Chapter 1184: Chapter 1184: Gathering (7)

An Yiqing remained calm despite the danger, gently squeezing Ah Mi’s slightly trembling hand.

“Don’t be afraid. As long as I’m here, no one can hurt you or Granny. Hold onto your phone tight, we’re picking up the pace!”

With that, An Yiqing ordered Dashan to carry Granny on his back and run ahead, while Ah Mi held onto her and lit the way forward.

The rumbling from the direction of the cave entrance grew louder, and the ground shook more violently with each passing moment. The group’s steps transitioned from swift to even swifter, and finally, they broke into a full run through the secret passage.

Thud—

With a heavy crash, An Yiqing tumbled hard onto the ground.

“Xiao Yu, are you okay? Get up quickly! Where are you hurt?”

Ah Mi, tears streaming down her face, helped An Yiqing back to her feet. Then, using the flashlight, she examined An Yiqing’s injuries, which only made her cry harder.

“Sob… Xiao Yu, I’m sorry! This is all my fault—I shouldn’t have insisted on coming back! If you’d stayed in Xuandu City, none of this would have happened!”

Guilt engulfed Ah Mi. Xiao Yu was blind and had no way of seeing the path, yet she had stumbled countless times along the way. She was already wearing a thin skirt, and now both her knees were in an unspeakable state!

The more Ah Mi thought about it, the worse she felt; her tears flowing more intensely until a wild idea popped into her mind: she could act as bait to delay the enemy, giving Dashan and An Yiqing a chance to escape with Granny.

“Stop thinking about such nonsense! We leave together, or we stay together! Back when I was in training, I endured much worse pain than this—what’s a few stumbles compared to that? Now, move!”

In the chaos, neither Ah Mi nor Dashan nor An Yiqing noticed the slip of the tongue, their focus solely fixed on gasping for breath as they continued their frantic sprint forward.

Meanwhile, back in Granny’s bedroom—

“What the hell? Still not blown open? Useless fools! Can’t even blast through a damned wooden bedframe!” a man in a gray outfit snarled angrily before pulling out two black objects from a nearby companion’s bag.

The companion’s face turned ashen and he frantically reached out to stop the gray-clad man.

“Big Brother! These explosives are too powerful! If we’re not careful, the whole cave might collapse!”

The gray-clad man impatiently shoved the other away. “Then let it collapse! We’re not the ones dying! Hell, if it collapses, even better! I want to see if that old hag really hid the stuff underneath this bed!”

“Big Brother, don’t act recklessly! Have you forgotten the master’s orders? We must bring that old hag back alive!”

The gray-clad man froze mid-action, muttering a curse with exasperation. Their original plan had been seamless: kill everyone on the island, take the old woman back, and retrieve the hidden item. But things didn’t go as planned—the old lady had been unexpectedly defiant, attempting to take on all of them by herself. In desperation, they severely injured her and tossed her into a pile of corpses.

The intent had been to slaughter everyone on the island and search for the item afterward before leaving with the old woman. But the item was never found. Worse still, when they returned to retrieve the old woman, they discovered she had disappeared!

Panicked, they doubled back to her house, noticing that someone had tampered with the bed in her bedroom.

Though they couldn’t confirm who survived, one thing was clear—the dead woman had been rescued! What’s more, there was likely a hidden passage below leading to their escape route!

Unable to locate the hidden mechanism for the passage, they resolved to take the most brute force option: blowing the bed apart with miniature explosives.

At this moment, neither An Yiqing and the others in the secret passage nor the gray-clad man in the bedroom realized that a black military ship, like a king in the dark, was rapidly approaching the island.