A fine, cold drizzle pattered against the earth, shrouding the world in a grey mist.

Wang Ba moved like a phantom, stepping cautiously through the ruins of a deserted courtyard in South Lake Village. He stopped before the mouth of a dry well—the entrance to the escape tunnel dug by ‘Rat-Head’ Gou Mu.

He paused, channeling Spiritual Power into his eyes and ears, amplifying his senses to their limit. After a tense moment of listening to the silence, he carefully lowered himself into the darkness of the well.

What reassured him was the stillness within his Yin Spirit Abode. The Yin Spirit Power he kept active remained inert; it did not spin.

This was his danger sense. Its stillness meant the cultivators who had once occupied this area had truly departed.

However, caution was the bedrock of his survival. He did not deactivate the Yin Spirit Power. As long as he remained unseen, the drain on his resources was negligible, and he would not trade safety for a sliver of energy.

The dry well was a suffocating throat of stone—deep and perilously narrow. Before reaching the Qi Refining stage, Wang Ba wouldn’t have dared to descend into such a pit.

But now, with Spiritual Power coursing through his veins, his night vision was sharp, and his hearing acute. It gave him just enough courage to proceed.

He descended a full dozen meters before his hand brushed against a jagged crack in the well wall. It was tight—barely wide enough for a single person to squeeze through. A surge of relief washed over him.

“The rumors were true,” Wang Ba thought grimly. “Gou Mu keeps the tunnel intact until he uses it. Once he escapes, he collapses it behind him.”

He immediately turned sideways, forcing his body into the fissure. After a claustrophobic shimmy forward, the path dropped sharply again.

The air grew heavy with the scent of damp earth and decay. Occasionally, the muffled gurgle of underground water echoed through the walls, a reminder of the crushing weight of the earth above him.

Then came the maze.

Left turns, right hooks, steep ascents, sudden drops…

The complexity was appalling. The tunnel system extended in all directions, riddled with false paths and dead ends. It was a subterranean labyrinth designed to confuse and trap.

If Wang Ba hadn’t memorized Gou Mu’s map down to the smallest detail—rehearsing the route in his mind until it was instinct—he would have been hopelessly lost in the crushing dark.

Even with the map, the journey was grueling. He estimated he had descended several hundred meters underground.

At this depth, even the spiritual sense of a Golden Core True Person might not penetrate the earth to find him without a deliberate, focused search.

Wang Ba couldn’t fathom how Gou Mu had excavated such a masterpiece. The tunnel walls were smooth, devoid of chisel marks, as if the earth itself had parted to create the path. It was a work of almost supernatural craftsmanship.

Constantly checking his mental map against reality, correcting his course at every junction, he finally reached the end of the line.

According to the map, the exit was a steep, narrow slope leading up to the surface. It was a tight squeeze; he would have to climb diagonally, body pressed flat against the dirt.

Wang Ba stopped. He held his breath, straining his senses for any sign of movement above.

Silence.

Satisfied, he began the slow, agonizing climb.

His movements were glacial, calculated to be silent. Shrouded by the concealing nature of his Yin Spirit Power, he was a ghost. Even if someone were standing right next to the exit, they would be hard-pressed to detect his presence.

After a long, muscle-burning ascent, he neared the surface.

A faint light filtered down. It was a small, open-air hole, hidden amidst the grass.

From his angle, he could feel cool raindrops landing on his face. He smelled the wind—fresh, carrying the scent of wet mud and freedom.

It was the smell of the outside world. The scent he had longed for.

Wang Ba braced his legs, preparing for the final push to freedom.

And then, he froze.

A face—round, fair-skinned, and terrifyingly close—abruptly poked into the hole, blocking out the sky.

The eyes stared straight down, locking onto Wang Ba’s position.

Time seemed to stop.

But a split second later, the face shifted. The eyes showed a flicker of confusion, swept around the darkness of the hole without focusing, and then withdrew. The face disappeared from view.

“Strange…” A mutter drifted down from above. “I could have sworn I felt someone there…”

Then, another voice answered, sending a chill into Wang Ba’s marrow.

“Senior Brother, be careful. Don’t capsize your boat in a ditch. Want me to go down and check with you?”

“No need, I’ll go myself… Sigh. It’s a pity that kid Gou Mu was taken away by the Sect. We’ll have to find another trustworthy rat to dig for us… Troublesome.”

