Chapter 81: No Return
Translator: Cinder Translations
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Fortunately, the music classroom had a tiered structure, and the water that had seeped in stopped at the first step.
Once they stepped up the stairs, they were finally free from the strange sensation of walking in water.
The constant squelch, squelch sound was driving them insane.
Zhou Taifu shook off the water from his shoes, glanced around, and instinctively lowered his voice, "This place is too big. If we want to search everything, we won't make it in time."
"Let's start searching. If we can't find anything, we'll figure it out later," Yu Wen replied, clearly also unwilling to split up.
From where they stood, darkness swallowed nearly everything, shrouding the room in a foggy gloom.
They started on the far left.
There were piles of equipment, presumably left over from previous rehearsals. Moving them around constantly would have been inconvenient, so they were just left here.
The thought that, in less than 30 hours, they would be back at midnight for the third rehearsal spurred them to move faster.
After a quick search, they didn't find anything unusual.
They pressed forward, and aside from Yu Wen's phone light, Zhou Taifu had borrowed a small flashlight from Feng Lan.
It wasn't very bright, only lighting up a short distance, but it was better than nothing.
Zhou Taifu carefully moved his feet, avoiding the colorful wires scattered on the floor, which resembled a spider's web in a demon's lair.
He lifted his feet high to avoid tripping over the wires.
Ten minutes passed, and they had only searched a small area. At this pace, there was no way they would finish before nightfall.
"This won't work," Zhou Taifu straightened up. "We need to spread out more to cover a larger area."
Yu Wen, having no better suggestion, nodded, "Be careful. Call out if anything happens. And…" She spoke seriously, "There are a lot of obstacles here that block visibility, so stay sharp."
Zhou Taifu nodded, "Okay, let's keep within ten meters of each other."
Just as Zhou Taifu was about to head to another section, Yu Wen suddenly shouted toward the door, "Miss Feng!"
After a brief silence...
"Miss Yu," Feng Lan's voice replied from the doorway, sounding terrified, "Please... hurry up. It's so dark in here."
Hearing Feng Lan's response reassured Yu Wen a bit. She gestured to Zhou Taifu, and he moved off to search elsewhere.
But as often happens, the gap between expectations and reality widened. As they raced against time, they strangely started to lose track of each other, growing farther and farther apart.
An eerie and inexplicable tension gradually began to consume them. They became increasingly anxious, and their movements grew more erratic.
Zhou Taifu rolled up his sleeves and moved a cabinet that seemed suspicious, but in the end, it turned out to be nothing.
The cabinet was empty, clean, with nothing inside.
Even the gap beneath it held nothing.
Creak—
A sudden, sharp sound of friction caught Zhou Taifu's attention. He glanced around, but other than Yu Wen's phone light flickering from the other side, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"What was that noise?" He frowned.
Creak—
It was as if something was playing hide and seek with him. As soon as he bent down, he heard it again.
This time, a chill ran down his spine.
It wasn't the sound of old door hinges squeaking. This was the sound of a rope straining under pressure, as though it was about to snap.
As a former mercenary, Zhou Taifu had mastered the art of assassination.
He had once strangled a traitor with a rope, and during the man's final moments of struggle, the rope had made that very same sound.
Zhou Taifu didn't react immediately. Instead, he called out loudly to Yu Wen, "Did you hear anything?"
The light from Yu Wen's phone flickered, and then her voice came, "No."
Her voice was calm, and Zhou Taifu couldn't help but let out a long breath.
"Stay alert," he warned, still scanning the area.
It was even darker than before. The shadows, which had once been faintly visible, now appeared as pitch-black masses.
Zhou Taifu reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, something he had bought earlier that morning along with some soy milk.
He wasn't addicted to smoking, but he had an odd attachment to it.
It stemmed from his time in the mosquito-infested jungles of Southeast Asia.
The veterans there smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, often adding crushed leaves from a particular plant.
One puff was enough to clear the mind, keeping one awake for an entire day and night.
Zhou Taifu had once asked a veteran about the plant, but the old man, with his yellowed, decaying teeth, had only smiled and told him it was called Sang Ji Ji in their local dialect.
It had another name: "Corpse Grass."
This plant was strange, the veteran had explained, growing only in swampy areas filled with freshly buried corpses.
The old man, with calloused hands, had grabbed Zhou Taifu's arm and told him he had once seen the grass sprout directly from a dead man's arm.
That had sent a shiver down Zhou Taifu's spine.
It started as a tiny sprout, then slowly absorbed nutrients from the flesh until it grew into a full plant, standing 20 centimeters tall.
Bright red, and visible from a distance.
"That's human blood and flesh inside," the old man had said, his expression serious as he crouched with his mud-stained legs crossed, staring off into the distance.
There was something in his eyes that Zhou Taifu couldn't comprehend.
"Kid," the old man rasped, his voice rough from years of smoking, "Listen to me. Walk away. While you still can, leave this place. Go anywhere, just never come back."
"But I haven't even gotten half my payment," Zhou Taifu had replied, not wanting to interrupt the old man's thoughts. He had half-joked, half-reassured him, "I'll finish this job, then settle down, get married, and live a peaceful life."
The old man, seeing through Zhou Taifu's deflection, had sighed and said nothing more.
The rough, homemade cigarette had burned brightly in his hand, the flame blood-red, filling the air with the acrid taste of blood.
After finishing his cigarette, the old man had stood up, patted the dirt off his pants, and left without a word, slinging his battered AK-47 over his shoulder.
His pants were so dirty their original color was unrecognizable. One leg was rolled up, while the other dragged in the mud, making a squelch, squelch sound with every step.
Just as Zhou Taifu had been about to leave, his peripheral vision had caught something beneath where the old man had been sitting.
No, it wasn't just an ordinary rock.
It was a tombstone.
And on that tombstone were engraved words in the local script.
Worn down by time, the inscription was barely legible.
Zhou Taifu, unfamiliar with the language, had squinted, trying to make out the words, reading them one by one:
"Those... with blood on their hands... shall not return."
(End of the Chapter)
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