Engravings

"Anyway, since we need to treat everyone's wounds, how about taking another break?" Li Ming Hao proposed.

"All we have been doing is taking breaks since the morning. It has become late afternoon already and we are taking another break?" Chen Chen's impatience was really apparent. In his mind, it was all this guy's fault. He might be his boss's son but this guy sure was unlucky. They had only been encountering obstacles since they started. He had completely forgotten that the first break in their journey was because of himself.

Su Xin Yu glared at the guy who was not being any help at all while Li Ming Hao cleaned up her wounds. He had sat down on his knees while he made her sit on the rock, so that he could examine her injuries, both on her arms and her legs. He dipped a small cloth into cold water of the river they had found and carefully removed the blood.

She hissed in pain when he finally started dressing her wounds.

"I am sorry! I will be careful," Li Ming Hao looked up and his expression turned painful. She was just ending up getting more and more wounds because of him. Her whole body had cuts and bruises now.

"No, it's okay. The medicine just now stung a bit. Don't worry about it," Su Xin Yu was strong, she was really strong. Li Ming Hao had to give it to her.

Chen Chen was brooding at the side. They lost a full bag with rations, someone was lurking in the darkness to harm them and now they were being stalled because of something so stupid. "Why did only you get wounds. Isn't this suspicious?" he lowkey accused his sister as he took up a stone and threw it into the river.

"What do you want to say?" It was turn of Li Ming Hao to get angry. This guy had been doing nothing since the beginning and now he was complaining about an injured person? They both looked in his direction with their flashlights.

"What is that?" Su Xin Yu spotted something in the background. A few bigger rocks from the roof had formed monoliths in the background. And it seemed like they had some engravings.

Both the guys looked into the direction Xin Yu's flashlight was pointing and noticed the foreign language.

"Is that… some form of writing?" Chen Chen excitedly walked towards the monolith. What the actual hell? In all his years of dungeon exploring, he had never seen any monolith with something written on it. How come they encountered one now?

"Let me check," Su Xin Yu tried getting up but her ankle did not support her weight. "Ouch!" she yelped in pain.

"What, what?" Li Min Hao supported her instantly, her body leaned against his. Their heartbeats increased at the inadvertent touch. The soft body with tattered cloths, exposing her pale skin here and there tugged a few strings of Li Ming Hao's heart. He swallowed his saliva, a weird craving for her taking over. His grip over her arm, which he had caught for preventing her from falling, tightened.

Then he realized there was another 'man' here.

"Chen Chen, it seems your sister cannot stand up. Let me look at her ankle, can you click a few close up shots of the writing there?" he sent away the cousin while he could see what was wrong with her ankle.

As soon as Chen Chen left, Li Ming Hao started unbuttoning his shirt.

"What are you doing?" Su Xin Yu asked him, her eyes going wide. What was this sudden action?

"Your bag with extra clothes is gone and I only have undershirts in my bag. I am giving you my shirt, just wear it," Li Ming Hao covered her upper body with his shirt, finally covering up those gaping holes in her clothes.

"You don't really need to…," she wanted to refuse but then her eyes traveled to the spot that the guy in front of her was leering at. Her tee had a big hole in front of her chest, exposing her collarbone and non existent cleavage. She immediately buttoned up the shirt and glared at him angrily. Li Ming Hao instantly averted his eyes to hide his embarrassment.

"Sister, I got the pictures. Can you read?" Chen Chen came, breaking the tension between them.

Su Xin Yu took the camera and found that the language was something she had never seen. Li Ming Hao also could not recognize it at all. It was definitely not any modern language.

Even the alphabets did not resemble any language he knew. He had done quite some extensive research on languages for decoding those diaries, and so he knew it was not a widely used language for sure.

"This is very close to our ancient language, but it is not exactly that," Su Xin Yu informed the two guys who were staring at the picture as intently as the girl, as if they would magically start deciphering the contents.

"What is different?" Li Ming Hao asked. Perhaps if the two of them put their heads together, they could find something?

"Hmm… the sentence structure is definitely different, that is if I am reading the words correctly. And there are a few additional letters. And it seems like there is just a mixture of alphabets from the countries that surround this area", she replied.

"But mixing the languages would not make sense. That would be very difficult," he responded with reasonable conclusion from his past studies.

Su Xin Yu nodded. "It might be another ancient language that I don't know about. Or there might be a key to it."

"A key?" This was amusing idea to Li Ming Hao but not completely implausible. Someone might have just left a full book of what meant what. Or there might be some other monolith somewhere in these caves which could have details of this weird language.

Chen Chen was just looking at the two people who were going back and forth, talking all these high level terms he did not understand. He only understood strength, so he just went ahead and sat down on another rock nearby. This was boring, so he might as well take a nap. They were not going to go further ahead anyway.

"Hmph! Your cousin is pretty rude, you know? I wonder why you have brought him along. We two would have been enough," Li Ming Hao was not happy with this fatty at all. It was like, he just wanted the results without putting in any effort.

"I… can show you right now why we need him," Su Xin Yu pointed behind as she saw another pair of red eyes, very close to Li Ming Hao. It did not seem they were from the bats earlier.

Li Ming Hao thought she was joking but he saw her pale face, and fierceness in her eyes, he knew something was behind him. He did not dare look.

Su Xin Yu waved her flashlight towards Chen Chen who had just sat down to give him the signal. The red eyes were coming closer to Li Ming Hao and Su Xin Yu had no means to save him, just in case it attacked. The flashlight did alert the guy it was intended for.

"Li Ming Hao, at the count of three, just run from here," she whispered to him.

"What about you? Have you not had enough injuries?" Li Ming Hao refused. He was not that weak that she would need to save him again and again. "I will carry you with me. Just flash the light in its eyes, whatever it is."

Su Xin Yu realized she had no choice.

"1… 2… 3"