After Transmigrating into a Book as Cannon Fodder, I Pampered the Villain - Chapter 51

Chapter 51: The Broken Hairpin

She must hold a special place in Yan Huaixi’s heart, right?

The group moved cautiously through the secret passage. As Yu Yingxia brushed her fingers against the walls, she noticed they were smooth and polished, unlike the jagged, uneven tunnels outside. It suggested this was a path frequently used by its creator.

Suddenly, Wen Xin grabbed Yu Yingxia’s arm, pulling her to a sharp halt. The others ahead had stopped as well. At that moment, Yu Yingxia’s dulled sense of smell was jolted awake by something horribly wrong in the air.

“What’s happening up there?” someone from the back whispered.

“Ahead… is a corpse pit,” the leader replied, his voice heavy. He shifted aside to let the others see.

The secret passage didn’t lead to a room; it opened out onto the wall of a massive, deep abyss. Extremely narrow ledges lined the sides the only path forward. One misstep meant a fatal plunge.

At the bottom of the pit, mountains of corpses were piled high. Ghostly green flames flickered above them, providing just enough light for Yu Yingxia to see the carnage. She turned her head away, fighting the urge to gag. The other cultivators looked no better, their faces pale and sickly.

“He did this?” the leader murmured to himself.

Yu Yingxia heard him. Her intuition told her they had realized that the person impaled by the Demon-Suppressing Nail earlier was indeed Yin Duo. No one answered. No one wanted to believe that a respected elder, once stripped of his mask, was this hideous, sin-stained monster.

“Let’s move. We need to get out before things get worse,” Wen Xin said, her voice colder than before. “Be careful where you step… do you need me to carry you?”

Yu Yingxia realized Wen Xin was speaking to her and quickly waved her hands in refusal. She stepped onto the shoulder-width ledge. There were no railings, but she used her spiritual power to anchor herself to the wall, which felt secure enough.

However, as they shuffled forward, the ground suddenly groaned and shook! Debris rained down on Yu Yingxia’s head, and she nearly stepped into the void.

“Cr-crunch… crunch…”

A bone-chilling sound echoed from the pit below—the sound of something massive grinding human bones to powder.

“Turn back! Fast!” someone screamed.

Wen Xin grabbed Yu Yingxia’s wrist and summoned her spiritual power to fly back toward the entrance they had just left. They had been avoiding using spirit power to prevent attracting “unclean things,” but they no longer had a choice.

They were a second too late.

A gargantuan figure lunged out from the corpse pit. It was a colossal rot-giant. When it stood up, the ledge where they stood only reached its chest. Yu Yingxia realized with horror that this wasn’t just a dumping ground—these bodies were feed for this monster!

Disturbed by the presence of strangers and spiritual energy, the monster roared and smashed its fist into the secret passage entrance. With a deafening boom, the tunnel collapsed. Worse still, the surrounding walls began to shift like a giant mechanism, hiding the passage they had come from.

“We’ll hold it off! Wen Xin, find an exit!” the leader commanded.

“Understood!” Wen Xin set Yu Yingxia down in a spot far from the combat and erected a defensive barrier around her. “Stay here. I’ll find a way out and come back for you.” Without another word, she vanished into the dark mist.

The pit was massive, filled with a fog of corpse-gas so thick it suppressed divine sense. Wen Xin had to physically check every ledge. She eventually found ten potential exits, and her heart sank—it was a “ten deaths, no life” formation. She sent a voice transmission to her companions: “Hold on as long as you can! I need to break the array to find the true exit!”

The monster’s arms were bound by massive specialized iron chains, limiting its range, but its strength was terrifying. Even when hit by the attacks of several Refining Qi into Spirit cultivators, the bones in its face only dented slightly. It sustained almost no real damage.

The creature’s head was knocked aside, only to snap back with an ear-piercing creak. It let out a sonic roar. The weaker cultivators began to bleed from their noses and mouths. Even the barrier around Yu Yingxia flickered, nearly shattering.

The cultivators were becoming desperate as they realized how thick the monster’s hide was. Even Yu Yingxia could see they were losing. She watched the rot-giant intently, searching for a weakness.

She noticed something strange: the giant had legs, yet no matter how much it was attacked, it never moved its lower body. It ignored most strikes, but when a few stray spells flew downward toward the space behind it, the monster intercepted them as if by instinct.

Is it protecting something?

Yu Yingxia focused her spiritual power into her eyes. It was painful for her unaccustomed eyes to hold that much energy, but she pushed through. As the giant stumbled from a heavy blow, Yu Yingxia finally saw it: a plain, ancient door almost perfectly camouflaged into the wall behind the monster.

Meanwhile, Wen Xin’s face was grim. All ten exits she had tested were dead ends traps designed to lead people to their doom. “The exits are all fake!” she cursed.

Was this whole place just a cage? Even the resilient Wen Xin felt a flicker of despair. If we can’t find a new path, we have to try to go back the way we came! She broadcasted the grim news to the group.

Yu Yingxia couldn’t use voice transmission, so she screamed at the top of her lungs: “There’s a door behind the monster! It’s been protecting it! That might be the way out!”

Wen Xin’s relief was instantly replaced by terror. Her pupils shrank as a foul, putrid wind whipped past her. She threw all her power into flying toward Yu Yingxia.

She was too late.

The rot-giant wasn’t a mindless puppet; it had enough intelligence to realize its secret was out. Yu Yingxia became its first target for revenge. It threw a punch with such force that even the giant couldn’t have pulled it back. The cultivators tried to intercept, but their strength paled in comparison to that strike.

Yu Yingxia, the weakest of them all, had no defense. Wen Xin’s heart turned cold; she knew that if that fist connected, Yu Yingxia’s body and soul would be obliterated.

