Chapter 301: Leave

Poker-face was lying there, and Fatty gave him a sedative shot, after which he fell asleep.

Looking at him like that, I felt an immense tightness in my chest—it was unbearably painful.

He must have come out of that hole while we were sleeping, but how did he end up like this? I looked up at the meteorite above; its green-black surface was as ugly as ever, with no change at all, and the countless holes looked like eyes, making me suffocate.

Goddammit, what is going on here?

I was so frustrated I felt like dying, thinking this was just messing with me.

"No time left." What does that mean? It sounds like something is about to happen right away, and there's no time left to take any measures. Could something be about to happen here?

The surroundings were as quiet as the universe; without the miner's lamp shining, we couldn't see anything. If some change was happening here, we wouldn't even know.

"He must have suffered a huge shock," Fatty sighed. "He has no reaction to anything outside—can't hear, can't see, all his senses are shut down. Just like a friend of mine. The doctor said it's like his brain got stuck on the last moment he experienced, jammed."

I remained silent. I don't know what kind of person Poker-face really is, but I can vouch for his mental endurance. His psychological quality has reached such a level that it would be extremely difficult to shock him severely.

What happened inside this meteorite must be terrifying beyond anything we can comprehend.

But I really can't imagine what could scare someone so calm into a breakdown. I'm sure it wasn't some monster—physical fear even I can overcome. No matter how terrifying a monster inside might be, it wouldn't scare him like this. What he saw must have been something extremely bizarre.

Then I thought of Wenjin again. Where is she now? Is she also crazy and can't come out? If so, I have to go in. Even if I fall a thousand times, I'll crawl in and bring her out. There's no way I'm leaving her in that meteorite.

Thinking that gave me goosebumps. I stood up again, walked to the opening, and shone my flashlight upward. By now it was almost a habitual action; I'd done it who knows how many times these days. I flashed the light into the hole casually, then turned back.

After just a few steps, I suddenly froze and realized something was wrong. This time, the hole wasn't dark—there was something inside it!

Instantly my scalp went numb. I immediately went back and shone the light again, and sure enough, deep inside the cave, something had appeared.

I shouted in my mind, immediately called Fatty over, and turned on the bright light. Shining it upward, I saw at a depth of about twenty or thirty meters inside the hole, a pale face was peeking outward.

I was delighted, thinking it was Wenjin, but when I looked again, I went cold all over. That white face was expressionless, eyes deeply sunken into their sockets, face cold as ice, an extremely sinister expression. What made my blood run cold was that it was a face I had never seen before.

Who is this person? Cold sweat instantly soaked my back.

Fatty saw my expression was off, came over to look, and also froze. He immediately went for his gun. I grabbed his arm; as the miner's lamp swayed, I looked again and the face was gone, leaving only darkness at the end.

Fatty and I looked at each other, both sweating like rain. After a long silence, I asked, "You saw it too, right?"

He nodded. I saw his face had turned pale with fright—seemed like he was scared out of his wits.

This was beyond my comprehension. How could there be a stranger inside this meteorite? Was someone living in there? Could the ancient people of the Queen Mother of the West still be alive inside? That was too absurd. Then I thought of Wenjin again, and my heart sank—could Wenjin have started to turn into a corpse? Was that face her in the process of transformation?

I looked at Fatty, wanting to ask if he saw any resemblance to Wenjin, but I saw he was still pale, staring at the hole, not recovered yet.

Fatty was not such a coward. Feeling something off, I asked him what was wrong. He turned his head and asked me, "You didn't recognize that?"

"Recognize?" I was stunned. "You know this person?"

Fatty pointed behind us. I turned and saw the female corpse sitting on the throne. Fatty shone the miner's lamp on her face; with the flash, the shadows made the corpse's face suddenly twist into a fierce grimace.

