Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Murong Yue and I were locked in the cramped antechamber with seven tomb raiders.
Murong Yue sat awkwardly on the steps.
“I thought you were telling me to run.”
The tomb raiders burst out laughing.
“Hahaha, that’s all you’ve got, and you still tried to pretend you were cops?”
“Aren’t you two those fake feng shui masters running scams out there? Little girl, you’re so young and already up to no good. Swindling people out of money wasn’t enough, so now you’re learning to rob tombs too?”
“Come on over. You want to learn tomb raiding? I’ll teach you a few tricks.”
Tomb Raider No. 1 gave a vicious grin and was just about to lunge at me when another thunderous boom shook the chamber.
A massive flare of fire flashed before my eyes. Wood chips flew everywhere, and dust sifted down from the ceiling. Because the passage had been sealed off, the blast echoed through the narrow space, the shrill ringing almost piercing our eardrums.
Everyone was knocked staggering. Tomb Raider No. 1 got to his feet, swearing so fluently it was practically an art form.
“Fuck! Holy fuck! Are you a goddamn idiot? Did I tell you to set it off?
“You used that much this time? Are you trying to bury us all alive in here?”
As he cursed, he beat Tomb Raider No. 2 over the head and shoulders. Tomb Raider No. 2 was a big-nosed young man with an honest, simple face. He didn’t fight back at all, just stared at the Yellow Heart Timber Collection in front of him, ecstatic.
“Boss, we blew it open! Four of them came out!”
The cypress heartwood beams were about twenty centimeters wide. With four pillars blasted apart and pulled free, a hole forty centimeters long and forty centimeters wide had been opened in the wall. An adult could squeeze through it by hunching their shoulders.
Tomb Raider No. 2 was extremely excited. He bent over in front of the waist-high opening and started clawing out the broken wood chips. After a while, his whole body suddenly shuddered, and he let out a scream.
Immediately after, he pitched forward, his entire upper body wedged into the hole, leaving only his two legs dangling outside. The next second, he abruptly drew his legs in, and with a whoosh, his whole body slipped through the opening.
Everyone was dumbfounded. Several of the tomb raiders began whispering among themselves.
“Wait, since when was Xiao Li that agile?”
“Did he learn to jump through flaming hoops in a circus or something? That was so fast I almost didn’t see it.”
“Xiao Li, you need a flashlight?”
They called several times from our side, but there wasn’t the slightest response from inside. Tomb Raider No. 1 swallowed, his face deathly pale, and retreated several steps until his back hit the wall.
“You idiots. Are you all fucking blind? He didn’t crawl in by himself. Someone dragged him in from inside.”
Everyone’s expression turned ugly. In truth, even if Tomb Raider No. 1 hadn’t said it, we had all guessed as much. It was just that no one dared to say it out loud.
This was too bizarre. This ancient tomb had been sealed for a thousand years, and it had taken three days of explosives just to blast out such a tiny opening. With the interior sealed this well, there was no way any animal could have survived inside.
Then what exactly had dragged Xiao Li in?
One of the lights in the corner had gone out during the explosion just now. The other seemed to have short-circuited too, flickering on and off. The light jumped once, then suddenly went dark, and everyone’s heart lurched with it.
When the light came back on, that pitch-black hole somehow looked even darker than before, so black that not even light could penetrate it.
Everyone looked at one another, eyes fixed on the opening while their feet unconsciously inched backward, until they had retreated all the way to the steps.
“Has a corpse come back to life?”
“There’s probably a big zongzi in there. Boss, what do we do?”
Everyone looked hesitant, and as one, they turned to Tomb Raider No. 1. Tomb Raider No. 1 swung his head toward me, gripping his axe in both hands, his eyes fierce.
“You. Go in and take a look!”
Of course I refused.
When zombies appeared in tombs, it was usually because something was wrong with the feng shui. Yin energy had gathered without dispersing, which caused the corpse to transform. But this tomb was dry and clean, the hall qi hadn’t leaked, and the primordial spirit had not dispersed. I couldn’t see the slightest thing wrong with it.
Most likely, no corpse transformation had occurred inside. But if it wasn’t an ancient corpse, could there be something else in there?
Fear came from the unknown. In the past, whether I faced zombies, Hanba, or all manner of ghosts and monsters, I knew what they were and how to deal with them. No matter how terrifying the scene was, I never felt especially afraid.
But now, first, I truly had no idea what we were dealing with. Second, in a hole that small, even the greatest skills would be almost impossible to use.