NR | Chapter 26
My companion and I leaned together and drank a little water. Afraid the coffin chamber we’d left behind might be shoved open by those bugs, we crawled forward for another half an hour. The passage was very narrow. I had no idea if the people who had carved these tunnels out back then were generally short, because every time I crawled, I either slammed my head or scraped my back, and it was an absolute struggle.
These tunnels wound and twisted. There were no straight-up or straight-down stretches, but the few steep slopes at roughly sixty degrees were enough to wear me out. The scenery in front of me never changed, and it almost made me faint.
On top of that, after crawling for so long, my spine had stayed bent the whole time. My kneecaps were rubbed raw by sharp stones, and my back, legs, and neck all ached. Before this, I’d never thought crawling through a tunnel was a technical skill.
I gritted my teeth and kept following He Yu for more than an hour. At last, the tunnel ahead visibly widened by about a handspan, and I waved a hand, leaning against the wall as I sat down. “I can’t do it anymore. I’m too tired to crawl. Let’s rest for a while.”
He Yu didn’t say anything, but he stopped with me. Sweat was beading all over his forehead too. Suddenly putting ourselves through this kind of intense exercise left me a little oxygen-starved. We dumped all the food and water from our backpacks onto the ground. In total, there were only three packs of compressed biscuits and two and a half bottles of mineral water.
“If the route ahead isn’t the tomb passage you guessed, then we’ll just end up wandering in circles in here. We’ll either die of thirst or starve to death,” He Yu said. He split the food into two backpacks and handed me the one containing the jade box.
I took the backpack and leaned against the stone wall. Exhaustion swallowed me like a tide at that moment. He Yu said something else after that, but I was so sleepy I couldn’t hear a single word clearly. My head tilted, and I fell completely asleep.
That sleep was terribly uneasy. I dreamed I was in a gilded palace, and on the murals along both sides, a group of people were worshiping a thousand-legged centipede flying out of the sun.
I was holding that nine-ring jade box in my hands. The box had already been opened, and countless horse centipedes were crawling out of it. My hand jerked, and the jade box fell to the ground. I woke from the dream in a fright, sweat pouring off both my body and face. He Yu was sitting opposite me, smoking one cigarette after another.
“Want one?” he asked, holding one out to me. Seeing that I was about to refuse, he added, “It helps calm your nerves. You’re easy to have nightmares in a place like this.”
I didn’t usually smoke, but I still let him light one for me. Then I took it and took a hard drag. After I calmed down, my wildly pounding heart slowly returned to normal. Only after I’d finished the cigarette did He Yu start strapping the backpacks onto himself.
He smiled. “Rested enough? If you have, then we need to keep crawling. We can’t stay here too long. We’ve already been stopped for three hours. From my experience, staying in a tunnel this narrow for too long can cause hallucinations. I think we’re almost at that passage.”
I nodded, flicked away the cigarette butt, and made room for He Yu, motioning for him to go first.
But He Yu shook his head. “I’d better stay behind you. If anything happens, there’s someone to cover you. If you run into trouble while you’re crawling and I’m behind you, in a tunnel this narrow I won’t even have time to pull you back.”
What he said made sense. He Yu did have more experience down here than I did. If he was behind me, he could still fight a monster for a while. If I were behind, I’d just end up being eaten by the monster. Thinking that, I adjusted my posture and crawled forward.
I turned the flashlight beam down to the smallest circle, bit down on the flashlight, and felt my way ahead along both sides of the tunnel wall. After crawling for twenty minutes, I suddenly felt the space ahead open up. Another branching junction appeared in my line of sight, and I immediately sped up, using both hands and feet to scramble over.
Almost the instant I saw it, I was sure it really was a passage connecting to the tomb chamber. This was a structure like a crossroads. The tunnel we were in had been dug straight through the passage, forming a right angle with the original passageway.
Since we had found the passage, we would definitely be able to find the tomb chamber. If Tian Yuqing was taking the proper official route, then we would definitely meet in the chamber.
“He Yu, I think we’re saved.” I turned back, and froze. Behind me was nothing but a pitch-black void. Fuck, where was anybody?!
I was certain that ten minutes ago, He Yu had still been following behind me. The rope on his clothes and gear would slap against my leg with a very regular rhythm.
So I hurriedly crawled back, shining my flashlight around on all sides, thinking, could a monster have dragged He Yu away? No, if a monster had taken him, wouldn’t he have shouted? He couldn’t just disappear that silently.
I crawled back more than ten meters in a row and still found no trace of anyone. With so much space here, and only this one path, no branches at all, how could a living person just vanish into thin air?
Suddenly, a clanging sound striking the wall of the tunnel caught my attention. It sounded like the accidental tapping of a zipper against stone. My first thought was that He Yu might have found something and was now banging on the wall to call me over, but why wouldn’t he just say so directly?
“He Yu?” I shouted, my body involuntarily moving toward the source of the sound. No one answered me, but the knocking continued to spread deeper into the tunnel, and the rhythm was clearly getting faster.
It really was He Yu?! I immediately thought he must have run into some trouble and couldn’t get free, so he was banging on the stone and waiting for me to come save him. Thinking that, I panicked and immediately raised my flashlight, crawling back at top speed.
Just as I was about to reach the source of the sound, I suddenly felt my right arm get yanked hard. With a sharp pop, the flashlight fell to the ground and went out. In an instant, it felt like two forces were dragging both me and my backpack into a crack in the stone wall.
What the fuck? Did this rock gain sentience?!
I shut my eyes and flailed wildly with all four limbs. Soon I heard He Yu’s voice. It was right by my ear. “It’s us! Keep quiet!”
I immediately went still. When I opened my eyes abruptly, I saw him and Lu Ayao, one in front and one behind, pressed into the crevice in an extremely difficult posture. Outside the crack was the tunnel I had just crawled through, while I had already been switched to their side and shoved all the way to the deepest part of the crevice.
When I saw the daggers clenched in their hands, I seemed to understand what was happening. I quickly covered my mouth and stayed completely still. The surroundings instantly fell silent. At the same time, that knocking sound suddenly grew several times louder in the tunnel, as if it was passing right in front of my face.
Outside the tunnel was a dark mass. Before I could make out what it was, the hand gripping Lu Ayao’s dagger thrust outward decisively. The dagger stabbed into something, the knocking sound stopped abruptly, and was replaced by a sharp, ear-piercing baby’s cry. In the blink of an eye, Lu Ayao was dragged out of the crevice.
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