The Cutoff Route

The collapse did not erupt all at once from a single point. At first, the stone slabs beneath his feet tilted slightly. Then the cold-light ores went out one after another. The metal channels holding them groaned with a grating sound as the mountain squeezed them.

Helian Yuan immediately tucked the map of Sunken Bone Slope into the oilcloth at his chest rather than his pack. He could abandon the pack, but not the route. He also separated the iron plaque, the record page, and the remaining lamp oil so a single impact would not destroy them all.

The wooden box in the records room remained unopened, and the key had yet to be found. Going back for the box might yield a more complete answer; leaving now would at least preserve what he had already confirmed about the Fourth Hunting Ground.

Helian Yuan hesitated for only a breath before choosing to retreat.

The secrets would not disappear just because he had not collected them all today, but the mountain would not wait for him to finish searching the drawers.

He followed the charcoal line back. Half the charcoal mark at the first right turn had already been covered by dust. The iron nail was still there, but falling rocks had pulled the hemp rope toward another fork. For the first time, the three sets of markers gave different answers.

Helian Yuan crouched and felt the ground. The path toward the exit had dry sand that the soles of his shoes had carried in; the wrong fork had only wet mud. He followed the sand, not the rope pulled astray by falling rocks. A fixed procedure did not mean blindly following markers. He also had to know how each kind could fail.

On the way, a row of old iron traps snapped shut again from the tremors, blocking the narrow passage. He jammed the shaft of his broken spear into the first trap, then squeezed sideways through the gaps between the others. Iron teeth grazed his left ribs, and the wound that had just scabbed over began to bleed again.

By the time a boulder pinned his boot, he had already made several choices in succession: leaving behind a length of hemp rope, abandoning an old arrow, and giving up the wooden box. With each thing he left behind, his body grew a little lighter, and he had one less reason to turn back.

When the first rock fell from the ceiling, Helian Yuan was still seventy paces from the exit.

The rock snapped the hemp rope, and all the markers ahead vanished beneath the dust. The rush of air extinguished his torch, leaving only the faint, dismal glow of the cold-light ores on the walls.

Helian Yuan did not rush ahead from memory.

One wrong turn in the branching tunnels would turn those seventy paces into a dead end. He found the wall on his right and followed the shallow scratches he had left when driving in the iron nails. Each time he passed a nail, he counted down one in his head.

Nine.

Eight.

When he reached the sixth nail, the entire ceiling ahead collapsed.

Rubble blocked half the passage first, followed by a thick iron chain that had been fastened to the ceiling. It hung down and caught between two boulders. Helian Yuan could squeeze through sideways, but his pack and short spear would be blocked.

He pushed his pack through the gap first, then took off his short spear. Just as he bent down, a deeper crack sounded overhead.

The boulder was still sinking.

Helian Yuan was halfway through when a chain link caught his left foot. He turned back to free it, but the gap had already narrowed from a person's width to half a shoulder's.

Pulling hard would crush his ankle.

He inserted his hunting knife into the chain link, but he did not have enough room to angle it.

"Come!"

The tiger shadow rose behind him in the darkness.

This time, it neither covered his spear nor pounced. It simply braced its two front paws against the edge of the still-sinking boulder. The black shadow could not possibly hold up the mountain, but it bought Helian Yuan a moment's reprieve.

In the first breath, he pulled out his hunting knife.

In the second, the blade cut through his bootlace.

In the third, Helian Yuan pulled his foot free and threw himself through to the other side of the gap.

As the tiger shadow dispersed, the boulders slammed together.

One boot remained in the chain, completely pinned beneath them.

Helian Yuan lay prone on the ground, his left foot clad only in a cloth sock. A chain link had scraped a bloody mark across the top of his foot. He did not go back for the boot, and he could not have retrieved it anyway.

The way back was completely blocked.

Only the final stretch toward the exit remained, but dust kept falling onto the stone steps ahead as well. Helian Yuan shouldered his supplies and continued on. Along the way, he saw a side door that had been shaken open.

