Chapter 39: Peeping

Looking at the footprints left on the ground, I swallowed nervously. Sister Hong and Chen Jiansheng didn't look any better.

We were being watched.

What was even more terrifying was that we didn't know if this thing was human or a ghost. In other words, there might be more than just the three of us here now. There was something else.

Fear stems from the unknown; the more we thought about it, the more unsettled we became, and even Chen Jiansheng stopped his blustering.

"Chen... Chen the Earthwork, is it possible this is someone from your crew? Do you have any dwarves or disabled people in your group?" I tried asking her.

"No," Chen Jiansheng frowned. "Before this, all the other brothers besides myself and Chen the Pot-Bearer had met with accidents. Besides, our team had no such disabled members."

With this sudden development, we didn't dare to rush off. The three of us discussed it and decided to stay put for the night to recover our strength.

We took turns keeping watch while we slept, neither of us daring to fall completely asleep. It was my turn to stand guard from one to three in the morning.

Chen Jiansheng had built the fire using a fire-starter. There was plenty of burnable material here, so we had gathered some rotten, dried-up branches and wood. We had set up our temporary camp right next to that small mound because there was relatively little vegetation in that area.

While watching the fire, around two in the morning, my eyelids grew heavy and I felt incredibly drowsy. But since it was my turn to watch, I kept telling myself I couldn't sleep. When I couldn't hold out any longer, I pinched my thigh hard a few times.

Sister Hong and Chen Jiansheng were asleep.

I added two dry logs, still forcing myself to stay awake, my head bobbing.

"Snap!" Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head. Someone had hit me with a small clod of dirt.

Looking at the small clod rolling at my feet, my sleepiness vanished instantly. A cold sweat broke out on my back—I was terrified.

In the glow of the fire, I turned my head back, inch by inch.

I saw a small dwarf standing on the ground about thirty meters in front of me. He was wearing a huge, wide-brimmed hat and was covered in a ragged black garment. The clothes were covered in dirt, tattered and old, as if they had been stripped off a corpse...

"It's a dream, it's a dream, it must be a dream," I pinched the webbing between my thumb and forefinger hard. A sharp pain followed.

"Thwack!" The dwarf threw another clod of dirt at me. This time, his aim was off, and it didn't hit me.

I retreated in terror, inch by inch, until I reached Chen Jiansheng's side.

Too afraid to speak, I nudged him, trying to wake him up. He didn't react at first, so in a panic, I pinched him.

"What are you doing, kid? Are you sick?" He was jolted awake by my pinch.

I looked at him with a pale face and silently pointed behind me. Sleepy-eyed, Chen Jiansheng glanced behind me.

A moment later, he rubbed his eyes hard.

We faced each other, and I could see it clearly. His face went stark white in an instant.

Chen Jiansheng lowered his head, his lips trembling as he whispered, "Don't make a sound. Go to sleep. Pretend you didn't see anything." With that, he lay flat on the ground and closed his eyes.

The night passed in silence.

The next morning.

"You two didn't rest last night? Why do you look so terrible?" Sister Hong asked.

My face was pale, and Chen Jiansheng looked much the same, because we had both seen that thing the night before. I had been hesitant, not daring to tell Sister Hong about it. It was Chen Jiansheng who brought it up.

After hearing his account of the previous night, Sister Hong turned to look at me and asked with a frown, "Yunfeng, is it true?"

I clenched my fists and nodded.

Chen Jiansheng looked around with a grave expression and lowered his voice. "I said it was strange. The halberd I buried couldn't have grown legs and run off on its own. It must have been this thing playing tricks."

"Did you see its face?" Sister Hong asked, frowning.

"No, we didn't."

"The thing was wearing a very large wide-brimmed hat and was covered in clothes stripped from who knows where. It was completely swaddled; we couldn't make out anything," I said, carefully recalling the scene from the previous night, making sure I hadn't missed anything.

Afterward, the three of us huddled for a while and came up with a secret plan.

At first, I was terrified. I told Sister Hong we should leave immediately and stop worrying about what this thing was. But Sister Hong shook her head, saying that this place was full of mysteries, and her intuition told her that we shouldn't just leave; we had to follow this lead.

During the day, we all tried not to look around, keeping our heads down while walking and talking. We didn't dare to eat anything else, sticking to the same fruit to stave off hunger.

When night fell, we built a fire as usual. No one stood watch; the three of us lay on the ground around the fire and closed our eyes. However, unlike the night before, none of us were actually sleeping. We were all pretending.

Sister Hong held a small dagger, her palm facing down, hidden under her sleeve. Chen Jiansheng and I had small, sharpened wooden stakes hidden in our hands, pressed down by our arms so they couldn't be seen from the outside. To anyone watching, it would just look like the three of us were sleeping.

Time ticked by, and since we hadn't added any wood, the fire had burned down to embers.

"Tap." Something threw a small clod of dirt at us to test the waters. We feigned sleep, keeping our eyes closed, neither of us moving. I gripped the wooden stake hidden under my arm, terrified.

A few minutes passed.

"Tap." Another small clod of dirt was thrown. We remained motionless, ignoring it entirely.

About an hour later, I heard very faint footsteps.

I squinted through a tiny slit in my eyes, lying on the ground and peeking carefully. I saw the same dwarf from the night before, holding a small rock, stepping closer to the fire, twitching left and right.

The way this thing walked was extremely bizarre—twisting and turning like a little old woman. It walked very slowly and cautiously, inching toward us.

Afraid of being discovered, I quickly closed my eyes again and stopped looking.

The footsteps drew closer and closer. I felt the creature arrive right beside me.

"Now!"

Chen Jiansheng sprang up from the ground, let out a roar, and lunged with his sharpened wooden stake! Sister Hong also jumped up, aiming her dagger directly at the dwarf.

"Squeak!" The thing let out a strange, rat-like shriek and turned to run.

We had spent the whole night in a painstaking ambush, waiting for this exact moment—there was no way we were letting it escape. I was the closest, so I grabbed its leg and held on for dear life.

"Quick! Quick! I've got it!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

With its leg held by me, the creature went berserk. It thrashed and jumped around with immense strength; I almost lost my grip.

"Squelch." Sister Hong's dagger plunged into the dwarf's stomach, sinking in to the hilt.

The thing bled profusely, the blood a dark, reddish-black.

In pain, it dodged Chen Jiansheng's blow, thrashing wildly. My wrist felt like it was about to be dislocated.

Within a minute, there was a thud.

The dwarf collapsed to the ground, Sister Hong's dagger still buried in its stomach. It twitched, blood pooling on the ground.

Seeing this, the three of us exchanged pale-faced glances. We were communicating with our eyes, the message roughly being:

Who is going to take its hat off?

Let's see if it's dead.