Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen: Open the Door

Meng Ya’s emotional display was clearly not a joke. In fact, ever since she started vomiting after we crossed the viaduct, I had felt something was off and had mentally prepared myself. I nodded with a faint smile and asked, "How many months?"

Seeing that I wasn't shocked, Meng Ya was the one taken aback. After a long pause, she sighed, "Do you remember when you asked me to watch the shop before we left and I refused? It was then."

It dawned on me instantly. Before our departure, fearing for her safety, I had asked Meng Ya to wait for me in Beijing. She refused, insisting on coming along. I still remembered her words vividly: "Qiu Tong, if you abandon me, I will kill you the moment you do, and then I will kill myself."

Though spoken in jest, the words came from the heart. We had been intimate soon after, and it was in that moment of indulgence that I had harmed the woman who loved me.

I nodded and said, "It’s okay. Once we get out of here, you’ll rest well, and we’ll raise the child together."

"Really?" Her face showed disbelief; she hadn't expected such a response and was struggling to process it.

"I said it before: you are my wife, my fiancée. You’ve done so much for me; I won’t let you down." I pulled her into an embrace. She wrapped her arms around me, sobbing—not out of sorrow this time, but out of joy.

"Ahem..." Ghost-Face Zhang, seemingly realizing that our confrontation had been resolved without issue, coughed loudly. We quickly pulled apart.

"Finished?" he asked.

I nodded.

"If you're finished, hurry up and write out the musical notation. Don't drag it out! Staying here like this isn't good for the child in her belly."

His comment made me want to vanish into thin air. After all, "premarital pregnancy" wasn't exactly a badge of honor. I scratched my head and asked, "How did you know?"

"Kaleidoscope is a master of medicine. Seeing her vomit so much, he figured it out. That guy has a loose tongue; he told everyone when we were setting up tents on the mountain peak. The old-timers kept quiet out of respect for you, a junior, but in this day and age, who doesn't take precautions? There's nothing to be ashamed of."

I inwardly cursed Kaleidoscope for being such a gossip—he’d kept it from me just to watch me make a fool of myself. He was nearly sixty and still wagging his tongue; he clearly wasn't much better in his youth. And as for Ghost-Face Zhang, he had the nerve to talk about taking precautions—he was the one who toyed with a young girl's body and heart at the Xu Yang trading post before walking away, leaving her to raise his child. Did he think he was Emperor Zhengde, having no heirs and then suddenly having one like the Jiajing Emperor? The audacity of these two shameless men.

I cursed them silently and looked at Ghost-Face Zhang. "Alright, alright, let's talk about something else."

Ghost-Face Zhang nodded. "True. Don't worry about being a father yet; let's talk about getting this score arranged."

I responded with visible impatience, snatched the notebook from his hand, and looked at Meng Ya. "Honey, go sit on the side and rest for a bit."

Meng Ya smiled. "If I had known it would be like this, I should have told you sooner."

I smiled back, looked at the previous notation, and listened to the melody of the tidal wind blowing against the fish tail. Without hesitation, I completed the score in one go.

Ghost-Face Zhang frowned. "That fast? Don't you need to think it over?"

I waved my hand. "This is nothing difficult for me."

He snorted and gave me a disdainful look from the corner of his eye. "You should think it over carefully. At the very least, you should think about your child and your wife."

"If you don't trust me, you can do it yourself."

Seeing me annoyed actually amused him. He gave a cold laugh. "I don't have time to bicker with you." He looked at Meng Ya. "Rest there. I can handle it myself."

Meng Ya had no intention of helping anyway, so she ignored him.

Ghost-Face Zhang examined the score, drew his long blade, held the paper in his left hand and the sword in his right, and leaped up. A dark shadow, he stepped onto the carvings on the door, vaulting upward. In a moment, he threw a mountaineering rope that hooked perfectly onto the tip of the giant fish's tail. He tugged it with the little finger of his left hand; it was secure. The maneuver was heart-stoppingly risky.

I watched him from below. When he threw the rope and caught it with just his little finger, my heart skipped a beat, and I cried out, ready to rush over to help, but Meng Ya pulled me back.

"It’s useless for you to go over. Let him do it alone; let's see how capable he really is."

I nodded. "You're right. It's useless for me to go."

Looking back at Ghost-Face Zhang, he raised his hand to check the score. Suddenly, he struck the sixth human head from the bottom. A resonant "Hum!" echoed, leaving everyone's head spinning. He didn't hesitate and struck the head again, the same sound filling our ears.

"Oh..." Meng Ya winced, enduring the headache, and looked up. "The pitch goes from bottom to top, increasing by two scales each time."

I nodded. "Yes, the scale changes based on the pitch of the twenty-four small fish, one of which is a 'null' note that changes at any time. It's ten o'clock at night, so the scale shift depends on the pitch of the twenty-second fish counter-clockwise."

Meng Ya smiled. "I never imagined that your musical skills would come in handy during tomb raiding."

As we watched, Ghost-Face Zhang struck twelve times. Suddenly, the door let out a thunderous "clatter," and the giant fish tail rotated fifteen degrees. Ghost-Face Zhang swayed violently, stabilized himself for a moment, and looked at the score again.

"Third Uncle! Wait!"

Just as he was about to strike the thirteenth time, I shouted in alarm: "The time is up! It's time!"

"What time is it?" Ghost-Face Zhang called back.

"An hour has passed, the tone has shifted!"

Creak, creak, creak...

Ghost-Face Zhang froze, looked up, and cursed: "Damn it! Hurry up! The mechanism above our heads has triggered! How many scales did it shift?"

I cursed back, "I don't have the score, how would I know? Look at what the last note is!"

Ghost-Face Zhang looked. "One, one! There's a dot above it!"

"Shift up one scale, hurry, Third Uncle Zhang!"

Ghost-Face Zhang hesitated for a second, then struck the third human head from top to bottom. A loud boom echoed through our ears, and the mechanism instantly stopped.

I wiped the cold sweat from my brow. "Damn, that scared the hell out of me."

Clatter! Clatter-clatter-clatter...

Just as we were all wiping our sweat, the monster in the center lowered its massive tail, steadily setting Ghost-Face Zhang down.

Ghost-Face Zhang frowned. "Why didn't the door open?" He glared at me. "Did you write it down wrong?"

I spat. "If I had written it wrong, would we still be alive?"

Ghost-Face Zhang nodded, looked at the door, and tapped it with his hand. With that tap, the massive door, which had weighed thousands of pounds, began to push open slowly. As it swung wide, two thuds rang out, and two corpses came into our view.