Chapter 57 Untitled Continued

After Fatty finished speaking, he coughed and spat a few more times. I was anxious to hear the rest of the story so I urged him to continue. Fatty scratched his back and said, “Even a hanged man is allowed to breathe a little. Give me a minute. The whole thing happened so fast that I can’t say it all at once. Wait for me to organize my thoughts first.”

When I saw how pale his face was and heard how strange his voice sounded—as if there was still water in his windpipe—I hurriedly patted him on the back a few times with all my strength. He hunched over and coughed up something sticky before croaking out, “Enough, enough! If you fucking smack me like that again, I’ll die!”

“Come on,” I urged him. “Just say it. What the hell happened to you guys?”

Once he recovered, he blew his nose and gave me a brief account of what they had gone through. His story was rather messy since it had all happened very quickly, but I still got the overall gist of it.

As it turned out, he looked at me staring blankly at the porcelain paintings and urged me to hurry up several times, but I was so absorbed that I didn’t hear him at all. When he saw that I wasn’t responding, he didn’t bother urging me anymore and just ran back to the other chamber first. I figured he was probably thinking about those valuable jade and ivory accessories that were in that coffin. At that time, he assumed that I would naturally come after I finished picking out a porcelain bowl. After all, the two ear chambers were only five or six steps away so surely nothing would happen.

But what he saw next distracted him so completely that he forgot about my existence and didn’t even notice when the stone door disappeared.

He went back over to the coffin and the two of them started scooping the water out together. Soon, that pile of dead flesh emerged from the liquid. Fatty took a closer look and was horrified to find that those sarcomas he thought were heads were actually plump female breasts, which were so large that they hung down on the twisted torso. Fatty was completely stunned at that time; he never expected that the corpse inside would turn out to be a female corpse.

But, in principle, there should be twelve breasts since there were twelve hands. When they counted, however, they found that there were only five breasts on the front. Did that mean that the rest were on the back? They pondered over it as they tried to figure out how to get the body out of the coffin.

Fatty first tried to use his speargun as a hook to pull the body out, but the flesh was too soft and almost all of it had a waxy texture, which made it too slippery to grab onto. Next, they put on gloves and tried to use their hands, but that was even worse. It was just like trying to pick up a slippery bar of soap—as soon as they grabbed the body, a layer of oil immediately appeared which made it impossible to get a good grip on it. The whole thing was absolutely disgusting. In the end, Poker-Face was the one who came up with a solution. They took off their shirts, wrapped one around the corpse’s head and the other around its feet, and then inserted their spearguns into the knots. With their guns acting as carrying poles, they lifted the corpse out and put it on the ground.

Under the bright light of their lamp, the body quickly dried up and turned black, which enabled them to see everything clearly. As it turned out, the rest of her breasts had been cut off, leaving a few big bowl-shaped scars on both sides of her body. Her torso wasn’t twisted like we had originally thought, it just looked that way because of all the fat on her body that had piled up like a mountain.

At that time, they didn’t wonder why the female corpse’s belly was so big; they just thought that she was very fat. This meant that they also didn’t notice that she had actually died shortly before giving birth, and that there was a child in her belly.

After the body was lifted out, the stone slab below was finally exposed. Poker-Face said that it was a coffin weight, which was used to prevent the coffin from floating up once the airtight structure of this undersea tomb was destroyed. The coffin weight was very crude, and only had a row of large characters engraved on it.

Fatty looked at it for a while but couldn’t understand it, which was when he finally remembered me. It was only at this time that the two of them discovered that the door on the wall had disappeared. Fatty immediately panicked when he saw it, not because he was worried about me but because he wouldn’t be able to get out. Poker-Face told him not to worry. He said the door would naturally appear when the time came so it was useless to stress about it. The most important thing at this time was to deal with what they had started. Fatty saw how calm he was and immediately felt relieved.

When the two of them tried to take the stone slab out of the coffin, they found that not only was it very heavy, but the edges had been sealed with pine resin so that it was firmly stuck to the bottom of the coffin. Fatty, upon seeing this, didn’t think it made any sense so he knocked hard on the stone slab. That was when he suddenly found that it was actually hollow underneath.

They lit a fire stick to melt all the pine resin and then moved the stone slab away, revealing a big hole below. Although Fatty was a relatively crude person, his experience was still very rich. That was why, when he saw this, his mouth dropped open in surprise—this hole hadn’t been specially made by the tomb’s designer, it was a grave robbers’ tunnel!

This was an explosive discovery. Even if you ignored the other aspects, the location of this grave robbers’ tunnel alone could be said to be unparalleled in this world—it had actually been dug directly under the coffin. If not for this coffin weight, the body inside probably would’ve been dragged into the hole long ago. But the strangest thing was that this tomb was located at the bottom of the sea, so how exactly was this grave robbers’ tunnel dug?

Moreover, if this tomb chamber was designed to move up and down like an elevator, then there should’ve been another tomb chamber under the coffin. How could such a space accommodate such a deep hole? Fatty immediately decided that our theory about the tomb’s mechanism may have been wrong.

At this time, the whole thing once again became shrouded in mystery and the two of them fell silent. Fatty knew very well that the nourishing qi and corpse incubator array here had been destroyed by this hole. Although this corpse was covered in wax and could no longer transform, this place’s powerful energy was no longer here, which would definitely affect the entire tomb’s feng shui. Although he didn’t know how everything had changed overall, it was hard to guarantee that this tomb wouldn’t suddenly change from a spiritual place to one that was full of dark energy. Although Fatty wasn’t very skilled in feng shui, he was still from the northern school of grave robbers and knew that this kind of change was very bad.

