Chapter 115: The Underground Palace Sewer

As soon as I finished speaking, He Yu shoved me away with his hand. “Go, go, go! Out of the way! Honestly, this place isn’t even that big. The three of us must have searched it two or three times by now. Where’s this passage of yours? There isn’t even a trace of it!”

He slung an arm over my shoulder. “Xiao Yao, you didn’t remember it wrong, did you?”

I slapped his hand away and said firmly, “Impossible! That map is burned into my mind. The passage definitely exists, and it’s located right beneath this stone chamber, unless the person who drew the map made a mistake.”

Chen Canghai straightened up from the other side and shook his head at us, indicating that he hadn’t found any gaps or mechanisms either.

I was getting puzzled and paced around the stone chamber like a headless fly. He Yu, on the other hand, was unhurried. He checked the time again, put his hands on his hips, sat down right in the middle of the open area, and began pulling things out of his massive travel bag one by one.

“You two use your brains. I can’t think of a way out, but I can handle logistics.” He Yu pulled several pieces of coal out of the bag. He had snatched this bag from Qiao Sangui’s crew during the earlier chaos, and the compression sacks inside were packed with coal briquettes and instant noodles.

I suspected he had planned this all along.

“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t you start a fire! We don’t even know if there’s enough oxygen in here for the three of us to make it out. You light that coal, and before we even find the exit, we’ll be poisoned to death by your carbon monoxide.” I quickly warned him as I watched him tinker.

He Yu shot me a side-eye and checked the sealed bags in the pack. “Xiao Yao, you underestimate me too much. Is your Lord He really that dumb? I’m just looking to see what’s in the bags. Once we find an exit, we need to eat a proper meal. Chewing on compressed biscuits all day isn’t good for our health.”

This guy was still making excuses. The glint in his eyes earlier clearly showed he wanted to start a fire and cook right then and there.

I kept my eyes on him until He Yu sighed and silently stuffed everything back into the bag. I rested my chin on my hand and surveyed the stone chamber, my mind racing.

By normal standards, this stone chamber was built very simply. There were few stone beams or loose tiles, and the walls were rammed tight with stone blocks with hardly any decorative carvings. That should have greatly reduced our workload in checking for hidden mechanisms. Yet despite that, we were still trapped here.

I soon noticed something off and went to feel the seams between the bricks. They were completely sealed shut with mortar, including the door we had tried so hard to push open. It had to be designed this way, because only then could not a single red fire ant from outside crawl in.

If that were the case, the oxygen level here should be very low. Yet we had been in here for so long without feeling even a hint of suffocation, which meant there really was some sort of ventilation facility here.

Chen Canghai was standing near me. Right then, he stood in the center of the stone chamber and struck a fire-starter. I immediately watched the direction of the flame. As soon as it caught, it began to tilt toward the door. Though the tilt was slight, it proved there was indeed a moving draft.

Holding the fire-starter, Chen Canghai walked a full circle around the stone chamber. When he approached Chen Jianguo’s body, I noticed the draft blowing past grew noticeably stronger.

I quickly shone my flashlight in that direction.

We hadn’t moved Chen Jianguo’s body much earlier. Where he had collapsed was a corner of the stone chamber, quite far from the door. I slapped my forehead, thinking my brain had been out of commission so long it was rusted over.

Since Chen Jianguo had already lost so much blood back then, the fact that he collapsed in the farthest corner after entering the room was suspicious in itself. The only explanation was that this corner was different from the other three, and Chen Jianguo was actually using his own corpse to give us a hint.

Yet I hadn’t realized it at all earlier.

He Yu stood before the corpse and bowed three times. “As expected of a veteran. Even at the brink of death, he was thinking of leaving a way out for the younger generation. Don’t worry, we got your note. May your spirit in heaven protect us and grant us smooth sailing for the rest of the trip.”

After he finished muttering, I bowed to the body too—a small sign of respect before moving it. The old man, Chen Jianguo, really thought several steps ahead. He had used his corpse to cover the mechanism before he died; otherwise, that unknown team might have destroyed this place.

The three of us moved Chen Jianguo aside, and He Yu squatted in the corner to inspect it. He kicked the floor slabs a few times and clicked his tongue. “Something’s wrong. The wind is definitely coming from here, but how do we get in? We can’t seriously dig a tomb-robbing tunnel to get through, can we? Do either of you know how to do that?”

Chen Canghai took off his hearing aids and put them away safely; at this point, he probably didn’t feel like talking.

