Luo Ren considered several plans before finally deciding on a fire attack.

Hurting anyone wasn’t the objective; the priority was to lure out the wild person. The three had distinct roles: Yan Hongsha would make the challenge, Mu Dai would provide cover, and Luo Ren would remain hidden to facilitate later pursuit.

The pitch-black cave entrance offered no hint of its depth. Yan Hongsha gathered a pile of leaves, separating the wet from the dry. She first used a torch to ignite a nest-shaped pile of branches. Once the fire grew, she mixed in both dry and wet leaves. The wet leaves easily produced smoke, quickly making her cough incessantly.

Mu Dai watched from a nearby tree, feeling anxious for her. Fortunately, Yan Hongsha soon found a technique—holding her outer garment in hand, she fanned it to direct the smoke into the cave.

Luo Ren speculated that the woman was likely still in the cave. Her pale skin and hair showed signs of long-term light deprivation, suggesting she rarely ventured outside except for important reasons.

He signaled to Yan Hongsha: Continue.

Yan Hongsha pressed her lips together, repeating the motions of fanning smoke and adding leaves.

A quarter hour passed with smoke thoroughly filling the cave entrance, yet there was still no response. Yan Hongsha hesitantly stopped.

Perhaps the woman wasn’t there.

Yan Hongsha pulled a torch from the fire, looked back at Mu Dai, silently asking if they should enter the cave to investigate.

This was the second plan: if the woman wasn’t present, they would enter to examine her lair and search for more clues. Two people would enter and exit together, while the third kept watch outside.

Mu Dai signaled to Luo Ren, indicating she would accompany Hongsha inside, then jumped down from the tree.

The smoke was substantial, settling low, immediately irritating their eyes upon entry. Yan Hongsha muttered that this was like calling for geese only to get pecked in the eye—setting a trap but getting caught in it themselves. They hadn’t smoked out the woman but could barely keep their own eyes open.

These words…

Mu Dai’s heart skipped a beat. She suddenly reached out and grabbed Yan Hongsha’s arm as she walked ahead.

Yan Hongsha turned back in surprise. Mu Dai remained silent, giving her a meaningful look while pulling her backward, retreating outside the cave entrance.

She whispered to Yan Hongsha: “What if she’s not afraid of smoke?”

Animals and people naturally fear smoke, scientifically speaking, because tiny particles obstruct airways and cause oxygen deprivation. But that woman—did she even have functioning airways? Did she fear oxygen deprivation?

Perhaps she was now crouching in the smoke-filled cave, like a predator poised to pounce.

Yan Hongsha understood and asked in a lowered voice: “Then what should we do?”

Mu Dai replied: “She may not fear smoke, but she certainly fears fire.”

They retreated to the fire pile and pulled out about ten burning torches. Yan Hongsha picked up a thick one and hurled it forcefully toward the cave entrance.

The cave entrance flickered with alternating light and shadow, flames dancing along the ground, carving out a bright space in the smoke.

At the entrance, they threw in two more torches, illuminating the path deeper inside. Mu Dai and Yan Hongsha clasped hands, cautiously advancing one step at a time, confirming safety on all sides before continuing.

After an uncertain number of steps, Yan Hongsha suddenly shuddered and squeezed Mu Dai’s hand hard.

“Mu Dai, did you hear that?”

She had faintly heard something—like the sound of something scratching against the stone wall. Mu Dai’s heart pounded fiercely, but she forced herself to remain calm, throwing her last two burning branches deeper inside.

This time, they finally saw something.

At the edge of the profound darkness, on the stone wall diagonally to the right, the woman was perched high above, looking down. Her white hair hung down, her eyes slightly narrowed.

With Luo Ren’s earlier description as preparation, although their flesh crawled, neither was too frightened. They simultaneously stepped backward.

Yan Hongsha lowered her voice: “What now? Do we attack?”

Mu Dai nodded, saying softly: “I’ll go high, you go low.”

This was a pincer attack formation. Yan Hongsha felt somewhat nervous and reminded her: “Let Luo Ren know.”

Mu Dai acknowledged with a sound, moving sideways with extremely slow steps while putting a whistle in her mouth.

As she and Yan Hongsha gradually widened their distance, they formed a triangle with the woman.

As Mu Dai moved, the woman’s head turned stiffly, her body shifting slightly on the stone wall. During this movement, Mu Dai again heard the sound of metal scraping against stone.

