In the Tomb
It wasn’t appropriate for a man and woman alone together to be dressed this sexily…
Someone was trying to take off Fu Qi’s pants.
In fact, the other person had first tried to remove his shirt.
There was no light anywhere, only pitch-black darkness. On top of that, Fu Qi was wearing a specially designed combat uniform, with his waist belt and tactical harness fastened securely. The other person clearly did not understand how any of it worked. They fumbled around his body several times without finding any way to get his clothes off, and eventually turned their attention to his pants instead.
In the darkness, Fu Qi could clearly feel the other person’s hand feeling around his waist belt a few times before forcibly squeezing underneath it from the bottom.
After struggling for quite a while, the hand finally managed to worm its way inside. With only a thin layer of fabric between them, it pressed against his abdomen.
The hand wasn’t large. It was somewhat soft, but it did not feel like a child’s hand. It probably belonged to a rather small man or a woman.
Right now, it was pressed against his stomach, laboriously wriggling around.
Despite being touched so intimately, Fu Qi still did not move.
First, although the other person had gone to great lengths to get a hand inside his clothes, Fu Qi could tell that their target was his clothing. They held no malice toward him personally.
Second, with the method they were using, at most they would manage to squeeze one hand inside. There was still no way they could actually take his clothes off.
And third—
That hand.
It was extraordinarily cold.
Even though Fu Qi had mentally prepared himself before it touched his abdomen through the lining, the icy temperature still made his heart jolt.
Amid the darkness and deathly silence, Fu Qi relaxed his body and allowed the cold hand to continue wreaking havoc over him.
The other person apparently lacked patience. After fumbling for a while, they shifted position.
Now Fu Qi was half-reclining against the wall while the other person straddled his thighs, one hand braced against his chest for leverage while the other continued digging around his waist and abdomen.
They were extremely close.
Fu Qi caught a cool, chilling scent coming from the other person, mixed faintly with a damp, mouldy smell.
It was like old grain or pottery that had been sealed away in a cellar for years without ever seeing sunlight.
The smell made perfect sense.
Because he was currently underground.
What had happened was quite simple.
A conflict had broken out during a mission. A stone wall had been blasted apart, and Fu Qi had been unlucky enough to fall into a tomb chamber.
He was highly skilled, so he had not suffered much injury from the fall.
His luck afterward, however, had been terrible.
The newly blasted opening had been completely blocked by fallen rocks. Not only was he trapped inside, there were also hidden mechanisms within the tomb.
A crossbow bolt had suddenly fired out and grazed his neck.
The bolt was poisoned.
The poison was extremely potent. Although Fu Qi immediately used the antidote he carried with him, he was still affected. Half his body became paralysed, leaving him unable to move.
All he could do was quietly wait for the paralysis to wear off.
And he had waited for thirteen hours.
During that entire period, the only thing he had encountered that could move was the unknown person currently sitting astride him.
For now, he would call them the Clothes Thief.
This was the third time Fu Qi had encountered the Clothes Thief.
The first time had been shortly after the explosion.
The Clothes Thief had rushed over carrying a faint source of light. Upon seeing Fu Qi, they had screamed and immediately fled.
The light had been too weak, and Fu Qi had been paralysed all over, unable even to open his eyes properly. He had not managed to see the person clearly.
All he had caught was that scream.
It had been hoarse and dry.
It sounded human, but he could not tell whether the speaker was male or female.
The second time, the Clothes Thief had not brought any light.
They had secretly observed him from some distance for a while, then cautiously crept around him and headed toward the collapsed section of the tomb.
An hour later, they returned and crouched in a corner, watching Fu Qi for a very long time.
Unfortunately for them, by then the paralysing effects of the poison had already begun fading.
Fu Qi’s five senses had recovered.
There was still no light, so his eyes remained useless, but his perception was extremely sharp. Following the faint rustling sounds, he silently maintained a standoff with the other person for quite some time.
In the end, Fu Qi tried moving his body and accidentally made a small sound.
The other person instantly vanished with a *whoosh*.
The third time, the Clothes Thief once again observed Fu Qi from far away for a long while.
After carefully approaching, they kept some distance and poked him several times with a wooden stick.
