Chapter 9: Judas

17TH NOV 2021~ VERALUCTL

“Boss.”

“Hm?” He Jingming was rubbing the bridge of his nose, a deep crease between his brows. In the past few days, he seemed to have suddenly aged ten years. His cheeks had sunken in and he frequently stared blankly into space, pushing off several big deals that required his supervision. He Jingming had suddenly realized that after all those years spent in blood and rain, he had nothing left apart from a handful of dirty money.

From youth to old age, he was all by himself, not a person to speak to around him.

Loneliness.

When he was young, there were many things he wanted to be, many ambitions he wanted to achieve, and much discontent in his heart. He had suffered, had been in pain, and had done countless immoral deeds. Loneliness wasn’t much; he might light up a cigarette by himself, pour out a cup of alcohol, and then continue fighting, struggling as if nothing was wrong.

But it was like a heart disease, or a spinal disorder; like a ruptured disk in his back that would slowly show more and more pain as he got older. In his life, He Jingming had eaten the most delicious food and slept with the most beautiful women, but now, he felt like he never had a thing to himself.

He had no place to stop by and no arms to hold him when he was tired, no one to leave a light on for him or to think about him late in the night.

He had nothing.

“Boss, we found where Master Yin Hu was last seen.”

He Jingming stood up suddenly. “Where?”

The well-clad young man hesitated and said quietly, “…The great desert.”

He Jingming’s heart froze.

He was the only one he cared for in his entire life, yet to run away from him, he ran to all the corners of the earth: the deadly ocean, the snowy mountains, the great desert, all under the flimsy excuse of a desire for adventure. Yin Hu, Yin Hu, are you trying to destroy yourself, or destroy me…?

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“Lao Mo, it’s time to go.” An Jie sighed, getting up and patting Mo Yannan’s shoulder. “Enough. It’s too dangerous here, let’s leave then talk.”

Mo Yannan held Li San’er body in his arms. The body’s feet had been crushed by the fallen boulders and only half of his body was visible, like he was a delicate plant growing from the crevices of the rocks.

“It’s not safe here. San’er used the last of his life to tell you to be careful; you can’t let him down. We still need to find Mr Shen.”

Mo Yannan made a small movement, finally coming back to his senses. “Where is Lao Shen?”

An Jie’s expression was dark as he said lightly, “I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything from him so we can assume that… he’s still alive. Lao Mo, you shouldn’t continue with your expedition anymore. Leave first- there have been too many casualties already; if you don’t leave now, the entire team might perish.”

Mo Yannan gently let down Li San’er corpse and took off his jacket, covering the body with it. He took a deep look at this man who had been one of his closest friends and companions over the past few weeks before finally standing up. “An Jie, I shouldn’t have insisted on bringing you here. We dragged you into this.”

An Jie shrugged. “Didn’t Lao Ma ask me for my opinion? I ran straight into this, and regardless, if I hadn’t met you, I would have been burnt into a fish crisp in the desert by now. There’s no point in saying these things now- the right thing to do is just to find a way out.”

“I’m fairly certain we fell through the sand,” Mo Yannan reminded, but he didn’t want to go back out. The tails of those man-faced monsters were even worse than the snake lady underground who recited poems. At least the latter could be seen and touched. He finally understood what it meant by ‘men would rather go down with a fight’. To have one’s brain silently eaten away was just too unsettling of a way to go.

An Jie straightened up. From his angle, he could just see those bloodied words. The top lines had oddly become blurred and darkened and only that last line, ‘But for you; to come with many, and leave alone’ remained a striking red, like the open maw of some giant monster.

“What?” Mo Yannan followed his gaze, but An Jie dragged him away.

“Nothing.”

Nothing at all. Just that this sense of uncertainty which suddenly rose in his heart… was… unease. An Jie had always allowed himself to be carried away by the current; he had faced countless risks in his life and as someone who was approaching his middle ages, didn’t possess much curiosity anymore. All he wanted was to keep on walking, to keep on stimulating his numb nerves with these thrilling things, because he was afraid that one day, he would truly become a desireless piece of wood, unable to feel joy or sorrow.

And it had been a long time since he had last felt this emotion of unease.

“Let’s find Mr Shen and then see how we can leave.” He unslung the gun from his back and carried it in his hands. Mo Yannan watched his man’s upright posture and followed silently behind.

The two searched in the ruins for a long time, from the inside of the palace to the outside, climbing through a hole they dug out with their own bare hands. The terraces and pavilions couldn’t stand up to the violent earthquake and the whole city had become in shambles. Mo Yannan frowned and muttered to himself, “So the earthquake we just experienced was the first in a few hundred years?” Was it a coincidence… or was it because their arrival had triggered something?

They still hadn’t found any traces of Shen Jiancheng. Mo Yannan knew that the longer they took to find him, the less the chance there was for him to be alive. After all, Lao Shen was old and he didn’t have a calm master like An Jie with him; even someone as witty and alert as Lao Ma had fallen prey to this ancient city.

The air was uncomfortable to breathe in, and now Mo Yannan understood why. It was the lack of life inside. The city was so incredibly beautiful, but there was not a single thing alive within it. Apart from the monsters that could appear at any moment, everywhere, even the most resilient weeds were wilted.

