Chapter 37: Main Text Chapter Thirty-seven Explosion

Main Text Chapter Thirty-seven Explosion

The corpse-scented konjac, I think it not only interferes with people's minds through the fragrance it emits; more terrifying is its color—just a glance up close will cause hallucinations.

No wonder there are no defensive mechanisms near the coffin of the Queen of Jingjue; it turns out this demon flower is the fiercest tomb guardian—anyone who tries to approach the queen's coffin will have their five senses snatched by the corpse-scented konjac and be killed by their own memories.

It seems the stone beam suspended above the bottomless giant cavern before us is the area controlled by the corpse-scented konjac; once you step on the corpse beam, you will hallucinate.

I suppose the explorers and tomb robbers who had been here before all died as mysteriously as Chu Jian and Sa Dipeng; they probably never figured out what was going on even to their deaths.

Fortunately Shirley Yang had an extra bit of caution and didn't let Pangzi pull me over; otherwise I would already have been dead on the stone beam for a while. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, and I furiously cursed the mother of the Queen of Jingjue, grabbed my gun and fired several shots at the corpse-scented konjac on the distant coffin. The bullets hit the flower's branches and leaves, as if fired into rotten wood—not even making a hole in the big cavern, and there was no reaction at all. Left with no choice, I had to give up.

Sa Dipeng lay beside the coffin at the end of the stone beam, blood flowing all over the ground; he seemed beyond saving, but we couldn't just leave his corpse there—we had to find a way to go over and retrieve him.

I discussed a few points with Shirley Yang and Pangzi, but we had no good plan. Although Professor Chen was not in danger of losing his life, he remained unconscious, and Ye Yixin cried beside him, unable to catch her breath. Our current situation is truly a tangled mess, leaving us with no idea where to start.

Pangzi said, "Lao Hu, I actually have a clever plan to get rid of this demon flower."

I asked him, "The corpse-scented konjac is so formidable—what could you possibly do?"

Pangzi said, "Although it's powerful, it's not hard to deal with. It merely interferes with sight and hearing, luring those who approach it to death. You all wore gas masks when you went over, yet you still fell for its trick—this shows it doesn't kill just by its scent; a single look with your eyes will bewilder you, making you unable to tell real from fake, leaving you helpless. My clever plan is: we won't look at it, we'll blindfold ourselves, crawl on the ground feeling our way over, and pull that flower out by the roots—how about that?"

I said, "All right, quickly blindfold yourself and crawl over; we'll cheer you on from behind."

Shirley Yang said, "No, aside from Professor Chen knowing a little about the corpse-scented konjac, none of us knows anything about it. How can you be sure it hypnotizes through the five senses? This devilish flower is truly sinister; if we misjudge, we could very well die on the stone beam."

Pangzi said, "If we follow your advice, should we just abandon Sa Dipeng's corpse and make a quick getaway?"

I said, "Even if we leave, we can't let the corpse-scented konjac off easy—we have all that yellow explosive, don't we? I'll blast the stone beam short so the flower falls into the depths of the cavern."

The three of us were arguing back and forth when we suddenly saw Sa Dipeng's body in the distance twitch violently; we immediately stopped arguing and focused our attention on the situation at the stone beam.

The strong searchlight had been kept at a relatively low angle so that people returning from the stone beam wouldn't have their eyes hurt by the light; now I raised its angle slightly and aimed the light beam at Sa Dipeng in the distance.

Sa Dipeng's body rolled a bit, as if being dragged by something, continuously being pulled toward the black hole beneath the stone beam; just as I was about to look closely, the strong searchlight flickered twice and then went out—whether due to poor contact or it simply died, the whole cavern instantly plunged into total darkness.

At this critical moment I hammered the searchlight hard, but it still wouldn't light up; I quickly told Pangzi to fetch the spare battery.

Pangzi said, "No spare batteries left—the two sets of spares for the searchlight are with the camel caravan; when we entered the city you told everyone to travel light, so we didn't bring any extra gear."

Shirley Yang lit a cold smoke flare, and the surroundings lit up; even a little light in the darkness brings a sense of peace, but we still couldn't see far off—what was dragging Sa Dipeng away? Are there other creatures in this great cavern?

In the darkness we only heard a rustling like whispers on the walls of the bottomless abyss—a faint sound, like some animal wriggling and crawling, and the number of them was impossible to estimate.

