Chapter 200
Chapter 200
“W-What is that?”
The refuge alcove was dimly lit, and the kerosene lamp Qin Ying had brought inside was nearly out of fuel.
In the flickering light, Zhao Jixian saw Qin Ying dragging an enormous Shadowy Figure out from deeper within the alcove. He eagerly stepped forward to take the kerosene lamp from her.
Unfortunately, its light fell directly on Zhang Lang’s face, which had been warped by his Monstrous Beast Transformation.
Zhao Jixian cried out and dropped the lamp.
Fortunately, the lamp from the train’s VIP compartment was sturdy enough that it did not shatter.
Yin Minmin hurried forward and picked it up.
But Zhao Jixian and Feng Meiyu had already gotten a clear look at Zhang Lang’s hideously mutated, inhuman appearance.
Neither of them had ever seen anything like it.
In the 1910s, the strangest creature most people could imagine was a demon with a fox’s tail or something of that sort.
A half-man, half-beast being like Zhang Lang was beyond anything they had ever conceived.
Tension gradually filled the alcove.
At that moment, Qin Ying, who had collapsed against the wall from exhaustion, finally managed to catch her breath. She cleared her throat.
“Don’t panic. This is… a colleague domesticated by our unit.”
She began spinning her tale without so much as blinking.
Raising her hand, she motioned for the Thunderbird to perch on it and said to Zhao Jixian and Feng Meiyu, “Just like this one.”
Yin Minmin had no idea what was going on with the little blue bird beside Qin Ying, but she was quick-witted enough to know they had to calm these two down.
“Yes, exactly!” she chimed in.
“It’s like how veteran tomb raiders train pangolins to excavate graves. Ours is simply more advanced. It’s… an armadillo spirit.”
Once Yin Minmin started making things up, there was no stopping her. She even dragged tomb raiders into the story.
“You’ve heard of the Northern School and Southern School of tomb raiding, haven’t you? One of them specializes in taming animals. They use rats to sniff out burial mounds and command pangolins to dig through the tomb’s brickwork.
“They also train fighting beasts to deal with the foul creatures lurking in hidden chambers.”
Yin Minmin raised a finger and continued fabricating nonsense with perfect confidence.
Unlike Qin Ying, Yin Minmin looked thoroughly respectable and official, the very picture of a well-behaved young woman who would obediently sit for the civil service exam.
As a result, Zhao Jixian was completely taken in by her story.
Feng Meiyu listened from the side with shining eyes. “Do people really raid tombs that way?”
“Of course!” Yin Minmin nodded firmly. “Some people have made huge fortunes doing it.”
At the mention of making a fortune, Feng Meiyu, who had refused to let go of her basket of edamame even in mortal danger, finally released it. She crouched down and touched the scales covering Zhang Lang’s body.
Then she exclaimed excitedly, “It’s still warm!”
“This must be extremely valuable, right?” she murmured. “How do you raise one?”
The girl clearly loved money. Otherwise, she would never have dared sell edamame across turf lines behind the backs of Black Seven and his gang, much less do it without paying protection money.
How would Yin Minmin know how to raise one? She casually brushed the question aside. “That’s a secret. I can’t tell you.”
Feng Meiyu looked disappointed. She reached out and stroked Zhang Lang’s exposed scales again.
“I’m so jealous.”
She wanted one. She wanted to make a fortune too.
There were three young women in the refuge alcove, along with Zhao Jixian, the only older man, and Zhang Lang, who was lying there like a corpse. Zhao Jixian found himself unable to keep up with their train of thought.
He did not dare argue with Qin Ying or Yin Minmin, so he turned to Feng Meiyu instead. “What are you jealous of? It’s not as if you raid tombs.”
Feng Meiyu faltered and said nothing.
But Qin Ying noticed her eyes darting away.
She could not help thinking of that plague of an ex of hers, Feng Mu.
A family that gave one of its descendants a godforsaken name like that was obviously no ordinary household.
Qin Ying had once heard that the Feng Family’s rise to wealth had been far from honorable and that its ancestors had deep ties to the tomb-raiding trade.
That was why a bastard like Feng Mu had been willing to resort to any means necessary to gain entry into more respectable circles.
She stared at Feng Meiyu, wondering if there could really be such a coincidence in this world.
Her gaze made Feng Meiyu uncomfortable.