It was undoubtedly a land of death.

The aimless and endless search continued.

Finally, before Mo Yannan had lost all his energy, he found Shen Jiancheng, alive. He ran out from a corner of a street, all of his elegance gone as he shouted, “Monster!”, stumbling out, his footsteps faint and his face pale. The moment he saw An Jie and Mo Yannan he pounced on them.

Mo Yannan was overjoyed. To put it simply, right now, Professor Mo’s ‘joy’ was an incredibly easy thing; as long as he saw an alive, non-hostile creature, he would be delighted, let alone a teammate he had been searching for all this time. Shen Jiancheng was out of breath as he helped him up and checked him carefully for injuries. For some reason, An Jie didn’t receive him as warmly and only watched calmly from the sides, on guard with his gun.

“Lao Shen, what happened?”

After a long while, Shen Jiancheng finally recovered his breath. He took a small sip from the waterskin Mo Yannan passed to him before reluctantly parting with it. “When the palace collapsed, I was standing closest to outside. I hid under a pillar which happened to fall down, and afterwards, I heard a scream…” He looked hesitantly at the two. “Do you know what happened?”

Mo Yannan’s eyes reddened. “Lao Shen, Zhixiao is gone…”

Shen Jiancheng let out an ‘ah’ and froze, unable to speak.

An Jie quietly commented from the sides, “And then?”

Shen Jiancheng closed his eyes and rubbed his face forcefully. After a pause, he continued, his voice coarse, “After that, I thought that something had happened to someone, and since it had stopped shaking, I gathered up my courage and tried to go outside. I clawed out a crevice.” He showed his hands to the two; all ten fingers were scratched, the blood already scabbing. “Thankfully, I wasn’t buried too deeply and was able to climb out after moving just a few rocks away. I tried to look for you but I couldn’t find you anywhere and then just then, I saw the small hole by the palace.”

“It was probably from us and we just happened to miss each other.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought as well; it was obviously man-made. I crawled out from there…” Shen Jiancheng paused. “I crawled out and I wanted to find you, but no matter where I walked I couldn’t find anything. This place isn’t small and I didn’t know where you went; I was so worried…” His shoulders shook a little but he didn’t go on any further.

“What happened?” An Jie asked.

“I- I saw over there, there were so many monsters, it was like a monster nest!”

“Snakes?” Mo Yannan’s eye twitched. 

Shen Jiancheng looked at him, his face dark with an indescribable fear. “N-no, those man-faced monsters with the marrow-eating insect tails!”

Mo Yannan felt all the hairs on his body prickle.

He couldn’t help but turn to An Jie, and saw that the man was thinking about something, his chin on his hand. He could only calm himself down to comfort Shen Jiancheng. “We’re also trying to find a way out. Since there are monsters there, let’s change direction…”

“No, we’ll go there.”

“Huh?” An Jie’s sudden voice startled Mo Yannan as he pointed in the direction Shen Jiancheng had come from. “But, but…”

“No buts.” An Jie’s expressionless self was cold to the point of being unreasonable. “Lao Mo, since the monsters could get aboveground, that means they know how to get up. The quicksand was able to send us down, but we can’t escape gravity and go back up. We’ll have to take this risk.”

Mo Yannan was choked by his own words. Shen Jiancheng’s expression changed several times before he nodded reluctantly. “I’ll listen to Mr An.”

An Jie looked at him with an ambiguous smile. “Then… please lead the way, Mr Shen.”

Shen Jiancheng took a brief rest and calmed his breathing before he stood. “Follow me.”

The path became more and more wild and the occasional snake that approached them quickly fled under the bright light of the torch. These animals that followed their instincts were all easy to deal with… the only thing that was difficult to deal with were the beasts with the face of men.

Slowly, the buildings from the ancient city became lost behind them. Mo Yannan felt like he was walking into the nest of either some ground-burrowing rodent, or some manner of giant ant. The tunnels grew more and more cramped as the three of them traveled through them with difficulty. An Jie who was the tallest of the three even had to eventually lower his head.

The path seemed endless, sandy dirt from above falling on them constantly until they all looked like refugees.

He didn’t know how long they had been walking for before the landscape in front of them opened up. Mo Yannan thought fuzzily that perhaps they really did arrive at the monsters’ nest. Seeing that the height really could work, he couldn’t help but feel nervous. 

He gripped the handle of the Desert Eagle tightly and moved closer to An Jie, looking around.

“Are we almost there?” An Jie shifted the gun in his hands.

“Almost…” Shen Jiancheng stopped mid-sentence. The muzzle of An Jie’s gun pushed against the bottom of his chin. “An… What are you doing?”

“An Jie?!” Mo Yannan was shocked. “What are you doing?!”

“What am I doing?” An Jie narrowed his eyes and smiled. His eyes weren’t small but he seemed unwilling to open them completely. On top of that, his long brows which reached into his fringe gave him a tired and lazy look. “Then I’ll have to ask our prestigious Mr Shen where he plans on killing us? We’re almost there, right?”

Author’s Notes: Third update, everyone’s response is very cold- -sigh

Vera: No!! Author, we love you!