Chapter 14 Freed

I thought about it for a few seconds but ultimately decided not to lure the bugs over.

They were a little smaller than corpse-eater insects—about half the size of a normal one—but they were most definitely aggressive and their mouthparts looked very sharp.

If they entered my ears and nose, I couldn’t use my hands to defend myself or move my head since it was stuck, so they’d be able to eat my brain in no time.

What should I do?

I felt around my head and then began groping my body, trying to find something to use. As a result, I found the flashlight I had hung on my belt earlier.

I inserted the flashlight into the gap under my neck and used it as a crowbar. The flashlight was built very strong, so I was able to push on it hard until the two rocks loosened slightly. I quickly pulled my head out of the gap using all of my strength.

It was basically the same as being squeezed out. Several crushed stones on top loosened and fell off, so I immediately hugged my head, fearing that if this space collapsed, I would be completely squeezed into juice by the massive weight of all those rocks.

Fortunately, only a few rocks fell, and the place became stable again. When I turned on the flashlight, I found myself in a cocoon-like space, surrounded by clothing fragments. I suddenly felt extremely embarrassed.

My feet were completely buried in a pile of rocks, practically crushed to death, but there was nowhere else to put them in this space so I could only leave them like that for the time being.

Upon closer inspection, however, I found that the objects crushing my feet weren’t rocks, but bones.

They were all fragmented human bones. I picked up half of a skull and found that there were many precious stones lying among the pile of broken bones, all of which were shining brightly under the flashlight’s glow.

The bones actually didn’t weigh much, so I carefully pulled my feet out a little so that I could lie down. The pain wracking my entire body had me groaning for a long time.

I began to rummage through the pile of bones, which had a lot of precious stones and gold mixed in with them. After searching for what felt like half a day, I eventually found part of a crown. The gold on it looked blackened and very old.

These bones all belonged to dancers from different eras who were offered up as sacrifices here. They all wore similar clothes and gorgeous crowns, which were decorated with gems and gold that were now scattered everywhere among these bones. These scattered gems and gold suddenly made the whole space look very bright.

It was the splendor of complete and utter death.

Humans could never possess these beautiful stones; it was these stones that possessed our lives.

It suddenly dawned on me that being stuffed into this gap was no accident. In fact, it was probably a way for that creature to store food.

I found an emerald the size of a goose egg, which was dazzling in the flashlight’s glow. It was enough to buy the mountain behind the village, but unfortunately, if I couldn’t get out, I would soon turn into one of these piles of bones.

These creatures had fully adapted to the ecological environment in these stone crevices, so there must be more than one food storage space here.

After thinking about it, I stuffed some of the big emeralds into my pockets, pulled the cut sleeves out of the gap, and put them on my hands again—my bare arms were cold—before using the sewing kit hidden in the dagger’s handle to hastily sew up the connecting part.

Then I started taking stock of my injuries and food.

There was only one piece of chocolate left in regards to food. For my injuries, there were six big wounds and about thirty small wounds, but they weren’t as serious as I had originally thought. The most serious injury was my arm. Since the tendons were hurt, I couldn’t use any strength.

I looked up and saw that my surroundings were nothing but rocks. The stones here were very big, so the crevices were also quite large. Of course, these so-called “large crevices” were only as wide as half a hand so you could barely fit in them.

The situation was the same on both sides. I could see that these crevices were about three meters deep and full of small rocks.

I glanced down at the watch and pressed the button to turn it on. When the light came on, I found that the countdown had reached zero. I stared at those zeros for a long time before lowering the watch.

There was nothing to say other than I hoped they had a Plan B. Fatty was probably digging through the rocks overhead right now. I prayed that I wasn’t buried too deep.

I suddenly felt a little dizzy so I ate the chocolate and then began examining the mechanical structure of all the rocks around me. I was trying to find a key stone that I could break to cause a controlled collapse that would open up a path for me without turning me into freshly squeezed juice.

Of course, this was all just wishful thinking on my part, but when I was examining the rock structure around me, I suddenly heard the sound of another watch alarm. In fact, it sounded exactly the same as mine.

It wasn’t my watch, however, but another one that sounded like it was coming from behind the rock layer beside me. I pressed myself up against it and saw a faint watch light coming from over there, but there were too many rocks in the middle so I couldn’t see clearly.

“Xiao Hua?” I asked softly while wondering how there could be two identical watches in a place like this.

No one answered me, but the sound of the watch’s alarm kept going, which made me very upset.

“Xiao Hua?” I asked again.

“Don’t talk.” A person’s voice suddenly came from behind the rock, speaking in a very low tone. “Don’t talk.” As soon as they said that, the sound of the watch also disappeared.

I was startled because it was a voice I wasn’t familiar with. Then I suddenly realized that it might be someone else from Xiao Hua’s team. It wouldn’t be surprising for them to all have standard watches.

But I had been yelling for a long time earlier. Why didn’t this person say anything then? If they had spoken at that time, I would have felt a lot better.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The person didn’t answer me, but asked softly, “Can you recite the sutra?”

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