Chapter 13

Chapter 13

A Soul Vase was a special kind of funerary object, a dwelling place for the tomb owner’s soul.

Its main body was a large porcelain jar, with pavilions, towers, and five figures carved on the top, symbolizing the completeness of the Five Elements. At first glance, it looked as if a tall tower had sprouted straight out of the jar. The craftsmanship was exquisite.

In the Han dynasty, the right side was considered the place of honor, so an important burial item like a Soul Vase was usually placed in the right side chamber.

I nodded and was just about to head to the right side chamber to look for the Soul Vase when I turned around and saw something that shocked me.

My hard hat had a spotlight mounted on it. The beam was focused, forming a circle of light on the ground instead of scattering outward, which let me see farther. But the drawback was just as obvious: my field of vision was extremely narrow.

Wherever I turned my head, I could only see a small patch. Everything around it remained pitch-black. In a gloomy tomb like this, the terror was doubled.

When I was talking to Murong Yue just now, I had instinctively turned my head. When I looked back toward the entrance of the side chamber, I finally realized that Little Li’s body was gone.

I immediately went on high alert. Without caring about anything else, I gripped the Thunderstruck Wood Talisman and recited a passage of the Five Thunder Divine Curse.

Thunder and lightning contained righteous astral energy and were the bane of evil things. After several bolts of lightning fell in succession, I refused to believe there was still any sinister creature that could stay hidden.

But after I finished the thunder curse, the tomb chamber remained deathly silent. There was no reaction at all.

I waited a moment, then sped up and darted into the first side chamber on the left.

The instant I stepped inside, I nearly jumped out of my skin. The room was packed wall to wall with people.

“Holy shit!”

I stumbled back two steps. The people inside did not move. When I looked more closely, I finally realized they were all burial figurines.

These pottery figurines were roughly as tall as the Terracotta Warriors. Their colors were bright, their style simple and ancient, and most of them were maidservants.

I swept my gaze over them casually and did not notice anything special. Just as I was about to back out, I spotted a huge earthen jar in the corner.

My heart leaped. Wasn’t that exactly the Soul Vase I was looking for?

I hurried over and felt all around the Soul Vase, top to bottom, but found nothing unusual.

Just as I was about to try turning the Soul Vase, something caught the corner of my eye, and my scalp instantly went numb.

I saw Little Li.

Little Li had been over 175 centimeters tall. Now that he was missing his head, he stood among those burial maidservant figurines at about the same height. If I had not looked carefully, I would not have noticed him at all.

Anger flared in my chest.

It wasn’t a zombie and it wasn’t a ghost. What the hell was this thing, scaring people like that?

I did not even bother using a ritual tool. I gripped a dagger and charged straight at him, stabbing several times into the wound at his neck.

A large amount of green mucus sprayed from the wound. To my surprise, the blood vessels in his neck suddenly shrank back into his body, then burst out from inside Little Li.

Little Li remained standing where he was. From his chest, back, thighs, and arms, several noodle-like blood vessels shot out everywhere. As soon as those vessels hit the ground, they began writhing and twisting. The sight was revolting.

I sucked in a cold breath and finally realized what these things were.

They were actually the legendary Corpse Thread Worms!

Everyone must have heard of horsehair worms, the kind that parasitize mantises. Even long after a mantis dies, it can still move because of them.

Corpse Thread Worms were similar to horsehair worms. They were a special kind of creature that parasitized corpses. They could eat all the flesh and blood inside a corpse, leaving only a shell of skin, and even control the corpse to move around and search for a new host.

No one knew how they came into being. The Hidden Classic only recorded a few brief lines about them.

“Shaped like threads of blood, gathering and scattering in endless loops, yet forming one seamless whole.”

Corpse Thread Worms absorbed the blood of corpses and contained toxins inside their bodies, but they did not count as ghosts, demons, or other evil entities, so ordinary ritual tools had little effect on them.

Most importantly, they appeared in swarms. There would never be only the few in front of me. On top of that, they reproduced extremely quickly and had tenacious vitality. Even if they were chopped into several pieces, they could continue growing.

I thought of that enormous number of rats, and a bad feeling rose in my heart.

Those rats could still bite people after they died. There had to be these things inside them too. With so many of them, if they all merged together, we would be in serious trouble.

While I was distracted, those Corpse Thread Worms suddenly coiled their bodies and sprang up, wrapping toward my thigh.

I hurriedly swung my dagger to block them. Several Corpse Thread Worms were cut in half by me, but one still wound itself around my arm. It sliced open my skin, and in the blink of an eye, its body slipped right inside.

I only had time to grab its tail.

The Corpse Thread Worm was ice-cold all over. It looked smooth, but its surface was covered in tiny raised barbs of flesh. It felt a little like a sea cucumber. Fortunately, those tiny barbs gave me enough friction to hold on. Otherwise, there would have been no way to grab it at all.

“Fuck! That hurts like hell!”

I gritted my teeth and tried to pull it out, but then I remembered getting bitten by a leech when I was a kid and did not dare move recklessly.

If I snapped it in half, there would be no way to get the front half out.

This thing could reproduce on its own. If it burrowed straight to my heart and rooted itself there, making a nest, then in less than an hour, my heart would be turned into a hornet’s nest.