Chapter 1350 - 1026: A Near-Death Joke

"Wait!"

Lei Yu stepped forward and shouted, "Just for him alone, you’re going to kill so many of us?"

Young Master Jia sneered. "I already said it just now: men die for wealth, birds die for food. Since you came here for the treasures in the Left General’s Tomb, you should be prepared to be buried here for those very things."

Lei Yu furrowed his brows tight, unable to speak.

He hadn’t expected this man to be so obsessed—merely because others coveted the Left General’s Tomb, he wanted them dead; and from the way he had vanished last night, only to reappear now with everything prepared, it was clear he had resolved not to let them leave this stone chamber alive.

Seeing Young Master Jia about to ignite the tung oil on the ground again, Lu Xiao suddenly said, "But this place isn’t the Left General’s Tomb, is it?"

"..."

His hand paused slightly and stopped. He lifted his head to look at Lu Xiao.

Lu Xiao slowly stood up; even at such a life-and-death moment, she still kept a beguiling allure. Only she herself knew that as she spoke, her palms were slick with cold sweat, further aggravating the wound so that waves of pain shot through it.

She sneered and said, "Even if we are all going to die for wealth, at the very least you ought to let us know where that wealth actually is."

"..."

"To see it even once would make it less of a waste."

Young Master Jia sneered. "You won’t see it."

Lu Xiao was taken aback. Ashina Zhuxie immediately said, "What do you mean?"

Young Master Jia said, "In fact, your guess is indeed correct—the Left General’s Tomb is indeed in Skytop Mountain. It’s just not on this South Peak."

Ashina Zhuxie silently calculated in his heart and at once understood: the slightly lower peak they had traveled along all the way was to the south and thus the South Peak he spoke of, while the taller one was plainly the North Peak. So he asked, "Then it’s on the North Peak?"

Young Master Jia coldly shook his head.

Ashina Zhuxie grew all the more confused. "Then what do you mean by saying the Left General’s Tomb is in Skytop Mountain?"

The group was thrown into confusion by Young Master Jia’s words, and just then a weak voice sounded—Wang Shaoqiu said, "I... understand now."

They all turned back in haste. No one knew when he had forced himself to prop up his upper body, sitting in a corner against the stone wall. Even this small movement had exhausted him. His face was so flushed it was almost black, his lips a dark purple, the whites of his eyes veined in blood. He looked like some fiend who had crawled up from Hell. Lu Xiao only glanced at him once, then turned her face away with a complicated expression.

Young Master Jia looked at him coldly. "You understand what?"

Wang Shaoqiu’s breathing was already extremely faint, yet he still drew several deep breaths, as if desperately trying to keep himself alive. He said, "It’s... it’s because of that... earthquake back then, isn’t it?"

"..."

Young Master Jia said nothing; his pupils merely dimmed slightly.

Wang Shaoqiu said, "The Left General’s Tomb... was indeed in Skytop Mountain. But eleven years ago... that earthquake... altered the Heavenly Peak Mountain Range. After the sky collapsed and the earth caved in... only then were these South and North Peaks left behind. Since it’s not on either of these two peaks, then there’s only one possibility—"

Ashina Zhuxie looked at him. "What possibility?"

Wang Shaoqiu cast him a powerless glance, and the corner of his lips suddenly curled in a faint smile, a smile that seemed to hold some indescribable irony—it was just unclear whether that irony was directed at them, or at himself.

He said, "The Left General’s Tomb is probably already buried deep underground."

"What!?"

Ashina Zhuxie blanched and stepped forward, staring at him. "Are you telling the truth?"

Wang Shaoqiu had spoken very softly, but every syllable was so heavy it felt as if it would crush everyone here. After he finished, he no longer had the strength to speak. His lids drooped weakly, and he lightly shook his head with a soft laugh.

That laugh was itself an admission.

Ashina Zhuxie still seemed unable to believe it. Seeing how drained he looked, he hurriedly turned to Young Master Jia—only to see, in those cold eyes, for the first time a hint of desolation.

Ashina Zhuxie was stunned on the spot.

Standing beside him, Lei Yu listened to these words. He looked at Wang Shaoqiu’s eyes, growing dim like a candle guttering in the wind; then at Ashina Zhuxie, brows tightly knit, his expression bleak; then at the people around them who had followed them through endless peril to reach this place. On each face, after the shock, a numb, helpless look had settled. A boundless desolation suddenly rose in Lei Yu’s heart.

So this was how it was.

Back then, when Zuo Chen An died of illness, to guard against his tomb being plundered after his death, he set up several decoy tombs to mislead the world, secretly building his true mausoleum in Skytop Mountain. He had thought he could escape the covetous eyes of men, but he still underestimated human greed. There were still those who, undeterred by hardship, traveled thousands of miles, crossing mountains upon mountains, just to find the treasure within. Yet little did they expect that after all those ordeals—people wounded and killed for it—long ago, over ten years back, a single earthquake had buried his grave deep underground, its traces already lost.

Everything had been for nothing.

All the toil of their journey, the plots and schemes, the mutual deception—seen now, it was like some life-or-death farce.

Ashina Zhuxie’s face grew increasingly ugly. He shook his head violently and said, "I don’t believe it. How could it be like this? We... we went through countless hardships to find this place, and it turns out it was already— I don’t believe it!"

As his furious roar echoed, Wang Shaoqiu let out another soft laugh, like a sigh.

He shook his head and his whole body slid limply downward onto the ground, ever weaker, as he said, "The affairs of the world are unpredictable."

Lei Yu turned to look at him, his brows knotted tight, unable to utter a single word.

And just then, a soft sigh drifted out from that long tomb passage.

The sound was very faint; those in the stone chamber seemed not to have heard it yet, but Young Master Jia was the first to catch it. His body went rigid, the hand holding the torch trembling lightly. He slowly turned his head, as if in disbelief. Before he could see what lurked in the pitch-black passage behind him, he heard a somewhat familiar voice sigh, "Palaces by the thousand—at last, all return to dust."

"..."

"All the more so, a mere little decoy tomb."

At the sound of this voice, Young Master Jia’s expression instantly darkened.

This time, everyone in the chamber had heard it. The crowd broke into commotion. On Lei Yu and Lu Xiao’s faces, surprise and joy both appeared. Lu Xiao even hurriedly took a step forward, but with Young Master Jia’s torch raised before them, there was no seeing what lay in that black passage behind him. Young Master Jia also turned around; the torchlight flared and finally lit up the path they had come.

In the pitch-dark tomb passage, two familiar figures slowly walked into their sight.