Chapter 46 People Everywhere

I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Fatty was talking about. After a short pause, I said to him, “Don’t give a half-assed explanation like that. What do you mean ‘there are people everywhere’?”

Fatty paused, and I suddenly felt Poker-Face pushing me forward. Fatty was obviously retreating and forcing Poker-Face to come closer to me, but I didn’t dare go any further because of our assumption that this was like a highway. As I resisted, Fatty’s trembling voice reached my ears, “What kind of question is that? They’re all fucking people! They’re blocking our way back. We kept crawling forward, but I didn’t see anything behind us at all. In fact, these things must have been following us the whole way. There are a lot of them.”

“Are they little porcelain figures?” I remembered the little porcelain figure I had seen in the tomb passage before and thought Fatty was talking about that.

“Fuck, man! They’re people! People!!!” Fatty was getting more and more agitated. “Mr. Naïve, keep going! They’re crawling over!”

“They’re alive?” I was still confused and couldn’t see anything from this angle. “Who is it?”

“Their heads are down so I can’t see their faces, but their nails are long!” Fatty sounded furious. “Hurry up and fucking crawl! They’ve almost reached me! I’m about to die!”

I could basically picture what Fatty was seeing and knew it had to be creepy. A bunch of people in this dark hole were crawling towards him like centipedes. He couldn’t see their faces clearly, but he could tell that their nails were very long. If it were me, I would’ve definitely peed.

“Take a picture and send it to me.” I didn’t know why I suddenly blurted out this sentence. Fatty started cursing me out and pushed Poker-Face until he was up to my calves. I suddenly realized that Fatty was really going to die.

I didn’t know how he could see “people everywhere”, because my lighter could only illuminate a distance of less than an arm’s length in front of me.

I hesitated for a quarter of a second, debating on whether to continue crawling for my life or lighting the rhinoceros horn candle in front of me. At this time, my reflexes formed by many years of experience kicked in and I lit one of the rhinoceros horn candles. I figured these things had been put here by human beings, and humans definitely wouldn’t put something here to hurt themselves.

The rhinoceros horn candle had a green flame that was surprisingly bright and shone quite a distance in the tunnel.

Fatty yelled, “Mr. Naïve, if you don’t crawl, I’ll blow us all up and we’ll die together.”

At this time, I saw a stone door appear under the candle’s faint green light. It was set in the tunnel’s wall right in front of us and was engraved with a relief of horses and chariots riding on clouds. The door was so small that I immediately knew it was called an immortal gate. It was usually an opening left on coffins to enable the corpse’s soul to pass through.

I couldn’t see this door until the candle was lit, but I was willing to stake my reputation that there had been nothing on the wall before.

I didn’t hesitate and immediately crawled over, pushing on the door hard. It had been fastened shut, but finally opened after two more pushes. I immediately crawled through. It was very wet on the other side, but I continued crawling through the water until my whole body was through the door. I found myself in a tiny space that looked similar to the inside of a coffin, but it was much wider than the tunnel I had just come from. There were rotten wooden boards all around and black things that looked as if they had been rotting for a millennium. I found that I couldn’t stand upright and could only squat in the waist-deep water.

Under the candle’s green light, I could see barnacles covering the wooden boards. Poker-Face crawled through the door at breakneck speed, quickly followed by Fatty who had obviously been caught by something.

I shouted at him, “Don’t blow yourself up!”

Poker-Face grabbed his feet and started dragging him out, but Fatty shouted, “My dick! My dick is stuck!”

“You’re old, you don’t need it!” I shouted back as I ignored his screams and helped drag him into this small space. At that moment, I suddenly caught a glimpse of the “people” outside.

They really were human. I saw one of them was a naked “man” with his head lowered, as if his neck had been broken. But I couldn’t see any more than that because Poker-Face immediately blew out my candle.

It was dark all around.

I felt my way towards the door to close it, only to find that I couldn’t touch it at all.

Fatty shouted beside me, “Light! Light the candle! This fat master will fight!”

I pulled out my lighter and flicked it a few times, but nothing happened. This is bad, I thought to myself. I touched the lighter, only to find that the flame was hot.

At that moment, I didn’t realize what was happening. I kept flicking the lighter and found that there wasn’t even a spark appearing in the darkness around me. I touched it with my hand and found that it was extremely hot.

My hands began to tremble violently as I immediately realized that the lighter had been lit, but I couldn’t see it.

I was blind.

At that moment, the pressure on my bladder lifted and everything went silent.

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