Chapter 212
Chapter 212
The items removed from the Wax Corpse’s abdominal cavity were absolutely filthy.
But no matter how filthy they were, Qin Ying had to examine them immediately.
The Wax Corpse still lay behind the oak desk. Using a waterlogged book as a tray, Qin Ying carried everything to the corner of the second shelf.
Many of the books on the bottom shelf had been soaking in water so long that they were beyond salvaging. A single squeeze reduced them to handfuls of pulpy fibers.
For Qin Ying, that was actually rather convenient.
She scooped up two handfuls of dripping paper pulp from the floor and used it to wipe down the items coated in corpse wax.
As she rubbed the wax from the badge’s surface, a sea serpent design emerged.
A ring of olive leaves intertwined with a bronze sea serpent, encircling symbols of the ocean, a harbor, and a black-and-red volcano.
“The Ruins of the Ancient City of Xinelopolis,” Qin Ying murmured.
She had once traveled to Italy on official business and visited the Ruins of the Ancient City of Xinelopolis in her spare time.
The olive leaves, ocean, harbor, and volcano on this badge all unquestionably pointed to that ancient city, which had been destroyed two thousand years ago.
Despite having been buried in corpse wax for many years, the bronze badge still gleamed beneath the cold white light once the wax was wiped away.
Its edge was lined with gearlike teeth.
Qin Ying turned the button-sized badge over with her fingertips.
A line of characters had been engraved on the back.
She wiped them again with the wet paper pulp.
At last, she could make out the Latin inscription: Audentes fortuna iuvat.
Qin Ying did not know Latin, but she had seen this maxim before.
At an Italian restaurant, the chef and owner had once proudly explained to her that it meant, “Fortune favors the bold.”
Beneath the inscription was a gilded date: 1910.
Qin Ying’s expression turned contemplative.
There was no doubt that the objects placed inside the Wax Corpse for its Soul-Container Consecration pointed to something specific.
Anything used in a Soul-Container Consecration had to represent its owner.
This badge must have held extraordinary significance for the Wax Corpse. That was why it had been chosen for the Soul-Container Consecration.
After a moment’s thought, Qin Ying took the first-aid kit from her backpack and placed the badge inside the box of antibiotics.
Next, she examined the pair of eyeballs, each soaking in its own Specimen Bottle.
The bottles were tightly sealed. When she gently shook the brown glass, she could see the eyeballs drifting through the preservative inside.
Their irises were a muted green. They must have been quite beautiful when they were still alive in their owner’s eye sockets.
Qin Ying stored each Specimen Bottle separately.
She put one in the first-aid kit and the other at the bottom of her backpack.
She had made the trip down here, after all. She needed to bring something back to satisfy the Cultural Preservation Bureau.
With the efficiency of an expert organizer, she sorted everything neatly by category.
Then her gaze shifted to the bronze plaque and the small lead casket she had deliberately saved for last.
Patiently, she wiped the bronze plaque clean inch by inch with the paper pulp.
As expected, it proved to be a native artifact.
The verdigris had already been treated, revealing the bronze’s original color.
Raised cast ridges resembling flanges ran across its surface.
Each of the abstract little figures depicted on it was as thin as paper, with a waist as narrow as the neck of a funnel.
The figures knelt beneath a great tree with five roots.
The tree possessed unmistakable religious significance.
The lower tier represented the earth’s core, filled with a chaotic profusion of strange Monstrous Beast forms. At the very center, a long-tailed civet lay curled inside a womb-shaped cavern.
The middle tier showed figures performing sacrificial rites, most likely symbolizing the mortal world.
The upper tier was wreathed in clouds, with the sun and moon hanging in the sky together. It presumably represented the immortal realm.
A Slim-Waisted Man had been bound upside down to a cross-shaped execution frame. Its abdomen had been cut open, and the black tube within, which ran from its mouth to the cloaca in its lower body, had been gouged out.
Having personally descended there and witnessed them, Qin Ying knew that the disemboweled figure was none other than one of the Gutless People.
She continued looking down, then froze for a moment.
One of the Gutless People was undergoing Soul-Container Consecration.
In the image on the bronze piece, one of the Gutless People had its perfectly straight intestines gouged out while it was still alive. Its empty abdominal cavity was then packed with organs in their proper anatomical order.
After dying from the Soul-Container Consecration, the corpse was carried to the crown of the great tree, the Heavenly Realm, and offered up amid the cheers of the other Gutless People.
Deep in thought, Qin Ying raised a hand to her mouth.
If she hadn’t suddenly remembered what that hand had touched, she might well have bitten down on her thumb.
Fortunately, she caught herself in time and lowered her hand.
Qin Ying was no expert on religion or theology. She could only speculate that the consecrated corpse down below might have belonged to the person who had discovered this bronze piece and then tried to imitate the Gutless People in ascending to immortality.
The moment the thought occurred to her, she found it utterly absurd.
Qin Ying didn’t rush to a conclusion. She tore open the lining at the bottom of her backpack and hid the bronze piece inside.
That left the main event: the lead box sealed with wax.
Di Shang covered Qin Ying’s right hand. The tip of her index finger wriggled slightly, and a curved claw extended from it like that of a feline.
The blade-like claw was exceptionally sharp. One sweep around the edge of the lead box was enough to slice clean through the sealing wax.
“Well done.”
Qin Ying praised Di Shang, then pressed a hand to the edge of the box and opened it.
The moment she saw what was inside, delight surged through her.
It was a small, black-covered notebook with gears and a railway printed on the front.
It looked like a commemorative notebook issued for some engineering project.
Qin Ying wiped her hands and flipped through it.
The first third of the notebook was written in Italian. Qin Ying knew a little Italian because of a friend, but the scrawled handwriting and abundance of technical terms put it well beyond her ability to decipher.
She frowned, thinking she wouldn’t be able to make any progress for the time being, only to discover Chinese writing in the latter half of the notebook.
From that point onward, the work notes became a diary.
The writer’s Chinese was clearly on par with an elementary school student’s.
Every stroke had been pressed down so hard it seemed ready to punch through the paper.
Thanks to that childish handwriting, however, Qin Ying could make out every character with ease.
The first diary entry was dated September 4, 1905.
It contained only one sentence: “Other things exist beyond the world governed by common sense. We are not alone.”
Qin Ying rubbed her thumb uneasily over the paper.
From that entry onward, one name appeared again and again.
“Shiye says the bronze artifact that burst from the White Civet’s belly records a method of becoming immortal known as Soul-Container Consecration.”
“The more I learn about this country’s ancient culture, the more fascinating I find it.”
Qin Ying’s hand paused mid-page.
So this man from Italy really had been one of the engineers back then?
However, he seemed to have gradually lost his grip on reality.
Shiye appeared constantly throughout his records.
Shiye says this. Shiye says that.
The man from Italy seemed to have been completely taken in. Little by little, he abandoned his original faith and began trying to wed technology to ancient witchcraft.
More alarmingly, they appeared to believe that the Gutless People depicted on the bronze piece were the ancient ancestors of humanity.
They believed that cutting open the abdomen and removing the intestines was a ritual for ascending to immortality.
Qin Ying silently cursed them as a pack of ignorant lunatics, then continued flipping through the notebook.
Suddenly, one diary entry caught her eye.
“Perhaps I overworked myself while constructing this underground project. I cannot stop coughing.”
“Meanwhile, that civet-like creature is still alive despite having nothing left but its head.”
“What remarkable vitality.”
“How enviable… and how it fills me with jealousy.”