Chapter 1123: A shriek in the labyrinth, a trap afoo (2/2)

Gu Qishao glanced over with narrowed eyes, but remained silent.

“Stand guard, I want to think!” Long Feiye’s tone was no different from a direct order.

“What are you thinking of?” Gu Qishao asked.

How much did Long Feiye hate talking to Gu Qishao? He tried to avoid whenever he could and made every instance as unnecessary as possible. Soon enough, he was leaning against the wall with his eyes shut. Gu Qishao only felt that the guy was rubbing against his bottom line, but for the sake of saving Poison lass, he couldn’t do anything but endure it!

He silently vowed to speak as little to Long Feiye in the future as possible. If the guy wanted to ask him questions, he’ll give him a taste of his own medicine!

Long Feiye recalled the routes they’d taken in the maze based on his own memory. It had been six times since they’d circled back to their starting point. Every trip, they’d ran into seven to eight passages that branched off into three separate segments. Each of the segments led to a passage with seven to eight separate tunnels, and beyond those was a segment with five to six different tunnels. Sometimes the tunnels led back to where they began, or circled around multiple times before returning to the starting point. In short, it was very complicated.

Long Feiye reviewed their routes and thought for a long while before biting through his finger to draw a bloody map on the floor. Seeing this, Gu Qishao scooted over for a look, only to see Long Feiye draw multiple six-sided figures crowded together with each other, similar to a honeycomb.

Gu Qishao couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but Long Feiye simply stared at it coldly as if thinking of something. Gu Qishao waited but the man didn’t speak. Finally, he tossed aside his lofty vows of silence and asked anxiously, “What did you find out? What’s this drawing for?”

Long Feiye ignored him and studied the bloody marks on the ground. If he guessed right, the big underground maze was shaped like a hive with multiple combinations of hexagons. Each of the corners in the hexagons led to three separate pathways, and because the maze was so huge, it was easy for them to make a wide arc before circling back. Big circles like those meant they often returned to the starting point from different directions, making it hard to see any marks they left on the pathways before. However, making smaller circles back meant they could spot them eventually. If this really was a hive-type maze, then Long Feiye had ways to break through it. Still, he wasn’t sure about his deduction, so it’d be best to circle around a few more times as a way to verify his guess.

He stood up and started walking, too lazy to bother signaling Gu Qishao. The glum-faced man could only follow after him. While he and Long Feiye walked around experimentally and Gu Beiyue and Tang Li were stuck in circles, Bai Yanqing was frantically looking around for Han Yunxi.

That’s right!

He might know how to navigate the maze, but he couldn’t control the entire structure. It was simply too big and filled with multiple layers while he himself lacked manpower. Han Yunxi and Fourth Young Miss Ren had gone missing as soon as they entered its depths. Bai Yanqing and his contingent of guards couldn’t find them anywhere. The more he searched, the less rational he grew. His temper turned irascible. With the entryways on both ends invaded, Han Yunxi had a chance of running into Long Feiye’s group or even running. How much effort would it take for him to bring her back after that?

After circling around the maze once, Bai Yanqing finally stopped to calm down. He said coldly, “Bring over Ning Jing and Su Xiaoyu for this old man!”

There were still those two hostages left who could be of use!

Soon enough, Bai Yanqing disappeared from the maze. One hour later, Long Feiye confirmed that the maze was shaped like a haze and told Gu Qishao, “There are multiple layers in this maze. It’s manmade and designed in the style of a hive, so there are many exits. However, that means there’s plenty of traps. It’d be even more secure to hide the hostages within the maze rather than behind it. We should be located in the top layer right now, but there’s no choice except to head down. Remember to control yourself--don’t alert the enemy!”

If they were to search layer by layer, then Long Feiye’s understanding of the maze and his combined speed with Gu Qishao would take them down every possible path in just two days and two nights. However, they’d hardly started when a familiar voice rose on their right. It was the shrill scream of a woman who seemed to be frightened by something.

“Ning Jing!” Long Feiye recognized the sound after hearing it once at General Mu’s estate.

“It’s from the right!” Gu Qishao immediately pinpointed the location.

As the two prepared to run, another shriek rose up, this time from Su Xiaoyu.

“Left!” Long Feiye said coldly.

What had happened? Why were Ning Jing and Su Xiaoyu located on the left and right sides of the maze? Why would they start screaming at the same time? And where was Han Yunxi? Gu Qishao and Long Feiye fell silent again, both of them stuck waiting in place…

...for Han Yunxi’s scream.

But after a while, they heard nothing. Instead, Ning Jing and Su Xiaoyu screamed multiple times again. Their voices were so loud that it rang through the whole maze. Heaven knows what they were going through.

At the same time, Gu Beiyue and Tang Li heard the voices from the opposite end of the maze. Without hesitation, Tang Li ran towards the source of Ning Jing’s voice. Helpless, Gu Beiyue could only chase after him.

Long Feiye and Gu Qishao steeled their hearts to keep waiting, but when they didn’t hear Han Yunxi, Long Feiye said, “We’ll head for Su Xiaoyu first!”

If these two were in trouble, then it was likely Han Yunxi was in peril as well. With the screams so loud, Tang Li would definitely aim for Ning Jing first, so they could only seek out the younger girl. They ran quickly, fearful that the screams would halt, but instead it intensified without stopping.

Finally, Long Feiye screeched to a stop and declared, “It’s a trap!”