Chapter 57: Revenge

She was grinning sinisterly when a beam of flashlight light suddenly shone straight into her eyes, hitting them dead-on. Up above, Sara crouched amid the treetops, using the stone branches for cover as she unleashed a torrent of curses. “Fuck your whole damn family, you bitch—you actually dare show your face! Damn it, you’ve caused me no end of grief! Where the hell did you take our people?”

Yuzi didn’t get angry at the barrage of insults. Instead, she leisurely crossed her legs, propping the black folding crossbow on her knee and sighting along it, up and down, before finally settling the aim on Yao Cuo.

Narrowing her eyes, she let out a disdainful snort. “Men really are no good, aren’t they? Clinging to that one before, and now protecting this one. I didn’t expect the underground palace to fail in trapping you all. Looks like what he said really is true.”

“What the hell are you muttering over there?” Sara yelled. “Can’t you hear me asking you a question? Where are those two useless old men?”

Yuzi sneered. “You really want to find them?”

“Like hell, no—wait, yes! Of course!”

She shielded her eyes with one hand and jabbed a finger toward the cliff wall diagonally opposite. “Right there. See for yourself.”

Gu Xianwang noted the height of her pointing finger, and her heart sank with a thud. Glancing across, she spotted it: the waist of that statue she’d glimpsed earlier, not far from the sword-tassel skeleton. There, dangling beneath two platforms about four or five meters apart, hung Old Dog and Chak.

Each clutched a round, bulging object to their chest, with ropes wound three or four times around their arms and the items. It was hard to make out clearly from this distance. Their mouths were gagged, their eyes half-open. They reacted sluggishly to the flashlight beam, as if they hadn’t fully shaken off the effects of anesthesia.

“Fuck, what the hell is this supposed to mean?” Sara’s cursing grew more restrained this time. Her standoff with Long Li across the void was one thing, but that woman down there had a real ranged weapon.

Yuzi shrugged. “What do you think it means? I told you before—they’re the last important tools I selected, the star guests for my grand finale.”

Gu Xianwang frowned. “What kind of performance?”

Yuzi ticked off her fingers. “Soon. The audience will be here any minute. Just be patient a little longer, and you’ll see.”

Her voice brimmed with cheer, a far cry from the woman in the cavern. This Yuzi seemed like an exuberant teenage girl, radiating boundless energy—but that was what made her all the more terrifying.

Long Li climbed up silently and whispered in Gu Xianwang’s ear, “Climb into the canopy first. Once we’ve got solid footing, we can figure out our next move.”

Gu Xianwang nodded. She exchanged a glance with Yao Cuo below and mouthed a silent signal. Without a word, the group swiftly climbed higher.

Yuzi watched their efforts with cold indifference, as if savoring the futile struggles of ants beneath her feet. She ran her fingers lightly over the crossbow’s trigger, a thrill of pleasure beginning to stir within her.

~~~

Where… where was this?

A blinding flash seared across his vision, followed by a cacophony of hollow, amplified voices.

Tch, so damn noisy. That voice—was it Sara?

Chak screwed up his face in a fierce frown. The muscles in his neck felt leaden and sore, too weak to lift his head. His sight swam in and out of focus; vaguely, he made out… a tree?

Not a dream! A jolt shot through him as realization hit—he’d been dosed with a nerve agent. Shit, how the hell had he let himself get taken down like that?

Without a second’s hesitation, Chak clamped down hard on his tongue. A thick gush of hot, salty blood flooded his mouth.

As his mind sharpened, he took stock of his situation: limbs intact, spine unbroken, senses all accounted for. Good. Just suspended from a sheer cliff dozens of meters up. No big deal.

Of course, there was bad news too—like the goddamn thing cradled in his arms. Wasn’t that the fucking marrow beehive?

Chak tested the climbing rope lashed between his elbow and the bronze kettle, easing it outward ever so slightly. The motion sent cold sweat beading on his skin. That bitch had tied a slipknot, alright. One wrong twist, one extra struggle, and the whole thing would unravel. No handholds fore or aft. If he dropped…

Heh. Splat. Meat pancake.

He held his previous posture, eyes cracked open just a slit to feign unconsciousness. But from the corner of his vision, he’d already scanned the surroundings. The view was hazy, but he wasn’t likely mistaken: hanging right beside him was Old Dog.

Now, he had to figure out how to handle this situation. If he moved, the rope would snap; if he stayed still, it was only a matter of time before the beehive was disturbed. He’d even heard Sara and that woman’s voices just moments ago. Sara was probably about ten to fifteen yards away from him, while the woman seemed to be more than twenty yards out.

That meant Sara was most likely up on that stone tree, which made her useless in a fight. The only one who might actually come in handy was Old Dog.

The dagger on his belt had already been taken, so the only weapon nearby was probably the butterfly knife hidden in Old Dog’s shoe lining.

Just as Chak tried to turn his neck, heavy footsteps echoed from the rock ledge above his head. There were quite a few of them, by the sound of it.

~~~

The yellowish beams of old-fashioned flashlights swept around, accompanied by the unmistakable twang of countless bowstrings being drawn taut. Gu Xianwang finally climbed into the treetop, where she spotted over a dozen Yelang villagers emerging onto the rock platforms lining the walls.

So these were the audience Yuzi had been waiting for?

She glanced at Long Li, who had just bent down to drag Ye Chan into the canopy. Their eyes met briefly, and Long Li murmured, “Her first target isn’t us. Find some cover and watch out for flying arrows.”

