?Chapter 1175:


    “Do I look like I need protection?” Eric snapped, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Go! Find Brady!”


    “But—”


    “What’s holding you back? I said go!”


    “Right away!”


    The bodyguards hesitated for a mere moment before scattering to carry out Eric’smands.


    Having yelled, a sharp ache pierced Eric’s head. He brought a hand up to massage his temples as he took in his environment. The mountaincked proper lights, and the paths were slick with mud from recent rains.


    Dys onlypounded the risks. Each minute that passed, each person added, brought a sliver more of hope. Clutching his shlight, Eric plunged into the search effort.


    As he moved forward, the voices behind him faded, the beam of his shlight cutting through the darkness. Eric intermittently checked his phone, fearful of missing any crucial calls or messages.


    Then, the ground vanished beneath him.


    “This isn’t happening,” he thought.


    In a fleeting moment, Eric felt his bnce shift disastrously, and he was falling, plummeting downwards!


    “Cordell! Somebody help!” He tried to shout as his descent elerated. But his voice was lost as quickly as he was falling, swallowed by the vast emptiness.


    His descent scraped him against jagged rocks, each contact sending jolts of pain through his body. Eric winced and moaned in the pitch-ck, his shlight gone, engulfed by utter darkness and mounting panic.


    A chilling thought shed through his mind—was this how it would end?


    Just as terror began to take a firmer hold, a piercing painshed through his thigh.


    Abruptly, his tumbling ceased. His body came to a jarring stop. The sharp stingpelled Eric to shut his eyes tightly, sucking in air as he felt his left thigh with his hand.


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    He discovered his pants ripped open, his palm slick with his own blood, the metallic scent heavy in the air.


    Eric drew in a sharp breath, nonchntly wiping his bloody palm on his clothes.


    He fumbled in his pocket for his phone, intending to check the extent of his injury and call for Cordell’s assistance.


    To his dismay, the phone was missing.


    Eric clicked his tongue in frustration, surmising it must have slipped out during his fall, possiblynding somewhere close.


    His search in the pocket yielded only a lighter, which he promptly extracted and flicked on. The weak me cast a dim glow around him. He had initially thought he plummeted off a cliff, yet the depth didn’t align with that theory.


    It appeared more like a cave.


    Holding the lighter higher, Eric tried to prate the darkness ahead, but the cave’s end remained elusive. What was this ce?


    Hold on!


    His hand drifted back to the spot he had just checked.


    That silhouette in the corner looked eerily human.


    Eric quickly snuffed out the lighter, and then flicked it back to life, aiming the frail light toward the shadow.


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