Meng Qianzi drove a four-wheel drive vehicle alone.

She was rarely by herself. From childhood to adulthood, she had always been surrounded by people. In her memory, there seemed to have never been a time when she had done anything truly alone. Even when eloping, she had dragged someone along.

She also rarely drove herself, because she always had drivers. On the rare occasions when she did drive, she was extremely cautious, as city traffic was complex with heavy flows of people and vehicles that didn’t allow for careless driving. But the plateau was different—looking out, there wasn’t a soul to be seen, not even a ghost.

She pressed the accelerator to the maximum, her body surging forward with the vehicle. She felt like a bullet fired from a gun, sliding out of the narrow, dark barrel into a vast, unfamiliar world.

She drove past the place where Jiang Lian and the others had encountered trouble. The two vehicles were too heavy and remained overturned. That’s how it was on the plateau—towing costs were exorbitant, so most people would strip the vehicles for parts, leaving the frames lying there. Later travelers who saw them wouldn’t be surprised, assuming it was just a traffic accident, reminding themselves that “of all the rules of the road, safety comes first.”

She only stopped when she reached the vicinity of the dark, looming mountains.

It was extremely quiet around her, with only the occasional sound of the wind. Meng Qianzi rummaged through the car, finding cigarettes and a lighter in the glove compartment, and two bottles of Yellow River beer on the back seat.

The beer was good—alcohol made her excited, and she wanted to stay in a state of excitement, exhilaration, or even semi-mania to accomplish what she needed to do.

The cigarettes were good too—soothing and relaxing. One couldn’t be too tense; being too tense would make it impossible to get anything done.

Meng Qianzi lit a cigarette and drank the beer. The ash at the tip of the cigarette slowly accumulated, much like her delayed emotions.

Jiang Lian’s death had been too sudden, like a bucket of water poured from above while she stood under an awning. It would take a long, long time before even a drop would seep through.

But now, she didn’t need to think about him. If the matter was settled and she hadn’t died, she would have a crippled leg and sit on the throne for several decades. Decades would be enough for her to cry, to pine, to reminisce, to waste away to skin and bones.

This one night, these couple of days, could wait.

After finishing a bottle of beer, her cheeks felt warm, and she was slightly tipsy. Meng Qianzi took out a bottle shaped like eye drops from the mountain dweller’s basket. She tilted her head back and put two drops in each eye, then closed her eyes and quickly rotated her eyeballs.

This was called “Brightener,” a tool used by the water dwellers for night vision. It was said to be made from owls and geckos, both creatures with excellent night vision abilities. Though the precision of the “Brightener” wasn’t as good as a flashlight, it was sufficient for seeing the path, and its advantage was discretion—it wouldn’t expose her position with light during nighttime activities.

After her eyes adjusted, she stroked the golden bell at her right ankle, put on her weapon belt, and shouldered the mountain dweller’s basket. She placed one gun behind her back and another at her thigh, with a sheathed dagger by her lower leg.

Then she got out of the car and walked to an open space. The car had a tracking device; someone would come to retrieve it later.

When she reached the center of the open area, she knelt on one knee, silently chanted an incantation, then slowly lowered her upper body until she was flat against the ground. Her hands grasped and pinched the soil, then spread it flat.

After a while, she stood up.

Compared to before, nothing had changed—the wind was still the same inconsistent wind, and she was still herself.

Yet everything had changed; the wind gradually carried scents.

This was another function of the Golden Bell—Mountain Wind Guide.

In this world, everything has a scent. Sometimes, what seems to have dissipated lingers; it’s just too faint for you to smell.

The Mountain Wind Guide wasn’t very suitable for the humid mountains and forests of the south, because it was too damp there with too many plants and animals. The various smells of decay, rot, and biological matter mixed by the thousands, making it difficult to distinguish them. Often, while trying to sort through the scents, one would become dizzy and disoriented. But this technique was perfectly suited for the snow-covered ridges of the northwest, where there were few people and limited livestock. With a smaller base of scents, it was easier to pick out the special, strange, or bloody ones.

Finding specific people was more difficult, but if a person had a distinctive body odor or liked to use strong perfume, it wasn’t hard to track them.

Meng Qianzi’s nostrils flared slightly as she repeatedly waved her hand near her nose. It felt as if countless scents were coming to her, lining up for her to select, and she eliminated them one by one.

After a while, she lowered her hand, turned in a specific direction, and began to run quickly.

The Mountain Wind Guide was similar to attaching a divine eye. When using it, entering a state of delirium was optimal, as this allowed for complete immersion—without becoming obsessed, one couldn’t succeed. But Meng Qianzi didn’t particularly like the Mountain Wind Guide; she always felt that sniffing and chasing like this made her seem like a dog.

