Chapter 121: Black Taisui – 2

“N-no, what’s wrong? Is th-there a problem?” I felt a chill down my spine as the three of them stared at me.

After a moment of silence, He Yu tugged at Lu Ayao. “Alright, alright, let’s stop the damn guessing. No matter how dire the situation was, the point is that Xiao Yao survived. That’s the best outcome, right?”

His words left me completely in the dark. Once Lu Ayao let go, I quickly pulled my sleeves back down. These guys had overactive imaginations—who knew where a few cuts on my arm had taken their thoughts? They probably assumed my situation at the time was utterly hopeless.

I touched my knee. I had scraped it earlier as well, but I hadn’t paid it any attention, and feeling it now, it didn’t hurt at all anymore.

“Stop staring at me, I’m really fine.” I pressed my palms together, short of kneeling to beg them to look elsewhere. My mind raced, and I quickly shifted the topic to ask Lu Ayao, “So, why did you say the water is dangerous?”

“Is it because of the corpse oil? But Old Lu, you’re being too sensitive. Corpse oil is disgusting at most, but it’s hardly dangerous,” He Yu chimed in.

Lu Ayao glanced toward the distant hole leading to the waterway. “It’s not the corpse oil. I noticed there’s something else in the water besides the oil. For example, stones.”

I let out a confused “Huh?” and asked him, “What stones?”

Lu Ayao said, “While wading through the water, I passed an area filled with corpses up ahead and noticed many stones floating on the surface, right alongside the bodies. Something was clearly wrong, so I stopped and turned back. But the corpse poison was spreading too fast, and I couldn’t reach the hole I had fallen through. I could only use whatever strength I had left to dig a safe robber’s tunnel upward for temporary shelter.”

“What?! There’s a pile of corpses up ahead?!” He Yu was so shocked his jaw nearly dropped to the floor.

Lu Ayao nodded at him.

My focus wasn’t on the corpses, but rather on why stones would float on the water. That part completely baffled me. Lu Ayao’s description was strange; in all my life, I had never seen a stone that didn’t sink in water, unless what was in the passage wasn’t water at all. That was the only way stones could float on the surface.

Although corpse oil had accumulated in the waterway, the primary component was still water.

“Why would stones float on the water?” I asked Lu Ayao.

“I don’t know. I felt something was off, and since I was injured, I pulled back first,” Lu Ayao said.

I nearly laughed out of exasperation. I thought to myself, so if you hadn’t been hurt, you actually intended to go over and check it out?

Just then, a detail flashed through my mind. I quickly turned and shoved Chen Canghai. “Wait, do you remember when we tried to reach Han Jian and the others from the stone pillars? Didn’t the word ‘stones’ come up over the walkie-talkie back then?”

We hadn’t been ready to jump from the pillars yet, so I had tried to use the walkie-talkie first. I originally intended to tune into Lu Ayao’s channel, but somehow I connected directly to one of Han Jian’s men. I still remembered three words coming through the static in fragments: “Stones… go… first?”