Chapter 32 Chapter 32 The hard part is leaving.
cold.
The biting cold was like a row of cold nails driving into the body, first causing numbness and then stinging pain.
Then came the drowsy numbness.
She was frozen in the icy water, unable to move a finger, and was swept involuntarily by the underground current into a dark passage. The sound of water rushed, and she strained to keep her eyes open, but there was no light at all, only a blank blackness. She almost thought she was blind.
In a panic, he tried his best to move his body, struggled to raise his head, and took a few breaths in confusion.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and her head hit something hard. She groaned and her ears suddenly started ringing.
My neck was nearly broken and I felt dizzy.
Her head was spinning, the water was spinning, and the monotonous tinnitus was like a long iron nail, piercing her brain.
...It's so cold and dark.
This is where I am.
She can't control it.
In her chaotic state, the last thing she could hold on to was the iron chain that almost broke her collarbone when she hit the wall.
...that iron chain.
Before the last trace of clarity disappeared, she used her last bit of strength to open the iron bracelet on her wrist and locked the iron chain inside the bracelet.
When I woke up again, I was already on the ground.
It was pitch black, and you couldn't see your hand in front of you.
She was soaked all over, and her body, which was soaked from head to toe in icy water, was shivering slightly, as if all the bones in her body were fighting.
The water choked her nasal cavity, causing her to feel astringent and painful. She leaned on the ground and coughed violently for a while. Finally, she gasped and said, "Mist Blade."
The voice was as dry as rusty iron.
No one responded to her.
Well, she had expected this. The situation was too urgent, and she was afraid he wouldn't have time to follow.
So he struggled to support himself and got up.
Every time he moved, there was a rattling sound of iron chains.
It was the iron chain. In that life-or-death moment, unable to hold on, she suddenly realized that perhaps the chain led to the dark room beneath the pool, so she tied herself to the chain with her last breath.
Then, it was washed directly to the dark room along the groundwater.
Fortunately, the water was flowing very fast. Otherwise, if she fainted in the water, she wouldn't be able to be saved even if she had nine lives.
She took a deep breath with lingering fear.
There was a strange smell in the air, one she had never smelled before: damp, rotten, and stagnant, like a pool of stagnant water that had never flowed.
She frowned and fumbled to open the bracelet, only to find that her wrist was torn and the skin was exposed. When she touched it lightly, it seemed that the skin was curled up.
The iron bracelet had been deformed. She sighed and threw it away.
This smell is probably underground.
Just now, she was at the well, looking intently at her so-called home, but she was caught off guard and someone pushed her from behind, directly into the well.
Unexpectedly, there was a dark room at the bottom of the well.
Li Xuanbai once said that the key to the Star Pavilion was hidden under the Hualong Pond.
So, the key is right here, right?
She smiled.
No matter what the person who pushed her into the well was or what he was thinking.
Today, she got a good deal.
She turned her intact wrist, skillfully opened the secret compartment in the wooden bracelet on her wrist, took out a phosphorus pill, and crushed it between her fingertips.
A little fire was ignited instantly.
The dark room suddenly lit up, revealing scattered clay sculptures on the messy floor. Having collapsed, the wooden frame within was exposed. She lowered her eyes, picked up a piece of wood, and carefully placed the small flame on it.
Only then did he take a closer look inside the dark room.
The flames burned a hole in the darkness.
In the cave, a pale face with long, blue-white fangs was close to her face, looking into her eyes.
Nan Qiong Shuang blinked as usual, raised the torch higher, and sneered.
...Why would someone place a statue like this underground? Are they free?
The one in front of him seems to be the Silver Lock General in the underworld, and next to him seems to be the Golden Shackle General.
As for where she came from, at the door of the dark room, there was a skeleton lying on the edge of the water not far away, which was swallowed by darkness.
Holding a torch, she walked around calmly and found that this seemed to be not just a dark room, but an underground palace.
