Chapter 248 Saving a Life from the Snake
Two hours. Hearing that, Leng Changxi frowned a little. It implied that someone had started off at least two hours earlier than they did. Who indeed was following them so closely？No. He was not following them. The man was walking even ahead of them.
In front of the snake cave, there was still residential heat on the faggots which hadn’t been burned out yet. The grass and wood beside it were cleared, which obviously was done when the man was resting. The cave was dark inside. Cha was not seen anywhere. The soldier kidnapped by the huge python was very likely to have little chance of surviving.
Wanyan Su ordered the soldiers to tie the torches. In the wild, fire and water were both of great importance. This time, however, he asked people to take out a dozen torches at one time. He also seemed to feel worried about the man showing up in Yeren Valley without reason.
The torches were set to fire one after another. The smoke rose up slowly. Wanyan Su selected 12 of his agilest and strongest bodyguards to enter the cave. The 12 torches shone the entrance of the cave bright immediately. Seeing them going in one by one, people felt as if their hearts had been hanged up into the air. After a while, reporting voice came from inside, “Your Highness, Cha and the huge python has died together. The snake’s stomach was cut open, but the person in it had been totally dead already.”
Clearly, the brave younger brother had risked his life to save his elder brother, but he ended up dying with regret. Before long, soldiers’ voices came again from the inside, “There was another person’s body in the cave.”
“Drag him out.”
A few moments later, the twelve soldiers in the cave came out, each three of them carrying a body. Cha’s body was covered with drug wounds and bruises. The man in the python was covered with slime. The last one, the body that was carried out, was only a half of it, to be precise. His lower body was eaten up by the huge python, but his upper body was recognizable with effort.
The soldier put the body’s hair to the other side, exposing his pale face. The dead man was the young man of Tamuer Village.
Immediately someone among the soldiers shouted, “I’ve known that there is something wrong with the village. Brothers, we will level the village to the ground and kill all the people there when we come back.”
“Shut up, all of you!” It was the first time for Wanyan Su to lose his temper in public. Leng Changxi once said, his good temper of being graceful and kind might cause his inferiors to violate his order causally. Although his temper was in sharp contrast with the Grand Prince’s cruelty and foppery, he should not tolerate it if his authority was challenged. At this moment, Wanyan Su fully understood the words.
“Now that we have been in the valley, it’s impossible for us to come back.” Yes. Although Wanyan Su had sent someone to bury Sun Chengzhen’s body well in secret, if the villager found that Sun Chengzhen was missing or dead, they would absolutely blame Wanyan Su and his people for it. While Sun Chengzhen had killed so many people, to those villagers, he had always been a kind old man with some madness. They were the only suspects.
Maybe because it was the first time for Wanyan Su to get angry like that, more than 100 people present were shocked by that. Leng Changxi squatted to examine the young man’s wound. It was undeniable that he was bitten to death by the python. At the scene, there was only his trace. It seemed that he had sneaked into the valley alone. If he had the same aim as Leng Changxi did, to find the lost treasure or weapon factory, shouldn’t he take more people with him?
Leng Changxi continued to go down. He saw that the young man’s right hand was clenched tightly as if it were holding something. Something that he was protecting when dying must be more important than his own life. Leng Changxi took great strength to open the young man’s cold, stiff right hand. Inside, there was no more than a map as large as his palm, on which there were dried blood and the sticky slime in the huge python’s stomach.
The more he looked at the map, the more familiar he felt to it.
Leng Changxi glanced at Wanyan Su, expressing what he was thinking right now through his eyes. Wanyan Su looked around and counted the number of people quickly. Besides the one eaten by the huge python and the one died with it, there were many bitten to death or injury by the snake in the 170 people. Those serving ladies following the troop all died without any exception. At such a key point, the soldiers couldn’t spare time and effort to protect them.
The troop was organized in a hurry. The people were walking in haste in the valley where poisonous snakes were the most crowded. The cool wind blew from a hillside. This was the first open ground the soldiers saw after walking through so many thick forests and bushes.
Wanyan Su ordered the soldiers to encamp here. Although it was still early, everyone was scared out of their lives by the terrifying experience in the snake valley. When the tents were pitched, and the campfire was burning, the sun was about to set. Wanyan Su’s tent was a white one in the center, also the largest. Yaqi came in, carrying the soup made just now. In the tent, Wanyan Su, Qin Yunuan and Leng Changxi were discussing something important.
