NR | Chapter 22

The quicksand beneath the clay figurine collapsed all at once. None of us had seen that coming, so when we fell, all three of us were utterly unprepared. The cavity below was huge. Sand flooded up my nose and squeezed me downward. My chin slammed against a rock, and the pain made me wince hard.

It felt like only a moment before I hit the bottom. I landed on my ass and sat there for a long while, every part of me aching and bruised. I barely managed to pull my legs in and look around. It was pitch black. This kind of darkness was something you could never feel on the surface, a total, bone-deep darkness.

I’d lost my flashlight during the fall. I didn’t know whether it had come down with me, so I hurriedly lay down and fumbled around the ground. After feeling around for a long time, my hand closed on something cold and hard, like some kind of rolling pin. What, were burial goods from the Warring States period really this considerate? They even came with rolling pins?

I brought it closer and still couldn’t tell what it was, so I set it back down and felt for the four glow sticks on the sides of my backpack. I’d seen Tian Tinghan use these before, so I copied him and bent one hard.

The glow stick suddenly lit up, shining right onto the thing by my feet. I was so scared I reflexively crawled backward more than ten steps.

Fuck! What rolling pin? This damn thing was clearly a bone!

Cold sweat ran down my back. I held the glow stick in my hand, trembling all over. I’d been down here for so long, and aside from the noise I’d made myself just now, I hadn’t heard a single other sound. Could that at least indirectly prove that He Yu and Lu Ayao hadn’t landed in the same place as me? After reaching that conclusion, I almost burst into tears. But at the same time, I was also very clear that crying was useless. This wasn’t like getting bullied by classmates in kindergarten and running home to Mom.

I forced down the fear in my heart and started moving the glow stick around, trying to shift my attention to the surroundings instead of letting it stay trapped in my imagination. If you stayed in a place like this too long, anyone with a vivid imagination would go insane on their own.

This was a huge cavity, roughly oval in shape. I was currently on a small platform inside it. Behind me was a deep cave mouth cut into the stone wall. I touched the wall with my hand. The chiseling was rough. This hole should connect to the upper layer of quicksand beneath the clay figurine, and I must have slid out through this narrow opening.

My chin still hurt. I wiped at it and came back with a hand full of blood, but I should be grateful it was only a scrape and not a dislocated bone. Leaning against the cave wall, I took off my backpack, rummaged out the gauze and cotton balls He Yu had packed for me earlier, and tried to disinfect myself using the method Tian Yuqing had taught me before.

The chin wasn’t like an elbow or an arm. I didn’t know how to secure the gauze, so after disinfecting it, I simply used a bandage strip for a makeshift fix.

I broke off a piece of compressed biscuit, sat in place, and took deep breaths, trying to calm down and think things through. I began my first mental reconstruction.

First, the clay figurine, then the mechanism core turned, then the sand layer collapsed. The sand layer covered all kinds of holes of different sizes. The three of us, me, He Yu, and Lu Ayao, may have fallen into three different holes. Or maybe the two of them fell together. If they fell together, that would still be manageable. Two people wouldn’t completely break down. But if the three of us really fell into three entirely different cavities, then things would be a little bad.

I tried to climb back into the previous cave, thinking maybe I could follow it back to the clay figurine. At least that side wasn’t as deep as here. Even if Tian Yuqing had already left, I could still use the rope from before to call for help and get back to the surface.

I tried three or four times, but the wall was simply too slippery. After the fourth fall, I gave up on the idea.

I lifted a hand to feel the stone walls inside the cavity, and soon realized a second problem. The hole I’d fallen through and this small cavity didn’t seem to be from the same period.

The amount of wear on the stone walls inside the cavity was worlds apart from the wear around that hole. This hole had clearly been cut later with a modern tool like a pickaxe. Could it have been that tomb robber who died earlier in the clay figurine formation?

I shook my head and threw the unimportant stuff out of my mind. What I needed to think about now was how to get out of this hellhole, or make enough noise to get Tian Yuqing to send someone to rescue me. The glow stick was terrible for lighting. This little thing, only good for finding a path, could only shine two or three meters ahead. I could vaguely see something hanging from the top of the cavity, but I couldn’t make it out clearly.