Behind it was a tiny watchroom. A table had overturned, and a bunch of rusty keys hung on the wall. Only one was still reasonably intact. A rectangular groove was carved into the end of the key, identical to the one on the wooden box in the records room.

Helian Yuan took down the iron key.

Half the reverse side of a map was also trapped beneath the table. He turned it over and saw a line written in newer ink: Number seven, moved to Sunken Bone Slope.

The handwriting was different from that in the old register, and the ink was darker. The line had been written long after Blackwater Ravine was abandoned.

The gray-robed organization had not given up on number seven.

They had merely moved the target from underground to Sunken Bone Slope.

Helian Yuan folded the reverse side of the map into the oilcloth and did not look for the wooden box in the records room. The main route was cut off; going back would only get him buried. He had to leave with the evidence he already had.

A cracked wooden sign also hung on the watchroom wall. It listed the order of evacuation: people first, records second, equipment last. At the bottom, someone had added a line with a knife: number seven excepted.

Most of the words had been scraped away, though the character for "except" was still legible. Helian Yuan had no time to determine whether the exception meant number seven had to be taken away first or left behind. He only committed the sign's location and the shape of the knife marks to memory. Every rule in this cave seemed complete, yet whenever number seven came up, there was always a blank, a torn page, or an exception.

Beyond the threshold of the door leading toward the sound of water were two kinds of wear marks. The wider ones came from wooden crates or iron frames; the narrower ones looked as though chains had been dragged there over a long period. Both sets of marks led downward, but only the wider ones had been worn smooth again in recent years. The recovery crew had taken the crates, while the chains remained underwater.

On the other side of the watchroom was a narrow door, with damp, cold air blowing through the crack. The route was not on the map, but the draft showed that it led to a waterway outside.

Helian Yuan tried the keys in the locks. The third lock matched one perfectly. Beyond the iron door was a long downward slope covered in water moss, and the constant sound of water came from the distance.

This was a new exit, but it could also be another trap.

There was no artificial lighting on the long slope beyond the narrow door, but handholds had been chiseled into the walls at intervals. The grooves were at uneven heights. Some suited adults, while others reached only to Helian Yuan's waist, as though things of more than one size had been transported down here in the past.

Short black fur clung to the edge of one groove, still faintly oily and glossy after getting wet. Helian Yuan took only one hair and slipped it between the pages of a paper, without stopping to identify it amid the sounds of the collapse. Only something unknown that he carried out alive would be worth examining later.

He left three iron nails at the doorway: one pointing toward the sealed main route, and two pointing toward the sound of water. If he could find this place from outside in the future, he would know that Blackwater Ravine still had a side passage.

The ceiling behind him shook again.

He pressed the last of his hemostatic powder onto his left foot, then wrapped the broken bootlace just below his knee to keep the wet cloth from slipping down as he walked. While he did this, another shower of rubble fell in the direction of the main route. Every sound urged him on, but none could take the next step for him.

Helian Yuan hesitated no longer. He braced himself against the wall and headed down.

His bootless left foot slipped with every step on the cold stone. He looped hemp rope around his waist and through the rings on the wall, lowering himself section by section as though descending a cliff. He had only one torch left and little lamp oil, so he lit neither, relying on the cold light and the sound of water to advance.

After nearly a hundred paces, a blue-gray glimmer of water appeared at the bottom of the slope.

The water was still, like a slab of cold iron buried in the mountain's depths.

Just as Helian Yuan approached, a huge shadow suddenly turned beneath the water.

Helian Yuan lowered his body without retreating immediately. The slope was covered in water moss; turning around in haste would only send him sliding into the pool. Only after finding a dry outcrop to his left did he slowly move his short spear in front of him.

Two points of eerie green light opened in the depths.

He had not found a safe exit.

He had walked up to the pool of another level-four demonic beast.