Chapter 15

Chapter 15

I had only taken two steps when I felt a tug at my waist. Looking down, I saw the snakeskin tied around me was pulled taut.

The snakeskin was exactly ten-odd meters long. While I could move freely at the bottom of the pit, the length wasn’t enough for me to walk into the passageway. After a moment of hesitation, I untied the snakeskin and walked into the tunnel as if possessed.

The white beam from my flashlight hit the wall, and I finally saw the last mural clearly.

My footsteps ground to a halt.

Ahead of me was a massive Mass Grave. The bottom was piled high with scattered bones and bronze artifacts, and atop these skeletal remains, a giant python lay sleeping.

This giant python was completely different from the Man-eating Snake from before.

Instead of a black cockscomb, it had a dark, obsidian horn on its head. It looked somewhat like the legendary Jiao.

As if sensing something, the Jiao Serpent snapped its eyes open.

Enormous vertical pupils appeared before me. I immediately felt a wave of heart-stopping dread that made me want to drop to my knees.

I spun around and bolted, screaming as I ran, “Jiang Haoyan!”

Reaching the bottom of the pit, I saw the snakeskin jerk violently. I lunged forward and grabbed it. Jiang Haoyan and the others quickly hauled the snakeskin upward.

“Run! Get out of here!”

Back in the main hall, while I had been down there, Ah Kuan and the others had managed to hook several outdoor grappling hooks onto the ceiling.

These were climbing tools shaped like tiger claws, also known as serrated triangular mountaineering hooks. The hooks were firmly secured in the gaps of the stone ceiling grid with ropes hanging down. Ah Kuan had already been the first to climb up and was currently pulling Professor Chen up after him.

I nervously gripped my Thunderstruck Wood Talisman, standing by the edge of the pit. I planned to wait for the Jiao Serpent to emerge and blast it with a lightning tribulation, regardless of the consequences.

I stood there for a long while until everyone else had climbed onto the roof, but the serpent never appeared.

Sighing in relief, I was the last to grab the rope, letting Jiang Haoyan pull me up.

Just as I turned around, everyone on the roof screamed.

“Qiao Moyu, don’t look back!”

Jiang Haoyan’s eyes were bloodshot. His arms moved like a whirlwind as he desperately pulled me upward.

Gripping the slowly rising rope, I turned my head to look.

Good heavens. The Jiao Serpent had poked its head out from the deep pit. That black horn shimmered brilliantly in the sunlight, almost surrounded by a halo.

It watched me silently, its eyes reflecting a uniquely human expression of contemplation.

After a two-second pause, it suddenly lunged out of the pit, opening its bloody maw toward me.

Its mouth was lined with dozens of rows of densely packed, razor-sharp teeth-enough to give anyone a case of trypophobia at a single glance.

At that critical moment, Jiang Haoyan pulled me through the roof. Everyone scattered, running through the sand with uneven steps.

The roof finally succumbed to the weight and collapsed entirely, burying the Jiao Serpent under a mountain of yellow sand.

Long afterward, the gale howled.

On the surface of the desert, peace returned once more…

After returning from Xinjiang, Zhu Tanjian quickly lifted the curse for us.

The process of breaking the curse wasn’t complicated at all. He looked at Jiang Haoyan and me and whispered a few characters.

“＆Φξ＃……”

It was completely unintelligible, sounding almost nothing like human speech, but it felt incredibly powerful.

The next morning, I discovered the Pentagram on my back had vanished. Overjoyed, I had Zhu Tanjian record that passage and post it across various online platforms.

Jiang Haoyan set up a challenge: a one-million-yuan reward for anyone who could perfectly repeat those words.

Soon, the video spread across the internet like wildfire, and everyone’s curses were lifted.

There was heated discussion online about how the high-fever plague in Nanjiang City had suddenly disappeared. People wondered if the rising temperatures had made the disease less contagious.

I smiled secretly, hiding my contributions and fame.

The Program Team’s cameras were buried under the yellow sand, and the memory cards were never recovered. The show was a bust, much to Professor Chen’s regret, but I felt it was for the best.

Some things are truly not meant for the public eye.

Back at school, life returned to normal, but deep in my mind, I always felt like I had forgotten something.

In the dead of night, I suddenly sat up in bed.

I realized what it was. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was on that final mural I saw. I still hadn’t figured out the identity of that woman either.

Jiang Haoyan also started acting strange, grinning at thin air from time to time.

One day, while carrying a stack of books, I ran into him on campus. He was holding his phone, smiling like an idiot.

I walked over and patted his shoulder.

“What’s up? Did you find some money? You look so happy.”

Jiang Haoyan waved his phone at me triumphantly.

“Qiao Moyu, I have a girlfriend.”

“She invited me to travel to Tibet over the summer break.”

On the other end of the phone, Fang Lu’s face appeared.

She wore an eerie smile as she waved at me.

“Hello there, Qiao Moyu.”

The End.