Chapter 205
Chapter 205
The old torch cast its light only a few feet ahead. Zhang Yuqin’s Living Corpse, dressed in a dragon-and-phoenix bridal jacket, descended the stone steps one at a time, the hem of her skirt swaying gently.
Before Zhang Lang could react, Qin Ying said, “I’ll go down and take a look.”
Zhang Lang’s hand tightened reflexively around the torch. He wanted to refuse.
“Down there. Dangerous.”
For him, forcing out even those few words to Qin Ying was extremely difficult.
Qin Ying naturally understood that the way ahead was unknown and dangerous.
But the stone staircase was so narrow that even Zhang Lang had to stoop to enter. If anything happened, he would barely have room to turn around.
Besides, they could not leave Yin Minmin up here alone to watch over three injured people.
By comparison, Qin Ying, accompanied by Di Shang and Thunderbird, was more agile and better suited to scouting ahead.
Zhao Jixian and Feng Meiyu could stay behind under Zhang Lang’s watch.
Perhaps he realized after some thought that her plan made sense. After a moment’s hesitation, Zhang Lang handed her the torch.
The Wolf-Eyes flashlight was brighter, but they had no idea how much battery it had left. If it died while Qin Ying was down there, she would be trapped in total darkness. That was far too dangerous.
Qin Ying took the torch from him.
Zhang Yuqin’s footsteps were already fading into the distance. Qin Ying only had time to tell the others to be careful before heading down the stone steps with Thunderbird.
The winding steps were made of stone, though there was no telling how old they were.
The passage was so narrow that Qin Ying could touch both walls with her fingertips if she spread her arms.
There was a corpse somewhere ahead, so she advanced with extreme caution.
Fortunately, the staircase did not descend too far.
After going down the equivalent of two or three stories, the space ahead suddenly opened up.
A vast chamber lay before her, and the damp, moldy smell in the air grew much stronger.
Qin Ying spotted loose pages scattered across the floor.
One sodden page had lain in this stagnant place for who knew how long before Zhang Yuqin’s shoe stepped directly on it.
Just as Qin Ying was about to follow, a rapid patter of footsteps came from the darkness.
An enormously tall shadow shot out at an inhuman speed.
Its arms were two or three times longer than those of an ordinary person and as thin as dead branches. They wrapped around Zhang Yuqin’s Living Corpse at the waist.
The creature cradled her like a doll.
Then it carried her step by step back into the darkness.
Qin Ying huddled inside the passage, not daring to make a sound.
That thing might not necessarily be very powerful, but having it suddenly leap out of the darkness right in front of her was genuinely terrifying.
From that startled glimpse, Qin Ying had seen that it stood as tall as two grown men.
It had no eyeballs and was horrifyingly gaunt, its white, leathery skin stretched tightly over its bones.
But what alarmed Qin Ying most was another feature of its silhouette: its impossibly narrow waist.
It resembled the corseted waists of women from a certain period in European history, tapering into the shape of a slender funnel.
Its abdomen was flat, as though it had no internal organs.
Qin Ying had seen beings like this in the World in the Box.
It was one of the Gutless People.
But unlike the Gutless People in the World in the Box, this figure had a huge Y-shaped incision and sutures across its bare chest and abdomen.
Its unnaturally narrow, organless waist had also been deliberately created by removing its internal organs.
Qin Ying poked her head out of the passage. The monstrous figure carrying Zhang Yuqin’s corpse had almost vanished into the darkness.
She licked her chapped lips and took a deep breath.
Then she silently followed.
Only after entering did she realize that the chamber below had been built in imitation of a monastery’s underground halls.
Papers and books were piled everywhere, while numerous bookshelves lay overturned.
The chamber was buried deep inside the mountain, and water seeped in through the rock, leaving everything damp.
The pages and large sheets of drawings had grown moldy and stuck together in solid clumps.
Even modern technology would be unable to restore them.
In addition to the books, there were numerous examples of the Musalabi tooth script Qin Ying had seen before.
But compared to the patterns on the altar above, the ones here were far cruder.
They had been made by pouring concrete into molds, without any finesse. Instead, they had the tacky, pretentious look of a pauper trying to pass as rich.
Just like this underground study.
Knowing the thing ahead of her had no eyes and did not react to firelight, Qin Ying followed it without bothering to hide.
Just as she was about to follow it out of the study, she stepped into a particularly deep patch of water.
The stagnant water, littered with submerged chunks of wood, rose over the uppers of her hiking boots.
Splash.
Sure enough, the strange figure carrying Zhang Yuqin stopped.
Its long hair, matted into noodle-like ropes, swayed as it bent slightly and looked back.
Qin Ying’s hand twitched. A thin layer of Di Shang swiftly covered her right palm.
She waited for the thing to turn and attack.
To her surprise, it showed no intention of doing so.
It merely sniffed the air like a wild beast before continuing onward.
Before Qin Ying could even breathe a sigh of relief, a fierce rush of air came at her from behind.
The Thunderbird beat its wings and shot into the air, violet-blue arcs of electricity crackling around it.
Di Shang rapidly condensed into a silver blade in Qin Ying’s right hand.
She swung behind her on instinct.
Plop. Plop.
Two shriveled hands fell to the floor one after the other.
Then came the strange figure’s body, severed cleanly at the waist.
Every hair on Qin Ying’s body stood on end. She rubbed her tingling face, then beckoned helplessly to the Thunderbird.
She looked down at the strange figure again.
The blind slash she had made moments ago had effortlessly cut through its waist, which was no thicker than the mouth of a cup.
The severed surface of its deliberately cinched waist was pitch-black, and a large amount of pungent liquid seeped from it.
The liquid spread through the stagnant water.
Qin Ying’s nose twitched. All she could identify was the smell of formalin.
This seemed to prove once again that these creatures with their eyes gouged out were artificial creations.
Qin Ying flicked the black liquid from the short blade in her right hand, then raised her torch and continued after the other figure.
She wanted to see exactly what that man from Italy had done down here.
Driven by curiosity, she moved both swiftly and steadily.
It was not long before she caught up with the strange figure carrying Zhang Yuqin.
By then, they had entered an extremely long corridor.
Though calling it a corridor did not seem quite right.
Judging by the iron cages lining both sides, this place was more like a prison.
Or a laboratory.
The light from Qin Ying’s torch flickered across a corpse behind one of the rusted cages.
Its flesh and clothes had rotted into a hardened, moldy mass of dark green.
Looking closer, Qin Ying spotted a thin braided queue at the back of the corpse’s head.
There was neither a toilet nor a bed inside the cell.
There was only an iron chain hanging from the ceiling, fastened around the corpse’s neck as though it were a tethered dog.
Half the cages were empty.
The other half were filled with corpses.
Some contained only one, while others were crammed full of them.
The ripples Qin Ying stirred as she passed sent the black insects infesting the piles of corpses scurrying in every direction.
Black leeches dropped into the water with wet slaps.
The sight made Qin Ying’s skin crawl, and she quickened her pace.
At last, she reached the end of the corridor.
A cool white light shone from beyond. Qin Ying approached cautiously.
The space before her suddenly opened up.
She saw a massive tree covered in blossoms the size of bowls.
Every Migu Flower was in full bloom, radiating a bright, cool white light that illuminated the darkness.
Beneath the Migu Flower tree stood a European-style oak desk.
A waterlogged corpse reclined in the chair. It wore a worn, old-fashioned suit, and a cracked monocle rested over its left eye.