Chapter 67 - 71: The Fall

Chapter 67: Chapter 71: The Fall

Minghao was still examining the markings when the ground beneath his feet gave a faint tremor.

He stopped speaking.

"Did you feel that?" Yuexin asked.

Xiaoyu had already lowered her gaze toward the ground. A moment later, a low rumble travelled through the ridge. The stone slab beside the entrance shifted, sending a shower of grey dust down the slope.

Yichen instinctively stepped away, but the ground beneath him suddenly sank.

"Wait!"

His foot slipped into a gap that had not been there a moment earlier. He grabbed at the edge, catching a handful of loose soil, but the ground continued to collapse beneath him.

Minghao reached for his arm while Yuexin lunged forward to grab his other shoulder. Xiaoyu moved at almost the same time, reaching for Yuexin’s sleeve in an attempt to keep her from being pulled forward.

For a brief moment, all four managed to hold on.

Then the earth gave way as if the world had suddenly decided to cave in at this very moment.

The ground collapsed beneath them, and they dropped together.

Their spiritual energy surged instinctively, but the moment they tried to circulate it, something pressed down on their meridians.

The energy that should have responded immediately became sluggish, moving through their bodies as though they were trying to push it through thick mud.

"What happened to my spiritual energy?!" Yichen shouted as the darkness entered their vision while they were rapidly falling.

Minghao barely had time to answer. The opening above them was already shrinking from view, and the darkness below swallowed the faint light from the entrance.

"Use your techniques! Don’t panic!"

He forced spiritual energy through his meridians, gathering what little he could into his legs. Yuexin did the same, while Yichen hurriedly formed a protective layer around his body.

Xiaoyu tried to gather energy around herself as well, but the suppression made the process painfully slow. She managed to form a thin layer before the darkness swallowed the last trace of light above them.

The four descended through the darkness.

Minghao managed to slow his fall with a brief burst of spiritual energy, landing on one knee before rolling across the stone floor. Yuexin followed suit by forcing her spiritual energy to use a wind-stepping technique for a brief burst to redirect her momentum.

Xiaoyu landed a short distance away, bending her knees and turning with the remaining force of her fall, though the impact still sent her stumbling several steps across the floor.

Yichen was less graceful. He struck the ground with a heavy thud, rolled twice, and finally stopped against something hard.

"Ouch..."

"Are you hurt?" Yuexin immediately asked.

Yichen pushed himself upright, rubbing his shoulder. "I think I’m fine. My pride took the worst of it."

"Then your pride should learn to watch where it steps."

Xiaoyu glanced over at him, checking that he was able to stand before turning her attention to the others. "Is anyone injured?"

"I’m fine," Minghao replied, rising from his knee.

Yuexin gave her a brief nod. "Nothing serious."

Yichen raised one hand. "I’m alive too, in case anyone was wondering."

Minghao ignored their exchange and quickly looked around. He tried to summon a spiritual lamp from his storage ring, but the energy gathered at his fingertips flickered weakly before disappearing.

He tried again.

Nothing.

His expression changed for the worst as he realized what was happening, "Don’t waste your energy. Something here is suppressing it."

Yuexin raised her hand and attempted to summon a small flame. A faint spark appeared above her palm, trembling for an instant before vanishing.

She frowned. "It’s not completely sealed. I can still move some energy, but it’s difficult."

"Mine too," Minghao said. "It’s like there’s something interfering with our circulation."

Xiaoyu lowered her eyes toward her palm and attempted to gather a trace of spiritual energy. A faint shimmer appeared around her fingers, but it quickly scattered.

Yichen got to his feet and looked upward.

The opening was gone.

Where they had fallen from, there was now only darkness above their heads. No gap, no loose soil, and no trace of the passage they had entered. Even the faint outline of the original entrance had disappeared.

Yichen stared at it for a while.

"Well... that’s not good."

