Chapter 267
Chapter 267
Fang Chuanzong had come to Chang City too!
Sure enough, there was nothing on either side of the Yin-Yang divide that escaped his notice.
My guess was that he’d been watching this Corpse Fiend for quite some time. He simply hadn’t dared to intervene before. Tonight, he’d come to snatch it out from under us.
The only question was whether he knew there was more hidden beneath the burial pit.
I didn’t have time to worry about that. Fang Chuanzong wouldn’t get in our way, and Liu Junyan had already given me the signal to move. Carrying the Soul-Guiding Lantern, I crouched low and hurried toward the burial pit.
The pit was both wide and deep. Without the Golden Scale’s golden radiance, its depths were pitch-black.
I tore the black cloth off the Soul-Guiding Lantern.
As the Light of Merit flooded the pit, I leaped in without hesitation.
There was another layer of coffin boards at the bottom, but it was nothing more than an empty frame.
I’d seen the coffin lid flung away earlier, yet all that remained down here were the coffin’s four walls. There wasn’t even a bottom.
The instant my feet touched the ground, an intensely cold yin aura surged continuously up through the soles of my feet, making me shudder.
The space below was cramped and narrow, far tighter than the burial pit above. It was barely wide enough for one person.
I raised the Soul-Guiding Lantern and examined my surroundings, but saw nothing except dirt.
That couldn’t be right.
The Corpse Fiend had been drawing vital essence from this very spot. This was the Formation Eye of the Nine Heavens Soul-Locking Formation.
Logically, no matter which direction I went from here, I should reach one of the mine tunnels.
In that case…
I thrust a hand into the dirt and felt around.
Sure enough, I soon found a mechanism. I pulled hard, and with a loud crash, a great mass of black coal and cold, damp earth came tumbling down, nearly burying the lower half of my body.
Fortunately, I’d been expecting something like this. The moment I triggered the mechanism, I sprang upward.
The space beneath the burial pit was so narrow that I couldn’t dodge in any direction except up.
Luckily, I had jumped — and high enough at that.
The instant I left the ground, over a dozen sword-like shards of black coal shot out from the opening. They grazed the soles of my feet before burying themselves deep in the dirt wall opposite me.
My body immediately began to fall.
Before my feet could land on the pile of coal, I heaved myself upward again, gaining just a little more height.
Just as I’d expected, the wall struck by the coal swords had opened as well. More coal swords came whistling out.
This happened several times in succession until all four dirt walls had opened. I landed steadily on the pile of coal and stared at the identical passages around me, unsure which one to enter first.
Logically, the entire network of mine tunnels should be interconnected.
Even if I chose the wrong path, I could quickly retreat to the Formation Eye. Nothing should go wrong.
I tightened my grip on the Soul-Guiding Lantern’s handle and entered the passage on the left.
These tunnels had been built over a century ago. Back then, people likely still considered the left side the position of precedence.
Beyond the entrance was a passage dozens of meters long, sloping downward all the way. At its end was a short flight of steps.
I descended one step at a time, moving very slowly.
By the time I reached the last step, even the Soul-Guiding Lantern could no longer illuminate the entire space.
Dark.
It was far too dark.
I realized I had entered one of the mine tunnels. Bringing the Soul-Guiding Lantern close to the wall, I discovered that every wall down here had been densely built from layers of dirt mixed with black coal…
It reminded me of a classic tomb structure from ancient history, one notoriously difficult to breach — the Huangchang Ticou.
The Huangchang Ticou was an elaborate outer coffin chamber found in the tombs of ancient emperors, constructed from stacked yellow-heart cypress timbers with their bark removed.
The neatly arranged heaps of coal in the mine tunnel before me seemed to serve much the same purpose.
The heaps stood one after another, leaving only a narrow path that led deeper into the tunnel.
I didn’t know how long this mine tunnel was, but I did know there were nine tunnels just like it.
Each tunnel had nine anchor points, and at every anchor point was a miner who had suffocated to death… No, wait!
Old Madam Hui had said that Hui Xiaotiao and the miners were suffocated when the mine tunnel collapsed, but there wasn’t the slightest sign that this tunnel had ever caved in.
So how had those miners actually died?
I instinctively held my breath and backed away a few steps. Could it have been poison gas?
But after a moment’s thought, that didn’t seem right either.
Wouldn’t poison gas have contaminated the miners’ vital essence?
Once I ruled out other unnatural means, the only possibility left was the Nine Heavens Soul-Trapping Formation itself.
I cautiously took a few steps forward. Nothing happened.
So I continued ahead, testing the way.
As I walked, I counted my steps.
I kept my strides short, taking two steps to cover the distance of one normal stride.
The moment I took my eighteenth step — the equivalent of nine normal steps — a wave of disorientation suddenly swept over me.
It lasted for several seconds before I noticed something was wrong.
The mine tunnel was moving.
Changing!
No. It was the Nine Heavens Soul-Trapping Formation that was moving and changing!
The shift happened without a sound, yet it made me feel as if my soul were being wrenched from my body. I struggled to breathe and clutched my throat with one hand, as though I would suffocate at any moment.
I wanted to retreat, get out of there, and stabilize my Spirit Soul before figuring out what to do next.
But I couldn’t move at all.
It wasn’t that some force had immobilized me. My brain simply felt starved of oxygen, leaving me unable to command my legs to step backward.
The feeling of suffocation grew worse and worse. My fingers dug so hard into my throat that they nearly pierced the flesh, as if severing my own windpipe would somehow bring relief.
I dropped to my knees, and the Soul-Guiding Lantern fell to the ground with me.
The next moment, the Light of Merit within the Soul-Guiding Lantern enveloped my entire body, and the suffocating sensation abruptly vanished.
My heart jolted as realization struck me.
No, I hadn’t actually been about to suffocate. The Nine Heavens Soul-Trapping Formation had clouded my mind and trapped me in a hallucination.
It was only then that I finally understood how those miners had died all those years ago.
They hadn’t suffocated because the mine tunnel collapsed. The Nine Heavens Soul-Locking Formation had affected their minds. They had been suffocated to death by hallucinations created within their own minds!
What an ingenious — and vicious — method!
Once I understood, I took three deep breaths in succession, rose to my feet, and picked up the Soul-Guiding Lantern again.
This time, I strode forward without hesitation.
On my ninth step, that destabilizing sensation in my Spirit Soul returned, and the feeling of suffocation followed right on cue.
I steadied my mind and kept walking.
Sure enough, the suffocating sensation vanished almost as quickly as it had come.
My theory had been right, and now I had proven it.
There was nothing left for me to fear on the road ahead.
After completing my third set of nine steps, I paused where I was. Then I opened my mouth and shouted into the tunnel ahead, “Zhang Chongzhi, it’s time to go home…”
My voice rang out loudly, the final syllable drawn out for a long time.
For a moment, my call echoed throughout the mine tunnel, traveling far, far into the depths.
Clutching the Soul-Guiding Lantern tightly, I continued forward, calling out names as I walked. “Zhang Chongzhi, it’s time to go home… Li Huaian, it’s time to go home… Sun Dabing, it’s time to go home… Wang Ah Zhu, it’s time to go home…”