Professor Chen suddenly lunged, snatching the ancient parchment of the Prophet and hurling it toward the ground. We tried to stop him, but it was too late—we couldn't react fast enough.

The suddenness of the action demanded an equally sudden countermeasure; life or death often hung on a single thought. I instinctively kicked out at the parchment as it fell vertically, sending it skittering sideways like a ball.

The trajectory of my kick sent the parchment directly toward where Fatty stood. Fatty didn't dare hesitate, but the parchment was flying too low for him to bend down and catch; he had no choice but to kick it away too, refusing to let it touch the floor.

The tomb chamber was already cramped and low, and these two kicks resembled an acrobatic routine. Everyone’s hearts were lodged in their throats. Perhaps due to the adrenaline, these few seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity of stillness.

Fatty’s kick lofted the ancient parchment up and away, arcing diagonally toward Shirley Yang’s face. Just as Shirley Yang reached out to catch it, Professor Chen suddenly moved, snatching the scroll just ahead of her, and was about to smash it to the ground again.

At that moment, a massive silhouette surged forward and tackled Professor Chen to the floor. It was Fatty, who, seeing the danger, deployed his ultimate, forbidden technique: the "Heavy Meat Shield," slamming into the professor.

I rushed forward immediately, snatching the "ticking time bomb"—the parchment that held the fate of us all—from Professor Chen’s grip. Finally, it was saved from hitting the floor.

Shirley Yang shoved Fatty aside: “The Professor is an old man, are you trying to smash him to death? If anything happens to him, I’ll hold you accountable.” With that, she began administering emergency pressure point relief to Professor Chen, whose face was contorted from being pinned by Fatty. Fatty’s sheer bulk nearly ended the old man’s life.

I carefully tucked the parchment into the portable pouch hanging at my waist, then turned to Shirley Yang and Fatty. “Haven’t you noticed how extremely strange this Old Man Chen is? Listening to him speak, doesn’t he sound a bit like Ye Yixin?”

Fatty grumbled, “Yeah, maybe the soul of that girl has possessed him? She died with such a grievance; maybe she doesn’t want to be left alone and wants us to stay with her. I suppose that’s rather pitiful.”

I cursed, “Go to hell with that! The paths of the living and the dead are separate. She was our companion in life, and now that she’s dead, she wants to drag us down with her—that’s the selfish thinking of a petty woman, not worthy of pity. We can’t afford to be soft-hearted right now.”

Shirley Yang retorted, “Don’t talk nonsense. Ghosts don’t exist in this world. The Professor must have suffered too great a shock and lost his wits, causing his erratic behavior. If there were ghosts, why wouldn’t they possess one of the three of us? Why target Professor Chen specifically?”

I replied, “You don’t know the full story. The situation is critical, and it’s not the time for a long explanation. I’ll tell you about some of my past experiences later. I used to be a staunch materialist, but I discovered there are many things that simply cannot be explained. The reason the three of us rarely see ghosts is that we carry objects that ward off evil spirits. I have a black donkey hoof here, and Fatty has one too. You’re wearing an authentic Mojin Talisman around your neck. Professor Chen has none of these protections. Furthermore, his mind is muddled, and his Sānmèi True Fire is weak, making him susceptible to invasion. If you don’t believe me, stuff this black donkey hoof into Professor Chen’s mouth; we’ll know instantly whether he’s possessed by a vengeful spirit or not.”

Shirley Yang flatly refused, “Is that something a person eats? If you want to eat a black donkey hoof, you eat it yourself.”

I thought to myself that we weren't expecting to get paid anyway; the key now was survival. Any lapse in vigilance was a hidden danger. We absolutely had to test Professor Chen with the black donkey hoof to find out what was truly wrong with him; his performance just now was far beyond simple insanity.

Ignoring Shirley Yang’s protests, I forcefully jammed the black donkey hoof into Professor Chen’s mouth. Professor Chen’s vicious expression had vanished, replaced by his prior vacant foolishness. Seeing the hoof offered to him, he opened his mouth and bit down, chewing with a foolish grin.

Shirley Yang snapped angrily, “Are you going to stop tormenting the Professor only when you’ve killed him? Take that thing out of his mouth!” I quickly removed the hoof. Perhaps I had worried over nothing.

The four of us finally managed to calm down after the chaotic episode. Recalling the Prophet’s revelation—that he would show us an escape route—we gathered around his remains, examining them meticulously, terrified of missing even the slightest clue.

After looking several times, we found nothing. The Prophet’s corpse bore no suggestive symbols, drawings, or text. Fatty, impatient, rummaged thoroughly through the Prophet’s skeletal remains, still finding nothing.

