Chapter 171: The Mechanism

Tian Xiaoqi and I continued moving forward along the plank path. The walkway, constructed from linked iron chains, was incredibly unstable. I had no idea how deep the darkness below went or how high we were, so I didn’t dare move too fast. This completely throttled our pace, forcing us to stop every three steps.

After walking for over half an hour, I shone my flashlight toward the end of the rift, sweat pouring down my face. I discovered the path was nearly at its end, and not far ahead of us, a massive gap had appeared in the walkway.

I swept the light up and down, feeling a chill of dread. The sudden gap was at least two or three meters wide. We had no rope with us, so if we wanted to see what lay beyond, we had no choice but to jump across.

Hardening my resolve, I took a step forward, only to have Tian Xiaoqi grab my sleeve.

“The distance is too far. If you miss, you’re going to fall. Think about this. The safest way right now is to head back up. Setting aside the fact that Lu Ayao is more capable than us, he’s moving so fast that he clearly has no intention of waiting for you. This place is too strange. For safety’s sake, let’s stop following him and get back up first.” Tian Xiaoqi looked at the increasingly bizarre reliefs on the walls, her face clouded with worry.

I felt a twinge of cowardice myself, but then I suddenly remembered the feeling of being left alone in the darkness of the seabed after Bai Shenxian departed. My resolve hardened instantly, and my fear receded.

Lu Ayao had gone down alone. At the very least, I had Tian Xiaoqi with me. If this was so difficult for the two of us, then he was facing all these hardships and dangers entirely by himself with nothing but a flashlight. The mere thought of that kind of isolation felt suffocating.

“We can’t. We don’t even know the way back up yet,” I said. “By the time we figure out how to get out, explain the situation, and have Fourth Brother send people down, at least a week will have passed. Lu Ayao just had the poison neutralized; he won’t last that long.”

Hearing this, Tian Xiaoqi began to waver. While she was thinking, I rolled up my sleeves and took a few steps back to get into a starting stance. I recalled jumping across stone pillars of a similar distance back in Yunnan, so I figured this shouldn’t be a major problem.

I secured my flashlight. Tian Xiaoqi quickly moved out of the way, and I immediately accelerated into a sprint. But the moment I leaped, I realized I had overlooked a very serious issue. In Yunnan, I had managed the jump because Chen Canghai was on the other side to catch me. This time, there was no one to meet me on the other end.

Furthermore, the width of this gap was significantly larger than the distance between those stone pillars. In mid-air, I realized the distance was way too far. As I began to fall, time seemed to stand still.

My knuckles actually brushed the iron chain on the far side, but it happened too fast. I couldn’t react in time. My hand slipped, and I plummeted straight down from the heights. I even heard Tian Xiaoqi’s scream from above.

Time slowed down. All sorts of random thoughts flooded my mind. Was I really going to die like this? What a waste, what a pointless way to go. Falling to my death… even if Fourth Brother came to collect my body, he wouldn’t even know where to start looking.

Just as the thought crossed my mind, my descent came to a jarring halt. The sudden stop jerked my neck violently. When I opened my eyes, I found myself hanging from a stone beam. Below me were dozens of intersecting beams, and my backpack strap was snagged on one of them, leaving me dangling precariously.

Tian Xiaoqi’s cries reached me from far above, her voice trembling and on the verge of tears. “Gan Ji! Gan Ji!”

I managed to lift my head. “I’m not dead! I’m caught! There are stone beams all over down here!”

She went silent for a moment upon hearing my voice, then her tone shifted to joy. She quickly called out again, “See if you can get down! I’ll find a way to meet you!”

My shoulders were aching terribly from being suspended. I looked down and saw another stone beam just two meters below me. I twisted my body slightly and pulled a sharpened karambit from the gear bag at my lower back. Reaching up with effort, I finally managed to grab the backpack strap. With a reverse grip, I flicked the blade upward, slicing through the strap instantly.

I dropped as expected, landing hard on my backside on the beam below. I sat there for a moment, feeling like I’d been put through a wash cycle, my limbs weak and trembling. After catching my breath, I wiped my face with my sleeve, stood up, and began searching for Tian Xiaoqi.

Tian Xiaoqi was brave enough. She picked a beam that her flashlight could reach and jumped straight down, then used the intersecting beams like stepping stones to reach me.

The moment she found her footing, she lunged forward and hugged me. I stiffened instinctively for a second, but luckily she released me quickly. she was so anxious she was stomping her feet; I hadn’t even seen her this worked up when we were facing those fire ants in Yunnan.

“You scared me to death! Are you okay? It’s so high, you didn’t break anything, did you?” She was speaking several times faster than usual.

I kept telling her I was fine, but she still grabbed me and spun me around several times to check for injuries. I finally had to stop her before I got dizzy. “Sister, I’m really fine. I got caught before I even fell that far. Besides, I’m not that fragile.”

Tian Xiaoqi wanted to ask more, but fearing another round of medical interrogation, I immediately swept my flashlight around to change the subject. “There’s a huge space down here. If the plank paths on both sides have ends, then Lu Ayao most likely headed down here. We—”

Before I could finish, my ears caught a terrifyingly familiar sound. I shut up instantly. Tian Xiaoqi didn’t understand at first, so I made a silent gesture to her. She became hyper-alert in an instant.

Almost simultaneously, a small pebble fell from the rock wall and landed by my feet. It rolled twice. My reflexes kicked in; I realized what was happening immediately. I grabbed Tian Xiaoqi and threw ourselves flat against the beam.

“Quick!” I screamed at her. “Hold onto the beam! Hold on tight!”

Tian Xiaoqi didn’t understand why I had suddenly become so frantic, but she followed my lead anyway, clinging to the stone beam with both arms like a koala. We had just gotten into position when the beam dropped half a meter with a heavy thud, nearly jolting her off.

I quickly drove the claw knife in my right hand into a crevice in the stone to anchor us, then tossed the short rope from my backpack to her with my left hand. “Hold on tight! Or you’re going down!”

The moment I finished speaking, the sound of complex machinery grinding echoed from within the rock walls. Simultaneously, every stone beam within the reach of our flashlights began to shift its position. Seeing such a massive movement with our own eyes was a staggering sight.

However, we soon lost the luxury of admiring the spectacle. Our own beam began to plummet at a terrifying speed. Tian Xiaoqi couldn’t keep her grip on the stone, forcing me to free one hand to grab her while my other hand strained to hold onto the knife embedded in the beam.

I gripped as far up the knife as possible, my palm pressed directly against the blade. It sliced into my skin, drawing blood, but I couldn’t let go. I knew that if I slipped now, the other shifting beams would likely smash into us, flattening us against the rock wall until there was nothing left to scrape away.