Ch. 102 – Buried Bodies

When this thought occurred to him, Hao Chen firmly shook his head to get rid of the feeling of estrangement he felt toward Feng Ye. Then he simply slung an arm around Feng Ye’s shoulders.

Now this was more like it. He had Feng Ye securely encircled in his arms. How far away could he possibly go now? Hao Chen’s tense body relaxed considerably.

Then he met Feng Ye’s surprised and uncertain look in reaction to Hao Chen’s inexplicable action.

Hao Chen blinked at Feng Ye with a look of innocent confusion.

Feng Ye blinked back and gestured with his eyes to Hao Chen’s hand, which was resting where it shouldn’t be.

But not only did Hao Chen not remove his hand, he even tightened his grip a little more. That hand moved from Feng Ye’s shoulder to the back of his neck, and before Hao Chen could make up an excuse for his actions, Feng Ye’s expression suddenly changed.

Hao Chen could feel the dragon tremble violently under his hand, his face paling. Then, the world spun around him.

Feng Ye seized his wrist and executed an over-the-shoulder throw, slamming him to the ground with a loud thud.

Hao Chen was a little dazed from the fall. It didn’t actually hurt, since he had landed on soft grass and soil. He just didn’t understand why Feng Ye had suddenly thrown him down. But before he could fully grasp what had just happened, a sudden vibration surged up from beneath him.

The ground was shaking. He wasn’t heavy enough to cause an earthquake, was he? Hao Chen glanced at his hands and thought, I’m definitely still in my human form.

Then he caught sight of a stone door slowly opening in the ground and belatedly realized that this was not an earthquake. His fall had triggered some sort of mechanism that opened the entrance to the ruins.

Hao Chen was sitting directly above that closed stone gate. Dangerously close to falling through the entrance of the unknown ruins, the fish remained sitting there blankly, without making a move.

Despite having been the one to throw Hao Chen, Feng Ye still reached out and pulled him up. Hao Chen finally came to his senses and took hold of Feng Ye’s hand, then stood up and stepped out of the stone gate’s perimeter.

Right after pulling him up, Feng Ye released Hao Chen’s hand and leveled him with a glare.

Hao Chen wore a baffled expression. What on earth was wrong with this dragon today? Why did he keep suddenly flying into a rage?

Wait, it didn’t seem to be a random occurrence. Each time, his whole body trembled after he touched a certain spot on his neck…..

The neck…..he’d heard that a dragon’s inverse scale grew there…..wait, inverse scale?

An epiphany flashed through Hao Chen’s mind. He looked at Feng Ye, who was clutching his neck with his head turned away, no longer looking at him. Could it be that…..Feng Ye’s inverse scale was his sensitive spot?!

Judging from Feng Ye’s behavior, this was very likely to be true. Hao Chen desperately suppressed his excitement. He seemed to have discovered an incredible secret.

The commotion they made drew everyone’s attention. Fang Yang watched as Feng Ye inexplicably attacked Hao Chen, but before he could ask any questions, he saw that an entrance had opened in the ground.

The stone gate was now fully open, occupying the space beside the vine-covered platform. A two-foot square hole had appeared out of nowhere. Fang Yang was immediately drawn to it, and hurried over to peer inside.

He exclaimed in surprise: “This is…..”

Beneath the gaping stone door lay a three-meter-deep pit. But that wasn’t all, for at the bottom of the pit, there was a downward-sloping tunnel. Fang Yang looked, but couldn’t see the end of it. He could only guess that the tunnel led deeper underground.

“This is part of the royal city of Western Qiang. These ruins are much bigger than what you can see above ground.” Wang Wu came over as well, explaining to the group, “Although the city was shattered by the earthquake and buried deep underground, a few sections still have entrances that connect to the surface. This place is one of them.”

“So what do you say? Want to go down and take a look?” Wang Wu rubbed his hands together, his tone revealing his anticipation.

He had been waiting impatiently for ages. Hao Chen’s fall just now had fortuitously opened the entrance to the underground ruins. He could finally get down to business.

He had laid so much groundwork beforehand, painstakingly boasting about the treasure lying beneath in the underground palace, all to lure these people down despite their lack of temptation.

However, his efforts were not entirely in vain. Fang Yang was eager to go inside, not entirely because of the treasure, but because he was very curious about Western Qiang’s royal city and wanted to see what was down there in the ruins.

So he turned his head back and asked Feng Ye excitedly: “Shixiong, should we go down and take a look?”

