Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Night fell. The Yushou told us the last time it had seen Ji Kang was in this valley.

The valley was a typical Danxia landform. The cliffs on either side looked as if they had been hewn out with an axe, jutting outward layer by layer, each stratum a different color. But once night descended, all of it turned into varying shades of black. Sparse clumps of wild grass grew here and there in the cracks along the cliff walls.

We set up camp at the mouth of the valley, planning to wait until daybreak before heading deeper in to look for him. While I was picking up stones from the ground to weigh down the tent, I spotted a footprint.

“Huahua, take a look. Is this Ji Kang’s footprint?”

The ground was packed gravel, hard enough that a person walking over it normally wouldn’t leave much of a trace. Yet for some reason, this footprint was especially deep. Even the tread on the sole was clearly visible, and at the heel there was a small round depression.

Hua Yuling crouched down with her flashlight and studied it for a long while.

“It’s half a footprint. There’s a bigger one on the outside, and inside it, half of a smaller one from the ball of the foot. I just don’t know what this little round pit is.”

“Half a footprint?”

“Who wears half a shoe?”

I thought about it for a while but couldn’t come up with anything. Forget it. A footprint, at the very least, proved someone really had gone into this valley.

After we pitched the tent, we couldn’t find any firewood nearby, so we ate a few packs of compressed biscuits and squeezed into the tent to sleep. The northwest wind slapped the canvas with sharp cracking sounds.

“Pap! Pap!”

“Pap, pap, pap!”

My eyes flew open.

That wasn’t the wind. Someone was really patting the tent.

The moonlight was bright. On the beige canvas, a pair of handprints pressed inward from outside, followed by a face flattening against the tent as whoever it was tried to peer in.

Hua Yuling had woken up too. The tent had two zippered entrances, one at each end. I gestured to Hua Yuling, signaling that the two of us should rush out from opposite sides.

Jiang Haoyan happened to be sleeping along the outer edge of the tent. I crept over and stepped right onto his stomach.

Jiang Haoyan opened his eyes. “?”

I clamped one hand over his mouth and grabbed the zipper with the other, yanking it open in one swift motion.

The tent opened, and a fierce gust swept in, carrying sand with it.

I rolled out on the spot and lunged outside, just in time to see a black silhouette sprinting toward the depths of the valley.

Hua Yuling chased after it for a few steps, then stopped. With a flick of her hand, an insect the size of a fly darted out from her sleeve and flew after that shadow.

It was a type of gu insect she had refined. She called it a Shadow Chaser. The insects usually came in pairs; no matter where the male insect went, the female could always track it down.

At night, wild animals often roamed these deep mountain gorges. We didn’t dare charge in recklessly. This method was the safest.

“Look!”

“There are more footprints on the ground!”

The flashlight beam fell across the ground, illuminating a small patch of brightness. Several more half footprints had appeared, the same as before: the front half of a foot, with a tiny round pit behind it.

Hua Yuling was completely baffled.

“What kind of shoe only has the front half of a sole?”

“And what’s this pit at the back? Is there really a shoe that strange in this world?”

Jiang Haoyan said, “High heels?”

I stared into the pitch-black valley, goose bumps rising all over my back.

People get trapped by fixed ways of thinking. If we’d seen this footprint in a city, Hua Yuling and I definitely would have thought of high heels. But this was an uninhabited region of the northwest, far from any human settlement. The only people who would show up here were basically hikers and adventurers.

Who went trekking in high heels?

I was still staring blankly into the valley when Hua Yuling, beside me, suddenly shuddered from head to toe. Her expression darkened like still water.

I asked if she needed to pee. Hua Yuling shook her head.

“My Shadow Chaser is dead.”

A gu insect like the Shadow Chaser was skilled at hiding its presence. It was almost impossible to notice. Whoever-or whatever-that thing was, there was a good chance it wasn’t human.

Could it be a female ghost? But as everyone knew, ghosts didn’t leave footprints.