But he still wasn’t really an expert in this field. When he tried to think about it in detail, he couldn’t come up with anything else. He thought that the words on the stone slab might be the key, so he immediately wrote them down. But at this time, he heard Poker-Face—who was crouching beside the female corpse—suddenly shout, “Shit!”

He turned his head and saw that a small hand covered in white hair was sticking out of the female corpse and tightly gripping Poker-Face’s left wrist. He didn’t expect there to be a dead baby in the female corpse’s stomach but he still reacted very quickly. He immediately grabbed his speargun, went up to the female corpse, and fired a spear into its belly. He seemed to have hit the right spot because Poker-Face was instantly able to break free. Fatty wanted to shoot it again but Poker-Face shouted, “It can’t be killed! Go!” Then he pulled him into the hole in the bottom of the coffin.

When Fatty saw the remaining coffin liquid flowing down there, he balked at the disgusting sight, but then he looked back and saw that a face was protruding from the skin on the female corpse’s stomach, as if it were desperately trying to get out. The skin on the female corpse’s stomach was stretched to the point that it looked transparent, so even the facial features of the thing inside could be seen clearly. Fatty felt chills run up and down his spine. Telling himself that a gentleman should know when to retreat, he gritted his teeth and climbed into the hole.

The tunnel had been dug through the bricks in a very clever manner so that only half of the bricks were knocked out to form a natural brick arch at the top of the tunnel. This method ensured that nothing above would fall down. This kind of craftsmanship was really a test of time and probably wouldn’t have been completed in just a few days.

Poker-Face had already crawled far ahead so Fatty desperately chased after him. He didn’t know where this tunnel led to, but after crawling a few more steps, he suddenly found that it was sloping downward and there was water below. Fortunately, this submerged section didn’t seem to be very long. At this time, he saw light refracted through the water and thought that it might be me so he dove into the water. After swimming for a little bit, he found that the area in front of him had widened and turned into a big pool. At that time, the two of them were out of breath and rushed to the surface with all their might, where they found me pointing my speargun at them.

When I heard this, I couldn’t help saying, “So you only saw one hand?”

“I wasn’t afraid of that thing at all,” Fatty said, “but Little Brother here ran away as soon as he saw it. You know how powerful he is so what was someone with my capabilities supposed to do? But then again, I really don’t understand why we had to run. Little Brother, what was that thing? Is it really so powerful? I looked at how big it was. I think we could’ve taken care of it with a few spears.”

Poker-Face touched his wrist and said, “It’s a white-haired drought demon.⁽¹⁾ It can be killed by cutting off its head, but when it dies, a lot of corpse poison is released into the air. We only have so much air right now so it wasn’t worth it.”

I was surprised when I heard him say that. According to legends, the drought demon was an evil spirit that could cause droughts. It was said that a zombie may turn into a drought demon if it was nurtured for a long time. The “Book of Songs”⁽²⁾ even said that the drought demon was an oppressive existence that dried everything up around it to the point that it burned. In short, there were many stories about this thing, but I didn’t expect it to look like that.

But that wasn’t important right now. When I first entered this ancient tomb, I was prepared to see all kinds of strange things. That grave robbers’ tunnel, however, was even more unusual. It supposedly led to this pool, but that was just too unlikely. I figured that the opening under this pool was really just an exit instead of an entrance. It was possible that when the person was digging it, he wasn’t sure about the main coffin’s location so he dug the tunnel in several possible directions and this was just one of them. When I thought of this, I asked Poker-Face and Fatty if they had seen a fork in the tunnel.

Fatty shook his head and said no. This grave robbers’ tunnel wasn’t very long and had been dug in a straight path all the way to the end. I wasn’t even depressed after hearing this because I knew the tunnel had been made out of bricks. It would’ve been very convenient for them to use the bricks to hide the fork in the tunnel.

But when I thought of how airtight the structure of this tunnel was, I figured that the other entrance must also be in this ancient tomb. If that were the case, it would be useless to try and find it. It seemed that, just like us, the person who dug these tunnels must have entered the tomb through one of the pools in the ear chambers. But the ear chamber at that time didn’t have a door so he had no other choice but to dig his way out. But this person was really unlucky—when he dug into the other ear chamber, he ran into the coffin weight; when he dug towards the side halls, he ran into a pool of water. I wondered if he had dug his way to the main tomb chamber or not.

As I was lost in thought, Fatty suddenly said, “Do you guys think that drought demon can swim?”

I froze for a moment, not understanding what he was talking about. He pointed to the water, and when I turned around and looked, I saw that a lot of bubbles had suddenly appeared in the center of the pool.

<Chapter 56><Table of Contents><Chapter 58>

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TN Notes:

(1) Also called “Hiderigami” in Japanese and “Nüba” or “Ba” in Chinese. It’s a mythical species of yōkai in Chinese and Japanese folklore that holds the power to cause droughts. According to legend, she’s the daughter of Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor), whom she aided during his Battle at Zhuolu against Chiyou. She is said to have eyes on top of her head and moves as fast as the wind.

(2) Also called “Shijing”. It’s the oldest existing collection of Chinese poems (comprising 305 works) and one of the Five Classics of Confucianism. More info here.

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