76: Danger at the Crossroads

Running, endless running.

The ghostly blue light of the crystals stretched their shadows long; in this silent underground world, only their hurried footsteps and heavy breathing could be heard.

"Brother Feng... this path... is it ever going to end?" Wang Dalong was running so hard his tongue was practically hanging out. He kept looking back as he ran, terrified that those men in black would appear behind them at any moment. "And this place is way too big! It's like a maze!"

He was right.

They soon reached the first fork in the road.

Three identical tunnels stood before them, their entrances pitch black and emitting a damp, musty smell, leading to parts unknown. Every path looked like an entrance to hell.

"We're screwed... how do we choose? Draw straws?" Wang Dalong was in despair, plopping down on the ground and gasping for air. "How about we each pick one, and whoever survives remembers to burn some spirit money for the other on Tomb-Sweeping Day?"

Lin Feng didn't stop. He stood before the three tunnel entrances and closed his eyes.

His brain worked at high speed. Every detail of the nine Golden Murals on the Sun God Temple's altar surfaced, rotated, and reassembled in his mind in 3D form.

Those reliefs, dismissed as myths by outsiders, and the scripts misunderstood by scholars as sacrificial symbols, now became a vivid, incredibly precise map of the underground waterways and tunnel network!

This is it!

Lin Feng opened his eyes, his gaze locking onto the middle tunnel. According to the murals, this path was the only main road leading to the "Heart of Gold."

But... his gaze swept over the other two tunnels, and a bold, ruthless plan instantly formed in his heart.

He turned to Wang Dalong and said, "Give me your dagger."

"Huh? Oh." Wang Dalong didn't understand why, but he still pulled a small military dagger from his hiking boot and handed it over.

Lin Feng took the dagger. Instead of heading toward the middle tunnel, he walked to the entrance of the leftmost one. On the stone wall of the entrance, a sun-like mark was painted with an ancient dye. This was a signpost left by the ancient Maya people.

Lin Feng raised the dagger and unhesitatingly scraped the sun mark off. Then, he walked to the entrance of the rightmost tunnel and used the dagger to carve an identical, brand-new sun mark into the stone wall.

After finishing this, he went to the middle tunnel—the one that should have been the correct path—and carved a crossbones mark, which represented "danger" and "dead end" in the murals.

"Bro... Brother Feng... what are you doing?" Wang Dalong watched, dumbfounded. "You changed the signposts? What if we get lost when we try to come back?"

"We aren't coming back." Lin Feng's voice was devoid of emotion as he handed the dagger back to Wang Dalong. "They don't have a map; they can only rely on the signposts. Since they want to find us so badly, we'll give them a grand gift."

Wang Dalong looked at the dark right-hand tunnel now marked with the sun symbol, feeling a chill rise from the soles of his feet. He understood Lin Feng's intention.

This wasn't giving them a gift; this was clearly sending them to their deaths!

Just then, clear footsteps echoed from the distant passage, accompanied by the light clinking of metal.

"They're here! Let's go!" Lin Feng barked in a low voice, pulling the still-dazed Wang Dalong into the middle tunnel—the correct path he had marked as a "dead end." A few minutes later, a group of six figures in black high-tech combat suits appeared at the fork.

Leading them was the captain of the Scorpion Squad, his eyes behind his visor as cold as ice. Beside him, a similarly dressed but slightly disheveled person removed his mask, revealing none other than Juan, who should have been devoured by the Emperor Crocodile!

Juan wasn't dead. He was also a member of Scorpion; infiltrating Lin Feng's team had been part of the plan all along. What the Emperor Crocodile had crushed was merely a blood-filled dummy he had swapped in using a special device.

"Captain, there are three forks," a team member reported.

The captain's gaze swept over the three openings, finally resting on the marks on the stone walls.

"Juan, look." He pointed at the marks.

Juan stepped forward, identified them carefully, and then said, "Captain, according to the data we deciphered earlier, this sun mark represents the 'correct path' or 'sacred direction.' And these crossbones are a later symbol, meaning 'forbidden zone' or 'death.'"

The captain's gaze fell on the brand-new sun mark on the right. The carvings were fresh, with stone dust still falling from them.

"They just passed through here," a team member judged.

"Interesting." The captain's voice betrayed no emotion. "Where are they trying to lead us?"

"Captain, could it be a trap?" Juan was somewhat hesitant. "That Lin Feng is meticulous; he doesn't seem like the type to make such a low-level mistake."

"A trap?" The captain sneered. "In the face of absolute strength, any schemes or intrigues are meaningless. They think they can play us by changing a signpost? How naive."

He raised his hand and pointed toward the right-hand tunnel marked with the sun, issuing an order.

"Squad One, Squad Two, go in and scout the way. Maintain communication and report any situation immediately."

"Yes, sir!" The four team members didn't hesitate, raising their Gauss Rifles and entering one after another.

The captain and Juan stayed behind, waiting quietly.

They waited for about a minute before a member's voice came over the comms: "Reporting, Captain. The passage is secure, no anomalies found. We are proceeding deeper."

"Continue forward."

Two more minutes passed, and the comms rang out again, but this time, it was filled with screams of extreme terror and intense gunfire!

"Monsters! They're monsters! Ah—!"

"Fire! Fire! We can't pierce them! Their carapaces are too hard!"

"Help! My leg! My leg's been bitten!"

*Sizzle—*

Communication was cut off.

Dead silence.

Juan's face turned deathly pale.

The captain's body also tensed up. He stared at the pitch-black tunnel entrance and slowly raised the heavy Blaster in his hand.

From within that tunnel came a series of bone-chilling "rustling" sounds of carapaces scraping against the ground, along with the horrific noises of flesh and bone being chewed.

One... no, a whole swarm of indescribable creatures were slowly crawling out from the darkness.