Chapter 128 Entering the River

“But we don’t have time! It’s crawling with Stone Horseshoe Crab Insects out there. Who knows where that tiny Qi Vent is in a place this big? Besides, this entire Underground Palace has undergone a massive shift in position. There’s no telling if the Qi Vent has been blocked!” Han Jian spoke faster and faster, clearly gripped by panic.

I listened from the side, just about to speak, when the entire Buddhist Pagoda suddenly began to shake violently. Several workers standing too close to the stairs lost their footing and plummeted from the tower in an instant. In the chaos, Chen Canghai scrambled against the wall and managed to grab hold of a window frame.

He Yu couldn’t keep his balance either. He was thrown hard against the stair railing. The thousand-year-old wooden railing completely gave way under the impact, and he let out a sharp cry of alarm.

I was hugging a pillar for dear life. Terrified, I spun around and lunged for him, catching him by the collar just as he slipped. He was left dangling in mid-air. I didn’t even dare to breathe. The pagoda was still shaking, and large chunks of dust and stone were raining down from above. My arm quickly began to ache from the strain.

“Help him! Old Lu! Get over here and help, I can’t hold on much longer!” My face was flushed deep red. I was holding onto He Yu through sheer willpower, the veins in my arms feeling as though they were about to burst from the pressure.

He Yu took one look down the stairwell, closed his eyes, and started hollering, “Mamma mia! Little Yao, this time next year, you better remember to burn some paper for me! Oh, and bring a bottle of wine! I want the expensive stuff!”

“Shut up, He Yu!” I roared at him.

Just then, I felt a gust of wind at my back. A hand reached out and grabbed the other side of He Yu’s collar. The weight in my hand lightened instantly. I caught my breath, then put every ounce of strength I had into pulling with Lu A’yao to haul He Yu back up.

He Yu crawled over like a maggot and hugged the pillar just like us. The brush with death had turned his face ghostly pale, and he still hadn’t recovered.

“Wha… what’s the situation here? We didn’t set off any explosives. Can this pagoda understand human speech? Did it decide to dismantle itself just to save us some dynamite?”

The pagoda continued to vibrate, shaking off most of the Stone Horseshoe Crab Insects that were crawling up its sides. I focused on the sensation. The tremors didn’t seem to be coming from the base of the tower, but rather from deep underground. It was the ground shaking that was causing the pagoda to vibrate.

Just as the thought crossed my mind, the pagoda gave a sudden lurch.

“What’s going on? Did it stop shaking?”

He Yu was about to cautiously let go of the pillar when the Buddhist Pagoda began to shake even more violently. This frequency was on an entirely different level than before. The world spun around me, and I was nearly shaken loose from the pillar I was clinging to.

“Is this a damn earthquake!” He Yu cursed. “We can’t just stay like this. Do something!”

“It’s worse than that. We’re sinking!” Lu A’yao suddenly shouted.

His words jolted me into alertness. A flash of insight struck me, and the rough outline of a plan formed in my mind.

I tried to use my flashlight to find a reference point on the outer stone walls, but we were too far from the window. Combined with the dust falling from the Pagoda Spire, I couldn’t see a thing.

I hugged the pillar tight and shouted to Lu A’yao and He Yu, “Guys! I think I know what’s happening! But to be sure, I need to get to the window and take another look!”

Hearing this, He Yu was so happy he almost slapped the pillar. “Go, go, go! The two of us will push you over. Little Chen is right by the window, but you’d better stand firm. Don’t go tumbling out headfirst!”

Chen Canghai, who was barely a meter away and closest to the window, heard me and immediately freed one hand. He braced his legs, ready to catch me. I adjusted my posture, supported by Lu A’yao, and then He Yu gave me a powerful shove from behind.

Chen Canghai caught me successfully and quickly made room for me to press against the wall. Dust from the top of the tower covered my head and face. The pagoda was still slowly sinking, and I knew I had to move fast.

I grabbed the window frame with both hands and leaned out to look down. With just one glance, I was almost entirely certain of my theory.

We had been wrong. This entire Underground Palace, along with the cliffside we saw earlier, wasn’t actually beside the river. It was completely submerged beneath the riverbed. The cliff and the palace were likely solid rock originally, but the builders had hollowed them out and installed a massive traction-based mechanical system.

