txolops Chapter 90 The Woman in the Well, Using Shen Qingci as Bait
Chapter 90 The Woman in the Well, Using Shen Qingci as Bait
As soon as the knocking sounds on the walls subsided, a chain was seen dragging across the muddy ground deep inside the tunnel.
The oil lamp went out, and the earthy smell rose to the top. Only the ball of spiritual fire in Lu Yuan's palm remained in the cave, illuminating the cracks in the bricks and the muddy water, making them appear bluish.
The woman didn't show herself, but instead chuckled.
"Since you're already here, why are you holding a lantern? Someone like you, afraid of the dark when walking alone at night?"
Lu Yuan stood still, not responding to her words.
There were three forks in the road ahead. The left one was damp, the right one was dry, and the middle one smelled of medicine. The smell of medicine was mixed with well mud, from years ago, the kind of smell that comes from years of tormenting people. He thought to himself, this woman dared to speak, so she probably had something to buy time. She might not be a fighter, but she had probably already prepared a way to escape.
"Playing tricks and deceiving people is beneath you."
"Losing value?"
The woman laughed even harder.
"You were taking people's heads off on the mountain, ordering Sun Changhe to repair the gate in the courtyard, but here you're showing off. Mr. Lu, your status is quite flexible."
Lu Yuan raised his eyes and looked at the path in the middle.
"Do you enjoy watching me on the security camera?"
The cave fell silent for a moment.
The woman didn't answer immediately; her footsteps retreated two steps, and the chain scraped against the ground with a series of muffled thuds.
"You're harder to fool than I thought."
"You're dumber than I thought. You dare to come close to me with just a few broken cameras to spy on people."
"I haven't contributed; I'm waiting."
"Wait for me to open the door for you?"
The woman didn't laugh this time.
"You can really see."
Lu Yuan carried the spirit fire forward, his shoes sinking into the mud, the muddy water squeezing outwards along the cracks in the brickwork. He walked slowly, his ears filled with the sound of water seeping from the cave ceiling. After three steps, something suddenly leaped out of the darkness on his left.
not human.
A corpse covered in mud, with an iron ring around its neck and thin chains binding its hands and feet, its facial features sealed by mud, leaving only its eye sockets oozing black liquid. Its sudden appearance intensified the medicinal stench in the cave.
Lu Yuan raised his hand and pressed down.
The mud-covered corpse slammed against the wall, its sternum collapsing instantly, the chains taut, and the sound of a woman gasping for breath could be heard from behind.
"You raised this puppet so poorly."
"The roughness is enough to hold back quite a few people."
"Are you referring to those people at the Astronomical Bureau?"
The woman did not deny it.
The mud-covered corpse was still being pulled, and two more dark figures crawled out from behind the chain, blocking the passage from the left and right. They were still wearing their engineering uniforms, their faces were white from being soaked in mud, their mouths were stuffed with black mud, and all ten of their fingers were worn raw, with brick dust under their fingernails.
Lu Yuan glanced at them and recognized them as the two people who had been taken away by the higher-ups but weren't quite dead yet.
The woman spoke from the shadows.
"I don't have many people at my disposal, and even fewer who are truly useful. You won't feel bad about making use of them, will you?"
"You're using a dead person as a door latch; you're really heartless."
"You, someone who went up the mountain and wiped out an entire family, are you calling me heartless?"
"I kill the damned, you take the living to save your own lives. These are two different things."
As soon as those words were spoken, the person in the darkness didn't respond. Instead, the sound of chains retracting echoed through the passageway. The three mud puppets pushed forward simultaneously, the mud spreading along the ground, climbing up their trouser legs with great force, and clinging to any living creature they encountered.
Lu Yuan didn't retreat. He stepped on a protruding brick corner, and split the fire in his palm into three, flicking them out towards the foreheads of the three mud puppets.
"Slap, slap, slap."
As soon as the fire was lit, three clay puppets had red-hot hooks driven into their foreheads, causing their bodies to curl up. White smoke rose from the iron rings, and the clay shells fell off, revealing grayish flesh underneath.
The woman muttered a curse under her breath.
"Where did you learn to use fire?"
"You dare ask?"
Before he finished speaking, Lu Yuan stepped over the foremost mud puppet and grabbed forward with his five fingers.
Deep inside the passageway, around a corner, a woman was forcibly pulled out.
