Danger in the Well

The night in the West Suburbs was as thick as spilled ink.

Li Tui did not carry a lantern, crouching in the wild thistle bushes beside the ridge like a stone soaked in the darkness.

He crouched for about the time it takes to burn a stick of incense. All around, there was only the chirping of insects and the rustling of wind through leaves. In the distance, toward the Zhao Mansion, there were only sporadic lights; the field patrollers seemed to be slacking off.

Li Tui rose, his movements as light as a night owl stepping on roof tiles. He skirted the traces of his previous fight and crept toward the abandoned well from the side.

The moonlight was stingy, barely outlining the rim of the well. The withered vines used for concealment were still there, but their position was skewed; it was clear someone had disturbed them.

He squatted down, his fingertips brushing the stone rim. There were fresh scratches on the moss, and a blurred half-footprint left in the damp soil.

Li Tui's gaze darkened. He didn't rush to look into the well, instead moving toward the burial site. Under the thistle bushes, the soil had been dug up. The pit was empty, leaving only a few shriveled, blackened scraps of viscera that looked as if they had been licked clean.

The corpse had been dragged away.

He returned to the well, pulled a thin hemp rope from his robes, tied one end tightly to an old tree root beside the well, and wrapped the other around his waist.

The mouth of the well was a pitch-black hole, and a damp, fishy stench hit his face. Li Tui did not hesitate; he braced his hands against the rim, let his body drop, and slid into the darkness.

The hemp rope pulled taut, the rustling sound of it rubbing against the well wall sounding jarringly loud. After falling about three zhang, his feet touched solid ground; the bottom of the well was hard mud, devoid of water.

He released the rope and stood steady. The bottom of the well was about a zhang square, more spacious than he had expected. The faint light leaking from above barely illuminated the immediate area.

Then, he saw it.

The carcass of the Earth Lizard Demon had been dragged to the center of the well, and by now, it was unrecognizable. Large patches of scales had peeled away, revealing the grayish-white muscle beneath, which was being slowly covered and devoured by a dark red, moss-like mycelium. The mycelium sprouted from the cracks in the well walls, dense and thick, like countless tiny blood vessels burrowing into the corpse, pulsing slightly in a rhythmic beat.

What was even more striking was that near the incision he had made in the demon's abdomen, the dark red moss had accumulated into a particularly thick, bulging mass. It looked like a poisonous sore growing out of rotten flesh, heaving slightly with the rise and fall of the moss. The shape immediately reminded him of the tumor-like growth in his own robes.

Li Tui looked away and turned his gaze to the well wall. The gaps between the blue bricks were filled with slick moss, but near the bottom, a few bricks were darker in color than the rest. He squatted down and scraped away the floating moss and grime with his fingernails.

Beneath them, several crooked carvings were revealed.

They were carved very shallowly, the edges worn smooth, suggesting they had been there for quite some time. The lines were chaotic, looking neither like characters nor drawings, but rather like something a child had scribbled at random.

In some places, the moss had regrown, making them impossible to notice without a careful look.

Li Tui touched the carvings. The stone surface was ice-cold, and the grooves were filled with damp mud, but his fingertips felt an indescribable sense of wrongness.

This cold, chilling aura felt very similar to the damp, fishy stench in the well and the sensation of that dark red moss.

This well... it likely hadn't become this way recently.

With the carvings being this old and the moss specifically growing around them, it was likely that someone had been doing something at the bottom of this well long ago.

Just as he was concentrating, the light from the well mouth above suddenly dimmed for a moment.

It wasn't a cloud obscuring the moon. It was a silhouette blocking the light.

A very faint sound of soil being compressed came from the mouth of the well.

Li Tui's muscles tensed instantly. He shifted silently, pressing himself into the shadows of the well wall, his right hand already gripping the freshly sharpened short blade at his waist.

Half a head peered down into the well, backlit, making the face impossible to see; only a pair of eyes glinted in the darkness.

The person did not come down immediately. A moment later, a hand reached down and grabbed the hemp rope hanging in the well. The rope swayed as the person tested its strength.

Li Tui held his breath, his true qi quietly condensing at his fingertips.

At that exact moment, Li Tui's heart skipped a beat without warning, and a chill crawled through his pores and into his bones. Immediately following, an invisible pressure descended, weighing heavily on his chest and causing his breathing to hitch.

He forcibly suppressed the instinct to lash out and flee, forcing his breathing to a near-halt and even intentionally slowing his heartbeat.

He could not move.

The moment he moved, he would confirm the existence of a "living thing."

The person at the mouth of the well remained silent for a moment.

That omnipresent "sense of being watched" slowly swept over every corner of the well bottom, lingering for a split second on the shadow where Li Tui was hiding.

Then, the "sense of being watched" vanished.

Suddenly.

"Who's there?" A hoarse voice crashed down, creating a dull echo against the well walls.

Before the words had even faded, a streak of black light shot down from the well mouth! It aimed straight for Li Tui's throat!

Li Tui had been tense the moment the prickling sensation struck; the instant the black light pierced the air, he lunged to the side. The bottom of the well was too narrow, and his shoulder slammed hard against the wall, sending gravel raining down.

The black light grazed his neck and embedded itself into the stone wall behind him with a "thud." It was a short fork made of spiritual energy, half-buried in the stone, its tail still vibrating with a hum.

A Qi Refining cultivator?!

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