Chương 90: The Death Beneath, III

Wu Hao sniffed again, more discreetly this time. That same scent that he'd smelled before remained, though. It was hard to pin down the exact nature of the scent, but he thought he recognized some of it. A certain earthy odor to it - that taste was one he'd never forget from the time he'd eaten the Mountain's Breath Mushroom - but.. polished, somehow. Refined. How could dirt be more refined? It didn't make much sense. The scent slipped away in mere moments.

Already he'd caught only the last vestiges of a trace that it existed. And it came from deeper within the mines. Which meant that the martial artist was residing deeper in the mines. Much deeper. Wu Hao sighed, then began to trudge forward. If Wu Hao died right now then he'd be returned to just before - or maybe directly into - the negotiations. That presented its own problems, but he could deal with those, he thought. Besides, he thought wryly to himself.

Maybe his luck had turned and there'd actually a treasure down below. If he'd found something like the Mountain's Breath Mushroom here, then this entire trip might not have been a waste at all. In which case he needed to act quickly, before Wang Hangsheng was able to seize this possible treasure for himself. What would be the point of shying away from possible danger, anyway? He'd revive if anything killed him.

"Hey," one of the guards protested, the same one who'd noticed Wu Hao enter.

"Kid, stop, or else -" What the "else" entailed, Wu Hao didn't bother to find out. He pushed qi to his feet, punching himself forward with its detonation, and soared past the grabbing arm. He saw the guards' stunned expressions, felt an instant of vindictive pleasure at the gobsmacked looks on their faces, and then he was heading towards the entrance of the mine.

"Stop!" one of them roared behind him.

"Stop him!"

"He's a martial artist!" the other said, voice shaking. It was the one who'd tried to stop Wu Hao just now, judging by his voice.

"Old Ye, maybe we should -" Behind Wu Hao, the sound of a bell's loud ring cut off whatever the guard had been about to say. Wu Hao landed, skidded on both feet and nearly stumbled with the slick mud making him slip and slide over the rough cave floor. Regaining his feet, he risked a glance behind him and saw that the other guard had grabbed the bell from the table and was already in the process of ringing it again, a determined look on his face.

"The boss'll reward us for this," he shouted, and then drove the hammer into the steel. Another loud ring echoed.

"Grab your spear, Old Gu! We'll keep him here!" No you won't, Wu Hao thought to himself, and launched himself deeper into the cave. The cave walls narrowed down enough that he nearly skimmed the cave roof with the top of his head, and he had to push himself down with one arm mid-flight before he really did crash into something. His landing was easier, but he couldn't brace in time against the sudden, jarring impacts.

His knees pulsed with a spike of pain and he could feel that he'd gotten scratch wounds on the top of his hands, but he ignored all of it and pushed through the tunnel. Behind him the guards cursed, had a quick argument, and then the ringing of the bell continued, unabated. Wu Hao could have silenced them with an exploding knife, but he had only a single one left. He needed to save them for whatever was down there. He proceeded on foot, running.

Behind him the bell rang out again, men's heads poking out of alcoves here and there. Blurs of a room filled to the brim with rocks, tools, and other things flashed by, and grasping hands extended at Wu Hao half-heartedly to try and pull him back. Then he was past the corridor. Behind him he heard the sound of confused muttering, feet shuffling forward in as much of a run as could be managed here, and another strangled ring of the bell. And then the ground below his feet abruptly changed.

Instead of the rough but more or less even stone, instead it changed into a simple slope. Wu Hao tried to stop, to catch himself, eyes wide with surprise and regret, and then his feet didn't hit the next incline but nothing but blank, empty air. Mouth opening wide, Wu Hao turned slightly, saw the ceiling tilt before his eyes as he did so, and then began to fall into an endless, inky blackness.

Around him he could see thin steps carved into the wall of this place, and a wooden anchor up at the top that might have supported some sort of platform. Then his conscious mind took over and he fought to claw a breath into his lungs from the ripping wind. Accelerating, he tucked in his arms instinctively and tried to make for the nearest wall.

The knife in Wu Hao's hand was pointed forwards as he fell, gathering his qi all the while, and when he spoke, he pushed his qi out in one of the first techniques he'd ever learned.

"Rending Dagger Art," he said, voice turning rasping from the exertion and from the wind whipping past.

"Long Hook." His qi blazed, forming into a long, straight edge made of qi that jutted out from the kitchen knife he was wielding. It tore into the wall, and the shock at Wu Hao's arms was so awful that he imagined any moment now his arms would tear straight off. Desperately he pumped more qi into the technique, his descent slowing and slowing, until finally he hung, suspended from nothing. The ground was just below him, a drop five times his height.

Wu Hao dangled for a moment, wondering what he'd get if he just fell to his death. He could cut off the qi, and then he'd be smashed into the ground. Simple as that. Something worth trying later, he figured. Maybe if he died down here, because right now he didn't think the fall would kill him. It'd just shatter most of his bones, and that would be miserable. Also, it wouldn't be a new death if he just wound up killing himself like that.

For the moment, he just pulled out one of the failed knives and began to stab his way down the wall. The first movement was doable but then he had to slowly cut off the qi flow to the Long Hook, and that felt so stupid and dangerous that, even though it probably took only seconds, it felt like he'd hung there for minutes, hesitating.