What was that? Mu Dai frowned but didn’t dare relax even slightly. When both sides were in a standoff, time seemed to pass particularly slowly. An invisible string stretched in midair, ready to snap at any moment.

It wasn’t clear which side moved first when the stalemate suddenly broke. A sharp whistle sounded as a rush of air passed overhead—the woman pounced toward Yan Hongsha first.

Yan Hongsha clenched her teeth and quickly rolled on the ground, ending up right beside the torches they had thrown earlier. Without thinking, she grabbed one in each hand, executed a swift kip-up, and struck directly at the woman’s head.

The woman indeed seemed wary of fire. She quickly flattened her body against the ground and slid backward rapidly.

Ground friction is considerable, but the woman seemed to generate power from her abdomen, moving as if on ice. When she reached the stone wall, it was as if her entire body grew feet, instantly climbing up.

Mu Dai observed. The woman had no weapons; her fingertips were sharp, and her attacks relied mainly on her hands and biting. She couldn’t be said to have martial arts skills, just rapid movement, likely developed from living at the bottom of a well for so long. Her ability to cling to the ground and walls made her as swift as a beast.

With this analysis, Mu Dai immediately had a better understanding.

Often, fear largely stems from the unknown and one’s boundless imagination. Once the opponent becomes visible, regardless of whether they have three heads and six arms or steel teeth spewing fire, they seem much less formidable.

Indeed, much less formidable—how much more frightening could she be?

Mu Dai uttered a low exclamation, climbing up along the wall. Amid the chaos, she instructed Yan Hongsha: “Hold up the torches to give me light!”

Yan Hongsha responded quickly, raising both hands while kicking backward to hook and toss up a third torch from the ground, then clutching all three together.

The flickering firelight illuminated half of the arched cave ceiling. Mu Dai couldn’t match the woman’s speed, but her mind worked extremely fast. She threw throwing darts one after another, not aiming to hit but to force the woman’s movement—if the woman tried to go up, Mu Dai would throw darts higher, forcing her downward.

Soon, Mu Dai had forced the woman below her position.

This was exactly the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She exchanged a glance with Yan Hongsha, then suddenly released her grip on the stone wall and crashed down toward the woman.

The impact was substantial. The woman was forcefully knocked to the ground, and before she could make another move, Mu Dai followed through with her momentum. When determined, she could be ruthless—using the woman as a cushion, she drove her knee down, pinning her firmly to the ground. Seeing the woman trying to raise her head, Mu Dai instinctively pressed her hand against the woman’s head, nearly forcing her face into the ground.

The woman struggled to flip Mu Dai over, who clenched her teeth and pressed down, much like when she had used the water vat lid to trap Yan Hongsha in the vat. Her disadvantage lay in her light weight; she was being rocked back and forth from below. If it had been someone of Cao Yanhua’s tonnage, they would have been as stable as a mountain with a single press.

Footsteps sounded as Luo Ren entered. Seeing the scene, he first breathed a sigh of relief, then couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

He remained silent at first, striding over and using plastic restraints to bind the woman’s feet. Then he took out another restraint for her hands, pulling them behind her back without immediately securing them, looking up at Mu Dai.

Mu Dai was still clenching her teeth, her cheeks puffed out, her hand firmly pressing down on the woman’s head, her face showing a “look how impressive I am” confidence.

Once Luo Ren completely restrained the woman, she could release her grip.

She exchanged a glance with Luo Ren, perplexed: why hadn’t he tied the woman yet?

Luo Ren gestured toward the woman’s head: “Aren’t you disgusted by that?”

The woman’s white hair was damp and sticky. What Mu Dai felt beneath her fingers was likely the occipital bone, warm, with wrinkled scalp against her fingertips.

Mu Dai felt a chill down her spine and jumped up from the woman with a shriek, shaking her hand vigorously.

Luo Ren burst out laughing as he quickly secured the plastic restraint around the woman’s hands. The woman rolled her eyes upward, struggling to turn her head, her facial expression extremely ferocious as she stared intently at Luo Ren.

Luo Ren said, “What are you looking at? Where’s my knife?”

After speaking, he turned to look at Mu Dai, who was still shaking her hand, repeatedly wiping it against the stone wall, her expression so disgusted that she looked as if she wanted to chop off her hand.

Luo Ren sighed: “Little pocket, you do blank out from time to time.”

This wasn’t the first time. The previous occasion, she had grabbed open that human skin evil talisman, then washed her hands with soap, using up half of his bottle of hand sanitizer.

