Chapter 231: Original Intent

“A breeding ground? So you’re saying these things are multiplying inside Brother Kuba’s stomach? Then wouldn’t Old Qian also be…” He Yu looked at me with an indescribable expression.

Chen Canghai seemed to have undergone some military training abroad and possessed some knowledge of emergency medical care. I made room for him, and he immediately knelt on one knee, gently pressing his hand against Kuba’s abdomen. After feeling around for a moment, he looked up at me.

I immediately asked, “How is he?”

“It could be live, elongated worms that have already hatched, or it could be unhatched eggs,” he said. “I’m leaning toward both. If these eggs are fully incubated by body heat, he definitely won’t make it. We have to get him out of here as quickly as possible and do surgery to take them out.”

I asked, “Can you perform that surgery?”

Chen Canghai lowered his head to feel the abdomen again. “Not many eggs should have entered. Although we have sufficient equipment, I don’t have full confidence given these harsh wilderness conditions.”

“This place is too remote. Even riding back on horseback would take at least two hours. In two hours, it’ll be far too late. Xiao Chen, give it a try. We believe in you!” He Yu said, pressing a hand on Chen Canghai’s shoulder.

A plan began to take shape in my mind. I stood up immediately and said, “Alright. Canghai, you take Kuba out first. Old Qian has definitely been infected too. He Yu and I will go find him and bring him back.”

Chen Canghai glanced at me. Seeing my determination, he didn’t argue. He unclipped two Tu Haozi from his waist and handed them to He Yu, then immediately hoisted the unconscious Kuba onto his shoulder, intending to carry him back to the tents. Before leaving, he stopped and warned me, “Brother, things aren’t like they used to be. You have to be careful.”

That sudden remark forced me to pause and reflect for a moment; it felt heavy with hidden meaning. However, Chen Canghai didn’t linger. Carrying Kuba, he quickly vanished into the woods.

I soon focused on the most pressing problem at hand. He Yu and I climbed over the deep pit one after the other. With one of us holding a knife and the other a gun, we slowly approached the base of the Couple Trees.

The spot directly above us was where Old Qian had been hanging from the vines earlier. I scanned the surroundings but couldn’t find him. He had indeed left his original position. Now, the only option was to climb the tree and look.

He Yu gave me a look, tucked his gun into his waistband, and took the lead in climbing. I stayed below on guard. Based on Kuba’s state earlier, an infected Old Qian would surely possess some level of aggression. Although he wasn’t naturally intimidating, we still had to be on guard. If the guy bit us, he’d clamp down with a death grip; even if the bite didn’t kill you, it would tear off a layer of skin.

Once He Yu had climbed up completely, I grabbed the trunk and began my ascent. Massive trees like these Couple Trees were easy to climb, but this one had likely endured too many parasitic plants over the years. The interior had been hollowed out, so we had to be extremely careful as we climbed.

We climbed up to the main branches and swept the area with our flashlights.

“What’s going on? Why does it feel like this flashlight isn’t working right up here?” He Yu gave his flashlight a hard smack.

Keeping a constant watch on our surroundings, I warned him, “It’s not that our flashlights are failing. This Couple Tree was likely planted here intentionally. The branches are coated in some kind of light-absorbing paint, so visibility up here is less than four meters. If I had to guess, this is probably the work of the King of Gune.”

We moved back-to-back toward a branch within our limited range of light. Hearing this, He Yu asked, “This King of Gune… did he just have too much time on his hands? This is just a fake tomb. Why go through all this trouble?”

I gave a soft chuckle from the front. “You don’t get it, do you? The fake ones need to be built even more grand and imposing. The more tricks you put on the outside, the better you lure tomb raiders in. With a tree like this set up outside, it’s no wonder Ye Yuzhu mistook this place for the real royal tomb.”

As we walked, He Yu suddenly stiffened behind me. I stopped immediately and whispered, “What is it? Did you find Old Qian?”

“No,” He Yu swallowed hard. “But I found something even more terrifying. You might want to brace yourself before you look.”

I turned around and looked in the direction he was pointing. To my shock, several dried corpses were “standing” on another branch not far from us. They were hard to make out clearly in the gloom, but they seemed to be wrapped and bound in something.

He Yu and I froze in place. After a moment, he whispered to me, “You’re still wearing that ward against evil, right?”

I didn’t answer him. What concerned me more was how these corpses were able to stand upright on the branch on their own. I aimed my flashlight over and jiggled the beam. They didn’t move at all, proving they weren’t reanimating. But what on earth was that stuff wrapped around them?

Before I could figure it out, He Yu’s light suddenly swept to the side, and a figure darted quickly across the shadowy branches.

“Old Qian!” I caught a clear look this time and bolted after him. “He Yu! Get down there and flank him!”

He Yu immediately headed down, while I kept pursuing from above. I figured Old Qian wasn’t in his right mind now, so I should be able to herd him toward the ground.

Old Qian was leaping back and forth between the branches, moving at incredible speed. I shouted after him as I gave chase, making several big leaps across the limbs myself.

The gap to the last branch was too wide. I stared into the darkness beneath my feet and hesitated for a moment before jumping. By the time I landed, my flashlight could no longer find him. That was when I realized our strategy had been a mistake. I was now completely lost within the dense, overlapping branches of these Couple Trees, with no sense of direction at all.

“Old Qian!” I called out, stepping forward onto the nearest branch.

