The Last Dahlia

037

The thing about being stuck in a tunnel was that there typically were only two options: go back or go forward. Yuehwa would much have preferred to go forward, but with the knowledge that there were likely Gi soldiers waiting ahead and that the entire tunnel system could collapse at any time, the unfortunately logical thing to do was to head back.

They turned and broke into a sprint, while fragments of rock began to break away from the rumbling walls and rain down upon their heads.

"If I ever see Baixun, I'm going to throw some of these rocks at his teeth!" Yuehwa shouted. Two more explosions had rung out after the first and she was convinced that it was the Gi army, since a bunch of mountain bandits had no reason to destroy one of their best hideouts, nor would they have access to gunpowder.

Another explosion went off.

Shoya lifted his arm and blocked a stray rock the size of a ripe gourd that had almost struck Yuehwa on the head. Then, he grabbed her arm and swung her aside, just in time to avoid a cascade of tumbling rocks.

A moment later, the ground stopped shaking, and the world fell silent once again.

The group looked around, realising in dismay that they had been trapped by walls of boulders on both side. The route they had taken to get here was now sealed shut.

"I don't suppose we can use our own gunpower to blow our way out?" Yuehwa grumbled. She gave the fallen boulders an indignant kick, then looked around.

Shoya was tapping at random positions on the rock, with his ear plastered to the cold surface. The white fabric of his robes had been tainted by gravel and sand, with a large rip along the right arm where the rock had struck, revealing a long, red gash beneath.

"You're bleeding," Yuehwa said, grabbing hold of his wrist.

"It's only a little scratch."

"This is a little scratch?" She ripped a strip of fabric off the hem of her sleeve and quickly wrapped it around his open wound. "I know you like pretending to be—" She looked up to find Shoya staring past at something past the top of her head instead, not paying the slightest bit of attention to what she was doing. "Hey, are you even listening to me! What are you doing?"

"Finding a way out."

Shoya pulled his arm free and walked over to the section of wall behind her, listening intently at the sound that travelled back into his ear following his continuous tapping. He exchanged glances with her and Ru Fei, and the both of them took the cue to do exactly what he had been doing.

Yuehwa rapped her knuckles against the part of the wall that Shoya had singled out, then she did the same at other sections.

"It's hollow," she said, noting how the reverberation sounded more echoey over here, suggesting that there was empty space behind that wall instead of miles of solid rock.

Ru Fei quickly instructed their men to detonate the wall segment with some careful placement of gunpowder. With a loud bang and a large cloud of dust, the wall collapsed, leaving behind a gaping hole large enough for a man to squeeze through.

Yuehwa and Shoya peered into the darkness.

"It's an entirely new passage," Shoya said. "And look, there are steps."

The new tunnel branched off perpendicularly to the one they were currently in, with steps chiselled into the stone that led downwards in a fairly steep incline. There were also wooden holders that had been nailed in on both sides, carrying torches that had not been lit for hundreds of years. Tiny white spiders scuttled over their surfaces, rapidly dispersing when they sensed the approach of other forms of life.