Chapter 100: Xiao Qi’s Suspicion

Before I could react, I heard a sharp crack from my knee. It was clear the anesthesia had started to take effect, because I didn’t feel any pain. Still, the sound echoed in my ears and made my teeth ache just listening to it.

Tian Xiaoqi clapped her hands and stood up, tossing me some bread from her bag. After taking a swig from her canteen, she said, “Take off the top of your wetsuit. I need to check the wound on your back.”

I froze for a second, thinking how awkward that was.

But Tian Xiaoqi’s face changed faster than flipping a page. She snapped, “Hurry up! If the wound gets infected, it’ll be a real problem!”

Her tone was enough to scare me into action. I quickly started peeling off the top half of my wetsuit. When He Yu and I were forced off the boat by that swarm of snakes, we had no time to grab spare clothes. So after crawling through caves for so long, this wetsuit was all I had.

The upper half had been shredded by a swipe from that infant corpse, and the lower half was hanging on by threads, barely covering my thighs. I hadn’t realized how bad it was until I looked down. I honestly looked like I’d just crawled out of a refugee camp.

The wound on my back covered a large area, and much of it had stuck to the fabric. Tian Xiaoqi had to crouch down and carefully cut the material away with surgical scissors. As she worked, she asked, “Did you treat the wound yourself?”

“No. I passed out in the cave and didn’t wake up for a long time,” I answered truthfully.

She paused, then looked at me with clear suspicion.

I didn’t understand why she was so distrustful of me, so I quickly tried to explain. I told her everything—how I got pushed through the flipping door, the stone pillar jumps, and the infant corpse that dragged me into the abyss. I left out only my own theories about the nameless cave. Everything else, I laid out in full detail.

After listening, she rested her chin on her hand and stared at me, then glanced back at my wound. “So you’re saying… you have no idea what’s been happening outside?”

Her question left me blank.

Seeing my expression, Tian Xiaoqi said, “Judging by how clueless you look, I’ll tentatively believe you’re not lying. Two nights ago, the cliffs on both sides suddenly started collapsing to different degrees. We think the timing mechanism at the bottom of the river started up again, so we launched a wide search around the cliffs.”

She took a deep breath. “According to the Rubbing Manuscript, we’re certain there used to be an underground palace here. But despite searching for a long time, we couldn’t find any kind of entrance. All we found was a crack just wide enough to fit an arm through. We were going to keep looking, but before we could, the cliffs started collapsing right before our eyes.”

“Collapsing?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah, the cliffs began to break apart. Rocks were falling everywhere. Then we heard explosions from the other side. The two people who were with you aren’t exactly the cautious type. They planted blasting caps and blew a massive fissure into the mountain.”

I was stunned, half in disbelief. If He Yu had done it alone, I wouldn’t be too surprised. But this time, he had Lu A’yao with him. Lu A’yao was always meticulous. Blowing up a mountain like that seemed way too reckless for her.

If I calculated the time right, I must’ve been unconscious for about a day and a half. During that time, the cliffs were constantly shifting. While I was crawling, rocks kept falling, and that deafening rumble I heard was probably the explosion from outside.

“I was originally diving with Han Jian, but I lost my way halfway through and somehow got swept into that giant fissure. The current carried me all the way here. This place used to be next to a mining vein, full of holes and crevices. It took me two days of crawling to get here.”

I looked around as she spoke. We were in a natural cave, right in its center. There was an old, man-made well nearby, long abandoned. The black stone wall closest to me had some exposed jade embedded in it.

As I munched on the bread, it hit me—so the mining vein she mentioned was a jade mine. All this jade… it could be worth a fortune, enough to last ten lifetimes.

I was still lost in thought when Tian Xiaoqi gave me a pat. “Back to the point—did you really crawl through hundreds of meters of cave with a wound like that?”

I felt okay, all things considered. A bit helpless, I turned to her and asked, “Why? Is it so bad I should start picking out a coffin?”

To my surprise, Tian Xiaoqi actually paused to think, then gave a slow nod. “Under normal circumstances, being clawed by an infant corpse and losing that much blood, not to mention the corpse poison, would be fatal. You’d be dead in minutes.”

She lifted my shoulder for a closer look. “But not only are you alive, you crawled through hundreds of meters of cave alone. Your bleeding even stopped. That just doesn’t make sense.”

I didn’t know anything about medicine. Everything she said was beyond my understanding. So I just turned back and smiled at her. “Then maybe I’m a one-in-a-million medical miracle. I really did walk here alive. Maybe the heavens are watching over me. Guess I’ll have to eat vegetarian for a few days when I get back.”

That response left Tian Xiaoqi speechless. I rolled my shoulders and stood up, trying to figure out where He Yu and the others might be now, and thinking back to everything I’d considered while trapped in the cave.

There were no corpses in the cave, which meant whoever dug the passage had already climbed up through the well like I did. Maybe they had even stood in the same spot I was standing in now. That thought sent a chill down my spine, and I couldn’t help but shiver.

Tian Xiaoqi bent down and tossed me a vacuum-sealed bag from her backpack. Inside were some clean clothes—men’s clothes, no less. I looked up at her with deep gratitude in my eyes.

“I took quite a bit of Han Jian’s supplies. Was planning to toss them, but I guess you’re in luck,” Tian Xiaoqi said. She didn’t even spare me a glance before turning and walking to the other side of the well, clearly telling me to hurry up and change.

The upper edge of the well jutted out quite a bit, and when I sat down normally, it covered most of my upper body. I didn’t care whether the ground was dirty or not—I plopped down and started peeling off the last bits of my soaked and stinking wetsuit. In just a few quick moves, I got the clothes on.

Aside from the outer brown jacket being a size too big, the T-shirt underneath fit pretty well. The numbing effect in my left leg had finally worn off, and the searing pain was starting to creep into my other leg. Tian Xiaoqi had made a makeshift splint for me and told me to hop on one leg as much as possible.

The two of us huddled together near the stone wall, building a small fire. After changing out of the damp, sweat-soaked gear, I felt instantly refreshed, my appetite coming back with a vengeance. I devoured a piece of bread, then pried open a can of meat and scarfed that down too. But as soon as I finished eating, sleepiness hit me like a wave.

After being on edge for so long, my body was finally crashing from exhaustion.

Tian Xiaoqi checked the time and said, “Rest for two hours. I’ll take the first watch. I’ll wake you for the second.”

Hearing that, I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. I closed my eyes, tilted my head, and fell asleep almost instantly.