Minghao approached the wall and pressed his palm against it. The stone was cold and completely solid. He moved his hand across the surface, searching for a seam or some kind of mechanism, but found nothing.

"Could it have collapsed?" Yuexin asked.

"Not like this." Minghao knocked against the stone. The sound was dull and heavy, suggesting considerable thickness behind it. "And even if it did, the entrance wouldn’t have sealed itself so neatly."

Xiaoyu stepped closer, but did not immediately touch the ceiling. She looked over the smooth surface, searching for any difference in colour or texture that might indicate where the opening had been.

"There isn’t even any loose soil left," she observed. "It looks as though the stone was always like this."

Minghao glanced at her before looking up again.

Yichen took out his recording scroll, but when he tried to activate it, the faint spiritual light across its surface barely appeared.

He stared at it.

"Even this thing isn’t working properly."

"Put it away," Minghao said. "We should conserve what little energy we have."

Yichen reluctantly rolled it up.

For several breaths, the four remained beneath the sealed ceiling, listening to the silence around them. There was no sound of shifting earth or distant footsteps. Even the wind from the surface had disappeared.

Xiaoyu turned her head slightly, trying to sense what lay beyond the stone around them. The suppression made it difficult to extend her spiritual sense very far, and whatever faint impression she managed to gather offered little information.

Yuexin was the first to turn around.

"Where exactly did we fall?"

The answer became apparent when they looked ahead.

A broad passage stretched into the darkness. Its two towering stone walls ran parallel to each other, while the ceiling rose so high that even when Minghao strained his eyes, he could barely make out its outline through the darkness.

The floor was covered by a thin layer of dust, and there were no lamps, windows, or visible source of light.

Yichen slowly turned his head.

"Is this... some kind of underground road?"

"Maybe," Minghao replied.

He took a few steps forward, then stopped to examine the floor. It was surprisingly smooth, though covered in a thin layer of dust.

He crouched and touched it with his fingers.

"No fresh footprints."

Xiaoyu looked down at the dust as well. She crouched beside him, lightly brushing the surface with her fingertips. The layer was thin but mostly undisturbed, with only the marks left by their own fall scattered across it.

"It doesn’t look as though anyone has passed through recently," she said.

Yuexin looked behind them. "What about behind us?"

"There’s nothing behind us except a wall."

"Then we go forward?"

Minghao did not answer immediately. He looked at the passage, then at the sealed stone behind them.

"We don’t have many choices."

Yichen walked closer to the wall and ran his hand over it. "Can’t we just break through?"

"With what spiritual energy, Yichen?"

"I can still use a little."

"Then try."

Yichen hesitated before placing both palms against the stone. He circulated his energy with visible effort, gathering it into his arms. A faint glow appeared around his hands, but it was so weak that it barely illuminated his fingers.

Then, without hesitation, he struck the wall.

Thump!

A dull thump echoed through the passage.

The stone did not move. Instead, Chen Yichen shook his hands and grimaced. "That hurt more than I expected."

Minghao examined the surface where he had struck. There was not even a scratch, "Don’t waste your strength. Whatever this material is, it isn’t ordinary stone."

Yuexin stepped forward and placed her palm against it as well. She tried to push her spiritual energy into the wall, but it was immediately repelled, leaving her fingers slightly numb.

She withdrew her hand.

"It isn’t just blocking our way. I can feel something rejecting spiritual energy."

Minghao looked at her. "You felt that too?"

She nodded. "The moment my energy touched it, it was pushed back."

Xiaoyu carefully placed her fingertips against the wall. She did not try to force her energy into it, instead allowing a small amount to flow toward the surface.

The moment it made contact, the energy scattered, leaving behind a faint tingling sensation in her fingers.

She withdrew her hand.

"It’s the same here," she said. "The wall seems to repel spiritual energy rather than simply prevent it from passing through."

Minghao glanced toward the passage again. "Then this place was probably built to restrict cultivators. The suppression outside might be coming from here."

"Or the entire grey region is affected by it," Yuexin added.

