Chapter 19 Trap

Before Uncle Three could react, the sound of the mechanism activating rose up from beneath the coffin and then a loud “bang” came from the dark entrance of the tomb chamber, as if something heavy had fallen into the huge iron vat they saw when they first came. In the enclosed space, the sound was so loud that it made his heart thump.

Uncle Three hurriedly pulled his hand out of the coffin hole and wiped it on himself, not caring about the filth. He then turned his flashlight toward the iron vat, wondering why they were so unlucky.

This place was worse than being aboveground. At least on the surface, if rocks fell down and blocked the tomb passage, or yellow sand started pouring down from the tomb ceiling, there was still time to escape through a grave robbers’ tunnel. But this tomb was located beneath a coral reef at the bottom of the sea. Once a mechanism was activated and trapped them here, nothing but death awaited them. There was no point in even trying to come up with a solution; all they could do was pick a spot where they wanted their corpses to lie.

Next to him, Xie Lianhuan was also startled and quickly retreated far away from the coffin, obviously thinking that the trap would come from there since that was where the vibrations were coming from.

Although Uncle Three hated Xie Lianhuan’s guts and wanted to kill him right now, he knew that he couldn’t let the other man run around wildly—he was still family after all. So, he stopped Xie Lianhuan and told him not to move. Then, he jumped off the iron coffin and carefully moved towards the iron vat to see what the mechanism had dropped inside of it.

The iron vat was less than twenty steps away from him, so he reached it quickly. But by this time, the mechanical sounds of the activated mechanism could no longer be heard, as if it had stopped working. Uncle Three gulped and pointed his flashlight towards the ceiling, finding that there was a drop-down plate above the iron vat. This kind of thing was called “ghost treading on air”. Oftentimes, extremely heavy rocks would be placed on the drop-down plate in the tomb chamber’s ceiling. Once the mechanism was triggered, the heavy objects would fall down and flatten the people below into mincemeat. But no heavy stones fell from above here; instead, two huge iron chains hung down from the ceiling and into the iron vat below.

Uncle Three looked at it for a long time, silently wondering what kind of mechanism this was. It didn’t seem to be a trap used to thwart grave robbers—the trigger mechanism was inside the coffin, but whatever fell ended up landing in this iron vat. It wouldn’t kill anyone, so what was the point?

Uncle Three thought of how this tomb wasn’t designed to usual tomb standards and felt even more puzzled. But then he pulled himself from his thoughts, took out his knife, and gripped it between his teeth. Once he was ready, he hoisted himself up the iron vat and carefully looked inside to see what was attached to the ends of the iron chains.

At first glance, he saw a strange thing lying at the bottom of the iron vat. But after taking a closer look, he realized that it was a skeleton with two pipa locks that looked like black demon claws embedded in its body.⁽¹⁾ The skeleton’s body was completely entangled in the iron chains, but its arms and legs seemed to be missing—it looked like a slave who had been buried with the tomb owner.

The skeleton seemed to have belonged to a burly man, who was dressed in tattered bronze armor. The pipa locks were firmly embedded in the skeleton’s collarbone, although one had already broken off.

Uncle Three was very surprised. Pipa locks embedded in the collarbone was an ancient method of torture used to restrict prisoners’ freedom. In ancient times, people with strong martial arts skills couldn’t be restrained with ordinary shackles, so they would use pipa locks. This was because after a hole was made in the collarbone, it became extremely fragile and would fracture easily. This “locking” of the bone was why the collarbone started being called the collarbone.⁽²⁾

The skeleton had completely rotted to the point that even the bones were starting to flake, as if they would crumble away at the slightest touch. Uncle Three took a careful look with his flashlight and saw that the shape of the skull was very strange—not only was it larger than that of an ordinary person, but it was also twice as long. Uncle Three couldn’t find the right words to describe it, but his first thought was that it reminded him of a large banana.

The fact that such a strange skeleton appeared after he triggered a mechanism in this ancient tomb was really bizarre. But based on the structure of the tomb chamber, it was obvious that the skeleton had been hanging in the tomb ceiling for a long time. When the mechanism in the coffin was activated, the skeleton had suddenly plunged down.

It was an ingenious trick, but what was it for? If it was supposed to be an anti-theft mechanism, it was certainly scary but not lethal. Did the tomb owner hope that whoever came to this tomb chamber at the bottom of the sea would be scared away by the mere sight of rotting bones? There was also the fact that this hanging skeleton obviously wasn’t an ordinary corpse. What exactly was it?

Uncle Three lacked the imagination to come up with any answers while feeling so confused, but his mind was still turning quickly. Then, a sudden thought popped into his head—considering how creepy this skeleton was, maybe it was the remains of a zombie that had transformed from a corpse? The chains were as thick as the mouth of a bowl and had pipa locks on the end, so the person had obviously been very strong before they died. There had long been rumors that skilled people in the remote Miao regions could raise demons and walking corpses. Could the tomb owner here have used pipa locks to restrain a revived corpse and use it as a watchdog?

But the skeleton was so completely rotted that even if it was a zombie, its bones could easily be crushed into dust. There was nothing to be afraid of here. Uncle Three’s curiosity was piqued, and he was feeling much braver than before, so he decided to climb into the iron vat to take a closer look. At the same time, he called Xie Lianhuan over to take pictures so that he could ask about it when they returned home.

But Xie Lianhuan didn’t respond. Uncle Three naturally wasn’t paying any attention to him and proceeded to climb into the vat. But as it turned out, a layer of dust had fallen from the ceiling along with the corpse, coating the inside of the iron vat. When Uncle Three stepped on it with his wet feet, he suddenly slipped and fell right into the pile of bones.

The brittle bones had already been damaged when the skeleton fell from the ceiling just now, but Uncle Three’s fall completely shattered them to pieces. He hurriedly sat up and took a look with his flashlight, finding that he had fallen right on the skeleton’s chest. The deformed skull, which was hanging right by his head, had been shattered by his fall, exposing the inside of the cranial cavity. A large mass that looked like a honeycomb was stuck to the sides of the cranial cavity, filled with insect eggs that looked like pearls.

<Chapter 18><Table of Contents><Chapter 20>

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TN Notes:

(1) Pipa locks usually refer to having meat hooks inserted into the shoulder blade area. Something like this:

(2) Doesn’t translate well at all. The characters for collarbone/clavicle in Chinese are 锁骨 (pinyin: suǒ​gǔ). If you separate them, 锁 (suǒ) means lock/padlock or shackles/chains and 骨 (pinyin: ​gǔ) means bone/skeleton or frame/framework.