Chapter 158

I felt difficulty breathing, my limbs were useless, and no matter what, I couldn't raise my submachine gun in my right hand. Pangzi and Shirley Yang behind me should arrive soon, but I feared that in another two seconds, I would have to return to my position first.

My neck was tightly gripped, my head forced upward, and I saw only the white quartzite above, completely unable to see what was choking me opposite. At that moment, someone behind me suddenly slapped me hard, I cried out "Ah!" as my wrist and neck ached as if they would break, yet the hand choking me vanished like a nightmare.

It turned out the person who slapped my shoulder from behind was Pangzi, who asked: "Commander Hu, your pose just now was quite good—head up, chest out, with a bit of that vigor from the Great Leap Forward when they grabbed revolution and promoted production."

At this time, Shirley Yang also came over, saw the situation, and also asked what had happened.

I touched my neck in a daze, utterly unable to describe it, merely gasping heavily. After a while, I finally told them what had happened in those few short seconds.

Pangzi seized the opportunity to mock me for daydreaming again. I said to Pangzi and Shirley Yang: "If it's a dream, then what the hell is this?" As I spoke, I raised my arm flat to let them see the bruise on my arm, and continued: "I've long felt that the Xian King's Tomb is misleading, with many things that shouldn't be in an immortal cave—there must be a ghost in this wall."

Shirley Yang asked: "Aren't you wearing some consecrated amulets?"

I patted the jade Buddha pendants on my chest: "These things are useless—if they weren't so damn expensive, I'd have thrown them by the roadside long ago, saved to call those foreign devils later. From now on, if I wear them again, I'm his grandson."

Pangzi could no longer laugh; upon closer inspection, the woman in the mural protruded noticeably from the flat surface, as if a corpse was buried beneath the painting, seemingly fused with the white quartzite. Is she in the catastrophe? Pangzi said to me: "Anyway, this wall blocks the path to the burial chamber, so let's not hesitate—we still have explosives, right? Blow it apart with a ground-to-air missile; whatever's inside will be blown clean." He then set down his backpack and began preparing the explosives.

Throughout the journey, supplies were continuously consumed; Pangzi's backpack was already more than half empty. In the tomb, he took whatever he saw, and now it was still bulging, with that bronze mirror placed on top. I thought: since this mirror can suppress corpses, using it to shine on ghosts might have some effect. So I bent down, picked up the bronze mirror, turned, and used it to shine on the woman's portrait.

Just as I turned, before I could even raise the mirror, I felt my neck tighten again, gripped tightly. This time the force was greater—within a blink, I couldn't make a sound. Pangzi and Shirley Yang were behind me searching for explosives, utterly unaware that I was being silently choked, but this time I saw clearly: the hand choking my neck was exactly that of the woman on the wall.

Once my neck was locked, my hands and feet lost all strength. So when a hanged person kicks over the stool, their hands can't lift up—now I couldn't even send a faint signal for help.

Just as I was about to lose consciousness from choking, I suddenly felt the wall before me collapse, something burst out from within, a tremendous force knocked me down, sending me along the rotating slope in the hollow. I slammed downward, my neck loosened slightly, I finally caught my breath, and as I rolled backward, I kicked away the thing choking me.

The opponent used too much force, actually breaking through the wall; otherwise, in a few more seconds, I would have been choked to death. At that moment, my body also involuntarily tumbled backward, when suddenly a hand grabbed me—I stared and saw it was Pangzi. He and Shirley Yang had avoided the thing rolling ahead first, saw me also tumbling down, and instinctively grabbed me.

Everything happened too suddenly; no one understood the situation. My neck and arm bones burned with pain, I urgently asked Shirley Yang and Pangzi: "What was that thing that just fell down?"

Shirley Yang and Pangzi both shook their heads—it happened too fast, neither saw clearly, only a white flash before their eyes; if they hadn't dodged in time, they too would have been smashed down. Our position was at the top of the vast white hollow; below, it was pitch black, invisible where we came from. That white thing had just tumbled down into the darkness below. I said to Shirley Yang and Pangzi: "Just now……the portrait of the Xian King's wife suddenly came to life, nearly choked me to death—quick, fire a flare down to see what's going on."

Seeing my flustered expression, Pangzi knew I wasn't pretending, immediately took out his device from his backpack, loaded the flare gun, and Shirley Yang pointed to the lower right: "Over there, five o'clock direction."

Pangzi fired the flare; it shot out, and in the empty cavern, it instantly brightened—only to see in the white, eerie light, on the narrow slope below, a female corpse lay upside down, her shape extremely plump, motionless, struck by the blinding white light, suddenly as if electrified, she sat up with a jump in place.

Pangzi jumped up in fright, I also felt a jolt in my heart, already aiming the "Chicago Typewriter" at the target—how could this corpse be embedded in the wall? I said to Pangzi: "This woman's a fresh corpse……"

But before I finished speaking, I saw clearly: actually, the woman's corpse hadn't sat up—it was because her body was gradually swelling and inflating, like a balloon continuously being filled with air, making the corpse appear ever fatter.

Seeing this, Shirley Yang said to me: "After death, corpse gas trapped in the body causes rotting and swelling; this corpse has been dead for at least two thousand years—even if preserved perfectly, it shouldn't only now begin to swell from corpse gas?"