Yichen looked between them. "So we’re trapped in a place designed to make cultivators weaker, and we don’t even know where it leads?"

Neither answered.

He sighed. "Great."

Minghao took out a small ordinary stone from his storage pouch and threw it down the passage. They listened as it struck the floor several times before the sound gradually faded.

A few seconds passed.

Then silence returned.

"At least there’s no immediate obstruction," he said.

Yuexin looked at the darkness ahead. "We should mark our path."

"With what?" Yichen asked.

"Something that doesn’t need spiritual energy."

She took out a small knife and scratched a simple mark into the wall beside them. Minghao watched carefully before nodding.

"Good. We’ll leave a mark every fifty steps or whenever the passage changes."

Xiaoyu studied the mark Yuexin had made, then looked at the wall around it. "We should make them somewhere easy to recognize. If the markings are too similar, we might mistake one for another."

"That’s true," Minghao said. "Make each mark slightly different. We can also record the direction and approximate distance whenever we find something unusual."

He paused, then looked toward the dark passage.

"We should also try to preserve what little spiritual energy we have. Only use techniques when necessary."

Yuexin nodded. "We can still use the simplest techniques, can’t we? Ones that require very little energy."

"Possibly. We should test them before relying on them."

Minghao gathered a small amount of spiritual energy at his fingertips. It took considerably more effort than usual, but a faint light eventually appeared above his hand. It was no brighter than a firefly, and the glow flickered whenever his concentration wavered.

He maintained it for several breaths before letting it disappear.

"Even a basic light technique consumes more than it should," he said. "We shouldn’t use it continuously."

Yuexin tried next. Her own light was similarly weak, though she managed to maintain it a little longer. Xiaoyu followed, producing a faint glow that illuminated only the space immediately around her hand.

Yichen attempted to do the same. His first effort failed, and the second produced only a brief spark.

He stared at his palm.

"Even the simplest technique is giving me trouble."

"Then don’t waste your energy trying to make it brighter," Minghao replied. "We only need enough to see the ground and the paths ahead."

After a brief discussion, they agreed to take turns using the techniques. They would rely on their eyes as much as possible, and only summon a faint light when the darkness made it difficult to distinguish the floor or the walls.

With that settled, they began moving forward, keeping close to the right-hand wall. Minghao walked in front, Yuexin followed behind him, Xiaoyu walked next, and Yichen took the rear.

Their footsteps echoed through the passage, sometimes returning from the distant darkness with a strange delay. The walls remained almost entirely featureless. Every few dozen steps, they found shallow grooves or faint marks in the stone, but none appeared to be writing.

Xiaoyu occasionally glanced at the walls, paying attention to the distance between the grooves and their positions.

She also kept an eye on the floor, where the dust sometimes gathered in uneven patches. So far, however, nothing suggested that the passage had been recently disturbed.

They continued in the same direction for some time.

Eventually, the passage widened.

Minghao slowed as the right-hand wall ended, revealing another corridor branching away from it. He stopped before the intersection and raised a hand to signal the others.

Yuexin stepped beside him and looked down the newly revealed path.

"Another passage?"

"It seems so."

Minghao examined the junction. The corridor ahead continued straight, while the new one stretched to their right. Neither showed any obvious difference in construction.

"There’s no sign telling us which way to go," he said.

Yichen looked from one corridor to the other. "Then we pick one."

"We should mark this intersection first," Minghao said.

Yuexin scratched a distinct symbol into the wall beside the junction. She then added a second, smaller mark pointing toward the corridor they had come from.

"That should be enough to recognize it."

Minghao nodded. "Let’s continue straight for now. If we find another junction, we’ll record it and decide from there."

They followed the corridor ahead.

The passage remained straight for a while, but gradually became narrower. The faint light from Yuexin’s technique revealed several shallow grooves along the walls, arranged at irregular intervals. Minghao stopped to inspect one of them, but found nothing that could explain its purpose.

