The Scent of the Orchid in the Forest of Secrets (密林兰香)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

They dropped down into pitch-black darkness. Yu Jielan took out a fire stick from the inside of her robes and blew it lightly. It illuminated a coarse, rough looking tunnel that seemed to have been dug swiftly and wasn't quite structurally sound. Even though the opening had been narrow, the tunnel opened out into a comfortable width for people to walk in a single-file line. The air was stuffy and slightly stifling.

The two walked forward for a long time. The loose gravel underneath their feet crunched with their footsteps, and the oxygen grew so little that the fire stick sputtered, and then went out, leaving them in darkness. Shu Haolin grasped Yu Jielan's hand, and they continued to walk forward in the darkness. They had gone for so long that they felt like they were going to faint from lack of oxygen, until they felt a light breeze blowing on their faces, a welcome hint of fresh air. The two of them subconsciously sped up their footsteps, and they finally emerged into a large, square room with a couple of dusty, old barrels and nothing else. They located a ladder and climbed out of the cellar, finding themselves in a tiny, dilapidated hut that had clearly not been taken care of for a long time.

"What is this?" Shu Haolin asked, catching her breath after the long trek in the tunnel. Yu Jielan went up to the window and glanced outside. They had already left the mountains of the Yu Sect behind—they must've emerged somewhere in the outskirts of Hangzhou. The two of them flipped through the tiny hut, and even went back into the cellar to investigate the barrels. The hut showed clear signs of not having been lived in for a while, except for the freshly dug soil around the tunnel. They went outside and glanced around the surroundings, and walked a couple of steps to the nearest hut and knocked on the door. The door creaked even with the light force that Shu Haolin applied to it, and after a few minutes, no one responded—the hut had clearly been abandoned. They walked to the next hut and found it abandoned too, and walked in a large circle before finding another person. The hut was fairly clean and showed signs of being cared for, with the hinges of the door well oiled, and the doorstep was mostly swept clean. A middle-aged man answered the door, his face filled with the fatigue of a person who labored in fields all day.

"How can I help you?" The man asked. Shu Haolin noticed the way the door was only held half-open, and the man didn't fully step out, as if on guard. His fingers curled around the door and held it tightly, and he scanned the two of them with a slight frown.

"Uncle, I was wondering if I could ask you something about the owner of the hut in that direction." Shu Haolin pointed behind them in the general direction of the exit of the tunnel. "Do you know who it belongs to?"

The man frowned. "All the huts nearby are abandoned. I'm the last one left, caring for the little fields my father left me and the ancestral shrine. Nobody lives here anymore."

"But Uncle, I was wondering if you saw any people here recently, any big movements around this area? In particular, were there people digging a tunnel?"

The man stared at them skeptically. "Just who are you? What do you want?"

"Uncle, was there or wasn't there?"

There was a long silence, until the man finally responded. "There was. He was a middle-aged man, maybe a little older than me, with a bunch of creepy looking followers. They were over there, making a ruckus day and night. I don't know anything else. Don't ask me," he said sharply, and the door slammed shut in their faces.

On the way back to the Yu Sect, the two of them were completely silent. However, when they returned, they were greeted with a ruckus. A whole crowd was gathered in front of the doorsteps of Yu Ziting's residence. Shu Haolin felt her heart drop into her stomach, and Yu Jielan rushed to the front.

"Don't tell me more disciples have already died," Yu Jielan said with dread in her voice. The people in front glanced back upon hearing her voice, their clamor dying down slightly upon seeing the Sect Leader arrive. However, just before Yu Jielan pushed her way to the very front, someone stepped in front of her with a slightly lifted chin. It was Yu Zifan, who had been challenging Yu Jielan during that disastrous clan elder meeting.