Chapter 258: The Missing Person

Chapter 258: The Missing Person

Bai Hongtu himself was stunned by this realization, hardly able to believe it. Li Yanchu gave a slight nod, his gaze deep.

“It looked like we were the ones making the choice just now, but in truth, we were also being

chosen

. If we had decided to open the Heavenly Palace of Myriad Phenomena, we might have ended up trapped inside Feng Jiu’s imagination.”

Feng Jiu’s body trembled, the color draining from her face in an instant.

“No... impossible... this can’t be... Why would it be fake? There’s no reason to deceive me...”

She murmured under her breath, unable to accept it.

Li Yanchu and Bai Hongtu exchanged a glance, silently agreeing to keep quiet. In the end, the three of them left the depths beneath Thousand Corpses Ridge, climbing toward the surface along the ropes.

Suddenly, Li Yanchu stopped in his tracks.

“What is it?” Bai Hongtu asked.

Li Yanchu was silent for a moment before saying slowly, “There are five ropes here.”

He had overlooked it earlier, his mind preoccupied in such a dark, silent place. For a time, he hadn’t noticed.

Bai Hongtu froze. “Five ropes... so what?”

Then it hit him. He turned toward the silent abyss, a faint chill creeping into his heart.

“There’s... another person!”

Feng Jiu, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since earlier, now looked over, drawn by their conversation.

“That’s right,” Li Yanchu said gravely. “There’s someone else hidden down in this abyss, someone who never revealed themselves.”

Bai Hongtu fell silent.

Including himself, who was under the effects of the Bewitchment Technique, Shaman Sect had sent four people here in total. There was Grand Magu Hak, the black-robed woman, and the burly man.

Yet at the cliff’s edge... there were five ropes. The meaning was obvious: there had been another person who descended the ropes with them at the very start. They must have come down at the same time.

It was just that Bai Hongtu, under the effects of the Bewitchment Technique, had lost that part of his memory.

Because, if it had been someone who came later, there would have been no need to drop another rope at all. They could have just used one of the existing ropes, like Li Yanchu and Bai Hongtu had done.

What’s more, all five ropes were identical in style and material, clearly coming from the same source.

“There weren’t any bodies along the way, so they didn’t die en route,” Li Yanchu said.

This discovery brought an inexplicable heaviness to the hearts of the three. Where had that person gone?

If they had come together, then why hadn’t they shown up earlier, when they were inside the Fei’s lair? Or was it...

Li Yanchu suddenly looked up sharply. “Could it be that there was another person in Fei’s lair at the time, someone we never saw?”

Someone invisible.

Bai Hongtu forced a laugh. “That’s too far-fetched. To escape the perception of all three of us, that’d be one hell of a sinister character.”

He exhaled slowly. But ever since discovering there was someone missing, he couldn’t shake the feeling that, hidden in the darkness, a pair of eyes was watching them cunningly and brutally, tracking their every move like a ghost.

Once the thought took root, it wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t even tell whether he was just scaring himself... or if he had truly felt that gaze.

Li Yanchu thought for a moment, then said in a deep voice, “It’s like they say, when you’re suspicious, you see ghosts. Even if there really is someone skulking and hiding like that, they’re not likely to be much of a threat. If they were confident they could take us down, they’d have acted long ago. No way they’d wait until now. Let’s just head back up and get out of here.”

Bai Hongtu nodded. “Alright.”

He’d already felt his scalp prickle earlier. Now, facing this strange abyss, he couldn’t help but keep his distance, eager to be gone.

Feng Jiu obediently followed behind the two men, her eyes a little unfocused, her expression evoking a touch of pity.

The three each picked a rope. Li Yanchu gave Bai Hongtu a light nudge without saying anything. In response, Bai Hongtu glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, expression unreadable.

Soon after, the three began climbing upward. Feng Jiu, nimble as ever, had been a bit nervous when they descended. But now she was strangely calm, as if weighed down by something heavy in her heart. Even the discovery that someone was missing hadn’t made her particularly afraid.

