The wind in the wild bamboo forest carried the smell of blood straight into his nose. Ye Fan carried the injured Xiao Zhou on his back as he wove through the bamboo stalks. The wound on his left shoulder, grazed by a bone-piercing nail, burned with a fiery pain, but what worried him even more was Xiao Zhou's hand—those fingers gripped his lapel so tightly that the blood seeping from between them had already soaked through his back.
"Young Master... to the left." Xiao Zhou's voice was as weak as water-logged cotton. "The third clump of bamboo ahead, there's a blue stone slab under the roots..." His forehead was burning hot, and Ye Fan could feel him trembling with every word he spoke, yet his uninjured hand still pointed at Ye Fan's back. "Old Wu at the mine said that the ventilation shafts in this kind of wild bamboo forest are always hidden under the roots of the green bamboo... That's how we used to smuggle ore back then..."
Before he could finish, Xiao Zhou's head slumped heavily onto Ye Fan's shoulder. Ye Fan's Adam's apple bobbed. The old peach tree in his Inner World suddenly shook off a leaf, its tip condensing a droplet of emerald-green sap that seeped along his meridians and into Xiao Zhou's body.
Chapter 179