Chapter 244
Chapter 244
The hanged corpse, the swaddling bundle it carried, and the wooden tag that had fallen from the bundle all proved that what Qin Ying had seen was no hallucination.
She gave them a grave warning. “We need to watch out for that wet nurse.”
Whoever had done all this had to have a purpose.
A wet nurse’s duty, naturally, was to care for an infant and feed it her milk.
Whatever that shadowy figure was, it had just proven itself immune to physical attacks.
Which meant they might not be able to deal with it.
Qin Ying’s mind raced as she searched every ghost story she had heard and every horror movie she had seen for a practical way to exorcise it.
Chicken blood? Yellow talismans? A sword made of coins?
There was no way to get any of those right now.
Just as she was fretting over it, Han Lie suddenly leaned close and whispered into her ear, “Blood.”
With that, he pressed his palm against the short knife Di Shang had transformed into in Qin Ying’s hand and drew it across the blade.
Blood welled from his palm, staining half the blade crimson.
Seeing Qin Ying’s astonishment, Han Lie turned his back to Xie Shao and silently mouthed, My blood.
Qin Ying immediately understood.
In his Monstrous Beast Transformation State, Han Lie took the form of a Qilin. The Qilin was an Auspicious Beast that warded off evil and misfortune. His blood might actually work.
She gave a silent nod.
Behind them, Xie Shao failed to notice their brief exchange. When he saw Han Lie cut his palm, he thought for a moment, then wiped a hand across his chest.
He had slammed face-first into the ground earlier and suffered quite a nosebleed. After his Monstrous Beast Transformation, all that blood had run into the thick protective fur over his chest.
It was still only half-dry, perfect for smearing over his hands. What if it actually worked?
Like he was applying hand cream, he spread the blood evenly over his palms and the backs of his hands.
Qin Ying noticed what he was doing and simply asked, “If everyone’s ready, shall we head in and take a look?”
Han Lie would follow Qin Ying’s lead, while Xie Shao was a Cultural Preservation Bureau man through and through. Whatever his personality, his curiosity was inevitably off the charts.
They had already come this far. How could he possibly sleep without taking a look?
“Let’s go!” Xie Shao said.
He took point once again as the three people and one bird skirted around the corpse on the ground and ventured deeper inside.
Once they passed through the door at the end of the Stone Path, the light from Qin Ying’s phone suddenly reached much farther ahead.
Clearly, the chamber was quite large.
Everything in sight was grayish white, and their feet came down on something resembling coarse sand and pebbles.
Qin Ying wondered what it was, but the moment she aimed her phone’s flashlight at the ground, her scalp prickled.
The entire floor of the chamber was covered in teeth, every last one with its root intact.
They formed a layer two fingers thick. Walking over them actually felt like treading on loose gravel, and they clattered with every step.
Xie Shao’s face contorted. During his Monstrous Beast Transformation, his body had grown large enough to burst his shoes apart.
Now he was practically barefoot as he stepped across all those teeth.
He muttered a string of curses under his breath.
For a moment, Qin Ying wanted to throw all dignity aside, leap onto Han Lie’s back, and make him carry her.
But the thought vanished as quickly as it came. In the end, she suppressed her discomfort and forced herself to face it head-on.
“Is this a tomb?” That was Xie Shao’s first thought.
Han Lie took the phone from Qin Ying and shone its light to one side.
“No,” he said. “It’s a Corpse-Hiding Cave.”
Only then did Qin Ying and Xie Shao realize that what they had mistaken for uneven walls were actually row after row of corpses, deliberately stacked into walls by human hands.
It was as if a neat freak had turned into a deranged serial killer and meticulously arranged their trophies.
Human bodies had been straightened, bound with thin iron wire into rectangular blocks, then stacked into wall after wall.
Treating people like building blocks was enough to make any normal person deeply uncomfortable.
Especially Xie Shao and Qin Ying, who had grown up in a society governed by law.
Xie Shao’s black-furred, boar-like face contorted.
Qin Ying couldn’t help tightening her grip on her saber.
Han Lie walked up to the wall of corpses alone. After tilting his head to examine it, he said, “These corpses are all ancient. They died in war.”
War?
Qin Ying rubbed the goosebumps on her arms and approached the wall as well.
Only then did she notice that no one had bothered to strip the skeletons used as bricks.
Scraps of clothing and rusted pieces of armor remained wedged among the bones bound into blocks.
Most importantly, many of the bones bore marks from blades and axes.
Qin Ying glanced at the teeth underfoot, then at the walls of bones surrounding them. Her thoughts began to race. “This place used to be an ancient battlefield where large numbers of prisoners of war were buried.”
“Could these bones have been dug up from underground?”
“And the teeth on the ground…”
Before she could finish, Han Lie reached out and twisted the skull of one of the skeletons.
Its jaw was crooked, and not a single tooth remained.
“The teeth on the ground belonged to them.” Han Lie confirmed Qin Ying’s guess.
Qin Ying flexed her fingers uneasily. “Why?”
What did the Hu Family’s actions have to do with that wretched Tooth Regrowth Formula of theirs?
Han Lie considered it for a moment. “Perhaps the story you heard was wrong.”
“The Hu Family might not have used teeth from living people. They may have used the teeth from these corpses instead.”
Human teeth and hair had always been commodities traded in the shadows. That had been true since ancient times, though the trade in the former was far less widely known.
“But the formula we found specifically said the teeth had to come from living people.”
Though Qin Ying phrased it as a question, she did not wait for Han Lie to answer. Her gaze had already turned toward the distance.
She knew the Hu Family’s secret had to be hidden somewhere in here.
The only question was whether the secret had vanished along with the Hu Family.
Xie Shao was covered in goosebumps. He rolled his neck, looking distinctly uncomfortable.
Then he said, “Let’s keep moving and search together.”
With danger all around them, he made no suggestion that they split up.
The three continued onward together, guarding against the missing Earth Womb and the invisible Wet Nurse.
“Jinbao, scout ahead.” Qin Ying gave her shoulder a shake, and the Thunderbird perched there took flight.
It flew into the darkness and circled overhead.
The three pressed on, treading over broken teeth as they searched.
Everywhere they looked, they saw the same endless expanse of skeletons. Walls of bones rose three people high, forming a vast maze.
After walking for a while, sweat began to bead on Xie Shao’s forehead. “Are we lost?”
Qin Ying and Han Lie answered at the same time, “No.”
Han Lie pointed at the wall of bones to their right. “I’ve been leaving markers everywhere we’ve passed.”
Xie Shao looked and indeed saw that Han Lie had deliberately snapped some of the bones to mark their path.
If they had gotten turned around, they would have encountered those markers again.
Yet somehow, Xie Shao found the fact that they were not lost even more terrifying.
It meant this truly was an endless land of bones.
The three continued for some distance. Suddenly, the Thunderbird’s piercing cry rang out through the gloom, and a flash of violet-blue lightning streaked back toward them.
Jinbao landed on Qin Ying’s shoulder and raised one wing, pointing in a certain direction.