Chapter 186: Crossing the Death Trap

Seeing Yue Mingxuan remain silent for a long moment, Xi Yu impulsively jumped out, only to have the sound he feared most ring in his ears.

Shang Qinghua reacted with lightning speed, pulling him back into the trees.

Once safely back among the foliage, Xi Yu sat on the ground, his heart pounding.

The familiar sound instantly confirmed Yue Mingxuan’s suspicions: the “strange iron rod” Xi Yu had mentioned was a gun loaded with dum-dum bullets.

No matter how fast a person was, they could never outrun a bullet. What were they going to do?

Xi Yu who is slumped on the ground finally regained his senses. “Shang Qinghua, you two are hopelessly naive! This isn’t Sheng Gate, it’s clearly Si Gate. Damn it, you scared the hell out of me.”

In his panic, Xi Yu even cursed aloud.

Yue Mingxuan frowned.

As Xi Yu had said, there shouldn’t have been a weapon of such destructive power in Sheng Gate.

Could it be that he and Shang Qinghua had made a misjudgment?

At that moment, Yue Mingxuan noticed Shang Qinghua beginning to manipulate his outer clothing. “Shang Qinghua, what are you doing? You’re not thinking of…?”

Could he be plotting something reckless, knowing the odds were death?

Shang Qinghua ignored him.

He had broken off a small branch and draped his clothes over it, extending it outward.

Soon, a concentrated volley of gunfire erupted.

Moments later, he retrieved the branch—his previously pristine clothing had been shredded into a sieve of tattered strips.

The three of them exchanged glances, terror reflected in their eyes. This was truly a death trap and utterly impossible to overcome.

Xi Yu looked at the shredded cloth in Shang Qinghua’s hand and swallowed his saliva hard. “Shall we just go back the way we came?”

Yue Mingxuan let out a bitter smile. “The Eight Gates operate in sequence, break one, enter another, and the transformations are unpredictable. If we retreat now, we might run into one of the inauspicious gates. That too would be a certain death trap.”

Had they truly misjudged? Was this really Si Gate?

At that moment, Shang Qinghua, who had been silent until now, spoke: “If the hidden weapons this mechanism fires don’t hit a target, can it reset and fire again?”

His words sparked a realization in Yue Mingxuan.

Firearms, though nearly invincible in the era of cold weapons, had one major weakness: ammunition.

No matter how powerful the weapon, the bullets would eventually run out.

With this thought, Yue Mingxuan turned to the two men in front of him. “Take off every piece of clothing you can.”

Yue Mingxuan didn’t idle either.

He removed all the clothing he could take off, leaving only his undergarment.

The moonlight was bright, but the dense layers of leaves above provided enough cover that nothing could be clearly seen.

Xi Yu looked at the two people suddenly undressing in front of him with a mix of horror and disbelief. “Are you crazy? Th-this… we are different, you are a Ger…”

Flustered, he could barely get his words out properly.

“Do you want to live? You’d better take yours off too,” Shang Qinghua said coldly, dropping the remark and continuing to focus on tying his clothes to a branch.

Wearing only his undergarment, Yue Mingxuan shivered and explained, “The hidden weapon fires only once. We use our clothes to make it mistake us for a target. Once the weapon is spent, we can cross safely.”

Hearing Yue Mingxuan’s explanation, Xi Yu’s expression shifted to one of sudden understanding.

He quickly began removing his clothes as well, even a bit faster than Shang Qinghua.

After a short while, the three branches draped with clothing extended toward the next tree.

A rapid volley of gunfire rang out and Yue Mingxuan felt an almost surreal sense of being back on the battlefield with his comrades.

About ten minutes later, the gunfire gradually thinned and moments afterward, Yue Mingxuan heard the sound of the magazine locking after the bullets were spent.

He excitedly stood up and said. “It’s done! We can cross now.”

Xi Yu eyed him suspiciously. “Are you sure?”

The sensation of narrowly escaping death was something he never wanted to experience a second time.

Seeing Xi Yu acting like a terrified mouse, Yue Mingxuan secretly laughed.

No matter how formidable an assassin was, even he would have to bow before modern technology.

He waved his hand out and smiled at Xi Yu. “See? I told you, it’s fine.”

Seeing that Yue Mingxuan was indeed unharmed, Xi Yu cautiously leaned halfway out, scanning the surroundings before saying, “You two wait here. Once I secure the rope to the pagoda, you can zip over.”

Yue Mingxuan nodded, securing the rope and handing the other end to Xi Yu.

In this way, the three of them relied on the zipline to reach the second floor of the pagoda smoothly.

The exterior of the pagoda looked unassuming, dark and ordinary, but once inside, even Shang Qinghua was stunned by its luxury.

The walls on all sides were inlaid with luminous pearls the size of a child’s fist, golden lamps hung from the ceiling, and a sweet fragrance filled the air, the unmistakable scent of Nanhai shark oil burning in the lamps.

Yue Mingxuan stood frozen, his mind consumed by a single thought: Fortune, fortune! Any one of these items is surely worth more than a thousand taels of gold.

After a moment of shock, Shang Qinghua turned his head and saw Yue Mingxuan already leaning against the wall, prying a glowing luminous pearl loose.

He chuckled.

“Hey, this pagoda has several more floors. The treasures above are probably even better. Are you really going to waste your time here?”

When Yue Mingxuan heard this, he quickly straightened and was about to rush toward the third floor, but Xi Yu grabbed him. “Why do you have to risk your life every time money is involved? If there’s a trap above, you’ll have the life to take it, but not the body to enjoy it.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep