Chapter 105: Inside the Pagoda 3

At the mention of this, we all fell silent. He Yu shot me several looks, and as we exchanged glances, both of us knew the other had plenty of thoughts running through their mind. But since we considered Tian Xiaoqi an outsider, none of those thoughts could be voiced right now.

Tian Xiaoqi spoke with such sincerity that I took her word for it for now. As Tian Xiao’s biological grandson, Tian Yuqing had been shipped abroad by his grandfather before he even turned thirteen, left to drift on his own—a far worse deal than what Tian Xiaoqi got.

That meant Tian Xiaoqi was the one who had truly grown up at Tian Xiao’s side. Tian Xiao was quiet by nature and disliked crowds, so if something had gone wrong with him, perhaps only Xiao Qi would notice.

However, once Tian Yuqing reached adulthood, he returned to the main family. Logically, the family’s affairs, big and small, should have been gradually handed over to him or his younger brother, Tian Tinghan. If Tian Xiao’s behavior had suddenly changed so drastically, it made no sense for his own grandson not to notice.

“Did you talk to Tian Yuqing about this?” I asked, taking a different approach.

The moment I asked, Tian Xiaoqi rolled her eyes so far back they nearly hit the ceiling. “I told him a long time ago, but he thinks I’m just being overly sensitive. I strongly suspect he has a lot to do with this. Besides, he’s been sharp since he was a kid. I don’t buy that he can’t tell something is wrong with that man.”

He Yu chuckled. “So you already have a theory? You don’t actually think the one at your family home right now is an imposter, and the real Tian Xiao was hidden away by Tian Yuqing, do you?”

Tian Xiaoqi nodded in all seriousness, without the slightest trace of joking. “It’s not impossible.”

I rubbed my chin. After roughing it in this place for three or four days, my fresh stubble felt prickly to the touch. Thinking it over, Tian Xiaoqi’s theory wasn’t entirely baseless. Throughout history, countless people had committed murder and slaughtered whole towns to seize power. Human nature is unpredictable, even between flesh and blood.

Tian Xiaoqi suspected Tian Yuqing had orchestrated the whole thing, but I thought that was unlikely. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t choose to do it this way, just to play it safe.

Tian Xiao was already up in years and might pass away in a few years anyway. If the goal was to seize the family estate, there was no need to go out of the way to hide him. And even if they did hide him, swapping in an imposter made even less sense.

Setting aside where you’d even find a fake, such a massive undertaking wouldn’t be nearly as practical as simply holding a funeral and claiming the old man died in his sleep.

So I shook my head. “It doesn’t sound like Tian Yuqing hid him. Doing it this way makes things too complicated, and the more complicated a plan gets, the more likely things will go wrong.”

Right after saying that, a sudden flash of inspiration struck me. I grabbed Tian Xiaoqi and asked, “Do you know anything about your great-grandfather’s younger days? Like where he used to work—did he ever mention anything like that to you?”

Tian Xiaoqi winced from my grip, pulling back her hand to rub it while looking at me strangely. “Your grandfather’s and my great-grandfather’s ancestors were all doing business with the Thieves’ Sect. Later, those people from the Thieves’ Sect got caught; some were executed and others were imprisoned. Out of options, they scattered to find places to hide, and they only dared to come out and make a living after that period passed. Did your grandfather really never tell you any of this?”

Thinking back, I almost laughed out loud. My grandfather? He was just an old farmer who spent all day squatting by the curb watching his plot of land. Tight-lipped as could be, he really had never told me any of this.

“So my grandfather went home to farm, but where did your great-grandfather go?” I asked.

Tian Xiaoqi explained that her family’s ancestors specialized in spatial orientation: how wide and long a tomb-robbing tunnel should be, where it was best to turn, and the load-bearing capacity of the tunnel roof. Many tomb raiders had to consult the Tian Family’s Strategist for things like that. Her great-grandfather only knew that single trade, so he later joined an engineering team to help dig tunnels and the like.

Hearing the words “engineering team,” my heart stirred. Just as I was about to follow up with another question, I felt Lu Ayao suddenly press down on my hand. I turned to look at him, and he quickly flashed a look at He Yu. He Yu scrambled up in a roll, threw both torches to the ground, and stomped them out.

The whole coordinated maneuver between the two of them took less than a minute.

The voices stopped abruptly, and dead silence descended once more. The torches overhead had been so warm that they nearly gave me a false sense of comfort. Now that they were extinguished, the cold wind made me shiver where I sat, remembering that we were still inside that mist-shrouded stone pagoda.

Lu Ayao kept his hand pinned to my wrist. I had no idea what was happening, so I leaned into his ear and whispered, asking him what was wrong and if something had happened.

His gaze peered out through one of the pagoda’s windows as he replied in a breathy whisper, “There’s something outside. It’s moving fast.”

He Yu shuffled over to us as well and nudged me with his elbow. “That infant corpse… did you guys kill it earlier?”

An ominous feeling slowly rose inside me. Before I could say a word, I saw a dark shadow streak past the window. Right after, the thing landed on a stone pillar less than ten meters away, the sound of its long nails scraping against the stone grating violently on the ears.

Lu Ayao moved very slowly to pull me up from the ground, his other hand digging something out of his bag at the same time. Everything before my eyes was pitch black, and I could only make out a dark, shadowy shape perched on the pillar, its blood-red eyes staring dead at us.

