Chapter 97: Encountering the Infant Corpse Again

The process had been grueling, but I’d finally figured out the pattern. With that, things became much easier. Chen Canghai would jump first, then it’d be my turn. I stood in place, watching him arc gracefully through the air in a perfect parabola, feeling intensely envious.

Why was everyone so damn capable? It was like I was the only clueless idiot on the entire ship.

I crouched slightly and slowly edged toward the rim of the stone pillar beneath my feet, getting fully ready for the jump. Just as I was about to leap, a strange squeaking sound suddenly came from behind me.

The moment I heard it, I slammed to a halt. Chen Canghai clearly heard it too and immediately looked up in my direction. I opened my mouth to yell for him to hold on, but before the words were half out, something lunged at me from behind. In an instant, my feet lost their grip, and I tumbled headfirst off the stone pillar.

I let out a scream, rolling all the way down the stone with that thing clinging to me. Instinctively, I reached out to grab the pillar, but my fingernails scraped hard against the surface, several of them tearing back instantly and leaving streaks of blood behind.

As I plummeted, sheer terror took over, leaving me completely unable to control my body. In the midst of the tumbling, one of my hands brushed against the icy hilt of the knife at my waist. Regardless of the consequences, I yanked it out with all my strength and plunged the entire blade into the brittle rock.

It barely slowed my fall. The blade ground down rapidly against the stone, and before I could even process what was happening, I slammed into the icy water. The moment I hit the surface, I felt the crushing impact drive my entire skeleton backward toward my abdomen.

A mouthful of water surged down my windpipe. The pool was terrifyingly deep; I plummeted nearly ten meters before desperately clawing my way back toward the surface. My left leg gave out with a sharp crack, rendered completely useless, whether broken or sprained.

Relying on just my arms and one good leg, I forced myself to the surface as fast as I could. The freezing, foul-smelling water and the agonizing pain brought my mind into razor-sharp focus. All around me, strange, dark shapes were floating on the water.

I had no idea what they were. They looked like lifeless objects, bobbing up and down on the water’s surface. Pitch darkness surrounded me, limiting my vision to less than a meter. I reached for the flashlight hanging at my chest, but I didn’t dare turn it on.

I was terrified that the moment I clicked it on, a horribly decayed face would be staring right into mine, nose to nose.

This place was far more eerie than the stone pillars above. Though surrounded by water, there wasn’t a single splash or ripple to be heard anywhere. It was a pool of dead water.

I didn’t dare yell for someone to save me. Before hitting the water, I’d heard that thing splash down not far away. When it had pounced on me, the foul stench it gave off reminded me of that infant corpse from before. There was a very good chance it had followed us through the flip gate.

I didn’t know where it was yet. Shouting out blindly would quickly expose my position and bring danger to Chen Canghai, so I could only rely on myself to swim to shore before that infant corpse floated back up.

Panicked, I looked around, desperate for my eyes to be of some use. Just then, a section of iron chain floated over in the water right into my hand. I immediately lifted the chain to inspect it; it was undoubtedly from the same bridge as the one Chen Canghai had shown me earlier.

This chain seemed to be anchored to something fixed on shore, which was why it hadn’t sunk into the water. It angled upward, and a spark of hope suddenly flared in my chest. I hurriedly pulled myself along the chain, swimming in that direction.

As I pulled myself along, I guessed that this might be part of the bridge’s wreckage left behind after it collapsed. Some sections had fallen to the bottom, while others remained caught on the bank, suggesting the shore might be wide enough to keep part of the bridge’s frame from plunging into the water.

After swimming for a bit, my right foot touched some wooden planks. Many were broken, likely a small section of the bridge deck. It seemed to be resting on top of something, feeling soft underfoot, as if there was something else beneath it.

Gripping the chain, I half-climbed, half-crawled onto the bridge deck, moving forward while listening intently for any sounds behind me.

I was scared to death. I didn’t dare investigate further or pay attention to the strange texture under my feet. I just followed the remnants of the bridge until I reached a spot where I could touch the rock wall ahead. Only then did I stop. That stretch had been grueling to navigate.

In front of me was a cave. The entrance was extremely narrow, barely wide enough for a person to crawl straight through. But after just one touch of the cave wall, I made up my mind to crawl inside.

I wasn’t wearing any gear, leaving me with only a short claw knife at my waist. My subconscious told me this was no place to linger, and that I had to get off this chain bridge immediately no matter what. So I crouched down and squeezed right into the entrance.

I was bleeding continuously and terrified I might faint halfway through. I needed to find a relatively safe environment as quickly as possible, so I bit my lip, engaged every muscle in my body, and crawled forward dozens of meters in one go.

I had never crawled through a cave this narrow. The last time I had crawled through a tunnel was with He Yu, and having him there had eased my anxiety significantly.

Clearly, without He Yu this time, I was barely handling it. It wasn’t too bad when I first entered; every pore could feel air coming in, and the cool breeze helped me relax just a little. But once I crawled thirty or forty meters in, the breeze disappeared. The sensation was hard to describe, and a strange tightness soon began building in my chest for no apparent reason.

I knew I had to stop.

Crawling to this point had brought me right to my limit.

Being plunged completely into darkness alone is terrifying. Fear of the unfamiliar environment made my heart race and my breathing grow ragged. I curled up inside the cave, but space was so limited that the posture was unbearable; my feet were practically at the top of my head, and the roof was so low it brushed against my scalp.

The feeling brought back memories of playing on those tube slides for the first time as a kid. Places that insanely cramped would often drive me crazy, and right now I felt like going crazy too. In fact, halfway through the crawl, I couldn’t stop myself from crying. But I couldn’t stop back then either. Crawling forward meant I might live, but if I passed out near the entrance, I wouldn’t even know how I died.

Just then, I coughed up another mouthful of blood, smearing it across my face as I curled up inside the cave. At that point, crying and screaming were almost impossible to suppress. I can’t even remember what I was shouting back then; I had completely lost my mind. My body was even trying, purely on instinct, to wriggle backward.

But going back was out of the question. I didn’t have the strength left to crawl back out.

Maybe I should just die here, I thought.

This end wasn’t all that different from those grave robbers, but without a doubt, I was a pathetic one: dying in some nameless cave, one leg broken, my arms and back covered in scratches from that infant corpse.

As random thoughts scrambled through my mind, my vision began to blur. My head slumped to the side, and I collapsed in the cave.