Why Do I Feel Like This Is a Trap?

Gu Feidi didn’t pursue further on the wild onions. He only chuckled and shook his head slightly, helplessly.

They harvested a few wild onions together. Gu Feidi also recognised a plant dubbed ‘sand riceTeo: Direct translation of 沙米 , real translation is agriophyllum. I think sand rice would be better than me putting agriophyllum, like I don’t even know what the word sounds like.’. They collected a few along the way. Took their gathering to wash off any surface dirt in the stream, and chewed them uncooked.

The taste of grass was not the best, without seasoning and they were eating it cold. Their vegetarian meal was only good to fill their empty stomachs.

“There is plenty of water and grain in this cave. That means there are insects and rats in the vicinity, and they attract snakes.” Gu Feidi described, “If we encounter snakes, we can kill them for food.”

Su Yang choked on his grass and asked, “Neither of us have a flame stick, how can we eat snakes? Are you actually going to drill wood to make a fire?”

Looking at the clueless Su Yang, Gu Feidi smiled. “I see, the Young Master is used to his sovereign life, naturally, he has never eaten raw snake meat before.”

This startled Su Yang. “Raw?!”

Gu Feidi stayed silent for a moment before saying, “We will chat more once we see them. Let’s go.”

After eating, they continued to explore the cave. They couldn’t stay sheltered in this place till death just because it had water and grass.

The two didn’t walk far before a hole at the edge of the lush wild onion field emitted a rustling noise.

Gu Feidi pulled out his sword and brushed away a path in the grass. A grey-coloured snake of about two metres in length quickly turned away and fled. He quickly raised his sword and cut off the snake’s head.

Su Yang: “...”

Man, the power of the protagonist's halo—it’s really extraordinary. Wish for a snake, and a snake shall come on a platter immediately.

Seeing a wild snake for the first time, he curiously came forward to have a closer look.

“Don’t touch!” Gu Feidi warned, as he quickly dug out a small pit in the ground with his sword and buried the snake’s head.

Once he was done, he explained, “This is a pit viper, very venomousRule of thumb, if you eat it and you die, it’s poisonous. If it bites you and you die, it is venomous. . Even if the head is cut off, it still has the ability to bite. Never be careless.”

Su Yang’s survival skill stats: Big Fat Zero. 

He nodded in a daze. He stared blankly at Gu Feidi, who pulled out a dagger, skilfully peeled off the snakeskin, and removed the organs. He then washed the meat in the stream and cut it into pieces.

“Have a taste?” Gu Feidi prepared the snake very well. He passed a small piece to Su Yang, and said beaming, “Snake meat is a delicious delicacy, it tastes good even raw.”

Su Yang couldn’t help taking a half step back.

He glared at the snake meat like it was his mortal enemy, before saying, “This…raw meat commonly contains parasitic bugs inside…”

Puzzled, Gu Feidi inquired, “What kind of bug?”

Su Yang murmured, “...Gu bugThe legendary man-made venomous insect from a dark magic that involves putting several venomous creatures like centipede, snake, scorpion inside a closed container, where they are forced to devour one another and allegedly concentrated their toxins into a single survivor, whose body would be fed upon by larvae. The last surviving larva held the complex poison (a bit like Doku mushi in Japanese folktales). I can’t find a good english translation so I am using pinyin ‘gu’..”

“Gu?” Gu Feidi raised his eyebrows, grinning. “Poisonous dark art is indeed a common tactic of the E’Luo Guo Faction, but they don’t breed the insect inside of snakes. So you can be at ease.”

Su Yang: “...”

Oh, that was right, how could he forget that he was in a fictional world of martial heroes. What kind of author or screenwriter had this much free time to write about parasites in snake meat in detail?

The protagonist, after all, would eat raw meat to survive during many crises. If the protagonist died from parasitic infections, it would be too outrageous.

But that didn’t change the fact that Su Yang didn’t have the guts to eat raw snake meat.

He reluctantly put up the Young Master’s facade to find an excuse, “I…this Young Master, will stick with wild onions. It’s too barbaric to feast on the snake’s raw meat and blood. This one finds no enjoyment in it.”

With that, he put his hands behind him, raised his head, creating this arrogant image, untainted by even a speck of dust.

