Go to Hell — He Didn't Want to Talk to Her

The people lying further back were all unfamiliar faces too. He Zhuoming didn't spot Xu Feixian among them, so she quietly slipped out and searched the other rooms.

In the other rooms, she came across quite a few familiar faces—mostly the white-robed attendants she'd seen in the main hall during the day. The thought that these people had been greeting her, chatting with her, and showing her around like ordinary folks just this morning sent a chill down her spine.

This Divine Palace was as creepy as a cult den!

And that Earth Immortal was just as unsettling! She'd never seen the Earth Immortal with her own eyes, but she'd already gotten a taste of the True Deity's methods from the sidelines.

What kind of sane person makes a crabapple tree grow out of someone's body over a minor offense?

Even now, thinking of those glistening blood beads on the crabapple tree made her stomach churn. She'd already thrown up outside a moment ago, so nothing was left to come up—she could only cover her mouth and dry-heave softly.

As she was retching, she suddenly felt a gust of wind sweep down from above; before she knew it, the lantern was snatched from her hand—and He Zhuoming herself was hauled up along with it!

Her feet lost the ground beneath them, and with a jolt of alarm, she was about to strike back—when, in the dim lamplight, Xu Feixian's face emerged from the shadows, her voice low: "It's me."

He Zhuoming stared at her, still shaken.

Xu Feixian raised the lantern, puzzled, glancing between it and He Zhuoming. "A borrowed street lamp? Where'd you get this?"

He Zhuoming said, "A musician from the Pear Garden lent it to me..."

Xu Feixian shoved the lantern back into He Zhuoming's hands. "How did you end up here?"

He Zhuoming whispered, "I was afraid you'd die, so I came to find you... You're not dead?"

She took advantage of the dim light to size up Xu Feixian warily—then the surroundings. Having just seen a room full of "living corpses," He Zhuoming was now half-afraid that whatever was inside Xu Feixian's body wasn't actually Xu Feixian.

If Xu Feixian suddenly smiled at her all sweet and gentle, He Zhuoming was prepared to run her through with her sword.

Luckily, Xu Feixian's expression was calm. She did look a bit worse for wear—a few small scrapes on her cheeks—but at least she wasn't smiling.

At the moment, the two of them were squeezed into a crawl space about a meter high under the roof. At He Zhuoming's feet, there was an opening leading outward; that was where Xu Feixian had hauled her up from.

Xu Feixian had cut the opening with her saber. She replaced the slab of ceiling she'd removed, covering their tracks, and answered He Zhuoming's question in the same breath: "I'm not that easy to kill. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve."

After she'd replaced the ceiling, Xu Feixian looked up at He Zhuoming, her feelings complicated.

When the white figure had first crashed through the window, she'd assumed He Zhuoming was running around outside, breaking some kind of taboo and stirring up trouble.

Her first thought had been: go for a head-on clash. If we can win, fight; if not, toss He Zhuoming out—the one who brought the trouble can be the one to face it.

Never did she expect that the danger hadn't been He Zhuoming's doing at all—it had been aimed at her the whole time. If anything, He Zhuoming was the one caught in the crossfire because of her.

Xu Feixian spoke: "You... why did you run back for me?"

He Zhuoming was busy looking for something and answered without raising her head: "I told you already—I was afraid you'd die."

Xu Feixian: "And if I had died?"

He Zhuoming: "If you'd died, I'd have dug you a grave and buried you. Don't worry, I've got plenty of experience with that—I dug one for Lin Qingyun before."

Xu Feixian: "What if you'd come looking for me, gotten caught up in my mess, and died too?"

He Zhuoming froze. "Ah... I hadn't thought about that."

Xu Feixian said seriously, "You should have."

He Zhuoming nodded. "Oh, okay, I'll think about it next time... Oh no! Crap!"

She patted down every pocket on her person, her face falling. "The triangle talisman and red string that nice musician lent me—I think I lost them."

"She said I had to tie that red string around your index finger before I could bring you back. What are we gonna do now?"

No sooner had the words left her mouth than a bone-chilling cold seeped up through the floor beneath her—accompanied by rustling, skin-crawling whispers.

Xu Feixian: "They're back."

He Zhuoming panicked. "What do we do? Are we gonna have to go down fighting?"

Xu Feixian: "Follow me."

She crawled deeper into the crawl space, and He Zhuoming scrambled after her.

The space was about a meter high—not tall, not short, but there was no way to stand upright. The only option was to crawl on hands and knees.

He Zhuoming crawled after Xu Feixian, asking, "Is this the way out?"

Xu Feixian replied, "I don't know, but it's the only passage I've found here."

"This isn't a fabricated illusion—it's real architecture. And since it's real, it must have been built by living people. Word has it the Earth Immortal's Divine Palace simply took over the imperial palace of Moyi and renovated it. Most imperial palaces, after completion, would have their craftsmen sacrificed to heaven as a blessing. So I'm guessing this crawl space might be a secret passage the workmen built for themselves to escape."

