Chapter 246: Imminent Disaster

After a moment’s consideration, I decided I couldn’t let Old Qian and Han Zhuo keep eating like this. Even if it were real mutton, eating at that pace would lead to disaster. I quickly conferred with He Yu, and we decided to use the hemp rope found in the shop to tie up the two crazed men. He Yu would stay behind to watch them while I scouted the nearby area for any other clues.

Old Qian and Han Zhuo’s eyes were bloodshot. When they looked up from their bowls, they gave He Yu and me a fright. Neither of them was usually a physical threat, but their strength had suddenly become immense. It took a massive effort from both He Yu and me, along with three layers of rope, to bind them securely and dump them on the floor. Neither had even finished swallowing the rice in their mouths, yet they still thrashed and clawed, trying to crawl back to the table to continue eating.

He Yu suddenly became frightened. “This is getting really sinister. How did these two lose their minds just by eating something? I can’t stay here alone. Xiao Yao, you have to get back quickly.”

Staying put wasn’t an option; I had to figure out what was happening to Old Qian and Han Zhuo as soon as possible. After giving He Yu a few quick instructions, I left the shop alone. I planned to start my search from the main street, so I followed my memory and circled back. However, as soon as I reached the corner, I realized the scene on the main street had undergone a massive transformation.

When we first entered the city, the shops on both sides of the street were empty shells. Now, their doors were wide open. Not only that, but behind every wooden pushcart stood a pale-faced puppet with painted red cheeks and an upturned, frozen smile. These puppets were either standing or crouching, their faces coated in a deathly white paint that was truly unnerving to behold.

I didn’t go over to inspect them. Instead, I switched to another street and continued toward the edge of the royal city. Ever since we entered, we could clearly see a corner tower in the distance. Only a quarter of it was visible, while the rest was shrouded in thick white mist. Despite walking for a long time, we never seemed to get any closer. The tower seemed to be floating in mid-air. Since the King of Gune had hollowed out a mountain to build his tomb, logic dictated that the edge of the city must connect to the original mountain walls. This wasn’t the deepest part of the royal tomb; the place where the sarcophagus rested should be adjacent to that corner tower. If that floating tower was a real structure, I should be able to reach it by following the mountain wall.

After walking for another ten minutes, I finally glimpsed patches of exposed rock. The rock face was covered in a layer of condensation. I approached the wall, wiped some of the water off, and sniffed it. It smelled like snowmelt. We had walked so long I wasn’t sure where we were, but this was likely groundwater that had melted from the snowy peaks and flowed down through the earth. It was icy cold. For some reason, after I splashed some on my face, I felt much lighter, and my breathing became smoother. Perhaps this water would help Old Qian and the others.

I glanced back, preparing to pull out my empty water bottle, only to realize the scene behind me had changed again. There was no trace of a magnificent royal city. Behind me was a vast, hollow space overgrown with weeds. Amidst the tall grass grew dense clusters of green, stone-like plants. Long-stemmed pink flowers bloomed from the centers of these strange plants. Some of these “green stones” were enormous, over a meter wide, and covered in sharp thorns, resembling some kind of cactus.

I realized things had gone horribly wrong. We had fallen for the King of Gune’s trap. The Gune Kingdom hadn’t been particularly wealthy; there was no way they had a royal city paved with gold. The King of Gune had used hallucinations to create a city, and these green stones on the ground were almost certainly the source of the hallucinogen. I immediately picked up my pace, unscrewed my water bottle, and used a clean handkerchief to soak up the water seeping from the rock wall before wringing it into the bottle.

Once I had enough water, I tied the damp handkerchief over my face. I strode past the green plants, pushing through the weeds toward where I remembered the main street being. Before I could even reach the location of the shop, I was shocked to find that half of the green stones on the main street had been hacked in two with sickles. A large patch of them had been uprooted entirely. The memory of that black-clad team flashed through my mind. This was bad.

I turned and sprinted back toward He Yu and the others. The moment I saw the masked men, I skidded to a halt and dove into a nearby thicket. Lying flat on the ground, I saw at least ten flashlight beams cutting through the darkness from different directions. By their light, I saw the men in black uniforms dragging He Yu and the other two off a giant green stone. It turned out that what we had perceived as shops were actually massive, fuzzy green plants growing from the ground.

