Record of Mortals Slaying Heaven

Chapter 2: Crossing the dilapidated temple, a sense of bewilderment arises, but suddenly hope is see

Consciousness is peeled away bit by bit from a void of cold nothingness.

Shen Moqi opened her eyes, her vision blurry, seeing only a dim, swaying shadow. Her thoughts were frozen, the first clear thought to enter her mind simple yet terrifying:

Am I...dead?

This thought jolted him awake. He strained to focus, turning his stiff neck—he didn't see the terrifying gates of hell he'd imagined, no ox-headed demon, no horse-faced demon. Above him were old, decaying wooden beams, covered in tattered cobwebs.

"This...is this the underworld?" he wondered blankly, his heart pounding slowly and heavily in the silence. "How...is it so dilapidated?"

He tried to sit up, wanting to see more clearly. In that instant—

"hiss--!"

A sharp, burning pain came from my left arm and back.

It hurts! He still feels pain!

I'm not dead! This realization pierced my dazed mind like a ray of light. Before the exhaustion of surviving the ordeal could even settle, a greater sense of bewilderment and fear surged forth: If I'm not dead, falling from such a height... where am I? A hospital?

He endured the pain, struggling to lift his head and look around more carefully. A dilapidated temple, collapsed statues, cold, filthy mud, the air thick with the smell of mildew and a strange odor mixed with dust and decaying plants… This was definitely not a hospital. Had he been kidnapped or trafficked? Was he about to have his kidneys cut open?

Just then, a sharp dizziness and stomach cramps struck. An unbearable hunger, accompanied by a burning thirst in his throat, overwhelmed him. He then realized that the intense weakness and the empty cramps in his stomach indicated that he had been unconscious for quite some time.

Almost simultaneously, his right hand unconsciously clenched, and a familiar yet hard touch came from his palm—it was his phone! It was still in his hand! And miraculously, it wasn't damaged at all, just a few scratches on the edge.

If he were kidnapped or abducted, his cell phone would be his only hope of communicating with the outside world. Despite his pain and weakness, Shen Moqi used his still-functioning right hand to painstakingly slip the phone into the inner pocket of his school uniform, carefully concealing it with his outer garment. Completing this simple action nearly exhausted the little strength he had just regained, and he leaned against the cold mud wall behind him, panting. He couldn't let anyone see it. This thought was crystal clear.

The backpack was left open next to a haystack not far away.

Just as he was trying to make sense of this absurd situation, the crooked wooden door of the dilapidated temple creaked open.

Four figures squeezed in, necks hunched, bringing with them a chill from outside. The leader was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, dark-skinned, thin with prominent cheekbones, wrapped in an old, patched, ill-fitting coat, carrying a broken earthenware pot. Behind him followed three even younger children, the oldest no more than seven or eight, the youngest perhaps only five or six, all sallow-faced and thin, wrapped in tattered cloth, their faces filthy, only their eyes shining with an astonishing light, carrying a timid, wary glint. As soon as they entered, they all stared intently at the awakened Shen Moqi.

The boy in the lead was clearly not expecting Shen Moqi to be awake. He paused for a moment, then quickly pulled the three children behind him and stepped forward. His gaze swept over Shen Moqi like a hook, especially his strange short hair and his tattered but oddly textured "clothes".

"You...you're awake?" the boy asked, his voice dry and thick with a local accent, but Shen Moqi could barely understand him.

"It was you... who saved me?" Shen Moqi endured the pain and tried to keep her voice as kind as possible.

The boy shook his head, then nodded. "It wasn't exactly a rescue. We found you two days ago in the weeds behind the temple, barely clinging to life. We were all barely alive ourselves, with no medicine or food, so we dragged you in. You got some scrapes and abrasions while we were dragging you, but at least this place is sheltered from the wind." He paused, his wariness lessening and replaced by a hint of sympathy. "Where are you from? How did you get here? Your clothes... I've never seen them before."

Shen Moqi opened his mouth, but his throat was sore and dry. Out of caution, he did not answer.

Seeing that he remained silent, the boy didn't press the matter further. He sighed to himself, his tone carrying a numbness beyond his years: "Forget it, I'm almost dead anyway. It's all the same now. I guess I'm just a refugee from the north too. It's all the same."

"Where...where am I? How long have I been unconscious?" Shen Moqi asked hoarsely, seizing the opportunity to start the conversation.

