Chapter 176: Seeking Death

I watched in silence as Lu Ayao walked toward me. He ignored me at first, instead looking the White Corpse Turtle Immortal up and down where it was pinned to the wall, split in two by his machete. Only after confirming it was thoroughly dead did he pull the blade free. Blood dripped from the steel, staining the floor as he bypassed me to sit in a dark corner of the passage.

I sat where I was, taking a long moment to recover my wits. From the shadows about three meters away, Lu Ayao spoke. “It’s dangerous here. Don’t run around blindly. He Yu will be here soon; go back up with them.”

I finally looked up, alert enough now to realize that Lu Ayao was in a very strange state. To put it simply, he looked as if his soul had been snatched away. Normally, he wouldn’t just sit there like this.

At that moment, I remembered the corpse I’d glimpsed earlier, wedged into the crevice of the wall. The hair on my arms stood up, and an involuntary shiver ran down my spine. My legs were still weak, so I leaned over and shone my flashlight toward the crack in the wall I remembered.

The corpse wedged inside was very small and thin. The parts I could see had already skeletonized, curled up in the deepest part of the fissure. It looked as if the man-eating wall had swallowed her whole. Even with my flashlight, I could only catch a fleeting glimpse of the remains.

Lu Ayao was sitting nearby. He kept his head down, his hands covered in blood. I felt certain that his reason for sitting there was connected to the body in the wall. I patted my legs and began to crawl toward him, slapping my thighs as I went, trying to get my blood flowing and warm up my body.

I crawled to his side and said, “I’m glad I found you. I was too impulsive before. Now I think He Yu was right—there’s definitely more than one White Corpse Turtle Immortal here. We should find a way back up; it’s safer.”

Lu Ayao stared at the beads of blood dripping from his blade. “I’m not going back up,” he said calmly. “You all go. Stop following me.”

I froze. My immediate reaction was to check the wound on his arm. He Yu had mentioned before that the traps in this tomb were incredibly vicious. Lu Ayao had come down to scout the path while barely recovered from a serious illness, and we hadn’t met up until now. Had he fallen prey to some trick of the Yin-Yang Thirteen Palaces?

At the thought, I stood up and unslung my backpack, reaching out to roll up his sleeve. “Where are you hurt? I have medicine, it’s fine. We still have Tian Xiaoqi with us.”

To my surprise, the moment I grabbed his arm, he shoved me away. It was a decisive movement, delivered with enough force that I stumbled back half a step, nearly falling on my backside again.

Confusion flooded me, followed quickly by a surge of resentment. I’d gone through hell to get here—nearly crushed into a meat patty, nearly bitten to death by an Ancient Corpse, and just moments ago, nearly falling to my death. Now that I’d finally found him, this Master Lu was giving me the cold shoulder.

“Explain yourself. What do you mean by that?” I snapped, dropping my backpack onto the ground and looking down at him.

I watched him, and we stayed in that same position for over ten minutes. Just as I reached my breaking point, Lu Ayao finally spoke. He dropped his knife and said, “Lu Xiaosu is dead. There’s no point in me going back.”

“How do you know she’s—” I cut myself off as a realization hit me. I turned my head to glance at the curled-up corpse in the fissure, realizing I’d overlooked something.

Lu Ayao’s pace was naturally much faster than ours. He was skilled in martial arts, and ordinary illusions shouldn’t have been able to trap him. Because of me, we had been trailing far behind him, and we’d been hit by a Ghost Blinding as soon as we entered the Yin-Yang Thirteen Palaces. By all rights, Lu Ayao should have reached the perimeter of the Main Hall by now. He shouldn’t be here.

If he was here, there had to be a reason he was willing to stay.

“We found eight bodies further back,” I said hesitantly. “The remains here are already skeletonized. How can you be so sure it’s Lu Xiaosu?”

He silently produced a cloth bag from behind him. I knelt down and looked through the contents. The machete had likely come from this bag. Inside, besides the blade, was a white whip. It was better made and more resilient than the one Lu Ayao had broken previously.

“The bag was outside. She crawled in there herself,” Lu Ayao said.

I set the bag down and moved back to the fissure. I touched the stones forming the crack; it was only about the width of my fist. Even a child would have trouble squeezing inside. The mystery deepened. Why would she choose such a difficult way to die?

But I couldn’t worry about that now. To me, the living were more important than the dead. Even if that was Lu Xiaosu’s body, I had to get Lu Ayao out of here before we worried about recovering her.

Having made up my mind, I turned back. I heard the click of a windproof lighter. Lu Ayao had produced a cigarette from somewhere and was leaning against the wall, smoking. I didn’t remember him being a smoker; it seemed I didn’t know him as well as I thought.

I walked over, sat beside him, and held out my hand. “Got another? Give me one.”

He handed me the remaining three. I pulled one from the damp, soggy pack and lit it, taking a deep drag. The action made me feel dazed for a moment, as if I were back in middle school, hiding in the last stall of the boys’ restroom, peeking out to make sure the dean wasn’t coming to catch us.

As I inhaled the smoke, my frantic nerves finally settled. I’d run too fast and hadn’t looked where I was going; it might take He Yu a while to find me. Thinking of this, I clicked off my flashlight.

“If you think I’m leaving on my own, you’re wrong. You want to stay here and starve to death? I’m telling you, as long as I, Gan Ji, am alive, that’s not happening,” I said, stating my position simply between puffs of smoke.

Lu Ayao thought for a moment. “Just go. If I’m missing for a month, the Lu Clan will begin funeral preparations for the Clan Head. This won’t involve the Gan Clan or the He Clan.”

I realized he’d misunderstood me. I tossed the cigarette butt aside, rolled to my feet, and clicked the flashlight back on, shining it directly at him. “Is that the point? Is that the point! What kind of people do you take us for? The point is I’m going to save you! Didn’t you just save me? The four of us are going to get out of here safely together!”

Lu Ayao lowered his cigarette and turned to look at me. “Gan Ji, I have nowhere left to go.”

I didn’t quite understand exactly what he meant by that, but I answered anyway. “How is that possible? If you don’t want to go back to Nanjing, you’re welcome at my place anytime. As long as you come to Henan, you’ll never be without a place to stay.”

He fell silent again, head bowed in thought. Seeing that he seemed wavered, I quickly pressed further. “You aren’t alone. There are so many people in this world who genuinely care about you. Why would you want to die all alone in this godforsaken place?”

Lu Ayao let out a short laugh at my words. “Who is left that genuinely cares about me?”

“I do! If you want, I can stay with you. We have to have hope for life; you can’t just give up on yourself.” I patted his shoulder twice, inwardly hoping my “chicken soup for the soul” would have at least some small effect on him.

Lu Ayao didn’t argue with me this time. He sat there, stroking the white whip in his arms, lost in thought. By the time he finished his cigarette, he tossed aside his machete and stood up. He’d decided to follow my lead and find a way out.

At the time, I was quite smug, thinking my little pep talk had actually worked. It wasn’t until later, when I learned the truth and looked back on his silence, that I realized how hopelessly naive I’d been.

Lu Ayao was never the kind of man who could be moved so easily.