Chapter 63 Ghostly Prank

I looked back at the dog’s head. The skinned shape of it truly was a horrible sight, but its symbolic meaning had my hair standing on end even more.

I stared at the entrance to the hole for about four or five minutes, trying to figure out what was going on.

Ping Lian had to be dead. His head had been cut off, after all. When I had used my knife earlier, I directly cut into his cervical vertebra and then broke the joint off. This was because all transformed corpses would stop moving after the head was removed.

Plus, he only had one head, which I had thrown into the coffin. I clearly remembered closing the coffin lid, so how did his head open the coffin and climb to the entrance of this hole?

This wasn’t Ping Lian’s doing—in fact, I was almost certain that it was done by something else that had the ability to move the coffin lid. And if that were true, then there was a “person” or “thing” here in this underground palace with me.

But its behavior was very strange. By putting the dog’s head behind me like this, it didn’t seem like it wanted to take my life but was playing a prank.

Truthfully, I was feeling really creeped out.

I suddenly recalled the series of events that happened to us on the grassland before. Now that I thought about it, it all seemed to have the air of a prank. The satellite phone and even Jiang Siwang’s sudden appearance all had a strong mischief-like feeling to them.

There was also that night when we were running from the horses and I saw a man with a black face appear behind Fatty. Then there were the things in the stone lantern and the underground corpse herding area that also had black faces.

I suddenly thought of that black face that appeared in the pool. I didn’t know why, but at this time, I began to think of that thing. Why did it suddenly appear in the water? I figured that maybe it wanted to see me from a close distance. At that time, not only was I certain that it was interested in me as I looked at its expression, but it also seemed to say something to me.

This kind of black thing seemed to appear everywhere in this place, so if it was playing a prank, was it related to them?⁽¹⁾

There was no basis for this, but my intuition kept pushing me to think in that direction.

My back was soon covered in a cold sweat as I came to a realization in my heart: these pranks would only get scarier and more malicious. There were many pranks in this world that were executed to hurt people while still staying within the moral code.

Using a skinned dog’s head to play a prank showed that the implementer had no concept of cruelty at all and could do horrible things beyond your imagination. To it, I was actually more like an animal it was teasing.

At this time, I suddenly thought of the herding corpses scene from the murals. If those corpses were herded, then did that make me wild? Was this thing teasing me?

I heard that headhunters in the past used to tease their prey because they thought that the meat would taste more delicious if they had scared their prey to a state of extreme fear.

I quickly reined in these paranoid thoughts.

At this time, I had two choices: I could either go back and find that thing in the underground palace or I could continue moving forward and meet up with Poker-Face.

I thought about it for a second and decided to join up with Poker-Face.

I took one last look at the dog’s head before pulling a gadget out of my belt. It was a whistle, which had a very thin wire that could be pulled out of it. I strung this wire up in the passage behind me.

As long as something passed by, it would definitely touch this wire, which would immediately pull the whistle and make a sound.

This wire was particularly inconspicuous but extremely sensitive; even if you barely blew into the whistle, it would immediately make a sound.

I felt more at ease after setting it up, so I began moving forward again. But things developed completely beyond my expectations.

I had only crawled six or seven steps when I immediately heard the sound of a whistle come from behind me.

I really didn’t expect it to be like this.

I immediately jumped in fright and spun around with my flashlight in hand. The whistle’s wire had been broken and Ping Lian’s head was about two or three steps behind me.

I had no idea how it had moved to this spot.

I immediately broke out in a cold sweat as I realized that it had only taken a brief moment for Ping Lian’s head to move from the entrance to the position right by my feet.

From this distance, the head looked even more sinister and had a strong smell to it.

It had been placed very neatly in the passage, so I could tell at a glance that it wasn’t thrown in. Something had clearly crawled in and put it right behind me. That thing was obviously very fast and had to be close by, but there was nothing behind the dog’s head.

After thinking about it, I looked at the dog’s head using my peripheral vision, but I still didn’t see anything.

I knew that something terrible would happen if I continued to crawl forward now. This prank was still progressing, so Ping Lian’s head would probably end up biting my ankle next. I took a deep breath and looked back in front of me to see if I could clench my teeth and quickly crawl forward. Maybe I could find a spacious place where I could come up with a plan.

Unfortunately, the tunnel in front of me was still very narrow.

At this time, I looked back behind me and suddenly saw a black, expressionless face appear behind Ping Lian’s head. It crawled over Ping Lian’s head as fast as lightning until it was face-to-face with me.

This place was too narrow for me to do anything, so that face was almost half a palm’s width away from me in an instant.

<Chapter 62><Table of Contents><Chapter 64>

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TN Notes:

(1) He used the characters “它们” which is “they” for inanimate objects. So I think he’s talking about ghosts (just a wild guess on my part, though)

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