On the table, there was the map taken from the young man’s hand.
Yaqi put down the soup behind the curtain for spacing. The ingredients were some fungi found by soldiers in the forest temporarily, giving out fragrance.
Beside the table, Leng Changxi put silently the map of the four families he collected in front of Wanyan Su one by one. He explained, “This one is made up of four maps which are kept by the four prominent families of Qi. And this one is found from the man of Tamuer Village. Your Highness, have you seen something unusual?”
Wanyan Su frowned and stared at them carefully for a long time before saying, “The two maps are actually the same. That’s right. They are the same but are put together in different ways.” While saying, Wanyan Su was fiddling with the four separate maps. He couldn’t help but say, “Oh my God! It’s incredible. No matter what kind of way is used to put the four maps together, a complete route will form in the end. However, how can we know which one is the correct one?”
Leng Changxi sighed deeply and pointed at the four maps, “This is exactly where the intelligence of the last emperor of Qi lies. Queen Mother invented the four maps in order to make the four families fight with each other. The last emperor was better than her. Even though the four families can cooperate with each other and collect these maps together, they can’t reach the treasure. What they will get is more and more blood and tears.”
“What about this one?” Wanyan Su pointed at the smaller one, which was taken from the young man, “This one is complete. Maybe it is real.”
“If it is real, why did the young man die of the snake?” Qin Yunuan said slowly, “I’ve checked the mud around the cave. The one on the surface is quite different from the one under it, which is mixed with the smell liked by the snake. When I went downhill, I paid attention to the surroundings. The mud on the surface of the whole mountain has been under special treatment. It can be said that it is actually an artificial snake mountain. If I’m right, there must be a person good at mechanism and geomancy that has arranged the Yeren Valley accurately and modified its structure, making it a huge labyrinth. Those knowing nothing of the labyrinth and having no correct map will step into the trap he set.”
“Who on earth designed it, then?” Wanyan Su frowned. It seemed that things were much worse than his imagination. What was scarier was that he had walked to the center of the labyrinth step by step. It would be too difficult for him to go out.
Leng Changxi and Qin Yunuan exchanged a glance.
“I guess it’s Sun Chengzhen,” Leng Changxi said quietly.
“How can it be him?” Wanyan Su wouldn’t believe it, “You’ve said that the reason for him to stay at the Tamuer Village is to return to the weapon factory one day. If it was him who designed this, he could have entered it easily.”
“In my opinion, returning to the weapon factory may not be his real goal,” Qin Yunuan analyzed slowly, “Talents are always lonely. Since he could set such a big structure in the Yeren Valley under the monitoring of the emperor, he must be waiting for someone who can break it. His escape later was also challenging himself to see whether he could run away from the labyrinth he carefully constructed. His final success made him even lonelier. He thought that nobody could beat him anymore, so he set barriers and horrible stories to stop people from entering the valley while waiting for someone really powerful who could break his labyrinth. I guess that the fake map in the young man’s hand was from Sun Chengzhen, too. He just wanted to see how smart the young man was and whether he could find out the flaw. What a pity! Facing such an attractive condition, who can still keep great observation and logical thinking?”
“If it is really him…” Wanyan Su elongated his voice, “There must be methods to break the labyrinth in his house. I’ll send people to search for his house immediately.”
“Unnecessary,” Qin Yunuan stopped him, “I’ve already seen everywhere in his house. There is nothing useful. It seems that he has ruined all the clues already.”
Wanyan Su sighed. He was worried about the fate of the 170 people. At first, learning that Leng Changxi was confident of getting the whole map, he agreed to risk the danger to go because he believed in Leng Changxi. But now he suddenly learned that the map was not reliable at all.
“However, he can ruin the clue, but he can’t ruin his own habits,” Qin Yunuan raised her lips suddenly, showing extreme confidence. There would always be clues in the world. What really mattered, however, was whether they could be found.
“My husband and I have examined it. Inside Sun Chengzhen’s teapot was the Sparrow Tongue tea. Even the teacup was steeped with the aroma of it. It implied that he had drunk this tea for years. There was its aroma in the bamboo basket outside his house, which meant that the Sparrow Tongue tea was picked up by himself. The Sparrow Tongue tea was hard to grow. It only grew in the place where there was thick, wet, red earth on the lee side, which was also good for bamboo to grow. Sun Chengzhen was old now, so he couldn’t walk a long distance to pick the tea. Therefore, the map with the sign of bamboo forests is the one at the bottom.”