Chapter 61: Ghost Paintings and the Ghost Ruins

“Get some rest and prepare to move out again.”

“This cave must have been flooded. Everything’s damp. What a damn mess.”

“Keep your voice down. Don’t let Boss Yu hear you.”

The rustling voices stirred me from sleep. The stone beneath me was hard enough to bruise bone, and there was still water in my lungs I hadn’t completely coughed out. I sat up and hacked a few times, the world slowly coming into focus. I saw a fire burning nearby, a blanket draped over me, and groups of people huddled around the flames, eating canned food. The faint crackle of dry wood made the whole area feel even more quiet.

“You’re awake?” A pleasant female voice sounded beside me.

I turned my head in a daze and saw Yu Jingzi sitting not far away. She was dressed in a complex, professional-looking expedition outfit, with curved blades strapped to both sides of her waist. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail. This was the first time I’d seen her up close. She was indeed beautiful, but I quickly realized that calling her merely “beautiful” was far too shallow. She was beautiful, yes, but far more than that.

As I came to, she was using a knife to pry open a can. With a flick of the blade, she popped the lid off effortlessly. Every movement she made was graceful. She looked at me and held the can out. “Here. You’ve been out for a while. You must be hungry.”

“Thanks.” My voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper. Sometimes, I really envied Fourth Brother. How did that guy get so lucky? To have a woman like her take a liking to him. Meanwhile, I couldn’t catch a break with women.

Wait, what the hell was I thinking? I should be figuring out how I even got here. And Xiao Wu—right, where was Xiao Wu? I remembered pushing him into the River Channel. If he drifted along with the current, he probably avoided getting crushed by the falling rocks.

Yu Jingzi pulled out her knife and began cleaning it as she spoke. “You’ve been unconscious for two days since we found you. We did some emergency treatment and removed the bullet. Your fever finally broke last night. The team medic says you’re in good shape overall, but you’ll need proper rest once we get out of here.”

Maybe it was the lingering fever, but my head was still spinning. I couldn’t even form a proper sentence. I mumbled, “I remember… something pulled me down. A stone statue underwater. Did you guys drag me out from down there?”

She paused, as if she hadn’t heard me, then looked up and said, “Thanks to you, the fissure below shifted dramatically. Looks like the mountain outside might’ve collapsed too. The entrance we came through is now blocked by rocks, so you’ll have to keep moving forward with us. Maybe we’ll find another exit ahead.”

She must’ve noticed I wasn’t fully processing her words, so she left me alone and went back to her own tasks. I stared into the flickering firelight, and before long, I drifted off again. I had no idea how long I slept, but when I woke naturally, most of the others had already settled down to rest.

The fire was still burning. I pulled off the blanket and used the cave wall to push myself upright. That’s when I realized this place was completely unfamiliar. We must’ve gone deeper into the cave system. We were now in a large cavern chamber. In front of me was a wide, crystal-clear pool of blue water. There were no fish. Yu Jingzi had chosen a rocky shore as the camp site, and everyone was resting with their backs against the slightly damp cave walls.

My abdomen had stopped bleeding, though it still hurt like hell. My waist was wrapped in four or five layers of gauze. I crouched by the pool and scooped up some water to wash my face. The icy cold jolted me awake. I lifted my shirt and saw my elbows and knees were covered in deep bruises—probably from hitting rocks while I was being dragged underwater.

Thinking of that, I immediately tried to stand and find Yu Jingzi, but the movement yanked at my wound, making me grimace in pain and collapse back onto the ground.

“Don’t move too much. Conserve your strength. When you were unconscious, I could have someone carry you. But now that you’re awake, you’ll have to walk the rest of the way on your own.” Yu Jingzi appeared beside me, lifting me up with one hand while holding a knife in the other.

I grabbed her arm. “Where’s Xiao Wu? The guy who came in with me. We met you at the local diner. He fell into the water with me. Did you find him too?”

I was frantic. In contrast, Yu Jingzi’s face remained expressionless. She waited until I calmed down a bit before answering. “The place where you two fell—the current was fast and there were strong undercurrents. We found you downstream in the River Channel. We searched a fifty-meter radius thoroughly. There was no sign of your companion. Not even a trace of blood. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Of course I understood. She was implying Xiao Wu might not have been swept downstream at all. With his skills, maybe he’d managed to climb up one of the stone paths along the sides. But I wasn’t sure that was possible. He was already unconscious when we fell, and he’d been shot. Could he really have woken up after that?

