Free Web NovelChapter 382: Finding his world
The distant chopping sound of blades grew louder as the aircraft maneuvered carefully between towering trees. The canopy was too dense for landing, branches too close for safe descent.
A rope ladder was thrown down instead.
Without hesitation, Fu Jing Rong grabbed hold and ascended swiftly. Wind whipped against his coat as he climbed, boots scraping briefly against the helicopter’s frame before he pulled himself inside.
The pilot adjusted course instantly toward the eastern quadrant.
From above, the forest looked endless—a sea of black stretching into the horizon. But Fu Jing Rong’s mind no longer registered the vastness. It fixated only on the red marker blinking on the navigation display.
Buried alive.
His jaw tightened.
Images assaulted him uninvited—Hua Jing struggling for breath, her hands scraping against packed soil, her voice muffled by earth. He forced the thoughts away. He could not afford panic.
The helicopter could not land directly at the site due to uneven terrain, so they hovered low enough for descent.
When they arrived, the ground team was already converging from different directions, guided by the transmitted coordinates.
The forest floor here looked deceptively ordinary.
But one patch of soil was freshly disturbed.
Fu Jing Rong jumped down before the helicopter fully stabilized. His boots hit the ground hard as he rushed forward, eyes locking onto the uneven mound.
When Fu Jing Rong stepped forward and his eyes finally landed on that uneven mound of freshly turned earth, something inside him stopped—not in a dramatic, theatrical way, but in a deeply physical, suffocating way. His chest tightened so abruptly that for a moment he could not draw in air. The forest around him—dense, towering, endless—seemed to recede into a blur as his entire focus narrowed onto that patch of soil. It was not large. It was not marked. It did not carry a headstone or a sign. And yet he knew with a certainty that hollowed him out from the inside that beneath that earth lay the center of his world.
The grave was crude but deliberate. The soil had been packed down hastily, though not carelessly. There were faint impressions of boots around it, disturbed leaves pressed into the mud, the imprint of someone kneeling. The earth was darker there, still damp, not yet fully settled back into the forest floor. It looked disturbingly ordinary—just another patch of wilderness—if one did not know what it concealed. But he knew.
For a suspended second that stretched unbearably long, he simply stared at it. In that second, images assaulted him—Hua Jing struggling in suffocating darkness, her palms scraping uselessly against wood, her voice swallowed by layers of soil. The thought was so violent that it made his vision blur.
He could not afford to freeze.
"Dig," he ordered, but the word came out rough, almost breaking at the edges.
He did not wait for anyone else to move first.
He dropped to his knees.
The rest of the team surged forward immediately. There were no shovels, no proper tools. They had come prepared for pursuit, for confrontation, for extraction—not for excavation. The realization only made the urgency more brutal. Without hesitation, they began clawing at the soil with their bare hands.
Earth tore beneath their fingers. Clumps were thrown aside desperately. Fingernails scraped against small stones and roots. Mud packed beneath their nails, skin splitting where friction grew too harsh. No one slowed down.
This was their madam.
The woman who had walked beside their master. The woman who had softened him in ways none of them had ever thought possible. The one whose quiet strength had changed the rhythm of the entire Fu household.
They dug as if their own lives depended on it.
Fu Jing Rong’s hands moved frantically, shoving soil aside with reckless force. Dirt smeared across his sleeves, across his face. His breathing was uneven now, harsh and uncontrolled. Every second that passed felt like sand slipping through his fingers.
As they dug deeper, the soil grew warmer.
The heat beneath the earth was faint but undeniable—a trapped warmth held within the small space below. That detail struck him with terrifying clarity. She was down there. In that confined space. Air limited. Time limited.
"Faster," he rasped, though no one needed the command.
The mound diminished rapidly under the coordinated desperation of ten men working with raw urgency. Clods of earth flew in every direction. The forest floor became chaotic—roots exposed, leaves crushed, soil scattered in dark arcs around them.
Then—
One of the men’s hands struck something solid.
He froze for half a heartbeat before brushing away more dirt.
Wood.
A flat, unyielding surface.
"There’s something here!" he shouted, voice tight.
The digging intensified, even more frenzied now. Soil was scraped away in great handfuls until the rectangular outline became unmistakable. A coffin. Simple. Unadorned. The wood already slightly damp from the earth pressing in around it.
Fu Jing Rong’s heart slammed violently against his ribs.
The sight of it was both confirmation and devastation. frёewebηovel.cѳm
They cleared the remaining soil from the lid with trembling hands. Mud smeared across the grain of the wood, sticking in grooves and crevices. The coffin was not deeply buried—but deep enough.
"Lift it," Fu Jing Rong ordered hoarsely.
Several men positioned themselves along the sides, fingers wedging beneath the edges where they could. Muscles strained as they heaved the coffin upward just enough to loosen it from the packed soil. It shifted with a dull, heavy sound.
They pulled it fully into the open.
For one suspended moment, no one moved.
The forest seemed to hold its breath with them.
Fu Jing Rong stepped forward slowly. His hands hovered over the lid, trembling faintly for the first time that night. His composure, which had carried him through hours of pursuit and command, felt dangerously thin now.
If he opened it—
He forced himself not to hesitate.
With a sharp motion, they pried the lid loose.
The wood gave way with a cracking sound.
And then they saw her.
