Fortunately, the most intense fire had already passed. The billowing fire clouds were mostly wrapped in thick smoke. Burning black bats began to fall in twos and threes. Without looking closely, they resembled the legendary three-legged crow falling to earth, trailing black smoke when Hou Yi shot down the suns.
Jiang Lian had to admit that Bai Shuixiao’s fire was masterfully set. Of the dozen or so descent ropes the mountain ghosts had sent down, almost none were spared. Only his and Shen Gun’s two ropes, being farther away, hadn’t immediately failed—but the situation was far from optimistic. Several burning points had appeared high up on both ropes, though the flames weren’t large and could hold for a while longer.
Shen Gun?
Jiang Lian suddenly remembered him and quickly looked down.
Thank heavens, Shen Gun was hanging about a hundred meters below, like a giant spider suspended on a thread. He was no longer screaming shrilly—probably exhausted from shouting—but hadn’t fainted. Even while spinning constantly on the rope like a large top, his hands and feet were still desperately flailing.
This man’s luck truly rivaled that of a koi fish: without even mastering the basic operations, he had descended such a difficult cliff; sliding down at such high speed, the rope hadn’t burned; more importantly, he had stopped in time—his depth was at least three hundred meters, and the mountain ghosts’ static ropes were 320 meters in length, meaning if he had slid just a bit further, he would have encountered a “knot.” Passing a knot at high speed carried obvious dangers—if not death, at least severe skin abrasion.
Jiang Lian called out to him: “Grab the rope and straighten yourself! Look around for a place to land—the rope is about to break!”
Shen Gun must have heard: the rope suddenly shook violently, showing what panic the words “about to break” had caused him.
Meng Qianzi looked in that direction: “At his position, there should be a mountain platform nearby. My Great-Grandmother Duan rested there.”
Jiang Lian made an affirmative sound: “Our rope is also precarious, bearing the weight of two people, with fire damage above. Going up is too dangerous, and Meng Jinsong won’t be able to lower new ropes any time soon… we can only hurry down.”
Meng Qianzi looked up at him, as if suddenly realizing something. Her grip loosened, her palm seemingly about to push away, but quickly stopped.
Jiang Lian noticed this and discreetly moved back a bit.
He certainly knew this posture was intimate, but the situation had been urgent—her rope had broken with nothing to leverage against, so he could only hold her. Now he couldn’t let go either: if he released his hand, she would fall.
Pretending not to notice, he looked down, indicating the various attachments on her harness and belt: “You can use the GO lock and quickdraws to secure yourself to the rope. It’s safer that way, and I can free my hands.”
Meng Qianzi also pretended this posture was normal, that she hadn’t noticed, and didn’t care. She looked down, quickly connecting the attachments.
Jiang Lian saw that the area from behind her earlobes to her neck had turned slightly red.
This was becoming dangerous—the atmosphere had suddenly turned awkward in the silence.
Jiang Lian cleared his throat: “Alright, no need to pretend. I know what you’re thinking.”
Meng Qianzi’s scalp tingled slightly, her fingers curling into the quickdraw’s lock gap. She looked up at him: “Huh?”
What was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking about anything—her mind was blank.
Jiang Lian said: “You want to thank me, but having been accustomed to oppressing me these past two days, you can’t adapt to this change and can’t bring yourself to do it… It’s fine, I get it. No thanks needed.”
Meng Qianzi burst out laughing.
She should thank him, but hadn’t found the right moment. Now that he had brought it up, rushing to thank him would seem insincere…
Meng Qianzi looked up at the rope above. The thick smoke hadn’t dispersed, and the few burning points on the rope no longer sprouted flames.
She changed the subject: “You came down quite fast.”
Jiang Lian smiled.
He said, “Not to brag, but if I hadn’t been urgently called away to wash a few dishes earlier, I could have come even faster.”
With that, he leaned forward: “Let’s go. We need to hurry.”
One rope supporting two people, with fire damage—it couldn’t withstand much strain. This meant that despite the urgency demanding a quick descent, they had to be patient and descend slowly. With speed limitations, they couldn’t afford any delays—each second meant additional danger.
As he leaned forward, the rock wall behind him was exposed.
Meng Qianzi suddenly saw that where he had just been leaning, the surface was stained with traces of blood. A sharp protruding edge still held droplets of blood.
Her heart trembled, and she instinctively looked at Jiang Lian’s back, but he had just turned sideways, and she couldn’t see it. She could only see a couple of shredded fabric strips hanging behind him, frayed from abrasion and stained with blood.
Their bodies began to slide downward as the descender took effect.
Jiang Lian tilted his head back, looking focused as one hand gripped the rope while the other slowly controlled the descender’s brake valve. The movement appeared to be just slight releases and tightening, but it required excellent hand feel and skill, without sufficient experience, it would be difficult to master.
Meng Qianzi’s lips moved slightly. She noticed the hand controlling the descender looked strangely colored. Looking closely, she realized the skin on his palm had been abraded away, with blood slowly seeping out. Several fine lines of blood had even slid down to his wrist.
She wanted to say something but felt constricted, as if words were superfluous and thanks were too light.
She looked up again at the blood-stained cliff wall they had just left.
It was farther away now, and fainter, like a dark cinnabar imprint blending into the stone.
As Jiang Lian had predicted, Shen Gun managed to stop sliding just before the first rope knot.
Once bitten, twice shy—he finally remembered how to use the descender: after stopping, it needed to be self-locked to maintain the suspended position.
What happened after he stopped once again verified Jiang Lian’s words: unable to control his balance, the rope began to spin on its own. The rope twisted clockwise to its limit, then reversed. Shen Gun spun until dizzy, his glasses shifting position—originally resting across his nose bridge, they now cut diagonally across his face, with one temple firmly hooked around his ear and the other jabbing into his neck.
In this situation, Shen Gun naturally knew he should remain calm, not struggle or move, but wait patiently for the rope to stabilize. It was like someone learning to swim for the first time: the more they thrash about, the faster they sink, but by holding their breath and relaxing their limbs, they might slowly float.
There was a reason for his constant kicking and grabbing, ceaselessly moving like someone treading water.
Ah Hui’s photo had fallen.
Ah Hui, whose real name was Sheng Zehu, belonged to the Black Hmong of Yunnan. The arm-thick poison insect that Shen Gun had boasted about accidentally sitting on and killing when sharing his experiences with the two Shens was related to Sheng Zehu.
She certainly didn’t know Shen Gun. She died in a small mountain village in Henan during the 1940s, reportedly from an extremely bizarre disease that had stripped a piece of skin from her back. The shape of the wound resembled a fluttering, blood-colored butterfly.
Strictly speaking, she had “committed suicide.” She paid two tubes of silver coins as compensation to hire villagers to carry her coffin deep into the mountains and lower it into a cave high on a cliff. Then she lay peacefully in the coffin, asking the villagers to nail it shut.
The villagers, coveting the silver money, carried out her wishes despite knowing such actions would harm their spiritual karma. They say that as the villagers left after completing the task, Sheng Zehu continuously scratched the coffin walls with her fingernails from inside. The sharp sound made people’s hair stand on end.
Later, it was discovered that she had used her body to feed insects and her life to create a blood curse, seeking revenge on those who had ruined her life.
Shen Gun had acquired two photos of her through a chance encounter and was immediately captivated. After learning her story, he sighed with emotion, constantly referring to her as “my Ah Hui.” His friends teased that she was his “girlfriend.” Far from being angry, he felt his heart leap like an old deer, unable to contain his self-satisfaction. Over time, it seemed to become a reality.