Chapter 232: The Chess Piece

He Yu clearly didn’t react in time to my words, likely because I hadn’t used my usual questioning tone.

He threw an arm around my shoulders. “Hey now, did you not hear me? Don’t be mad. Didn’t I just apologize? I promise, from now on, I’ll tell you everything first.”

My gaze didn’t waver, and I didn’t move an inch. I kept staring at him, my voice flat. “It’s not that. It’s something else.”

The smile on He Yu’s face instantly froze.

Maintaining a calm expression, I said quietly, “He’s using me as a tool to repay a debt. What about you? What am I to you?”

I had finally voiced the question that had been weighing on my heart. As the words left my mouth, I didn’t even feel a hint of trepidation. I was as calm as if I already knew the answer.

He Yu withdrew his hand. “Wh-what… what do you mean, what are you to me? You’re my brother, of course!”

I watched his expression and shook my head. My tone was that of someone objectively analyzing a matter that had nothing to do with them. “No. Almost everyone who approaches me has a motive. I can more or less guess what most of them want, but I still can’t figure yours out. You’ve been protecting me since the very beginning in Gansu. That suggests your goal is deeper, or perhaps closer to the core of this whole affair. I only understand what’s on the surface right now, which is why I can’t guess your motive, right?”

“Enough, Gan Ji!”

I must have struck a nerve, because He Yu suddenly stood up in a fit of rage. “Why does everything in this world have to have a reason? Oh, just because that guy from the Lu Clan abandoned us, you’re starting to doubt your own brother? Let me tell you something: not everyone is like the Lu Clan, needing a reason or some damn motive for everything they do! I, He Yu, protect you because I think you’re a good person. I truly see you as a brother and a friend. What kind of person do you take me for!”

I looked up at him, and suddenly, my nose felt a bit stingy.

He Yu plopped back down and pulled me into a hug, giving my back a heavy pat. “I know this feels like hell. I swear, this is the only time I’ll ever lie to you. Never again!”

“I don’t resent you for hiding things,” I said. “I’m just afraid that if you leave one day too, I’ll truly have no one left to trust.”

Since He Yu was unwilling to speak, I didn’t press him further. Whatever he was hiding must be incredibly important, and since he refused to tell me even now, I believed he truly had his reasons.

I gathered the cigarette butts from the ground into a trash bag, stood up, and patted He Yu on the shoulder before ducking into the tent. He Yu didn’t follow me this time. Instead, he sat where I had been sitting, lost in thought for a long time.

The tent was thick with the scent of blood. The two men, still unconscious, lay on the ground covered by thermal blankets. Chen Canghai was sitting in a corner, sleeping.

I picked up a jacket from the floor and moved toward him. I’d barely taken a step when Chen Canghai opened his eyes. I hadn’t fully appreciated his level of alertness before. I handed him the jacket and sat down naturally beside him.

Chen Canghai picked up a plastic bag by his leg to show me. It was filled with the greenish insects and transparent eggs we had seen in the forest.

“These eggs entered their bodies through their noses and mouths,” he said. “Fortunately, you found them in time. Not many eggs got in, and I’ve removed most of them. However, some are likely in difficult positions. With our limited resources, we might need Fourth Brother’s help to clean them out completely. They have relatively sophisticated equipment, so the risk of an accident during the extraction would be low.”

I nodded. “I’ll think of a way. To be safe, I want to head over to the other side first to scout for information.”

“You realized it too?” Chen Canghai put on the jacket and looked at me.

“I should say my reaction was too slow,” I replied. “If Old Qian and Kuba hadn’t been affected, I would have tried to avoid crossing paths with Fourth Brother and his group, and I certainly wouldn’t have acted with them. Given how Fourth Brother was constantly trying to stop me from following him, I should have realized he wasn’t just blocking me. He was hinting that I should conduct my own secret investigations. He wanted me to gather information from those investigations—information that served as his messages to me. If I’m not mistaken, he was the one who hinted to Zhurige to tell me about the Crying Forest.”

Chen Canghai remained perfectly calm as he listened. My suspicions were correct; he had likely already uncovered most of this information.

“There is a major problem within the ranks of your Five Masters,” he said.

I turned to him. “What kind of problem do you mean?”

Chen Canghai didn’t hear me. He had been quite silent back in the Crying Forest, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to speak—it was because his hearing issues were becoming more severe.

I leaned closer and repeated myself. This time, he heard.

“According to my investigation, from the moment you opened the Nine-Ring Jade Casket in your Fourth Brother’s shop until now, that casket has remained in the hands of the Five Masters. It has never fallen into anyone else’s possession. Furthermore, there are no rubbings or copies of the water system map on its surface. Only those who have seen the casket should know the coordinates. Yet, the number of teams arriving in the grasslands far exceeds expectations. These people have never seen the real Nine-Ring Jade Casket, so how did they know to follow the coordinates all the way here?” Chen Canghai asked.

His words left me deep in thought. It reminded me of something very strange. The Nine-Ring Jade Casket had indeed been in my hands for a long time, but I hadn’t focused on the water map on its side; I had been entirely preoccupied with how to crack it open. The only people who had seen it, Li Wantian and Hou Jinshan, were already dead in Hubei.

Only Fourth Brother had been using that water map to search for the great tomb, yet I had never seen him take out a transcribed copy to verify their location.

That map contained the locations of hundreds, if not thousands, of burial sites. Memorizing it in its entirety would be an incredible feat. Was his memory truly that powerful?

Furthermore, from the moment I opened that box, Tian Yuqing had been certain that the underworld was about to descend into chaos. What could have made him so confident in such a statement? Unless, of course, they were the ones stirring the waters themselves.

This led me to a chilling possibility. Tian Xiaoqi had told me that my opening the box was no accident, but likely the result of a carefully orchestrated arrangement. Since Tian Yuqing had been involved in this for a long time, it stood to reason that everything else – including my study of the Art of Mechanisms under my grandfather’s guidance since birth – might not be a coincidence either. My grandfather might have been part of this plan all along.

“If the Five Masters realized this problem existed long ago but couldn’t solve it quickly, would they deliberately create a trap to deal with it?” I mused, rubbing my chin.

If every piece on a chessboard has its own purpose, then what exactly was mine?