Chapter 5 — The Thief Girl's Use

Gao Heng knew perfectly well whether this little girl named Rebecca had gotten her head addled in that fight with the monsters, but he still forced himself to say patiently: "I may have 'lived' here for many years... but I was dead at the time, all right! Once you're dead, can you tell what your own grave looks like?"

Rebecca thought about it. She wanted to remind him that the imperial tomb of the founding king of Ansu back when the Xuanyuan Sect rose to power had actually been built while the king was still alive—the king had even taken part in the design himself—but on second thought, she realized that if she said another word, Aunt Heidi would very likely beat her to death on the spot, so she swallowed the words back down and said with an awkward laugh: "Ahaha... fair point."

"We can't go back the way we came," Heidi sighed, analyzing calmly. "The castle's central courtyard and the entrance to the ancestral crypt have both been overrun by those monsters. Going back that way is suicide."

"We have to find another way," Gao Cen said, calling up the memories he had inherited. "Seven hundred years have passed—the castle on these lands can't still have the same layout as back then, surely?"

"The upper levels have been renovated several times, but the foundations haven't moved," Heidi said quickly. "That entrance you mentioned should still be where it was."

"Is that so? Then this is easy," Gao Dai said, extending a hand toward a soldier beside him. "Lend me your sword."

Taking the longsword the soldier handed over, Gao You began sketching on the ground. First he drew a top-down view of the castle's outline, then a side view roughly divided into three levels. Though both were hasty sketches, the division of the main sections was still quite clear.

"The entrance is here. Two levels underground, next to the wine cellar and the grain store—back then they were the wine cellar and grain store. There are two passages leading inside, but both require crossing the surface level, so that probably won't work."

Rebecca peered curiously at the sketch Gao Lan had drawn: "Those are still the wine cellar and grain store now, but I never knew there was a third room between them..."

"Not a room—a cavity between the walls, hidden between the walls and the support beams using a few architectural tricks," Gao Rong laughed. "These lands were hardly peaceful back then. It was the frontier—monsters crawling out of the wasteland of the old Gondor Empire and the maddened remnants of the imperial army came knocking almost every ten days or half a month. The earliest Cecil territory was built almost to the standards of a war fortress. In that kind of situation, hidden passages and false walls were indispensable—they could be used for emergency evacuation, and to smuggle supplies in when under siege."

Sir Byron studied the crude map carefully for a moment, then drew his own longsword and sketched across the lower diagonal of the map: "So the entrance to the castle's second floor is where we're headed... and we can't take any aboveground route, including the central courtyard. Here is where we are now. The ancestral tomb was built southeast of the castle as an underground structure, with about a third of it overlapping the castle's foundations..."

"Right in that overlapping section, there should be a passage," Gao Yang cut Byron off. "The tomb was built seven hundred years ago. The craftsmen then were the same ones who built the war fortress. These structures were built to the standards and rules of that era—the backup passages must exist."

As he spoke, he gave Rebecca a somewhat strange look: "You really know nothing about this? This should all be knowledge passed down through the Cecil family, generation after generation."

Rebecca lowered her head, somewhat ashamed: "I..."

"Ancestor, we have failed the glory you won for this family in your day," Heidi bit her lip and said with considerable difficulty. "The Cecil family has been through a great deal over these seven hundred years..."

"All right, I understand," Gao Cen waved a hand; this was no time for storytelling. "Once we're out of here, I'll sit you down and learn properly what's happened over these seven hundred years. Right now the priority is finding the route from the tomb to the hidden passage."

Rebecca, Heidi, and Byron crouched before the rough maps and studied them, but although they knew the Cecil family's old castle, they had no clear idea of the tomb's internal structure. This seven-hundred-year-old crypt was no tourist attraction charging two silver coins a ticket—never mind dropping by every few days, even a century ago, before the crypt was sealed, the family heirs could enter the tomb's interior only a limited number of times in their entire lives, and they were never even allowed near the ancestor's resting place.

Who knew where the hidden passage opened?

Faced with this problem, even Gao Song's memories were of no use—after all, when he died back then, he certainly never imagined that one day he would have to haul himself up and figure out a way out...

But just as the group was at their wits' end, Amber, who had been sitting quietly to one side the whole time, suddenly spoke up: "Um... I might know the way..."

Instantly, every eye in the crypt turned to the half-elf thief.

Amber's neck shrank at once.

Heidi frowned: "How would you know?"

"I..." Amber was a little frightened, but after seeing the encouraging look in Gao Yang's eyes, she grew bolder. "I just... crawled in from over there... the direction should be about right. I'm guessing that's the hidden passage."

Gao Yan nodded: "Good. You lead the way."

Amber patted her chest: "As long as you don't hold it against me anymore for digging up your family tomb..."

Heidi glared at this loose-tongued half-elf, then raised her staff and turned toward the tomb chamber's door, while Gao Yang, just before taking a step, suddenly stopped.

"Ancestor?" Rebecca looked at him curiously.

"I need a weapon too," Gao Dai said. Although he was not the legendary duke who had carved out new territory seven hundred years ago, he still had the common sense to find something to defend himself with in a place this dangerous.

His gaze swept across the tomb chamber. One soldier voluntarily unbuckled the sword at his waist and was about to hand it over, but Gao Yang waved a hand and declined the soldier's kindness. Guided by memory, he went to the black steel coffin and leaned over to rummage around inside.

Inside the coffin he found a heavy longsword, black from hilt to tip, though near the guard the blade faintly gave off a crimson glow.

The moment the longsword settled into his hand, a feeling of familiarity and rightness welled up in him—as if every groove on the blade fit the lines of his palm with impossible exactness. Gao Yang instinctively swung the sword twice, and each swing felt as though it had been tempered through a thousand refinements.

He knew this was the memory left in the body he now inhabited. Even if the soul had changed, every muscle still remembered how to wield this weapon.

One could call it a pleasant surprise, though not entirely unexpected.

Beyond the residual memories of the body, all of Gao Yang Cecil's knowledge of combat from his lifetime could also be found in his mind—not only basic swordsmanship and horsemanship, but also those supernatural powers that seemed to Gao Yang almost like magic. That part was undoubtedly tempting, but now was no time for experimentation and study.

First, get out of this miserable situation.

When Rebecca saw the black longsword, her eyes went wide at once, and even her voice trembled slightly: "Is that... the legendary Sword of Ansu the Pioneer?"

At Rebecca's voice, Heidi, who had already reached the doorway, spun around instantly. She stared fixedly at the sword in Gao Yang's hand, unable to hide her excitement: "The Sword of the Pioneer?!"