Chapter 00249: Trapped for Several Days
# Trapped for Several Days
Chapter 249
Novel: AFK Game: Portal to Another World
Chapter 249: Trapped for Several Days
The Thunder Mountain Treasury was filled with treasures, and every time it opened, it would attract all the young talents of the Jianghu.
But the Thunder Mountain was also littered with corpses.
After all, not even one in ten who entered could make it out alive.
Most of the corpses would be devoured by the jackals, wolves, tigers, and leopards on the mountain, but if you looked carefully, you could still find plenty of bones.
Yang Yiyi had never paid attention to such things, so when she suddenly saw a skeleton in the pitch-black underground, she was naturally startled.
There was no muscle tissue left on the bones at all; it was a complete skeleton.
By the looks of it, the person must have been dead for over ten years, likely having died here twenty years ago when the Thunder Mountain was last opened.
The clothes had also rotted away, their original color and style unrecognizable.
However, you could see that the skeleton's left thigh bone was broken, its sternum was not only shattered but also caved in, its arm bones were covered in cracks large and small, and its collarbone was also broken.
It might have even been tortured.
“This looks like someone broke his leg, then struck him in the chest with a fierce palm technique. With no one to rescue him, he eventually died here from his grievous injuries.”
Hearing this, Yang Yiyi quickly bowed to the corpse, praying it wouldn't turn into a fierce ghost and come looking for trouble.
Yang Yiyi wasn't interested in who this person was or who killed them; she just wanted to walk around it.
But just then, Li Chengxi spoke again,
“Wait, don't be in such a hurry to leave. Move that skeleton.”
“D-do I really have to move it?”
Li Chengxi's words nearly brought Yang Yiyi to tears.
She really didn't want to touch bones.
“Don't be afraid. Haven't you ever eaten spareribs? Just treat it like you're cleaning up leftover rib bones.”
“……”
Yang Yiyi felt that she would never want to eat braised spareribs again.
Mustering all her courage, Yang Yiyi gave the skeleton a push to the side.
The moment she moved it, she quickly clapped her hands, afraid something might have stuck to them.
“Now push away the large rock the skeleton was leaning against. That's right, that one. There's something underneath it.”
Li Chengxi had developed a habit of pressing the Alt key to highlight interactable objects whenever he saw a new scene.
Just now, besides the word ‘Skeleton’ appearing on the screen, he had also seen the words ‘Loose Rock’ on the stone behind it.
In an RPG game, this was obviously a place where things could be hidden.
Pushing a rock was much less psychologically taxing than pushing bones.
With a grunt, Yang Yiyi overturned the large rock that was half her height.
She then discovered a cloth bag pinned underneath it.
Opening the tattered cloth bag, she found what looked like a book, wrapped in cracked oil paper.
Lifting away the oil paper, a hand-copied, blue, thread-bound book appeared before her.
On the cover were written the words ‘Earth Evasion Step’.
It was possible this person had copied the secret manual from the stone wall, hidden it, and then destroyed the wall, only to be killed by someone later.
And so, the secret manual had remained here until now.
Just when she thought all hope was lost, she suddenly felt like things were taking a turn for the better.
Yang Yiyi opened the book to have a look.
The book was severely decayed, with many pages damaged and moldy, but thankfully, the characters were still mostly legible, without major damage.
Yang Yiyi briefly flipped through it, and on Li Chengxi's end, he saw a glowing plus sign appear on the Teaching Box icon.
He clicked on it and saw that it was indeed the Earth Evasion Step, and it wasn't an incomplete scroll either.
As long as it was in the Teaching Box, it didn't matter if the physical manual was lost.
Li Chengxi immediately clicked to teach it, but the screen displayed a prompt: ‘Conditions not met’.
It seemed she couldn't learn it for the time being.
The more divine a technique, the higher the requirements for the practitioner.
Only basic skills had no requirements at all.
Still, there was no need to worry that she couldn't get out just because she hadn't learned the Earth Evasion Step.
Judging from the state of the corpse, he was definitely killed nearby, possibly due to a dispute over loot.