His arms screamed from the effort, and he groaned with exertion at every jerky movement, but eventually he managed to make his way down to a distance that he considered safe to drop down from. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. He landed on his feet and had to roll to try and disperse the impact to his knees, but they still groaned. Wu Hao wondered if he'd imagined feeling something snap, tried to stand upright, and decided he had in fact imagined it.

His legs still hurt like hell, but he could live with mere pain. Hell, he'd lived with far worse pain, and he probably would live through worse pain again. Way up above, where he'd dove into the hole, voices were beginning to resound. They sounded urgent, and they sounded like at least three people. That would be the two guards and then maybe their boss, or another guard. It was impossible to tell and it didn't matter, either. Wu Hao looked around him.

The bowels of the earth lookd like they had above, except the little natural light that had seeped through from the cave entrance was totally gone here. There was only the flickering light of the lanterns. They illuminated little, though: there was a wooden platform that could be raised with a rope and some sort of metal system that Wu Hao didn't understand. There were a few broken tools, like a pickaxe and a shovel and other things Wu Hao didn't recognize.

He'd have liked to maybe see a reservoir of oil or a portable lantern, but none of that was available. Nothing to light on fire, in other words. Probably a safety precaution, he decided. If a fire went off here... well, the miners would probably die, one way or another, trampled or choked to death or burning to death. Unpleasant thoughts. There were also several mineshafts, branching off from where he stood. They were marked with signs placed next to each of the entrances.

There was a series of lines, some horizontal and some vertical, but their meaning was lost on him. More ways to help illiterate miners find their way in the near-dark? His arms still hurt like hell. He moved to each of the entrances in turn. Some of them were silent and dead, with no lanterns there burning at all. A long scratch had been made through the signpost there, as if marking it either complete or exhausted.

Others he heard men at work, with rhythmic grunting and the clang of steel striking stone, and the occasional mutter of what had to be a supervisor pushing them to keep working. Wu Hao stopped in front of a mine shaft that looked exactly like all of the others, stood there, inhaled deeply, and smelled it again. Deep, deep earth, but there was a scent suggesting age - age without rot, though. He wasn't quite sure how else to describe it. It was the same way wine got stronger with age, or so he'd heard.

It was more concentrated, though in the same way it wasn't as concentrated as some qi he'd sensed before. He lingered in front of that entrance. There were no sounds of labor here, but neither did he get the sense that it was empty, as such. He wasn't sure how else to describe the instinctive sense that there was something here. It'd be foolish to push further.

There was a martial artist down here who could be far stronger than Wu Hao was, whose motives were unknown and whose martial arts were a total mystery, beyond that earth was involved somehow. And considering the sheer amount of earth around Wu Hao even at this very moment, that meant the martial artist out there might be able to wield the entire mountain against Wu Hao. He took the first step into the mineshaft, and then several more.

If he'd thought the tunnels up above were twisty and small and confusing, these were doubly so. Some of them branched off into smaller shafts, so small that Wu Hao would've had a hard time fitting in there. Finally, though, minutes later he stumbled across a shaft that opened into a small cave, of sorts. Warily, he stepped in, trying to catch his breath. Every lantern in the mine shaft went out, snuffed out one by one by a relentless, formless pressure.

The fires hissed as if they were being pinched out by an enormous hand. Wu Hao had only a few moments to appreciate the irony, but then a voice spoke.

"Someone found me?" That same qi that Wu Hao had sensed earlier began to build upon itself, resolving into a sitting shape. A man, maybe of middle age, with a short beard and shoulders that spoke of an immense strength. His long hair was bound behind his back into a rough sort of ponytail. Grey patches decorated the sides of his neck and his large hands, and probably the rest of his skin too underneath his simple robe.

His qi was thick, solid, and and shaped like a series of overlapping chunks of stone with dark red tints to it. It spread through the mine shaft, suffusing every single inch of it with ease. A second-grade martial artist. Wu Hao's heart rose on a tide of hope - someone of the same level as Wang Hangsheng. Maybe if he got lucky, they'd kill each other. If he got unlucky then they'd somehow combine forces to kill him. Wu Hao knew which of the two he considered more likely.

At least now he knew that it wasn't a treasure down here. Eyes with grey pupils opened. The eyes of a blind man, though they locked in on Wu Hao's position without fail anyway. No, Wu Hao thought. Not a treasure at all.

"A young boy?" There was a distinct surprise in the man's voice, but the man sighed, then pushed himself up into a standing position.

"It's unfortunate," he said, more to himself than to Wu Hao.

"Very unfortunate indeed. I do hate killing children." Wu Hao didn't bother responding. He'd heard attempts to claim it was lamentable that he needed to die before, and he'd always died anyway. To hell with their fortune.

"Who are you?" he asked, voice low. He glanced at the walls around him, but his saber wouldn't be able to do anything here. Too cramped, too small to swing it around the way that his techniques required. Knives it was, then. Just like old times.

"Does it matter?" the man asked, voice growing flintier as he released his qi. It flooded around him and then, in an explosion that would've been totally invisible to anyone else, the bubble he'd been building burst around him and rained down on the mine shaft's walls, floor, and roof.

"You'll die here." Wu Hao pulled the first of his knives from his belt in response. The next moment he turned, pushed all of the qi he could manage to his feet, and ran. Behind him, the mine shaft began to shudder, roil, and quake.