She had complained about this to her Second Mother, Tang Yuru, who had taught her this technique. Tang Yuru had firmly replied: “Dogs aren’t even as good as you.”

She didn’t know if that was an insult to dogs or herself.

—

About two hours later, Meng Qianzi tracked a strange, fishy odor to a cave.

The cave was located on a hillside with a concealed entrance. If she hadn’t been following the scent and had relied only on sight, she might have missed it even in daylight. Meng Qianzi stood at the entrance for a moment, listening for any movement inside.

There was no sound, and the scent didn’t fluctuate. This place might just be an uninhabited shelter.

Meng Qianzi turned on her flashlight and slowly walked in.

The cave wasn’t large, but it was about fifty or sixty square meters. The first thing her flashlight illuminated was a pool of blood. Meng Qianzi stared at the blood for a moment—the amount suggested an injury, not a death.

She moved the flashlight beam, and soon, something glinted at the edge of the light—a pair of glasses with one lens shattered and the other intact.

Meng Qianzi went over and picked them up, quickly recognizing them as Shen Gun’s glasses.

The driver named Sun Yao had said that the people in the car had separated and scattered in different directions.

If the pursuers had been targeting Shen Gun, then he would have been a priority, and his capture would have been inevitable.

Was Shen Gun dead? It didn’t seem so. This place was already far from the incident site. With Shen Gun’s physique, running this far would have been nearly impossible. Perhaps he had been brought here and then taken elsewhere.

Where had he been taken? This was the Bayan Har Mountain range, but her path had been singular, consistently pointing northwest. This direction, if followed long enough, would connect to the Kunlun Mountains.

Meng Qianzi pondered for a moment, tucked the glasses with the single lens into her bag, and as she stood up, noticed something else on the cave wall.

Was that… human skin?

Pale and rotting, it hung loosely on the wall. Meng Qianzi found it disgusting and didn’t touch it, but leaned in to smell it—her sense of smell was now too sensitive, causing some physical discomfort, so she backed away.

Yes, it was that smell—the strange, fishy odor.

She took out a GPS device and recorded the location. Time was pressing; the effect of the injections would begin to weaken after four hours, at which point she would need another dose. But her body might develop resistance, meaning the second and third injections would be far less effective than the first. She needed to hurry.

As Meng Qianzi was about to leave, her nostrils instinctively flared again.

A fishy smell was approaching, getting closer, and this scent carried warmth.

Something alive.

Meng Qianzi quickly turned off her flashlight, looked around, and hid behind a rock. She drew her gun, rested it on the rock, and aimed while holding her breath.

Before long, the thing entered. Its form was strange, and as soon as Meng Qianzi saw its head, she knew “who” it was—indeed, the head was enormous, with thin, long limbs, resembling a mantis-person.

Meng Qianzi gritted her teeth, lowered her gun barrel, aimed at one of its thin legs, and pulled the trigger. Truthfully, her shooting was like her fishing for abalone shells—sometimes hit, sometimes miss, purely based on luck. Today her anger was strong, and it seemed her luck was good too; she hit it on the first shot.

The mantis-person rolled away, emitting a low, strange sound that made one’s skin crawl. It seemed its throat and vocal cords hadn’t developed properly, making normal vocalization impossible, yet it still managed to squeeze out some sounds.

Meng Qianzi turned on her flashlight.

Now she could see it.

The mantis-person was wearing clothes, though they seemed to be a random assortment, pieces taken from here and there, serving only the function of covering the body and keeping warm. No normal person would dress like that. Its head wasn’t large—the back of the skull protruded, like a deformed child with two heads where one hadn’t fully developed independently and had been partially absorbed by the other. More frightening were its four limbs. It wasn’t wearing shoes, and the sleeves and pants only covered half of its limbs, leaving the other half exposed. Perhaps startled by the flashlight, the exposed halves folded back, making its form appear more normal than before, more human-like.

Not far from the mantis-person lay a leg as thin as an arm—the piece she had shot off. Strangely, despite the severed limb, there wasn’t much blood. Moreover, the skin on that leg segment appeared rotten and loose, with several places where the skin was hanging, as if the slightest brush against something would cause it to fall off.

Meng Qianzi immediately thought of the water dwellers.

Yes, it must be the water dwellers. Years ago, when the water dwellers had an incident at the Three Rivers source, they died in countless bizarre ways. The most memorable account she had heard was of people whose bones grew rapidly, eventually piercing through their skin—this happened because the skin’s growth rate couldn’t keep up with the bones. If the skin had kept pace and the person had survived, they might have ended up like the mantis-person before her.

