Chapter 232: The Chess Piece

He Yu was clearly caught off guard by my words, because I hadn’t asked a normal question like I usually did.

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 pulled back his hand. “Wh-what… what do you mean, what am I using you for? 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 my nose suddenly stung.

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 into a trash bag, stood up, patted He Yu on the shoulder, and lifted the tent flap to step inside. 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 a heavy scent of blood. The two men, still unconscious, lay on the ground beneath thermal blankets. Chen Canghai sat asleep in a corner.

I casually picked up a jacket from the floor and started toward him. I had barely taken a step when Chen Canghai opened his eyes. I had never quite appreciated how alert he was. I handed him the jacket and sat down naturally beside him.

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

“These eggs entered their bodies through their mouths and noses,” he said. “Fortunately, you found them in time, so not many got inside. I’ve removed most of them, but a few are likely in tricky spots. Given our limited resources, we might still need your Fourth Brother’s help to clear them all out. They have proper equipment, so the risk of anything going wrong during the extraction is low.”

I nodded. “I’ll figure something out. To be safe, I want to go over to their side first and scout around for information.”

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

“I should say my reaction was still too slow,” I replied. “If Old Qian and Kuba hadn’t been compromised, I would have avoided crossing paths with Fourth Brother and his group, and I certainly wouldn’t have acted alongside them. From the way Fourth Brother kept trying to stop me from following him, I should have realized he wasn’t really blocking me. He was hinting that I should carry out my own secret investigations. He wanted me to gather information from those investigations, which also 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 calm as he listened. My suspicions were correct; he had indeed already uncovered most of this information.

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

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

Chen Canghai didn’t hear what I said. He had been quite silent back in the Crying Forest, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to speak; his hearing problems were simply growing more severe.

So I leaned in 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 your 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, so only those who have seen the casket could know the coordinates. Yet the number of teams arriving on the grasslands far exceeds expectations. None of these people have ever seen the actual Nine-Ring Jade Casket, so how did they manage to follow the coordinates all the way here?” Chen Canghai said.

His words left me lost in thought, bringing to mind something exceptionally strange. The Nine-Ring Jade Casket had indeed been in my hands all along, but I had never focused on the water map on its side, occupying myself entirely with how to crack it open instead. The only people who had seen it, Li Wanchou and Hou Jinshan, were already dead in Hubei.

Only Fourth Brother had been using that water system map to try to find the great tomb, yet I had never actually seen him take out a traced copy out in the field to check the locations one by one.

That map recorded the locations of hundreds, if not thousands, of tombs. Memorizing it completely would be no easy feat. Could his memory really be that good?

Furthermore, ever since I opened that casket, Tian Yuqing had been certain that the underworld would grow turbulent. What could have made him speak with such conviction? Unless, of course, they were the ones who muddied the waters in the first place.

This brought a possibility to mind. Tian Xiaoqi had told me that my opening the casket was no accident, but likely the result of someone’s arrangement, and Tian Yuqing had been involved from early on. In that case, even my learning the Art of Mechanisms under my grandfather’s guidance after I was born might very well not be a coincidence either. My grandfather might also have been part of this plan.

“If the Five Masters had long realized this problem existed, but couldn’t solve it in the short term, would they deliberately set a trap to resolve it?” I rubbed my chin, deep in thought.

If every piece on a chessboard has its own role to play, then what was my role supposed to be?