Meanwhile, Yan Hongsha was holding torches, moving deeper into the cave in intervals, when she suddenly exclaimed softly and crouched down to look at something.

Luo Ren kept his eyes on the woman, standing still, while Mu Dai, still wiping her hands on the wall, went over to Yan Hongsha.

The end of the cave appeared to be the woman’s “bedroom.” Wooden boards were placed across two protruding rocks, covered with animal skins. There were also bowls and basins for eating and drinking, their edges chipped by teeth. On the bed was a blanket, piled in a shabby heap, emitting a damp, moldy smell, and also…

There seemed to be something on the bed. Mu Dai took a torch from Yan Hongsha and moved closer to look. There were two cloth dolls, one larger and one smaller.

The dolls were pieced together from cloth scraps. When squeezed, they weren’t soft inside but rustled—probably stuffed with dry leaves or twigs. The smaller doll wasn’t finished yet, with a needle stuck in it at an angle. The needle was a thin splinter of wood without an eye, with thread tightly bound to its end. The thread wasn’t a real thread but unraveled cloth fibers.

Picking it up to examine, Mu Dai saw that the stitches were crude.

She recalled the “Fair Weather Doll” she had seen earlier—apparently all made by this woman. Previously, she had thought the crude stitching was due to poor craftsmanship, but now she realized it was partly due to physical limitations and partly due to inadequate materials.

Both dolls were girls. Given the extremely basic materials, they could hardly be called charming; instead, they were somewhat chilling.

Was this the woman’s hobby? Mu Dai felt a complex mix of emotions as she placed the dolls back.

For the sake of retrieving the evil talisman, they might have to take action against this woman. Therefore, Mu Dai didn’t want to learn too much about her. If they traced back her family, lover, and interests, this woman would no longer be just the repulsive monster before them. She would become a three-dimensional person of flesh and blood—someone they couldn’t bring themselves to harm.

Yan Hongsha was still kneeling, extending her torch under the bed. After a while, she pressed her lips together, lay flat on the ground, and reached for something.

Before Mu Dai could ask, she had already pulled out a stone, then reached in again.

Mu Dai looked down at the stone and suddenly thought of something. She reached over and turned the stone to its other side.

As expected, this side had been polished, revealing the stone’s core, which contained a greenish piece.

Mu Dai vaguely guessed: “Gemstones?”

With half her body under the bed, Yan Hongsha’s voice sounded muffled: “Emeralds.”

As she spoke, she pulled out several more stones.

Some were polished, others weren’t. The polished surfaces varied in color—some rose-red, others speckled as if with gold dust.

One after another, they were rolled out by Yan Hongsha.

Growing tired of reaching, she emerged from under the bed, her hair covered in dust and cobwebs. Mu Dai helped remove the spider webs from her hair. Yan Hongsha sat dazed on the ground, looking down at the raw gemstones, giving a bitter smile.

Luo Ren was concerned and took a couple of steps toward them, hearing her speak.

“My grandfather came to dig at an empty well. This woman had already moved all the stones from the bottom of the well.”

Years ago, when Old Yan and his group of city people had made a grand expedition into the mountains, the local mountain dwellers probably knew they were coming to collect treasures. The woman, living in the village, might have heard legends about treasure hunting. Having survived, she endured days of suffering at the bottom of the well, desperately wondering why she had been targeted and what was special about this well.

According to speculation, she had seen the stones at the bottom of the well and polished some of the raw gems.

So, although these stones were of no use to her, she didn’t leave a single one for Old Yan—not a single one.

Mu Dai could almost see the woman, filled with immense hatred, climbing out of the well along its walls, carrying out the stones one by one, removing them completely.

When burying Old Yan, Hongsha had said that her grandfather had been obsessed with this treasure well for most of his life, so it was fitting to bury him in it. He could share his final resting place with the gemstones he had so desperately wanted—since they couldn’t be together in life, they could be in death, fulfilling his one desire.

But now it turned out that the treasure well was empty.

What bitter irony—his life’s pursuit had been in vain, and in death he rested in emptiness. What was it all for?

Mu Dai sighed, about to say something, when Luo Ren suddenly made a hushing sound.

In the profound depth of the cave, even this sound seemed to echo.

Mu Dai felt a chill down her spine as she looked toward Luo Ren.

But he wasn’t looking at her. He lowered his head, staring intently at the woman’s throat.

That broken throat, wrapped in a layer of transparent rouge-amber, was slowly rising and falling.