The four of them huddled together, with Sara standing a few steps apart. Ye Chan knelt on the ground, sweat dripping in large beads as her hands trembled uncontrollably. She was utterly spent.

Her chest heaved dramatically—she was barely exhaling at all—yet she still managed to point a shaky finger toward the outer edge of the canopy. “Th-those… huff… those cages…”

Her voice was too faint, instantly drowned out by the shout from the lead Yelang crone.

Yuzi flashed a cold smirk at the Grand Matriarch on the opposite rock platform before turning to her attendant, Old Stick. “Uncle Jiake, it’s been a while.”

She deliberately spoke in Chinese, causing Old Stick’s eyelids to twitch involuntarily. His throat tightened as he replied stiffly, “Yuzi… what the hell is going on? Why are you—why are you here?”

The Grand Matriarch couldn’t understand their exchange and scowled. “Yuzi, with the God Lord watching above, everything you’re doing is right under his eyes! How dare you aid these outsiders spying on the altar! Where’s Aqiu? Where did you take Aqiu?”

Yuzi smiled sweetly, still in Chinese. “Aqiu? How would I—a long-dead woman—know where she’s gone?”

“Ah, Uncle Jiake, after being ‘dead’ for so long, has my Chinese improved? If only I’d listened to you back then and left this hellhole sooner… maybe everything would have turned out differently. Chinese—Chinese is wonderful. Once I learned it, I realized how vast the outside world is, full of people so different from us.”

“I learned it too late, Uncle Jiake. Too late to understand that people can live like that—that humans can be equals, that we don’t have to believe in the God Lord, that we can choose our own lives. You know that, right?”

Old Stick’s face darkened. He wasn’t sure whether to translate for the Grand Matriarch first or try to talk her down—but what right did he have to persuade her now? He’d voted in favor of executing Yuzi at that meeting, hadn’t he? He’d personally promised her late father—his own brother—to look after her and raise her properly, but in the end…

It was all the fault of these sly, scheming outsiders! These vultures eyeing the altar, with their honeyed words!

Yuzi had just been deceived.

“Why aren’t you saying anything? Do you despise me too now? Hate me?”

Old Stick’s voice rumbled low. “No… Yuzi, we can talk about this later, once we’re out of here. Right now, the priority is dealing with these outsiders.”

Yuzi’s gaze dropped, a flicker of disappointment crossing her grotesque features. Then she asked abruptly, “What about A Yan? Why isn’t A Yan here?”

A shadow of gloom passed over Old Stick’s face. He rasped, “A Yan… he’s dead.”

The air grew thick and still. Dead silence filled the rock cavity.

Yuzi seemed not to comprehend, or perhaps she was genuinely curious—her ugly face gave nothing away. “Dead? Why?”

She sounded unwilling to accept it, bowing her head with a laugh more pitiful than any sob. “Why?”

“Why is he dead? Why didn’t he come to see me? I’m here now—finally inside the altar, right in front of you all, bold as day! Yuzi is in the altar!”

“I’ve finally made it, just like Aqiu. We have the same qualifications now, don’t we?”

Old Stick furrowed his brow and shouted at her in the Yelang dialect: “Yuzi, stop blindly trusting those sly outsiders! A Yan died at their hands! It was these very people standing before you who killed him!”

Yuzi’s face twitched strangely at his words, as if some deep-seated obsession had abruptly snapped.

She peered at the faint silhouettes amid the Leaf Crown, her gaze flickering with a hint of madness.

“Dead? Good riddance,” she said, curling the corner of her mouth. “Someone told me this isn’t an altar at all. The epic songs we’ve heard, the faith we’ve revered—ha—and even our village… all of it is a lie. I didn’t believe it before. I wanted to come inside and see for myself.”

“But now, none of it matters.” She shrugged her shoulders in a motion that could have been laughter or sobs. From the shadows, she turned and hauled out a bronze kettle from behind her, setting it on her knees. “That person said the so-called God Eye is nurtured in bronze cages like this. They’re mutants among the marrow bees—only one in countless swarms. I’ve never seen one; they say it’s a pure white bee. Such a bee finds its own way into the altar, burrows into this cage, transforms from a single bee into a cocoon, and then from the cocoon back into an egg.”

She let out a self-mocking laugh. “How wondrous—like an old man reborn as a baby.”

The sight of that bronze kettle made everyone freeze in tense alarm. Even the Grand Matriarch panicked and cried out, “Yuzi, whatever happened before, this is the Yelang Clan’s altar! Don’t do anything reckless!”

Even as she spoke, her eyes signaled to her attendants. Four or five hidden bowmen had already trained their arrows on Yuzi’s head.

Yuzi narrowed her eyes—the only part of her that remained unmarred, still almond-shaped and bright. “These marrow bees are like all worker bees and ants, toiling away their entire lives in meaningless drudgery. Their only purpose is to produce that rare mutant destined to become a God Eye. Heh, we’re no different—all of us. From the moment we’re born, our fates are set: the noble remain noble forever, the lowly forever base.”

“I’m not resigned to it.” She shook her head. “If they can’t fly here on their own, then I’ll bring them. Let them see this tree, this cage, these sights for themselves.”

Then, let us all be destroyed together.

Without warning, Yuzi raised her crossbow and fired at the ropes binding Chak and Old Dog—