Chapter 17

Chapter 17

“Qiao Moyu, the exit is over here. Crawl through this shrine niche and you’ll be out.”

Lu Lingzhu pointed at a Buddhist shrine niche about half a person’s height. As she spoke, she pressed my head down, trying to make me crawl through first.

“Okay.”

I crouched and pretended to crawl forward, but I had already gripped the Thunderstruck Wood Talisman in my hand.

My hand had been smeared with blood from the fight earlier. I took the chance to wipe it all over the talisman, then abruptly spun around and smashed it toward Lu Lingzhu.

“Five Thunder Command!”

Boom!

A bolt of lightning as thick as a bowl flashed past. Lu Lingzhu let out a shriek, and her entire body began to twist and warp until she turned into a black, branch-like object and collapsed to the floor.

Song Feifei stared at me in shock.

“Qiao Moyu, what are you doing?! Lingzhu, she-wait, she’s not Lingzhu?”

I nodded.

“Right. And you’re not Song Feifei either!”

As I spoke, another bolt of lightning flashed. Song Feifei screamed and fell to the ground as well, turning into a charred black branch.

The real Lu Lingzhu was still sitting on the floor in a daze. I walked over and gave her a kick.

“Get up. I figured out how to get out of here.”

Lu Lingzhu’s expression was complicated.

“No, wait. How did you figure out that one was fake?”

“Isn’t it obvious? With your brain, could you possibly come up with a way to leave this place before I did?”

Lu Lingzhu suddenly understood.

“Oh, right!”

Then she glared at me, clearly unconvinced. “Then why could you come up with one?”

I picked up the withered branch from the ground and snapped it hard. At the broken end, a tiny emerald-green bud was exposed.

I broke off a small piece of the branch and casually tossed it into a pit. The branch rapidly sprouted leaves and twigs, then burrowed into the wall and vanished.

I asked Lu Lingzhu if she still remembered what Hua Yuling had said.

Wriggling Grass could regenerate, but only if there was soil.

Why did we keep falling into pits, and every time we dealt with the monsters inside, there were still more in the next pit, endlessly replenishing themselves?

It was because the wooden floorboards in front of us weren’t actually made of wood. Their true nature was probably soil. That was why they could sustain so much Wriggling Grass.

In other words, we weren’t on the upper floors of the pagoda at all. We were underground.

Lu Lingzhu’s brain had completely stopped working.

“That doesn’t make sense! Didn’t Huahua say this thing wasn’t Wriggling Grass? She couldn’t sense the aura of Wriggling Grass from it.”

“She was wrong. This thing is Wriggling Grass. But there must be some other reason we don’t know about that lets it successfully hide its aura.”