Free Web NovelChapter 375: Buried alive
Hua Jing slowly turned her face back toward her, disbelief written plainly across her features. For a fleeting moment, she searched Hua Ling’s expression as if hoping—absurdly—that this was hysteria speaking, not conviction.
But the madness in Hua Ling’s eyes was real.
This was who she had become.
"You will pay for this," Hua Jing said quietly, though her voice trembled. "Just like your mother went to prison, do you really think you’ll escape? Do you think you’ll get away with killing me?"
Hua Ling laughed.
It was not a pleasant sound.
"Get away with it?" she echoed mockingly. "After I bury you, who will even know you were here? This place is miles from the main city. No one would think to search this deep in Silian Forest. And even if they did..." Her lips curled. "It would take days. By then, only your corpse would be left. Only your corpse."
A shudder ran through Hua Jing’s body despite herself.
Hua Ling’s face hardened.
"Enough," she snapped. "Take her. Throw her in."
The men advanced immediately.
For the first time, true panic broke through Hua Jing’s resolve.
"Don’t do this!" she shouted, struggling violently as they grabbed her arms. "Hua Ling, don’t do this! You still have time to stop!"
But her pleas were swallowed as one of the men pressed a rough hand over her mouth, muffling her cries. She kicked, twisted, fought with everything she had—but her wrists and ankles were tightly bound, leaving her movements clumsy and ineffective.
The lid of the coffin was thrown open.
In one brutal motion, they lifted her and dropped her inside.
The impact knocked the air from her lungs. The wood was cold and unyielding beneath her back. She writhed desperately, trying to sit up, but her bound limbs made it impossible. Her shoulders slammed against the narrow sides. There was barely space to move.
Through blurred vision, she saw the dark silhouette of Hua Ling standing over her.
Then—
The lid came down.
The world shrank to a thin sliver of light.
And then—
Nothing.
Darkness consumed her completely.
The sound of nails being hammered into place rang in her ears. Each strike felt like a countdown. She twisted violently, trying to brace her feet against the interior, trying to force the lid upward, but her bound hands could not find leverage.
Her breathing grew erratic.
Tears streamed freely now, soaking into her hair as she fought the suffocating weight of terror pressing down on her chest. She could feel the coffin being lifted, the tilt of her body as they carried it. frёeωebɳovel.com
Then came the sickening sensation of descent.
She was being lowered. ƒreewebɳovel.com
Lowered into the grave.
A dull thud vibrated through the wood as the coffin touched the bottom of the pit.
For a brief second, there was silence.
Then—
The first shovelful of dirt struck the lid.
Thud.
Another.
Thud.
The sound was muffled but unmistakable. Soil raining down. Piling up. Sealing her in.
Her screams were trapped within the wooden box, swallowed by earth. She kicked and thrashed, her body straining against the ropes until her skin burned raw. She tried to slow her breathing, but panic clawed mercilessly at her lungs.
This couldn’t be her fate.
It couldn’t end like this.
The thudding grew heavier as more soil accumulated. The faint, distant sounds of movement above gradually dulled. The last traces of external noise disappeared beneath layers of earth.
She felt it.
Hua Jing had been buried alive.
Above ground, the men finished their task quickly, flattening the disturbed soil as best they could. In the dim light of the clearing, the patch of earth looked almost natural again—just another uneven rise in the forest floor.
Hua Ling stood still for a long moment, staring at the freshly covered grave.
Her chest rose and fell unevenly.
Finally, she turned away.
"This is what you owe me, Hua Jing," she said coldly, though her voice trembled faintly at the edges. "There can only be one of us in this world. And it will never be you."
She took a final look at the mound of soil.
"It will always be me."
With that, she climbed into the sedan. The engine roared to life, headlights cutting briefly across the clearing before the vehicle turned and disappeared deeper into the forest path.
Moments later, the rumble of the car faded into the distance.
...
It had been nearly an hour since Fu Jing Rong and his men entered Silian Forest.
An hour that felt like a lifetime.
They had followed the fresh tire tracks as far as they could, pushing their vehicles deeper into the forest until the path narrowed into something barely passable. At several points, the trail split. At others, it disappeared entirely beneath layers of old tracks left by hikers and off-road vehicles. The damp earth that had once clearly held the sedan’s imprint gradually became a chaotic mixture of overlapping marks.
They searched on foot when the cars could no longer advance.
Flashlights sliced through the darkness. Radios crackled with clipped updates.
"Nothing here."
"Negative on this side."
"No fresh disturbance."
Fu Jing Rong walked ahead of most of them, his boots sinking into mud, his coat brushed repeatedly by low branches. His face was rigid, but his breathing was uneven. Every passing minute tightened the invisible vice around his chest.
She was somewhere in this forest.
Or she had been.
The thought that they might already be too late clawed at his mind, but he refused to let it take shape.
Each time a search team reported failure, something inside him edged closer to snapping. Deng Li noticed the shift immediately. Fu Jing Rong’s patience—normally calculated and cold—was thinning to something raw and dangerous.
Then—
His phone rang.
The sharp vibration cut through the night like a blade.
He answered immediately. "Speak."
It was the traffic commander.
"Mr. Fu," the man said urgently, "we’ve picked up movement on the eastern exit of Silian Forest. The black sedan just left through the national highway. It’s heading north toward City B."
