Chapter 105: Inside the Pagoda 3

Mentioning this, we all fell into a collective silence. He Yu shot me several meaningful looks, and as we stared at each other, I knew we both had plenty of theories. However, since we had tacitly agreed that Tian Xiaoqi was an outsider, we could not voice those thoughts right now.

Tian Xiaoqi spoke with such sincerity that I decided to believe her for the time being. As Tian Xiao’s biological grandson, Tian Yuqing had been sent abroad by his grandfather before he even reached his thirteenth birthday. In comparison, Tian Xiaoqi’s treatment had been significantly better.

In that case, Tian Xiaoqi was the one who truly grew up by Tian Xiao’s side. Tian Xiao was naturally a quiet person who disliked crowds, so if something had gone wrong with him, perhaps only Xiao Qi would be able to notice.

But later, once Tian Yuqing reached adulthood, he returned to the main family. Logically, the family’s affairs should have been gradually handed over to him or his younger brother, Tian Tinghan. If Tian Xiao’s behavior had suddenly become so different from before, it seemed impossible for his own grandson not to notice.

“Did you go to Tian Yuqing to talk about this?” I asked her, approaching from a different angle.

Right after I asked, Tian Xiaoqi rolled her eyes so hard they nearly disappeared. “I told him a long time ago, but he thinks I’m being too sensitive. I strongly suspect he has a lot to do with this. Besides, he’s been meticulous since he was a child. I don’t believe he can’t see that there’s something wrong with that man.”

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

Tian Xiaoqi nodded solemnly, without a hint of a joke in her expression. “That possibility is not non-existent.”

I rubbed my chin. After scrambling around this place for three or four days, my newly grown stubble was becoming a bit prickly. Thinking about it, Tian Xiaoqi’s words weren’t entirely without merit. In ancient times, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of people killing and slaughtering cities to seize power. Human nature is always unpredictable, even among blood relatives.

Tian Xiaoqi suspected that Tian Yuqing had orchestrated the whole thing, but I felt that such a possibility was relatively small. If I were the one handling this, I wouldn’t choose such a path, just to be safe.

Tian Xiao was already advanced in years. He might depart this world in just a few more years anyway. If the goal was truly to seize the family estate, there was no need to deliberately hide him. Even if they did hide him, replacing him with a fake didn’t make much sense.

Setting aside the difficulty of finding a double, the sheer effort involved in such a mobilization wouldn’t be as cost-effective as simply holding a funeral and claiming the old man had died suddenly in his sleep.

So I shook my head. “It doesn’t seem like Tian Yuqing’s doing. That would make things too complicated, and the more complicated a plan is, the more likely it is to go wrong.”

I had just finished speaking when a flash of inspiration hit me. I grabbed Tian Xiaoqi and asked, “Do you know anything about your great-grandfather’s youth? For example, where he used to work? Did he ever mention it to you?”

Tian Xiaoqi winced from my grip and strangely pulled back her hand to rub it. “The ancestors of your grandfather and my great-grandfather were all in business with the Tomb-Raiding Faction. Later, those people from the faction were caught, some were executed and others were imprisoned. With nowhere else to go, they scattered to find places to hide. They only dared to come out and make a living after that period passed. Did your grandfather never tell you any of this?”

The thought almost made me laugh. My grandfather? He was just an old farmer who spent all day squatting by the curb watching his fields. He was incredibly tight-lipped and had never told me anything like that.

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

As it turned out, Tian Xiaoqi explained that her family’s ancestors practiced the skill of orientation. For a Tomb Robber’s Tunnel, they determined the width, length, the best places to turn, and the weight-bearing capacity of the ceiling. Many tomb raiders would consult the Tian family masters for such expertise. Her great-grandfather only knew that one skill, so he later joined an engineering team to help dig tunnels and the like.

Hearing the words “engineering team,” my heart skipped a beat. Just as I was about to press for more details, I felt Lu A’yao suddenly press down on my hand. I turned to look at him, and he quickly shot a look at He Yu. He Yu rolled to his feet and threw both torches to the ground, stomping them out.

The two of them completed the entire sequence in less than a minute.

The voices stopped abruptly, and the surroundings returned to a deathly silence. The torches above had been so warm that I almost fell into a false sense of security. Now that they were out, the cold wind made me shiver as I sat there, remembering that we were still inside that stone pagoda shrouded in mist.

