novelraw Chapter 149 Two “Lian-s”
Chapter 149 Two “Lian-s”
But just then, the boy who had been pretending to be mute beside me suddenly moved.
He pinched me sharply and murmured, “Don’t talk.”
A heartbeat later, he lifted his head, his voice turning steady—so steady it was like he’d become a different person. “Everyone stay calm. We are not remnants of the Blood Lotus Sect. We’re undercover agents sent in to investigate.”
My eyes flew wide. Excuse me?
Since when did this kid unlock the eloquence expansion pack? This was a pretty significant upgrade from “village idiot.”
The man leading the group eyed him suspiciously. “Undercover? Any proof?”
The boy replied coolly, “The proof was… in the fire.”
I nearly laughed out loud. Amazing. Peak nonsense with perfect delivery.
The leader frowned, clearly wanting to press further, when another explosion rocked the mountainside.
Boom—
Flames surged higher, smoke billowed up, and several startled birds burst out of the canopy.
In that split second of confusion, the boy grabbed me. “Run!”
“Hey, hey—!” I barely had time to protest before he yanked me downhill at full speed.
Shouts erupted behind us. “After them! Don’t let those two escape!”
As we tore down the slope, I yelled between gasps, “I swear next time I’m picking the ‘early retirement and do nothing’ quest line!”
Wind howled past. I glanced back at the collapsing blaze engulfing the little cabin.
In the fire, a blood-red lotus seemed to flicker and sway—
A shiver shot through me.
The boy dragged me left and right through the undergrowth, moving so fast I nearly ascended on the spot. Wind sliced at my ears as he half-dragged, half-carried me into a narrow path hidden by thick trees.
He looked back once, kept his voice low. “This is the back of the mountain. They won’t reach here immediately. You… do you know what just happened?”
“Just now?” His question only made my head spin harder.
I thought of those two children, the burning cabin, that masked older kid, and the small child who looked exactly like Lian. My scalp tingled.
“I saw a ghost,” I declared flatly.
“Who would have guessed the hot spring mouth had a water channel leading to this cursed place? You sure you didn’t get it wrong?”
The boy pressed his lips together, expression tightening. “This area… shouldn’t exist. Unless—are we inside a formation?”
“A formation?” I blinked.
“Yes. Nothing here follows common logic.”
I snorted, unconvinced. “Formation or not, what about Lian and Hua? The two you met, and the… ‘beautiful one’ who came in with me.”
I trailed off mid-sentence as a chill ran down my spine.
“If they came in too… then why haven’t we seen a trace of them?”
I didn’t want to think further. Something about this place made my neck prickle.
The boy frowned. “We should focus on getting out first.”
“Agreed.” I raised both hands immediately.
Between the burning cabin, the random ambush, and kid-sized Lian… things were getting too surreal. If this kept up, I’d be promoted into a reincarnation protagonist.
But once I calmed myself, I asked the crucial question. “Do you actually know the way out?”
The boy glanced around, eyes shifting. “I’ll try.”
——
By the eighteenth time we circled back to the exact same tree, silence fell between us.
I stared at the trunk I now recognized better than my own handwriting, my face slowly cracking.
“Are we… back again?”
The boy said nothing.
I tugged the bit of cloth I’d tied earlier onto the tree. Wind had ruffled it, but it was very much there—faithfully marking the fact we hadn’t gone anywhere at all.
I collapsed onto the ground, resigning myself to misery.
“This damned place has ghosts! It’s ghost-walls! A full ghost-wall loop!”
The boy’s expression hardened. “Something’s wrong. The airflow circulates unnaturally. No matter which direction we walk, we’re pulled back to the same point.”
“I knew it—this formation has its own bug!” I was now fully convinced the system had glitched again.
So I yelled mentally: [System? You there? Fix the terrain! Now!]
Nothing.
I scratched circles in the dirt with my toe. “Great. Useless system is offline again. We’ll fix it ourselves.”
Just then, something caught my eye—faint markings on the bark.
“Huh?” I leaned closer.
“Look up.”
I blinked twice, then obediently looked up.
Higher up, another small line read: “You got tricked.”
“What?!” I nearly exploded.
As I was about to vent my rage, I noticed another tiny row of scratches to the side.
“Look right.”
I turned instinctively—nothing.
Just another tree.
Grinding my teeth, I went over and searched. Sure enough, near the roots, more words were carved:
“Follow the arrow.”
And below that, a crooked little arrow pointing deeper into the woods.
I immediately shouted, “Someone left instructions! This might be—divine guidance!”
The boy approached and studied it with a frown. “Or a divine scam.”
I slapped my thigh. “Even if it’s a scam, better to follow it than die circling this place!”
He paused, then nodded. “Let’s go. Whatever it is, we need to check.”
So, the two of us began following the carved arrows.
Whoever made them had questionable artistic ability. The arrows were crooked, inconsistent, sometimes pointing east, sometimes north, sometimes seemingly back the way we came.
After a while my head throbbed.
“I swear the person who carved these had no respect for forestry.”
The boy stayed silent. Thinking he was still rattled, I teased, “Hey, don’t worry. Worst case we get a scenic tour of the Blood Lotus Sect’s mountain trails. By the way—how did you know earlier that direction was the back mountain?”
His gaze flickered, avoiding mine. “I live in the mountains. I know how the wind moves.”
I opened my mouth to tease him again, but he suddenly looked up and said, unhurriedly, “If you keep talking, we might never get out.”
I shut my mouth immediately. Even my breathing quieted.
After what felt like half a day, we finally broke out of the dense forest.
Ahead was a wide, mirror-clear pool, its surface shimmering.
And on the bank—
Three people were crouching.
I squinted. Nearly jumped.
Lian, Hua, and Mu Cangli?!
They had a small fire going, a delicious smell drifting from it.
On top of the fire—
Roasted sweet potatoes.
“…?”
At this point I suspected this wasn’t a formation. It was the Blood Lotus Sect’s hidden resort.
Lian looked up, saw us, eyes flickering, but said nothing.
Mu Cangli, however, leapt to his feet, excited. “See! I knew leaving marks on the trees would work! That’s the method we always use in our village—it’s foolproof!”
I rolled my eyes. “If you carved them simply, we would’ve arrived faster!”
“That wasn't my fault!” Mu Cangli pointed at Hua, who was calmly turning a sweet potato. “He insisted on adding extra marks. Said only the clever would reach us.”
Hua snapped open his fan and smiled politely. “Otherwise, who knows what kind of people might wander in?”
“You trying to get us killed?!” I nearly stomped a hole in the ground.
Hua sighed, folded his fan, and spoke helplessly. “We already broke into the Blood Lotus Sect’s headquarters. What else can possibly go wrong?”
He eyed the boy. “And you—how did you end up tagging along?”
Only now did the boy catch his breath. He scratched his head awkwardly. “I didn’t want to come. Circumstances forced me.”
“So,” I scanned the green mountains, the fire, the roasted sweet potatoes, my eye twitching, “this really is the Blood Lotus Sect? And you three… have the leisure to picnic?”
“Waiting to see what happens next,” Mu Cangli said solemnly.
“And roasting sweet potatoes,” Hua added matter-of-factly.
“Also paying respects to whoever lit that fire over on my side,” Lian said, voice calm, expression unreadable.
I fell silent. Completely at a loss for words.
And in the back of my mind, one thought crept up—the child who escaped the flames…
If that was really Lian…
Then who exactly was the man standing in front of me now?