Chapter 173
Chapter 173
“Click.”
The Bone Staff tapped against the iron statue with a faint sound.
Yet everyone fell into an eerie, breathless silence.
Qin Ying clutched the Bone Staff impaled through her right palm, hardly daring to breathe.
Chen Zhao and Liang Pu were the same, standing rigidly in place.
The sound traveled along the plank walkway and echoed through the hollow like widening ripples.
The eerie silence dragged on until Qin Ying’s chest began to ache from holding her breath.
She carefully moved the Bone Staff away and let out a dry laugh into the stifling silence. “That was an accident.”
After all, who could immediately get used to having something so ridiculously long nailed through their palm?
“It should… be fine, right?” she muttered, trying to reassure herself.
But as if reality wanted to slap her in the face, the White Monkey Quanyu suddenly let out a piercing shriek the instant the words left her mouth.
Its patchy white fur stood on end, and it sprang away from the iron statue.
The light in its normally intelligent eyes went out.
Its eyes turned bloodred. It paced in frantic circles, clamping its precious tail between its sharp teeth and gnawing on it.
It had clearly been scared out of its wits, losing all trace of its spiritual intelligence and becoming no different from an ordinary macaque.
The sudden shriek was so sharp that Chen Zhao’s expression changed drastically.
Quanyu was extremely sensitive to danger. Its current state made it obvious that something had gone terribly wrong.
Chen Zhao spread his arms and scooped the White Monkey Quanyu into his embrace. Even when it bit him, he refused to let go.
“Run!” he shouted.
Liang Pu reacted quickly and reached out to pull Qin Ying along.
The instant he grabbed her, however, he froze.
The wrist in his hand was unnaturally thin.
It felt as though there was no flesh beneath the skin, only bone.
It had definitely not been like this fifteen minutes ago.
Alarmed, Liang Pu glanced at Qin Ying.
All he saw was her sunken eye socket and jutting cheekbone in profile.
She had wasted away until she looked almost skeletal.
Liang Pu’s heart lurched.
The next instant, his expression changed as his gaze fell on the Bone Staff impaled through Qin Ying’s right palm.
That thing had to be draining away her flesh and vitality.
Liang Pu’s saber had long since been reduced to scrap iron by the Rust Tide. He grabbed Qin Ying’s wrist with both hands and shouted, “Young lady, brace yourself!”
“If we don’t remove this Bone Staff now, you’ll die.”
With that, he exerted his strength.
Qin Ying snapped back to her senses, only to find Liang Pu trying to snap her right wrist like a frozen ice pop.
“Wait!” Before she could finish, excruciating pain tore through her.
Liang Pu hadn’t become Chen Zhao’s trusted attendant by lacking strength. Gritting his back teeth, he twisted hard.
There was a crisp crack.
Qin Ying watched helplessly as her wrist broke in two, leaving her hand connected to her arm by only a layer of skin.
Liang Pu did not stop. He intended to rip through that final layer of skin and separate the hand impaled by the Bone Staff from Qin Ying’s body.
Then he could use her severed arm to wield the Bone Staff that restrained the Rust Tide.
“I’ll find medicine to reattach your arm afterward. Don’t worry!”
“How could I not worry?!”
Even though this was only her Soul-Container Puppet body, Qin Ying still went deathly pale and yelped like a dog from the pain.
She had planned to sacrifice a hand if she couldn’t escape, but having someone snap her wrist with his bare hands had never been part of that plan.
As they spoke, the skin connecting her hand to her arm tore a little farther.
A small amount of fresh blood trickled out and wound its way down the Bone Staff.
Drip.
A thick drop of blood struck the ground.
The entire cavernous valley shuddered.
The surface of the iron statue before Qin Ying and the others began to slough away.
It was not being corroded by rust. It was dissolving.
Dark silver liquid seeped from the widening cracks, slithering outward with agonizing slowness like countless mercury snakes.
Every rust sphere within the grooves between the stone slabs began to tremble faintly.
Qin Ying was the closest to the iron statue.
She immediately jumped back, only for her heel to land on something.
Something tightened around her ankle, nearly yanking her off her feet.
Fortunately, Liang Pu and Chen Zhao, who had rushed over, grabbed her and pulled in the opposite direction. Together, they barely managed to hold their ground and keep her from being dragged away.
Qin Ying was stretched out like a strand of noodle, nearly torn in half.
On one side were Chen Zhao and Liang Pu, too loyal to abandon her. On the other was that mass of Di Shang.
Gritting her teeth, Qin Ying waved them off. “You two go. Leave me!”