There is an underground palace built for no one's clear reason, filled with clay statues of the underworld's Black and White Impermanence, Ox-Head and Horse-Face, golden shackles and silver locks, and other soul-binding messengers.
It doesn't matter what's here, she doesn't care.
Statues of all sizes collapsed to the ground, scattered with severed heads and legs, and headless and legless torsos lying on the ground, their wooden frames exposed from the neck. Nan Qiongshuang didn't even bother to look, but simply carefully adjusted the hem of her skirt to avoid staining her clothes.
Holding a torch, we walked all the way in, and when we reached the deepest part, we realized that the place where the King of Hell was enshrined was Yama.
In the firelight, she looked expressionlessly for a while, staring into the eyes of the almighty Pluto.
Suddenly I remembered the Avici Hell that I had just seen in the well.
After a while, he sneered.
Under the feet of Pluto, there is a large red coral, so big that it almost becomes a fan-shaped barrier.
In the middle of the corals, there is a wooden box.
Inside the box, there is a small key.
The key to the Star Pavilion.
She walked over, held the key between her fingers, and looked at it carefully in the firelight.
Just this ordinary, tiny key could unlock the Star Pavilion. Inside the Star Pavilion lay the Mountain Guarding Jade Plate she'd always dreamed of. After taking the Mountain Guarding Jade Plate and striking Gu Zhi in the heart, she could escape, return to the Rebirth Gate, and watch the Records Division make a final decision on her.
Then, she, Nan Qiong Shuang, only had one last task left.
If all goes well, she will redeem herself before she turns eighteen.
In the firelight, she looked at the little key with an expression that was almost intoxicated.
Today, she was lucky. If she hadn't been pushed down, she really wouldn't have thought of coming down. This pie-in-the-sky good thing, how could she miss it?
Putting the key into her sleeve, Nan Qiong Shuang turned around in a good mood.
After taking two steps, he suddenly stopped.
Why does it feel like something is wrong?
It seems to be going too smoothly.
If it was so easy to get the key, why would someone die at the door of the secret room?
Speaking of that well, although no one would normally want to jump down, it wouldn't be surprising if someone really fell in.
The Xingchen Pavilion houses the Mountain Guarding Jade Plate, the key to all the mountain's mechanisms. It's no exaggeration to say it's the heart of Tianshan. How could the Tianshan Sect hide the key to such a place so easily accessible?
There is indeed something strange.
But what's strange?
Nan Qiong Shuang couldn't understand.
So, I thought of taking a closer look at the skeleton, maybe by looking at the bones, I could determine the cause of death.
He walked to the door of the dark room, squatted down, and looked around carefully with a torch, but did not see anything unusual.
At first glance, there seemed to be no broken bones or fractures.
Judging from the placement of the skeleton, the person died leaning against the wall at the entrance to the dark room.
Perhaps too much time had passed, and the ground was covered with a thick layer of dust, making it impossible to tell whether there had been bloodstains on the ground.
Why on earth did this man die here? Was he thrown against the wall in the secret passage, hitting a vital part?
However, there was nothing abnormal about the skull.
Perhaps he had sustained some fatal wound. Now his body was rotten and unrecognizable, Nan Qiong Shuang thought calmly.
It didn't matter. She didn't want to dwell on it. She didn't want to stay long. She'd probably have to act out another scene of accidentally falling into a well, panicking, drowning, trembling, and tearful begging. She prepared a script in her mind and stood up.
As the corpse stood up, something flashed between the five whitish finger bones.
She frowned for a moment, squatted down again, pried open the two fingers of the skeleton, and took out the small object sandwiched between them.
She looked carefully at the firelight.
I instantly broke out in a cold sweat.
Another key.
How come there are two keys?
Are you going to die here with this key in your hand?
In the firelight, she placed the two keys in her palm and compared them carefully.
The more I watched, the creepier I became.