Just then, I heard something rolling near my feet. I looked down and saw a flashlight. It slowly rolled in from the left and stopped by my feet. I lifted my foot and blocked it in place.

Puzzled, I crouched down and picked it up to check. The battery hadn’t fallen out, so it should still work. I twisted it on. The flashlight flickered from a bad connection, and in that one flash, I caught a glimpse of a huge human-shaped black shadow standing motionless at the far left side of the cave where I’d fallen.

The flashlight lit up for a second and went out. Cold sweat slowly soaked my temples again. My heartbeat sounded as loud as a drum, and my fingers started shaking again. That shadow was just too big. I had no idea when it had appeared there, or whether it had already been standing there while I was by the cave wall studying the stone. But it hadn’t moved at all. It had just hidden in the darkness, staring at me fixedly.

I thought again of the bone I’d picked up off the ground earlier. This small cavity definitely wasn’t a tomb chamber. It should still fall within the scope of a burial pit. What in a burial pit could be that enormous?

My legs had gone numb from squatting, so I shifted to the right, then stood up in place with one hand holding the flashlight and the other holding the glow stick. I shook out my numb legs and, trembling, called toward the direction of the black shadow, “Ancestor, this junior entered this place by mistake. I absolutely won’t take a single piece of your gold or silver. Once I find a way out, I’ll get lost immediately. I’m timid, so please don’t scare me.”

I twisted the flashlight on with my hand. This time it didn’t flicker. The area in front of me suddenly lit up. In the beam, I saw a gilt-painted lacquer coffin pressed against the wall. The dark patterns on the coffin still held a faint sheen under the flashlight. I turned the light again and rubbed my eyes. There was no black shadow across from me at all.

Having an illusion in a place like this didn’t seem all that strange.

I let out a long breath, my body nearly collapsing against the stone wall, when suddenly I heard a faint rustling sound. In such a silent environment, even the slightest noise could scare me into a breakdown. My body tightened at once. At the same time, the rustling grew stronger. I listened carefully to find the source, and what made me even more desperate was that the sound seemed to be coming from inside that coffin.

I was about to curse the heavens. A surge of anger at being toyed with rose up all at once.

As it turned out, once anger reached its peak, it really could make someone forget fear for the moment. I didn’t know where I got the nerve, but I pulled the new shovel head from my bag and strode up to the coffin. I leaned in and listened carefully. The rustling was still going on, and I was almost certain now that the sound was coming from inside.

I was still listening when a dull boom suddenly came from within the coffin. The sound was not small. It shook the whole coffin three times over, startling me so badly that I stumbled back a step. The glow stick in my hand fell to the ground. I found it strange. What was this supposed to mean? Was this corpse rising from the dead and doing it so ridiculously? Could it be too weak to lift the coffin lid? In my head I instantly pictured a corpse doing sit-ups inside the coffin. It was kind of funny.

Just as I was thinking that, the coffin suddenly went quiet. After a while, sound came from inside again. It was intermittent, and I could hear it very vaguely, but there were even pauses in it. Could it be that the one lying in there had been stuck inside for too long and was lonely enough to want someone to chat with?

I was the only one here, and that anger and impulse had already faded.

I didn’t dare open the coffin, so I could only sit cross-legged in front of the lacquer coffin. “I know you’re lonely in here all by yourself. At most, I can chat with you for ten minutes. Once I find a way out, I’ll leave. Don’t scare me.”

The lacquer coffin immediately went still. I thought the thing inside might really understand what I was saying, and I was about to say a few more words when the coffin suddenly began shaking even more violently, rattling the whole lid almost off. Those unclear sounds came with it, too. I listened carefully and only vaguely caught one sentence: “You motherfucker.”

Hm? Had this corpse turned into a spirit, or crossed over from another time? It could even curse?

Then it hit me. I jumped to my feet at once. Fuck, this wasn’t a corpse rising from the dead. That was clearly He Yu’s voice!