward.

She moved like lightning, a coiled spring bursting loose with pent-up force. Her jacket pinned something down in the bushes, creating a small bulge as it thrashed wildly inside. Gu Xianwang let out a soft hum and prodded it through the fabric with her finger. “Hm?”

Long Li woke in an instant and hurried over, her first words a congratulations. “Got it?”

Gu Xianwang glanced back at her, still groggy. “Feels weird. Kind of fluffy, like it’s got feathers.”

Long Li was surprised too. At this size, it couldn’t be any ordinary bird. Compared to the black-feathered mynas they’d seen earlier in the sinkhole, it was a good two sizes larger.

She crouched down and ran her hand along the jacket until she reached the neck, securing it firmly between two fingers. “Let’s have a look.”

Gu Xianwang nodded and lifted the hem of her jacket. With a whoosh, the creature shook out its long tail. Black-and-yellow feathers unfurled, smacking her right in the face.

Gu Xianwang: …

Long Li arched an eyebrow and flipped open the other end, revealing the brazen thief in all its glory.

Gu Xianwang: “Is this… a chicken?”

Thief: ?

Gu: ?

One pair of big eyes met one pair of small ones. Gu Xianwang had never encountered a chicken so utterly shameless. Caught red-handed as the prime suspect, with ironclad evidence, it still tried to wriggle free through neck-rubbing pleas, pitiful looks, and feigned innocence.

Long Li asked helplessly, “What now?”

If she were honest, such a plump chicken would be a godsend ingredient in their current straits. But…

“It’s pretty friendly,” Gu Xianwang muttered.

Long Li chuckled. She scooped up the fat bird with both hands and draped the jacket aside for a closer inspection. “Hm? This isn’t a chicken. Looks like a bird.”

Gu Xianwang saw it too. The plumage was long, the wings broad. The tail was bulky, but the main black feathers dragged along the ground. It appeared too fat to fly, yet… “It’s a bird, all right.”

That made sense. There were no chickens in these deep woods. Even if the mountain folk raised them, they wouldn’t let one wander into a place as sacred as the altar.

It had all been a false alarm.

“Let it go.”

The moment her grip loosened, the thieving bird didn’t flee. Instead, it waddled in tiny steps around Long Li. Beneath its rotund body, its delicate little claws were almost invisible.

Gu Xianwang found it amusing. “It really likes you.”

Long Li teased its small head. “Off you go. Back to your own home.”

This time, it seemed to understand. Its beady eyes flicked to Gu Xianwang, then back to Long Li. It took two reluctant steps backward, looking heartbreakingly forlorn.

Then it darted its head forward in a sudden peck, snatching up the last piece of dried fish. With a frantic flap of wings, it vanished into the bushes.

Gu Xianwang stared in stunned silence.

She got it now. She truly understood. Not only was she more naive than other people—her cunning didn’t even measure up to that of a bird!