As the voices drifted down, the Yin Spirit Power in Wang Ba’s mind began to spin violently.

His heart went cold. An unbelievable realization dawned on him.

They were camping the exit.

They were guarding the stump, waiting for a rabbit.

And he was the rabbit.

Lying prone in the dirt, less than a foot from the surface, Wang Ba clenched his jaw until his teeth ached.

He had come too far to die in a hole. Retreat was impossible; the path was too narrow, and they would hear him.

The round face appeared at the hole again, peering down.

Wang Ba’s hand drifted to his waist, fingers brushing the Spirit Beast Bag and the jade pendant. He held his breath, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He waited…

Come down, he thought viciously. Just stick your head in a little further.

The moment the cultivator descended, Wang Ba would trigger the jade pendant and unleash Alpha-Seven in a frenzy of beak and claw.

“Senior Brother, wait a moment,” the second voice called out, saving the round-faced man’s life for a few more seconds. “Let me go back with you. With this weather, it’s unlikely any Laborer Disciple will try to sneak out today. Staying here is just a waste of time.”

The face above turned away.

“Fine. Hurry up then.”

“Mm. Don’t worry, my little darling will finish eating soon…”

Eating?

Wang Ba forced himself to relax, seizing the momentary distraction. He began to inch backward, trying to retreat down the slope.

But gravity was a cruel mistress. Climbing up was hard; climbing down quietly was a nightmare.

He had barely moved a few inches when the face snapped back to the hole.

“I knew it! I hear movement!”

“Almost done, almost done! We can leave in a second!”

Panic flared in Wang Ba’s chest, hot and suffocating. He froze, mimicking a stone, praying to gods he didn’t believe in. He waited until the face turned away again before daring to inch downward.

One foot. Two feet…

FLASH!

Suddenly, the tunnel was flooded with a blinding white light.

It was as if the sun had exploded inside the hole. Wang Ba instinctively ducked his head, but his vision was instantly wiped out, replaced by a searing white void.

“Crawling marks! There really is a little mouse down there!”

The round-faced cultivator’s voice echoed down, mocking and triumphant.

“Hiding in the shadows… clever. You actually managed to evade my five senses. You don’t feel like a Laborer Disciple. Are you some kind of spirit beast?”

Wang Ba’s heart stopped.

Blind and exposed.

He gripped the jade pendant with a death grip, frantically blinking tears from his eyes, trying to force his vision to return.

“Heh heh. Let me see what prize I’ve caught. If it’s a spirit beast…”

The voice was casual, the tone of a butcher eyeing a slab of meat. But then, the tone shattered.

“Wait… Who are you?!”

The arrogance vanished, replaced by sudden, sharp terror. The round-faced cultivator moved away from the hole abruptly.

Wang Ba, still blinking away spots of light, didn’t understand. But he knew an opportunity when he saw one. He scrambled backward, trying to put distance between himself and the surface.

Then, he froze again.

“Senior Brother! Watch ou—!”

“You… Who are you people?! This is the Eastern Sage Sect! You dare—!”

The scream was filled with shock, horror, and primal fear.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Three dull, wet sounds echoed from the surface.

Wang Ba felt three bursts of Spiritual Power bloom like fireworks—and then instantly extinguish.

Silence.

Dead, heavy silence.

Those two cultivators… are dead?

Wang Ba’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drum in the quiet earth.

What the hell is happening up there?

He pressed himself flat against the muddy slope, burying his face in the dirt, holding his breath until his lungs burned. He dared not make a sound. He dared not exist.

Time lost its meaning. It could have been seconds; it could have been hours.

Just as the urge to flee overcame his paralysis, a new voice drifted down.

It was deep, magnetic, and terrifyingly calm.

“Bai Yu. Bury that tunnel.”

Wang Ba’s blood ran cold.

Bury the tunnel?

If they collapsed the exit, he would be sealed alive hundreds of meters underground.

“Tunnel?” A new voice, young and unfamiliar—Bai Yu—responded.

The deep voice continued, sounding bored.

“Dug out by a Ground-Piercing Lizard. Specifically engineered to trap Eastern Sage Sect laborers looking to sneak away… Heh. Those two idiots have been running this racket for so long without getting caught. Qin Heng really has gotten old.”

A pause.

“But it has nothing to do with us. Bury it. Do not let anyone escape from here.”

“Yes, Steward!”

(End of Chapter)