They continued.

After another stretch of walking, the corridor opened into a second intersection.

This time, three paths lay before them.

One continued straight, another branched to the left, and the third turned sharply to the right.

Yichen stopped and looked around. "Well, that’s more complicated."

Minghao studied the three openings. "We should avoid choosing randomly. Let’s record this as the second intersection."

Xiaoyu looked back toward the path they had taken. "The first intersection was to the right. This one has three directions."

"Then we can keep track of them in order," Minghao said. "If we need to return, we should be able to follow the same route."

Yuexin made another mark on the wall, using a different pattern from the one at the previous junction. She also scratched a small arrow beside it to indicate the direction they had come from.

After considering the three paths, Minghao chose the left corridor.

They continued walking, counting their steps as they went.

At first, nothing seemed unusual. The passage was similar to the others, with the same dark stone walls and smooth floor. Their faint techniques provided just enough light to keep them from stumbling, though the glow barely reached beyond a few steps.

Then the corridor turned.

Minghao slowed and examined the corner before proceeding. Beyond it, the path stretched forward again, eventually widening into another junction.

He stopped.

Yuexin looked over his shoulder. "Another one?"

Minghao nodded.

The new intersection had two passages branching away from the one they had entered. One turned left, while the other continued straight.

Yichen looked at the paths, then back at the corridor behind them.

"How many of these are there?"

"We don’t know," Minghao replied.

Xiaoyu examined the walls around the junction. Unlike the earlier intersections, this one had several shallow grooves carved into the stone, some of which resembled the markings they had discovered near the entrance.

She leaned closer, studying their arrangement.

"These markings might be intentional."

Minghao turned toward her. "Do you recognize them?"

"Not yet. But they don’t seem random."

Yuexin approached and examined the grooves as well. "Could they be directions?"

"Possibly," Minghao said. "We should record them before choosing a path."

They spent several minutes studying the markings. Yuexin sketched their shapes onto her scroll the best as she could with force, while Minghao compared them with the symbols they had seen near the entrance.

The similarities were noticeable, but there was not enough information to determine what they meant.

In the end, they chose the straight passage.

They continued forward, making sure to mark the junction behind them before leaving.

The corridor eventually widened again, and Minghao slowed as he noticed something familiar on the wall ahead.

He stopped.

Yuexin nearly walked into him. "What is it?"

Minghao raised his hand and pointed.

A shallow symbol had been carved into the wall.

It was the same mark Yuexin had made at their first intersection.

For a moment, none of them spoke.

Yuexin stepped closer. She looked at the mark, then at the one she had carved on her scroll.

"This is mine."

Yichen looked behind them. "Then we’ve come back to the first intersection?"

Minghao turned slowly, examining the surrounding passages. The corridor they had entered from was on their left, while another extended to their right. The path ahead was different from the one they remembered taking.

"That shouldn’t be possible," he said.

Xiaoyu walked toward the wall and examined the mark. She ran her fingers over its edges, confirming that it was carved into the stone rather than merely resembling Yuexin’s work.

"We followed the same direction after the last intersection," she said. "We didn’t turn back."

"Exactly," Minghao replied.

Yuexin looked at the branching corridors. "Could the passages have shifted?"

"Perhaps. But we didn’t hear anything."

Yichen glanced toward the corridor behind them. "Or maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere."

"We marked every intersection," Minghao said. "And we followed the route we chose."

He walked toward the nearest passage and looked inside. It appeared identical to the others, stretching into darkness without any visible landmark.

Xiaoyu turned to examine the opposite corridor. "If this is the same intersection, then one of these paths should lead back the way we came."

"Let’s check."

Minghao took out the small stone he had used earlier and placed it on the floor beside the wall. He then pointed toward the passage on their left.

"We’ll follow this one for a short distance. If it leads somewhere familiar, we’ll know."

They proceeded carefully, keeping their steps measured.

