The signal flare fell down, sweeping across this area, and the faces began to move, all avoiding the scorching light sphere. It looked like a swarm of beetles with human faces. These must be the true forms of the Chigui that Liang Shiye mentioned. The ancients kept them in special masks, and they somehow thrived. Just a moment ago, I was still half in doubt, but I didn’t expect to encounter them so quickly, and in such large numbers.

The faces clung to the bronze tree riddled with crevices, and when illuminated by the flowing light, they displayed different expressions: some were in pain, some melancholic, some grimacing, and others grinning sinisterly. I had never seen such a bizarre sight; it made my hair stand on end.

Liang Shiye spoke passionately, but upon seeing the real thing, he faltered, trembling as he said to me, “T-two… two young sirs, these are all alive. Those Chigui are attached beneath the masks. What should we do? How can we get past them?”

“Don’t panic,” Lao Yang said. “Look at their reaction to the signal flare; these things must be afraid of light and heat. If we light up our torches and approach slowly, they won’t dare to touch us.”

I shook my head. “Don’t be so absolute. The temperature and brightness of the signal flare are extremely high, so of course they are afraid. A torch is different; don’t forget those monkeys we saw earlier. They fled at the sight of the signal flare, but when you try to scare them with a torch, they only retreat a little. I estimate that if you approach with a torch, not only will you not get through, but you’ll also get surrounded, making it difficult to escape later.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Lao Yang asked me. “Do you have any ideas?”

I replied, “I don’t have a ready-made plan, just a preliminary thought. I’m not sure if it will work.”

Lao Yang, impatient, said, “I know you have a lot of clever ideas, so hurry up and tell me.”

I pointed to the rock wall several dozen meters away and said, “It’s too dangerous to go straight up like this. If what Liang Shiye said is true, these living masks must have some way to crawl onto our faces. Charging in will certainly result in sacrifices. Instead, we should take a detour. Do you have any way to get us swinging over to the opposite rock wall? There are so many holes up there; it shouldn’t be too hard to climb, and we could take a good rest.”

Lao Yang looked in the direction I was pointing and exclaimed, “D-distant? Swing over there?”

I nodded and gestured, “That’s just my idea. Don’t we have a rope? Take it out and see if it’s long enough. If this doesn’t work, I think the only option left is to go down. Next time, we should bring a flamethrower.”

Lao Yang took down the rope coiled around his waist, one of the pieces of equipment he had taken from Uncle Tai. It had a U.aa label on it. This is the best climbing rope in the world, used by special forces, and it seems they are quite willing to spend money on gear.

Before we went to the Lu Wang Palace, I had helped Uncle San procure equipment and had researched a lot of information. So I knew that this type of rope, if it had a diameter of over ten millimeters, could withstand nearly three tons of impact force (like a sudden fall). It would easily support the weight of the three of us…

The strength was sufficient; I just didn’t know if the length would be enough. Lao Yang lowered it down the tree for a rough estimate and couldn’t help but exclaim, “Oh no!” The total length of the rope was only a little over ten meters, and we were still far short of reaching the opposite side.

“What should we do?” he asked me. “Even if we connect our belts, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

I squeezed the rope and realized it was a sixteen-centimeter double-strand rope. Suddenly, an idea struck me, and I said, “It’s fine. Let’s unravel the two strands of this rope and tie them together; that should be enough.”

“Little Wu, is that okay? This rope is so thin; it won’t break, right?” asked Liang Shiye. “Look, it’s even thinner than rice noodles. You better not mess around.”

“That’s what they say in foreign mountaineering magazines; they wouldn’t lie to us,” I replied.

I pulled back the outer layer of the rope, revealing a very thin nylon cord. I swallowed hard; it was really too thin. By common sense, such a thin rope definitely couldn’t bear our weight. However, the foreign materials did say that this reinforced nylon fiber with an eight-millimeter diameter could be used as a climbing auxiliary rope, and as long as there wasn’t a severe fall, it wouldn’t break easily. Of course, using such a rope carries certain risks, so it’s usually used in pairs. We only have one, so we’ll have to rely on divine protection.

