Chapter 138: Wall Runner

"Turn off the flashlights?" I was baffled. We'd already lost so many people, and he wanted us to turn off the flashlights? What if we lost even more? That was just asking for trouble—I quickly looked at Monk Hua, hoping he'd be more level-headed and see how he reacted.

Monk Hua was also extremely nervous. When he saw me looking at him, he actually asked me, "Should we turn them off or not?"

Fatty turned off his flashlight and said, "Listen to him. Turn them off and see!"

I immediately turned off my flashlight, and Monk Hua and the others followed suit one by one. In an instant, we were plunged into absolute darkness. We quickly looked up at the ceiling. At first, it was pitch black and we couldn't see anything. Fatty was about to curse when suddenly the ceiling lit up. We immediately saw countless tiny green dots densely clustered on the ceiling. At first glance, it looked like a vast sea of stars.

"Is this... a Fifty-Star Chart?"

I heard Monk Hua beside me exclaim in surprise. I looked up again, and sure enough, the shape formed by the green dots above vaguely resembled a Fifty-Star Chart, but not exactly, because those green dots were actually moving.

"We're rich! So many night pearls!" Fatty exclaimed in astonishment.

"No, night pearls aren't this small," I said, cold sweat dripping. "They're moving—they're bugs!"

"Bugs? What kind of bugs?" Fatty tensed up immediately, probably thinking of corpse beetles. "Fireflies?"

"No, fireflies flash. I didn't—" Before I could finish, I suddenly felt an itch on my neck, as if something had fallen into my collar. I quickly reached to touch it and grabbed a lump. I pinched it and crushed it.

Based on the feel, I immediately sensed something was wrong. It was an arthropod, and it seemed to have a lot of legs.

I pinched the thing out of my collar with my fingers, turned on my flashlight to look at it, and suddenly felt a chill. I quickly threw it to the ground.

It was an insect about the length of a palm, looking very much like a centipede, with long antennae at both ends, a slender body divided into nine segments, and a green dot on the back of each segment. But what clearly distinguished it from a centipede was that its legs were extremely long, almost as long as its body, and very numerous, like hairs growing along both sides of its torso.

I knew this insect was called a "house centipede," also known in some places as a "wall crawler" or "scutigera." These things are very sinister. When I was a kid, I dared to touch anything, but not these. They just made you uncomfortable at the sight. According to the legends in my hometown, if one crawled over you, the places it touched would all rot. The most terrifying thing was that they would crawl into your ears. Seeing them now, my whole body went numb.

"Wall crawlers" are even recorded in *Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio*. They can grow up to three feet long, and like centipedes and spiders, they are creatures with strong demonic tendencies.

Seeing this bug made my whole body tense up. Then my head itched again. I reached up and found another one—it had fallen from above.

I immediately cried out, quickly slapped it off, then pulled up my mountaineering hood. I shone my light on the ground. Damn, I didn't know when, but the ground was already crawling with these bugs, and more were constantly falling from above.

The people below couldn't avoid being hit. Monk Hua wasn't as fast as I was; he had already jumped up, frantically slapping at the things in his collar, but it was useless. They slipped into any opening and quickly got inside his clothes. Moreover, the bugs on the ground inexplicably all swarmed toward us, climbing up from our shoes.

Fatty put a washbasin over his head and used an entrenching tool with his other hand to keep slapping. I saw Ye Cheng clutching his head, so I quickly went to help him. When I pulled his hands away, I saw that several bugs had already crawled into his ears.

Some "wall crawlers" are as venomous as centipedes, or even more so. I'd rather have scorpions all over me than have these things crawl on me. I had him tilt his head down and slapped his head to knock the bugs out.

We slapped and ran, but "wall crawlers" were falling like rain everywhere. Just when we were about to lose it, there was a sudden *pop*, and a lamp slave in the distance lit up. Someone had apparently lit it.

I was wondering who would have the mind to light a lamp at a time like this, when the "wall crawlers" on the ground reacted and began crawling toward the lamp slave.

From a distance came Shunzi's voice: "Bosses, light a fire! These bugs lay their eggs on warm things. Don't let your body be the warmest thing around."

So it was that kid Shunzi, I thought. It seemed he'd woken up.

Fatty and I quickly climbed onto a nearby lamp slave. This was a stone carving shaped like a man carrying a basin, and in the basin was the wick. The lamp slave was as tall as a person. When I climbed up to look, the thousand-year oil in the basin had frozen into soap, and it was crawling with bugs.