The corridor stretched forward for several dozen paces before opening into another intersection. Minghao stopped, looking at the three paths before him.

Yuexin glanced at the markings on the walls.

Then her expression changed.

"Wait. This is the second intersection."

Minghao looked at her.

She pointed toward the wall beside the left passage. A distinct mark was carved there, matching the one she had made earlier.

Yichen stared at it.

"So we really did come back."

Minghao looked between the junction and the path behind them. They had not turned around, nor had they deliberately retraced their steps. Yet they had returned to a place they had passed earlier.

Xiaoyu looked at the markings, then at the passages branching away from them.

"Could the corridors be connected in a circle?"

"That might explain how we returned to the same intersection," Minghao said. "But it doesn’t explain why the distance and turns don’t match what we remember."

Yuexin crouched and examined the floor. The dust had been disturbed by their earlier passage, but the marks were difficult to distinguish from the tracks they had just made.

"Maybe we should retrace our steps."

Minghao nodded. "Let’s return to the first intersection and check whether the path is still the same."

They turned around.

The corridor behind them appeared unchanged, and after walking for some time, they reached the junction where they had found Yuexin’s original mark.

But this time, the passage they had entered from was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, three unfamiliar corridors branched away from the intersection.

Yichen stopped.

"...That’s not right."

Minghao examined the walls, then looked down the three paths. The mark Yuexin had made was still there, but the arrangement of the corridors did not match what they remembered.

Yuexin approached the nearest opening and peered inside. "This isn’t how it looked before."

Xiaoyu stood beside her, observing the junction in silence. She looked from one passage to another, trying to recall their previous route.

"We didn’t come from any of these directions," she said.

Minghao took a slow breath. "Then we need to stop assuming the passages remain the same."

Yichen looked at him. "You mean the maze is changing?"

Minghao did not answer immediately. He examined the familiar mark on the wall, then the unfamiliar paths surrounding it.

"We don’t know whether the corridors themselves are moving, or whether this place is manipulating our sense of direction. But we’re no longer following an ordinary underground passage."

Yuexin’s expression grew serious. She looked at the three unfamiliar corridors, then back at the mark on the wall.

"Then we shouldn’t keep walking as though we can simply find our way back."

Yichen glanced at the three corridors. "And if the paths change again?"

"Then we adapt. Running around blindly will only make things worse."

Yuexin took out her scroll and added a brief note beside the drawing of the first intersection. Meanwhile, Xiaoyu remained a little behind the others, her gaze occasionally shifting toward the dark corridors. Even though she tried to keep her attention on the markings, she could not help feeling uneasy about the unfamiliar passages surrounding them.

When she looked back at Yuexin’s mark, something beneath it caught her attention.

At first, she thought it was merely a shadow cast by their faint light. But after leaning closer, she realized that another carving lay beneath the original mark, much deeper and wider than the one Yuexin had made. Its uneven grooves looked as though something sharp had clawed into the stone with considerable force.

"Um... Yuexin?"

Her voice was quiet enough that the others almost missed it.

Yuexin turned. "What is it?"

Xiaoyu pointed toward the wall, keeping a small distance from it.

Yuexin crouched to examine the carving. "This wasn’t here before."

Minghao stepped closer, studying the grooves. "It doesn’t look like a tool mark."

Xiaoyu’s fingers curled slightly against her sleeve. She stared at the carving for another moment before taking a small step back.

"I... I don’t think it was made by a weapon."

Yuexin glanced at her. "Then what?"

Xiaoyu hesitated, her gaze lingering on the deep grooves.

"...Perhaps a nail."

The three of them looked at her.

For a brief moment, nobody spoke. Yichen’s expression tightened as he glanced toward the surrounding passages, suddenly aware of how little they could see beyond the reach of their faint light.

Then, a sudden thump echoed from one of the dark corridors.

All four turned toward the sound.

Chen Yichen frowned, his gaze fixed on the darkness. "It seems we are not alone..."