Wang Wu and Zhao Yi also looked over. As expected, Feng Ye was the leader of this group. As long as Feng Ye agreed, everything would go smoothly.

Feng Ye sent the two bandits a cool glance, then acquiesced to their wishes and gave a nod.

Ling Yun had discovered the Living Soil here, not in this particular ruin, but in the area around it. Feng Ye didn’t know the exact location, but these underground structures should be connected. If he descended from here, he would eventually reach his destination.

But…..before he went down, there was still one more thing he needed to do.

At once, he approached the secretly elated Wang Wu and Zhao Yi. Then, to their great astonishment, he made his move.

He grabbed Wang Wu by the collar and lifted him up, and although the man was a big, heavy wall of muscle, it was no more difficult for Feng Ye to lift him than it was to lift a chick.

Feng Ye dangled him directly above the pit. If he let go, the man would directly plummet into the ruins.

A height of three meters was actually not very great. An ordinary person might break a bone, but for those with martial arts, it was nothing to worry about.

But when Wang Wu looked down, he immediately put up a violent struggle. He tried to pry Feng Ye’s hands away, but they were as solid as rocks and couldn’t be budged an inch. When his attempt failed, he cursed in terror: “Are you crazy?!”

He then shouted toward Zhao Yi, who was still standing there in shock at this turn of events: “What are you just standing there for?! Come and help me!”

Zhao Yi then seemed to wake up from a dream, and strode forward.

Fang Yang and Cao Zirui watched the proceedings. Unsure of exactly what Feng Ye was doing, they stood frozen in place without making a move.

But Hao Chen understood. He and Feng Ye had overheard the bandits’ plans.

Zhao Yi approached Feng Ye, but before he could get too close, Hao Chen blocked his way with his fan.

He slowly unfolded it, exuding the elegance of a young master from a prominent family even so deep in this desolate mountain forest. He then covered his lips with it, saying with a smile: “Don’t rush. You’re next.”

“Fuck you!” In sharp contrast to Hao Chen’s elegance, Zhao Yi cursed and threw a punch.

Hao Chen met the punch with his closed fan, effortlessly blocking it without even needing to exert any strength.

With another casual wave of his hand, Zhao Yi was thrown to the ground by an irresistible force transmitted through the fan.

Upon seeing this, Wang Wu immediately gave up any thoughts of resisting. As expected, these people were all powerful cultivators.

He reacted quickly. With the knowledge that they couldn’t defeat Feng Ye and his group by force, he stopped cursing their ancestors and instead donned a pitiful expression.

Forcing a smile, he pleaded with the cold-faced Feng Ye: “Please, hero, I don’t know what I did to offend you. I’m just a rough man and my manners are lacking. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Fang Yang ran up to Feng Ye’s side and asked him doubtfully: “Shixiong, what are you doing?”

But despite questioning him, he didn’t stop Feng Ye. Because he believed in his Useless Shixiong, who wasn’t one to use his power to bully others. He believed that Feng Ye must have a reason for his actions.

“They should be…..” Cao Zirui also made his way over, and hesitated before making a guess: “….mountain bandits.”

He had sensed that something was amiss at the dinner table, but he wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Only now that Feng Ye had taken action was he convinced that these two were bandits.

“Mountain bandits?!” Fang Yang repeated in disbelief. He’d said at the dinner table that these two looked like fearsome bandits, which was true, but he never could have imagined that they actually were.

Feng Ye glanced at Fang Yang, then confirmed Cao Zirui’s guess: “That’s exactly what they are. That house likely isn’t theirs either.”

At this point, he turned his head to regard Wang Wu with a toothy smile: “Where are the original owners?”

Feng Ye’s smile was usually gentle, but this one sent chills down one’s spine. Wang Wu shuddered helplessly, but still tried to argue: “Bandits? My brother and I may look fierce, but we’re decent people. That house is ours!”

“Oh,” Feng Ye responded calmly, his expression unchanged.

Then he released his grip.

With a piercing scream reminiscent of a pig being slaughtered, Wang Wu plummeted into the pit.

He wasn’t injured, as the bottom of the pit was filled with soft dirt that coated his body. But without even bothering to brush it off, he scrambled up the pit on all fours, as desperate to escape as if there was a monster pursuing him. 

After dropping Wang Wu, Feng Ye turned and picked up Zhao Yi, who had been knocked to the ground by Hao Chen. This time, he didn’t even ask any questions before tossing Zhao Yi down as well.

Then, as if having just disposed of trash, he dusted off his hands and gave the two people in the pit an ultimatum: “Will you talk or not?”