I took out my lighter and lit the wick. The flame started very small but grew larger as the thousand-year oil melted. The "wall crawlers" in the oil basin, seeing the flame, unhesitatingly swarmed toward it. Several bugs tangled together, crackling as they burned.

I turned on my flashlight again and shone it at the ceiling. The painted beams above had changed—it seemed the pattern just now had been formed by these bugs arranging themselves. By then, other lamp slaves had been lit elsewhere. The firelight through the darkness was very dim; I still couldn't see the people around me, but I knew their positions. It seemed the darkness here wasn't impenetrable to light—our light just wasn't strong enough.

Bugs were still falling sporadically from above, but most fell toward the lamp slaves. We shielded our heads with our hands and ran toward the light. After a few steps, I saw Lang Feng and Shunzi. Lang Feng had collapsed on the ground, convulsing continuously. Shunzi was rubbing the back of his head while slapping bugs off him.

I ran up and asked him what was wrong. He said, "It's over—bugs got into his brain. Too deep to dig out."

Fatty let out an "ah" and involuntarily dug into his ear, muttering to himself, "Lucky I have a lot of earwax."

I asked Shunzi, "Is there any way to save him?"

Shunzi shook his head. "I don't know. In our village, once you get hit by these snow mites, you live or die by fate."

I checked Lang Feng's eyes; he was already unconscious. He was really done for. But actually, this was probably a good thing, because this guy was one of Chenpi A'si's men. When the time came to turn against Chenpi A'si—and that was inevitable—he would have been very hard to deal with. Now that he was out of commission, our odds improved a bit.

Panzi called out from a distance, telling us to all gather together. I said to Shunzi, "Let's not worry about that for now. We need to regroup first. Are you okay in the head?"

Shunzi nodded, then asked in confusion, "How did I suddenly pass out? I remember... you were going to blast the mountain! Where is this place?" I was momentarily taken aback, but Fatty quickly said, "You've really lost it. We just wanted to fire a salute, but it caused an avalanche. Some rocks fell and hit your head, knocking you out. The snow swept us into here. It looks like some kind of temple. We don't really understand what's going on either..."

Shunzi thought for a moment and said, "I don't remember any of that. But how can you blast things on a snowy mountain? That's way too reckless... No, you'll have to pay me extra when we get back. This deal isn't worth it."

Fatty was about to say something else, but I was afraid he would ramble off topic. I patted him and said, "Cut the bullshit. We'll talk about this later. Let's move."

With that, Fatty and I together lifted Lang Feng, trying to carry him over to Panzi. Lang Feng was too big; we used almost all our strength just to get him sitting up.

Lang Feng convulsed, his head unable to stay upright, lolling to the side. I was figuring out how to lift him upright when Fatty suddenly frowned.

I followed his gaze and noticed that there was an obvious mark on the back of Lang Feng's head, like he had been hit. It wasn't very noticeable, but a closer look revealed it.

My heart skipped a beat—this meant Lang Feng wasn't poisoned but knocked unconscious. I glanced at Shunzi, who was carrying Lang Feng's backpack, and was about to ask him what happened when Fatty shushed me, signaling me not to speak.

I looked at Fatty's expression, not knowing his intention, so I could only return a look, then lifted Lang Feng, struggling to get him over my shoulder, and supporting him, headed toward Panzi's direction.

After passing through a stretch of darkness, we reached the lamp-nu by Panzi's side. Chenpi A'si and Panzi were waiting there, but Poker-face was nowhere to be seen. I asked Panzi, "Where's that young fellow?"

Panzi said, "Wasn't he with you guys? I never saw him."

I looked around; apart from the lamp-nu we had lit and the one Shunzi had lit, no fourth lamp-nu was lit. In the distance, only two dim flames stood there, ghostly and lifeless.

Logically, in that environment, hearing Shunzi's shout, he would have lit a nearby lamp-nu; otherwise, he'd definitely be surrounded and killed by those wall-crawlers. If he didn't light one, could it be that before hearing Shunzi's shout, he had already been hit and lost consciousness like Lang Feng?

That's impossible too. With his mosquito-repellent constitution, any insect should be afraid of him.

Fatty shouted into the surrounding darkness; the sound echoed and circled in the empty spirit palace for a long time, but no one answered, as if Poker-face had never entered at all. When it quieted down, we listened—there was no sound of breathing or footsteps.