When my flashlight beam hit the figure ahead, I realized I had been mistaken. Standing upright on the branches before me were several dried corpses. Their clothing had decayed into tattered rags, making their features unrecognizable, but they weren’t the ones from earlier. I suspected they were likely members of Ye Yuzhu’s former team.

I cautiously crept forward a few more steps, finally getting a clear look at what was coiled around them. As soon as I saw it, I scrambled back, breaking out in a cold sweat, realizing with a jolt of shock that there were actually no naturally growing vines on this tree at all.

What had disguised themselves as vines were tens of thousands of green insects.

Clustered together, crawling and moving in unison, these insects looked just like green vines swaying in the wind. It was highly likely that Old Qian and Kuba had been dragged into the woods by “vines” made of these creatures. Yet they didn’t seem interested in me; even when I had gotten so close just now, they hadn’t attacked.

I reached out and touched the jade hanging around my neck to steady my nerves. Just as I was turning to take another path, a figure suddenly lunged at me from a branch above. My footing gave way and I lost my balance, dragging the figure down the tree with me as we tumbled off.

After falling just a few meters, we slammed into a lower branch. My waist took the full impact against the limb, hurting so badly that I struggled for a long time without being able to stand up. In my daze, I saw Old Qian stand upright as if completely unharmed, his mouth open as he lunged at me once more.

Gritting my teeth, I let out a roar and threw myself right back at him, sending us rolling across the branches once more.

I didn’t care what we slammed into along the way. I only remember hitting at least three branches that cushioned our fall. Every time Old Qian tried to bite, I grabbed him and leaped down further. Finally, both of us crashed to the ground, and the impact knocked Old Qian out cold.

Landing hard, I felt numb all over. My right hand had completely lost sensation, and I couldn’t tell if my wrist was broken or dislocated.

He Yu jumped down from the tree from somewhere nearby. Before he could help me up, I forced myself through the pain and scrambled to my feet, yelling to him, “Let’s go, fast! The trees are full of bugs!”

He was stunned for a second, but immediately turned and hoisted Old Qian onto his back. Running for our lives, the two of us sprinted out of the deep forest.

Outside, daylight flooded the sky. By the time we made it back to the tents, I was completely exhausted. Once I caught my breath, I noticed He Yu staring at my hand with a complex expression. I followed his gaze down and finally realized that my right wrist had already swollen up.

Chen Canghai came over and reset my wrist, then went off to sterilize his scalpel with alcohol.

Chen Canghai worked quickly. By late afternoon, he had extracted all the insect eggs from Kuba’s stomach. Tonight, it would be Old Qian’s turn.

Having just been revolted by the swarming mass of insects in the woods, I couldn’t stomach the bloody sight of someone’s abdomen being sliced open. I asked He Yu to assist while I went outside to sit by the tent and smoke a cigarette to calm down.

As the tobacco smoke spread, it was the first time in years I truly appreciated what the stuff could do.

My wrist still throbbed, but the pain no longer seemed able to trigger my senses. The eagerness to put up a fight that I’d felt when we arrived yesterday had vanished completely. I began to instinctively sort through everything in my mind.

The wind of the grassland and the dead silence helped me calm down. Lu Ayao’s departure felt like a sudden awakening from a sweet dream, placing a heavy question mark over trust between people once again.

It was just like the absolute trust I’d given Liang Zicheng when we first met. And what did that trust get me in the end? He took my work to go around swindling people, eventually leaving my name off the reports entirely. He stole my paintings to sell for a fortune, and even screwed me over in the vault of Xinchang Bank.

In a game this large, how many people did I have left to spend such trust on?

I sat there, finishing the cigarette puff by puff. Then I took another from the pack I’d gotten from He Yu, lit it, and kept smoking.

By the time He Yu emerged from the tent with his hands covered in blood, I had finished the entire remaining half-pack of cigarettes.

“I’ve never seen such a bloody scene in my life,” he said, rinsing his hands with a water canteen. “Xiao Yao, you really owe me one for this. And I have to say, it’s a good thing I’m so meticulous. When the three of us left the tent last night, I made sure to pull your flap shut. I bet that guy Lu just forgot to pull the flap shut before he left, which is how Old Qian and the others fell prey to those bugs!”

I didn’t say a word. He finished washing his hands and sat down beside me. Seeing the pile of butts at my feet, he chuckled. “Whoa! Since when do you smoke like that? Are you trying to finish a month’s supply in a single day?”

I still didn’t say a word.

Seeing that I wasn’t responding, He Yu seemed to realize something. He immediately began to apologize. “Look, I admit it. What I did last night was wrong. I shouldn’t have listened to Old Lu and kept you in the dark. It was pointlessly hiding it from you anyway, and I didn’t think it through. I’m sorry.”

“Lu Ayao told you to do it,” I said. “If I’m going to blame someone, it won’t be you.”

“Hah! I knew you were the most reasonable one, Xiao Yao. Before Old Lu did it, I told him Gan Ji would blow his top if he found out. But he wouldn’t listen! He said if you knew, you’d never let him leave like that.”

Hearing He Yu say this, I suddenly started laughing. “It seems we all thought we understood each other so well, but up until now, we’ve only ever had a half-understanding.”

“What?”

I turned to look at He Yu. The corners of my mouth were still turned up, but the warmth had vanished from my eyes.

I looked at him and said, “He Yu, I know you’re still hiding something from me.”