Chapter 36 Exit

I felt my blood run cold. We all stood there stunned for a moment, but then Pan Zi reflexively reached for his gun, and Fatty took the rhinoceros horn and slowly lifted it up.

The ceiling was very high, so the light from our lanterns and smokeless stove couldn’t reach that far. If it weren’t for the fact that burning the rhinoceros horn had caused the flames from the smokeless stove to suddenly brighten, we would have only seen absolute darkness when we looked up. But such lighting was still very limited, so the black silhouette of the “child” was extremely blurry in the firelight. It looked just like a black jellyfish attached to the ceiling, swaying in “seawater”.

For a brief moment, I wondered whether this shadow above our heads had appeared because of the rhinoceros horn light, or if it had originally been there and we just didn’t notice it. The latter was quite possible, because even though we had taken a cursory look at the ceiling when we first entered the tomb chamber, our minds were quickly distracted by the treasure, so we might not have realized what we were seeing. The “child” could have already been hanging on the ceiling at that time, but we didn’t notice it.

Fatty quietly picked up his gun and then turned to us and mouthed very slowly, “Is…this…the…culprit?”

I waved at him, silently telling him not to make any rash moves. In fact, there was no basis for saying that this thing was the one messing with us. Maybe it just happened to pass by and decided to take a rest on the ceiling above our heads. But this was no time to think about such things—going from a situation where you didn’t know what to do to suddenly finding a target to focus your attention on would send anyone into a frenzy.

But we still didn’t know what this thing was, or if bullets would even affect it. If we acted rashly, it might run away, and we didn’t have a second rhinoceros horn to burn.

We all stood up very cautiously. Fatty hung the stove on the barrel of his gun and then slowly lifted it up. The ceiling gradually became brighter and brighter, but doing this took a lot of energy—Fatty’s hands began to shake from the effort and Pan Zi had to rush over to help him.

The black silhouette of the “child” became clearer and clearer until we could see its distinct shape above our heads. I took a closer look and suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.

As the shadowy silhouette gradually took shape, the “child’s” head became bigger and bigger, and the whole black shadow gradually morphed into something that looked like a giant fetus.

This… wasn’t this the big-headed corpse fetus we saw in the secret corpse chamber?! Why was it here? Had it been following us this whole time?⁽¹⁾

I felt horrified as I suddenly realized that we had also been in a ghost-hitting-a-wall type situation in the main hall before. But wasn’t this thing originally hidden in the mezzanine under the main hall? Was the strange, physics-defying dilemma we were currently facing the work of this corpse fetus?

Fatty and Pan Zi also recognized it. Fatty’s face contorted into a grimace and he mouthed at Pan Zi, “Damn…it…seems…your…evil…daughter…doesn’t…want…you…to…leave.” He moved his lips so exaggeratedly that he looked ridiculous.

Pan Zi immediately became furious, and mouthed back at him, “It’s… your…damn…son…who…grew…up…like…this!”

I waved my hand to get their attention and then pointed to the smokeless stove—the light was already starting to dim. Once the flames from the rhinoceros horn burned out, then we’d really be doomed. We had to hurry up and deal with this thing right away.

Fatty nodded, gently pulled the bolt back on his gun, and moved to aim the muzzle at the creature. But the smokeless stove was still hanging from the barrel, its weight constantly throwing his aim off. He tried several times, but the muzzle was shaking so much that it became obvious he’d have better luck firing in short bursts. On the other side, Shunzi also raised his gun and aimed at the creature in the dim light.

The light was getting dimmer and dimmer, but the two of them still didn’t shoot. I was so nervous that I was covered in a cold sweat, but I knew what was going on—the light from the smokeless stove was too erratic from all the movement, which meant that the creature’s position on the ceiling was slightly off when viewed with the naked eye. That was why they wouldn’t dare shoot rashly. Sure enough, Fatty and Shunzi really were professional gunmen. They could only aim properly when the flames were on the brink of being extinguished, in that brief moment when the light was very dim and the shadows were no longer flickering.

I didn’t dare speak as I watched Fatty’s hands start shaking more and more violently. Pan Zi tried to help him out by providing support from below as we waited for the shadow above us to gradually merge with the surrounding darkness.

I didn’t know how many seconds had passed, but the speed at which the light dimmed almost made it impossible to prepare ourselves mentally. At the exact moment the corpse fetus suddenly disappeared, Fatty and Shunzi both fired at the same time.

Based on the sound of gunfire, the two of them fired a total of ten shots at this time. I didn’t know how many actually hit their target, but black liquid suddenly splashed all over the place, and the creature fell to the ground. Fatty, unable to hold the stove up any longer, let it roll to the ground, where the remaining coals scattered in all directions.

We immediately took several steps back. The corpse fetus emitted a loud cry similar to that of a baby, slammed into the stove that was still rolling on the ground, and then swiftly fled towards the darkness on the other side of the tomb door.

“Shit… it can still run?!” Fatty cried out.