“BOOM!” The wall where Yu Yingxia stood was pulverized.

“Miss Yu…” Wen Xin’s voice trembled. She regretted not keeping her closer. Now, everyone involved might face the wrath of a certain someone for failing to protect her.

“Die, you monster—” Wen Xin’s curse died in her throat. Her eyes widened. On the giant’s fist, which was still embedded in the wall, sat several Blood Butterflies.

Seeing them, Wen Xin instinctively backed away. The terror these butterflies instilled in her was greater than the monster beside her.

The rot-giant let out a howl of agony. It yanked its fist out, revealing that the center of its hand had been eaten away by an unknown power and the rest of its arm was rapidly dissolving.

Yu Yingxia stood in the crater, completely unharmed but dazed. She didn’t understand how she was alive. Wen Xin, being the closest, saw a red protective barrier fade away from around the girl.

I gambled right! Wen Xin thought with a sigh of relief.

Yu Yingxia’s hair fell loose as her jade hairpin tumbled to the ground, snapped in two. The sound of it hitting the stone snapped her back to reality.

It was the power Yan Huaixi had stored in the hairpin that had saved her.

Yu Yingxia could hardly believe it. Wasn’t this pin meant to monitor and execute traitors? She could still remember the original host’s memories of the Right Protector’s gruesome death. She picked up the broken pieces, tracing the patterns Yan Huaixi had carved. A complex emotion rose in her chest.

Compared to the Right Protector, I actually have a different status in her heart, don’t I? Enough that she added a protection ward.

For a moment, Yu Yingxia felt a flicker of genuine warmth—perhaps even joy.

Outside, the rot-giant was wailing like a frightened child, its body shaking violently. It no longer guarded the door. Seeing the opening, the cultivators didn’t hesitate. Wen Xin performed a quick calculation, confirmed the path, and yelled for everyone to strike the door.

Before Yu Yingxia could stow the broken pin, Wen Xin scooped her up.

“Fellow Daoist? Could you… maybe carry me a different way?”

Before she could finish, they were airborne. In that moment, she missed Yan Huaixi even more—at least Yan was gentle when she carried her.

The group blasted the door open. The entire corpse pit seemed ready to collapse. The giant finally reacted and lunged for them, but they were already through. It could only roar in fury from the other side.

Passing through the door felt like being inside a washing machine. It wasn’t a tunnel, but a teleportation array. After spinning countless times, Yu Yingxia was spat out into mid-air.

She cried out as she fell, but Wen Xin hadn’t let go of her hand and yanked her back to safety.

“Miss Yu, what were you saying earlier?” Wen Xin asked with a mock-innocent expression.

“Nothing.” Yu Yingxia forced a smile. She had realized now: the “sweet” Wen Xin was actually a “sesame bun”—white on the outside, dark on the inside.

“Wen Xin, look ahead. We’ve entered somewhere… incredible,” someone said, their voice shaking.

Wen Xin’s playful look vanished. What she saw left her stunned.

They had entered a macabre “Palace of Blood.” The space was vast beyond sight. The outskirts were lined with blood pools containing “semi-living corpses”—creatures that were no longer human, moaning in agony. Wen Xin knew they were beyond saving.

Further in were fully transformed living corpses. Their numbers and variety were staggering; some were species the cultivators had only read about in ancient myths. At the center, the corpses were of even higher grade—Wen Xin even spotted an Ancient Demon Beast from the records!

“How many people did he murder?!” Wen Xin hissed through her teeth. “Yan Huaixi hasn’t killed this many people in her entire life!”

Hearing that name snapped Yu Yingxia out of her shock. Yan Huaixi was no saint, but her body count was likely a fraction of what lay here. Why mention her now? Because she’s the most famous ‘villain’ they know? How ironic.

Yu Yingxia looked at the pools, arranged like a honeycomb. If a beehive is disturbed, everyone nearby suffers. And this was a hive of monsters.

Her eyes throbbed from overexertion, but she forced her spirit power into them once more. She saw faces rising from the blood pools. The corpses were turning their heads. Their gazes were all converging on the group.

“We can figure out who to blame later,” Yu Yingxia said, her voice trembling. “Do any of you see signs of these things being… restrained?”

“It seems… no.”

Wen Xin didn’t hesitate. She grabbed Yu Yingxia and bolted. The half-finished monsters at the edge were still, but the completed corpses further in were like a disturbed swarm of hornets, rising in a tide to hunt them down.

“Wen Xin! Is this really the ‘Path of Life’?” a companion screamed as they ran, glancing at the high-level monsters closing in.

Several of those corpses were at a higher cultivation level than anyone in their group! It was only a matter of time before they were caught and slaughtered. They had trusted Wen Xin’s divinations before, but they feared she had made a fatal error this time.

“…It’s the path of life until we’re dead! Keep running! There’s still a chance!” Wen Xin knew they couldn’t fight these things, but her divination hadn’t failed. Their salvation had to be somewhere else.

The fastest corpse at least at the Refining Spirit and Returning to Void stage was gaining. It was a full major realm above their strongest member.

“It’s on us! Hiding won’t work… let’s fight it!” someone yelled in desperation. But bravery couldn’t bridge a realm gap. The white-haired, zombie-like monster swatted the cultivator’s spell aside and sent him flying into a boulder. The man lay still, his status unknown.

Others tried to save him, and the white-haired monster didn’t stop them. Its ravenous eyes were locked on a different target. It leaped, ignoring the others, and lunged directly for two specific figures.

Yu Yingxia felt the chilling gaze. She turned her head, only to find the white-haired, rotting face almost touching her own!

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