Chapter 172: Severe Injuries

The massive grinding of stone and the whistling of wind roared in my ears. Simultaneously, a much louder sound emerged. At first, I thought it was the resonance of dozens of stone beams moving in unison, but after listening for a while, I realized with a jolt of alarm that it wasn’t.

The realization hit when my leg brushed against a relief on the rock wall. It was a turtle-faced immortal holding a banner. This immediately put me on high alert, because this rock wall should have been far away from us; Tian Xiaoqi had to navigate several stone beams just to jump to where I was.

I looked up and saw that the reliefs on the opposite side, which had been completely hidden in the darkness and invisible moments ago, had suddenly appeared within my line of sight.

I reacted instantly, cursing loudly, “Climb up, damn it! Move! The rock walls on both sides are pressing inward. This tomb owner wants to squash us into meat filling for buns. This is a damn trap! We’ve been caught!”

We had been clinging to the stone beams long enough to have basically adapted to the rhythm of their vertical movement. As soon as I finished shouting, I saw Tian Xiaoqi release one of the hands she used to hold onto me, adjusting her posture to prepare for a jump. But since I had been dragging her along as we clung to the beam, she had no solid point of leverage.

I didn’t have time to be afraid now. I looked up to find a suitable stone beam. The reliefs on both sides were becoming so clear that it was proof the inward pressure was accelerating. This chasm might truly close shut in less than ten minutes.

“I’ll swing you up!” I shouted, hooking both feet onto the stone beam and stretching my movements to their maximum reach.

I spotted the nearest stone beam above us and locked eyes with Tian Xiaoqi. I gripped the handle of my claw knife tightly with one hand. The blade had cut deep into my palm, and my hand was covered in blood, but I had no time to worry about that now. Once I adjusted my stance, I mustered every ounce of strength in my other arm and gave a great shout, swinging Tian Xiaoqi upward.

She was light, and once I let go, she successfully caught onto the beam above. However, at the same moment, the claw knife in my hand let out a sharp “clang.” The blade had actually snapped under the force I exerted.

“Gan Ji!”

It all happened so fast that I only had time to protect my head. My flashlight was knocked away, and I tumbled downward, slamming into a moving stone beam without anything to cushion the impact. As the beam shifted away, I continued to fall. I could only hear the dull thuds of my own body. I was being battered like a ball of flesh against these solid stone beams; in less than half a minute, I felt as though my internal organs had been pounded a thousand times by a heavy sledgehammer.

At some point, my descent abruptly stopped. The moment I came to a halt, hanging in mid-air, I coughed up a mouthful of blood. My mouth and throat were thick with the metallic taste of gore. I was barely conscious from the impact, feeling only that my wrist was being pulled so hard it was about to dislocate.

The person holding me dragged me up from the void and shone a flashlight into my pupils. His voice drifted in and out. I was suddenly jolted awake by another mouthful of blood welling up in my throat, choking me. My mouth was covered in bloody froth. For a moment, I couldn’t even feel my legs.

“Let’s go, move now!” I vaguely heard He Yu shouting. Then, I quickly felt my body being moved. He hooked his arm under mine, hoisted me onto his back, and began sprinting into the darkness.

The jolting from the run felt like it was going to shake my lungs right out of my chest. As He Yu ran, I coughed uncontrollably against his back. By the time his flashlight beam finally came to a rest, I had coughed myself into a state of clarity. We had run into the palm of a turtle-immortal relief, where a mountain gate had been carved. Behind it was a man-made corridor.

Tian Xiaoqi was waiting ahead. He Yu’s flashlight beam met hers. He swept the light around the surroundings and glanced behind us. Deciding it was safe for the moment, he hurriedly lowered me from his back and had Tian Xiaoqi check my injuries.

My mind was fully conscious, but my chest hurt terribly, and my hearing was intermittent. I thought to myself that I had certainly taken a brutal beating this time.

“Can you see me? Can you hear me talking? Don’t tell me you’ve actually been knocked stupid,” He Yu said, waving a hand in front of my eyes.

