Chapter 73: The Smiling Statue

  "King Suifeng, let's go out and search for him," Sanbao broke the silence, her voice calm but filled with urgency.

  After a brief discussion, they decided to follow Wang Suifeng's pn. Sanbao and Wang Suifeng would go out to look for Gu Xiaotu, while Qin Liangguang stayed behind with Wang Yuanying and Shi Mengsong to guard the courtyard.

  The vilge seemed even more desote under the cover of night. The vilge paths became slick and muddy, and the two didn’t walk far before they found a set of footprints that hadn’t yet dried, leading deeper into the vilge, toward the mountains.

  "Strange, didn't he say he was just going behind the house? Why is he heading further into the vilge?" Sanbao furrowed her brow.

  "Maybe he needed to do something... bigger?" Wang Suifeng chuckled, offering an expnation. "Perhaps he wanted to get away from everyone, so we wouldn’t bother him."

  "You still have time for jokes at a time like this?" Sanbao rolled her eyes at him.

  "I’m just trying to lighten the mood," Wang Suifeng shrugged, unfazed by her response.

  They followed the footprints, which led them to a lonely house at the edge of the vilge. Strangely, the footprints stopped here.

  This house was different from the others in the vilge. It wasn’t made of mud bricks or stones, but rather, it was built with grayish-white stone blocks stacked together. The house had only three walls, and inside, there was no furniture, only a ptform made of the same stone. On the ptform were several strange-shaped stones, their form difficult to discern.

  "This pce is too strange," Sanbao muttered under her breath.

  Wang Suifeng carefully examined the footprints inside the house. "Look here. The footprints originally entered the house, but then suddenly changed direction. Perhaps Gu Xiaotu intended to enter, but at the st moment, he changed his mind. And here, the prints are scattered and disordered, as though he was startled by something and fled in a panic."

  He stood up and fixed his gaze on the spot where the footprints ended. "The footprints stop here. If he didn’t suddenly fly away, the only other expnation is that something grabbed him and lifted him up."

  Sanbao’s heart skipped a beat. She crouched down to inspect the ground again, but there were no signs of dragging or struggle, no evidence of an escape. It was as if, in that moment, something had simply "lifted" Gu Xiaotu from the ground, and he had completely vanished.

  "But he’s a mid-stage Earth Elemental abilities user, how could there be no signs of resistance?" Sanbao frowned and asked.

  Wang Suifeng shifted his gaze to the depths of the house, his eyes lingering on the strange stone piles. His expression grew serious. "This isn’t an ordinary house."

  "Huh?" Sanbao looked up at him.

  "This is a temple," he said.

  Sanbao followed his gaze and finally noticed the statue, standing right at the center of the house behind the strange stone piles.

  The statue was wrapped tightly in a bright red silk cloth, obscuring its features. All she could make out was its general human shape.

  "This vilge has been abandoned for a while now, but why does the red silk look so new?" Sanbao took a few steps closer. "It’s almost as if it was just wrapped today."

  She reached out, intending to peel back the silk to get a better look at the statue.

  "Be careful!" Wang Suifeng grabbed her arm firmly. "This temple has something off about it. It's better not to touch anything carelessly."

  Sanbao’s heart skipped a beat. She quickly withdrew her hand. "Then let’s go look around the outside of the temple, see if we can find any new clues behind the house."

  The two of them stepped out of the stone temple, and a cold wind blew in their direction, making Sanbao shiver. She gnced back at the red-silk-wrapped statue.

  At that moment, the wind lifted the edge of the red silk ever so slightly. Between the folds of the fabric, Sanbao thought she saw the statue’s lips twitch, as if it was... smiling at her.