Of the three, the slowest climber was actually Bai Hongtu. This refined young master, back when he’d scaled walls with Li Yanchu to slay demons, had only been a bit more agile than the average person.

Li Yanchu held a torch in his hand, its light cutting through the gloom of their surroundings. The flickering firelight cast shifting shadows across the three faces, making them seem at once bright and dark.

Fortunately, nothing strange cropped up along the way, aside from the sheer exertion of climbing. There was no bone-piercing wind, no ghostly gales, nor venomous snakes or poisonous insects slinking out to harm them.

This was thanks to the mystical effects of the Wind Tamer and the fourfold-enhance Plague-Dispelling Talisman.

The former calmed the winds, preventing the kind of evil gusts that might suddenly sweep someone off a cliff, or the icy winds that constantly sapped one’s yang qi and stamina. The latter banished poisonous insects and miasma. In the mountains, miasma and venomous creatures were unavoidable. Many a herbalist, climbing into treacherous terrain, had lost their lives to a venomous bite.

With these two magical aids, the climb was much safer.

Li Yanchu’s vital energy blazed completely unrestrained, like a great furnace burning bright, while the Jiaoslayer at his side radiated an oppressive killing aura.

Any ordinary fierce ghost that approached would be scattered into nothingness. There would be no ghastly surprise of finding a corpse clinging to your back, breathing cold air into your ear... Nor would there be mountain spirits and strange creatures casting illusions to make you stumble off the cliff. You could say they were enjoying the effect of several powerful group buffs at once.

At last, the three climbed to the top. They could see the light above the cliff edge, and their hearts instantly eased.

Suddenly, from the sky came a piercing cry, sharp enough to shatter stone.

Just then, a mass of black swooped toward them! It was a raptor; its talons hooked like sabers, diving straight for Bai Hongtu.

At the same time, a huge, hulking figure dropped from the heavens. Its skin gleamed gold, muscles bulging in terrifying ridges. It was a man-faced ape!

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

It was just as they were about to reach the top, the moment when people were most likely to relax, that disaster struck. The man-faced ape radiated a savage aura, plummeting down toward them!

Seeing this, Li Yanchu’s eyes flared with killing intent.

Clang!

The Jiaoslayer was drawn, and a domineering arc of saber-light cleaved upward. The air itself exploded under its force!

The man-faced ape roared, but did not dodge or evade. It kept barreling down!

Shing!

The saber-qi instantly tore the creature to shreds, and from its back, a lightning-fast shadow leapt free.

The shadow pounced straight for Li Yanchu!

It was an ugly

bei

[1], and its eyes were pitch-black and glinting with cunning light as its claws shot straight for Li Yanchu’s throat.

As the saying went,

“The wolf and the bei act in collusion

[2]

.”

So the man-faced ape had been nothing but a decoy, there had actually been a

bei

clinging to its back!

A protective aura flared to life around Li Yanchu’s body, Primordial Chaos Technique! Qi Shield!

However, the bei actually tore through his Qi Shield and struck at his throat.

Clang!

A metallic ring like clashing gold and iron resounded. An ancient, majestic suit of armor flashed briefly over Li Yanchu’s body; it was the Daoist talismanic armor!

1. The bèi (狈) is a legendary canine creature. It is said to resemble a wolf, though smaller in size, with hind legs longer than its forelegs.

The bèi never lives or acts alone; instead, it chooses wolves as companions and even integrates itself into wolf packs, which makes it difficult to spot. It often roams about with the pack, riding on the wolves’ backs as they move. Clever and cunning, the bèi guides the wolves in finding food and avoiding traps. Here is a reference

image

. ☜

2. 狼狈为奸 is an idiom originating from a fable, with the earliest record found in Duan Chengshi’s

Youyang Zazu

of the Tang dynasty.

Its literal meaning is that wolves and bèi join together to commit misdeeds. Later, it came to figuratively mean colluding with one another to do bad things. In a sentence, it can function as a predicate, attribute, or adverbial, and it always carries a derogatory sense. ☜