I thought of those horrifying monster snakes and hurriedly told Pangzi to quickly hoist Professor Chen onto his back; no matter what emerges from the cave, there's no doubt it's unfriendly, so our best plan among the Thirty-Six Stratagems is to retreat.

The cold smoke flare's illumination time is limited, so we all took out our 'Wolf Eye' flashlights for lighting; Pangzi hoisted Professor Chen onto his back, Shirley Yang pulled the weak-legged Ye Yixin, we all found our direction and retreated back the way we came.

Then the sounds all around grew louder; Shirley Yang raised her camera and repeatedly clicked the shutter, the flash bulb popping flash after flash, and in an instant the surroundings were blazing white. Borrowing that lightning-like white light, we saw countless black-scaled monster snakes crawling out from all sides—big and small, the smallest only a dozen centimeters long, the largest nearly a meter, each with a black tumor on its head; some were clearly mature, and that large tumor had grown into a huge black eyeball.

The black eyes atop the snakes' heads are extremely sensitive to light; when the flash hit them they all recoiled, but there were too many—thousands upon thousands—continually surging out of the cavern, piling and tangling together, blocking the road we had come by so completely that we couldn't force them to clear a path.

Although the camera's flash and the flashlight's beams can temporarily hold back the snake swarm, it's a case of quenching thirst with poison—once the camera's power runs out, we will inevitably be bitten to death by the snakes.

The black snakes grew ever more numerous; the canister of solidified fuel we had brought when entering the city had already been used up in the temple, leaving us with no recourse but to keep retreating step by step.

Black snakes covered everywhere; at this moment the situation was as urgent as fire at one's eyebrows, and Pangzi suddenly pointed to the mountainside a few meters behind us and shouted, "There's a small cave over here—let's go in first to take shelter."

I looked back and saw it wasn't a cave but merely a fissure in the mountainside, aged and cracked open over the years, only about a person's height high; I didn't know its depth, but in the emergency we had no choice but to retreat inside to prop ourselves up temporarily, then think of another plan.

Then we dragged the immobile Professor Chen and Ye Yixin and quickly retreated into the mountain crevice; here the entrance is narrow and widens inward, it's also quite deep, and the ground is likewise split by fissures, but there's only about a centimeter of width underneath, so stepping on it we needn't worry about falling into the cracks.

Shirley Yang's mental fortitude is excellent; even in dire straits she doesn't panic. Taking in the situation of this mountain fissure, she saw a large lateral crack a few meters behind us and immediately formed a plan, saying to me, "Can we first blast the entrance to collapse it and block the snakes' assault?"

At that moment a few black snakes had already crawled in, preparing to jump up and bite people; Shirley Yang pressed the camera shutter, the flash made the black snakes flinch and turn away, Pangzi moved like lightning, his engineer's shovel aimed at the snakes' heads to smash them, then he swept with the shovel to clear the dead snakes out of the cave.

I recalled how Hao Aiguo had died, thinking that even being blown up and buried alive would be better than being bitten by venomous snakes; I hastily grabbed a few packets of yellow explosive, there was no time to calculate the dosage—I could only rely on my experience as a combat engineer over the past few years, slapped on a detonator, told Pangzi and the others to sprint quickly into the deep part of that lateral mountain fissure ahead, I set off the explosive, and as I retreated I fired my gun at the black snakes crawling into the cave mouth; after stepping back a few steps I ended up squeezed with Shirley Yang and the others at a bend.

I was just about to tell them to open their mouths wide and plug their ears, careful not to be deafened by the blast.

Before I could finish speaking, a violent explosion boomed, rumbling like thunder in the cavern; shrapnel and the blast wave surged in together. Although we were sheltered in the bend, avoiding the direct impact, we were still struck by the explosion's shockwave—it felt as if a heavy fist had punched our chests, our ears rang, our heads filled with buzzing, and we couldn't hear anything.

Pangzi opened his mouth and said something to me, but I couldn't hear a word; I shouted at him syllable by syllable, 'The ex~plo~sive~ seems~ to~ have~ been~ put~ in~ too~ much! Are~ you~ guys~ okay?' I don't know if my voice even made a sound—I was too close to the blast point, and the mountain fissure was extremely reverberant; my eardrums had been knocked flat, and even the words I yelled while straining my neck I couldn't hear myself.