Chapter 195
Chapter 195: To Kill You, I Don’t Need a Dagger
Luo Ning blacked out for a very short moment.
It was very short, because she did not even know when she hit the ground. She woke up quickly and heard someone screaming nearby.
When Luo Ning had pulled Qiu Hua under the table, the roof of the main hall at Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple had started to cave in. Many people, driven by the instinct to survive, had also squeezed under the table.
Qiu Hua had probably been dazed and had not guarded herself well. She had been pushed aside by the crowd. Their hands had been hard to keep tightly clasped to begin with, so they slipped apart without either of them meaning to.
After that, some mechanism had been triggered, and under the offering table there turned out to be a hidden door and a passage.
The place they fell into was not pitch black.
There was ventilation from somewhere, so the small secret room was not stuffy. At the highest point of the southeast corner, an oil lamp was lit.
The lamp was filled with oil and looked like it could burn for several days. The little flame even flickered a few times.
Luo Ning stared at it for a while. Once she was sure they would not suffocate, she relaxed a little inside.
Once her eyes adjusted to the light, she looked around. Four people had fallen down in total. One was an Old Madam holding a boy of seven or eight. He wore short, simple clothes, and only one straw sandal was left on his feet.
The other person was Wang Tang Yao.
The screams from before had come from the Old Madam and the child.
While Luo Ning was looking at the oil lamp, Wang Tang Yao was looking too.
He was probably thinking much the same as Luo Ning: they would not die right away. He started knocking along the walls.
The secret room was not large, but it was empty and clean. There had to be another door.
He knocked on the walls while Luo Ning sat on the floor and lightly tapped the floor tiles with her hand.
The Old Madam and her grandson just clung to each other, screaming and panicking. Then they started to cry and kept saying things like “What should we do?” and “May the Bodhisattva protect us,” just to vent their fear.
The empty room echoed, making it unbearably noisy.
Amid all the noise, Luo Ning felt that one of the floor tiles was hollow underneath.
She glanced toward Wang Tang Yao and quickly went over what she had on her: she had no weapon that could hurt anyone.
Luo Ning made up her mind at once and pressed down on that tile.
The mechanism moved, and the door right where Wang Tang Yao was standing swung open.
When the door opened, they saw several statues of evil gods with ferocious faces. They were so strange and gaudy that the Old Madam turned pale with fright and started screaming again.
Luo Ning faintly felt movement in the passage above their heads again.
Before she fell, she had seen someone moving toward her when the ground shook, as if they meant to grab her, and she had already been full of wariness.
Thinking of this, Luo Ning stopped caring what lay ahead or about Wang Tang Yao, who was frowning in a daze. She immediately ran toward the door.
Wang Tang Yao seemed stunned for a moment, but he followed her in and even closed the door behind them.
When the door shut, the mechanism clicked and locked it from the inside.
At the same time, there was movement and voices in the secret room they had just left.
It sounded like several people had come down.
Luo Ning ran forward.
The passage was long and not very high. Luo Ning could stand upright as she walked, but Wang Tang Yao had to bend a little. There was a very faint light because an oil lamp was set at intervals. Other than the two evil gods guarding the doorway, the walls were covered with murals.
The murals were too bright, all painted with cinnabar. They showed the Eighteen Levels of Hell, with guts cut open and spilling out, lifelike in every detail.
Suddenly, Wang Tang Yao spoke from behind her: “…What is going on? Who did you offend?”
Luo Ning stopped and slowly turned her face.
She gave a deliberately grim smile and said: “What do you think?”
Beside her, the mural was a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. She stood there with a terrifying expression, and she saw Wang Tang Yao step back two paces.
The passage turned a corner.
Luo Ning pushed herself to move forward as fast as she could. She wanted to shake off the man behind her.
He might have a dagger hidden on him, or his hairpin could be sharp enough to hurt her. Even if he had nothing, he was trained in martial arts. Lin Zhao had said his inner strength was not bad. If he wanted to strangle her, it would be easy.
Luo Ning felt real killing intent from him. When he had suggested talking to her and mentioned Bai Ci Rong, there had not been a bit of kindness in his tone.
She had no choice but to be on guard.
After being a ghost for so many years, Luo Ning actually felt little awe toward ghosts and spirits.
She knew very well that no matter how angry a ghost was, it was just a light breeze brushing past her ear. Late at night, they could not even enter anyone’s dreams.
Before the Heavenly Dao, living people were much more towering and powerful than the deities in the temples.
Luo Ning had to stay alive.
But there was nothing behind her to hide behind, and the passage only went forward in a straight line. She could not shake him off.
At the end of it, evil gods guarded another door.
The door would not open. Luo Ning fumbled with it for a long time. Wang Tang Yao stood behind her and helped look for a way to open it. In the end, he used all his strength and found that the door was simply extremely heavy and solid.
When he finally pushed it open, he almost threw up.
This was an even larger secret chamber. It was huge, and the ceiling was so high it seemed to have no end.
White bones were everywhere.
Luo Ning said: “It does not smell. None of them are fresh.”
Wang Tang Yao was speechless.
Where was the next way out?
The two of them split up to search.
From time to time, Wang Tang Yao glanced at her and felt she looked more like a monster.
She did not show a trace of fear.
Whether it was the eerie, bloody murals or the room full of bones, her eyes did not change at all, as if she had seen such sights many times.
She did not know how long it had been before she finally grew tired and sat down to rest. There was a skull beside her, and she leaned against it to make herself more comfortable.
Wang Tang Yao stood opposite her, looking at her over the sea of bones and thinking: [This woman is deep-hearted and bold, and she is also Prince Yong’s intended consort. In the future, she will surely cause trouble.]
Prince Yong’s ambitions were not small.
If anything happened to the Emperor, the Eldest Prince was still too young. The Empress and the Empress Dowager would not be able to resist Prince Yong. No matter how harshly the court officials cursed Prince Yong in public, many of them had already secretly pledged themselves to him.
If the inner residence gained a demoness like Luo Ning, Empress Zheng’s days would become very hard.
[It would be better if…]
Thinking this, the dagger in Wang Tang Yao’s hand dropped slightly.
A cold flash of light moved faintly.
Luo Ning suddenly looked over.
She did not move much. She just stared at him and slowly stood up, her hand feeling for a human bone on the ground.
The bone was fairly hard. Luo Ning snapped it in two, revealing a piece that was a little sharp.
Wang Tang Yao came closer.
He moved very fast, almost charging at her. Luo Ning knew that staying passive meant death, so she also used the force of running forward to see if the broken bone in her hand gave her any chance at all.
Just then, something fell from above.
When Wang Tang Yao glanced at it from the corner of his eye and it stopped by his feet, Luo Ning slammed into him and knocked him aside.
Pain shot through his shoulder, and the dagger fell from his hand.
It seemed the roof of the chamber was the mountain itself. When the ground had shaken before, the rocks had loosened and were now falling down. One of them hit his shoulder.
Luo Ning had pushed him aside and kept another rock from hitting his head.
Her hand was also scraped by a falling rock, and blood flowed.
She immediately snatched up the dagger Wang Tang Yao had dropped.
They were very close. She looked at Wang Tang Yao’s pained expression and saw his arm hanging at an odd angle. She knew he had been hit.
Luo Ning moved back to hide.
There was nowhere to hide.
Wang Tang Yao was hurt, and Luo Ning could not push open the door behind them to retreat.
She could only shrink back against the door as much as possible.
When the second rock fell, it smashed a big pit into the ground.
Wang Tang Yao also dodged over.
He looked at her with cold eyes and said: “Do not act rashly. To kill you, I do not need a dagger.”