Gu Feidi raised his eyebrows and studied Su Yang for a while. In the end, he didn’t insist any further. He ate two pieces of the meat and wrapped the rest with the snakeskin, carrying the reserved snake meat in his hand, as he planned to save it for later.

Back to their main task of exploring the cave, they shouldn’t let food hold up too much of their time.

Afterward, as they traveled in time to finish one cup of tea or fifteen minutes, Su Yang regretted not stopping Gu Feidi from killing the snake.

He spotted four to five ash-grey pit vipers slithering on the ground, which made the tingling numbness return.

He hid behind Gu Feidi without thinking and panicked. “Are they coming back for revenge because you killed their friend? They must have smelled their kin on you! I knew this would happen!!”

Gu Feidi: “...”

He hesitated for a moment before tossing the remaining snake meat a distance away from them.

The group of snakes didn’t move. They continued to be on alert to the two men, hissing and flicking their tongues out.

Su Yang panicked more. “Wh-what do we do?”

Gu Feidi, with a dignified face, declared, “We have no choice but to kill them all.”

Trembling down to his bones, Su Yang freaked out, “But what would we do if more of them come…once you kill these?”

Pulling out his sword, Gu Feidi comforted, “Don’t worry, there is not much vegetation here, that means less prey, so there shouldn’t be too many snakes.”

After killing the snakes this time, he didn’t skin the snakes for their meat, instead, he buried all of them. Then they continued on their journey.

However, after less than half a quarter of an hour, Gu Feidi ate his own words, or more likely his words came back and slapped him in the face.

Su Yang gawked at the swarms of snakes in front of them, feeling like there was nothing left to live for.

Gu Feidi narrowed his eyes and said, “Something is not right.”

Su Yang went beyond terrified, “Of course I noticed something’s not right!”

He fought the urge to turn and run, but it did not fit into the Young Master’s calm and collected nature. So he could only stand his ground and fake being calm and composed, then asked with a slight quiver in his voice, “I heard snakes are related to immortals. All the immortals' households have snakes. And if you kill any kind of snake, the immortal would seek you for revenge…”

Snickering, Gu Feidi said, “On the contrary, I doubt this was the work of an immortal or ghost, but the work of men.”

Su Yang questioned in a quiet tone, “What are we going to do now? Are you going to kill them all?”

Staying silent for a moment, Gu Feidi decided, “There are too many of them. We will retreat for now and rest for tonight. Thankfully, the freezing desert night will slow the snake's movement. We will clean up these snakes early tomorrow morning before the heat from the sun sets in. I want to see how people would catch and toss these vipers here, and find their motive behind this.”

The two men quickly reached an understanding as they temporarily initialised the retreat strategy.

They went back to a part of the cave that had easy escape routes and hid close to the chink by the cold underground river. Having put a long distance between them and the snakes, Su Yang finally relaxed and sat next to the wall by the chink.

Gu Feidi inquired with a teasing smile, “Are you afraid of snakes?”

Tightening up his neck, Su Yang did not admit, “How could this Young Master be afraid of those little things! If I didn’t accidentally lose my sword, I would also kill a few of them!”

—He released his sword handle after he stabbed the Wujiang Sect’s assassin, trying to protect Gu Feidi. Earlier during their journey, because of his injury, he paid little mind to it. Now, it didn’t matter, as he didn’t know where his sword would end up for the time being. 

Hearing this, Gu Feidi smiled again. He took out the dagger from his belt, weighed it with his long sword, then handed his long sword to Su Yang.

He insisted, “Take it. Having a weapon in hand will put your heart at ease.”

Feeling a bit embarrassed, Su Yang asked, “How about you?”

Gu Feidi answered, “This dagger is enough.”

Then he added, “Your Divide Lotus Technique and Gliding Blossom Art may not work with my long sword, but you can still use your Drunkard’s Plum Wine Slash.”

Su Yang held Gu Feidi’s sword close to his heart and nodded.

With that, Gu Feidi leaned on the stone wall and gazed up at the sky outside the gap at the top of the cave.

After pondering over Gu Feidi’s words, Su Yang had to admit his speculation was very spot on.

The barren wasteland would not have produced this many plants if the conditions were not right in the cave. There was vegetation here, but the amount was still considered scarce, which meant very few small types of herbivores in the cave, and without that prey, naturally, there shouldn’t be this large group of predators—a lack of food, whether it was humans or snakes, they couldn’t survive.