The things Feng Meiyu’s father and brothers did were crimes punishable by beheading. Afraid that someone connected to the authorities might notice something was wrong, she lowered her head and fell silent.
Zhao Jixian was afraid of Zhang Lang, but he didn’t dare say a word. He was even more afraid they might drive him out to face those bizarre things outside.
And so, with everyone harboring thoughts of their own, the subject of Zhang Lang’s strange behavior was dropped.
By the light of the kerosene lamp, Qin Ying and Yin Minmin worked together to lay Zhang Lang flat and treat his injuries.
After being injured, Zhang Lang had curled into a ball like an armadillo. Left with no choice, Qin Ying and Yin Minmin pinned down his head and legs and forcibly straightened him out.
Upon examining his wounds, Yin Minmin sucked in a sharp breath. “How did he get hurt this badly?”
Having never seen the Thunderbird in action, Yin Minmin couldn’t understand.
Qin Ying had no easy answer. She simply pulled the first-aid kit from her backpack.
The kit was well stocked, but for all her careful planning, she had never anticipated that one of their own would be electrocuted by the Thunderbird.
Most of the medicine was therefore useless. Fortunately, she had brought her remaining two Immortal Grass plants and half a Yao Grass plant.
She had also packed the Fei Yi Snake Corpse into empty capsules.
After some thought, Qin Ying selected a capsule containing Immortal Grass from the medicine case and slipped it into Zhang Lang’s mouth.
Yin Minmin was still dutifully holding the lamp over the first-aid kit and checking what medicines were inside.
Seeing how quickly Qin Ying acted, she asked blankly, “Sister Ying, what medicine was that?”
Was it safe to give him something at random?
Before she could voice the rest of her concern, Zhang Lang coughed. She immediately exclaimed, “It works that fast?”
The capsule couldn’t have made it past his throat yet!
Qin Ying gave her a helpless look. “He woke up on his own.”
With that, she bent down to check on Zhang Lang.
But the moment Zhang Lang saw her, he reacted as though he’d seen a ghost. He clutched his head and trembled, splitting open the charred skin covering his body.
He had been terrified of people and cripplingly anxious from the very beginning, so Qin Ying hurriedly raised her hands and backed away.
“Zhang Lang, are you conscious right now?”
Zhang Lang wasn’t quite as afraid of Yin Minmin. He grimaced in pain and barely managed a nod.
Qin Ying took the last bottle of water from her backpack and handed it to Yin Minmin so she could help Zhang Lang drink.
The instant Qin Ying raised her hand, Zhang Lang threw his arms over his head again.
Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought Qin Ying had beaten him half to death.
Perhaps Zhang Lang looked so utterly spineless that even Zhao Jixian, who had remained highly vigilant, relaxed a little.
After drinking some water and resting for a while, the Immortal Grass Qin Ying had fed him began to take effect. Zhang Lang flexed his fingers and realized his body no longer hurt quite as much.
He stole a glance at Qin Ying, then another at the Thunderbird perched on her shoulder.
In the end, he still didn’t dare ask.
As the Immortal Grass took effect, Zhang Lang’s condition improved visibly.
Hunching his shoulders, he said softly to Qin Ying, “I’ll go get Zong Li and the others.”
After a pause, he cautiously added, “Is that okay?”
Qin Ying didn’t know why Zhang Lang had been afraid of her from the moment they met. She pondered his question briefly before replying, “We’ll all go together.”
The tunnel below seemed like an endlessly folding space. Finding a way out would be nearly impossible. The key to the problem probably lay with the destroyed altar above.
Just then, Yin Minmin and Feng Meiyu returned. They had taken an empty mineral-water bottle to collect water seeping into one of the tunnel’s safety alcoves.
It was best not to think too deeply about where water trickling down the walls of a place like this might have come from.
Qin Ying decided to treat it as mountain spring water and dropped an outdoor water-purification tablet into the bottle.
She, Yin Minmin, Zhao Jixian, and Feng Meiyu each took a sip. Most of it still went to the badly injured Zhang Lang.
Carrying a basket would be inconvenient for the journey ahead, so Feng Meiyu set the bamboo basket on the ground and said, “Eat up!”
Incredibly, the edamame inside was still warm.
Under the circumstances, Zhao Jixian couldn’t stomach any food.
Neither Qin Ying nor Yin Minmin ate.
Only the sturdily built Zhang Lang sat cross-legged on the ground with his back to everyone and devoured all the edamame, pods and all.