He Yu was still trapped in the hallucination, his consciousness muddled and dim. He was completely unaware that someone was pressing a gun to his head. The other two were even worse off; Old Qian and Han Zhuo had passed out completely, lying there like dead fish at the mercy of their captors.

Panic began to set in. My breathing nearly stopped, and my hands and feet grew clammy. I didn’t know what to do. There were too many of them, and they held the lives of my three companions in their hands. I had seen how decisively these people killed. They seemed to possess no humanity; to them, killing was just the two-step process of chambering a round and pulling the trigger. It was simpler than gutting a fish.

Just then, I heard one of the men circling back from a distance say, “It should just be these three.”

The leader swept his flashlight around the area. As the beam swung toward me, I buried my head in the dirt. Then I heard the leader speak. “These three aren’t important. One of them is the smart one, a descendant of the Gan Clan.”

Another voice asked, “Could the Gan kid have already found a way out and run?”

The leader slowly shook his head. “As long as these people are here, he won’t go far. It’s been half an hour. For all we know, he’s already spotted us and is crouching nearby, watching.”

His words sent cold sweat pouring down my face, and my mind became a tangled mess of anxiety. This leader actually knew my identity. Whose side were they on? If their goal was me, I could only pray they would let He Yu and the others go.

Just as I was struggling to decide what to do, the leader spoke again. “Since these people are useless, deal with them.”

Following his orders, the men raised their rifles. Seeing how fast they moved, I didn’t have time to think. I scrambled up from the ground, causing the tall grass to rustle violently. The leader spotted me instantly. Several men rushed over, pinned me to the dirt, and confiscated the only rifle I had for self-defense. He Yu and the others were still trapped in their hallucinations, so the leader ignored them for the moment and walked toward me.

My arms were twisted behind my back, and I was pinned face-down, unable to move an inch. Even craning my neck to the limit, I could only see the hands of the people surrounding me. These strange figures were wrapped tightly from head to toe in black cloth, without a single patch of skin exposed, as if they were intentionally trying to hide any identifying features.

“Who are you? Why have you been following us? Why did you kill our people?” I asked from the ground.

None of the men standing nearby answered. Only the leader, standing a short distance away, took a few steps toward me. “Simply because you belong to the Five Masters. We intend to exterminate everyone associated with the Five Masters. Drag him over there. Let him die with his friends. Chen Si will be devastated when he sees your corpse.”

The men immediately hauled me up. A sudden spark of realization flashed through my mind, as if I had remembered something vital. I jerked my head up to stare at the leader. “Tian Xiao? Was it you who killed Tian Xiao?”

As I spoke, I was thrown onto the ground in front of the leader. They didn’t answer. Two more men came over and hauled me up again. I felt a sudden chill at the back of my head as one of them pressed my own rifle against my skull. I struggled instinctively, trying to break free from the grip of the other two. “Wait! Wait! Who sent you? At least let me know why I’m dying before you kill me!”

“Plenty of people die without knowing why. Do you think everything in this world is so clear-cut?” The leader stepped forward and kicked me hard in the chest. A metallic, bloody taste rose in my throat. I was kicked over and pinned down again. During the struggle, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the leader’s black glove riding up, revealing a slender tattoo on his wrist. It was only for a split second; I couldn’t make out what it was before the muzzle was pressed against me once more.

The men then grabbed Han Zhuo from the group and dragged him by the collar to a spot less than half a meter in front of me. Before I could even react, a gunshot rang out next to my ear. When I opened my eyes, my vision was blurred by a spray of red. Han Zhuo had been shot in the head; he slumped to the ground without a sound. My face, chest, and hands were covered in the blood that had splattered when the bullet tore into him. I stared at his body, my mind going completely blank.

Immediately after, the cold muzzle was pressed against my head again. My sweat turned ice-cold in that instant. I knew this was different from anything we had faced before. This was truly the end. Yet, I still didn’t know who they were. The man holding the rifle began to squeeze the trigger. I could almost hear the internal mechanism of the gun as the bullet prepared to fire.

Bang!