Chapter 36 Clicking Corpse Teeth

I looked at the scene in front of me, feeling very morose. This thing belonged to the early stages of civilization, while I was an idiot from the modern world. There was no telling how many eras it took for us to meet here like this.

The crevice was very narrow. I knew that if I went on like this and encountered a slight accident, I would wind up rotting silently on the bottom level here. I found that compared with an ordinary death, this kind of unknown and untraceable death was a little more terrifying.

Just as I was about to continue moving forward, I suddenly heard a sound like teeth clicking together coming from the corpse’s head.

When there was no sound of water moving through the rock strata, I found that the surrounding environment was very quiet. As a result, that noise was particularly obvious, which surprised me a bit.

I turned around and pointed my flashlight at the corpse again, but it didn’t make a sound. I watched it for a while, thinking that my arrival might have caused the air temperature here to rise, which in turn caused subtle changes to take place in the corpse’s body. After all, its whole body was being crushed as a result of its tight encasement in the crack, so even the slightest change could cause the brittle body to make a crackling sound.

I didn’t want to hang around the corpse for too long since I knew there were rumors about me having a bad constitution, so I decided to move on. But as soon as I turned my head, I heard a “click” come from the corpse behind me.

I immediately turned to look at the body, knowing that I had to face it now.

Although it was extremely difficult for it to fool me in such a narrow crevice, it was also very difficult for me to escape.

I shined my flashlight on the corpse’s face, thinking that the sound was very similar to the sound of teeth clicking together, so it must have come from the corpse’s mouth.

But no matter how I looked at it, it was impossible for this corpse to transform. It was absolutely impossible. This thing was like beef jerky that had completely decayed and then been air dried again. It felt like it would turn to dust at the slightest touch.

If I could have run away immediately at that moment, I would have, but leaving this place was a very slow process. After crawling for half an hour, I’d probably look back and still see that corpse in the crevice. So, it was better to just face it.

I climbed up to the corpse, focusing my flashlight’s beam on its mouth as I approached it. That was when I noticed something inside its mouth.

But I couldn’t see clearly.

At this time, I suddenly remembered the squinting method I had been using before—some of the things here could only be seen with your peripheral vision.

So, while keeping my flashlight trained on the corpse, I slowly turned my head and looked at its mouth using my peripheral vision. (I realized how effective my peripheral vision could be from the information recorded in the sutra. All my previous memories of the ancient python corpse⁽¹⁾ and my peripheral vision had been erased before.)

There was no change, but I did find that the corpse seemed to have a certain disturbing effect on the surrounding darkness (this meant that the body contained jade meteorite fragments).

I also saw that behind the body, there was an eye looking at me through the corpse’s mouth.

I immediately realized that there was a hole in the back of the corpse’s mouth, and something was peeping at me from behind the body.

That place was extremely narrow, which meant that normal people couldn’t get in there. I paused before asking, “Qi Yu?”

From behind the corpse’s head, there came another sound like teeth clicking together.

I immediately froze while thinking to myself, is that Qi Yu? It was impossible for any human-like thing I knew to squeeze into this crack in the rock.

Although I knew I would face it again, I didn’t expect it to be so soon.

The corpse made another teeth-clicking sound, but this time, the sound was different from the previous one. I didn’t know why, but I thought these two sounds seemed to carry some meaning.

Then, there came the sound of teeth clicking together three times in a row.

This behavior was very strange, but I could understand that the thing behind this corpse seemed to want to communicate with me. This teeth-clicking sound was probably a special method it was using.

Is it Qi Yu? I was very confused. Qi Yu most definitely wanted to kill us, so why would he hide behind the corpse when he could have snuck up on me just now? Was this some new trick he was trying to pull?

<Chapter 35><Table of Contents><Chapter 37>

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TN Notes:

(1) Ancient python corpses were mentioned pretty frequently in “Sea of Lights” (first mention in chapter 27). If I remember correctly, they were the invisible things Wu Xie kept seeing in the grassland that seemed to have fins behind their ears that were really heads. He could only see them when he looked out of the corner of his eye.