I decided to trust high technology; surely we wouldn’t be that unlucky.

I handed the prepared rope to Lao Yang, who took out a water bottle from his backpack. He tied it with a sailor’s knot to use as a weight and swung it towards the opposite side. After several failed attempts, he finally looped it around a stone pillar on the other side. He pulled it tight, and the rope was secured very firmly.

“Alright,” Lao Yang said, “Finally got it done. Lao Wu, what about those stones over there? Are they reliable?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, thinking about what would happen if the stones weren’t stable. I would probably swing back to the bronze tree on this side, and if I were lucky, I might hit the trunk and get half-dead. If I were unlucky, I could end up getting impaled by the branches.

This end of the rope was also tied to a branch of the bronze tree. Lao Yang tied a rather special knot, so that when we crossed over, we could untie it on the other side. The knot was very complex, and it made my head spin. I asked him where he learned such skills, and he said it was from prison.

With everything ready, I gave the rope a final tug to confirm it was secure on both ends and called for them to start climbing. However, neither of them moved. I glanced at them and found they were looking at me with a “not a chance I’m going first” expression. Clearly, being the first to climb such a thin rope required a lot of courage. I called out a couple more times, but both shook their heads. I could only curse under my breath and muster the courage to go up first.

Before climbing, I handed my camera and backpack to Lao Yang and Liang Shiye to reduce my weight as much as possible. These items could be tied to the other end of the rope, and when Lao Yang untied it from a distance, they could be swung down and pulled back up. Lao Yang was also not too confident about the caves on the opposite side, so he handed me his pistol, just in case something unexpected happened.

I sighed, feeling like a martyr going to my death. I patted the shoulders of the two and turned to climb the rope.

The moment my feet left the rope, my nerves were almost as taut as the rope itself. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, bracing myself for the sharp sound of the rope snapping. To my surprise, the rope held, but it emitted a very uncomfortable creaking sound, a result of the knots tightening suddenly on both sides.

I kept telling myself not to look down, but my eyes involuntarily glanced down. Oh my god! I groaned and quickly turned my head, closing my eyes and reciting “Amitabha.”

Old Yang shouted, “Hey, Old Wu, what are you dawdling for? Hurry up and climb! Staying up there is more dangerous.”

I cursed Old Yang’s ancestors under my breath, took a deep breath, moved my hands and feet, and began to crawl across to the other side. This kind of rope has a certain elasticity, and with each step, it shook violently. I crawled with great peril, and the rope was so thin that it hurt my hands. Before long, I felt a bit powerless. As I crawled, my mind went blank, and I didn’t even know how I managed to step onto solid ground. My legs went soft, and I clung to the stone pillar, collapsing in a heap and gasping for breath.

I had the torch with me. I lit it and stuck it to the side. Looking over at Old Yang and the others, I saw Master Liang trembling as he crawled onto the rope. Old Yang held him back, telling him not to climb just yet and to let me check the situation here first. If it wasn’t suitable for climbing or if there were other dangers, we could save some energy.

I looked around at the several caves, all only half a person’s height, man-made but showing signs of stalactites forming after thousands of years of rainwater seepage. They were quite damp. These caves might be related to the project that built this giant tree.

Looking up, the distance between these caves was only three or four feet apart. Although climbing wouldn’t be very fluid, it wouldn’t be too difficult either. The caves were empty, with no dangers. What I had seen in the cave from the tree earlier was likely an optical illusion caused by changing light and shadow; in such a dim place, one’s nerves are bound to be a bit on edge.

I reassured myself while confirming my observations again, then raised my hand to wave at Old Yang.