I certainly didn’t know how to dig a tomb-robbing tunnel, and Chen Canghai likely didn’t either. He Yu’s family didn’t deal in that line of work at all, and the only one who might know how, Lu Ayao, was missing. We were in serious trouble now.

One trouble after another. He Yu struggled up from the ground and turned back to dig tools out of his pack, while I stepped over to take a look.

Thinking about how He Yu had just stomped on the floor slabs, I gave the side wall a token kick. The moment my foot landed, I regretted it—my kick had caved in a section of the wall, leaving a hollow indentation.

Crap! That didn’t feel right!

“Fuck! We’re doomed! Why is it always me?!”

Before I could even process what was happening, I let out a loud shout as the ground beneath my feet suddenly gave way. Chen Canghai rushed over to grab me first, but missed, and immediately after, I fell almost vertically through a gap in the shattered floor.

Fortunately, it was a fairly smooth stone chute, so slippery that I couldn’t brake at all. After falling straight down for a few seconds, the chute turned into a downhill slope with several curves. My screams echoed through the hollow space, sounding wretched and distorted.

Finally, I slid through the pipe-like passage and plunged into water, getting a noseful and mouthful of foul sludge. The instant I hit the water, I struggled to lift my head above the surface, wiped my face, and found that this was a shallow waterway. When I stood straight, the water only came up to my thighs.

Just as I stood up, a strange “Yahoo!” rang out from the pipe behind me. Cursing inwardly, I quickly waded out of the way, but I still got splattered with foul water by He Yu, who landed like a massive depth charge.

“Damn! Is this the sewer for the underground palace? Why does it smell so awful!” He Yu covered his nose as soon as he pulled himself up out of the water.

I was so nauseated by the foul water that I couldn’t speak for a good while either. When Chen Canghai finally slid out of the passage, I moved fast and grabbed his arm, saving him from face-planting into the filthy water like the two of us had.

The stench around us was truly beyond description. He Yu pulled out a towel, cut it into three pieces with his knife, and the three of us tied a piece across our faces.

I shone my flashlight in all directions and realized this passage actually ran straight through from end to end. Air flowed in from one side, while the dirty water we were standing in seemed contaminated by something; whenever we moved around, a fresh wave of stench rolled up from underneath.

The smell reminded me of what I’d caught a whiff of when I fell from the stone pillar earlier. It just hadn’t been a fully enclosed space back then, so the stench hadn’t been as sharp and offensive. Or maybe it was just an illusion from my sense of smell being dulled after almost being shattered to pieces back then.

“Head right, into the wind,” I said.

He Yu pulled his makeshift mask tight. “Seriously, who built this underground palace anyway? This stench is way too extreme. Doesn’t having a stinking ditch like this right under the palace ruin the feng shui?”

The water in the channel was far too murky for the flashlight to reach the bottom. I had no idea what kind of sediment had settled down there, but wading through it felt terribly sticky and slimy underfoot.

Chen Canghai took the lead to break trail, wading with great difficulty, and it was just as grueling for the two of us behind him. Before long, all three of us were dripping with sweat. In the end, we were too exhausted to even speak, communicating solely by flashing our flashlights at one another.

Two flashes meant stop and rest; one flash meant we’d rested enough to keep going.

By the third break, He Yu was leaning against the wall, practically ready to collapse. He groaned, unable to comfortably sit or stand. “Brothers, how long have we been walking? Why does it feel like it’s getting stickier underfoot? And these stone walls too—they’re all sticky and slippery.”

I wiped my hands on my clothes and pulled a bottle of mineral water from He Yu’s bag. After I took a sip, He Yu reached out. “Don’t put it away yet. I’m dying of thirst, give me a drink too.”

His hands were covered in the wet, slippery black water from the stone walls, so I simply unscrewed the cap and poured some into his mouth for him.

I scraped a bit of the black grime that had smeared from the water onto the stone wall and sniffed it. Frowning, I asked Chen Canghai, “Have you seen this stuff before? The water in this underground palace should theoretically connect to the underground river. Why is it so filthy?”

Just as I finished speaking, the sound of water rippling echoed from the pitch-black passage ahead. Ripples spread toward us in circles. He Yu immediately drew his knife and stood straight. The sound wasn’t loud, but it made all of us go on high alert.

A moment passed, but no one appeared from ahead.

He Yu asked in a hushed whisper, “What’s the situation?”

As he spoke, I saw a dead flashlight bobbing toward us on the water from up ahead. I recognized the black flashlight at a glance, waded forward a few steps, and fished it out of the water.

After a quick glance at the flashlight, I turned back and waved to them, shouting, “Hurry up! Lu Ayao might be right ahead!”