Bai Haotian swam over while I went up to get some air. After I caught my breath, I dove back down and saw Bai Haotian floating in front of the two coffins with her hands in front of her like she was praying. As I swam over, I noticed that her short hair was fluttering in the water, her eyes were closed, and her face looked very pious.
I didn’t know what she was doing, but I went back up for air again while she worshiped since it felt like my lungs couldn’t take it anymore.
When I dove into the water for the third time, Bai Haotian had finished worshiping and swam with me to the two coffins. These coffins also had labels on them. One had Zhang Qishan’s serial number, while the other one had a serial number I had never seen before.
I couldn’t ask anything since we were underwater, so I let Bai Haotian lead me forward, where I saw countless colored glaze products piled up. As the flashlight swept over them, the colored glaze shone brightly under the refraction of water and light. When I approached one of them, I saw that these glazed products were as thin as a piece of paper. These kinds of things were extremely difficult to preserve on land.
Those huge coffins were like giant pillars standing in the middle of these small goods. I could see a lot of nails stuck in the decayed wooden boards and there were a lot of old-looking leather bags hanging from them. I shined my flashlight on one of them and saw Bai Haotian sign to me: there are bodies inside.
As we swam forward, I saw piles of earthen jars. Each jar was as tall as three or four people and they had all been stacked into pyramid shapes. I felt my lungs spasm and had to float up.
Bai Haotian had to practically push me up to the catwalk, where I lay on my back, gasping for breath. Bai Haotian climbed up and start apologizing in a panicked voice, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I forgot Uncle Two told me that your health isn’t good.”
I gasped and felt my vision go dark for a moment. I hadn’t even made it to the bottom just now. I only swam on the upper level and my lungs already felt like they were dying.
I looked at my watch and found that it had been less than ten minutes. Although I still had physical strength, I couldn’t seem to breathe. I didn’t know if it was a psychological effect or if what Uncle Two had said was true.
“What were you worshiping just now?” I asked after recovering a little bit.
“I heard a legend that they’re Fo Ye and Xinyue’s coffins, but no one has confirmed it,” she said. “Still, it’s customary to worship them when in this part of the warehouse in order to show your respect. There are many corpses below that Fo Ye watches over.”
I sat up and wiped the water from my face. Bai Haotian had to repeat what she just said before I understood it. When I did, all the hairs on my body stood on end. I had heard that Fo Ye was cremated, so why was there a coffin here? Was it a cenotaph (1)? There had to be another story here.
Compared with the other people in the Mystic Nine that I had been in contact with when I was a child, Fo Ye was a legendary figure to me. I suddenly felt a little regretful that I didn’t worship with Bai Haotian just now.
But it was impossible for me to go into the water again. I had to lay there on the ground for a long time before I could get up.
Bai Haotian felt very guilty and wanted to drive me home, but I refused. I lay in the car for a while before driving several hundred meters, but I couldn’t do it. I stopped on the side of the road and fell asleep. In my dream, I was in front of the two coffins. As I looked at them, a stream-like history seemed to flash before my eyes like a rotating lantern.
I suddenly woke with a start, took out my phone, and looked at Zhang Qishan’s serial number. I then typed in Xinyue’s serial number that I saw on the other coffin.
There was no relationship between the two numbers. But I was college graduate, so although my math wasn’t very good, I still knew that these two numbers had to be related to Warehouse Eleven’s coding system. One number wasn’t enough to crack the coding system, but it was possible to find a pattern if you had two numbers.
I stared at the phone in my hand for a long time, but I still couldn’t make sense of it. I suddenly remembered that Bai Haotian had guessed Zhang Qishan’s number, so I called her up and asked, “Are you interested in coming out to talk?”
<Chapter 110><Table of Contents><Chapter 112>
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TN Notes:
(1) An empty tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere.
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Episode 28, around 2:00-4:35
MereBear's Translation 