The muffled oil bottle lay there, and the fat man gave him an injection of sedative, after which he fell asleep. Looking at him, I felt a heavy sense of blockage in my heart, as if I was suffering immensely. He must have come out from that hole while we were sleeping, but how could he have ended up like this?

I glanced at the meteorite above, its dark, ugly surface unchanged as always, with countless holes resembling eyes, making me feel breathless. What the hell is going on? I was extremely frustrated, thinking that this was simply a joke at my expense.

What does “there’s no time left” mean? It sounded as if something was about to happen, and there was no time for any measures to be taken. Could something occur here? The surroundings were as quiet as the universe; without the mining lamps to illuminate, I couldn’t see anything. If anything was happening here, we wouldn’t be able to know.

He must have been under great stress, the fat man sighed, “He has no reaction to the outside world, can’t hear or see anything. All his senses have been shut down. It’s like his mind is stuck in the last moment he experienced, just like a friend of mine. The doctor said it’s as if his brain is frozen at that instant.”

I remained silent. I didn’t know what kind of person the muffled oil bottle was, but I could vouch for his psychological resilience; it would be very difficult to deeply shock someone like him. Whatever happened inside that meteorite was surely terrifying beyond our comprehension.

However, I couldn’t imagine what could scare such a calm person into a breakdown. I was sure it wasn’t some monster; I could overcome the fear of corpses myself. Even if there were terrifying creatures inside, they couldn’t frighten him to this extent. What he must have witnessed was undoubtedly an extremely bizarre situation. At this moment, I thought of Wen Jin. Where was she now? Had she also gone mad and couldn’t get out?

If that was the case, I had to go in. Even if I fell a thousand times, I had to crawl in and bring her out. I absolutely couldn’t leave her inside the meteorite. The thought sent chills down my spine. I stood up again, walked to the cave entrance, and turned on my flashlight to shine it upwards. This had almost become a habitual action; I had done it countless times over the past few days. I casually flashed the light into the cave and then walked back.

After taking just a few steps, I suddenly froze, realizing something was wrong. This time, the cave wasn’t dark; there was something inside! My scalp tingled, and I quickly turned back to shine my light again. Sure enough, deep within the cave, something was appearing!

I called out in excitement and immediately asked the fat man to come over. I turned on the high beam and shone it upwards, and there, about twenty to thirty meters deep in the hole, I saw a pale face peering out.

I was overjoyed, thinking it was Wen Jin, but upon a closer look, I felt a chill run through my entire body. The white face was expressionless, with deep-set eyes, its complexion as cold as ice, and the expression was extremely sinister. What sent shivers down my spine was that it was a face I had never seen before.

Who is this person? My cold sweat instantly soaked my back.

The fat man noticed my expression was off and came over to take a look. He froze immediately and went to grab his gun, but I pulled him back. As the light from the miner’s lamp flickered, I looked again, and that face had disappeared, leaving only darkness ahead.

The fat man and I exchanged glances, both of us sweating profusely as if it were raining. After a long pause, I finally asked, “You saw that too, right?”

He nodded, and I noticed his face had turned pale, as if he had been thoroughly frightened.

This situation had exceeded my understanding. How could there be a stranger inside the meteorite? Was there a person living in there? Did the ancestors of the Queen Mother of the West still reside inside?

This was too absurd. I suddenly thought of Wen Jin and gasped inwardly. Could it be that Wen Jin was starting to become a corpse? Was that face we saw just now her mutated visage?

I looked at the fat man, wanting to ask if he noticed any resemblance to Wen Jin, but he still had a pale face, staring intently into the hole, unable to recover.

The fat man was not usually this timid. I felt something was off and asked him what was wrong. He turned to me and asked, “Did you not recognize her?”

“Recognize her?” I was taken aback. “Do you know this person?”

The fat man pointed behind us. I turned to look and saw the female corpse sitting on the throne. The fat man directed the miner’s lamp at the corpse’s face, and as the light flickered, the shadow made the corpse’s face suddenly appear grotesque.

I saw it clearly and immediately understood, a chill ran through me, and I almost fainted.