Old Yang patted Master Liang, signaling him to go first. Master Liang rubbed his face with his hand and crawled up the rope toward me. Watching Master Liang climb the rope was a test of nerves; I won’t go into the details, but ten minutes later, I finally managed to pull the muddy, exhausted Master Liang to my side.

Finally, it was Old Yang’s turn. He took a deep breath, tied the flashlight to his hand, and carefully checked the knot on the other side before cautiously climbing onto the rope. He climbed quickly, and before long, he reached the middle section of the rope. At that moment, the stone pillar I was tied to suddenly made a strange noise. The three of us froze simultaneously, and Old Yang looked at me with a face full of terror. I turned my head and felt a jolt of fear—there was a crack appearing on the stone pillar.

This was bad! I turned and shouted, “Hurry up! This can’t hold!”

I called out several times, but Old Yang remained motionless, staring at me with wide eyes, and then he actually began to back away, gesturing for me to go back as well.

What are you doing? I thought, a sudden wave of ominous premonition washing over me.

Old Yang pointed desperately at the top of our heads, whispering, “Run…”

Both Liang Shiye and I looked up in surprise, and I was instantly stunned. The rock wall that had just been empty was now crawling with those human-faced masks, moving in clusters, making sounds as they slowly surrounded us like a tide. At first glance, it looked like countless people were pressed against the wall, looking down at us.

At that moment, I really wanted to slap myself; how stupid could I be? There were Chigu (a type of supernatural creature) in the trees, so why didn’t I think there could be something on the rock wall too? Now we were doomed. Was my fate going to be to become something like those monkeys and die here? I might as well just jump down and end it quickly.

Old Yang saw us in a daze and shouted, “Stop daydreaming! Come back! Cut the rope!”

Hearing this snapped me back to reality. I jumped back to the stone pillar in a few steps, leaped up onto the rope, and the impact yanked the rope down hard. The stone pillar emitted a series of chilling cracking sounds. Before I could steady myself, Liang Shiye jumped up too, stretching the rope by more than ten centimeters to its limit. I immediately heard an ominous sound, and then with a sharp crack, the world’s strongest rope finally met its end and snapped in two.

The eight-millimeter-wide rope indeed couldn’t bear the weight of three people. With a sharp sound, the knot on the side of the copper tree broke, and we swung through the air like a pendulum, crashing heavily against the cliff wall, leaving us disoriented and nearly vomiting blood.

Old Yang, who was at the bottom, took the hardest hit. He couldn’t hold onto the rope for a moment and started sliding down. In a panic, he grabbed onto a crevice in the rocks to stop himself. Liang Shiye and I were not much better off; my head grazed a sharp rock edge, leaving a cut that bled profusely. Liang Shiye was hanging there, losing strength, and the rope slipped through his hands, nearly sending him down completely. Luckily, Old Yang was below, preventing him from falling.

The stone pillar above continued to crack, threatening to break at any moment. I quickly reached out and grabbed a nearby stalagmite, jumping over to it and then pulling Liang Shiye over. He was so scared that he kept saying thank you, but before he could finish, a mask suddenly lunged down from above and landed on his face.

In that instant, I seemed to see several claw-like legs, like crab legs, stretching out from beneath the mask. Liang Shiye let out a pitiful “uh” as he tried to cover his face with his hands, but it was too late; the mask had already covered him. He desperately tried to pull off the mask, but it seemed to stick to his face, pulling back each time he tried to tear it away. I wanted to help him, but he was flailing around like a madman, and before I could get close, he knocked me over. I quickly grabbed the rope again and slid over to Old Yang, barely managing to stabilize myself.

I glanced at the bottomless abyss beneath my feet and cursed inwardly, just as I was about to go back up to help Liang Shiye. When I looked up, a large shadow, like a huge hand, descended from above and grabbed my face. Everything went dark, and I couldn’t see anything; I only felt several furry things trying to burrow into my mouth.