Not only that, but this mechanism was on a timer. I suspected there were two sets of machinery currently operating in the Underground Palace. The first was a timed mechanism that pulled the cliff up to make it appear out of thin air. The second was the anti-theft device that Lu A’yao had accidentally triggered earlier.

I hadn’t been sure before because this kind of primitive traction mechanism requires a specific type of bearing. To move an entire Underground Palace up and down, that bearing would have to be unimaginably massive. But seeing this Eighteenth Floor Buddhist Pagoda made everything click.

It wasn’t that there was no bearing; it was that there was more than one.

The Eighteenth Floor Buddhist Pagoda we were in was the main bearing. Every other small chamber also contained a Buddhist Pagoda, which served as secondary bearings, all following the main tower’s timed ascent and descent.

When the timer hit its mark, the Eighteenth Floor Buddhist Pagoda would sink, triggering the internal mechanisms of the palace to rise. This caused the towering cliff to emerge from beneath the water, creating the illusion of it appearing out of nowhere. Similarly, at the next timed interval, the pagoda would rise, and the cliff would sink back down.

That was why the top of the pagoda we were in was so close to the cave ceiling.

On the map Qiao Sangui had me memorize, there was a dotted line drawn near the Infant Corpse pit. I hadn’t understood what it meant at the time, but now I realized that dotted line was likely the Qi Vent Lu A’yao had mentioned.

“Can you pinpoint the location?” He Yu yelled at me.

I thought for a moment and shook my head. “The floor plan was too simple. All I know is that there must be an opening on the underwater side wall that connects to the river outside.”

Lu A’yao looked up at Han Jian, who was scrambling toward a window frame, and said, “It doesn’t matter. Just swim after me. I can calculate the approximate location of the Qi Vent. When the pagoda sinks to a certain height, we jump!”

“Damn, Old Lu, you actually calculated that! You’re incredible, a human smart GPS. I’m taking you with me everywhere from now on!” He Yu looked at Lu A’yao with immediate adoration. Leaning against the wall, I watched his expression, and it gave me a full-body case of the creeps.

At that moment, Chen Canghai glanced out the window and said to me, “The height is about right.”

I quickly adjusted my posture.

“Jump!” Lu A’yao shouted.

Almost the instant the words left his mouth, I lunged out from the window frame. There was still a significant distance between this position and the water. I tucked my head and crashed into the surface. The freezing water sent a sharp jolt through me. I swam upward a few strokes and saw the others jumping down one after another.

Lu A’yao landed to my right. As soon as he surfaced, he grabbed my arm and started swimming outward. I followed him, using my flashlight to signal He Yu to follow us. We swam hard in one direction for about two minutes. Underwater visibility was extremely low, and I had completely lost my sense of direction.

All I knew was that I soon felt a stone wall. Then, a circular underwater passage appeared before me. Lu A’yao immediately began using his hands to move the stones blocking the entrance.

Our oxygen was running low, so we floated up to catch our breath before diving back down to help. The stones only blocked a small portion of the passage. If we cleared them all at once, the river water outside might suck us all in, so He Yu signaled for me to stop when we were down to the last few rocks.

We surfaced, finding the stone walls above the water crawling with Stone Horseshoe Crab Insects.

Lu A’yao looked at the Buddhist Pagoda sinking into the depths and reached out to He Yu for the backpack. “I have to go back. This Pagoda cannot be allowed to remain in this world.”

“Wait, you’re going to blow up the Pagoda again?” I grabbed him.

He Yu thought for a moment before handing over the backpack stuffed with explosives. “Hurry up! Blow it to hell so we can get out of here and have a decent meal!”

He then patted me on the back. I understood the look in their eyes and finally let go.

Lu A’yao took the waterproof backpack and swam back. He was incredibly fast. Within minutes, I saw his head pop out of the water. He threw the backpack, which was already sputtering with fire, hard toward the Pagoda Spire, then immediately plunged headfirst back toward us.

He Yu slapped my shoulder, and I quickly dove back into the water. Han Jian was using a knife to pry the stones loose at the bottom. Chen Canghai was the closest and was sucked in instantly. A moment later, I felt a powerful suction pull both He Yu and me inside as well.