Chapter 111: Mengya

Dream Ya remained silent throughout, not even uttering a sound, suddenly ceasing all movement.

I sighed deeply. Indeed, it was I who had been fickle, having wronged her; her ignoring me was only natural. I gently reached out to rest my hand on her shoulder, but the moment my fingers touched her body, an icy chill shot down my arm, piercing to my very bones, compelling me to withdraw my hand immediately.

Her skin felt like the sludge at the bottom of a pond, utterly devoid of the elasticity that youthful skin should possess. The coldness was akin to the damp earth after rain—chilling to the bone and sending shivers down one’s spine.

“Who… who exactly are you? Could you be the traitor?” I shouted, wishing the entire tomb passage could hear me. I thought, no matter how formidable you are, if I called the whole team, surely we could capture a monster like you.

I expected my shout to draw them in to support me, but to my surprise, there was no response from the tomb passage. It was as if only the two of us existed there.

Yet Dream Ya seemed to hear my desperate call. She stopped crawling forward and, like some grotesque creature, ground her teeth subconsciously, emitting a series of “creak, creak” sounds. Then suddenly, she lifted her head so that the back of her skull pressed against her own back, her hair swinging to cover her face, her neck bent at an unnatural angle. Such a motion was impossible for an ordinary person; only those who had trained their ligaments and flexibility extensively could achieve such contortions.

I was stunned, but what happened next was even stranger. Still in that crawling pose, with her neck curled, Dream Ya raised both hands flat, reversed the positions of her elbow and shoulder joints, ground her teeth again, and began a series of bizarre, twitching movements, as if stretching in a grotesque dance.

Alarm bells rang in my mind: this couldn’t be Dream Ya. Such motions would shatter bones, even in a corpse, yet her joints moved freely. Moreover, the sequence blatantly defied gravity—if Newton saw this, he’d be terrified. Only one conclusion was possible: first, I must have been ensnared by something—this must be some monstrous entity from the tomb. Second, no one else could hear my calls here; I was truly on my own.

The fake Dream Ya twitched repeatedly for about half a minute, then abruptly froze as if her wind-up mechanism had run out of spring. Not a single hair moved. She remained posed with her head tilted back, the back of her skull pressed against her back, arms stretched straight forward in a gesture reminiscent of a Qing Dynasty corpse in old zombie films, her knees on the ground. The whole posture was deeply unsettling.

Fear gripped me so tightly I dared not breathe. After tens of seconds locked in this standoff, I thought, maybe this thing was conserving energy for a sudden attack. Though the cave’s tunnels made standing difficult, a scare from this creature would be enough. If that was the case, I’d better keep as far away as possible, sparing myself from its harm.

Steeling myself, I took slow, cautious, crawling steps backward through the tunnel slick with viscous liquid, watching carefully for any reaction from the false Dream Ya. None came. I moved further back—still no response. Relief flooded me. This imposter was merely trying to intimidate. I continued retreating several more steps.

But when I was about five or six meters away, a joint somewhere in that creature emitted a sharp “pop”—a physiological snap that startled me wide awake. I quickly looked back, only to find she had vanished from where she had been moments before.

“Slap!”

Startled, I felt a sudden blow on my back. Shaking, heart pounding, I slowly turned around to find Ghost-Faced Zhang lying in wait behind me.

“Keep quiet!” he hissed hoarsely, as if afraid to be overheard. “You idiot nearly got yourself killed. Lucky I showed up just in time.”

“Where is everyone else?” I whispered.

He sighed heavily. “Someone set a trap for us. No one else knows what’s going on yet.”

I furrowed my brow. “Then what was that thing just now? Where did it go?”

Ghost-Faced Zhang pondered for a long moment, then clicked his tongue. “No trace. Probably didn’t go far. We have no choice but to keep moving forward and see if we can find the others.”

I nodded, thinking it safer to follow Ghost-Faced Zhang. After all, he was the strongest fighter on land in our team. Yet, I couldn’t help but worry for Dream Ya and my old lover—the two women.

“Stay close,” Ghost-Faced Zhang whispered, then crawled ahead of me.

The tomb passage remained as before—filled with strange mucus and a nauseating stench that made me want to vomit. I held my breath to stave off nausea and avoid further trouble.

“Third Master, Autumn Child, wait!”

As we struggled through the tomb, a familiar voice called from behind. Turning to look, I saw my old lover, carrying something strange on her back—it seemed to be a person.

Ghost-Faced Zhang glanced back, startled. “What the hell is that?”

Old Lover snorted coldly, setting the figure down—it was Dream Ya!

“We saw you suddenly disappear, so we came back and searched here for a long time. Your Dream Ya probably couldn’t stand the smell and kept vomiting until she fainted.”

I clicked my tongue and checked Dream Ya’s breathing. “She’s still alive. Forget it, I’ll carry her.”

Old Lover said nothing, instead looking at Ghost-Faced Zhang. “Third Master, what’s the plan now?”

“What else can we do? Keep moving.”

Old Lover sighed without arguing and crawled ahead, while I stayed behind carrying Dream Ya.

We crawled through the tomb for about fifteen minutes. Exhaustion overwhelmed me. Despite the frequent traps ahead, the worst was carrying a living person through this mucus-filled passage—each second felt like an eternity, filling me with dread.

Just as I felt suffocated by the stench, an inexplicable sound echoed through the tomb.

Splash… splash… splash… splash…

The rhythmic sound of water. Humans harbor a primal fear of water. Being a native of Beijing and a landlubber, I was especially terrified.

Ghost-Faced Zhang was startled too, clearly lacking confidence in underwater combat. “Could it be that the stone slabs above are leaking?”

“No way! The water sound is coming from ahead, and it’s rhythmic,” Old Lover countered.

Ghost-Faced Zhang clicked his tongue, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. “Let’s go see.”

He started forward, but Old Lover grabbed his arm. “Third Master, we don’t know friend from foe. Besides, Second Master and the others are still missing.”

“Then are we doomed to be trapped here?”

Ghost-Faced Zhang grew impatient. This Tianchi event was proving a real challenge for them. Beyond the traps, their biggest worry was that rival teams lurking here could strike at any time. His urgency to move on was understandable.

Old Lover didn’t argue, merely nodded. We quickened our pace, crawling deeper into the tomb.

. . .