Chapter 73: Digging a Tunnel Part 1

Wang Ya placed Zhang Qingshui in the tent, then rummaged through the backpack beside her to find the first aid kit. She fed some medicine into Zhang Qingshui’s mouth. She did not believe Zhang Qingshui faced any life-threatening danger. Even with internal injuries, the Azure Dragon Vine wrapped around Zhang Qingshui’s arm, emanating a verdant green glow and continuously channeling Yi Wood Energy into her body, would save her.

What Wang Ya worried about was being trapped here with no way out.

Wang Ya had inventoried the supplies. The cave contained only one backpack—hers. The water and food inside were barely touched, so her supplies remained fairly complete. But Zhang Qingshui’s things were mostly lost, leaving only the Azure Dragon Vine. Even the shoulder bag holding her last-resort survival supplies had a huge tear, as if sliced by a sharp blade.

Wang Ya had little interest in delving into what happened after she passed out. As long as she was still alive and had temporarily escaped the pursuit, that sufficed.

Though the cave was sealed shut, she was no ordinary person. Even if she had to dig, she would carve a path to survival. She would not sit there waiting for death.

Wang Ya moved the rubble aside piece by piece. For larger stones, she circulated Demonic Power within her body to shatter them and burrow through. The pile from the collapse was not sturdy, mixed with heaps of gravel and sand. Often, when she dug out a stone below, the ones above—and the sand—cascaded down. Wang Ya nearly got buried several times. Digging a tunnel wide enough for a person to crawl through sounded simple but proved extremely difficult. She dug pits, used the backpack to haul soil, and shored up unstable, collapse-prone spots with stacked stones for support. Fortunately, she did not rely solely on her hands. Though small, the Trekking Shovel could still manage the digging.

Wang Ya did not know how long she would have to dig, nor if she would encounter a collapse and get buried during the process. She had no idea if her food and water would last until she broke through. She only knew that if she did not dig, there was no way out. She could only make the excavated passage as sturdy as possible and ration the water and food as much as she could. Even while scrimping, she did not neglect Zhang Qingshui. During breaks, she fed her some water and food.

Having a living person lying behind her was better than a corpse, at least. She was not trapped here alone.

Zhang Qingshui had attacked her and nearly taken her life, but the crime did not warrant death. By Chinese law, it meant prison time, not execution. Regardless of grudges, trapped together in peril, she could not stand by and watch someone die. That was one of her basic principles as a person. Even against a mortal enemy in a life-or-death struggle, one took the opponent’s life fairly through skill. If she killed Zhang Qingshui while she lay unconscious, Wang Ya would despise herself. Her heart still held the words “righteousness” and “justice.” She wanted to live upright, head held high, with a clear conscience. If others saw her as a Demoness, she had even more reason to be an upright person.

Wang Ya dug onward, unearthing decayed bones, uncollapsed sections of the Labyrinth passages, trap pits, and supplies left by those who came before. She glanced at the spent firearms and tossed them aside. If lucky, she found canteens still holding water or unruptured food packets, which she carefully collected.

The firearms, food, water, and occasional passages confirmed she remained within the Labyrinth.

The place brimmed with heavy Yin Qi and frequent ghostly disturbances. Perhaps due to her overwhelming Demonic Aura, the ghosts dared not approach. She had no close encounters with them but sensed ghosts passing through the mountain body. She once considered capturing a couple to guide her and indicate direction, but they kept their distance. Though she possessed Demonic Aura, she was no true demon without the ability to pass through solids and catch those spectral entities wandering the stone.

Wang Ya had witnessed the Leaf Demon’s True Body revealed in full might and understood she possessed only a sliver of Demonic Power. Compared to a true Millennium Great Demon, she was pathetically weak.

Wang Ya buried her head in digging the tunnel, repeating the dull, tedious labor. She had no friends growing up and was accustomed to solitude, so digging alone felt no lonesome. The work was monotonous, but compared to twenty years of daily cultivation training, it was nothing.

Zhang Qingshui sat silently in the tent, listening to the sounds of Wang Ya digging. When she awoke, the cave space was already half-filled with the soil Wang Ya had excavated. She figured Wang Ya later found other spots to dump soil, no longer hauling it back to the cave except occasionally for food and water, which she fed to the “unconscious” her.