I struggled to raise my hand and push his away, leaning against the wall and gasping in waves of pain. At the same time, I felt a sense of relief. I was glad that He Yu hadn’t ultimately left me down there. No matter how harsh his words had been, he still came back to help me in the end, even if he did it while grumbling.

“How did you…” I managed a few words.

Squatting beside me, He Yu said, “Don’t get the wrong idea. I really was going to go up, but after I doubled back, I found that level was a dead end. Just like you said, there was no way up or down. I had no choice but to turn back, and then the rock walls suddenly started moving. I knew something was wrong. I figured you must have done something again.”

My chest was still aching, but it was slightly less intense than before. There was no professional equipment here and the environment was harsh, so Tian Xiaoqi could only press gently on me while asking where it hurt.

“But damn it, I had just crawled onto a stone beam to figure out what was going on when I saw you falling. So I rushed to catch you. It’s fine, though. I caught you, so it’s fine.” As he spoke, he occasionally rotated his own wrist.

I knew that by running from so far away to grab a basically unconscious person like me, there was a ninety percent chance he had injured his own wrist as well.

Tian Xiaoqi slumped on the ground, looking like she didn’t know where to start. She said, “It might be a pulmonary contusion. You fell from such a height and hit so many things. But judging by the amount of blood just now, it’s not too much. It might just be a minor contusion. But we really need to start thinking about how to get out.”

He Yu checked the surroundings again. “We’re already very deep, yet there’s still air here. So maybe we didn’t take the wrong path after all. Besides, that gate we just entered looks a lot like a tomb entrance.”

“You mean this is the actual underground palace? We stumbled into it? We were just trying to stay alive, but we ended up finding the entrance?” Tian Xiaoqi asked.

I took a deep breath, propped myself against the wall to shift upward, and spat out the bloody foam in my mouth. “Then the deduction Lu Ayao and I made earlier should be correct. The real underground palace starts from here. Everything outside was a distraction, the outermost layer. I just didn’t notice this tomb gate at the beginning.”

“What do you mean? What deduction did you two make?” He Yu asked, studying the patterns on the wall.

I briefly explained the “three-layer old and new tomb” theory that Lu Ayao and I had come up with to Tian Xiaoqi and He Yu.

He Yu traced the patterns on the wall and turned back to look at me. “So, if we don’t count the collapsed modern research institute, the structure of this entire tomb complex should be divided into three layers. Did you two analyze the age of those stones back then?”

“One was old, one was new. I don’t know the specific eras,” I answered him.

He Yu had a sharp eye for such things. He nodded. “Then that should be right. At least two groups of people built this underground palace. I’ve looked around; the walls here all belong to the same era. Do you think this is the second layer or the core of the palace?”

I used the wall for support and struggled to stand up. Seeing this, Tian Xiaoqi immediately came over to steady me. By the light of He Yu’s flashlight, I used my sleeve to carelessly wipe the blood from my lips. “If I had to guess, we’ve probably just reached the second layer, which is also the most dangerous one. Everything before was just an appetizer. The builder brazenly opened such a tomb gate just to lure us in here.”

“Or rather, he believes that even if he lets us in, we won’t have the ability to enter the main burial chamber.”

Hearing this, He Yu hitched up his trousers and walked over to help support me. “That’s some arrogant talk. I’ve always hated people who act like hotshots. Based on the legends, Master Jiyun didn’t seem like such a boastful person.”

I shook my head and said, “I feel like something is wrong. This underground palace feels off. I still don’t know if my hallucinations were real or fake, but if they were real, and the person buried here truly is the legendary, miraculously powerful Master Jiyun, then it’s very likely he wasn’t the one who designed and built this tomb.”

I had entered two illusions previously. In the first, inside the head of the Tomb-guarding Beast, I saw Master Jiyun suspended in mid-air by ropes. His entire body was bound, and his face was covered with a sari. To me, that seemed like an insulting way to be buried.

Master Jiyun lying properly in a coffin was the content of the second illusion. That second vision conveyed a lot of information. First, I saw a research institute from many years ago, and then I saw the members of the 434 Archaeological Team. The fact that my grandfather was involved wasn’t the most shocking part; what truly stunned me was that they had actually unearthed Master Jiyun’s entire coffin and transported it back to the institute.