I saw clearly and instantly understood. A chill pierced through my heart, and I nearly fainted. Oh my god—the face we saw just now actually bore some resemblance to the carved appearance of this female corpse! What's going on? The face we saw—was that the Queen Mother of the West? Was this corpse really just a husk? Was the real Queen Mother of the West still alive inside this giant stone?

Impossible. How could that be? How could someone thousands of years old still be alive? Even if she didn't die of old age, she would have starved to death here.

"Is it an illusion?" I suddenly doubted my own senses, too exhausted mentally. "We've been driven crazy by this meteorite. Maybe that face was Wenjin, but because of the lighting, it looked like this female corpse."

Fatty paused. "Then why didn't she come out?"

I was speechless. Fatty said, "It's rare for two people to both be mistaken."

Now both of us were sitting on pins and needles. This place was no longer bearable. Fatty said to me, "Xiao Wu, this place is getting more and more eerie. When do you plan to leave?"

"What's wrong? Wenjin hasn't come out yet." I looked at his expression and asked, "You're this scared—that's not like you."

"That's one thing. Most importantly, we're out of food. I was going to tell you today anyway. If you don't leave tomorrow, I'll knock you out and take you with me. If we wait any longer, we'll starve to death here. We don't have much food left."

I said, "Can't we still hold out a few more days?"

Fatty said, "I've calculated. The remaining food, if we ration it, can last two days—just enough for us to find the exit smoothly. But now with the young master added, we have no other choice. Even if we reach the surface safely, we'll have to cross the rainforest on an empty stomach. The water has receded a lot now, so the swamp must have emerged. Crossing it will be extremely tough. If you insist on waiting any longer, we'll start starving tomorrow. After two days of hunger, you won't have the strength to leave. We'll die here."

I looked at the hole and shook my head. "No, we can't just abandon her."

Fatty patted me and said, "I know you're soft-hearted. I already thought it through. We'll leave all the edible stuff behind. We'll go out hungry. Once outside, if we can get back to that camp, we'll have more supplies. To be honest, at every resting spot, I buried a pack of compressed biscuits before leaving. As long as we take the right path, we can still make it out. I don't think Big Sister is going to make it out. Rather than waiting for her to come out and see us starved unconscious, this is a better plan. Besides, this meteorite is so sinister—I think—"

I knew what Fatty wanted to say, and waved my hand. I realized that although Fatty was speaking slowly and unhurriedly, his words were decisive, leaving almost no room for argument. I could imagine he had been holding it in all along.

"Besides, even if you're willing to die, the young master might not be. You have to save at least one."

I looked at Poker-face and immediately gave in. Yeah, I'd been thinking no one should be left behind, but in the end even Poker-face might end up dead because of me, and Fatty's method really made sense. I thought to myself, this might be the only way we could all survive. Staring at the hole, I sighed, then asked him, "But how do we get back now?"

Fatty said, "We'll go back the way we came, then follow the river wall. We're bound to find another outlet, which will take us back into the water storage system, and then we'll definitely find an exit."

"What if there isn't one?"

"We can't worry about that now." Seeing that I agreed, Fatty was overjoyed and immediately started packing as he spoke, "We'll have to leave it to fate, but there should be one—otherwise Black Blind would have come back by now."

Fatty was quick. An hour later, we packed up our gear, left behind all our dry food, wrote a note, and then he urged me to start heading back the way we came.

I was still a bit reluctant. I looked a few times, shouted a few times toward the cave entrance, then turned and left.

Poker-face was dazed. We supported him and quickly returned to the place that was covered in pottery shards from earlier. At that moment, I was wondering which direction Black Blind and the others had gone. Suddenly Fatty stopped and shone his miner's lamp into the water. I noticed that in this area full of pottery shards, a deep pit that hadn't been there before had appeared.

It looked just like the deep pits we'd seen earlier, but we could be sure that this pit hadn't been there when we arrived. It seemed as if something had burrowed it out.

I sensed something was wrong and urged Fatty to hurry up, but now he stopped. I asked him what he was doing. He said, "Didn't you see? Just now something flashed on the wall of that pit?"