Chapter 89: Defying Fate and Altering Destiny

Murong Xue sliced open her wrist, and fresh blood slid down her arm, pale and slender as scallion stalks. Unsure what she intended, I hurriedly tore a strip from my clothes to bind her wound, but she pushed my hand away and said, “My blood can cure any poison. If you drink it, you’ll be fine.”

So that was it. Without hesitation, I held Murong Xue’s arm and took a mouthful of her blood. It carried no trace of iron or bitterness; instead, it tasted sweet, akin to sugar water. Truly, celestial beings were extraordinary—even their blood was sweet. Once I was safe, I finished bandaging her wound, and together we turned to the task of breaking through the wall.

Lacking proper tools, we resorted to the Frostblade Sword. Yet the stone wall was unfathomably hard. Even with the sword’s edge, which could slice through iron like mud, and my robust internal energy, the wall remained impenetrable. I sat on the ground, breathless. If only Qin Tian were here; his technique, “Earth-Shattering Stone,” would surely blast through the wall. Thinking of him spurred me to stand and try again. I summoned every ounce of strength—no matter what, I had to escape this damned underground. My brothers still lingered outside, their fate uncertain.

“Old Li, this stone is too hard!” Yu Jing wiped the sweat from his brow. His forehead was drenched, his clothes soaked. He must have been the most anxious among us; after all, his beloved Xiao Xiang Ke’er was still outside. As for me, I had nothing left to bind me.

“Brother Yu, let’s shatter it together.”

I gathered my true energy, and Yu Jing and I attacked in tandem. Our fists struck the stone, sending sparks flying. If once wasn’t enough, we tried again. My next punch seemed to reveal a faint crack in the wall.

“We’re almost through. Brother Yu, give it all you’ve got.”

Yu Jing nodded. With our final blow, the stone wall collapsed with a thunderous crash, revealing yet another identical hall before us.

“What the hell is this! Fuck!” I couldn’t help but curse, hoping they wouldn’t understand. What kind of place was this? How many such halls existed? Clearly, they had been constructed by human hands. Why were they sealed? How did the builders escape? A succession of questions weighed on me; I dearly wished to curse the mother of whoever built this cave.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to me: perhaps something unexpected had happened here, forcing the workers to halt construction and flee in haste, sealing the entrances behind them. Yes, that must be it. I couldn’t think of a more reasonable explanation—such incidents often appeared in detective novels. But why did they flee? What uncontrollable events transpired?

Could it have been the zombie we burned earlier? Let’s speculate: the workers began their excavation, inadvertently uncovering a corpse—the white-haired zombie. That large vat must have been meant to store the body. The corpse, absorbing earth energy for years, failed to decompose, gradually transforming into a zombie. When the workers retreated, they sealed all the exits. We shouldn’t have been able to find this place, but continents drift and the earth’s crust shifts. After countless years, geological changes formed the entrance we entered through, and the passage leading underground had originally been carved by the construction team. This explains the child’s body in the cave—it must have been snatched by the zombie during the night. Fortunately, we destroyed it; had we left it unchecked, who knows what disaster it might have caused? It was simply unlucky to encounter us in the wrong era.

“How many more stone caves like this are there?” The Nine-Tailed Fox stamped her foot in frustration.

“Stop complaining. With the two of them clearing the way, what is there to worry about?” Murong Xue smiled lightly, her charm blossoming like spring flowers—a natural allure few could ever imitate.

I forced a bitter smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Murong Xue smile; she was stunning when she did. Yu Jing’s expression mirrored mine, a rueful smile lingering on his lips. There was nothing for it—time to keep blasting through walls. That’s what it meant to be a man: to stand before women when danger loomed.

After breaking through another wall, I wiped sweat from my brow and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Yu Jing asked for one, lighting it with my fire, and started smoking, whether out of habit or for distraction, I couldn’t tell. Ahead lay yet another hall—one stone table, four stone stools. I sat on the edge of the cave entrance, idly puffing, tossing out questions here and there. On this journey, nerves had been stretched taut; seldom did we have time to sit and talk.

“Miss Murong, you two come sit over here. I have some questions to ask.”

Murong Xue and the Nine-Tailed Fox settled onto a chunk of broken stone beside me. “What questions, Young Master Li?” The Nine-Tailed Fox gazed at me with an ambiguous, mesmerizing look. I thought, she truly lives up to her name—what man could resist such a seductive gaze? I certainly couldn’t.

“The fireball that appeared this time is clearly the same one we saw in the forest before. As Miss Murong predicted, it crashed down in less than twenty days. What is this fireball? What should we do when we get out?” I stubbed my cigarette on the ground. I was out of ideas. I, a small-town police officer from the twenty-first century, had inexplicably crossed into another world and was now tasked with saving it. What kind of joke was fate playing on me? Could I really save the world? Was I up to the task? The damn Martians were crashing into Earth—who was going to save me?

“That’s probably a small planet from the universe. Such phenomena have occurred before, though never on this scale.” The Nine-Tailed Fox rested her chin in her palm.

“Yes, that’s right. There was an incident a few hundred years ago. The fireball then wasn’t so large—it caused some fires, but passed quickly. This time, though, it’s far greater in scope. We’re seeing it for the first time ourselves.” Murong Xue agreed.

“So what are we supposed to do, sisters? Think of something! We can’t just keep hiding. Maybe we can prevent the fireball from crashing down.” The thought made my head ache. That fireball could blot out half the sky; if it struck, the Earth might explode outright. Was this the apocalypse? But what right did I have to stop it?

“Let nature take its course. Everything has its destiny,” Murong Xue replied calmly.

Destiny. Murong Xue still believed in fate? I didn’t. I intended to defy it! Damn fate! I stood up abruptly and blasted through the stone wall with a palm strike. Retracting my hand, I stared in disbelief at Yu Jing and the others. Beyond the opening I’d created, a sea of fire raged.