These two illusions were highly deceptive. I wasn’t sure if these events had actually happened, because in reality, I hadn’t seen any hanging corpse inside the Tomb-guarding Beast, nor had I seen any coffin in a research institute. However, these two false illusions were the only references I had.

So, I recounted the details I had seen in the visions.

“Do you really think the illusions here are reliable as a reference?” He Yu asked me. He clearly felt that relying on information from a hallucination to find a way out was an unreliable method.

I leaned against the wall, trying my best to keep my coughing from becoming too violent. “If there were any other way, I wouldn’t want to believe in illusions either. But if I extrapolate based on my visions, it’s very likely that Master Jiyun’s body wasn’t originally kept in a coffin. Someone moved it into that Golden Silk Phoebe Wood Coffin later on.”

He Yu thought for a moment and then asked, “What’s the use of deducing all this?”

He hadn’t caught my drift. I was almost frustrated enough to laugh, so I continued to explain: “It means that if this second level of the underground palace was built to protect the Golden Silk Phoebe Wood Coffin in the main burial chamber, then according to my vision, the 434 Archaeological Team already moved the coffin out. Even though we haven’t seen the coffin ourselves, it suggests that people have been in here before and made it out in one piece.”

“So, there will be traces left behind by those archaeologists. As long as we follow their route, we can get out too,” Tian Xiaoqi said, picking up on my point.

I nodded, leaning against the wall for support.

He Yu slapped his thigh. “If that’s the case, then damn it, we don’t have to be afraid! Let’s just go! Quick, Xiao Yao, I’ll carry you. Let’s find a way out of here!”

He Yu immediately turned around and crouched in front of me. The pain in my chest hadn’t subsided at all. It might really be a pulmonary contusion, just as Tian Xiaoqi had diagnosed. Although the fact that I hadn’t died yet suggested it might be mild, it was basically impossible for me to move on my own now.

I climbed onto He Yu’s back. For the first time, I truly felt like a burden. If He Yu hadn’t come back, I definitely would have fallen to my death in that crevice. Even if the fall hadn’t killed me, I would have been crushed into a meat patty by the shifting walls later.

Feeling very embarrassed, I whispered a thank you to He Yu.

He scolded me immediately. “What are you talking about? If you’re going to say thanks, save it for the dinner table. I’m telling you, one meal won’t cut it, it’s got to be two. I’m not accepting any thanks here. I’ve seen through you now; you and that guy Lu are exactly the same. Both of you are so stubborn, sticking to your guns and not listening to a word anyone says. I mean, this tomb is right here underground, it’s not like it’s going to grow wings and fly away. Would it kill us to gear up properly before coming down?”

I didn’t argue with him this time. His voice gave me a rare sense of security. He could scold me however he wanted now, and I would just listen. I just didn’t know how Lu Ayao was doing, though I imagined he was faring much better than I was.

The two of them tidied up the remaining gear and began to head deeper into the passage. As He Yu walked forward, looking at those bare walls made me feel increasingly drowsy. I didn’t know if it was from the blood loss, but my eyelids were fighting to stay open. Before long, my vision began to blur, and my hands and feet started to go numb.

Just as I was about to drift off, He Yu suddenly called out to me:

“Xiao Yao, you said this second level was full of traps, but we’ve been walking for so long and haven’t seen a single one?”

I pondered his words, my mind starting to work again. “That was just a hypothesis. Although there were many skilled craftsmen in the past, this is the seabed. Setting up traps on a ship is quite difficult. Plus, with factors like seawater corrosion and time, it’s possible the original mechanisms just don’t work anymore.”

“Hey, who do you think built this place? Everything they came up with is so vicious – poison, illusions, and even keeping pets,” He Yu asked again. “Wait, how do you know this wasn’t built by Master Jiyun?”

For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. This point was indeed something I had fabricated out of thin air. Perhaps it was because the state of the corpse I saw in the first illusion was so pathetic that it led me to the conclusion that Master Jiyun wouldn’t have ended up like that by his own design.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was a hint from the illusion,” I said truthfully.

He Yu kept talking just to keep Gan Ji from falling asleep.