When Fu Qi gave no reaction, the person finally dared reach toward him.
“Mm!”
After struggling for ages without making any progress, the Clothes Thief let out a frustrated grunt.
Fu Qi felt the faint current of air created when they made the sound, as well as that aged, stale scent on their body.
The one thing he could never detect was the sound of breathing that a normal person should have possessed.
The hand moving around his waist also remained freezing cold.
It had been pressed against him for so long, yet it had not absorbed even the slightest trace of warmth.
Put simply, if the other person did not move and did not disturb Fu Qi with their gaze, then to his senses they were no different from a rock lying by the roadside.
Even if their faces were only a centimetre apart, he would not be able to detect them.
The reason was simple.
There was no scent of a living person on them.
Yes.
No scent of life.
Fu Qi had encountered too many similar species before. There was no chance he had misjudged it.
However, this one in front of him was clearly a little different.
—This was the first time he had ever met one whose obsession with his clothes outweighed its interest in his flesh.
“That’s not how you take it off,” Fu Qi said.
His clear male voice rang through the dark tomb, producing a faint echo against the empty stone walls.
The Clothes Thief froze.
The next instant, they sprang away from Fu Qi and turned to run deeper into the tomb.
Fu Qi raised his hand swiftly, caught the thin, icy ankle, and pulled hard, dragging the person back.
The Clothes Thief immediately kicked at him.
Fu Qi released their ankle with the motion, dodged forward, and widened the distance between them.
The Clothes Thief instantly fled without looking back.
Fu Qi was satisfied.
Exactly as he had expected.
The Clothes Thief was extremely afraid of humans.
In their panic, they had fled blindly in the opposite direction—
toward the place where Fu Qi had fallen into the tomb.
A dead end.
Fu Qi stood up and casually straightened the clothes that had been pulled out of place.
He moved something at his wrist.
A beam of brilliant white light suddenly projected from his watch, illuminating the tomb as brightly as daylight.
After quickly surveying the surroundings, he frowned.
He remained where he was, thinking for half a minute before walking forward.
The passage was narrow, only wide enough for four or five people to walk abreast.
Fu Qi was tall, with long arms and legs. Standing in the centre, he blocked the escape route almost completely.
Before long, the Clothes Thief, having nowhere left to flee, was forced into the strong light.
A woman.
Around 167 centimetres tall, with a slender build.
Her clothing was strange.
Her upper body was covered by only a faded strip of striped cloth wrapped diagonally around her chest like a bandage.
The fabric was torn and ragged, with several loose threads hanging from it.
Her lower half was no better.
A short piece of grey, tattered cloth had been roughly wrapped around her hips.
Below that were bare feet.
The outfit looked extremely bizarre.
But surprisingly, she herself looked very clean.
More importantly, thanks to how much skin the outfit exposed, Fu Qi could clearly see the corpse-like pallor of her skin, faintly tinged with blue-green.
Even stranger, she was carrying weapons.
They were the same poisoned crossbow bolts that had paralysed Fu Qi.
Two in total.
One was clutched in her hand.
The other was embedded deeply into her left ribs.
A patch of dark-red liquid had seeped from the wound, resembling abnormal-looking blood.
Under the intense light, the woman pressed her back against the stone wall and adopted a vigilant, guarded stance toward Fu Qi.
Fu Qi stared closely at her as well.
They remained locked in a silent standoff for a long while.
Then Fu Qi’s expression relaxed.
“Very distinctive,” he praised.
Immediately afterward, he asked,
“Are you a fashion model?”
A puzzled look appeared on the Clothes Thief’s deathly pale face.
It quickly turned into speechlessness.
She even glared at Fu Qi with her pitch-black eyes.
She understood him?
“If it isn’t a modelling outfit, then you must be injured,” Fu Qi said calmly, kindly reminding her, “That crossbow bolt is poisoned.”
Hearing this, the Clothes Thief quickly looked down.
Then she yanked the bolt straight out.
She threw it disdainfully onto the ground.
As if to prove she was not afraid of it, she stepped on it with her bare foot and ground it beneath her heel.
Because of the movement, dark-red blood flowed from the wound.
There was not much.
