Gripped by sheer terror, Cha Ji bolted, fleeing with everything he had, but he'd barely taken a few steps before suddenly stopping, staring down at his own body in astonishment.
"How am I able to move...?"
He turned around.
Luo and Shun De could move too, as though the paralysis that had struck them moments earlier had never existed at all.
As for the hawk standing before them, it didn't seem to care about them in the slightest.
It calmly pulled back toward where the lizard had fallen, then landed beside its corpse and began pecking at it, as though it hadn't just fought a battle moments ago.
"...?"
None of them could make sense of what was happening.
They stayed rooted in place, watching the hawk tear through pieces of the lizard's corpse with steady pecks, holding onto that strange dignity of its amid the smoke and scattered rock.
The scene was imposing in a way hard to put into words.
A glowing blue hawk standing over the corpse of a massive beast, its feathers glowing in the darkness of the cave, tearing into its prey with a strange sense of reverence...
Like some legendary painting of a phoenix devouring a dragon.
The three of them looked at each other.
They exchanged nothing more than brief glances, as though they'd agreed on a single decision without needing to say a word.
Then they quietly pulled back.
But they didn't head toward the exit.
Instead, they chose to push deeper into the cave and take on even more risk.
After seeing the hawk up close, a strange sense of reassurance toward it had started creeping into them. True, the danger that had kept them from turning back had vanished, and they could now try to find a way out, but greed settled in with even greater force.
After all, when a predator leaves you alone, that usually meant it wouldn't waste its energy hunting you once it was fed.
And to the three of them, that felt like an extra layer of safety.
They circled around the hawk carefully, keeping a safe distance from it, then continued making their way inward.
A short while later, they found a narrow tunnel between the rocks, stretching deep into the cave, with a faint light coming from inside.
They exchanged glances, then entered one after another.
The moment they crossed through the tunnel, the space ahead of them suddenly widened.
The three of them stopped.
Before them stood giant crystals jutting out of the ground, the walls, and the ceiling, interlocking with each other like a forest of crystal. The crystals lit up the entire hollow with an intense glow, forcing the three of them to squint in the first moment.
The light reflected off the damp ground and the surrounding rocks, making the place look like a natural vault of gems.
"Are we sure pushing forward is actually a good idea?"
Cha Ji said, rubbing his arm nervously.
"I'm still shaking from that damn hawk."
Shun De sighed, then kept walking.
"Quite the opposite, actually, I'm starting to like its presence. If it weren't for it, we would've ended up in a life-or-death fight with that lizard, and I don't think the outcome would've been in our favor."
He paused for a moment, then turned to face them.
"And besides, we didn't come all the way here just to run at the first gust of wind. Why all this preparation? Why did we spend every last bit of our savings?"
He gestured toward the crystals scattered around them.
"I think the gems we've already walked past alone could make us rich, but I don't think we can extract all of it. This cave's full of danger, and carrying all this wealth around while hiding it from greedy eyes and grasping hands won't be an easy task."
Luo nodded, but didn't answer.
His mind was busy weighing every possibility.
He was comparing walking out now empty-handed against staying and gathering as much wealth as possible.
But the problem wasn't finding the money.
It was keeping it.
Even if they managed to extract a massive amount of gems, they wouldn't be able to carry all of it. And the more wealth they gathered, the more likely it was to draw the attention of people stronger than them.
And they didn't have the power needed to protect that wealth.
So finding one single, light, valuable item, or a high-level Phantom they could refine, would be far better than carrying massive quantities of gems around.
They kept pushing forward between the crystals, their footsteps echoing through the wide hollow.
Luo stayed silent for a moment, then a small smile appeared on his face.
"Next time we run into this hawk..."
He looked back, toward the tunnel that had vanished behind them.
"...I'm going to name it Wenru Deng."
"That's an embarrassingly cheesy name... hahaha."
The sound of laughter echoed through the cave.
It wasn't ordinary laughter.
It struck the walls and spread through the passages, its echo doubling until it sounded like several people laughing at the exact same time. The sound grew loud and terrifying with sudden intensity, making all three of them jolt in place.
"Oh, no..."
Luo flinched, activating his Phantoms on instinct.
His senses spread out around him, trying to sense any nearby danger, but nothing appeared.
No aura.
No movement.
No source for the sound.
And worse still, the sound was coming from every direction at once.
Then it spoke again, as though reading what was unfolding in front of it moment by moment.
"Luo backed away half a step, then clenched his fist, activating his Phantoms, trying to sense the source of the danger..."
Luo froze.
A chill swept through his entire body.
It wasn't just that this man knew what they were doing.
He was narrating their actions.
"Wh... who are you? Identify yourself!"
Cha Ji screamed, turning in every direction.
He couldn't sense anyone's presence.
He tried to pinpoint the direction of the voice, but couldn't; it echoed from the walls, from the ceiling, from the ground, as though the cave itself was speaking to them.
The answer came back immediately:
"Oh, your reactions are so bland."
A brief silence settled.
Then the voice continued, mockingly:
"My first volume might fail to tell a good victims' tale if you all keep this up."
Cha Ji swallowed hard.
"Victims...?"
The voice laughed.
"Come on, do you need to see fireworks before you give me better reactions?"
And suddenly, its voice rose.
A massive sonic blast tore through the cave, shaking the rocks around them, and all three of them felt a sharp pain in their ears.
Cha Ji doubled over, hands clamped over his ears.
Luo stumbled back a step, his eyes widening.
Even Shun De had to clench his jaw to fight through the pain.
But amid it all, Shun De remained the steadiest.
He wasn't entirely calm; a chill ran through his body, his mind racing at full speed.
Is he one of those crazy old men obsessed with writing?
He swallowed hard.
If that's the case... we're in serious trouble.
But what frightened him more wasn't the voice itself.
It was the fact that this person was describing their movements and words in real time.
Every time one of them moved, he'd talk about it.
Every time one of them spoke, he'd repeat what they'd said.
As though some invisible eye was watching them from every corner of the cave.
And worse still...
his voice hadn't stopped its noise for even a single moment.
"How about this?"
The voice suddenly stopped, then came back this time in a much calmer tone, as though it hadn't just been messing with their nerves moments earlier.
"There's an exit at the end of the cave."
Silence settled.
"Your mission is to make it out alive, and I'll give you a reward."
No one answered.
The three of them were still looking around, trying to pinpoint the location of whoever owned that voice, but the cave had returned to complete stillness.
This wasn't an ordinary suggestion.
It was clear the voice's owner had deliberately avoided giving them a direct order from the first word. He wanted them to first absorb his presence, to fear him, and then to start drawing their own conclusions about who he was, where he was, and what was actually happening.
Had he told them from the start exactly what he wanted them to do, telling them he was simply writing them, they might have refused or resisted.
But now, he'd planted the idea of an exit and a reward in their minds only after making them feel they were under his complete watch and control.
And when a person is consumed by fear and trying to make sense of what's happening, accepting the situation as it is becomes much, much easier.
The voice vanished.
It left them no chance to ask anything.
The three of them looked at each other.
None of them knew what they were supposed to
do.
But they knew one thing.
From this moment on, they were no longer the ones deciding the pace of this journey.
Someone else was watching them...
And he wanted them to push forward, all the way to the end of the cave.