Chapter 251: The Bullet

He Yu attached three safety buckles to the last twenty-meter rope, clipping them onto my belt and Old Qian’s. He had jammed the end of the rope into some rock crevice – he didn’t even know which one – but as long as it held for ten seconds, we had a chance of survival.

This was a last resort. We had lost our supply packs back in the Royal City, and this solitary rope was far too thin. We certainly couldn’t count on it holding for long. In other words, my signal to He Yu wasn’t meant for us to hang there, but to use the rope to achieve a temporary escape.

That was my perfect plan at the time. In reality, the moment the rope jerked us down, I regretted it. Dammit, I would have been better off faking a surrender!

The three of us fell too fast. Our momentum sent the rope swinging through the air in a perfect parabola. With all our buckles attached to the same line, we were swinging wildly with no way to control ourselves. We slammed into each other until we were all dizzy. Old Qian’s face turned green, looking like he was about to vomit, and I had to focus every bit of my attention on making sure Old Man Tian Xiao on my back didn’t get flung off.

Just as our momentum was about to smash us against the cliff face, a steel cable suddenly shot out from a cave lower down the wall. The timing was perfect. The cable snagged our rope, tossing the three of us back into the air before we tumbled into the cave one by one, landing hard on our backsides.

The moment Old Qian hit the ground, he let out a pathetic wail. I didn’t land like the others; I came in rolling. I had Old Man Tian Xiao strapped to my back, after all. If I had landed on my rear like He Yu and the others, I would have crushed the old man under my weight. In that split second of impact, I embodied the virtue of “respecting one’s elders” to the absolute limit.

The price was steep. A jagged rock in the cave caught the wound on my calf and scraped along it for half a meter. When I finally stopped, the pain was so intense I couldn’t even make a sound. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably.

“Are you alright?”

A familiar voice echoed from within the cave. I forced myself to look up and saw Tian Yuqing. He was wearing a black windbreaker, looking much the same as before, except he had grown a long, scruffy beard and the dark circles under his eyes were ten times worse than when I first met him.

I was in too much pain to speak, but I quickly unfastened the straps holding Tian Xiao to me. “Don’t worry about me,” I gasped. “Check on your grandfather. He took a few bullets for me! You have supplies – he might still be saved!”

Tian Yuqing rushed over to help me lay Tian Xiao down on the ground. The moment I touched the old man’s body, my heart sank. I couldn’t feel any warmth. His eyes were closed, his expression peaceful, but his lips were completely bloodless. Tian Yuqing checked his pulse at the neck, and his eyes instantly went dark.

“I was one step too late,” he said.

Sitting to the side, I heard his words and frantically reached for Tian Xiao’s hand. It was already ice cold. There was no point in even trying to save him. My mind went blank, and for a moment, even the wound on my leg didn’t seem to hurt anymore.

Old Qian was hunched over at the cave entrance, vomiting his guts out.

He Yu had taken a nasty fall too. He limped over, took one look at Tian Xiao on the ground and the state Tian Yuqing and I were in, and seemed to grasp the situation immediately. He was a perceptive guy. He wiped his nose and silently walked to the cave entrance to keep watch.

Only one thought remained in my head: I had to get the old man’s body out of here.

Tian Yuqing was far more composed than I was. His grief lasted only a moment before it vanished. I watched him pull a roll of gauze from his pack and tear off a piece. “Wrap that wound first!” he told me. “The things you took from the casket – where are they? Give them to me.”

I hesitated for a second, not handing them over immediately. He seemed to have expected this reaction and didn’t press me. Instead, he said, “You don’t have to give them to me, but you must keep those two items on your person at all times. Once you get out, give the Burial Bone Testament to your Fourth Brother. Now, follow this cave all the way back.”

As he spoke, he quickly shrugged off his pack and tossed it to me. “There’s a week’s worth of food in there. Keep moving forward through the cave. At the end, you’ll find a Seven-Star funerary pit. Count to the third star and jump down. The bottom of that section was half-eroded by snowmelt. If you follow the river, you can get out safely. There will be people waiting to meet you on the outside.”

I didn’t take the bag. Instead, I grabbed his arm. “Your grandfather is already gone. If you’re gone too, I won’t be able to face Tian Xiaoqi!”

Tian Yuqing helped me up from the ground. “I’m going out to lead that group away from you. It’s not my time yet. I’m not looking to die.”

With that, Tian Yuqing left through the stone passage at the cave entrance. With my bad leg, I hopped a few times but couldn’t catch him. He Yu held me up, the piece of gauze still in my hand.

He Yu and I looked at each other. Old Qian came back after finishing his business. I looked at my pants, which were dripping with blood, and asked him, “Do you have any alcohol on you? I need to get this bullet out.”

We had no tweezers, no surgical scalpel, and the environment was wretched. But Tian Yuqing had given us a week’s worth of food, which meant the upcoming journey would likely take at least that long. I couldn’t walk for a week with a bullet in my leg. If I did, I’d probably have to have the leg amputated by the time we got out.

I pulled out two of the thicker Cloud-Probing Needles, intending to use them as makeshift tools. He Yu disinfected them for me. I rolled up my pant leg to reveal the bloody mess of a wound. Old Qian, having just finished vomiting, stayed far away, not daring to look. The moment He Yu saw the wound, his hands started shaking.

“Wait, are we really doing this? The bullet is deep in there. No anesthetic… you’re just going to dig it out?” He Yu hissed, drawing in a sharp breath.

“What choice do I have? The conditions are what they are. Don’t worry, don’t let it get to you. Just be fast, and I’ll suffer less.” I stretched my leg out further.

He Yu knelt on the ground, trying to find an angle to start, but he was trembling so hard his hands looked like they had Parkinson’s. The needles hadn’t even touched my leg yet.

I simply snatched the tools from his hands and told him, “Forget it, I’ll do it myself. Go keep watch at the cave entrance with Old Qian.”

“Are… are you sure you can do this alone?” He Yu asked, staring at me.

I gritted my teeth. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

I never imagined that the first time I’d have to do something this bloody, it would be on my own leg. I felt around the edges of the wound, gauging how deep the bullet was lodged in the muscle. Then, I closed my eyes tight and drove the first needle in with my right hand.

Extracting a bullet like this was essentially inflicting a second trauma on the wound. The needle struck the metal and snagged. Half a second later, a wave of agony surged through my entire body. I began to shake uncontrollably from the pain, but I wasn’t finished yet. That was only the first needle.

The metallic taste of blood soon filled my mouth; I must have bitten through my lip. Ignoring the sensation, my left hand continued the work, driving a second needle into the wound. The moment an even sharper spike of pain hit me, the two needles caught the bullet, and I wrenched the lead slug straight out of my own flesh.