Chapter 124: Meeting Han Jian Again

When I heard the term “corpse beetle,” I froze for a moment. I wasn’t entirely clear on what the experts meant by that name, but seeing these creatures that could “turn into” stones, I instinctively thought of some kind of scavenger arthropod. Once they unfolded, they looked far too much like live shrimp with fangs.

“These aren’t corpse beetles. They’re stone horseshoe crab bugs. Their eyesight is poor, but their hearing is sharp. We need to get out of here fast,” Chen Canghai whispered in a hushed voice.

He spoke with urgent haste, stunning both He Yu and me. We clamped our mouths shut at once and immediately followed Lu Ayao’s lead, pressing ourselves against the wall and slowly shuffling forward along the waterway behind the two of them.

The beam of my flashlight remained fixed on those stones that twitched every now and then. The further we went, the denser the stones became. But the rocks formed by these stone horseshoe crab bugs looked so much like ordinary rocks that it was impossible to tell which was a bug and which was actual stone.

The four of us pressed against the wall the entire way. Because of those stone horseshoe crab bugs, Lu Ayao picked up the pace, marching forward for over twenty minutes without stopping. My chest heaved violently with exertion. Finally, just a second before my strength gave out completely, I looked up and saw bluestone steps leading upward.

It was an uphill stretch, with easily over a thousand steps in total.

Chen Canghai stepped onto the stairs first, then turned back to haul He Yu and me up out of the corpse oil one by one. Without pausing to clean the filth off ourselves, we scrambled up over a hundred meters on all fours.

Only when we reached a relatively dry spot did Lu Ayao suggest we stop.

He Yu pulled off the cloth covering his face and wiped the corpse water off his shoes against a rock, cursing, “Fuck! What kind of damn sewer is this? It’s just a flooded burial pit. Disgusting. I’ve never been to a place this foul!”

I sat on the ground to catch my breath and said, “Actually, based on the structure of the underground palace, this place really might not have been flooded back in the day. We haven’t seen any spots for human sacrifice along the way, so we can’rule out that this entire passage is a burial trench. There are probably corpses buried beneath all of this.”

“And goddamn child corpses at that!” He Yu spat.

The residue we’d picked up from the water was horribly sticky and nauseating, making me feel a bit sick too, so I followed He Yu’s example and rubbed myself against the wall. Just then, I saw Lu Ayao suddenly react as if he’d sensed something, shining his flashlight toward the bluestone slabs ahead.

This path was carved out above the waterway. After more than a hundred meters of stone steps came a bend, beyond which the path was mostly level ground. Lu Ayao was currently aiming his beam right at that bend shrouded in darkness.

Watching his movements, my nerves instantly snapped tight. My heart leaped into my throat, hammering wildly in my chest. Had he spotted more of those stone horseshoe crab bugs?

To my surprise, after only three or four seconds, another strong beam of light shone back from the far end of Lu Ayao’s flashlight beam.

There was someone there!

My heart went cold, and I instinctively reached for the knife at my waist, terrified we had run into Qiao Sangui and his gang of desperadoes again. They were far scarier than any Stone Horseshoe Crab Insect. If we really crossed paths, given the bad blood between us, a lethal shootout was entirely possible.

I stared intently at the corner as a relatively unfamiliar face rounded the bend from the other side. He was covered in blood and his face was bruised, but he grew visibly excited the moment he saw us. A second later, it clicked—this was one of the brothers Han Jian had brought along!

He waved at us and hurriedly shouted behind him, “Brother Han! I found them! We’re saved!”

“Oh? It’s that kid Han Jian!” He Yu had been scratching himself against the wall like a bear with an itch, but he stopped the moment he saw the man.

Hearing this, Lu Ayao was the first to step forward. Chen Canghai didn’t follow immediately, subconsciously glancing back at me instead. I hadn’t expected to run into Han Jian in such a vast place, and I couldn’t help but feel a surge of excitement. Forgetting my exhaustion, I hurried up a few steps and motioned for Chen Canghai and He Yu to keep up.

Around the bend, the stone path ahead suddenly became incredibly crowded. Han Jian had far fewer men left now. Only a few scattered individuals were leaning against the sides of the stone path, their heads and legs covered in injuries.

Seeing a familiar face in a place like this was enough to bring tears to anyone’s eyes. Some of them weren’t even close with us and we had barely spoken before, but because living souls were so rare in the Underground Palace, they pushed through their pain to come up and give us a hug.

He Yu thrived in these kinds of situations. Sentimental words poured out of him without a second thought, and within two or three sentences, he had men on the verge of tears.

Han Jian had the fewest injuries. His outer jacket had been torn into shreds, leaving him in just his short-sleeved undershirt, with one arm wrapped in gauze.

I could tell they must have encountered a desperate situation and survived a bitter struggle. Their casualties were severe, forcing them to hide here and rest.

After Lu Ayao exchanged a few brief words with him, Han Jian came striding toward me. Just as I was about to speak, he yanked me into a sudden, fierce hug, thumping my back so hard that the noodles I’d eaten earlier nearly came back up.

Then he released me and gave He Yu a bear hug as well.

“I’m only realizing now how important it is to have you guys in the group!” After hugging us, Han Jian wiped his eyes, looking thoroughly aggrieved.

My head was full of questions. What was going on? Was our appearance really that moving to him? Had his conscience finally kicked in, making him realize how good I was to have around?

“Ever since we split up from you guys, our luck has been in a downward spiral. First, the stone cliff sank, and we had no choice but to jump into the water. We ended up getting sucked into a crack and washed down into a pool of black water. Who knew that black pool was full of stone horseshoe crab insects? Several of our brothers were bitten to death in an instant.”

My heart skipped a beat as I listened. A pool? Could it be the exact same pool I had fallen into? I vaguely remembered that the water in that pool really had been unnaturally black.

I shifted my gaze and happened to lock eyes with Lu Ayao, who was standing behind Han Jian. He glanced at me once before looking away. I was about seventy or eighty percent sure now. It seemed the place where I fell off the stone pillar was the same location Han Jian was describing.

So those dark things I saw floating on the water had most likely been stone horseshoe crab insects. But they hadn’t bitten me. I let out a long sigh of relief, realizing I had actually been quite lucky.

Han Jian continued, “Once we finally managed to scramble ashore, those insects chased us into a wider stone passage. We found another open space at the end of it, with a pagoda standing right in the center. We entered the stone passage labyrinth through the top of the pagoda.”

Based on his description of where the pagoda was, it didn’t sound like the same one we had encountered earlier. I wondered to myself if there were countless small chambers hidden throughout this place, each containing a ghost Buddha dozens of meters tall.

Still, Han Jian and his men had been smart enough not to stop and worship the Buddha, heading straight into the labyrinth behind it instead. But according to him, the real despair began once they were inside. They wandered around in circles, and just as they managed to figure out a few patterns, the labyrinth routes automatically shifted and scrambled themselves. In the end, they completely lost track of where they were.

I stole another glance at Lu Ayao. The culprit behind all this was currently staring up at the ceiling, looking like he was studying the carvings on the stone passage above.

Just putting on an act, I thought to myself.