Chapter 486: Snow-Claw-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Zhao-Sword: Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives (3)

Arrows came from the walls; spikes waited in the floor.

And sometimes—

At the clunk from overhead, Qing snapped her head up.

The ceiling lunged at her.

Since Qing stayed still, one could fairly conclude the ceiling was the thing falling.

Qing’s fist shot up. Wham!

A steel punch—no, a fist like ten-thousand-year cold iron—hammered the insolent slab that dared leave its place.

Stone dust flowered up; shattered rock and broken chunks tumbled and sprawled across the passage.

Amid dust shoved every which way, Qing spat—ptoo—expelling a pebble that had gotten in her mouth.

Qing felt wronged.

“Isn’t it weird? Why is it only targeting me? Isn’t someone watching and triggering things just at me?”

Elder Cheon Yuhak answered with a snort.

“Hng. And who’s watching you from where?”

Qing looked over the party.

Everyone wore the same face—okay, that’s going too far.

It was a moment when truth got suppressed.

Her lips jutted out, denied agreement.

“No, it’s obviously only targeting me.”

If she walked at the front—trap at the front.

If she fell back—trap in the rear.

She’d even taken the middle once and nearly got everyone bloodied under a rain of arrows.

So Qing had given up and was striding well ahead of the others.

Projectiles from the walls: five times.

Ceiling dropping: three.

Floor giving way: four.

“Sometimes you’re just unlucky. What, who’s watching you, how, and from where?”

“But still. Plenty of people went through before us—why do the traps only spring when I pass?”

The survivors from the last grotto melee had already come through these corridors, hadn’t they?

So why did nothing happen until now, and then suddenly dump every trap on her?

How did that make sense?

“It is strange and coincidental, I’ll grant you that. But it beats saying some hundred-year-old grotto wraith has fixated on you. And even if so, why you?”

“Mm.”

“Just call it bad luck. Some of the mechanisms are old—they’re firing a beat late, right as you’re the one coming up.”

It made sense—but still felt off.

And it conveniently made things easy for everyone else.

“Ugh. I can feel the malice in this!”

Grumbling, Qing’s body dropped again.

The party went, mm, there she goes again.

Falling into a trap should be a once or twice thing.

This is how terrifying human acclimation is.

****

Why was the Empty-Blood Hall technician still triggering traps that weren’t working?

Not just to needle her.

Not merely a twenty-year slighted craftsman raging against the denial of his life’s work.

Because the big one was still left.

In truth, no matter how creative, the traps a trap-craftsman can build are all of a type.

Shoot, drop them, or drop something onto them.

So the placement is everything.

To land a fatal hit from an angle they do not expect at a moment they do not expect—

That is the very pinnacle of a trap.

Even now, there remained a final strike.

There were vicious mechanisms built with one purpose: this bastard must be crushed—the one obstructing the grand design must be erased.

The Empty-Blood Hall technician moved ahead and lay in wait on the level above a trapped corridor.

He peered through an observation window fed by several reflectors; the target stood boldly at the front—he triggered the mechanism at once.

Te-dung-tung! The iron bowstring he’d scrounged with such difficulty let off a powder-blast crack under brutal draw-weight.

The target hurled forward immediately.

But before she touched down—clunk!

The floor split wide and dropped; the target vanished neatly into a bed of spikes.

And then another clunk!

The ceiling slab came straight down, a massive boulder boring into the spike pit and plugging it.

“That’s right! You dog of a bitch! What was that? Worthless traps? Can’t catch a single rat? Ha! Don’t mock mechanisms! This is the very pinnacle of the Mechanism World, you damned wench! Khahaha!”

The technician broke into wild laughter.

Pinned beneath a rock weighing thousands of jin, lying on steel spikes—no matter how fine a master they were, what could they possibly do now?

Beyond the observation window, the companions—ashen—either collapsed on their rears or rushed to the trap, at a loss.

Then, suddenly—

All of them piled on the slab in the spike pit, hacking and cutting, hauling chunks away to the sides.

Why? Why not grieve more?

A prickle of dread ran up the technician’s back.

“Even if you clear that, all you’ll pull up is a body full of holes...”

Then shards of broken stone shot up from the hole.

A head popped into view, grabbing the wildly flung rope and climbing.

Blue ghostfire flared in both eyes.

“—Hhk!”

Feeling as if their eyes had met, the technician toppled onto his backside.

“There’s... there’s another one...!”

His final, last-resort measure:

A drop-chute that dumped the target dozens of jang down into a natural cave below.

If he couldn’t kill her, he would at least sweep her away.

He abandoned the room and sprinted for the next mechanism.

****

Qing had been hit by so many traps the sound of the arrow-mechanism was familiar now.

Tang—the first bowstring twanged and she thought, there, more arrows coming, and immediately drove forward with Heavenly Demon Conquest Step, body sailing—

The ground raced under her and—clunk—a spike pit bristling tight revealed its jaws.