The Prophet’s remains were seated cross-legged, one hand resting near the stone casket, the other flat on his knee; there wasn't even a gesture pointing the way. Besides the clothes that had decayed into powder, there was only one sheepskin wrapping his body, and nothing else.

I searched the surroundings again, looking for hidden mechanisms or secret passages. However, this chamber had been hollowed out of the solid mountain rock; the four walls were all unyielding stone. In a few places, there were small fissures. When I reached in, I could feel faint drafts of cool air. It seemed this chamber was not far from the mountain summit. The pressure generated by the internal stress transfer from the earlier explosion had caused several small cracks to open in the chamber. But without explosives or tools, carving an escape route through the solid rock was nearly impossible.

The only entrance to this chamber was the fissure through which we had entered. There had once been a stone door there, but we rushed in while dodging countless falling stones, never paying close attention to the outer passageway. The mountain's fracturing had connected our escape fissure with the tomb passage, but that path was now completely blocked by debris. Returning through the passage was absolutely out of the question.

The three of us paced frantically when suddenly the ground beneath us trembled. We heard a faint cracking sound emanating from within the mountain. The sound grew louder, and the ground vibration intensified. It appeared the pressure transfer from the explosion, after two successive and increasingly large ruptures, continued to build, and a third major fracture was imminent. Could the Prophet’s revelation correspond to this moment?

With a violent shudder, three large cracks split the chamber open with a resounding k'lālā. One ran across the floor, and the other two split the walls vertically, one on the left and one on the right, all wide and tall enough for a person to pass through.

Fatty swore, “Damn it, three choices! This kid Prophet is playing with us. Let’s each take one side. If one of us gets out, it’s better than being buried here together.”

Shirley Yang pointed at the Prophet’s bones, her voice trembling with uncontrollable excitement. “The Prophet has already shown us the way!”

Fatty and I looked down. The crack in the floor had caused the stone casket to sink halfway in, and the Prophet’s remains were askew. His right index finger was pointing directly at the large fissure that had opened on the left side of the chamber.

We immediately knelt and kowtowed, thanking the Prophet and the ancient sages for their protection. At that moment, the falling debris from above grew larger, and the roaring sounds became incessant. It was impossible to stand in the chamber any longer.

I told Fatty to carry Professor Chen, while Shirley Yang and I lifted Ye Yixin. We squeezed into the fissure on the left wall. After only a few steps, a dazzling white light assaulted our eyes, and the long-lost sky appeared overhead.

We were only a few meters below the mountaintop, but the mountain was shaking violently. Cracks were spiderwebbing across the rock face, and the ground beneath us was covered in loose scree, making every step treacherous.

Fatty squatted down, and Shirley Yang climbed onto his shoulders first, then, following suit, helped haul Professor Chen up.

I told Fatty to go up ahead, then dropped down a rope so we could pull Ye Yixin’s body up. I couldn't just leave her buried in the mountain forever. Fatty struggled to climb up, so I pushed from below while Shirley Yang pulled from above. It took tremendous effort to pull her up.

Just then, the stone wall behind me slammed shut with a deafening k'wāng that startled me. I turned back to look, and saw the mountain behind us collapsing backward. The entire Zha-ge-la-ma Mountain had split in two. The massive, rounded vault above the Ghost Cave could no longer withstand the numerous fractures and was continuously caving in, crushing the stone beams supporting the Queen's sarcophagus, the Corpse Fragrance Demon Lily, countless treasures, and the giant-pupiled stone statues into the bottomless Ghost Cave. Streams of black water were pouring out of the cave, immediately submerging whatever fell in. The black mountainside, the pitch-dark chasm, the land behind us—it was like the devil opening its gaping black maw, swallowing everything within the mountain’s belly.

The force of the landslide and earth collapse was dizzying. I clung tightly to the rock wall with one hand, holding Ye Yixin’s corpse to my chest with the other, afraid to move lest I too fall into the Ghost Cave along with the collapsing mountain behind me.

Fatty shouted anxiously from above, “Lao Hu, climb up quickly! Forget the girl’s body, we can’t worry about the dead right now!”

I had intended to take Ye Yixin’s body with me no matter what, but the arm holding the corpse had gone numb and weak from fatigue. I realized that if I didn’t let go, I would fall with Ye Yixin. I was forced to release my grip. Unexpectedly, the corpse’s arm snagged on my portable pouch. Dragged down by Ye Yixin’s weight of several dozen pounds, the pouch tore open. The Prophet’s sheepskin revelation tumbled out, falling down the mountain along with Ye Yixin’s body.