Chapter 508, Part I: On the Verge of Despair
“Ah Zu, is there anything we can do?” Pei Mianman was no longer her confident and bold self. Her face was deathly pale.
As a cultivator, she wasn’t really afraid of death.
However there were many ways to die! If she was killed by someone else, then that was that. However, being slowly chewed to death, little by little, by an endless sea of snakes was just too horrifying to even imagine.
She finally understood why those skeletons didn’t have any wounds. They had probably been poisoned by these strange snakes! These snakes were so small, so their teeth didn’t leave behind any visible marks on the bones. After these people had died from the venom in the snake bites, the snakes would feast on the flesh of the corpses…
These snakes would enter her body, and then come out of her eye sockets… Pei Mianman shivered in fear.
Zu An’s mind was moving at lightspeed. It would be a losing battle if they stood their ground against this endless multitude of snakes. He had to think of something else.
But they already examined this entire pit, and there was no exit to be found.
Unfortunately, this made a lot of sense. This pit was clearly designed to kill. The walls were slippery and impossible to climb, and there was even a seal above them, preventing any attempt to escape in that direction. Why would the one who made this trap allow any of its prey to leave?
Zu An couldn’t help but feel despair creeping into his mind. Why did they have to fall into this pit?
Hm? Wait. There was no seal when we fell in! There’s no way this seal could allow entry but not exit, right? I don’t think it’s that advanced.
He quickly scanned the surroundings. The walls around them were all perfectly vertical, but he was sure that they had tumbled in along a slope. Even though that slope was steep, it was definitely not perfectly vertical.
“Ah Zu?” Pei Mianman saw Zu An staring. She dealt with the incoming snakes with her black flames as she yelled at him.
Zu An snapped out of his daze. He said to Pei Mianman, “We need to hurry back.”
“Back? Back where?” Pei Mianman was lost.
Zu An replied, “We are returning to where we fell in. There should be an exit there.”
Pei Mianman immediately replied, “We already checked that area! There were only vertical walls there. There were no exits.”
They had moved on to look elsewhere precisely because they hadn’t found any exits there. They had already covered a distance of several soccer fields. There would only be more of these strange snakes to deal with if they went back.
Zu An quickly explained, “What you see isn’t necessarily real most of the time. Who knows, there might be some hidden mechanism, or an illusion that made us think they were walls.”
Pei Mianman still wasn’t convinced. “But we already checked everything. There were no mechanisms!”
She wasn’t a dolt. On the contrary, she was incredibly smart. She wouldn’t have been considered one of the best cultivators in her age group otherwise. She had taken special care to check that area before they left, just to make sure that there were no such hidden mechanisms.
Zu An replied, “We only checked the sections closest to the ground earlier. What if the switch is higher up on the walls?”
He led Pei Mianman back to the spot, brandishing his sword at the incoming snakes as he continued his analysis. “Actually, now that I think about it, it’s easy to see the contradiction. Since there is a seal above, why is there a need to make the walls so slippery?”
“Huh?” Pei Mianman had instinctively assumed that the seal was meant to deal with powerful experts, while the slippery walls were to deal with ordinary people. However, since there was already a seal in place, making the walls slippery was indeed pointless.
Zu An quickly continued, “We saw earlier that those skeletons weren’t bound, which meant that they could have tried to escape at any time as well. If the seal above only activated after they entered, those who fell in could use that small opening to escape, which would be troublesome. That suggests that the seal was already in place before those poor souls fell in.
“This presents another problem. If the seal was already in place, how were they put in? They were clearly brought in by a different channel. They were probably unconscious when they were chucked in, which was why they didn’t know that this alternate channel existed.”
Pei Mianman still had her doubts. “In that case, all of the victims could have been thrown in first, and then sealed in afterwards. There’s no fear of them escaping then.!”
