Chapter 70: The Ones We Can’t Take With Us

I waved frantically in Fourth Brother’s direction. He saw me too, his eyes full of worry. Strangely, there was no surprise in them. He and a few of his men grabbed hold of the iron chain extending to the cave entrance, and it took them a full half hour to haul us up.

The moment I climbed out, Fourth Brother yanked me aside. I stumbled, my ear aching from his grip, and he immediately started scolding me. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? What the hell were you thinking, running into a place like that?!”

As it turned out, no matter how terrifying a bird might be, it was still no match for modern firearms. The owl-faced birds’ nest had been practically turned into a sieve by these guys.

Hou Jinshan was tossed onto the stone path inside the cave headfirst, like a sack of trash. The jade casket he had just gotten his hands on was snatched away again. He was too weak to resist, barely able to breathe, let alone call for help.

I cried out in pain as Fourth Brother dragged me, and only then did he finally let go. I was seething, but right now I didn’t have time to argue with him.

When Lu Ayao was brought up earlier, I had already noticed his condition was terrible. We’d been hanging on that chain for quite a while, and during that half hour, blood had been steadily dripping down onto me from above.

Several times I was terrified he’d pass out from blood loss right then and there.

Worse still, I had no idea what kind of idiots Five Masters had for subordinates. Seeing someone so badly injured, not a single one even bothered to lend a hand, just letting him find a spot to sit down on his own.

I broke free from Fourth Brother’s grip and rushed over to Lu Ayao, who was sitting in a corner. When I got closer, I realized he had already passed out. I tried to lift him up, but even with a hard pull, I couldn’t get him off the ground.

I looked up at Fourth Brother and called out, “Fourth Brother, help me out! This is my friend. He’s saved me more times than I can count. If it weren’t for him, Hou Jinshan and I would’ve been bird food just now.”

But Fourth Brother just frowned tightly at me, staring as if what I was holding was a ticking time bomb. We stared at each other for a good half minute before Fourth Brother finally waved to a few of his men.

When he waved, those chubby guys just looked at me in confusion. Taking it like a royal decree, I immediately called out to them, “What are you all standing around for? Hurry up and come help!”

Hearing me say that, the men rushed over and helped me carry Lu Ayao to the stone path inside the cave. Once we set him down, a girl with a long braid from Fourth Brother’s team shoved me aside, knelt down, and started pulling all sorts of medical supplies from her backpack.

“Be gentle, miss. He lost a lot of blood just now,” I urged her.

She rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t get in the way. I’m more qualified than you.”

I had no idea how to respond to that, so I just stepped back to give her room. But the moment I backed up, a hand suddenly reached out from behind me, grabbed my sleeve, and yanked me back hard.

“Ow! What the hell? Take it easy!” Fourth Brother dragged me aside like a baby chick. I hated when he pulled me around like that. We weren’t even that far apart in age, but he always acted like he was my dad. With all these people around, it was seriously embarrassing.

As soon as he opened his mouth, he demanded, “What are you doing here? Right now, you should be at school.”

His words made me feel guilty, but then I thought about it. I was dragged into this against my will, whereas Chen Si had vanished into thin air, washing his hands of everything for months. I should be the one questioning him! What did I have to feel guilty about?

So I put my hands on my hips and shot back, “Then why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here first?”

Before I even finished, Fourth Brother cursed under his breath. The outburst was so loud he quickly lowered his voice, then dragged me over to the stone wall and said, “You! What friend? How did you get mixed up with him?”

His question caught me off guard. I gave him a quick rundown of what had happened to me in Gansu. When I finished, he fell into deep thought, and I sensed something wasn’t right.

I had always assumed he knew everything about what happened to me in Gansu. But looking at it now, he didn’t seem to know much about what Tian Yuqing and I had been up to. Maybe he had only deceived Liu Wan to a certain extent, but never intended to drag me into it.

The men with Fourth Brother were all quiet types, looking nothing like people of our Gan Clan. Fourth Brother had too many secrets. No matter how I tried to ask, he either stayed silent or brushed me off.

In the end, we both leaned against the stone wall in silence. Who knew how deep underground we were by now? After sitting still, the sweat on my body quickly cooled, and I shivered. One of Fourth Brother’s men went out of the cave to break off some coffin boards and started a fire in the stone passage.

I sat there poking at the fire with the back of my knife and asked, “Fourth Brother, did you see Yujingzi when you came in? I was with her earlier, but then everyone disappeared.”

Fourth Brother stared into the fire. “It was an illusion. You were caught in an illusion. That pillar you climbed earlier is called the Shadow Pillar. We estimate it to be a ritual artifact cast during the Shang or Zhou dynasty. The coffins you saw are just part of it. The locals call it the Ghost Copper Pillar. Legend says it’s piled high with corpses inside, serving as a medium to communicate with spirits and gods.

“Don’t underestimate Liu Wan just because she’s a woman. She was already in this game back when you were still playing in the mud. She’s got serious skills and wouldn’t fall for an illusion so easily. If she disappeared, it’s simply because she didn’t want you following her anymore.”

Seeing him zoning out and brushing me off made me thoroughly annoyed. I decided I wasn’t going to talk to him anymore.

Instead, he turned the question back on me and asked, “People from the Lu Clan bring bad luck. Getting involved with him won’t do you any good. Once you get out of here, try not to have anything more to do with him.”

I flared up the moment I heard that and snapped, “Come on, Chen Si, it’s one thing to act like that outside, but what the hell are you pretending in front of me for? Since when did you start believing in all that old feudal superstitious crap? Bad luck? He’s saved my life so many times! That’s bad luck? Nobody tears down the bridge after crossing it that fast! If it weren’t for him, I’d have been fucking digested into bird shit and dropped on the ground by now!”

Fourth Brother smacked me over the head. “Where did you learn to talk like that? You’ve been hanging out with that He kid for less than a month and you’re already cursing like this? People from the Lu Clan are cold to the bone and never keep friends. Back in the day, your grandpa, my master, walked several kilometers on foot just to deliver rice to Lu Xiaosu. But when Master passed away, did a single person from their family show up to the funeral?”

I didn’t know much about those old stories, but I believed one thing for sure: back then, when Grandpa gave Lu Xiaosu those three sacks of rice, it was out of pure kindness. He was known far and wide as a truly good man, and he definitely didn’t do it just to put the Lu Clan in his debt.

Fourth Brother glanced at Hou Jinshan, who could only lie prone on the ground, and said expressionlessly, “We’ve gone deep in now. This place isn’t some tourist spot, and we still have to keep moving forward. If the guy named Lu doesn’t wake up in an hour, I don’t plan on taking him. Carrying someone who’s incapacitated is too dangerous.”

I was shocked. “You’re going to leave him here all by himself? You just said this place is so dangerous! What if something happens to him before we can come back for him?”

Fourth Brother turned to look at me calmly. His eyes were cold and still, like a bottomless pool of water. Looking into his eyes, I quickly understood what he really meant. He wasn’t planning to scout ahead and then come back for him; he had no intention of returning at all.

Looking at his expression, I knew he wasn’t joking with me. But the Chen Si in my memory wasn’t like this at all. He was always loyal and straightforward. Why did he have to be like this?

I shook my head, my tone helpless. “Fourth Brother, we really can’t do this.”

Fourth Brother grew impatient, standing up to stare down at me. His voice suddenly boomed several times louder as he said, “I only brought around twenty people down here, and every single one of them has a job to do. No one can be spared to look after an invalid. Besides, we still have a long way to cover ahead of us. It’s impossible to carry him the entire way.”

Then he patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry. Even if you leave him here to die, he won’t hold a grudge against you. In this line of work, the one thing nobody lacks is the awareness of death. Yin Pozi was no exception.”