I understood in my heart: with his skills, nothing could subdue him without a sound. If he disappeared so silently, he must have had some special reason or discovered something and left the group on his own. Even if we knelt and kowtowed to him now, he wouldn't appear.

Panzi and Fatty called out a few more times. Confirming no response, they turned on flashlights and prepared to search. I stopped them and said, "We absolutely must not get separated now. Let's take care of the injured first, then go together."

Everyone thought that was right and immediately gathered around Lang Feng. Chenpi A'si examined Lang Feng's injuries. Given his old fox nature, I saw he almost immediately noticed the wound on the back of Lang Feng's head, but he didn't show any surprise—instead, he glanced at me, I don't know what he was thinking.

Suddenly I felt something was off. Not right—the ones who carried Lang Feng back were Fatty and me. According to general logic, Chenpi A'si couldn't suspect Shunzi, who was temporarily hired in the mountain village. So he would likely think that the person who struck Lang Feng was either me or Fatty, or both.

Then what strategy he would take toward us afterward—that was hard to say. This was really pulling the gun muzzle toward ourselves.

Come to think of it, Shunzi was a discharged soldier, after all a regular from the frontier defense front line. Knocking out a Lang Feng shouldn't be that difficult for him. He might be wary of us—after all, our identities are unclear and obviously not aboveboard—so he's temporarily playing dumb to confuse us. I can't expose him either; the environment here is so complicated—better to have one more friend than one more enemy.

We shouldn't have hired a soldier as a guide in the first place, I muttered to myself. I felt the relationships were a tangled mess and had no idea how to deal with them.

Shunzi laid Lang Feng down, then took two toothpicks from his pocket, pried open his ear, and picked out the "wall-crawlers" inside, slapping them onto the ground. Fatty immediately stomped them dead.

Shunzi told us that this kind of insect they called "snow hair" was a very rare medicinal herb. The insects usually live below the snow line; they've never been seen above the snow line. No idea why there are so many here. Lang Feng got insects in his brain; he probably doesn't have much time left.

Normally, entering the brain through the ear is bullshit. I felt Lang Feng's lower jaw and found swelling; it must be that a "wall-crawler" bit him inside his ear and caused poisoning. Not as serious as Shunzi said. But where these insects came from really baffles me.

Fatty looked at the ceiling and said, "They must be hidden in the roof tiles. When that so-called insect-incense jade smoked them, they woke up. That's a damn vicious trick. But did that old Wang know we would burn the magnetic turtle?"

I thought to myself that it was certain: since he buried the magnetic turtle at the very bottom of the sealing stone, he must have hoped tomb raiders would find it and destroy it—burn or smash, both would cause the insect-incense jade to volatilize and awaken the centipedes hidden in the palace roof tiles. But if someone who reveres the spirit palace doesn't destroy it, then the magnetic turtle would forever ensure the safety of the Cloud Summit Palace.

Monk Hua had brought some medicine and gave Lang Feng an injection, saying it could temporarily save his life. After the injection, we took off Lang Feng's outer clothes, patted off the insects curled inside the clothes, and cleaned him up. Panzi said to Chenpi A'si, "Fourth Uncle, the venom of these insects is very potent. We'd better leave here quickly. If anyone else gets stung, we won't have enough medicine."

Chenpi A'si looked around and frowned. Ye Cheng sighed and recounted to Panzi the situation where we found ourselves trapped. Upon hearing this, Panzi was also extremely puzzled: "Are you sure? Couldn't we have taken a wrong turn?"

Ye Cheng was about to speak when Shunzi said, "Hmm, strange." I turned around and saw that the flame of the first lamp-nu he had lit had disappeared in the distant darkness.

The lamp oil inside the lamp-nu hadn't been used for centuries; it was already a godsend that it could light. I told him there was nothing strange about it, but Shunzi still frowned and patted me again, telling me to look again.

I was getting a bit impatient, but then I saw the second flame of the lamp-nu I had lit begin to flicker, as if someone had walked past it, stirring the wind and making the flame dance.

There was absolutely no wind in the great hall. If nothing had passed by, this absolutely wouldn't have happened.

I thought it was Poker-face coming back and was about to call out, but Fatty covered my mouth. I saw in the light of the flame a faint silhouette of a person—definitely not Poker-face, because this shadow was too tall.