Chapter 251: The Bullet

He Yu attached three safety carabiners to the last twenty-meter rope, clipping them onto my belt and Old Qian’s. He didn’t even know which rock crevice he had jammed the end of the rope into, 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 dangle from the rope, but to use it to achieve a temporary escape.

All of this had sounded like a brilliant idea at the time. In reality, the moment the rope jerked us down, I regretted it instantly. Dammit, I would have been better off faking a surrender!

The three of us fell way too fast. Our momentum sent the rope swinging through the air in a textbook parabola. With all three carabiners clipped to the same line, we swung wildly with no way to control ourselves, slamming into each other until our heads spun. Old Qian’s face turned green, looking ready to puke, and I had to stay constantly alert so Old Man Tian Xiao on my back didn’t get flung off.

Just as our momentum was about to smash us into the cliff face, a steel cable suddenly shot out from a cave below. The timing was impeccable. The cable snagged our rope, launching the three of us back into the air before sending us tumbling into the cave one by one, landing hard on our rears.

The moment Old Qian hit the cave floor, he let out a miserable wail. I didn’t land like He Yu and Old Qian; I came rolling in because I still had Old Man Tian Xiao strapped to my back. If I had landed on my rear like they did, I would have crushed him under my weight. In that split second of impact, I truly brought the golden rule of respecting the elderly to life.

The price, however, was brutal. A rock in the cave ground against the wound on my calf for half a meter as I skidded to a halt. The pain was so agonizing I couldn’t even let out a sound, my teeth chattering violently.

“Are you alright?”

A familiar voice echoed from inside the cave. I forced myself to look up and saw Tian Yuqing. He was wearing a black jacket, looking much the same as before, except for a long, unkempt beard that made him look incredibly scruffy, and dark circles under his eyes ten times worse than when I first met him.

I was in too much pain to speak, but I quickly unfastened the straps binding Tian Xiao to me and managed to choke out, “Forget about me! Hurry, check on your grandfather! He took a few bullets for me! You have supplies; there’s still a chance to save him!”

Tian Yuqing immediately stepped forward to help me lay Tian Xiao flat on the ground. As my hand brushed against the old man, my heart sank—there was virtually no warmth left in his body. His eyes were closed and his expression was serene, but his lips were entirely drained of color. Tian Yuqing felt for a pulse at his neck, and the light in his eyes quickly died out.

“I was still one step too late,” he said.

Sitting beside them, hearing his words sent me frantically reaching for Tian Xiao’s hand. It was already icy cold. He was beyond saving. My mind went completely blank, and for a moment, I didn’t even feel the excruciating pain in my leg anymore.

Old Qian was lying near 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 through.”

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^[1]. 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 returned after he finished throwing up. 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^[2], 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.”

“Can… can you really do this yourself?” He Yu looked at me.

I gritted my teeth and said, “Whether I can or not, I have to.”

I never imagined that the first time I did 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 my flesh, then closed my eyes tight and inserted the first needle with my right hand.

Extracting a bullet like this was essentially inflicting a second injury on the wound. The needle struck the bullet and caught. Half a second after I pushed the needle in, pain swept through my entire body. I trembled uncontrollably from the pain, but it was far from enough. This was only the first needle.

My mouth soon filled with the taste of blood; I must have bitten through my lip. But my left hand kept working, driving a second needle into the wound. The moment an even fiercer wave of pain hit, the two needles wedged against the bullet, and I wrenched it straight out of my flesh.