Escape

I watched her back as she walked away back towards the other child. She began speaking to the child and I packed back up the cleaning kit Brother Chen gave to me. Once I tied the knot onto the box I placed it back inside my robe before looking up.

On the other side of the table I saw the shoulders and had of the little girl pop over. She was holding a brush and had some paper in front on her. She looked really focused as she began to draw. Soon she finished one, and began to draw another which looked awfully familiar to the first.

When finished the second she started on another and another before she ran out of paper to draw on. Since I had nothing to do I just watched her as she sketched the same drawing over and over again. In the end she had finished five drawings and a proud smile could be seen as she looked at her finished work.

"What are you drawing there?" I asked leaning on the table.

"Eh? Oh! This is a map for some of you to carry. I drawn it from memory, but it should be pretty accurate. I just thought about it, but I feel like I'll have too much responsibility if I'm the only one who knew anything. Take a look!" She handed me one of her maps.

The drawings might of been extremely rough, but it would probably come in handy. It contained all the places we've already been to as well as quite a few more places we haven't. She even placed an X mark on the library we were in incase anyone was confused reading the map.

"Hey, everyone look at this! Little Hu drew us maps of the stronghold for when we're going to escape." I waved the map up in the air getting the attention of the people in the room.

They glanced at the paper in my hand for a moment before looking down onto the table. I turned a bit before giving the map over to Chen Huang to look over. I gave the little girl a smile before looking over the shoulder of Chen Huang at the map.

Suddenly the sounds of the door began to open, but seeing that no one else moved I didn't either. I did in fact look over at the opening doorway though. As it opened I saw a pair of shining emerald-green eyes rapidly scan the room before landing on me.

Those eyes felt immense almost like staring at the sun, I couldn't help but to look away. Remembering what happened I felt embarrassment well up within. An hour didn't even pass after what I said for that act to happen. What was wrong with me? It happened way too fast almost like something was affecting my judgement.

Without me even realizing it she had snuck up behind me. A hand suddenly appeared atop my right shoulder. As a feeling just appeared on my shoulder I jumped a bit before noticing who it belonged to.

"I see that you've now created some makeshift maps. I've also got some information from that man.

First of all they have around fifty people who are mostly high stage twos, but their leader and co-leader should be in the early third stage. And second of all they were here to look for some kind of treasure, which their leader should have already found. I couldn't get anymore useful info though.

So is it time to go?"

"Um.. Yes?" Looking around everyone gave the go ahead

"Lets go over the plan one more time." Zhen Wuying said placing her map onto the table for all to see.

..

Around two to three minutes later we all packed up and moved over to the entrance we came from. The Library seemed like a maze to me and yet to the little girl it was almost like a linear hallway for her. She knew which way to turn and when, taking the quickest way possible. In less than three minutes we arrived to the door which was closed.

Chen Huang cracked open the door and peeked out looking both ways before opening it wide enough for us to exit. We went out one by one until everyone was out before shutting the door behind us.

Once everyone was in the hallway we started to form a formation with me at the center. Along with me were the three survivors we found: the little girl, little boy, and janitorial disciple stayed behind me. Yao Ya was five meters ahead of me and Chen Huang five meters behind me. The other four covered our flanks also staying a five meter distance with me.

The idea with the five meter radius around me was as a reaction zone. If any slipped past them I would at least be able to turn and try to react to them. It was also the radius of my Qi sense if I needed it.

I looked down at the map in my hands. There was a path that was drawn starting from the library to some random obscure corner that just had to be on the other side of the stronghold.

The shuffling of our feet could be heard through the dark and quiet halls. Putting away my map I placed my hands on the shoulders of the two kids who walked sided by side of me. The remaining disciple of the sect quietly followed behind me. Although I wasn't too fearful I did feel the slight shaking of the children beside me.

They must have been terrified of what lay just out of their sights, after all they had heard their fellow disciples die behind a wall. I tightened my grip around them with hopes of calming them. The little boy on my left did calm down, but the girl instead shook a little more strongly.

By this point we've almost made it an entire quarter of the path which took fifteen minutes to reach. Soon we should reached a left turn and proceeded like normal yet two people ahead stopped following the route. Yao Ya and Zhen Wuying looked the floor near a wall.

Before I could ask why we stopped an audible *Gasp* was heard before I saw Zhen Wuying take a step back. Seeing her reaction seeing her reaction my interest was peaked, but noticing that she took a step back it probably wasn't a good sight. Looking to my sides it seems the children were also interested as I saw their curious gazes, but incase it was a really bad sight I couldn't let them see it.

Remembering there was a man behind me I handed them over for a second. In a low voice I spoke to him "Hey Jin Bo please look after these two for a second I want check out what happened."

Turning around I gave the children to the man and walked over to the two. "What uh-hey!"

As I walked over it seems the others started coming over as well.

"Hey why are we stopping?" Chen Huang's voice came from behind as he approached.

"I don't know, I just saw that both Yao Ya and Zhen Wuying stopped at similar times and looked at the same thing." At this moment we arrived beside three of them as Tang He was closer to the girls. Chen Huang and I saw what made them stop at the same time.

It was a body of a man, but wasn't like any of the bodies we've seen so far. This one had robes with a familiar blue and black color scheme. The condition of the body was terrible, large chunks of flesh were missing, slash marks, and lacerations covered his body from head to toe. He lied on his left side partially touching the wall with his back.

A pool of blood radiated from his chest. The robes he wore were mere rags at this point. His head was quite badly damaged too, but a few discerning features could be seen: the color of his eyes, general shape what used to be his face, and his hair style.

But I don't think I've ever seen this man before or really know him.

'He might of been with our twenty man group, after all I didn't really meet many of them.'

We all just looked at the body until a pair of footsteps knocked us out of our stupor.

*Gasp!* Two simultaneous gasps were let out behind me.

"We have to continue onward! We can't waste more time looking at him." Before the the two would experience the stupor we did Zhen Wuying brought them back. We all quietly returned to our positions without speaking another word about what we saw and continued on the drawn path.

I walked back over to the three who only stared at us with confusion and the children came over to me.

"Big Brother what was that?" The little boy asked as he took my hand.

"It was nothing let's move on and get out of here, ok?"