Chapter 12 Secret Corpse Chamber

The entire corpse chamber was dark, and the beams of light from all of our flashlights swung around chaotically, making it difficult to see. In addition, the corner where Fatty was located was far away from us, so even when the flashlights were pointed in that direction, the surrounding corpses and endless layers of shadows blocked the light. But even if our flashlights were brighter, we still wouldn’t have been able to see clearly.

Despite all this, there was no mistaking that bluish-purple tint to Fatty’s skin, or that strange, lifeless expression on his face—it was so similar to the corpses around him that it made my hair stand on end.

Pan Zi, initially thinking that Fatty was still messing around, yelled at him again. But when Fatty still didn’t respond and remained there motionless like a statue, Pan Zi also realized that something was wrong and said to us, “Did something happen to him?”

I frowned. I didn’t know how to explain it, but Fatty’s expression and current position were too similar to the corpses here. If he wasn’t playing a trick on us, then something must have definitely happened. But everyone else was fine, so why was it him again? Thinking back on his unscrupulous behavior before, maybe he was possessed by one of the ghosts here? Or maybe he was affected by the shaman’s curse?

We slowly slid down the steep slope and approached the place where Fatty was squatting. There didn’t appear to be anything around him that was different from the rest of this place, just more of those purple fanged corpses. When we were about four or five meters away from him, Pan Zi suddenly raised his hand, silently telling us not to move. Then, he signaled to Monk Hua.

In Chen Pi Ah Si’s team, Lang Feng—like Fatty—played the vanguard, Monk Hua was the adviser, and Ye Cheng was similar to a jack-of-all-trades—each had their own special abilities. Although Lang Feng was dead now, Monk Hua’s ability to act as a vanguard wasn’t weak, so that was why Pan Zi signaled to him.

I suddenly felt the gap between us. When it came to our team, there were a lot of vanguards, but it was a bit of a stretch to call me an adviser considering how lacking I was. I thought about it some more and realized that if the other team didn’t have Monk Hua, then with Poker-Face’s absence, I would have been the one to go with Pan Zi. But Monk Hua’s abilities were obviously far superior to mine.

Monk Hua saw Pan Zi’s signal and nodded. Then, the two of them pulled out their hunting knives, held them in a reverse grip, and slowly moved closer to Fatty.

The two quickly reached Fatty’s side, but Fatty still didn’t turn to look at them. The way he remained motionless reminded me of those street performers who pretended to be living statues.⁽¹⁾

My palms were covered in a cold sweat, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. At this time, the two in front suddenly stopped. Pan Zi was so close to Fatty that he could reach out and touch him, but for some reason, they both suddenly waved their hands, telling us not to approach. Then, they began to retreat themselves.

My heart started pounding in my chest as I wondered what they had seen. When Pan Zi reached my side, he said to us, “We’re in trouble. There’s something wrong with the corpse behind him.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, “Is it a zombie?”

Pan Zi didn’t bother responding and just motioned for us to follow him.

We passed by several corpses, went down several of the terrace levels, and finally arrived at Fatty’s side. Pan Zi pointed at something, and when I looked to see what it was, I noticed several blue-black corpses sitting cross-legged behind Fatty, but one of them was different from others!

The head of this corpse was huge—almost three times the size of an ordinary person’s—and its facial features were indistinct, just like a big-headed baby that hadn’t yet reached maturity. A strange tongue was sticking out of the corpse’s mouth and coiled around Fatty’s neck.

As soon as I saw it, my scalp tingled, my heart started racing, and my neck felt stiff. I covered my mouth to prevent myself from shouting and whispered, “What is that?”

“This may be a corpse fetus. The location of these corpses is where the corpse incubator coffin would usually be located in a tomb.⁽²⁾ This corpse just happened to be sitting at the key point. Over time, it started to transform and became like this. In another few hundred years, it may become a spirit,” Chen Pi Ah Si whispered from the side. But after saying that, his expression suddenly became very strange, as if he had thought of something, and then he said, “Wait! But isn’t this dragon vein fake? How can there be a corpse incubator cave here? This…”

When Monk Hua saw Chen Pi Ah Si’s strange expression, he seemed to realize what the old man was talking about, and his expression also changed (I felt that Monk Hua actually thought of it a while ago, but in order to protect Chen Pi Ah Si’s reputation, he waited until Chen Pi Ah Si thought of it himself before reacting). “Boss, is this an ‘interlocking chain’?” He asked Chen Pi Ah Si.

“Interlocking chain” was a kind of deception, a trick used by those in the underworld to swindle people. It was about making a real thing look fake, and then making it look real again, but with a few flaws. This way, when others examined it, they would see the flaws and look through the “real” exterior and think that it was a fake. But in fact, it was real. This kind of deception was called the “empty city strategy”.

Chen Pi Ah Si sneered, “Yes, it’s fake. How can there be a corpse incubator cave in a fake dragon vein? Wang Zanghai, that old fox, was very good at ‘interlocking chains’. He might have been extremely careful and meticulous, but unfortunately for him, we finally found a flaw.”

I still didn’t understand, so I asked Monk Hua what was going on.

“That was close,” Monk Hua explained. “We were almost deceived, but fortunately, we fell down here. Do you remember that after we discovered that the location was fake, we believed that this whole dragon vein was fake as well? But there’s a corpse fetus here. There can’t be a treasure well on a fake dragon vein, so it’s impossible to have a corpse fetus here. That’s the flaw. It seems that the magnetic tortoise is also a part of Wang Zanghai’s trap. He tried to make us mistakenly believe that we had been tricked so that we’d think the whole dragon vein was fake. But in fact, the dragon vein was real; it just wasn’t a Three-Headed Dragon array. The magnetic tortoise simply modified an ordinary dragon vein so that it became a Three-Headed Dragon.”