It merely stained her exposed, flat abdomen.
Yet she seemed completely incapable of feeling pain.
Her expression did not change in the slightest.
Fu Qi took all of this in without changing expression.
Then he asked,
“I’ve heard you make sounds before… You can speak, can’t you?”
The Clothes Thief remained silent.
Her gaze merely darted toward his wrist.
Fu Qi therefore raised his left hand and showed it to her.
“It’s a watch with a lighting function.”
The shadows in the tomb swayed several times with his movements.
Then he said,
“Wait a moment.”
After speaking, he voluntarily stepped backward.
His right hand pressed several points at his waist.
A few *clicks* sounded as his waist belt and tactical harness came undone.
Within moments, Fu Qi removed the upper half of his dark-green combat uniform.
He held the jacket out toward the Clothes Thief and gave her a friendly smile.
Her expression had originally begun to relax.
But after seeing that smile, she immediately became wary again.
Clearly, she still remembered how he had pretended to be dead to lure her closer earlier, before deliberately trapping her in a dead end.
“You don’t mean me any harm. You only wanted my clothes to cover yourself, right?”
Fu Qi maintained the gesture of offering her the jacket and said gently,
“Put it on. A man and woman alone together like this—it isn’t appropriate for you to be dressed so sexily.”
That speechless expression returned to the Clothes Thief’s face.
She hesitated before cautiously approaching him.
Then she snatched the jacket and ran back into the corner.
Fu Qi watched her put it on and pull up the zipper.
His eyes flickered slightly.
“Aren’t you going to say thank you?”
“…Th-thank… you…”
The Clothes Thief spoke with great difficulty.
Her voice was hoarse, like an old machine that had suddenly been switched on after remaining unused for years.
“You’re welcome,” Fu Qi said.
“My name is Fu Qi. What’s yours?”
The jacket was rather large.
It completely covered the scrap of cloth wrapped around the Clothes Thief’s chest and the indecently short rag serving as a skirt.
Only two thin calves remained exposed.
Against the dark combat uniform, the unnatural bluish tint of her skin was no longer as obvious.
At first glance, she looked like an ordinary young woman wearing an oversized jacket.
Her expression had also relaxed now that her body was covered.
However, she did not answer Fu Qi’s question.
Instead, she put both hands into the jacket pockets and rummaged around.
Then she pulled them out and pointed toward Fu Qi’s pants.
“I can’t give you my pants.”
Fu Qi glanced at her completely bare legs.
“I have a sense of shame too.”
The Clothes Thief stammered,
“M-men…”
“Yes. I’m a man. You’re a woman,” Fu Qi replied smoothly.
The Clothes Thief fell silent for a moment.
Then, struggling to form the words, she said,
“Men… road… roadside…”
Fu Qi did not understand.
However, combining the three words *pants*, *men*, and *roadside* with the current context, he guessed she was probably trying to say that plenty of men casually relieved themselves by the roadside anyway, so what sense of shame could he possibly have?
Therefore, giving her his pants to wear would clearly be better.
Reasonable.
“I don’t understand,” Fu Qi said sincerely, looking at her.
“Why don’t you explain it in more detail?”
The Clothes Thief fell silent again.
After gathering herself for a while, she finally shouted loudly at Fu Qi,
“L-liar!”
The accusation was too broad.
Fu Qi had no idea which particular behaviour she was calling him a liar over.
He did not mind.
Still gentle, he said,
“See? Talking more is good for you. You pronounced those two words correctly, and your voice already sounds much clearer.”
The Clothes Thief looked somewhat angry.
Her pitch-black eyes stared directly at him.
After a while, she began circling along the stone wall around Fu Qi.
Fu Qi could tell that she wanted to escape.
There were still several things he did not understand, and he knew nothing about the environment inside the tomb.
He needed to confirm the surroundings first.
Therefore, he did not stop her.
Instead, he turned sideways and opened a path.
He watched as the Clothes Thief swept past him like a gust of wind and disappeared.
Half a minute later, several dull sounds came from somewhere nearby.
That mechanism had activated again.
Judging from the noise, the jacket he had only just given away was probably about to gain several more bloodstains—
and a few holes.
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