C10 Chapter 10

“General Lang, let me borrow your shoulder for a second.”

As she spoke, she suddenly climbed up onto him. General Lang stiffened, but he still went along with it.

She steadied herself on his shoulder, reached both hands up toward the top of the stone room, and fiddled with something out of sight. A moment later, the stone above them shifted open, revealing a patch of pale blue sky.

A light breeze drifted down, and a rush of fresh air filled their lungs.

The room instantly brightened, almost like they were outside.

General Lang hadn’t expected anything like this hidden in a tomb. His eyes lit up. “Is that wind from outside?”

Tang Yao flipped down from his shoulder with ease, landed lightly, and dusted off her hands. “It is. But this isn’t an exit. There’s some kind of strange crystal set in here—it pulls in fresh air and lights the place up. You can’t get out from here.”

“How do you know all that?” General Lang’s gaze darkened, a hint of curiosity flashing in his eyes.

“I figured it out. Call me a fortune-teller if you want.”

Tang Yao felt along the wall on the left for a moment. Two sharp clicks sounded...

A huge panel—something like a mirror—appeared in the stone.

She moved to the right wall and searched again. Click, click—another mechanism triggered, and the main door of the stone room suddenly slid back, opening wide. Then the clicking continued, one after another.

All through the tomb’s passageways, more stone-bright mirrors appeared. They reflected off each other, bouncing the crystal light around until the tomb was no longer dark, but bright as day.

The soldiers in the cavern let out startled cries. “Look—it’s lit up!”

“This is unreal. Whoever built this was a genius!”

“If it’s like this, we’ve gotta be able to get out now, right?”

“Even if we can’t, we can hide out here for a couple days!”

But at that moment, only Deputy Commander Zhang frowned. His eyes swept the area like a hawk’s, and he quietly started edging back toward the tunnel they’d come through.

Just then, a hand clapped his shoulder. “Deputy Zhang, where do you think you’re going? Back the way we came? That passage has been sealed off.”

Deputy Zhang turned around and saw a square-faced, middle-aged man with an imposing presence.

“Old Chen—man, you scared me. I just need to take a leak.”

The one they called Old Chen was a deputy commander at the same rank as Zhang. He split into a grin. “Deputy Zhang, I’ll go with you.”

Deputy Zhang: “...”

So the two of them went to relieve themselves together, then returned to the hollow chamber together.

Deputy Zhang noticed Deputy Chen staring at him the whole time today. He was irritated, but he couldn’t exactly blow up, so he went over to the side, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and pretended to rest.

At that moment, under the glow of the crystal light source, General Lang suddenly said, “Miss, men and women shouldn’t be touching like that.”

“What?” Tang Yao didn’t register it at first. But General Lang was looking at her, dead serious, and she remembered she’d basically stepped on his shoulder to reach up and turn on the light. Was that what he meant?

Oh no. Don’t tell her she’d ended up in some ridiculously old-fashioned world.

General Lang seemed to be reminding her, because he immediately added, “Can we go out now?”

Tang Yao raised a finger to her lips. “Shh—”

In a low voice, she said, “From now on, don’t make any loud noise. You’ll wake up whatever’s in this tomb.”

General Lang frowned. “Should we kill it first?”

Tang Yao: “...” Kill it?

“You think you’re the Rage King, Feng Mingmo or something?”

General Lang: “...”

With the memories that came with this body, Tang Yao knew the one name she’d heard people in the army gossip about more than anything was the Rage King, Feng Mingmo.