Chapter 262: The Giant Centipede

People naturally become desensitized when sudden tragedy strikes. The moment a blow falls, the mind triggers a defense mechanism that provides a temporary escape from the pain. This is why He Yu and I sat there in a daze for a long time after Tian Xiaoqi stopped breathing in my arms.

We sat so long that time seemed to lose all meaning. The blood on my hands had turned cold. A chilly wind blew in from outside the tent, making He Yu shudder. He jolted to his senses, scrambled up off the ground using both hands, and came over to nudge me.

I looked up at him. He Yu sniffed and said, “The dead can’t come back to life, so don’t take it too hard. The urgent thing right now is that this place is too dangerous. We can’t stay here anymore. Did you get a clear look at what that guy looked like?”

My brain felt sluggish as it turned. It took a long moment to pull myself together before I said, “It was one of those masked men. He ran fast, so I couldn’t see his face. The tent flap was sliced open with a knife. He must have been crouching nearby for a long time, just waiting for us to separate.”

He Yu slowly spread open a sleeping bag. The tent was covered in blood, so we had to carry Tian Xiaoqi’s body out to the open ground before placing her inside. I pulled out the towel Fourth Brother had prepared for me from He Yu’s bag, soaked it with water, and wiped the blood off Tian Xiaoqi’s face and neck.

We have always had this custom: whether a person is to be cremated or buried, they must maintain a basic level of dignity in death. Leaving a body covered in blood and filth was simply unacceptable. As I finished cleaning her neck and felt her body growing colder, the reality of the situation finally began to sink in.

At the same time, my nerves pulled taut. My eyes blurred with tears again, and my hands clenched into fists. That person had run too fast, and I knew I hadn’t seen his face, but I hadn’t been entirely unobservant either. I knew that sooner or later, I would follow this lead to find Tian Xiaoqi’s killer and get my revenge.

After cleaning Tian Xiaoqi’s face, I raised my head, stood up, and looked around. Suddenly, I felt an indescribable sensation of my hair standing on end. This unease came completely out of nowhere. I looked at the base of the two stone cliffs where we were currently situated and felt something was off.

He Yu was nearby, adding fuel to the fire. I immediately crouched down, zipped up the sleeping bag containing Tian Xiaoqi’s body, swung it onto my back, and grabbed He Yu. “Pack up, quick. This place is strange. We can’t stay.”

He Yu remained squatting, poking at the fire with a small twig. He asked in confusion, “Why? As long as the two of us stay together, no matter how capable that bastard is, there’s no way he’d come back to court death.”

I shook my head. “I’m not talking about him. Look at these stone walls. There are so many pits and hollows that don’t look natural. This path we’re on shouldn’t be a natural chasm. Even if there’s an underground river, this isn’t a channel carved out by water. So how did this path end up here?”

Just as I finished speaking, He Yu and I heard a massive boom in the distance. The sound was familiar, like someone detonating explosives off in the distance. The blast was considerable, and I didn’t know if they had used too much explosive, but I felt the ground beneath our feet vibrating for a full half-minute before it stopped.

I was about to head toward the sound of the explosion when He Yu grabbed me. He made a shushing gesture for silence. “Don’t move! Listen! Do you hear that strange sound?”

I stopped instantly and strained my ears. I soon realized that as the echoes of the explosion faded, another sound was approaching from the distance. It sounded like tens of thousands of hooked claws tapping against the rock walls and the ground. The sound wasn’t confined to a single spot, but was reverberating across the stone walls and the ground, and the source was still moving!

The more I listened, the more terrified I became, because the sound was closing in rapidly!

I swept my flashlight across the stone wall above us and spotted a crack. I shoved He Yu, handed him the light, and said, “Climb! Fast! We need to find shelter.”

Before the words were even out of my mouth, He Yu, who usually loved to argue, didn’t say a word of protest. He started scrambling up the stone wall in a frantic rush. Feeling something was off, I glanced back, only to feel something massive rush past me. The foul wind it kicked up instantly snuffed out the campfire on the ground.

It felt like the lights had been cut. In the pitch-black darkness at the bottom of the cliff, two things like fireflies appeared out of thin air, flickering right in front of my face. I squinted to adjust to the dark, and gradually, I saw what those “fireflies” actually were.

They were two long, thick fucking insect antennae!

I sucked in a breath and spun around. Just as my hand touched the stone wall, the area above me suddenly lit up. The flashlight beam nearly blinded me. He Yu must have seen the monster behind me clearly, because a blood-curdling scream of “AAAAAAAH!” pierced the air.

The sudden noise startled the monster too. I felt the thing behind me whip its tail violently. I dug my fingers into the stone wall and pressed myself flat against it just as the centipede’s barbed tail brushed past my chest.

Furious and panicked, I yelled up at him, “Stop your fucking screaming! If you don’t want to turn into centipede shit, keep climbing!”

The Giant Centipede was indescribably huge. If I had to compare it to something, it was like an extraordinarily long green train. These two cliffs had probably been one solid mass originally, but because this Giant Centipede lived inside, it had slowly hollowed out a path, leading us and Fourth Brother to mistake it for the bottom of a canyon.

I climbed after He Yu with every ounce of strength I had. Because the Giant Centipede was so long, it had to crawl some distance along the far wall before it could turn back, thrashing its long antennae to catch us like two little ants.

It was the first time I’d ever heard a centipede make a sound, and it was ear-splittingly harsh. Fortunately, the crack I’d spotted wasn’t too high. He Yu scrambled inside on all fours, and I followed right on his heels. Just as I got in, the centipede’s fangs came burrowing into the stone right after me. Thank goodness I was nimble, or my ass would’ve been history.

The centipede’s head slammed frantically against the stone crevice, shaking the ground so hard that rocks clattered down from both sides. He Yu and I were wedged into the deepest part of the fissure, watching the massive creature outside as it thrashed in frustration, unable to get in.

It spent over five minutes battering the opening, but the crack was simply too narrow. Even though it managed to smash away some of the stone, the gap couldn’t fit even one of the behemoth’s fangs. The centipede probed the interior with its antennae three times before finally giving up, seemingly realizing it was a lost cause.

Only after the centipede had crawled further and further away did He Yu and I finally breathe a sigh of relief. We were wedged tightly inside the crevice, our backs hunched and heads bowed, squeezed together alongside a sleeping bag containing a corpse. It was an agonizingly uncomfortable position.

“Should I head out and take a look?” He Yu asked.

I stopped him immediately. “Don’t! It’s too dangerous. Wait a bit longer. For all we know, that bug is waiting right outside for you to poke your head out.”

He Yu shifted around, twisting his waist to free a hand and turn on his flashlight. Just as the beam swept outward, he let out another loud shriek, giving me such a start that a shudder ran through my whole body. The flashlight dropped into a gap in the fissure with a click, wedged tight, and went out.

“What are you screaming about now!” I cursed. Bracing my legs against both sides of the crevice, I bent down and reached out to retrieve the flashlight from below.

He Yu was trembling violently. He grabbed hold of me and pointed outside the fissure. “A person… I just saw a person! They were walking around out there just a second ago!”

I felt a massive headache coming on. “Have you lost your mind? We’re inside a fissure. There’s nothing but empty air outside. Stop scaring yourself. If anyone were out there, that centipede would have picked them clean by now. Besides, how could a person be walking on thin air?”

He Yu looked like he was on the verge of tears. “It’s true! I really saw someone. It was so clear, they were walking right along the opposite rock wall. If you don’t believe me, take the flashlight and look for yourself!”