"Here? The capital of the Great Yan Kingdom, Yan Jing." The boy placed the broken earthenware jar on the ground; it was half-filled with murky, cold water. "You've been unconscious for about two days. As for now..." He forced a smile, a smile more painful than a grimace, "Yan Jing has been surrounded by the wolf cubs of the Black Stone Kingdom for almost two months. My father, my mother, and the parents of others all died defending the city and trying to break through the siege. If this continues, when the food runs out and the city falls, we'll either be beheaded by those cavalry or captured and enslaved."

"Besieged city? War?" Shen Moqi's heart trembled violently, and a certain absurd conjecture began to expand uncontrollably.

"Hmm." The boy sat down not far from Shen Moqi, rummaged in his pocket for a while, and pulled out half a dark, rock-hard flatbread. A hint of struggle flashed across his face. He carefully broke off a small piece, about the size of a fingernail, hesitated for a moment, and then handed it to Shen Moqi. "Eat it, that's all. My name is Stone, and they... you can call them Da Mao, Er Ya, and Xiao Shuanzi."

Shen Moqi looked at the pitifully small piece of bread, then at Shi Tou's chapped lips and the longing eyes of the three children behind him, and felt a lump in his throat. He didn't refuse, but whispered a thank you and took the bread, stuffing it into his mouth. The bread was cold and hard, the coarse bran mixed with a sandy texture scraping his throat, but he chewed and swallowed hard; it was the most basic energy to survive.

The hunger was slightly suppressed, but the sense of despair rose more clearly. The Great Yan Kingdom? The Black Stone Kingdom? A siege?

He swallowed with difficulty, trying to process the immense amount of information in Shi Tou's words. At the same time, fragments of his last memories of falling from the rooftop flooded back—not just weightlessness, but in that long, timeless darkness, he felt as if he were passing through a thick, icy "membrane." Simultaneously, the phone he was holding in his palm suddenly became scalding hot, so hot he almost wanted to let go…

Through.

The word finally struck my heart with absolute certainty, carrying a cold weight.

Moreover, it wasn't a journey to ancient times—although he chose the Physics and Biology major, he had at least studied history, and he was certain that he had no impression of the Great Yan Dynasty or the Black Stone Kingdom.

This is a completely unfamiliar world.

Then came an overwhelming wave of guilt and panic towards his parents. What would happen if his mother couldn't find him? What would happen if his father found out? He had to go back! He absolutely had to go back!

But the prerequisite for returning is to survive the current desperate situation. To survive, the city cannot be allowed to fall.

He forced himself to calm down, suppressing his turbulent emotions. "Stone, Black Stone Kingdom... how do they fight? How do they besiege cities? How many men do they have? How many of us are still capable of fighting?"

Stone poked at the cold embers on the ground, his voice low and menacing: "The wolf cubs of Blackstone Kingdom? All cavalry, swift as the wind, and accurate with their arrows. They're not good at sieges, they just surround us, trying to starve us. They swarm like locusts, I heard they started with 100,000 cavalry! Our men fought desperately to break out several times, many died, but they also lost a lot of men... Now, who knows how many are left?" He looked up at the drafty roof of the dilapidated temple, "On our side, the number of soldiers capable of fighting in armor is probably less than 20,000. The rest are like me, dragged up to make up the numbers, to fill in the city walls."

"What about outside the city? Are there mountains or rivers?" Shen Moqi pressed, trying to construct a map in her mind.

"Mountains? Rivers?" Stone thought blankly for a moment. "West of Yanjing City, there is the Canglan River. It's very wide, but it's shallow now because of the cold weather, so it's still not easy to cross. The rest... is just wilderness, some small hills, nothing special."

Twenty thousand cavalrymen against an unknown number, infantry against cavalry, trapped in a besieged city, with rivers outside... This was almost a textbook example of a dead end. Shen Moqi felt a sense of suffocation.

He had to do something. He remembered the phone in his pocket. It was his only "abnormality," his only hope. But before him were four strangers struggling in dire straits. He couldn't reveal this secret.

He took a deep breath, clutched his left arm, and looked pained. His voice was weak as he said, "My left arm hurts terribly. I need to lean against the wall to rest for a bit..." As he spoke, he carefully adjusted his posture, turning his back to the stones and children, and slowly moved towards a darker corner, forming an angle between his body and the wall.