The cracks on the bones indicated he was tortured before death.
Perhaps the killer tried to force the whereabouts of the Earth Evasion Step from him but failed.
There were no other skeletons nearby, which meant the killer had left.
Since the killer could leave, Yang Yiyi could naturally get out too.
Learning the Earth Evasion Step wasn't an absolute necessity.
–‐‐——–‐‐——
Finding a divine technique that was considered lost was good news, but Yang Yiyi couldn't bring herself to be happy.
After leaving the underground cavity with the Earth Evasion Step, Yang Yiyi found another cave to continue forward, but the path was frustratingly long.
On the first day after falling underground, Yang Yiyi simply made do with bread for lunch, eating as she walked.
After walking for a whole day, she still couldn't see the end.
The second day, she got up and continued walking.
She could feel the ground seemed to be sloping upwards, but the incline was so slight it wasn't very noticeable.
On the third day, the slope didn't change much, but the cave began to curve more sharply.
It was no longer a rough straight line but twisted and turned, and Yang Yiyi completely lost her sense of direction.
By the fourth day, Yang Yiyi still hadn't found her way out.
She felt that the cave she was walking through was spiraling upwards, but since she had completely lost her sense of direction, she didn't know if her feeling was correct.
She had not only lost her sense of direction but also her sense of time.
She relied entirely on Li Chengxi to tell her what time it was.
She was surrounded by endless darkness, the only light coming from the emergency lamp or flashlight in her hand.
If not for Li Chengxi occasionally talking to her, Yang Yiyi would probably have been driven mad by the environment.
That night, as Yang Yiyi lay on her folding bed, she heard a strange howling sound coming from down the cave.
It sounded like some terrifying monster.
But Li Chengxi told her this was a good thing.
The howling was most likely the sound of wind, which meant she was probably not far from an exit.
Although Li Chengxi couldn't be entirely sure he was right, this gave Yang Yiyi a great deal of encouragement.
On the fifth day after falling underground, Yang Yiyi got up and continued forward.
Since she was not far from the exit, Yang Yiyi didn't want to stay in the cave for another minute.
She walked with more vigor than she had in the past few days.
This time, after walking for nearly two or three hours, Yang Yiyi was about to take out her mineral water for a drink when she looked up and faintly saw a glimmer of light around a bend in the cave ahead.
“Is that the exit?”
A wave of ecstasy washed over Yang Yiyi.
Forgetting about her thirst, she broke into a run, taking two or three steps at a time.
Rounding a small bend, sunlight streamed in through the gaps in the vines covering the cave mouth.
Only then was Yang Yiyi certain she hadn't been mistaken; that was indeed the exit.
“Don't rush over. Seeing sunlight so suddenly after being underground for so long can damage your eyes.”
Li Chengxi tossed Yang Yiyi a pair of sunglasses he sold in his shop.
“Put these on first. Stay at the entrance for a bit to adjust before you go out.”
This time, Yang Yiyi was truly obedient.
She quickly put on the sunglasses as Li Chengxi had said, then stood at the edge of the cave mouth, slowly adjusting to the sunlight outside.
Once she had mostly adapted to the light, Yang Yiyi eagerly pushed aside the vines and stepped out.
Even with the sunglasses, the sunlight outside still felt dazzling to Yang Yiyi, but it wasn't harmful.
The mountain wind whistled by, rustling the pine needles with a soft whoosh.
With a single glance, she could even see the massive Heavenly Absolute Palace in the distance.
The exit seemed to be located halfway up Thunder Mountain.
Looking up, she saw dark clouds that hung like a lid, their oppressive presence even stronger than it was at the foot of the mountain.
Yang Yiyi took a deep breath, feeling as though she had come back to life.
But strangely, just as she was marveling at the beauty of the surface world, she suddenly caught the pungent scent of cosmetics.
A little puzzled, she slowly opened her eyes.
Not far from the cave mouth, Yang Yiyi saw the androgynously dressed Female Wolf Envoy she had met before, standing there with her eyes wide, looking as if she had just seen a ghost...
(End of this chapter)