In the midst of panic, I could only grab a crack in the rock with one hand while using the other to pry off the mask, gritting my teeth to prevent that thing from getting in. After just a little effort, the mask surprisingly fell off by itself. I quickly threw it out, but unfortunately, it landed right on Old Yang’s backside. He cursed loudly and hastily smashed it down with the butt of his gun.

I let out a sigh of relief, but as I turned around, four or five Chigu (a type of creature) jumped toward me, startling me so much that I shivered. I raised my hand and fired four shots, but it was completely useless. Suddenly, more than ten of them surged toward us. Old Yang and I began to retreat downward. At that moment, I heard a wailing sound, and looking up, I saw that Master Liang had fallen victim; he was covered in Chigu. He shouted and struggled, trying to swat them off, but for every one he knocked off, more would spring up.

As I continued to retreat and fire, I exhausted all my bullets, but the situation showed no signs of improvement. The Chigu surged toward us like a tide from both sides. Turning my head, I saw that the rock walls around us were already crawling with these creatures. They were touching each other, and the air was filled with strange, incomprehensible sounds that made my head ache. A moment of distraction, and several of them leaped up, lunging straight for my face. One careless move could lead to disaster.

We kept retreating, but there was no way we could move faster than these creatures. Soon, we were surrounded tightly. Just when despair was about to set in, Old Yang fired his gun. The loud bang sent a wave of Chigu flying off above us, and the closest masks were immediately shattered, with fragments falling like snow from above.

However, in less than a second, the area of rock wall that had been cleared was quickly covered again by the Chigu behind it. Seeing it was useless, Old Yang quickly covered his head with his clothes and shouted at me, “Old Wu! I’ll cover you! Quickly wrap your mouth and go get the torch!”

I looked up and saw the torch stuck on a ledge I had grabbed earlier. There was no Chigu around it, clearly these creatures were indeed afraid of fire. But the distance between me and the torch was swarming with Chigu, making it impossible to climb up. I shouted to Old Yang, “You go! I’ll cover you!”

“I’m out of options! You take a chance!” Old Yang yelled back while wildly swinging his gun. “What bad luck!”

I looked at these creatures, trembling inside. The Chigu didn’t have much attacking power; it was just that there were too many of them, and they were protected by hard masks, making it difficult to kill them completely. Moreover, these were merely the remnants that had survived after thousands of years of reproduction. It was unimaginable how many of these things the ancients had created to protect this copper tree.

Old Yang once again shook off the Chigu on him, trying to crawl over to my side. But when he looked up at me, he suddenly froze and shouted, “Old Wu, what’s wrong with you?”

Seeing him standing there, several masks crawled onto his shoulder and began to make their way into the clothes on his face. I yelled, “What do you mean what’s wrong! Be careful!”

Only then did Old Yang react, hurriedly swatting off the Chigu on his shoulder. He then said to me, “Old Wu, I’m telling you—don’t you notice? Something’s not right!”

“What’s not right!” I pulled him over, impatiently shouting, “What time is it? Spit it out!”

“Look at you, you don’t have a single mask on you! How come they aren’t crawling on you? That’s impossible!”

I looked down and gasped. I glanced at Liang Shiye and Lao Yang, who were both covered in Chigu, unable to shake them off no matter how hard they tried. But I indeed had none on me.

My heart sank a little as I recalled that from the moment I arrived until now, aside from the one that had flown onto my face, there hadn’t been any crawling on me. In the chaos earlier, I hadn’t noticed and thought I was quite lucky, but now it seemed something was off. I quickly looked around and found that while those Chigu were also crawling toward me, as soon as they got close, they suddenly changed direction and crawled away, as if they were avoiding me like they would a torch.

“What’s going on?” I wondered, and instinctively raised my hand to grab the nearest mask. Before my hand even touched it, the group of Chigu had already retreated in a flurry.

I looked at Lao Yang, and he looked back at me, both of us baffled. Lao Yang exclaimed, “My goodness, this trick is really cool! Did you accidentally touch something with your hand? Check it out!”

