Chapter 166
Chapter 166
One after another, the suffocated gerbil carcasses were hauled back out.
At last, Qin Ying and the others obtained a very precise figure: after turning right at the end of the corridor and proceeding fifty meters, the gerbils would encounter danger.
The distance was exact, and every gerbil had died from suffocation and crushing after rust encased its head.
The rust had not invaded their bodies or attacked their organs like a virus.
By then, night had fallen, so everything was put on hold. Qin Ying made do for the night in an isolated cave dwelling.
Desert nights here were bitterly cold. She sat beside the fire pit, yawning incessantly.
She was tired.
The exhaustion came from both body and mind, and she couldn’t help pressing a hand to her abdomen.
She had eaten and slept normally over the past few days, yet she had never once felt the need to relieve herself.
She was simply spending more and more time feeling drowsy, while her skin was becoming dry and shriveled.
The Soul-Container Consecration materials inside this body, especially that specially inserted sliver of flesh, were being consumed.
Once they were completely exhausted, Qin Ying would have to undergo Soul-Container Consecration again.
She had been keeping track of the time to see exactly how many days she could last. Of course, she was also calculating when she needed to return Outside the Box; she still had a meeting to attend.
With that thought, Qin Ying fell asleep beside the fire pit.
She did not sleep soundly that night. Even her puppet body, given life through Soul-Container Consecration, began to dream.
In the swaying dreamscape, she stood somewhere high above, overlooking a vast cavern lit by a faint glow.
Rust and filthy water had mixed into a knee-deep morass that looked capable of giving someone tetanus at a glance.
A figure resembling a Shaman used a Bone Staff to drive along several rust-covered things crawling prone across the ground.
They were humanoid, moving on their elbows and knees. As they crawled, the rust covering their bodies scraped and ground together with a grating creak that set Qin Ying’s teeth on edge.
She desperately wished she had a wire brush and some rust remover so she could scrub them all until they gleamed.
Amid that torturous sound, Qin Ying’s eyes snapped open.
The flames in the fire pit were about to go out.
She looked toward the tightly shut door of the cave dwelling.
The moonlight outside must have been bright. A watery glow seeped in through the cracks around the door.
Sensing that something was wrong, Qin Ying immediately gripped the protective dagger at her waist and shouted, “Aman!”
She knew Aman and the guards would be stationed outside the door.
Her shout rang loudly through the night.
A commotion broke out outside. Qin Ying heard the sounds of fighting, along with Aman shouting.
She edged forward, intending to open the door and see what was happening.
But the next instant, something gleaming silver shot through the gap beneath the door.
It was barely the size of a water droplet, but it moved with incredible speed.
In the blink of an eye, it was right in front of her.
Qin Ying barely managed to swing her dagger. There was a clear clang as the blade’s tip struck something.
A smooth, rounded notch instantly appeared in the tip.
The droplet-shaped silver object ricocheted off the blade.
It slipped into Qin Ying’s sleeve and nimbly spiraled across her skin.
Qin Ying instinctively yanked up her sleeve, then froze in alarm.
A tiny bead resembling mercury was clinging to the gold jewelry around her wrist.
It was slowly devouring… the gold ornaments she wore.
Hulan had given her all of them when she was with the Blackstone Tribe.
Qin Ying had kept them as portable wealth for emergencies.
The mercury-like substance writhed as it spread inch by inch across the gold around her wrist, carefully avoiding the gemstones set into the jewelry.
If you listened closely, you could even hear a crunching sound, like someone eating potato chips.
Qin Ying had no idea what this thing was. Not daring to even breathe, she slowly removed the bracelet from her wrist.
As she took off the bracelet, the drop of quicksilver seemed to have grown larger by devouring the gold.
When the bracelet was completely off her hand, the drop moved a bit.
But Qin Ying tossed her hand, throwing the entire bracelet into an empty clay jar.
Just as Aman rushed over, something as sharp as a silver needle and two fingers long brushed past his scalp.
It pierced right through his hood, carving a bloody gash on Aman’s scalp that revealed the bone.
Blood gushed down. If Qin Ying hadn’t shouted that warning, Aman’s brains would have been skewered.
After wounding Aman, the silver needle kept going. It flew through the air, wriggled, and surprisingly transformed into a quicksilver-like liquid.
It bounced on the sandy ground, then turned and headed straight for Qin Ying.
More precisely, it was aiming for the gold ornament under Qin Ying’s clothes.
With quick reflexes, Qin Ying yanked the gold necklace off her neck and threw it into the distance, scraping a bloody line on the back of her neck.
The silver droplet, glowing with a silver gleam under the moonlight, swerved and pounced entirely onto the gold chain.
The commotion had already alarmed everyone. Qin Ying ordered the guards to disperse the crowd.
Not far away, two similar droplets were lying obediently, quietly gnawing on some gold jewelry.
Aman used two wooden sticks to lift both pieces of gold jewelry together into the clay jar.
Under everyone’s watchful eyes, the two quicksilver-like things extended thin metal wires and merged into one.
Perhaps they had been one entity all along, just hunting separately.
At that moment, the Old Shaman who had gone to inspect the water cellar also returned.
The hole in the water cellar was perfectly sealed.
This thing must have followed the half-grown boy who dug through the wall out of the stone corridor from the very beginning.
As they gnawed on the gold, their size visibly increased.
Qin Ying gently poked the feeding quicksilver droplet with her dagger, wanting to see if they had eaten the dagger’s tip.
But the quicksilver droplet that was eating gold wriggled, extended a small hand-like metal tendril, and swatted the dagger away.
As if saying, “I’m eating, don’t bother me.”
Qin Ying clicked her tongue softly.
After pondering for a moment, she pulled Aman aside and whispered a few words.
By the time a small section of the gold jewelry had been eaten, Aman returned with a rusty iron jar that had been soaked in water for years.
Before the rusty smell even approached, the quicksilver droplet coiled on the gold began to stir uneasily.
But it was reluctant to let go of the gold jewelry, and in the end, it was trapped under the rusty jar Aman brought.
With a thud, the rusty jar was bumped against.
But compared to before, the force was as weak as a cockroach’s jump.
As Qin Ying had guessed, this kind of thing truly detested rust and could be trapped by it.
Then, in that passage…
As speculations swirled in her mind, an unexpected person spoke up.
Among the Kuxi Tribe, the Old Village Chief, so aged his back could no longer straighten, said a few words in the Sand People’s language.
After Aman’s expression shifted several times, he looked at Qin Ying: “The Village Chief says, this is Di Shang. ‘The Cup, armor, spear, and whip of the deity that descended from the high tower.'”