Wang Wu and Zhao Yi exchanged a glance, still hesitant.

Feng Ye and Hao Chen also looked at each other. Despite Feng Ye throwing him over his shoulder earlier, they worked together with perfect synergy.

Hao Chen sent Feng Ye a knowing wink, then unfolded his fan and gave a gentle flutter. As a result, the stone gate that had only just opened began to close again.

The noise from the gate startled Wang Wu and his companion. As the stone gate closed, their field of vision shrank. Once it shut, it couldn’t be opened from the inside, and they would surely be devoured by the creature down here, without even leaving skeletons behind.

The two of them instantly disregarded everything else and shouted for Feng Ye and the others to stop.

Feng Ye asked again: “Will you talk or not?”

Wang Wu raised a condition: “Take us up first, then we’ll talk.”

Before Feng Ye could smile, Hao Chen chuckled with his face concealed behind his fan: “Are you still at leisure to make demands? Didn’t you plan to close this stone gate as soon as we entered the underground ruins?”

These people actually knew about their secret plotting by the river?!

At this realization, Wang Wu and Zhao Yi finally put aside their ulterior motives and gave an honest confession.

They were bandits who had been roaming the mountains for many years. Having committed many serious crimes, they were constantly pursued by government troops and had no choice but to flee to the sparsely populated Longqiu.

They retreated deep into the mountain forest, planning to venture out again once the storm had passed. As for the wooden house, it didn’t actually belong to them. It belonged to a family of farmers living in the mountains.

The couple, along with their five-year-old child, were killed without exception.

“Beasts!” Fang Yang cursed, unable to contain his anger. And he had thought these two were good people!

Cursing once didn’t satisfy him, so he rolled up his sleeves and went to jump down and give them a beating. Cao Zirui grabbed him just in time.

Seeing that Fang Yang had been subdued, Feng Ye proceeded to ask: “And then what? The storm has long passed, so what are you still doing here?”

“It’s because of….the treasure…..” Wang Wu briefly hesitated, but then he realized that having confessed to the murders, what happened next was of no importance in comparison. Thus, he spilled the whole truth.

Longqiu contained the ruins of the royal city of Western Qiang, and indeed, as Wang Wu had mentioned on the way here, there was a long-standing legend that there was treasure contained within it.

But a legend was just a legend, and few people took it seriously. Wang Wu and Zhao Yi had heard of the treasure, but like most others, didn’t give it any credence at all.

When they forcibly seized the wooden house, the husband and wife fought back desperately in order to give their five-year-old child time to escape. The intruders first killed the husband, then captured the wife.

As for the child who had fled into the forest, he was dragged back with a broken neck by Wang Wu’s wolfhound.

They took turns playing with the female homeowner all night, before ultimately killing her as well.

The next day, the bodies began to take on a faint odor, so the two discussed dragging them elsewhere to bury them. Due to the fact that they planned to spend a stretch of time in the mountains and make this house their permanent residence, they didn’t bury the bodies nearby.

As luck would have it, the two had discovered this pit near the ruins after a few days, a ready-made hole that they could use to quickly and easily dispose of the bodies.

So with each of them dragging a body, they brought the corpses of the couple here. As for the child, it had long been gnawed to pieces by the wolfhound, leaving only shredded bones.

They tossed the bodies into the pit and haphazardly shoveled some dirt over them, then resealed the stone gate and headed back home.

But that night, Wang Wu suddenly remembered that the woman had a gold bracelet on her wrist, which he had forgotten to take off before burying the body.

Although the gold bracelet wouldn’t be worth a fortune, the two of them hadn’t had time to take their savings with them when they were being pursued by government soldiers. They were practically penniless, and even a mosquito counted as a small bite of meat. They couldn’t afford to waste anything, so the two of them retraced their steps to the pit the very next day.

However, when they unlocked the stone gate again and dug away the thin covering of dirt, they came across something unbelievable.

The bodies…..were nowhere to be seen.

It would have been fine if the bodies had vanished completely, as this would indicate that they’d been carried off by some kind of wild animal. Although they didn’t see any drag marks near the pit, it would have been better than just finding the gold bracelet laying alone in the dirt.

This gold bracelet wouldn’t have easily fallen off, and could only be removed manually.

But who would bother to move the corpses and rebury them elsewhere, leaving behind the only item of value on their bodies?

No normal human would do such a thing. Wang Wu and Zhao Yi exchanged a glance, thinking the same thing.

If it wasn’t a human, then it must have been a ghost.

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