“We can’t let it escape! Otherwise, we’ll be trapped again!” Pan Zi shouted. “After it!”

The four of us leaped up and ran after it, quickly passing through the tomb door. Now back in the tomb passage, we noticed right away that the murals had changed back to the original ones. That ghostly phenomenon was gone!

“We’re out!” Fatty was overjoyed. “We’re not going to die in that trap! Sure enough, it really was because of a ghost!”

“Where the hell is that thing?” I turned on my flashlight and immediately saw that the corpse fetus had stopped further down the tomb passage. But as soon as it saw the light, it rushed into the darkness at the other end of the tomb passage at an alarming speed.

We immediately chased after it again, knowing that we couldn’t let it escape. If we stopped, we’d probably experience that same situation again, and that was something I wanted to avoid at all costs.

We ran for about seven or eight minutes down the kilometer-long tomb passage. I was nearly out of breath by this time, but then I saw the end of the passage appear in front of us—it was a staircase leading downward. There was a trail of black blood all over the floor, making it obvious that the corpse fetus had rushed down the stairs.

I automatically tensed up—I was so used to seeing the stone door to the treasure room that seeing this staircase now suddenly caught me by surprise. But in the next second, I breathed a sigh of relief. Fatty caught up to me and pushed me from behind, urging me to keeping moving. We all rushed down the stairs one at a time, regardless of whether there were any mechanisms or traps. If we died, we died. Even if only one of us survived, we had to kill this creature to get our vengeance!!

Rushing down like kangaroos, it felt like we were taking nearly ten steps at a time, but we were still half a beat behind the corpse fetus. For us, running down the stairs was still slower than running on level ground, but the corpse fetus didn’t slow down at all. Seeing it instantly disappear into the darkness below, I knew that we’d never be able to catch up with it. But we were running with so much momentum that it was difficult to stop—just as I tried, I tripped over my own feet, pitched forward, and rolled down to the bottom of the steps. My flashlight went flying off into darkness and I could feel a stream of blood flowing from my head.

I cursed as I tried to stand up, but then Fatty also apparently tripped and landed on top of me. Fortunately, this wasn’t the first time this had happened to me—I let out a muffled groan and quickly moved to get up so that I wouldn’t be flattened if the others came rolling down the stairs as well. But I only made it halfway up before something pulled on my pants, throwing me off balance. As I fell once more, I felt a sharp pain in my butt.

I struggled to get up several times before I realized that I was hooked on something. Fatty got up, turned on his flashlight, and pointed it toward me before giving a thoughtful hum.

Using the light of his flashlight, I finally saw what had caught my pants—on the concrete support structure behind me, there was a kind of wire net running across the whole tomb chamber.

But before I could do anything, I suddenly heard the sound of gunshots coming from somewhere close by. They were fired in such quick succession that I knew it couldn’t be Fatty or Shunzi’s guns.

Finally freeing myself from the wire, I stood up and saw a dim light coming from the side. But just as I was about to go and check it out, Pan Zi finally caught up with us.⁽²⁾

When I asked what took him so long, he said that when we passed through the intersection from before, Shunzi decided to take the passage back and get out of here. Since he had already found his father and grabbed enough gold, he didn’t want to take any more risks with us. He said that he would wait a week for us on the snowy mountain outside. If we didn’t come out after a week, he would go back down the mountain by himself.

I secretly scolded him for being so heartless, but I couldn’t deny that he had suffered so much after following us this far. At this time, Pan Zi also heard the gunshots and immediately became alert.

We looked around with our flashlights and found that on the other side of the room across from the stairs, there was something like a terrace with several long, covered walkways branching out from it. In other words, this was an entrance to a huge, two-story tomb chamber. There was no floor between the two chambers, only a few covered walkways overhead, from which you could directly view the floor below.

This kind of structure was called a “Veranda Leading to Heaven”. Although it was decorated with carvings of dragons and phoenixes, it actually served a functional purpose—it held the equipment that was used to lower the coffin into the huge tomb chamber below. There was probably a chamber with a coffin below the terrace, and that was exactly where the intense gunfire was coming from. We could even see a bunch of flashlight beams darting around everywhere.

We wondered what was going on. Were they firing because the corpse fetus had jumped down there just now? With so many guns going off, they could have taken down an elephant by now. Maybe guns didn’t work against the corpse fetus?

The three of us lined up and went out onto the terrace. It actually turned out to be very narrow, so we climbed up carefully and looked down—there was a huge circular tomb chamber below that spanned an area of about five or six hundred square meters. To our surprise, A Ning’s team was standing right below us. A dozen cold fireworks had been scattered all around, brightly illuminating the whole tomb chamber. I could see that everyone was standing in a circle, constantly shooting at their surroundings, but I couldn’t see what they were firing at. When I took a closer look, however, I found that they were firing at a bunch of centipedes, each one as thick as an arm. The tomb chamber was absolutely crawling with them, their numbers so dense that it almost looked like A Ning and her team were surrounded by a sea of them.