I immediately looked at my hand, and aside from the blood and dirt left from my injury, there was nothing special.

This was strange. What were they afraid of? Could it be that their parasitism had some selectivity?

Seeing the way those Chigu retreated reminded me of the scene where the Muffled Oil Bottle repelled the corpse, and a question popped into my mind.

Wait a minute, could it be… blood?

How could that be? How could these vicious creatures possibly be afraid of the blood of an ordinary person like me?

I looked at my hand in confusion, my mind a jumble, unable to think clearly.

Meanwhile, Lao Yang was unable to hold out any longer. Reflexively, I reached out toward him, and to my astonishment, the Chigu clinging to him retreated like cockroaches fleeing from insecticide, the situation mirroring that of the corpse retreating from the Muffled Oil Bottle’s blood.

“No way!” My jaw dropped; I thought to myself, there’s no need to give me this kind of face.

Lao Yang still didn’t understand what was happening and shouted to climb up and grab the torch. I patted him and said, “Wait, something seems off.”

After saying that, I raised my hand and took a few steps toward the already convulsing Liang Shiye. Just a few steps, and the Chigu in that area retreated like a tide. The previously orderly sounds of masks being touched suddenly turned chaotic, overwhelmed by a terrified chattering sound.

Lao Yang stared at me in disbelief, as if looking at some kind of monster. I ignored him, crawled up, and placed my hand on Liang Shiye’s face. The mask suddenly heaved up, and I quickly grabbed it, pulling it off with force, along with a slimy “tongue”-like thing. Liang Shiye, who had been in a semi-conscious state, immediately vomited when that “tongue” was pulled from his throat, spraying himself all over.

The Chigu in my hand struggled violently, making it almost impossible to hold on. The tongue-like thing was too disgusting, so I had no choice but to smash it hard against the stone, splattering green juice all over my hand.

The nearby chi gu retreated, but did not go far, forming a huge encirclement around us that kept tightening. Lao Yang quickly pulled back the torch, sweeping it around to force them a little further away. At this moment, Master Liang coughed a couple of times, seemingly regaining consciousness. Lao Yang went to get the water bottle and retrieved the remaining rope. Unfortunately, all of our other gear and food were still up in the tree, and we had no idea how to get them back.

I poured some water into my hand and moistened Master Liang’s lips; he finally seemed to recover. When he saw me, tears streamed down his face. I was taken aback and quickly tossed him aside. Lao Yang, who had been on edge for too long, was a bit neurotic. I told him that with the torch lit, they definitely wouldn’t come closer, and he needed to relax, or else he would go crazy. Seeing that the chi gu indeed stopped approaching, he let out a sigh of relief and planted the torch in a spot between us. He immediately asked me, “Lao Wu, what’s going on? When did you become so powerful? Why didn’t you use it earlier and make us look so miserable?”

I looked at my hand, shook my head, and said, “I don’t fucking know either; I thought I was dreaming.”

Lao Yang glanced at the blood on my hand, sniffed it a bit, and still didn’t believe I was that strong. He asked me, “Did you touch anything special while you were coming over? Think carefully… Maybe you encountered the nemesis of those broken masks, and you don’t even know it.”

I thought for a moment. Everything I had touched, they had touched too. The only thing I hadn’t shared contact with was my blood. But that was impossible; if my blood was that powerful, I would have made a scene in the Royal Palace of Lu. Why waste it like that? So… could it be that I had gotten his blood on me back then, and it was still effective? No way—I shook my head, denying it to myself.

After hearing us talk about what had just happened, Master Liang asked what was going on. He had covered his eyes with the mask and hadn’t seen anything. Lao Yang, still intent on teasing me, said to him, “You don’t know, but Lao Wu just had a grand moment. Here’s what happened…”

Upon hearing this, Master Liang clicked his tongue and said, “Little Wu, have you ever eaten something that’s black and about this big—”