Beside me, He Yu and Tian Xiaoqi were moving as well, but I had no idea what they were doing because I didn’t dare pull my eyes away from that creature for even a split second.

We locked eyes with the thing for what felt like an eternity. I couldn’t tell whether Lu Ayao made the first move or if the creature struck first.

I only saw the objects in Lu Ayao’s hands cross with a sharp metallic clink, and in an instant, the creature lunged right at me. Lu Ayao caught my wrist, shoved me violently backward, and yelled to He Yu:

“Fire-starter!”

I was suddenly grabbed by He Yu, who simultaneously lit a Fire-starter he had prepared at some point. The stone pagoda lit up in an instant, revealing a monster with six or seven legs and bared claws pouncing on the spot where I had just been standing.

It was covered in blood, with several dried grass roots wrapped around its massive infant head. It let out a roar at the sight of me, a high-pitched, shrill sound terrifyingly similar to a baby’s cry. It was so grating that both He Yu and I covered our ears.

He Yu didn’t hesitate for a second. He pulled the box gun^[1] from his belt and started firing. The monster was hit before it could escape; three bullets struck two of its legs, sending black blood splattering across the floor. The infant corpse let out a loud roar and scrambled up a stone pillar in a few quick bounds.

The stone carvings on the pillar were intricately detailed, and the infant corpse scurried into the hollowed-out designs at incredible speed. He Yu raised his gun and blasted the carvings to pieces, sending stone fragments clattering down as dust billowed up inside the stone pagoda.

“Dammit! Let’s see if I can force it down!” He Yu yelled. He pulled out an old scattergun from somewhere and began firing with both hands, blasting left and right until the patterns on the stone pillar were practically obliterated.

The racket He Yu made by himself was almost enough for an entire regiment. After emptying one hand’s worth of bullets, he reloaded single-handedly. The firepower was so fierce that he was practically turning the infant corpse into a sieve. Once the carvings were blasted flat, the creature realized it couldn’t hide and was forced to charge down.

At that moment, Lu Ayao, who had been standing still nearby for a long time, suddenly seemed to flip a switch. He charged forward like an arrow. The instant the infant corpse leaped from the pillar, he used the ring blade in his hand to hook, stab, and flip, impaling the creature straight through the belly. It let out a few struggling cries before gradually falling still.

Lu Ayao tossed the slimy monster onto the ground. The edge of the ring blade in his right hand flashed, and blood dripped off the blade onto the floor, without leaving even half a drop on the edge itself.

Why hadn’t I seen this kid with such a great piece of gear before?

He Yu saw me staring in a daze and gave a chuckle. “How’s that? This trip yielded some rewards after all.”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

“We blew up the cave earlier, but one of the blast points was off by about a centimeter, completely ruining the structure of the cliff outside. When rocks started falling, we had no choice but to jump into the river and let the current carry us into the stone crevices. Guess what? I got caught in an undercurrent halfway through. My pack fell to the bottom of the waterway and got hooked on something.”

He Yu pointed at the ring blade in Lu Ayao’s hand as he spoke. “Later, Old Lu went into the water to retrieve the gear, and the thing hooking my bag was the very item in his hand. His soft whip was broken anyway, so it was a perfect replacement. Tell me, if this isn’t fate, what is? Huh?”

I listened to him ramble like he was performing a comedy routine, then walked over to look at the infant corpse on the ground, which was already turning into a pool of bloody water. In such a confined environment, the foul stench from the corpse’s blood slowly began to evaporate and spread through the air.

I felt a bit nauseous, but in the next second, I heard chanting coming from inside the pagoda again. The sound echoed through the tower, but unlike before, I could hear it with exceptional clarity this time.

Tian Xiaoqi walked over and looked at the corpse from a distance. She said to He Yu, “This thing doesn’t look like a burial object. Could it have been used as a sacrificial offering right after birth, then artificially pieced together into a multi-legged monster?”

The chanting continued to echo in my ears.

I looked at Lu Ayao and saw that his expression was normal. I began to suspect that I was the only one who could hear the chanting, but not knowing what this meant, I decided to ask for help.

“I hear someone chanting,” I said to Lu Ayao beside me. “But it seems like I’m the only one who can hear it.”

Hearing this, Lu Ayao looked over and tilted his head to listen carefully. Then, with a slight frown, he shook his head at me. He really couldn’t hear it.

“When I was bound by the mycelium, I had a hallucination. In the vision, I entered this pagoda and saw a monster. That monster took on your appearance to deceive me, trying to make me climb the pagoda and worship the Buddha. Back then, I heard the exact same chanting I hear now,” I told him.

Lu Ayao waited seriously for me to finish, then asked, “So did you worship the Buddha in the pagoda?”

I shook my head. “It didn’t succeed. I saw through it, and then I woke up.”

Lu Ayao’s chest rose and fell, clearly relieved.

“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?” I asked.

Lu Ayao looked up and glanced around before saying, “Only souls can worship the Buddha here. This pagoda wasn’t built to pray for blessings. It was built to deliver souls. This is a soul-suppressing tower^[2].”

The chanting was meant to deliver souls, so why was Gan Ji the only one who could hear it?