Chapter 14

Chapter 14

I loosened my grip, and my body dropped with it.

Song Tianming thought I had fallen. He leaned out to look, but my fingertips were still hooked firmly into a crack in the wall.

The moment he poked his head out, I flung a Fire Talisman straight up at him.

Boom-

Song Tianming’s hair burst into flames. He let out a miserable scream and frantically slapped at his head with both hands. Seizing the chance, I braced my arm, sprang upward, grabbed his collar, and yanked him down hard.

“Ah-”

Half of Song Tianming’s body had already been hanging out of the opening. With that one pull, he lost his balance, flipped over, and plunged down.

I took the opportunity to climb up through the opening and sat on the floor, gasping for breath, my mind still buzzing.

What was going on? Why had Song Tianming attacked me? Wasn’t he supposed to be downstairs with Hua Yuling? The stairs were only wide enough for one person. How had he gotten up here ahead of me?

Wait. No, something was wrong. I didn’t think there was a mole beneath his brow.

This wasn’t Song Tianming. Or rather, this was the Song Tianming who had brought us into the mountains, not the one who had been with us just now.

Forget it. There was no point thinking too much about it. The priority was finding Lingzhu.

I got to my feet, adjusted the flashlight fastened to my bag, and carefully took in the scene before me.

I had no idea which floor of the Buddhist pagoda this was. It looked no different from the first floor: empty in the middle, without a single furnishing, with murals and Buddhist niches lining the walls.

I took one step forward, and suddenly the ground vanished beneath my foot again.

Fuck!

The instant my body was thrown into the air, shock and panic surged through me, and I was so furious I wanted to curse out loud.

Fortunately, before I could even react, my feet hit solid ground. I twisted my ankle slightly and reached out to brace myself against the wall.

When I focused, I saw that I was in a circular pit about a meter across. Wooden partitions surrounded me on all sides, as if I were inside a section of some enormous pipe.

Everything inside the pagoda was pitch-black, and the wooden floor was an old, dark color as well, so I hadn’t noticed the pit in the floor just now. That was how I had stepped wrong and fallen in.

Luckily, the pit wasn’t deep. It only came up to the top of my head. I jumped hard, hooked both hands over the edge, and climbed out easily.

Once I was steady on the floor, I became extremely cautious. I swept the flashlight carefully over the ground and only moved forward after confirming that what lay ahead was solid flooring.

But to my surprise, I had only taken a few steps when the wooden floorboard beneath me suddenly caved in, and my body dropped sharply once more.

“Holy shit!”

This time, I was completely unprepared. I crashed hard onto the ground, pain twisting my face into a grimace.

I looked up and saw another round pit exactly like the one before.

Rubbing my butt with one hand, I slowly walked over, ready to climb out from the bottom of the pit the same way I had just done.

Just as my hand reached the floor above my head, a head suddenly poked out from inside the wooden wall in front of me.

A crown of jet-black hair slammed right into my chest.