She was wearing a black windbreaker, her hair was tied up short, her face was covered in dust, she was clutching a copper bell in one hand, and making a hand seal with the other. The soles of her shoes were covered in white dust, the same shoe print from the one in front.
She was pulled two meters away, and the rope around her waist tightened. There was a "click" sound from the stone wall behind her, revealing a hidden buckle.
This woman was well-prepared; she even considered the possibility of being caught.
Lu Yuan glanced at the steel hook behind her waist.
"Leave a way out in the well wall; you've even looked at the construction blueprints from the Astronomical Bureau."
The woman steadied herself, and the copper bell in her hand swayed slightly.
"The engineering drawings aren't that difficult; the difficulty lies in the people. You can stand in the mountain villa and come and go as you please. But for people like us, if we want to dig a well, we have to first prepare a plan for a dozen useless people, get their signatures and stamps, wait for the money, wait for the approvals, and wait for them to die."
"You're from the Astronomical Bureau."
"Count as half."
"Who bought the other half?"
The woman stared at him, then suddenly grinned.
"You're quite good at getting information out of people."
"You're not stubborn, so it's easy to get rid of you."
Lu Yuan flicked his fingers, and the steel hook at the woman's waist was pulled directly from the stone wall, scattering stone chips all over the ground. Her expression changed, and she slammed the copper bell on the ground. The three mud puppets in front of her all rushed over, their chains intertwining in the cave, blocking the front.
She turned and ran.
Lu Yuan kicked away the broken chain at his feet, sending it shooting straight out and wrapping around her ankle, pulling her to the ground. She rolled half a circle, her forehead hitting the brick wall, and the copper bell in her hand fell to the ground.
"Why are you running?"
"You really think I'm here to chat?"
She propped herself up on one side, reached into her bosom, pulled out a black talisman, bit her tongue, and sprayed it onto the talisman.
The talisman exploded, and the mud from the well rose from the ground, forcefully forming a wall that cut the passageway in two.
Using this as a springboard, the woman vaulted into the right-hand side passage, her steps swift and decisive.
Lu Yuan didn't chase after the mud wall; instead, he pressed the spiritual fire onto it.
The mud wall collapsed, and the well mud scattered into a black slurry on the ground, revealing half of an old wooden sign with two characters engraved on it.
"Gu Ku".
The warehouse number of the Natural Resources Bureau.
Lu Yuan bent down to pick up the wooden plaque, his mind racing with even more detail.
This woman, who can access Gu Ku's gate, can't be of low status. Shen Qingci opened the storeroom for him once, and the price was barely mentioned before someone dropped Gu Ku's belongings from the mine—that's where things get interesting. Either the Heavenly Surveillance Bureau is completely corrupt, or this woman has already gotten her hands on the storeroom.
As he was pondering this, a woman's shout suddenly came from the fork in the road on the right.
"If you still want to ask me questions, don't rush to chase me; watch your step first!"
Lu Yuan lowered his head.
From the cracked mud shell of the foremost mud puppet, half a tortoise shell was exposed, its charred edges and divination patterns clearly visible, matching perfectly with the half that Sun Changhe had brought.
Lu Yuan raised his eyelids.
That's an interesting move.
She threw mud puppets first, then wooden plaques, but the real bait was buried in the most inconspicuous corpse. Someone more impatient would probably have rushed over to grab the person first, only to find the clues buried in mud by the time they turned back.
He picked up the tortoise shell and put it together with the half in his storage ring.
"Click."
The two pieces of tortoise shell fit together perfectly.
On the originally charred black nail surface, several light gold lines slowly emerged, pointing directly to the medicinal-smelling path in the middle. Footsteps continued running from the right-hand side path, deliberately making a loud stomping sound, as if afraid others wouldn't hear them.
Lu Yuan raised his hand to put away the tortoise shell and uttered a sentence.
"Using a fake door to lead the way, they've got a pretty clever plan."
He turned and walked towards the middle path.
After three steps, the fork in the road on the right became quiet.
The woman stood behind the hidden door, her ear pressed against the crack in the brickwork. When she heard the footsteps outside fading into the distance, a strange expression finally appeared on her face.
"He didn't chase after him..."