At worst, she would abandon this Soul-Container Puppet and leave.
There was no reason for Chen Zhao and Liang Pu to die here.
The two sides had already been locked in a stalemate, but Qin Ying’s struggle tipped the balance in the other side’s favor.
A liquid-metal tentacle dragged her bodily away. She only had time to glance back at Chen Zhao and Liang Pu.
“Run.”
Her skeletal fingers pointed toward the shepherds’ passage, the one route they could safely take.
Then the mercury-like liquid engulfed her.
Seeing there was nothing more they could do, Chen Zhao and Liang Pu fled into the distance. When they looked back, all they could see was a writhing mass of Di Shang, as though it were feeding.
Chen Zhao’s heart went cold. Even if they somehow escaped alive, he had no idea how he would break the news to Han Lie.
But he had not lost his reason. Suppressing his grief, he patted Liang Pu on the shoulder.
Liang Pu sighed, then followed Chen Zhao in retreat.
As they ran, the Quanyu Monkey clinging to Chen Zhao’s back turned to look at the writhing mass of Di Shang.
It let out a quiet squeak.
Chen Zhao was too busy racing toward a dark, narrow fissure in the mountain to hear it.
With Qin Ying no longer dragging the Bone Staff along, the two men were considerably more mobile.
In the blink of an eye, they vanished into the abandoned mine shaft once used by shepherds to leave the mountain.
Qin Ying’s Migu Flower Lamp had long since been lost. Once they were gone, no source of light remained, and the area plunged into darkness.
Qin Ying lay motionless inside something slick and icy.
Cool, wet liquid covered her mouth and nose, making her feel as though she had sunk into the depths of the sea.
She was drowning while the pressure crushing her body slowly suffocated her. Just as the agony became unbearable and she prepared to abandon the body of the Soul-Container Puppet, her back struck something hard.
The substance enveloping her abruptly collapsed and scattered.
Coughing violently, Qin Ying found herself lying on a solid stone slab.
A silver circle had been drawn across its surface: the mark of Di Shang.
Qin Ying’s body had been reduced to little more than a layer of nearly transparent skin, through which the natural color of raw wood could be seen.
The veil over her face had vanished somewhere, and even her features were beginning to dissolve.
Anyone unaware of the truth would probably have mistaken her for some inhuman creature.
She lay on the imprint for a long while before finally catching her breath.
Her right hand, which Liang Pu had broken, was still connected to the Bone Staff.
Now that her body had almost completely dissolved, Qin Ying could no longer feel much pain. She struggled to prop herself up.
Her eyes were open, but she could see nothing in the darkness.
Only her intact left hand could make out the grooves carved into the stone slab beneath her.
Her heart steadied. She immediately realized that this was the sealed Di Shang Imprint mentioned in the ancient text.
With great effort, Qin Ying slid her left hand across the stone slab and drew an infinity symbol.
She intended to sacrifice the slab to herself.
Her consciousness detached from the weakness and pain, slipping into a comfortable, ethereal state.
Within the black mist, she searched for herself Outside the Box.
Then she followed that tenuous connection upward.
The next second, Qin Ying sat bolt upright on her bed with one hand over her eyes and retched several times.
Still shaken, she looked at her intact right hand.
After confirming that she had safely returned Outside the Box, she staggered to her feet and made her way over to the Box.
Amid the fragrance of burning Cogongrass, she saw a messy pile of tiny objects heaped in front of the Box.
There were rice cakes no bigger than sesame seeds, as well as an entire roasted Sand Lizard tail sacrificed by the Sand People. Outside the Box, it had shrunk to the size of a gecko’s tail.
There were also a few plants and other miscellaneous offerings.
At the very top of the pile, Qin Ying spotted a stone slab about the size of an amulet plaque.
Sprawled atop it was the Soul-Container Wooden Puppet, reverted to its natural wood color and looking utterly wretched.
The Bone Staff that had nearly cost her a hand lay beside it.
Qin Ying reached out to pick up the slab for a closer look, but a mercury-snake-like strand of Di Shang slithered out from the pile.
It was about as thick as her index finger and slightly longer than her palm.
It was one with the stone slab and had been sacrificed Outside the Box along with it.
Coiled protectively around the slab, it bristled with countless sharp spikes the moment Qin Ying’s fingers approached.
Yet when the difference in size was overwhelming enough, even such armaments looked no more threatening than an adorably puffed-up display.
Expressionless, Qin Ying pulled the slipper off her foot and brought it down with all her strength.
Every last ounce of resentment she had accumulated over this disastrous adventure went into that one blow.