My God, the face we saw just now actually resembled the carving on this female corpse!

What was going on? The face we saw earlier—was it the Queen Mother of the West?

Could this corpse really be just a shell? Was the real Queen Mother of the West still alive at the center of this massive stone?

Impossible! How could that be? How could someone have lived for thousands of years? Even if they hadn’t aged, they would have starved to death here.

Was it an illusion? I suddenly doubted my senses; I was too mentally exhausted. Perhaps we had become disoriented by this meteorite, and that face was indeed Wen Jin, just appearing like this corpse due to the lighting.

The fat man paused for a moment and said, “Then why doesn’t she come out?”

I was speechless. The fat man continued, “It’s rare for two people to misinterpret something together.”

At this point, both of us felt uneasy. We couldn’t stay here any longer. The fat man said to me, “Xiao Wu, this place is getting creepier. When do you plan to leave?”

“What’s wrong? Wen Jin hasn’t come out yet,” I replied, noticing his expression. “You’re acting scared, which isn’t like you.”

“That’s one aspect. The most important thing is, we’re out of food. I was actually going to tell you today that if you don’t leave tomorrow, I’ll have to knock you out and take you with me. If we wait any longer, we’ll starve to death here. We don’t have much food left.”

I said, “Can’t we hold out for a few more days?”

The fat man said, “I’ve calculated it. The remaining food can last us for two days if we ration it, barely enough for us to find a way out smoothly. But now that there’s an extra guy with us, we have no other choice. Even if we can safely reach the surface, we still have to go hungry through the rainforest. The water has receded quite a bit now, and the swamp must have emerged, making it an extremely arduous process to get through. If you keep insisting on waiting, we’ll have to start starving tomorrow. After two days of hunger, you won’t have the strength to get married. If we go out now, it’s like we’re dead here.”

I looked at the hole and shook my head, saying, “No, we can’t just leave her behind.”

The fat man patted me and said, “I know you’re soft-hearted. I’ve already thought this through. We’ll leave all the food we can eat behind. We’ll go out hungry, and once we’re outside, if we can return to that camp, we’ll have supplies. To be honest, I buried a pack of compressed biscuits at every resting spot before leaving. As long as we take the right path, we can still get out. I see that the big sister is having a hard time coming out. Rather than waiting for her to see us faint from hunger, this plan is better. Besides, this meteorite is so strange; I think…”

I knew what the fat man was trying to say, and I waved my hand. Although he spoke slowly, his words were firm, with almost no room for rebuttal. I could imagine he had been holding back from saying it.

“And even if you’re willing to die, the little guy might not be. You have to save at least one.”

I looked at the sealed bottle and immediately compromised. Yes, I had been thinking that no one could be left behind, but in the end, I might even get the sealed bottle killed. Moreover, the fat man’s method did make sense. I thought this might be the only way for all of us to survive. Sighing as I looked at the hole, I then asked him, “But how do we go back now?”

The fat man replied, “We go back the way we came, then follow the riverbank. We will definitely find another outlet, and we can return to the water storage project, where we will surely discover the exit.”

“What if there isn’t one?”

“We can’t worry about that right now.” The fat man was overjoyed that I had agreed and immediately started packing up: “We can only leave it to fate, but there should be one; otherwise, the black bear would have returned long ago.”

The fat man moved quickly. In an hour, we packed up our gear, left all our food, wrote a note, and then he urged me to start heading back the way we came.

I still found it hard to let go. I glanced back a few times, called out a few times towards the hole, and then turned to leave.

The sealed bottle looked dazed, and we helped him as we quickly returned to the place full of pottery shards where we had come from. At that moment, I was wondering which direction the black bear and the others had gone. Suddenly, the fat man stopped and shone the mining lamp into the water. I noticed that in this area piled with pottery shards, a deep pit had appeared that hadn’t been there before.

It was just like the deep pit we had seen earlier, but we could be sure that this pit didn’t exist when we came; it seemed to have been pushed up by something.

I felt something was off and urged the fat man to hurry. However, he wouldn’t move at this moment. I asked him what was wrong. He said, “Did you not see something flash on the wall of the pit just now?”