"My theory might not be right, but it's still better than going back out there to face a horde of ghosts."

Remembering the sea of white figures packed into the main hall, a chill ran down the back of He Zhuoming's neck. Silently agreeing with Xu Feixian, she quickened her crawl to keep up.

The two of them crawled through the passage for what felt like an eternity. He Zhuoming's knees ached, so she reached up to feel the ceiling: the cold stone slab was still only a meter off the ground—no way to stand.

She was about to withdraw her hand in resignation when Xu Feixian, crawling ahead of her, suddenly stopped.

He Zhuoming: "What's wrong?"

Xu Feixian's voice was hesitant. "Do you hear something?"

"A sound?" He Zhuoming blinked in confusion. "What sound?"

Xu Feixian: "It's... the sound of someone talking."

He Zhuoming nearly jumped. "Don't scare me! What 'someone talking'? You mean the two of us talking?"

Muttering to herself, she raised the lantern and swept it over every direction—front, back, up, down. The crawl space was a straight tunnel, just wide enough to squeeze two He Zhuomings side by side. Behind her, it was utterly empty, and ahead, there was only Xu Feixian.

But Xu Feixian's face had gone deathly pale, sweat streaming down it like she'd just been pulled out of water.

She slumped where she sat, turned back to He Zhuoming, and said in a trembling voice, "There really is—there really is a sound... a sound..."

She was nearly incoherent, as if she'd heard something absolutely horrifying. It was the first time He Zhuoming had ever seen such raw terror on Xu Feixian's face. Yet no matter how hard she listened—even pressing her ear directly to the wall beside her—she heard nothing.

He Zhuoming crawled over and clamped her hands over Xu Feixian's ears. "Does that help?"

She felt how cold Xu Feixian's skin was, how her whole body trembled against her.

Xu Feixian grabbed He Zhuoming's coat, her fingers bloodless, and stammered, "Knock me out... knock me out now..."

He Zhuoming could see how truly miserable she was—her eyes looked ready to bulge right out of her skull. Gritting her teeth, she brought the hilt of her wooden sword down on the back of Xu Feixian's neck. Xu Feixian went limp and collapsed onto He Zhuoming.

She was miraculously heavier once unconscious, crushing He Zhuoming flat to the ground.

He Zhuoming struggled to push her off and climb back up, then checked her pulse and breathing. Good—heartbeat and breath were both fine. She was just unconscious.

It was He Zhuoming's first time knocking someone out, and she had zero experience. She'd been terrified she'd use the wrong amount of force.

Now Xu Feixian was out cold, and He Zhuoming sat where she was, catching her breath and thinking about what to do next.

Going back was out of the question—there were too many ghosts down there; one bite each and the two of them would be finished. Keep going forward, then? Who knew what lay at the end of the passage, not to mention that sound Xu Feixian had heard...

He Zhuoming pressed her ear to the wall again, puzzled, but still heard nothing.

All she could pick up in the crawl space was the steady rush of well-ventilated air.

She tried dragging Xu Feixian along.

But the crawl space was too low to get proper leverage, and with Xu Feixian completely limp, she was far heavier than usual. He Zhuoming gritted her teeth and strained for a long while until she was panting, yet she'd only managed to drag Xu Feixian a short distance.

She had to give up on that idea. She sat down to rest and think, waiting for her strength to return.

Staying put and doing nothing wasn't an option—He Zhuoming hated sitting around waiting for death.

Despite the unknown ahead, she made up her mind quickly: she tucked the borrowed lantern into Xu Feixian's hand, then pulled out a packet of pastries from her own clothes and divided a portion into Xu Feixian's robe.

With that done, He Zhuoming picked up her wooden sword, gripped the Guanyin statue hanging around her neck, took a deep breath, and continued deeper into the crawl space on her own.

After crawling for another long stretch, until her knees were nearly numb, she suddenly felt the space around her open up, the swirling air growing wide and roomy.

She cautiously rose to her feet and reached up overhead—no ceiling above her. She could stand.

The sudden expansion of space made He Zhuoming uneasy. She'd left the lantern with Xu Feixian, so she'd have to rely on her own eyes now, and the darkness was so deep that visibility was poor.

She gripped her wooden sword tightly, nerves wound taut, and pressed forward—the further she went, the brighter it became, until He Zhuoming had to squint.

Then her mouth fell slightly open, and she swallowed hard.

Emerald jade flooring, cool and watery, shimmering like a deep, shadowed lake at first glance.

The walls, the ceiling—every surface was made of green jade. Even someone like He Zhuoming, who knew nothing about jade, could tell this was top-quality stone, priceless beyond measure.

But the floor was strewn with brownish-red bloodstains.