“There are three things that suggest otherwise!” Zu An said. “Firstly, there are too many bones down here. If they were all brought in at the same time, that would be a lot of work. From what I saw along the way, there were differences in the skeletons as well. They weren’t uniformly scattered around the pit, but rather in groups, and the groups were spaced out as well. These groups definitely didn’t know each other beforehand. We stepped on some bones along the way as well. Some of them were still hard, but some of them were much softer, which would mean that they were much older.
“Secondly, if I was the one in charge of engineering such a large pit trap, I definitely wouldn’t want to make it a single-use trap. I’d want it to be reusable. This increases the probability that there is an alternate channel, which was what I spoke about earlier.
“Thirdly, and most importantly, we were awake when we fell in, and we tumbled along an incline. This is the basis for my initial speculation.”
Pei Mianman’s eyes shone brilliantly as she listened to all of this. She had already begun to despair earlier on, but his analysis had given her a newfound hope. Even though she had yet to see this secret passage herself, she was already convinced. “Ah Zu, you’re too awesome!”
Being praised by a beautiful woman who looked at him with adoring eyes made Zu An’s heart stir. “Of course I am. Don’t end up falling in love with me now.”
“Hmph! You’re shameless!” Pei Mianman rolled her eyes, but she really was quite amazed. This fella was able to remain optimistic no matter the situation, and his optimism was infectious, imparting to those around him a feeling of safety.
However, the two of them didn’t have the luxury of chatting right now. More and more of those snakes had shown up as they made their way back, and they found it hard to even find proper footing.
At first, the situation was still manageable, thanks to Pei Mianman’s black flames. The snakes seemed afraid of fire, and didn’t dare get too close.
However, Pei Mianman’s injuries were still substantial, and she couldn’t sustain the black flames indefinitely. Eventually, she had to take a break to recover.
Zu An was left to wail away with his sword to clear away the snakes in their path. Fortunately, his Bixie Swordplay didn’t use up his ki. His direct fighting style was also suitable for such a situation, where enemies were everywhere.
Unfortunately, his Sunflower Phantasm was now completely useless. The technique was good for evading enemies, but there were snakes all around them, and simply evading attacks wouldn’t do him much good.
Snakes swarmed them from all directions. Left with no choice, Zu An tried to leap from skeleton to skeleton, using the bones almost like stepping stones. However, these skeletons had snakes of their own, which often slithered out when disturbed. If not for his quick reactions or Pei Mianman’s black flames, he would’ve already lost his life.
Faced with this seemingly impossible problem, Zu An discovered another method, which was to leap to the wall. Even though the walls were slippery and hard to use as footing, he could hang onto them with his Tai’e Sword and the Poisonous Prick, moving along the wall by alternately stabbing one or the other into the wall.
No matter how tough the walls were, they didn’t stand a chance against the Tai’e Sword or the Poisonous Prick, which both cut through iron like dirt.
Zu An sighed in relief. He patted Pei Mianman, who was clinging to him, and said, “We finally have a chance to catch our breath.”
He decided to climb back up to where they had fallen in, using his two blades like climbing claws.
Pei Mianman grunted in agreement. Her face was a little red. Her arms were hooked around his neck, and her body was pressed up right against his. They could feel each other’s body heat through their clothes. She was normally rather bold, but she felt incredibly embarrassed right now.
Zu An wasn’t faring much better either. His entire body was burning up as he smelled the fragrance of the woman clinging to him and felt the softness of her chest against his. This massive pit that was full of danger now no longer seemed as hateful…
He suddenly felt the beauty embracing him slowly slide downwards, and was immediately given a fright. He freed up one hand in order to grab her thigh and support her. “Manman, don’t let go! If you fall, it’ll be over!”
The snakes were all gathered right beneath them with their heads raised, staring at them with their vertical eyes and hissing. It was an extremely frightening sight.
Pei Mianman bit her lip, clearly embarrassed as well. “I don’t have any strength left. I can’t hold on tightly any longer…”