Chapter 242: The Child

“So what you’re saying is, we took the wrong path? This place doesn’t connect to the burial chambers below?” He Yu asked.

I explained to him that the lack of rushing water only proved there were no mechanisms down here that relied on water power to operate. In short, it wasn’t the kind of trap where stepping on a floorboard would trigger a flipping panel. However, that didn’t rule out the possibility that this was still a mechanism at its core. Something like a mechanical lock, for instance, requires external force to be activated.

I knelt on the ground and began rummaging through my multi-purpose belt for tools. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Han Zhuo didn’t seem inclined to leave. Instead, he limped over to us. He Yu had never given him a friendly look, but at this moment, he knew Han Zhuo was quite proficient with certain mechanisms, so he didn’t give him a hard time.

While I was busy grabbing my tools, Han Zhuo squatted down and tapped on the two floor tiles. After a moment, he looked puzzled. “Do you two really think there’s some kind of mechanism under these two stones?”

He Yu replied, “Why? Do you have a better idea?”

Han Zhuo stood straight up. “Don’t waste your energy. These are probably just two floor tiles with special patterns carved on them.”

I spread my tool roll out on the floor. I thought to myself that this Han kid was like a newborn calf who didn’t fear the tiger; he was young and lacked experience, so I ignored him. I pulled four tools of varying thicknesses from the cloth wrap. I’d had these custom-made by a blacksmith, and I called them “Cloud-Probing Needles.” They looked like elongated ear-picks, but instead of a concave head, the tips were completely flat and sharply angled, like miniature shovel heads.

Gripping a Cloud-Probing Needle in each hand, I inserted one into the gap between the floor tiles. I probed downward a few millimeters until I heard a crisp “click” as it struck something made of bronze. My eyelid flickered. There was definitely something down there.

I inserted a second Cloud-Probing Needle to widen the gap. Old Qian angled his flashlight downward, and beneath the stone tile, a six-rotational keyhole was revealed. I recognized it instantly as a Qintian Six-Son Rotating Lock from the Xia and Shang dynasties. Unlocking this type of mechanism was quite simple; it contained a hidden spring-wire as thin as a strand of hair. As long as you could hook that wire onto the bronze catch inside the lock cylinder, the lock would open. However, these locks had a terrifying reputation: they were often rigged with flying arrows. Once the lock opened, it would likely trigger a crossbow mechanism underneath. I had to be extremely careful.

Using three Cloud-Probing Needles, I pried open the keyhole of the Six-Son lock. One needle probed down less than four centimeters before it hooked onto the hidden spring-wire.

I signaled for everyone to move back. I shifted from a kneeling position to a crouch so I could escape quickly once the lock opened. My hand was steady as I hooked the needle onto the bronze catch. With a creaking sound of mechanical gears turning, the two floor tiles beneath me shattered into a thousand pieces that scattered outward. I let go immediately. A split second later, an arrow whistled through the air, flying out from the keyhole.

My movements were already incredibly fast, and I was mentally prepared, but I hadn’t expected the arrows below to be so small and fast. Startled by the sharp wind, I lost my footing and fell back onto my rear. The arrow grazed my ear as it flew past. My face immediately felt a searing, stinging pain; the skin had definitely been broken. He Yu reacted the fastest, lunging forward to tackle me to the ground. He saved my life, preventing me from being turned into a pincushion by the two subsequent arrows that shot up.

Once the noise on the ground subsided, I immediately scrambled up to check on He Yu. “Why did you jump in like that? Are you okay?”

He Yu pounded his lower back. “You’d better look at yourself first. Don’t go getting your face ruined before we even get into the tomb, or we’ll really be losing out!”

I hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. I reached up to touch my face and pulled my hand away to find it covered in blood. In a dead man’s tomb lit only by flickering candles, it was a gruesome sight. But my first thought wasn’t about whether my face was scarred; I didn’t care much about my looks. My greatest fear was whether the arrow had been coated in something. Poisoned arrows were very popular in ancient times. I could only hope the King of Gune had forgotten that detail.

Old Qian squatted beside me, hovering as he handed me some paper. I took it and wiped the wound on my face, then sat against the wall for a while. I didn’t feel anything strange in my body, so I organized the others to bring their flashlights over to illuminate the hole. The rotating lock had opened a pitch-black shaft. The diameter was just large enough to fit an adult man. The tunnel seemed to be curved and quite deep, with occasional gusts of wind blowing out from the opening.

Just as I was considering whether to be the first one down to scout, He Yu suddenly raised his flashlight. The beam hit me right in the eyes, and I quickly shielded them with my hand.

I slapped his arm. “What are you doing? Trying to blind me?”

He Yu waved his hands frantically. “No, no! A child just ran past over there in the passage.”

Because of the position of the floor tiles, the three of us had been crouching with our backs to the passage the entire time. Only He Yu had been facing it. He was the only one who could see what was behind us. When he said those words, none of us could quite process the meaning for a moment.

I stood up with him and looked in the direction his flashlight was pointing. It was the first bend in the tomb passage. Because of the curve, we could only see about ten meters ahead. The passage was empty; there was nothing there.

“What child?” I asked. “How could there be a child in a place like this? It’s not the time for ghost stories, alright?”

He Yu clicked his tongue and gestured. “A kid really did just run past. A boy, maybe seven or eight years old. He ran from that sacrificial pit we just came out of and went over that way. I saw him clear as day! I’m not lying!”

He spoke with such conviction that it seemed like a real possibility. I started to feel a sense of unease. If a child had come out of the sacrificial pit we’d just exited, was it possible some local kid had accidentally fallen down during the earthquake? Maybe he’d seen the hole and followed us in. If it was a child from a nearby village, we couldn’t let him wander around in here. If he touched the wrong thing, it would be a disaster.

