Chapter 53 Wanshi Meat

We searched the underground palace using our flashlights as searchlights, looking for the whereabouts of that huge shadow. When we came up empty, Fatty asked me to continue using my peripheral vision to look for it again as we walked around.

Everything was really blurred when I looked out of the corner of my eyes. I couldn’t see clearly, my eyes were hurting, and I still didn’t find anything after looking. But the light here was so dim that if something stuck close to the ground between the ceramic figurines and the banquet tables, it would be very difficult to find it without looking right at it.

I wanted to go and check that dark spot again with my peripheral vision.

“Do you want to find that thing and kill it first before we look for clues?” Fatty asked.

That thing just now was so big and the coffin had clearly been opened, so I assumed that some transformed thing inside had arisen. But when this kind of thing happened in the past, the opponent would’ve already attacked, not appeared and then disappeared right away.

That was why Fatty asked that question. In the past, we never had time to think about whether we should find that thing, kill it, and then continue to look for clues, or if we should ignore it, continue to look for clues, and then fight it again when we encountered it.

I looked at the darkness around me and then at Fatty and Poker-Face. The three of us barely needed to communicate. Poker-Face bent down, so Fatty and I immediately did the same. While I kept a grip on the knife at my waist and Fatty did the same with the rod at his waist, we began to quietly make our way towards the big coffin at the end of the steps.

Our movements were almost synchronous with Poker-Face, which was the optimal state we had achieved after imitating and learning from him for so many years. Of course, he was so much faster than us that it often created a kind of illusion. For example, if he went behind a wall, you’d think that it would take at least four seconds for him to come out on the other side, but he may appear after only one second. Poker-Face was very good at using this kind of illusion to solve problems quickly.

Currently, he was on the left, Fatty was on the right, and I was in the middle. They needed to bypass a lot of ceramic figurines and step on a lot of jade banquet tables while I could just go straight up the steps. This was our default formation because I wasn’t very skilled at jumping. Within four minutes, the three of us had arrived in front of the huge coffin.

The lid of the coffin was completely open and had been thrown to the side. We all paused as we saw the scene Shen Qianjue had described. There was a huge Buddha statue hanging there, watching the whole banquet. The face of this Buddha statue must have been made in the likeness of a real person, but once it was carved, it looked like it had a strange evil nature to it. It was enough to make people shudder.

Now that the lid of the coffin had been opened, it felt more like the Buddha statue was looking inside the coffin. Fatty signaled to me with his eyes, so I climbed up to the edge of the coffin and supported him as he jumped directly onto the coffin’s ledge.

The coffin was so high that it almost reached my chest. I watched him go up and said to myself, we’re well-coordinated, just like moving clouds and flowing water. When I glanced back at Poker-Face, I found that he was kneeling on one knee and looking down at the whole banquet hall. He didn’t bother looking at us at all.

At this time, I suddenly heard a faint “aiya” come from behind me. When I looked back, I saw that Fatty had fallen into the coffin.

I secretly cursed in my heart before immediately rushing over and climbing up with my flashlight to take a look. I saw that Fatty had fallen inside with all four limbs raised in the air. The inside of this “coffin” really didn’t look like a normal coffin but more like a banquet configuration. There were a large number of bronze wine vessels inside that were placed on the four sides of the coffin and the bottom was filled with red coffin liquid. When I pointed my flashlight at this liquid, I could see all kinds of black dregs floating in it.

I could tell from the shape that they were all completely oxidized spices that had been piled up layer by layer.

Fatty had fallen to the bottom of the coffin, but he didn’t actually fall into the liquid because there were piles of things beneath him. These objects resembled beggar’s chicken since they seemed to be wrapped in sackcloth that had completely blackened and oxidized. They were also half-submerged in the liquid, so they were surrounded by the spices.

When I saw that whatever was wrapped in that sackcloth was in the shape of a child, my whole body started to go numb.

Fatty looked at me and cursed under his breath, “Shit, are you shooting for the basket? You used so much strength that you directly pushed me into the coffin. Fortunately, this coffin liquid isn’t poisonous.” As he struggled to get up, I stretched out my hand and pulled him out. Once he sat down on the edge of the coffin, I was finally able to see that all of the sackcloth bags were laid out like a fish.

I could imagine what this coffin had looked like when it was just buried: the spices inside were colorful like gems, the sackcloth bags were dyed in a variety of colors, and the dishes were very beautiful and gorgeous in their fish-like arrangement.

“A food arrangement?” Fatty asked. “It’s so strange; this really is a dish. Mr. Naïve, what kind of perversion would you call this?”

“Where’s the head of this fish?” I found it odd that I didn’t see a fish head on this fish arrangement.

When Fatty fell down just now, did he press the sackcloth where the fish head should have been down into the coffin liquid? I asked myself.

Fatty used his flashlight to illuminate the place where the fish head should have been, but we found that something was wrong. There were obvious signs that a sackcloth had been at the spot where the fish head had been, but it appeared to have been bitten off by something. It was like the sackcloth bags had been stuck together and were torn off abruptly.

I looked at Fatty, who immediately became angry, “It wasn’t me! I’m not hungry.”

I gestured at it. “I didn’t say it was you. Is your mouth that big?” The only thing that could make a big bite like that was probably a zombie T-Rex.

By the time I finished speaking, Poker-Face had already climbed to the other side of the coffin and turned on his flashlight. He took a quick look and then immediately glanced up at the mural behind the coffin.

I suddenly remembered that I also wanted to know what mural was on this wall. But when I looked up, I saw that there was a huge, gaping hole on the back wall.

Fatty frowned and almost fell down again. The mural on the wall became difficult to interpret because of this hole. Fatty thought for a while and then said to me, “Uh-oh. Looks we made a mistake, Mr. Naïve. This isn’t a wall or a mural. Most of what we saw just now weren’t murals, either.”

“Then what are they?”

“This is a coffin. What we’re seeing now is one side of a huge coffin. These are the patterns painted on the coffin.”

Because this coffin was too big, we thought it was a wall when we first came here.

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