She glanced down at the blood on her hands, her breathing steady. This whole scheme had been planned for half a month, using the four talismans from the well to maintain the rhythm, and feeding the mud puppets with two engineers, all to lure Lu Yuan into the right path and drag him to the fake coffin. Once the fake coffin was opened, the well's energy would flood his body; even with his great abilities, half his meridians would be corrupted.
As a result, the man changed course after only one glance at the tortoise shell.
The woman sighed and cursed under her breath. She was actually quite tempted by that half of the tortoise shell. Gu Ku and his gang of old men had searched for it for over a decade without finding any use for it, and it ended up being used as junk to ward off evil spirits in the Sun family's possession. But this guy just happened to know how to use it right away.
"Okay, I guess you have the goods."
She raised her hand and pressed the miniature earpiece behind her ear.
"Zhou, the man has gone down to the middle of the well, and the second gate is about to fall. If you want to live, keep the person upstairs calm for now. If Shen Qingci goes down the well, turn on pump number three and fill the old waterway."
There was a pause on the other end of the earpiece, followed by the sound of Engineer Zhou suppressing his anger.
"You dare hit me? She almost overturned the surveillance car!"
That's your problem.
"You promised to give me the list after you opened the door."
I gave you half a portion.
"What's the point of half a portion!"
"Your son's illness requires at least three months of intensive care. If you keep yelling, I'll take back even those three months."
Zhou took a couple of breaths and stopped cursing.
The woman hung up her headphones and slid down the iron ladder behind the hidden door. She had her own calculations; Lu Yuan taking the middle path had saved her a lot of trouble. That middle door should have been opened by someone truly knowledgeable in divination. Whether the person in the well would wake up or not was another matter, but at least what she needed would be revealed.
As for whether Lu Yuan would also casually kill her...
She picked up the copper bell again and smiled.
"Get the stuff first, then we'll talk. Even if we die, we want to know why."
At the other end, the passageway in the middle became narrower and narrower, and the smell of medicine became stronger and stronger. Thin iron hooks hung on both sides of the brick wall, and each hook had a small medicine bag hanging from it. Water dripped from the bottom of the medicine bag and into the ceramic bowl, where black mud had accumulated.
Lu Yuan smeared some mud on his fingertip and smelled it.
Ginseng, aconite, well mud, chicken blood, plus half a turtle shell.
This is a truly mixed bag—lifesaving, death-inducing, soul-locking, it's all lumped together. The people doing this aren't very well-educated, but they're incredibly bold, daring to mix anything in. If they keep it in there for another six months, even if that thing in the well isn't released, they'll drive it half-mad.
At the corner ahead, the brick wall has been replaced with bluestone, and there are eight trigrams on the ground. In the corner, there are old copper coins, all of which are face down.
Lu Yuan tossed the closed tortoise shell into the air.
The tortoise shell falls, pressing down on the Kan position.
A dull creaking sound came from within the stone wall, and the blue stone door slid inward half a foot. A wisp of stale, cold air wafted out from the crack in the door, carrying with it the scent of decaying wood.
Voices came from behind the door.
"You've finally arrived."
He was an old man, his throat was terribly dry, like sandpaper rubbing against wood.
"If it had been half an hour later, I would have lost my breath."
Lu Yuan stepped inside.
The blue stone chamber was not large. In the middle was a black wooden coffin with nine copper chains wrapped around it. Behind the coffin sat an old man in a gray robe, so thin that he was just a skeleton. A wooden board was placed across his knees, and the board was stained with blood. He was the one who had been knocking on the wall earlier.
He had three silver needles inserted into his chest, and a thin tube hanging from the tip of his nose, the other end of which extended into the wall, slowly delivering medicine into his body.
Lu Yuan glanced at the wooden coffin, then looked at the old man.
"It was you who knocked on the door."
"I was the one who reported it."
The old man coughed twice, and black blood trickled from his mouth.
"That girl outside wants to open the coffin, and so do you. The difference is, if she does, an entire city will die; if you do, I can negotiate a price with you."
"What do you have to offer in this negotiation?"
The old man raised his withered hand and pressed it onto the coffin lid.
"Are you going to talk to me, using your family's temper?"
Lu Yuan stopped in his tracks.
The old man raised his eyelids, stared at him, and grinned, revealing a mouth covered in blood scabs.
"Cloud Peak Manor, last night the wind entered, tonight it enters the well. The first breath of spiritual energy from your girl has already been memorized at the bottom of the well."