Old Horse Knows the Way, Giant Gate Stone Road

"What the hell?!"

Qin Geng's heart hammered as a chill shot up his spine and straight into his skull.

He was decisive when it came to killing and had seen blood before, but this bizarre sight, so far beyond reason, still filled him with instinctive fear.

But Qin Geng did not stand there gawking. His survival instinct drove him to burst into a sprint. He turned and ran.

"Stay close!"

Qin Geng gave a low shout.

Shopkeeper Lu had said Qin Geng would lead the retreat, so right now, what he said went.

The others did not dare stay and fight. Those two monsters clearly could not be dealt with by ordinary means, and who knew whether a third or fourth might come leaping out of that ruined temple?

With the boost from Miaozhen's golden light, Qin Geng felt as light as a swallow, with wind beneath his feet. He was much faster than usual.

He raced through the woods at a startling speed. Behind him, Cao Xiaoliu was so exhausted that his eyes rolled back as he struggled to keep up.

Yet they had not gone far before Qin Geng realized something was wrong.

"This path... it's wrong!"

Alarm surged through Qin Geng.

On the way in, this had plainly been a gentle slope covered in low shrubs.

Now a jagged field of stones lay before them. The rocks looked almost alive, steeped in an eerie, ghostly air.

A ghost wall? Or a maze formation?

Qin Geng's mind raced.

An ordinary person would have panicked by now and gone around in circles.

But he was no ordinary person.

He was a Carriage Driver!

A Carriage Driver who had reached a higher level!

Reading the road was the skill that put food on his table and kept him alive!

His instincts told him: Straight ahead! The ground here is level!

His eyes told him: Rocks ahead. Run into them and you'll crack your head open!

Trust my instincts!

Qin Geng gritted his teeth. Without slowing down, he charged straight into the rocks.

"Xiao Wu!"

Lu Xingmin cried out behind him.

But no impact came.

Qin Geng passed straight through the seemingly solid stones as though they were a bank of mist.

"Follow him!"

Master Miao Zhen's eyes lit up, and she shouted the order.

Seeing that, the others did not dare hesitate. One by one, they shut their eyes and rushed through after him.

Every step of the way tested the limits of their nerve.

After they had run for a while, a sheer cliff suddenly appeared ahead, with a pitch-black drop below that seemed to have no bottom.

"This way!"

Qin Geng did not even glance at the abyss. He pushed off with his foot, launched himself forward, and landed right on the "empty air."

Anyone watching would have thought he knew how to fly through the air and was about to soar into the sky.

But to Qin Geng, the ground beneath his feet was solid yellow earth!

"This..."

Cao Xiaoliu was so frightened his calves cramped.

"Move!"

Third Master Cao kicked him in the backside. "If you don't want to die, follow him! The lay of the land has changed here. Your eyes will fool you, but Xiao Wu's feet won't! He makes his living by knowing the road. You can trust that!"

The others gritted their teeth and forced themselves to "jump off the cliff" after Qin Geng.

Sure enough, their feet met solid ground. They might as well have been walking across a plain.

Sometimes a towering tree so broad it would take several people to encircle it stood ahead. Qin Geng neither swerved nor slowed, but charged straight into it. It was only an illusion.

Sometimes what looked like a broad, level road lay ahead, yet Qin Geng would suddenly veer off into the brambles beside it—while at the end of that smooth road, there might well be a real trap or cliff.

So the group raced through the mountain woods for more than two hours.

The golden light flickered. Whenever it was about to go out, Miaozhen brought out another Talisman to keep it burning.

At last, the two familiar boulders appeared ahead.

Heaven-Reaching Gate!

The prickling sense of being watched from behind faded by more than half the instant those two boulders came into view.

The group rushed through the stone gateway in one burst. Only then did they stop one by one, like balloons with the air let out.

"Stop... stop, stop..."

Shopkeeper Lu's face was white as paper. He looked as if he had been hauled out of water, his chest heaving and his throat rasping like a bellows.

"We're... we're out of Heaven-Reaching Gate. We're... we're safe now..."

He spoke in gasps, then sprawled flat on the ground, heedless of appearances.

"This stone gateway... the boulders face each other, forming a natural formation that suppresses Baleful Intent... An expert laid down a spell here long ago. The filthy things inside... can't get out..."

Qin Geng was powerfully built and a third-level Carriage Driver. His breathing was steady, and he was still in decent shape.

He braced his hands on his knees and looked back at the narrow strip of woodland, black as ink. A lingering fear gripped him.

Master Miao Zhen sat cross-legged, regulating her breath. Her face was neither flushed nor strained; her cultivation was clearly profound.

Third Master Cao was hale despite his age. Apart from sweat on his brow, he looked as he always did.

Cao Xiaoliu was on the ground, dry-heaving. The journey had plainly terrified him, and he had run so hard that he had caught a stitch. Still, he was better off than Shopkeeper Lu, who was already lying flat.

"Thank you, Master Qin. Without you, we'd never have made it out."

Third Master Cao cupped his hands.

The others were exhausted too, but they all offered their thanks.

"Just call me Xiao Wu."

After catching his breath, Qin Geng went over to Lu Xingmin and helped ease his breathing.

Xu Chun had taught him the technique back when he had first started pulling a carriage.

"Shopkeeper Lu, that wasn't very fair of you."

Qin Geng smiled. "If you knew this stone gateway could keep disaster out, why didn't you say so last time? Those two things scared the life out of me."

Shopkeeper Lu rolled his eyes. It took him a long while to get his breath back.

"Last time..."

He waved a hand and said weakly, "Last time, we didn't know each other that well."

Shopkeeper Lu paused, then struggled upright and looked at Miaozhen. "Master Miao Zhen, did you get a good look? What were those things? They weren't reanimated corpses, were they?"

"No."

Miaozhen opened her eyes. A trace of wariness flashed through them.

"They had no teeth or tongues. Instead, a living snake grew from the root of each corpse's tongue. It wasn't the corpses speaking just now. It was the snakes."

"Unless my eyes deceived me, those were the legendary Human-Speaking Snakes."

"Human-Speaking Snakes?"

Third Master Cao and his nephew both leaned in, their faces full of curiosity.

Miaozhen nodded slightly. Her cool voice unfolded the tale in the night:

"The ancient text What the Master Would Not Discuss records that the South is thick with miasma and home to a snake called the 'Human-Speaking Snake.'"

"This snake is viciously venomous. It likes to eat the tongues of the dead, and likes even more to crawl into their mouths, coil up inside, and live by feeding on corpse energy. It coexists with the corpse, forming a Snake Corpse."

"It can speak human words and is skilled at mimicry."

"It often hides inside a corpse, imitating the voice the dead person had in life or the words of a passerby. If someone answers it or is lured close, it springs out, attacks, and takes their life."

Miaozhen's brows knitted as she went on. "But Human-Speaking Snakes mostly breed in the hot, humid lands of the southern frontier. The North is dry and cold; such things do not breed here. Besides, the Snake Corpses they form are usually of modest strength. They're rarely this powerful."

A chill ran down Qin Geng's spine.

Boss Lin and Guan Ershun had been turned into these "Snake Corpses."

"Those foreigners are plotting something big."

Third Master Cao tapped his pipe.

The others frowned too, unable to fathom why the foreigners had brought those things here.

Then Qin Geng said, "I knew the two we saw tonight. They were thrown into the river with weights yesterday."