Lu A’yao kept his hand on my wrist. I didn’t know what was happening, so I leaned toward his ear and whispered, asking him what was wrong and if something had happened.

His gaze pierced through one of the pagoda’s windows as he whispered back, “Something is outside. It’s moving fast.”

He Yu also moved beside us and nudged me with his elbow. “That Infant Corpse… did you guys finish it off earlier?”

An ominous premonition slowly rose in my heart. Before I could speak, I saw a dark shadow flash past the window. Immediately after, the thing landed on a stone pillar less than ten meters away. The sound of long nails scraping against the stone was exceptionally ear-piercing.

Lu A’yao moved very slowly to pull me up from the ground. At the same time, his other hand reached into his bag for something. It was pitch black before my eyes, and I could only see a dark mass crouched on the pillar, its blood-red eyes staring fixedly at us.

Nearby, He Yu and Tian Xiaoqi were also moving, but I didn’t know what they were doing because I didn’t dare shift my gaze from that thing for even a second.

We stared at the creature for a long time. I couldn’t tell if Lu A’yao made the first move or if the creature attacked first.

I saw the objects in Lu A’yao’s hands cross with a sharp metallic clink. In that instant, the creature lunged at me. Lu A’yao gripped my wrist and shoved me backward with force, then shouted 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 pagoda instantly lit up, and I saw 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, and several dried grass roots were wrapped around its massive infant head. It let out a roar at the sight of me, a high-pitched, shrill sound that was terrifyingly similar to a baby’s crying. It was so grating that both He Yu and I covered our ears.

He Yu didn’t hesitate. He pulled the box gun from his belt and started firing. The monster was wounded before it could escape. Three bullets hit two of its legs, and black blood splattered across the floor. The Infant Corpse let out a loud roar and scrambled back onto the stone pillar.

The textures of the stone carvings on the pillar were very complex. The Infant Corpse crawled into the hollowed-out decorations with incredible speed. He Yu raised his hand and riddled the carvings with holes, causing stone fragments to clatter to the ground. For a moment, dust filled the air inside the pagoda.

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

The noise He Yu made by himself was almost enough for an entire regiment. After emptying one hand’s worth of bullets, he reloaded with a single hand. The firepower was so intense that he was practically turning the Infant Corpse into a sieve. Once the decorations were blasted flat, the creature realized it couldn’t hide and was forced to charge down.

At that moment, Lu A’yao, who had been standing still 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 his Ring Blade to hook, stab, and flip. The Infant Corpse was impaled straight through the belly. It let out a few struggling cries before gradually falling still.

Lu A’yao tossed the slimy monster onto the ground. The blade of the Ring Blade in his right hand flashed, and blood dripped from the edge to the floor. Not a single drop remained on the blade itself.

Why hadn’t I seen this kid with such a good treasure before?

He Yu saw me staring in a daze and gave a chuckle. “How is it? This trip has 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. It completely ruined the structure of the outer cliff. Later, rocks started falling, so 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 bag fell to the bottom of the waterway and got hooked on something.”

He Yu pointed at the Ring Blade in Lu A’yao’s hand as he spoke. “Then Old Lu went into the water to retrieve the gear, and the thing hooking my bag was exactly what’s in his hand. His previous Soft Whip was broken anyway, so this 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 stench from the corpse’s blood began to slowly evaporate and spread with the air.

I felt a bit nauseous, but in the next second, I heard the sound of chanting coming from the Pagoda again. The sound echoed through the structure, but this time it was different. I could hear it with exceptional clarity.

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 A’yao and saw that his expression was normal. I began to suspect that I was the only one who could hear the chanting. I didn’t know what this meant, so I prepared to ask for help.

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

Hearing this, Lu A’yao 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.

“I had hallucinations when I was tied up by the Mycelium. In the vision, I entered this Pagoda and saw a monster. That monster took on your appearance to deceive me, aiming to make me climb the Pagoda and worship the Buddha. At that time, I could hear the same chanting I hear now,” I told him.

Lu A’yao waited seriously for me to finish, then asked, “Then 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 A’yao’s chest rose and fell, clearly relieved.

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

Lu A’yao 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 for the Transcendence Ritual. This is a soul-suppressing tower.”

The chanting was for the Transcendence Ritual, so why was Gan Ji the only one who could hear it?