Chapter 44: Getting Closer?

Chapter 44: Has the Distance Grown Shorter?

Ahead, apart from the wavering light of their torches, there was only a vast, impenetrable darkness—nothing else could be seen.

“Everyone, put out your torches. Let’s see if it’s just that the light outside is too faint, making it impossible to see,” Old Yao suddenly ordered.

Though Guo Qi and Guo Dashu at the rear didn’t quite understand, they obediently extinguished their torches. Instantly, everyone in the passage was plunged into boundless darkness.

Not a glimmer of light remained, only endless, borderless night.

“Could we have taken a wrong turn?” Zheng Ji asked, his voice trembling.

“We’ve checked every wall. Did any of you find another way?” Even as he spoke, Guo Dashu’s voice quivered.

But if Zhang Sanlu's intuition was correct, this path no longer seemed to be the one they had used to enter. What lay ahead in that utter blackness? Where did it lead?

“Maybe it’s because the rain outside is heavy, and the weather on Mount Mourning changes in an instant. Maybe the rain is so fierce that it’s turned the day to night,” Guo Dashu suggested, his reasoning sounding plausible. Everyone silently hoped this was the answer.

“Or perhaps, because we’ve been in the cave, we lost track of time. Maybe it really has turned to night,” Old Yao added.

A dreadful silence settled over them. Each person tried to reason out possible explanations, searching subconsciously for excuses. No one dared contemplate the worst possibility, or even to ask why this path seemed endless. In this moment, they were all at a loss.

“Could it be some kind of ghostly maze? Are we trapped in the cave?” Zhang Sanlu blurted out.

The others collectively drew in a sharp breath. The very thought they had been trying to suppress had been voiced, and now a chill of terror gripped their hearts, as if something was squeezing their very souls.

“What we need to decide now is—do we keep moving forward, or turn back?” Zhang Sanlu suddenly asked.

Once again, silence fell. Ahead lay unknown darkness, and they knew not where it led. Behind them, countless corpses and that eerie statue of the Bodhisattva.

After a moment’s deliberation, they decided to retreat. What if they really had taken a wrong turn?

“Everyone, about face. Let’s go back. Move slowly, and shine your torches carefully along both sides of the tunnel. We might have taken a wrong path,” Zhang Sanlu instructed. At his words, everyone seemed to breathe a little easier.

Yes, the priest was right—it must have been a fork in the path, the only plausible explanation. They all agreed: perhaps there was a subtle intersection, or at the chamber of bones there were actually two entrances, and in their fatigue or distraction, they had taken the wrong one.

But deep down, Zhang Sanlu was nearly certain they were in trouble.

As they retraced their steps, every single one of them unconsciously slowed down. They carefully examined every inch of the cave walls, not missing a single corner at the bends. They rounded the first turn, walked less than a hundred meters, then took another bend. Their pace grew ever slower.

The four torches swept the walls in a painstaking search, but in the end, they returned to the original ossuary chamber empty-handed.

Though Zhang Sanlu had expected this, it left everyone demoralized.

After circling the great bone-filled chamber once more, and returning yet again to the mouth of the cave with nothing to show for it, their fear became impossible to suppress. They began to curse loudly, their voices echoing obscenities through the cave as they vented their terror.

The louder they shouted, the more frightened they became.

After a few curses, Zheng Ji suddenly fell silent, staring blankly into the darkness, where distant flickers of green phosphorescence glimmered eerily.

Slowly, he edged closer to Zhang Sanlu and whispered, “Priest, I’m not sure if I should say this…”

“What is it?” Zhang Sanlu, slumped on the ground to recover his strength, replied. The pain in his abdomen had eased somewhat, but he was still uncomfortable.

“I… I feel like that… that statue… is it closer to the cave entrance than before?” Zheng Ji stammered, as if he himself could barely believe it.

That thousand-armed Bodhisattva statue?

Zhang Sanlu whipped his head around, peering into the darkness. There, dimly illuminated by a wavering flame, the statue loomed—half-hidden, half-revealed in the shadows.

Old Yao leaned in and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

Zheng Ji repeated his observation, and Old Yao turned to stare at the statue in a daze.

Guo Qi and Guo Dashu had fallen silent as well, watching the three of them as they stood transfixed by the darkness. They too had heard Zheng Ji’s words.

“It does… it really does seem closer…” Old Yao said hesitantly after a while.

Zhang Sanlu noticed it too. When they had first entered the chamber, the statue had stood at the center of the sea of bones, out of reach of their torchlight. That was why, at first, no one had noticed it.

But now, with their torches lit at the entrance, they could just make it out in the gloom.

That Bodhisattva statue truly seemed to have come closer to the mouth of the cave.

In the shadowy depths of the cavern, between the piles of bones and the enigmatic statue, the group was seized by a terror unlike anything they had ever known. The sensation of horror crept up their spines, chilling them to the core.

Zheng Ji pressed himself against the cave wall, clutching the rock with both hands, his eyes wide as if to devour all the darkness. His breathing was rapid and heavy, every gasp squeezed from his throat, carrying a sense of inescapable fear and despair.

Guo Qi and Guo Dashu fared no better; their faces were pale, lips trembling, unable to utter a single coherent sentence. Their eyes darted about the cave, searching desperately for something—anything—to hold onto. But all around them was endless gloom and a stench so foul it made them retch. Their hearts pounded ever faster, each beat threatening to burst from their chests, and an icy chill crept steadily up their backs, as if something unseen was drawing near.

Guo Qi’s wolfdog, Goldmark, had its tail tucked tightly between its legs, its body curled up so small that, but for its trembling, one might have thought it had stopped breathing altogether.

“It seems we have no choice but to go forward. We don’t know where it will lead, but it’s better than staying here,” Old Yao decided, sweat beading on his brow. He knew full well that unknown dangers lurked ahead in that darkness, but at this point, there was no better option.

None of them wished to remain in the cave a moment longer. They had to get out—get as far away from here as possible!

This time, they no longer searched the walls with their torches. No one wanted to linger; all they wanted was to escape, to end this nightmare as quickly as possible. Every eye was fixed ahead, into the blackness, while their torches cast tangled, flickering beams into the dark beyond.