Mm. Well then. The floor is opening.

Normally, a fall trap makes people panic—that’s natural.

But if you’ve learned it doesn’t really hurt you, it’s just a nuisance.

Qing’s white training robe was already polka-dotted everywhere with little red specks, so, well.

She twisted at the waist, whipping into spins, hands folded primly before her chest.

Her chest was bound tight as it was; if a spike poked there, it wouldn’t be polka dots, it would be a red jacket.

After a dizzying freefall—ack!

A sting along shoulder and outer thigh!

Then Qing rolled and tumbled over the spike blanket and slipped neat between the blades.

After a few tries, she’d found it far better to slip between the heads and stand, rather than lie pressing down with her weight on the grill.

Just as she wedged herself between the bars to rise—

Her view darkened all at once.

And—KWAANG!—an ear-splitting boom.

Only then did Qing’s skin prickle.

Guardian Qi or not—if she’d been lying on the grill when the slab came down, she would have ended as a neatly skewered corpse.

Her heart dropped for a breath.

Sister! Kid! H-how... what do we do...!

Her human-transcending hearing caught wet, shaken cries.

There was nothing Qing hated more than making someone worry.

She shouted, urgent.

“Don’t panic! I’m fine! Clear the rocks for me!”

Just in case they hadn’t heard, she went dang-dang, tapping the boulder with Tathāgata Divine Palm.

Footsteps hurried; Qing let herself relax, for the moment.

How long had it been?

Wedged on her side between the bars, she watched as the ceiling stone resting on the spikes split clean in half with a blaze of light.

She turned her head—eyes full of worry glittered against the backlight.

Blue ghostfire rose in Qing’s eyes.

Heat flashed through her in an instant.

She’d managed because she had taken the hit—but what if the kids had?

For a heartbeat, the vision of friends spitted on stakes slid cold through her mind.

Qing seized the lowered rope.

No sooner up than the two little ones barreled into her.

They were shaken badly; their trembling ran through her arms.

Qing hugged them tight, patting their backs.

“It’s okay. I bounced it. I’m fine.”

The one who’d fallen into the trap was doing the comforting.

But what could Qing do with her anger?

At best, beat on the traps for catharsis.

She was boiling over now.

Every damned trap dies.

She slammed a furious fist into the wall where the arrows had shot from—bang!

She’d always wondered why angry people punch random walls to their own hurt; having been through it, she understood.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Each driving punch pitted the wall, hairline cracks webbing over and over like stacked spider silk.

Then—crash! rrrrrumble!

The weakened face collapsed, exposing a small hidden room beyond—with a dozen fixed steel arbalests bolted inside.

“Mm?”

Of course there were arbalests; that’s why bolts had flown.

But a chest on one wall drew Qing’s eye.

She went over and peered in—packed with iron bolts.

She picked one up, looked along its surface—then the corners of her mouth pulled sharply up.

“Master, look at this. These seem like spare bolts, but there isn’t much dust, right?”

Elder Cheon Yuhak’s brow knotted hard.

A one-and-done trap has no reason to keep spare bolts.

If there are spares, it means someone brings them to reload the arbalests.

Sure, perhaps they were stocked when the Shin Family Tomb was built.

But after over a hundred years, those arrows should be thick with dust.

When Cheon Yuhak cleared off the top layer, the lower bolts gleamed—brand-new, polished.

“I told you. It feels like someone’s watching and setting the traps off.”

“Mm.”

He had scolded her more than once.

Perhaps at a loss for words, he changed the subject.

“If someone comes in to reload, there must be a separate entry. Hm. There, I’d say. Likely they climb down a rope ladder.”

He pointed to a section of ceiling.

It was plainly a manmade hole.

Qing hopped up and slipped right into it.

Hands and feet splayed to brace, she climbed the shaft straight up.

How far?

Until the room below looked a small square.

Thunk—her head bumped the end; she pressed both feet hard to either wall to fix her body, and drove both arms up.

With a weighty feel and a squeal of tortured metal, a hatch in the ceiling opened.

—“Who’s there!?”

“Just a moment!”

When she hauled herself up, a lived-in stone chamber spread out.

It was suspicious enough that the lamps were already lit bright.

Right beside the hole lay a bundle of rope ladders, stakes still in them, stacked in a heap.

****

The Empty-Blood Hall technician was peering through the observation windows by the next trap.

It wasn’t even that far, yet the target showed no sign of appearing.

He figured the beating she’d taken had made her cautious.

“Hm. She should be here by now...”

He muttered to himself.

A voice answered.

“Yeah? Who should be here by now?”

“Well, that bit—”

He froze, words dying, spine locking straight.

Monologue is called monologue because no one answers.

“That bit? Which bit? Someone I might know?”

There was a chill of killing intent in the voice.

Like a rusted mechanism squealing, he forced his head around.

There stood a woman, smiling wide, baring perfect white teeth.

His heart plunged.

Because her eyes were not smiling at all.