In autumn, the temperature difference between day and night was huge in the desert, which was fatal for snakes, as cold-blooded creatures. They just needed to wait until dark, when the temperature dropped and the snake’s activity would decrease, maybe some would even stay frozenly immoveable.

Not knowing what the culprits were thinking, did they even take the temperature into account?

…No, wait.

Pit vipers were venomous.

If one wasn’t paying enough attention, once bitten, the victim could only wait for their death in the barren desert cave!

“Why do I feel like…” Su Yang frowned. “This is a trap?”

Gu Feidi gave a gentle laugh. “You finally noticed?”

Glaring at him from the corner of his eyes, Su Yang rebuked, “I am not stupid!”

Gu Feidi said firmly, “I suspected that the whole news regarding the Sword Sage’s tomb was fabricated by the E’Luo Gui Faction, and it was intentionally leaked throughout the Central Plains. But I can’t figure out the reason they led us to this cave.”

“They deliberately led us here?” Su Yang questioned, not understanding the whole picture.

Gu Feidi nodded. “The large net set in advance in the river was an overt scheme. If we were caught in the net, our fate would definitely be captured alive, with no way to escape. If we didn’t get caught, we must have chosen the other route and ended up here by following the current. At first, I thought they didn’t know about the safe haven inside the cave, but with the den of snakes, I now suspect that they deliberately let us discover this place.”

Su Yang chimed in, “Maybe they only know about a way out beyond the cave? To cut off all of our escape routes, they released the snakes?”

But Gu Feidi didn’t buy that.

“Snakes are afraid of the cold, and anyone who realised this would not sit idle for their death. They would mostly find a way to solve the snake issue. That means the role of the snakes was forcing us to consume our energy and medicine, and ultimately to delay time.” He concluded.

He was on a roll, and Su Yang couldn’t object to his flawless logic. In this world’s background, Gu Feidi’s deduction made perfect sense.

“What do we do now?” he asked. “Are we going to beat them in their own game?”

Gu Feidi smiled brightly. “Since we already entered the trap, what else can we do? We can only outsmart them and change according to the situation. Once we get out of here alive, I must immediately inform my father of this, and have them investigate the E’Luo Gui Faction.”

As the Young Master’s role wasn’t in this part of the script, Su Yang didn't know if he should add his opinions.

He silently ended the conversation as he added nothing. He crossed his legs and continued to heal his injury.

—Nightfall was still a while away. Although it was not awkward to be alone with Gu Feidi, they had nothing in common to chat about. So it was better to rest than having awkward conversations.

Gu Feidi glanced at Su Yang, who had his eyes closed in meditation for a long time, before he looked away. He unconsciously caressed his left wrist guard, thinking of something.

As the sun made progress to the west, dusk approached.

When Su Yang opened his eyes, he found the cave was already dim.

The crack at the top of the cave stopped providing enough light to illuminate the whole cave. Even during a night of a full moon, the cave would stay pitch black, as the night light would not penetrate through the crack.

“Awake?” Gu Feidi’s voice rang beside him. “How is your injury looking?”

Su Yang replied, “It’s better. I am going to freshen up, then you can rest later. I will take my turn on guard watch.”

He got up and walked to the small stream, and took off his clothes. He washed the dust and sweat around his wound by using the glimmer that was about to fade away.

The Young Master’s body was amazing. The wound healed very quickly. Only one day had passed and it already formed a scab on its way to a full recovery. The wound didn’t hurt him anymore. Before in the House of Jade, when he was injured during a friendly fight with his fellow disciples, it never left a scar. He sighed, this body was indeed from a fictional world, very different from a normal human being.

After a simple scrubbing, he washed his clothes and dried them with his internal energy. His internal energy was not as cold as during his time absorbing the Apparition of the Frozen Lake. A very convenient means to dry his hair and clothes.

Once he returned to the cave wall, the sky turned darker.

He sat down beside Gu Feidi. Now in the shadow, he could only faintly distinguish the silhouette of the other man.

He smirked. “You can leave it to me to guard today.”

After a while, Gu Feidi responded with, “I am not sure I can meditate right now…I will sleep for a while first.”

Su Yang was in shock, and teased, “What’s wrong? Is the hardworking, diligent Young Lord having a lazy moment?”

Gu Feidi did not answer immediately.

After a long silence, he murmured in a whisper, as if to himself, “I cannot calm my heart down.”