In the center of the tomb chamber was a coffin well in the shape of an inverted pyramid, with eight huge black coffins at the bottom of it. There was a giant translucent jade sarcophagus in the middle, which had already been opened. Under the light of the cold fireworks, the jade sarcophagus sparkled with a strange and colorful light. I took a closer look at it and saw that the centipedes seemed to be crawling out of it in a continuous stream.

I immediately felt my heart thump. Was this the Nine Dragons Carrying the Lord’s Coffin that was recorded on the snake-eyebrow copper fish? Was this the same coffin that held King Wannu’s body? It seemed that these amateurs had either triggered some kind of mechanism or simply stepped on one of the centipedes, sending the others into a frenzy.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that—the dozen or so people below were already exhausted, but the centipedes continued to surge up like the tide. Killing them was useless, because the others became even more frenzied as soon as one died.

“Should we help them?” Fatty asked me.

Pan Zi shook his head, “Wait for a few more of them to die.”

Fatty laughed, “You might as well just shoot them now. At least that way they’ll die faster.”

I couldn’t help but feel conflicted. It wasn’t a question of whether to save them or not, but a question of what they would do to us after we saved them. A Ning had been ready to kill us back in the undersea tomb, but we were lucky enough to escape. And that was after I had saved her. She probably wouldn’t be grateful this time either, but after watching so many people die right under our noses, I knew I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life if I didn’t try to save them.

But this brought up another issue—could we even save them? Shooting down from above wouldn’t help them, which meant that the only way to save them was to pull them up with a rope. But they could barely fend the centipedes off now, even with all their firepower. If one person stopped shooting to climb up the rope, there would definitely be casualties below.

While I was hesitating, I suddenly saw a foreigner in A Ning’s team carrying a familiar-looking person on their back. I immediately patted Pan Zi and pointed it out to him. After taking a quick look, he suddenly exclaimed, “That’s your Uncle Three!”

“Are you sure?” I took another look, but it was too hard to tell from this distance. Seeing Pan Zi nod, I started to believe that he was right and hurriedly took a few steps closer to get a better look.

But just as I started to moved, I suddenly felt as if I had stepped on something. When I looked down, I saw that the corpse fetus that had escaped earlier was hanging from the bottom of the stone walkway, and I just so happened to step on it. One of those withered hands grabbed my foot and immediately dragged me down.

I felt a wave of anger rise up in my heart—considering how this thing kept picking on us, it must be trying to get its revenge—but before I could do anything, I lost my balance and fell to the floor.

This creature clearly had a short memory, because it wasn’t prepared when Pan Zi and Fatty raised their guns up and opened fire. At such close range, the creature’s big head was blown to pieces, leaving only about half of it behind. That withered hand clinging to the lower part of the walkway lost its grip, sending the whole corpse fetus crashing down from above.

But its other hand was still gripping my foot tightly, which meant that the weight of its falling body managed to drag me down as well. I let out a shout as I fell. The corpse fetus was the first to land in the middle of A Ning’s group, scaring the crap out of all of them—they had been so absorbed in fighting off the centipedes around them that they hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on above their heads. As everyone scattered in all directions, I also came plummeting down from above.

(According to Fatty, it looked like I had jumped down of my own accord, but I really did fall against my will). I quickly walked over to the corpse fetus and stomped on the remaining half of its head, sending black blood flying everywhere.

Fortunately, the stone walkway wasn’t too high; otherwise, I would have definitely sprained my ankle after falling so abruptly like that. But after the fall, I only staggered a little bit before regaining my balance. I looked around and suddenly found that the centipedes closest to me were running away, as if they had seen a ghost. In a matter of seconds, the endless wave of centipedes seemed to recede like the tide, with only the dead ones remaining behind on the ground.

I was so scared that I still hadn’t fully come back to my senses. Not really understanding what had just happened, I raised my head and saw that everyone was looking at me with horrified expressions, as if they had seen some kind of monster.

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

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TN Notes:

(1) Just a reminder, it’s the one from Chapter 12 that went after Fatty and Pan Zi.

(2) FYI, the raw actually said Pan Zi and Fatty ran up but that doesn’t fit with what NPSS wrote a few paragraphs ago about Fatty landing on Wu Xie so I changed some things. Same with the next 2 paragraphs. NPSS has Fatty doing all the talking but that doesn’t make sense if he was running that close to Wu Xie.

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THEY’RE OUT THEY’RE OUT THEY’RE OUT!!!!!!! FINALLY!!!! Not gonna lie, I had it in my head that Shunzi got killed off. Idk why I forgot he just up and left them at this point. I think I’d be more freaked out trying to leave that place on my own. Anyways, I am going to the lake this weekend but I like you guys so I pushed to get this one out ♡(>ᴗ•) Now next chapter….ha haha hahaha. The raws are 6 pages so expect it some time late next week.

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