I let out an “Oh,” as I finally understood what they were talking about. In feng shui, direction was very important in determining the quality of a dragon vein. For example, if there was a one-eyed dragon that ran from west to east, then it was an “ascending dragon”. But if it ran from east to west, then it was a “descending dragon”. By burying a magnetic tortoise and changing the cardinal directions, a descending dragon could become an ascending dragon.

(Later, I read up on Three-Headed Dragons and found that they could only be called a “Sitting Group of Dragons” as long as all three dragon heads faced east. But the three sacred mountains in the Changbai Mountain Range all faced north, and only the central mountain was the dragon head. The other two mountains were called “double coiled serpents”. They were also good feng shui spots, but they were more suitable for building temples rather than burying people. As soon as the magnetic tortoise was placed there, north became east, which caused Chen Pi Ah Si to draw the wrong conclusion.)

I couldn’t help but feel amazed—such a complicated setup and the sheer level of wits it took to come up with such an idea was simply incredible. I thought about it and realized that we had been completely deceived just now. If we hadn’t discovered the corpse fetus here, we would have gone back feeling dejected.

A thousand years separated us from Wang Zanghai, but I suddenly felt as if his thoughts were flowing right in front of me. Although he came up with that strategy a thousand years ago, it was still able to make us run around in circles. What exactly was his background?

“You guys still have the heart to keep talking?” Pan Zi whispered. “What about Fatty? Will the black donkey hooves work against this thing?”

Chen Pi Ah Si shook his head, indicating that he didn’t know. Monk Hua also frowned, apparently not knowing how to deal with it either.

It was moments like these that I hated the most. We didn’t know if Fatty was currently in any danger with that tongue wrapped around his throat like that, but rushing in to save him might make the situation worse. In the end, neither side could do anything. Pan Zi and I were covered in a cold sweat, but we still couldn’t come up with any solutions.

But to our surprise, before we could make a move, Fatty’s side reacted first—his body suddenly fell to the ground and started to get dragged away. The big-headed corpse fetus had suddenly started crawling down the steep slope, pulling Fatty along with its tongue. Fatty was as stiff as a rock and didn’t put up any resistance at all.

If it dragged him down, Fatty would surely die. Now that the situation had suddenly escalated, Pan Zi shouted at us to give chase and we all immediately rushed after them.

As soon as the big-headed corpse fetus saw us rushing down, it immediately sped up. Fatty’s body rolled down the slope, leaving smashed corpses in his wake. Since the slope was so steep, we couldn’t run down it at all and simply slid down it like a slide.

We chased after them for more than ten meters before Fatty suddenly disappeared from sight. Shocked at seeing him disappear so quickly, we all rushed over to where we last saw him and immediately found a hole on the slope. Fatty had been dragged into the hole, leaving only his legs sticking out.

Pan Zi rushed over like a tiger and pounced on Fatty’s legs, pulling on them with all of his strength. I slid past with a crash but quickly scrambled back up and went to help. Ye Cheng, Shunzi, and Monk Hua also came rushing down. Monk Hua took some of our climbing rope and tied one end around Fatty’s leg. That way, the corpse fetus wouldn’t be able to succeed in taking Fatty unless it tore him in half.

With so many of us working together, we were able to pull Fatty up in no time. But that tongue was still wrapped so tightly around his throat that it was practically digging into his flesh. The veins on Fatty’s face were bulging, his eyes had rolled into the back of his head, and he had almost stopped breathing. Pan Zi quickly pulled out his knife and cut the tongue—a woman’s scream suddenly came from the depths of the hole. Now that the tongue was cut in half, Fatty’s body went limp and we were able to pull him out completely.

We quickly removed the cut tongue from around his throat, threw it into the hole, and then started pushing on Fatty’s chest. His whole body shuddered, and then he reached up and rubbed his neck as he began gasping and coughing for air. Afraid that that thing would come out again, Pan Zi pulled out his folding shovel and went to the mouth of the hole. He shined his flashlight into the hole for a while before eventually putting his weapon down—it seemed the corpse fetus had already disappeared.

We all breathed a sigh of relief and lightly pounded on Fatty’s back. It took him a long time to recover, but when he finally did, he looked at the hole with a lingering fear and said, “Thank you, thank you all.”

I asked him what happened, and why he had been as motionless as a Maitreya statue,⁽³⁾ but Fatty didn’t know either. All he could say was that he felt his neck go cold and then he couldn’t move. He could see and hear just fine, but his body couldn’t move at all. It was almost like he was frozen in ice. He tried to use his full strength, but he couldn’t even move his eyes, and that was when he started to panic.

Pan Zi laughed, “Based on that scream just now, this corpse fetus was a female. She must have been too lonely down here, and seeing that you’re similar in size to her, she wanted to drag you down to accompany her. We call that a date from hell.”

Fatty smiled wryly and gave him a shove, “You’re the one who fucking looks like her.”

Pan Zi smiled and leaned back to dodge, but at this time, that huge corpse fetus’s head suddenly emerged from the hole. It opened its bloody mouth and suddenly bit down on Pan Zi’s leg, dragging him into the hole before he had time to react.

<Chapter 11><Table of Contents><Chapter 13>

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TN Notes:

(1) More info here.

(2) Reminder, corpse incubator is based on feng shui knowledge. It’s generally used in mountain tombs. If you have two places in the tomb that, according to feng shui, are suitable for placing the main coffin, you can’t just pick one. This is because a lot of spiritual energy will be concentrated at the other spot, which can attract demonic things. So, a corpse incubator coffin is placed in the empty spot, and blood relatives of the tomb owner are buried in it.  

(3) Maitreya is the Bodhisattva that is prophesied to appear on Earth, achieve complete Enlightenment, and teach the Dharma.