Chapter 62: A Counterfeit Relic

As soon as she finished speaking, I realized something was off. A logical person always has a focus when speaking, and Yujingzi was undoubtedly that type. She had said a lot, but every point she made stuck clearly in my mind.

Also, this was the first time I had ever heard of something called the “Wood-Returning Stone.” Her emphasis leaned heavily toward that, unlike Hou Jinshan, who had clearly focused more on the Ghost Market Map itself.

Why? I was deeply puzzled. Logically, Hou Jinshan had been investigating this matter for over a year, so he shouldn’t have known only about the Ghost Market Map while saying nothing at all about the Wood-Returning Stone. Moreover, Li Wanchou had only been interested in the Ghost Market Map as well.

A possibility quickly crossed my mind. The premise underlying all of this could only be that every piece of information Li Wanchou and I had gathered about these ruins originated from one and the same person: Hou Jinshan.

Li Wanchou was dead. At least from my current perspective, that was the only possibility, since both the partial Ghost Market Map and Li Wanchou’s situation had been told to me by Hou Jinshan. He had painstakingly woven a lie about the Nieyao Ghost Market Map^[1] to cover up his true goal: finding the legendary Wood-Returning Stone.

“You mentioned the Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins. So this is the Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” After Yujingzi disinfected her knife, she sliced open a can and used the blade to scoop out a piece of ham and pop it into her mouth. Watching her do it made my heart jump into my throat, terrified she might slice her own lips.

“We came looking for the Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins, but after coming this far, I feel like this isn’t it. The information Chen Si gave me said the Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins are supposed to be a grand, opulent market that connects to the underworld. Sure, there are plenty of welcoming stone statues^[2] here, but overall, this place is too crude.”

I chimed in, “Could it be because of how old it is? Besides, this place experienced crustal movement in the past. Maybe those tectonic shifts caused it to look different than before.”

Yujingzi swallowed a piece of ham and smiled. “Doesn’t that highlight the problem? As you said, tectonic shifts might have occurred here. So how could a legendary market meant for ten thousand ghosts to visit be built somewhere that could so easily be submerged? The water network here is quite extensive. I took a quick look around…”

As she spoke, she suddenly paused, squinting toward the pool directly ahead as if she had caught sight of something. I turned to look along her line of sight.

Before I could see anything, she drew the steel blade from her waist, pushed off the ground, and quickly strode toward the water’s edge. On her way, she shoved one of her groggy subordinates dozing near the extinguished fire. “The fish are here. Get up and get to work!”

The subordinate snapped awake immediately. Rubbing his eyes, he popped a small whistle hanging from his neck into his mouth and blew a few notes to a rhythm I couldn’t recognize. The henchmen resting around the fire instantly rolled up off the ground.

In less than ten minutes, the ring of fires lit near the water’s edge was completely extinguished. Over twenty people gathered together, with Yujingzi standing at the very front holding two Damascus steel blades. Without exception, every pair of eyes was locked on the gently rippling surface of the pool.

The Liu Family’s men were all brawny and well-disciplined. When they saw me inching over, they made space without needing to be asked. I slipped up beside Yujingzi and whispered, “What are you all looking at? Is there something in the water?”

Yujingzi nodded and reached behind one of her men to pull out a steel blade that was half a hand longer than my own palm. She reversed the weapon with one hand and offered me the handle.

But her eyes never left the water. Without turning, she said, “Stick close to the group. This pool connects to the core of the cave system. We’re hitching a ride.”

I took the blade, my mind struggling to keep up. “What? Hitching a ride on what?”

Yujingzi waved a hand at me to shut up. Just then, I noticed the bells tied to several large rocks nearby had begun ringing furiously. That’s when I realized the bells were tied to ropes, and the ropes trailed deep into the water. Something must have been hanging from the other end.

“Move!” Yujingzi shouted. In the next instant, she reversed her grip on her blade and dove straight into the water.

“What?!” I barely had time to react before everyone around me started diving in. The pool erupted into chaos, bubbling like boiling water. I stood frozen for several seconds as the light quickly faded around me.

Panic surged through me. I fumbled to switch on the small flashlight clipped to my belt, ignored the pain in my injured abdomen, took a deep breath, and leapt into the water.

The pool was absurdly deep. The moment I plunged in, a massive fish tail swept past my face. The thing was monstrous, looking as though it had been pumped full of growth hormones, easily ten times the size of a normal fish, with a grotesque face and fangs that looked at least twenty centimeters long.

One hit from that tail could probably break bones.

I barely dodged it and then saw Yujingzi’s crew clinging to the ghost-head fish like they were born to swim. No matter how violently the fish thrashed, they didn’t fall off. They had used a specialized net to lock down the fish’s head. Meanwhile, Yujingzi was riding one of the fish, swimming toward me.

I still didn’t understand what the hell they were trying to do, but when I saw her waving at me underwater, I knew I couldn’t hesitate any longer.

