Chapter 196: Explosion

The white python hissed at me repeatedly, the scales behind its head flaring slightly. I didn’t dare move a muscle. In an instant, the tomb chamber fell dead silent. He Yu, carrying Guangtou, was stepping across another crossbeam, already a dozen paces toward the center of the chamber. The black python coiled around a pillar, blocking the path between me and them.

I could almost hear my own heartbeat. Within a single minute, eight or nine escape plans flashed through my mind, but the snake’s head was simply too close. I feared that before I could even make a move, it would swallow me whole just as it had done to A Dong.

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lu Ayao brace himself against a distant stone pillar and vault onto a beam. He whipped three lit sticks of dynamite tied together from his backpack. The fuses sizzled as he hurled them toward He Yu, who was weighing his shovel, shouting as he threw them.

I wasn’t entirely sure what happened next. I only saw the white python turn its head, distracted by the dynamite. Then, acting on instinct, I ducked. Something seemed to brush past my head at that exact moment. I lunged backward, hooking myself onto a beam above.

With a loud boom, the blast went off less than ten meters from me the moment the dynamite touched the white python. The crossbeam below collapsed with a roar. The force of the explosion slammed my chest against the beam I held; a sweet metallic taste surged in my throat, and I immediately coughed up a mouthful of blood.

The white python went into a frenzy, thrashing wildly. Its impacts shook the beams so violently that I nearly lost my grip and tumbled off.

Clinging to the beam, I spat out blood and scrambled back up, cursing, “Damn it, He Yu! Are you trying to blow up the snake or me?”

“With aim like that, you’ll be thanking me once we’re out!”

Smoke filled the air, choking me until I could barely breathe. I couldn’t pinpoint He Yu’s exact location, but his voice sounded like it was coming from far away. Just as my head began to swim, a figure burst through the white smoke.

It was Lu Ayao!

“I’ve settled the others for now. Quick, climb up!” He ran over and yanked me upward, forcing me to leap to another beam above.

I swayed as I landed and leaned against him to steady myself. “Did that blast kill the snake?”

“Its scales are thick; an explosion won’t kill it right away. My plan was for He Yu to blow up its heat pits, but he misunderstood and only took out one eye. A snake’s eyesight is poor to begin with, so losing an eye barely affects its hunting. Now that we’ve enraged it, it won’t rest until it wipes us all out.”

I followed Lu Ayao for another dozen paces before we finally broke through the thick white smoke. Only then could I see clearly: the beams and pillars beneath our feet were crawling with snakes. He Yu and the others were no longer where they had been. Moving faster than us, they were already just a few beams away from reaching the vaulted ceiling of the tomb.

Lu Ayao and I worked together, leaping upward with everything we had. The white python’s eye was a bloody mess, but having recovered from the blow, it shook its head, opened its massive maw once more, and scaled the pillars to close in on us.

“Keep climbing!” Lu Ayao flipped the knife in his hand into a reverse grip, striking the back of the blade against the beam as he ran in the opposite direction from me. Seeing such a fast-moving target, both pythons were instantly drawn away by him.

I picked a beam and leaped onto it. He Yu was waiting for me three beams above, but I didn’t even have time to look back. The pythons were moving far too fast, and the time Lu Ayao could buy us was limited.

Soon, He Yu shouted down from above, “Gan Ji! The ceiling!”

I couldn’t hear clearly what he was saying. Then came a loud crash as another beam below was brought down by the weight of a snake. The collapse triggered a chain reaction, causing the beam directly above me, the one I had been aiming for, to snap clean in half.

The beam plummeted from high above, smashing directly onto the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber and sending dust billowing eight zhang high. With no more reachable beams above me, I had no choice but to lean against the Ship-Burial Coffins to catch my breath, then shouted up to He Yu, “What? What did you just say? Say it again!”

“I said!” He Yu screamed from above. “I said there’s no robber’s hole in the ceiling vault! We’re trapped here!”

My heart sank. Something was wrong. The archaeological team most likely hadn’t doubled back, but they had gotten out. If not by digging a robber’s hole through the vault, how else could they have escaped?

I shouted up at him again, “Did you check properly?!”

“I fucking checked three times! There isn’t one!”

I thought to myself that we were finished. We had likely gambled on the wrong path.

Snakes kept springing up from beneath my feet. Several times, fangs hooked into my shoes so firmly I couldn’t even shake them off. I had to fend off the snakes while pulling myself up along the prows of the Ship-Burial Coffins, until I finally scrambled to a spot with fewer snakes and crouched down.

“What do we do now?!” He Yu shouted again.