But which group of water dwellers were these?

In a flash of insight, she suddenly understood: those few tattered tents at the Three Rivers source had originally been a camp with at least twenty people. Later, when Ding Panling appeared, everyone from that camp disappeared.

After the mountain dwellers got involved, the water dwellers had quieted down and ceased their activities. Theoretically, with the drifting underground chambers cut off, they had lost their “eyes and ears”—that last batch of missing water dwellers were probably their final pawns and support.

Meng Qianzi emerged from her hiding place, keeping her gun pointed at the creature to prevent any sudden movements. “Can you speak?” she asked.

The question was pointless. It hadn’t even cried out in pain when its leg was shot off, so she didn’t expect it to speak.

“You can hear me, though, right? And you can draw?” Meng Qianzi gestured to a small stone on the ground. “Pick it up. I’ll ask, you draw.”

The mantis-person hesitated, then slowly unfolded its arm and picked up the stone.

Meng Qianzi reached into her pocket with one hand, took out Shen Gun’s glasses, and waved them. “This person—where is he?”

She had initially wanted to ask if he was alive or dead, but thought better of it. She shouldn’t give options; she should let it answer freely.

She had expected, like the entity inside Yan Luo, that it would only be able to make crude marks, but to her surprise, this creature could write—watching such a monster write was truly chilling.

That night, she had come with a desperate resolve, believing herself to be fearless, but the few words the mantis-person wrote instantly made her scalp tighten.

It wrote: “I know you.”

She quickly composed herself and laughed coldly. “You’ve seen me before?”

Perhaps the creature was just trying to intimidate her, deliberately disturbing her mind.

The mantis-person pointed to her ankle.

Meng Qianzi looked down to see the Beast-Subduing Golden Bell. Earlier, when performing the incantation, she had rolled up her pants leg for convenience, exposing the bell. Because that leg had been injected with the medication and had no feeling or sensation, she wasn’t bothered by the cold and had forgotten to roll it back down.

This being hadn’t seen her before; it had seen the Beast-Subduing Golden Bell. Based on the bell, it had deduced her identity.

Meng Qianzi said, “This is just a gold chain. They sell them everywhere. Nothing special about it.”

The mantis-person shook its head and bent down to write again. This time, its body crouched very low, its head hanging down, and its arm trembling continuously—Meng Qianzi recalled Yan Luo’s suicide. Whatever, if this thing wanted to kill itself, let it die.

But the words it wrote caught Meng Qianzi’s attention.

The first two characters were “Tian Ti” (Heavenly Ladder).

The Beast-Subduing Golden Bell was said to correspond to nine types of symbols. The ones Meng Qianzi used most frequently were “Moving Mountain Beast,” “Avoiding Mountain Beast,” and “Subduing Mountain Beast.” She even rarely used “Mountain Wind Guide,” but rare as it was, she at least knew what each one did. Only the final one, “Opening the Heavenly Ladder,” had a symbol but no incantation or ritual. When she had asked Lady Mother about it, she was told it hadn’t been passed down.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it hadn’t been passed down. Throughout history, across various industries, many things have been lost or discontinued. It didn’t matter if this was one more such case.

This being truly had seen the Beast-Subduing Golden Bell.

Meng Qianzi’s mind filled with questions. Holding her gun, she slowly circled to the mantis-person’s side and then behind it.

From this angle, she could see more words. It had written: You are there, you must be careful, you…

Why did each phrase start with “you”? It was as if it truly wanted to warn her about something.

Just then, the folded skin layers on the back of the mantis-person’s head suddenly lifted, revealing two fierce, glaring eyes.

Simultaneously, its arms and legs violently folded backward, with sharp claws extending directly toward Meng Qianzi’s head. The extra part on the back of its head was a face without a nose or mouth! Its limbs could bend forward or backward, functioning freely—in other words, its back was also a person!

Damn it, no wonder it had been so cooperative!

Meng Qianzi gritted her teeth, quickly lowered her gun barrel, aimed between those eyes, and pulled the trigger. Several gunshots rang out, splattering the creature’s brains, but its body didn’t die immediately. Its thin arms and legs moved rapidly across the ground, scurrying several meters away, still twisting and convulsing for a while before finally going silent.

Meng Qianzi stood motionless, gun still raised, waiting for quite some time before finally exhaling deeply. Then she looked down at the words.

It had written: Heavenly Ladder, you are there, you must be careful, you will die there.

Damn it, sure enough, it couldn’t write anything substantial. It was cursing her.