Thinking this, I grabbed my flashlight and jogged back to the bend in the tomb passage to take a look. The area was brightly lit and the passage was spacious, with no hidden blind spots. I walked a full circuit along the corridor and back, but I didn’t see any sign of the child He Yu claimed had run inside.

When I returned, I slapped the blood-stained tissue onto He Yu as if venting my frustration. “I didn’t see a single ghostly shadow. You definitely just imagined it!”

Seeing that I had gone to confirm, He Yu was no longer as confident as before. He likely began to doubt his own eyes. He rubbed them and prepared to be the first to enter the hole.

Although wind was blowing out of the hole, we didn’t know exactly how long it was. We planned to crawl in slowly, head-first, keeping a distance of three meters between each person so we could look out for one another if something went wrong.

He Yu led the way. After he had descended a few meters, Old Qian followed. Han Zhuo and I locked eyes. He was much more cowardly than I was; his face had already turned deathly pale when He Yu mentioned the child earlier. Still, he insisted on following us. I couldn’t just leave him behind. After all, no matter how bright the passage was, it was still a tomb, a place for the dead filled with a chilling Yin energy. If I let the Han kid bring up the rear, he might actually faint from terror.

I handed him the flashlight. “You go first. I’ll take the rear.”

Without hesitation, he took the light, adjusted his posture, and began to crawl down. I waited at the edge of the hole, counting to fifty before I would follow.

Feeling bored, I looked up at the ever-burning lamp directly above me. The flame flickered twice, yet I didn’t feel even a whisper of a breeze. Thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me, I blinked hard. To my surprise, every candle flame in the entire tomb passage began to sway in the wind, flickering dim and bright. Still, I felt no draft. Sensing something was wrong, I grabbed my rifle. Just as I looked down to flick off the safety, every single candle in the passage blew out at once.

In an instant, I was plunged into pitch-black darkness. I tried to stand, but my body felt as if it were being forcibly pinned down. I couldn’t even open my mouth to call out. A bone-deep chill spread across my shoulders, and my back was instantly drenched in sweat. A moment later, the extinguished lamps flared back to life one by one with a whoosh, but this time, they all emitted a ghostly, shimmering green flame.

Before I could figure out what was happening, I felt a violent shove from behind. I went head-first, tumbling into the hole along with my gun. The slope was so steep that I couldn’t stop myself. I slammed into Han Zhuo, who was struggling to crawl ahead of me, and he in turn crashed into Old Qian. We became a chaotic mess of tangled limbs, rolling and sliding down the tunnel together.

We splashed into the water one after another. Since I was at the bottom of the pile when we fell, I sank the deepest, nearly reaching the bottom of the pool. I swallowed a few mouthfuls of water and quickly held my breath, swimming upward. My gun was gone, so I stopped and opened my eyes underwater to look for it. The rifle was stuck in the fine sand at the bottom not far away. I dove back down and pulled it free.

It was only then that I realized the “fine sand” on the floor wasn’t sand at all. It was actually bone powder. Some pieces hadn’t been fully crushed and remained as small chunks. Mixed within this bone meal was a layer of gold dust. Aside from the gold, there were jade ornaments, golden wine vessels, and miniature golden chariots and horses. I couldn’t tell how many layers were buried beneath the bone powder. No wonder the entire bottom of the pool shimmered with a golden light.

I swam up with my gun. Just as I broke the surface, I saw He Yu about to leap off a bridge into the water. I waved my hand frantically at him. He braked hard at the edge of the bridge and then reached down to help me up.

I coughed up some water. As soon as He Yu pulled me onto the bank, a soaking wet Han Zhuo stomped over to interrogate me. “Gan Ji! Are you crazy? You’re the one who said we should crawl slowly, so what the hell was that, just jumping into the hole? Look at this! My clothes were shredded in that tunnel. Do you have any idea how much this outfit cost? Can you even afford to replace it?”

He Yu shot him a sidelong glance. “We’re all proletarian workers here, so drop the bourgeois attitude. If you keep annoying me, I’ll leave you right here and you can swim back yourself. You hear me?”

Han Zhuo was extremely materialistic. It might have been because the brand-name outdoor gear he wore—the name of which I couldn’t even pronounce—was truly expensive, giving him a sense of superiority over us. Now, however, I had ruined his clothes. He looked just like the rest of us. To put it nicely, we were four drowned rats; to put it bluntly, we looked like a pack of beggars.

He continued to nag me for compensation, but He Yu and I treated him like a noisy parrot. I scanned our surroundings. We were on a bridge in a massive cavern. Below us was a pool at least a hundred meters wide, and the space ahead and behind was vast and empty.

I wiped the blood from my forehead and looked at He Yu. “That kid you mentioned… you might not have been seeing things.”

He Yu’s eyes lit up. “You saw him too?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see him, but he played a nasty trick on me back up there. Quick, check my shoulders. It hurts like hell.”

He Yu immediately stepped behind me and lifted my shirt. He clicked his tongue. “Xiao Yao, did you get into a scrap with him up there? There are two black handprints on your shoulders. Small ones. This ghost seems to have some serious power. You didn’t get a ‘ghostly hitchhiker,’ did you?”

I twisted my head to look at my own shoulders. There were two tiny handprints, one on each side. No wonder I felt like I was carrying a mountain earlier. That thing must have taken advantage of the moment I was alone to mess with me. Logically, I was wearing the Blood Jade, so ordinary malevolent spirits shouldn’t be able to get near me. This was the first time I’d encountered a child ghost. People often say the smaller the ghost, the more vicious they are; this one must have significant cultivation.

I was fuming. It was bad enough being pranked by people, but now even a little ghost dared to mess with me. I pulled my clothes back on and spat on the ground. “If I ever see that brat again, he’s going to regret it.”

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