The words had barely left his mouth when, in the distance, I saw the white python’s head blown sky-high and the black python blasted downward. A deluge of blood crashed down like rain, soaking me completely. From my angle, the center of the blast had been right on Lu Ayao.

My mind went completely blank. Ignoring the nest of snakes beneath my feet, I kicked them loose, stepped out from the prow of the coffin, and sprinted toward that massive pool of blood, digging through the shredded flesh on the beam with my bare hands.

“Xiao Yao! Are you guys still alive?” He Yu bellowed. “If you’re alive, give us a shout!”

“Stop shouting! We’re not dead!” I yelled back, fighting the urge to gag.

The smell of the blasted flesh was indescribable. I dry-heaved several times as I pulled apart the mangled remains with my bare hands, finally digging Lu Ayao out from the wreckage. I checked his pulse and let out a small sigh of relief. The impact of the blast had been immense; he had likely just been knocked unconscious.

The beams above were all broken, meaning Lu Ayao and I probably couldn’t climb back up. I was about to tell He Yu and the others to check one more time when I suddenly felt the ship-burial coffins on both sides shaking violently. The tremors were identical to what I had felt back at the research institute.

Qiao Sangui, being more experienced than the rest of us, cursed loudly. “Damn it, find cover! They’re blasting from above! Get to the sides, everyone!”

I quickly grabbed Lu Ayao by the shoulders and dragged him toward the side. We ducked under one of the ship-burial coffins. The prow of the boat protruded from the wall, providing just enough cover to shield us from the falling debris.

“Xiao Yao, make sure you stay hidden!”

He Yu and the others were on the other side.

Two seconds later, the vibrations intensified. The entire vaulted ceiling above us was blasted loose and came crashing down. A continuous rain of falling rocks followed, slamming into the boat coffin above our heads with loud thuds. I gave the inner space to Lu Ayao, using my clothes and arms to shield my own head.

“Boss, we found them!” someone shouted.

Once the rockfall subsided, I heard the sound of ropes being lowered from above. A beam of sunlight spilled down through the breached hole. In that moment, my senses felt magnified tenfold. The voices of people and the mechanical hum of machinery outside rushed into my ears with startling clarity.

Fourth Brother had sent men to pull us up one by one. I hadn’t seen sunlight in what felt like forever. The moment I was pulled up, my entire body felt numb. I looked around and saw we were on an unnamed island. It was tiny, and we were a vast distance away from where our ship had originally been stationed.

Knowing that someone would eventually come to carry me to a cot, I took a few limp steps and flopped down on the ground next to He Yu. We lay there in a row, staring up at the seagulls soaring across the blue sky. When I saw Lu Ayao being the first carried into a makeshift tent, I lifted my head to watch.

“Stop looking. He’s more precious than us. Your Fourth Brother won’t let him die,” He Yu said, swatting at me. He kept his eyes closed, looking like he was about to drift off into the afterlife.

I grunted in response and lay back down to feel the sea breeze. Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind. I bolted upright and started shaking He Yu’s arm frantically.

“Can’t you just give it a rest for a second?” He barely managed to crack an eye open.

“Forget that—where’s the Black Hoof Iron?”

“Oh, that piece of junk burned to ash ages ago. There were only a few scraps left, so I tossed them.”

“Dammit! Who told you to throw it away? How am I supposed to explain this in a minute?”

“Explain it however you need to. It’s just an object in the end. If it’s burned, it’s burned. Besides, we were in a real emergency back there. Your Fourth Brother isn’t going to kill you over a piece of hardware, is he?”

I gradually let myself be convinced. I figured he was right; Fourth Brother had always doted on me, so at worst I’d get a scolding. Just as I was about to lie back down, I saw Fourth Brother walking toward us. I patted the dirt off my backside, stood up to greet him, and rushed forward to give him a big bear hug.

“Fourth Brother! How’s the poison in your system?” I asked.

Fourth Brother didn’t mind that I was covered in dirt. He patted my back soothingly and pulled a tissue from his pocket, handing it to me to wipe the blood off my forehead. “I’m fine now. It’s all thanks to Xiao Wan. She estimated the length and width of the tomb complex so we could blast our way down from here. You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“I’m fine, doing great.”

As soon as I spoke, I noticed he seemed a bit different than usual. That hesitant, holding-back look on his face struck me as strange, so I asked, “What is it, Fourth Brother?”

He sighed. “Hurry up and get cleaned up. There are fresh clothes in the tent. Go pick an outfit and change.”

“Why the rush? I wanted to rest a bit longer.”

Chen Si gave me a long look and pointed toward the largest tent. “Your mother came looking for you. She’s in the tent right now. She told you to go over.”