This time, I moved with practiced ease. I quickly switched the blade to my other hand and used every ounce of strength to swim forward. The ghost-head fish were lightning fast. I had barely reached out when Yujingzi grabbed my wrist in a firm grip.

That sudden yank made my wrist crack with a sharp snap. I grabbed her tightly in return, and the next second, I saw the blade in her left hand wedged between the fish’s massive scales along its spine. These fish had unusually large scales, and mixed in among them were scattered bits of bronze. I couldn’t tell whether they had been lodged there by chance or deliberately implanted.

The ghost-head fish was about to plunge into the raging river channel ahead. I quickly braced myself, aimed at a scale, and drove my blade in. The knife Yujingzi had given me was already razor-sharp, yet it still couldn’t pierce all the way through. It lodged between a bronze shard and a scale instead.

Still, it was enough to hold us steady. I gave Yujingzi an OK sign. She nodded at me and let go. I gripped the hilt with both hands as the underwater current tore past us so fast it felt like someone was slicing my face with a knife.

It felt like we were moving rapidly through a cave beneath the pool. Soon, the water level dropped sharply. The fish’s back broke through the surface, and just before I suffocated, I finally managed to catch a breath of air, discovering another hollow chamber similar in structure to the one before.

“Get some air!” Yujingzi shouted back at me. She was speaking only to me, her target crystal-clear.

I quickly took a deep breath. Right after I did, the Ghosthead Fish plunged back underwater into another submerged cave. I noticed that the bottom of every cave had those stone statues set in place.

My initial guess was that they were part of some anti-theft mechanism, but I still didn’t understand how these statues could distinguish between fish and humans. Both were living creatures, yet the fish passed through unharmed while people got their legs yanked. Could it be a matter of body size?

After three rounds of surfacing for air, the environment around us finally began to change. During our last brief stop at a pool, Yujingzi lifted her upper body out of the water and whistled in all directions. At first, I worried she hadn’t had time to breathe and might drown, but it turned out I was overthinking it.

Her lung capacity was definitely far superior to mine.

Clinging to the fish was exhausting, making my arms ache. This stretch of the River Channel was clearly steeper than before, and the current was even fiercer, so much so that the fish was practically floating on the water’s surface. By the light from the guy up ahead, I realized the River Channel up ahead wasn’t enclosed!

We’d finally reached the end of the River Channel, but what lay ahead was unmistakably a small waterfall!

These fish were carnivores. If we went over the waterfall with them and they all gathered at the bottom for a buffet, we’d literally turn into fish food!

Just then, I saw Yujingzi up ahead twist her body sideways, gripping the knife in the fish’s back with one hand. With the other, she pulled out an automatic grappling hook from who-knows-where. She reached out to grab me, and I quickly latched onto her.

A split second before the fish plunged over the waterfall, she fired the grappling hook. Instantly, I felt like I’d been launched from a catapult. Not just me, but the knife stuck in the fish’s back came out with me too.

Momentum slammed both of us into the stone walls flanking the River Channel. Yujingzi had found a leverage point and used her legs to absorb the impact with practiced ease. She hadn’t warned me, though, so I hit the wall full force, completely unprepared. The impact nearly killed me, and I instantly felt the sweet taste of blood in my throat.

With new injuries added on top of unhealed old ones, I was lucky the stone wall had been washed smooth by the water. Otherwise, if there had been any jutting edge, I might have died right then and there.

Yujingzi held onto me as we hung from the stone wall. I swallowed the blood and looked up just in time to see a length of rope tossed down from the stone steps above. I grabbed the carabiner at the very end and clipped it to my belt.

Yujingzi was closer to the steps. She gave the rope a tug, planted her foot on the grappling hook, and flipped herself up onto the stairs. The physics-defying move left me stunned. There was no way I could pull off something that advanced, so I had to rely on her crew to haul me up.

Then I heard a series of loud explosions from below the waterfall. The blasts shook the cave ceiling, dislodging chunks of rock that rained down around us.

Once I was up, the medic came over to check my wounds and change the bandages. Yujingzi stood beside me, took a swig from a water bottle, and smiled. “First time?”

I blinked at her, dazed, then nodded. My eyes drifted to the churning waters below, still trying to process everything.

Yujingzi laughed even harder. She pulled a cigarette from a waterproof pouch, lit it, and said, “I thought all you Gan Clan people were crazy. At least Chen Si is way more reckless than you. You cherish your life way too much. Looks like he won’t be able to count on you in the future.”

I thought to myself, what the hell do you know? There’s a saying: life is precious. I’ve still got my whole youth ahead of me; no way I’m dying here.

Once I’d caught my breath, I asked her, “You never finished earlier. Is this place really the Nine-Bend Corridor Ruins?”

She exhaled a puff of smoke, glanced around, and said, “I’ve taken a look. Doesn’t look like it. If I had to say, it feels more like a beautifully crafted fake.”