Chapter 207
Chapter 207
The underground space reeked of rust and was surprisingly vast.
The voice in the darkness echoed throughout the chamber, making Qin Ying feel as if someone were speaking right into her ear.
Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined there would be something down here that could talk.
Every hair on her body stood on end. She prepared to summon Thunderbird.
At the same time, she took a step back, intending to retreat from the room first.
“Hm? You don’t seem to be the bride.”
Perhaps it had noticed her movements, because the voice in the darkness spoke again, now laden with confusion.
Qin Ying kept moving toward the door.
The voice called out once more. “Wait, little girl. It’s been so long since I last saw light.”
“Don’t go. Come a little closer.”
The thing in the darkness spoke slowly and calmly, giving the impression that it had a mild temper. There was even a pleading note in its voice.
“I’ve been lost in dreams all this time. Only light can wake me.”
“Please stay and leave me a lamp.”
Qin Ying’s heart was practically leaping out of her throat, but she finally slowed down.
If the innate gift that allowed her to detect lies was working here, then the thing in the darkness wasn’t lying.
Her steps unconsciously slowed even further.
Sensing her hesitation, the voice pleaded again, “Please, leave me a lamp.”
“I only want to be awake for a little while.”
Qin Ying stopped beside the door, keeping half her body concealed behind the frame.
“Who are you? If you want light, why don’t you come out yourself?” she asked.
After a pause, she added, “And what bride are you talking about?”
A long time passed. Just as she began to suspect that the voice inside wouldn’t answer, someone in the darkness coughed twice, the sound low and muffled.
It answered her first question. “I’m chained up.”
“I have no name, but…”
“You humans once called me… the River God.”
The River God.
The moment those words reached Qin Ying’s ears, her mind went blank.
Then she abruptly spun around and pressed her back against the cold wall.
She couldn’t tell whether the moss on the wall was simply that damp or whether cold sweat had broken out all across her back.
Either way, Qin Ying’s clothes were instantly soaked through.
She shuddered. “The River God.”
The legendary River God?
The most famous story about the River God was naturally The River God Takes a Bride.
During the reign of Marquis Wen of Wei, Ximen Bao served as Magistrate of Ye County.
The Elders and Court Clerks of Ye County colluded with shamans, exploiting the common people’s fear of the River God to extort money and victimize young women under the pretense of finding him a bride.
They claimed that if they did not provide the River God with a bride, the river would flood and drown the people.
On the day of The River God Takes a Bride, Ximen Bao went to the riverbank and punished the shamans and village elders who had deceived the people with their superstitious lies.
And now, the thing in the darkness claimed to be the River God?
Worse, it didn’t seem to be lying.
Qin Ying licked her cracked, peeling lips and began to doubt herself.
The world was unpredictable and the human heart deceptive. She didn’t dare place too much faith in her talent for detecting lies.
When she neither answered nor stepped back into view, the voice inside the room began pleading with a sob in its throat.
“Please, don’t abandon me.”
“Leave me a lamp.”
The pitiful, tearful voice restored some of Qin Ying’s composure.
She took a deep breath, lifted the Migu Flower Lamp from her waist with one hand, and briefly swept its light through the doorway.
The glimpse of light was far too fleeting. The thing calling itself the River God sighed. “Leave the lamp here.”
“Answer my questions first,” Qin Ying replied.
“Why are you here? Who trapped you?”
The River God fell silent for a moment before answering sullenly, “You humans did.”
Qin Ying raised the lamp and swept its light through the doorway once more.
After carefully considering her words, she asked, “Is the strange phenomenon outside related to you?”
Her most pressing concern was finding a way out of this haunted tunnel.
She didn’t explain what strange phenomenon she meant. If the thing inside truly wanted light that badly, she figured it would tell her everything on its own.
Sure enough, a voice answered from behind the door. “This mountain bound me here, and I had nightmares. All of those… were my dreams.”
They were all its dreams?
Qin Ying frowned slightly as a thought occurred to her.
“Now that you’re awake, does the dream outside, the one keeping us from leaving, still exist?”
After receiving a definite answer from the thing behind the door, Qin Ying let out a long breath of relief.
If the warped space-time outside was merely this thing’s dream, did that mean they could finally make it out of that tunnel?
She extended the Migu Flower farther through the doorway, holding it there a little longer this time.
The thing inside was so delighted that its voice trembled on the verge of tears. In a hoarse rasp like rusted metal scraping together, it said, “So bright.”
Then it added, “Come inside. Once you do, you’ll understand that I can’t hurt you.”
Qin Ying considered this for a long moment.
She glanced at the Thunderbird and had it hide inside the hood of her mountaineering jacket.
Then, carefully holding up the Migu Flower, she stepped through the doorway again.
The corpse that had been severed in two lay submerged in rusty water.
As Qin Ying passed it, her steps faltered.
There was a braid at the back of the narrow-waisted monster’s head.
She was almost certain that this thing had also been created around 1910.
Its raw material had probably been some unfortunate missing person.
Qin Ying continued forward one step at a time, with nothing but her own heartbeat in her ears.
On either side of her stood rows of jars, each a Specimen Bottle smeared with yellow grime.
The iron racks beneath some had rusted through, sending the bottles crashing to the floor. Whatever had once been inside had long since rotted beyond recognition.
Others were relatively well preserved.
Qin Ying stopped before a jar taller than a person and wiped her sleeve across its surface.
A bloated, misshapen face emerged before her eyes.
Startled, she took half a step back and kicked a bottle.
The thing deep in the room called out anxiously, “Are you all right?”
“There may be things roaming around this room. Be careful.”
The moment it finished speaking, Qin Ying learned exactly what those roaming things were.
A narrow-waisted monster with a massive Y-shaped scar across its chest crawled out from some hidden corner. Its pitch-black maw gaped open as it lunged at her with its arms outstretched.
After several encounters with these creatures, Qin Ying knew they were nowhere near as terrifying as they looked.
In fact, the modifications that had turned them into this had also left them with glaring weaknesses.
She flexed her wrist, and the short sword in her right hand swept out horizontally once more.
After the bisected corpse hit the ground, the thing deep in the room asked again with concern, “Are you all right?”
Qin Ying gave a noncommittal hum in reply and flicked the black preservative fluid from the Di Shang dagger.
Seeing that she truly was unharmed, the “River God” deep in the room let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“As long as you’re all right. Come here. Come closer.”
Qin Ying ignored it. Instead, she stood before the specimen jar she had wiped clean and examined the thing floating inside.
It was a half-finished narrow-waisted monster.
Male. His chest and abdomen had been split open in a Y shape, and all his organs had been removed.
The jagged ends of ribs that had been deliberately broken and removed were still visible.
The reason she called it half-finished was that the person in the jar still retained a normal human build.
Qin Ying inspected them one by one. Two or three jars in a row, each a Specimen Bottle, held the same kind of thing.
Having descended into the Box World before, Qin Ying knew that someone in this laboratory had been trying to replicate the Gutless People from the World in the Box.
But why?
Compared to the other kinds of Monstrous Beast in the World in the Box, the Gutless People were laughably weak and unimpressive.
Why would anyone try to recreate them?
With questions churning in her mind, she finally reached the far end of the room.
Chains were everywhere.
Packed densely together, they extended from the ceiling into a pool of murky water, firmly binding a pallid thing within.
“Ah…”
Half submerged in the pool, the creature let out a weary sigh like an old man nearing the end of his life.
It slowly raised its head and looked at Qin Ying, who stood behind the railing at the pool’s edge.
“It has been so long since I last saw light.”
Its mouth split into a smile.