Some were scratch marks; others were written characters—large and small, crooked or neat, all of them spelling the same thing: "Go to hell."

Go to hell go to hell go to hell go to hell go to hell—

The "go to hell's" crowded together, overlapping, growing denser and denser, clustering around an unidentified object draped in bright red silk in the center.

He Zhuoming's perception of certain things was too dull; she couldn't hear the abnormal sounds like Xu Feixian could. But when she faced that floor full of "go to hell" head-on, the overwhelming malice and curses still made her scalp prickle, and she instinctively stepped back.

She remembered that behind her should have been open space—it should have been, by all rights...

But she hadn't retreated two steps before her back hit a wall. Startled, she spun around and found that behind her, a wall of emerald jade had somehow appeared where there was none before!

He Zhuoming gasped, her heart racing as she frantically pressed against the wall, hoping she'd accidentally trigger some mechanism; at the same time, her peripheral vision kept darting to that unidentified object wrapped in red silk at the center of the room.

Everything before her was bizarre and horrifying, but the thing that nearly made her heart explode was a powerful sense of familiarity.

This scene was almost exactly like that cell she'd been trapped in after she'd first crossed over and been tricked. The only difference was that this "cell" was made of far more luxurious materials—and its appearance was far more inexplicable.

He Zhuoming's mind was a jumbled mess right now. She failed to notice that the dried brownish-red bloodstains on the floor had already turned fresh red, along with the "go to hell" written in blood.

Keeping one eye on the red silk bundle, she ran her hands across the walls, carefully and diligently feeling her way around all four sides.

To her dismay, every single brick she could reach on those four walls fit seamlessly together—not one of them was loose, so of course there was no mechanism to find.

She looked up. The ceiling was far too high; unless she could fly, there was no way to reach it.

And as far as she could see, the ceiling was perfectly smooth too—not even a skylight to let in sunlight. This "cell" might have looked grander than the one she was in before, but it gave He Zhuoming an even stronger sense of suffocation.

A bizarre room with no discernible exit and no visible hope.

He Zhuoming finished her circuit and her gaze fell back on that mound of red silk.

She summoned her courage and called out, "Hey, are you human?"

No answer. Oddly enough, this huge room didn't even produce an echo—though He Zhuoming was oblivious enough that most of the strange, unnatural things went right over her head unless they were shoved right in front of her face.

At least she was spared a lot of frights.

She crept closer, initially trying to avoid the blood characters on the floor, but soon found that the closer she got to the red silk, the denser the writing became.

There was no avoiding it at last, so He Zhuoming stepped over the "go to hells" and made her way to the silk bundle. Cautiously, she poked it with the tip of her wooden sword—it was soft, but not too soft. It felt like something alive.

It just didn't move. Even poked with the wooden sword, it didn't move.

He Zhuoming tried again: "Hey, are you alive?"

That question naturally got no reply either. He Zhuoming hesitated, then lifted the red cloth with the tip of her blade—beneath it lay a child!

A child with long hair, dressed in bright red clothes.

The child was curled up on his side, his exposed skin covered in pale-red runes. Those runes were incredibly intricate and abstruse—after just a serious glance, He Zhuoming felt dizzy, so she quickly looked away.

She stared at the emerald wall to steady herself—blinking hard twice, then couldn't help but look down at the child again.

He looked... looked...

He looked just like Lin Qingyun.

He was a miniature version of Lin Qingyun, complete with thick lashes and a sweet, harmless face. Because he was so young, he still had baby fat, which made him look even more harmless than the teenage Lin Qingyun she knew!

Could he be Lin Qingyun's little brother?

He Zhuoming kept her guard up, doing her best not to pay attention to the dense spell-writing on the child's skin, and poked his cheek with the tip of her sword: "Hey—kid, kid? Kid kid kid kid kid—"

The little boy's eyes snapped open. His pitch-black pupils shifted toward He Zhuoming, his face utterly expressionless, exuding a commanding presence that didn't match his age at all.

Anyone else might have been cowed by that regal bearing. Too bad the one he was glaring at was He Zhuoming.

He Zhuoming felt no pressure whatsoever—instead, she sighed in relief. "You're not dead? Then why didn't you say something? You scared me half to death. Oh wait, are you mute?"

After a moment's thought, she added, "If you're mute, you can just nod or shake your head—"

The little boy sat up, his tone cold. "If you want to be mute, just say so. I can grant you that."

He Zhuoming: "Wow! You can talk—that's great! Hey, kid, do you know where we are?"

The little boy's gaze dropped to the wooden sword in her hand. Where did this idiot crawl out from? Not only was she utterly lacking in manners, but what was she doing pointing that piece of junk at him the whole time?

He didn't want to talk to her. He grabbed the red silk that the sword had flipped up and covered himself again.

He Zhuoming flipped it back open with the tip of her blade.

The little boy, without even looking up, pulled the red silk back over himself.