The movement aggravated his wound, causing cold sweat to bead on his forehead, but it also perfectly concealed his subtle actions. Using his tattered sleeve as cover, he stealthily slipped his hand into his inner pocket and touched the cold phone. Guided by memory and touch, he blindly pressed the power button, lit the screen, quickly activated AI, switched to voice input mode, and then pressed the phone tightly to his mouth, curling up as if shivering from the pain and cold.

He spoke in a weak, indistinct breath, barely audible to himself, sounding like an unconscious groan, "Record Analysis: Cold weapon era, siege warfare. Attacker: cavalry, initial 100,000, current number unknown, skilled in mounted archery, inept at siege warfare. Defender: infantry, current number less than 20,000, trapped in an isolated city. Terrain: a large river to the west of the city, named the Canglan River. Analysis... possible breakthrough. Don't tell me in words, show me in text."

The few seconds spent waiting for a reply felt incredibly long. The phone screen quietly lit up, and lines of text appeared one by one:

[Information is severely lacking. Precise data on the current troop strength, morale, equipment, supplies, commander capabilities, weather conditions, and detailed terrain for both sides is unavailable. Reliable tactical simulations are impossible. Based on the current fuzzy data model, the survival probability of holding out for reinforcements or negotiating is less than 15%, and the success rate of a forced breakout is less than 5%. Recommendation: Gather more critical information or seek unconventional factors to break the deadlock.]

Below 15%... even below 5%! Shen Moqi's heart sank to the bottom, and her last glimmer of hope was extinguished. Was she really destined to die here, never to see her parents again?

Despair overwhelmed him like ice water. Just then, Stone rubbed his hands together and exhaled a puff of white breath: "It's too cold, we need to start a fire." He walked to a pile of dry branches he had collected in the corner of the dilapidated temple and rummaged through them. He picked out a few relatively dry ones, then picked up a piece of wood with some black, sticky mud stuck to one end and struggled to strike it with a flint and steel.

"Sizzle—"

A spark ignited a dry leaf, and a small flame rose shakily. When this weak tongue of fire finally licked the piece of wood covered in black mud, something strange happened.

Instead of burning slowly, a sudden, intense, yellowish flame erupted with a "boom"! At the same time, a large amount of thick, black, pungent smoke billowed out, instantly filling half of the temple with a choking odor.

"Cough cough cough!" Shen Moqi was closest to the smoke and was directly enveloped by it, coughing violently and tears streaming down his face. Shi Tou was also startled and quickly used a stick to move the burning, strange piece of wood away a little.

"What the hell is this piece of wood? It's smoking so much and so thick!" Shen Moqi finally caught her breath and pointed at the piece of wood that was still burning fiercely and emitting thick black smoke, asking in a hoarse voice.

Shi Tou wiped away the tears from the smoke: "I don't know, I just picked it up in the ravine behind the mountain. That ravine is a bit eerie, the trees all grow crooked and shorter than elsewhere, and they break easily. This black mud... it's on a lot of wood, it sticks to your hands, and you can't wash it off. I only picked some up because I saw that it catches fire very easily and burns very slowly."

A mountain gully? Strange? Resilient black mud? Ignites instantly, billowing thick smoke?

Shen Moqi was still pondering when his phone screen lit up. It turned out the AI's voice input function was still running, treating his conversation with Shi Tou as information gathering and analyzing it. A moment later, a striking message appeared: "Success rate in breaking the deadlock increased to 50%. Providing detailed information about the ravine may further improve the success rate."

Shen Moqi was shocked. The only key word in his conversation with the stone was "wood covered in black mud." This piece of wood could increase the success rate of breaking the deadlock.

"Right, the mountain valley." Thinking of this, Shen Moqi coughed violently as she turned around with difficulty, naturally pressing her phone deeper into her bosom.

"Stone," he gasped, his voice hoarse from the smoke, but his eyes, glistening with tears, looked at Stone with unusual brightness. "Take me to that ravine you mentioned. Right now. I feel... there might be something there, something that could... allow us to survive."

Shi Tou looked at the flickering, almost obsessive light in Shen Moqi's smoke-reddened eyes, then glanced at the gloomy sky outside the temple, his face full of doubt and hesitation. But perhaps it was the unwavering certainty in Shen Moqi's tone, like grasping at a straw in a desperate situation, that infected him, or perhaps it was his own deep-seated yearning for a miracle, after a few seconds of silence, Shi Tou nodded heavily.

"Okay. The ravine isn't far. But your injury..."

"I won't die." Shen Moqi gritted her teeth, used her hands to support herself on the ground, and stood up.