When she compared the key she had retrieved from the underground palace with this one, she realized how crude it was. The grooves were shallow and simple, the lines chaotic, and only its outer shape was extremely similar to this one.
The grooves on this one pulled out from between the skeleton's fingers were fine and deep, and the patterns were dense and complex.
Even she, an outsider who had never learned any craftsmanship, could tell at a glance which one was the real one.
In order to take the key to the Star Pavilion, this man deliberately made a fake key of similar size, dived into the deep well beside the pond, and came all the way to this underground palace. He replaced the real key with the fake one and put it back in its original place to confuse people.
He had thought it through so carefully, and was obviously well prepared. But he died at the door of this secret room, holding the real key.
The feeling of horror that had come over him when he heard Li Xuanbai talk about the mountain god came back to him again.
She suddenly realized something.
Perhaps, the difficulty is not finding the entrance and taking the key.
The hard part is leaving.
*
Song Yaojie was on vacation today and didn't practice. Somehow, she felt like doing it and called Gu Zhi to paint a picture for her.
Gu Zhi has always been the best painter on the mountain, but as the young master, no one on the mountain dares to ask him to paint their portrait. The only one who is qualified to ask is Song Yaojie.
"How about this time?" Under the flower tree, Song Yaojie changed her sitting position.
Gu Zhi smiled, "Very good."
Song Yaojie straightened her already straight back even more, pushed her long hair to her chest and let it fall to her waist, and raised her chin slightly.
Gu Zhi said gently, "You're too tense, Senior Sister." He waved the brush at her a few times, "Relax."
Song Yaojie was used to being very strict, and she became even more nervous when she thought about posing well. The more she said she wanted to relax, the more confused she became.
Gu Zhi sighed, put down his pen, walked to her side, and pressed two fingers on her shoulders and neck.
As soon as she touched it, Song Yaojie's face turned red.
The place where his finger touched felt numb and itchy.
"Senior Sister?" Gu Zhi glanced at her expression and said softly, "Relax a little. Why are you getting even more tense?"
Song Yaojie was speechless for a moment, and after stammering for a long time, she could only say, "Nothing."
Gu Zhi shook his head slightly and said patiently, "Shoulders, neck, chin..." As he spoke, he touched her body lightly, "...back, relax a little more. It's okay not to open your back so wide."
Song Yaojie didn't reply.
Gu Zhi suddenly noticed that she was trembling slightly, as if she was cold and shivering.
Looking again, her cheeks were also very red.
He asked in surprise, "Why is Senior Sister like this? Are you having a fever?"
Song Yaojie lowered her head in embarrassment, avoiding his gaze, shook her head, and said, "Nothing. You sit over there, I'll set it up myself."
"Are you really alright?" Gu Zhi looked at her for a moment, then sat down as he was told. "Senior Sister, don't force yourself. If you're not feeling well, you can come back another day."
Song Yaojie just shook her head.
Today was her day off, and Gu Zhi hadn't been on, originally he was supposed to be practicing martial arts under the waterfall. Unexpectedly, when she asked him to give it a try, he agreed without hesitation, pushing Mr. Ge Duan aside and coming here to accompany her.
In the past, he had been gentle and considerate to her, but she could tell that it was only because he was an extremely considerate person.
But now, the man who used to devote himself to practicing martial arts and official duties actually pushed aside his unshakable schedule to be here with her.
Her eyelashes trembled slightly and she raised her eyes.
The person in front of me lowered his eyebrows and ground ink, his long eyelashes drooped, and his long black hair cascaded all over his body.
He was born with such a clear and elegant appearance. Sitting among the falling flowers, he looked like a statue made of snow, so noble and elegant that it was difficult to approach him.
Ten years, she thought.
It turned out that he also... treated her a little differently.
The two of them had been together since childhood. Now, they were both old enough. If she was willing to ask for help from her uncle, he might not be unwilling.
She looked up at Gu Zhi and thought, he... might not be willing.
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