Chapter 112

Chapter 112

Night swallowed the sharp silhouettes of the pavilions and towers around the park’s waterscape.

In the pitch-black grove, a young couple huddled together beneath an umbrella in the drizzle.

It was the purest, sweetest moment of romance. They weren’t afraid of the secluded woods, nor of the approaching Ghost Festival. Hand in hand in the dark, they whispered sugary words to each other.

Suddenly, the egrets in the trees were startled into flight, shrieking and crashing chaotically through the branches.

The couple jumped in fright.

Only then did they seem to realize this place was a little too remote.

The girl shrank her neck back and suddenly remembered something. “There used to be an underground karst cave park behind here. It was abandoned later.”

“Six middle school students went in to explore, got lost in the caves, and by the time the police found them, they were all covered in green mold.”

The girl was probably a local. She knew the area’s old cases like the back of her hand.

The boy listened, stunned into silence. Before he could even react, the girl had already hooked her arm around his.

“Retreat!”

She dragged him away at once.

There would be plenty of chances for romance in the future. But they only had one life.

In her low heels, she pulled her slow-witted boyfriend along the riverbank.

After only a couple of steps, some noise came from behind them.

The two, still holding hands as they fled, instinctively turned to look toward the sound.

In the darkness, a single spark lit up first.

The next instant, firelight erupted.

On the small island in the center of the artificial lake, an extraordinarily expensive fireworks display burst into bloom.

The two stood frozen. Then a team of people came hurrying toward them head-on.

The beams of flashlights dazzled them, and the crackle of walkie-talkies filled their ears.

Before they could figure out what was happening, they had already been forcibly led away.

“An emergency has occurred here. Please cooperate with the investigation for the time being.”

An old man with graying hair brushed past them, muttering under his breath, “Please, nothing must happen.”

…

Drip. A drop of icy water landed between her brows. Yin Minmin shuddered all over and sat up from the damp darkness.

It was so dark here she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. She could hear water rushing nearby, and the air around her was cold and wet.

Yin Minmin sat up and hurriedly felt for her own pulse.

Good. It was still beating. She wasn’t dead.

But… what had happened?

She tried her hardest to remember. All she could recall was a brief sound of fighting after the lights went out.

Then there was nothing. She had been knocked unconscious.

The hand that knocked her out had felt like it had scales.

Just then, another ice-cold drop of water slid down the back of her neck. Yin Minmin let out a small cry of fright, then quickly clapped a hand over her own mouth.

Had they been carried back to some creature’s nest as emergency rations?

As her imagination ran wild, a light came on not far in front of her.

“Miss Yin, are you all right?”

By the light, Yin Minmin made out Zhang Lang’s strange face.

As if she had just seen a lifeline, she asked, “Where are we? Where’s Sister Ying? And that kid who was with us?”

As soon as she finished speaking, a cough came from beside them.

Lin Yicheng answered, “I’m… here.”

They hadn’t experienced any of life’s so-called three great bonds together, but after being kidnapped as a group, some kind of camaraderie had still taken root.

Yin Minmin saw that Zhang Lang was holding a phone and asked, “Where did you get a phone?”

All three of their phones had been smashed by those criminals.

The only phone left…

Yin Minmin cried out, “Sister Ying!”

Zhang Lang turned the phone’s flashlight around. Sure enough, Yin Minmin saw Qin Ying half-sprawled over a stalactite formation.

Qin Ying’s eyes were tightly shut, and a large area of burn marks covered her back and the side of her neck.
Yin Minmin scrambled toward Qin Ying on all fours. “Sister Ying!”

Zhang Lang’s expression was strange. “We were knocked out by someone… or something, and dumped here.”

“When I woke up, I saw Miss Qin lying here. Her phone was beside her.”

Lin Yicheng lay off to one side, panting. “My neck feels like it’s been snapped in half.”

At Zhang Lang’s words, Yin Minmin’s mind spun into chaos. “That… that deer? Where is it?”

“And what was that shadow?”

Zhang Lang couldn’t answer her questions. He only gestured for Yin Minmin to look at his wrist.

One glance, and Yin Minmin sucked in a cold breath.

When Zhang Lang had been captured earlier, his hands and feet had been cuffed, restricting his movement.

But now, the chain between the handcuffs had been snapped in two. It had been torn apart by brute force.

Whatever could break something like that had to possess terrifying strength.

Zhang Lang swallowed. “Whoever it was, they were saving us.”

As he said this, his gaze flicked ever so slightly in Qin Ying’s direction.

Yin Minmin wanted to help Qin Ying up, but when she saw the burns on her back, she didn’t dare touch her. In the end, Zhang Lang carried Qin Ying on his back.

Yin Minmin went to support Lin Yicheng, who could still walk.

Only after they rounded the bend did Han Lie, who had been hanging from the stalactites overhead by sheer arm strength, drop down from the cavern ceiling.

He landed without a sound, then crouched in the darkness, quietly watching the direction Qin Ying and the others had gone.

A long time passed before he finally left, looking back every few steps.

The Supreme Deity had told them to hide here for now and not let anyone discover them.

Han Lie held Zhang Lang’s Black Trench Coat in his arms. Wrapped inside the coat were four vials of ice-blue agent Qin Ying had brought out of the laboratory.

Qin Ying had kept the remaining vial on her.

After walking for a while, Han Lie leaped into the underground river.

Like a great fish, he held his breath and swam for a stretch before surfacing again.

He arrived at a limestone cave.

Inside, Fuzhu knelt lazily on the ground.

Fuzhu, who had also been splashed with the agent, had grown larger without losing its combative temper. It had gored two people to death with its antlers, leaving them stained crimson.

It glanced at Han Lie and gave two soft bleats.

…

Qin Ying woke up on a burn-care flotation bed in the hospital.

At first, she had only been pretending to be unconscious, but after the adrenaline wore off, the burning pain in her back swept over her like fire.

Beneath her, fine grains of sand in the flotation bed churned under the airflow like a boiling pot.

Qin Ying wanted to open her eyes, but it felt as if her lashes had been glued shut.

The sensation was so familiar that she instinctively tried to raise her hand and rub them.

But then she felt her wrist restrained by a strap.

Her heart jolted. For one terrifying moment, she thought she hadn’t destroyed the surveillance footage thoroughly enough and that someone had found a clue.

She tried to force herself to sit up, only to hear someone call out, “Don’t move.”

“Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now.”

A damp cotton swab gently wiped over Qin Ying’s eyes.

It cleaned away the crusted flakes stuck to her lashes, like dried glue.

Only then could Qin Ying open her eyes. What came into view was the incandescent light above her, and the concerned face of a middle-aged nurse.

She lifted her head slightly and saw that her right hand was fixed in place with a strap. An IV line on the back of her hand was connected to a bottle of green agent whose color looked strange at a glance.

Inside the glass vial, only about the length of a middle finger, there was barely any medicine left.

The middle-aged nurse beside her reassured her, “This is the Cultural Preservation Bureau No. 3 Treatment Agent.”

“Don’t worry. Once the medicine takes effect, you’ll shed a layer of skin and be fine.”

At the nurse’s gentle reminder, Qin Ying realized that she was… about to molt.