Yu Jingzi helped me back to the wall and sat me down. “Don’t overthink it. In this line of work, life and death are often left to fate. And honestly, you’re not in much better shape than he is right now.”

My mind was a mess, full of scattered information, none of it from myself. Everything I knew came from outside sources. Yu Jingzi seemed open, answering every question, but if I thought about it carefully, she hadn’t actually told me anything useful. Not where we were in the mountain, not how they found me, not even why they were here in the first place. The only detail she gave was that vague mention of the “downstream” River Channel.

But I did remember parts of what happened after I fell into the water. The memories were blurry, but I was sure I’d been dragged down by a stone statue. Those statues underwater weren’t exactly fragile, but they weren’t indestructible either. You couldn’t smash them with a kick—you had to cut them with a blade. There was no way I’d broken it with just one kick.

And I noticed something strange—the timing didn’t add up. Back at the restaurant, Yu Jingzi and her group had clearly left long before us, and their gear was a hundred times more professional than ours. So why were they only a few hundred meters ahead? Was something holding them up along the way?

I gathered my thoughts and asked her, “Do you know where my Fourth Brother is? He hasn’t been back to the shop in months.”

For the first time, Yu Jingzi showed an expression that wasn’t just a polite mask. She picked up the canteen by her feet, took a sip of water, and said, “I don’t know where he is. In fact, that’s exactly what I wanted to ask you.”

“What do you mean? Weren’t you all operating near the Hengduan Mountains?”

Yu Jingzi shook her head. “Who told you that? Tian Yuqing?”

I nodded.

Yu Jingzi’s face twisted with genuine anger, something rare for her. She cursed loudly, throwing all decorum aside, and flung a knife she’d been carrying at me. “Those sons of bitches. What the hell are they up to, tricking me into coming to this place? And they actually managed to keep it secret?”

I barely caught the knife she tossed over. Yu Jingzi had a lot of strength, and the thing nearly took my head off. I was never good with sharp objects like this—too easy to get hurt.

If I was just confused before, now I was completely lost. Tian Yuqing had told me that Fourth Brother was working with the Liu Family, that the two of them were definitely moving together. But now that I’d finally gotten a chance to talk to Yu Jingzi, I realized they hadn’t been working together at all. In fact, Yu Jingzi was just as deep in the dark as I was.

That’s when it hit me—most of what I’d learned from Tian Yuqing was likely false. And Fourth Brother probably knew about it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have gone along with the lie and helped lure Yu Jingzi to Hubei with just a few casual words.

“We can’t go back the way we came now, so this works out fine. I want to see what the hell is really down here.” Yu Jingzi’s mood shifted in an instant. Honestly, this seemed more like her natural state—emotional, volatile, but real. Compared to earlier, she finally felt like a person.

Lesson learned: never lie to a woman. Judging by her temper, Yu Jingzi could probably twist Chen Si’s head off right now. We still had a long way to go, and I just hoped she wouldn’t take her anger out on me. If she did, I might really have to cut ties with Fourth Brother when I got out of here.

Suddenly, I remembered the casket and blurted out everything. “What is this place, exactly? The Nine-Ring Jade Casket I brought was snatched by Hou Jinshan. The Water System Map carved on it is crucial. We used that map to find the fissure and get down here. Without it, aren’t we just going to get lost?”

“If I were as useless as those idiots and couldn’t get down here without a map, the Liu Family might as well shut down their whole operation.” Yu Jingzi flipped over the dying fire with the back of her knife, unconcerned. The flickering flames lit up her face, highlighting her sharp bone structure. She went on, “The intel I have is limited, but it’s enough to navigate this cave.”

“You came here for the Nieyao Ghost Market Map too?” I asked.

To my surprise, Yu Jingzi slowly shook her head.

“No. The Nieyao Ghost Market Map is just a mural. Supposedly, it stretches over a hundred meters and depicts a hundred ghosts. Even if it’s a masterpiece worth a fortune, we can’t exactly cut it out and carry it away. Chen Si didn’t send me here for that. He sent me to find a place—a very strange place. They usually call it the Ghost Ruins. According to legend, it’s also known as the Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins. It’s said to be a marketplace of the underworld. And within the Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins, there’s a special kind of stone. Eat it, and all illnesses vanish. It grants long life and vitality. People call it the Wood-Returning Stone.”