I said to Shirley Yang: "How do you still have the leisure to worry about this now? But she doesn't seem to be swelling from corpse gas—rather……there's something inside her body."

The female corpse swelled extremely fast; in an instant, her flesh and skin were stretched to semi-transparency, then the corpse burst with a bang, countless moths sprayed out from within, flying forth—these moths varied in size, flapping their wings, all surging toward the nearby flare, immediately engulfing the light.

Compared to ordinary moths, the moths born from the dead body have much higher aggression and astonishing vitality—they swarm toward light, their bodies filled with corpse powder; touching skin, even the living will develop corpse sores. Thousands of "corpse moths" surged from that woman's body—she must have been tampered with before death for such numbers to breed inside. With our equipment, we cannot possibly eliminate them.

Now the only light source in the cavern was the headlamps on our three bodies; a massive swarm of "corpse moths" mixed with corpse-powder smoke flew straight toward us. Though we had gas masks, our arms and legs were exposed—touching even a bit of corpse powder would poison us, so we turned and fled upward. Originally blocking the path, the white stone wall now revealed a human-shaped gap, seemingly naturally formed; to seal it, they must have filled it with that woman's corpse. This might be the final burial chamber—I picked up the bronze mirror fallen at the entrance and called to Pangzi and Shirley Yang to retreat inside.

As the corpse moths flew swiftly, moments later they had already swarmed behind us; Pangzi had no choice but to use his last butane torch, spraying a wall of fire to block them—unexpectedly, these corpse moths were extremely ferocious; even when burned by flames, they kept charging forward until their wings were burnt out, then fell to the ground, still fluttering helplessly.

These many moths rushing at the fire came in overwhelming numbers and scattered widely, making mass killing difficult—especially up close, their bodies seemed to retain a few hints of human likeness, making one's hair stand on end. Pangzi's hands inevitably grew weak; after the butane ran out, he planned to charge headfirst into the burial chamber at the end without looking back—but in the panic, he stepped on empty air and fell from the highest slope. Though he reacted quickly enough to brace his arms on the edge of the dirt slope and avoid falling straight into the hollow below, such a minor mishap should not have troubled him—but as soon as his foot slipped, he felt uneasy and immediately shouted: "Commander Hu, for the sake of the Party and the State, quickly pull your brother up."

I had already retreated into the burial chamber at the end; seeing Pangzi lose his footing and hang midair, I and Shirley Yang had to turn back, shouting at him: "Please hold on for just two more minutes," while pulling and hauling him up. At this moment, after the first wave of corpse moths was burned to scattered remnants, a second wave of several hundred more surged forward.

We rushed into the burial chamber through the human-shaped gap, with no time to examine the surroundings closely—only eager to find something to block the gap. On the left was a small trapezoidal bronze coffin; the three of us didn't think much, lifted it, and shoved it into the gap—it fit perfectly, with two slight gaps which Pangzi stuffed with black donkey hooves. Although our actions were already at the limit, still a few dozen corpse moths crawled in front and back, but the number was small, posing no threat—they were flattened into meat patties with the engineer's shovel.

We checked our exposed skin and found no corpse powder, so we relaxed, surveyed the surroundings, and saw several strange objects placed about—indeed, this seemed to be the final burial chamber, but what these things were for, we couldn't tell for now. Recalling the panic when we moved a nearby bronze coffin to block the tomb entrance, we all thought it might not be the Xian King's coffin after all? However, its volume was tiny, shape peculiar, weight under two hundred jin—extremely strange. So I raised my "Wolf Eye" and turned back to examine that bronze coffin just now.

The bronze coffin was made of mixed wood and copper, overall dark brown-black, crafted from zhe nan wood with intricate copper inlays; all four sides had openwork miniature garden terraces and pavilions, the top cast with a huge copper bird; the coffin lid was not sealed, inside lay no corpse, only a set of feathered jade robes.

Pangzi casually pulled out the feathered jade robe, found its texture exquisite beyond compare, all threaded with gold silk; I saw nothing else inside the coffin, so I used my paratrooper knife to scrape inside—no corpse sludge either—clearly this was an empty coffin; if it had held a corpse that had fully decomposed through corpse dissolution, at least a thin layer of cinnabar-red mud would remain.

Shirley Yang said: "An empty coffin might just be a display; I think its symbolic meaning far outweighs its practical use—but what is it symbolizing? This large bird looks like a phoenix—perhaps it's meant to hold a phoenix's gall?"

I said to Shirley Yang: "It might also be meant to hold the Xian King's wife—judging by the position of the shadow bones, the Xian King's coffin should be in the eastern part of this burial chamber; moreover, look at the artifacts and murals in this chamber—all of the Xian King's secrets should be here. Let's immediately conduct a carpet search of this place."

This burial chamber had few traces of artificial carving—it was a natural white cavern, not very spacious; the surrounding white quartzite formations were strangely shaped, with many holes; the cavern was not through-going, natural stone pillars stood like a forest, some places extremely narrow. At this moment, we were solely focused on finding the Xian King's coffin, temporarily not considering how to return—in the most secret core burial chamber of the "Xian King's Tomb," who knows what else remains? The three of us dared not scatter, advancing step by step in search.

In the outer burial chamber were a few simple murals, utterly different from the exquisite large colored paintings outside—composition and brushwork were extremely simple, seemingly all personally painted by the Xian King himself; the content was deeply shocking……

The beginning part depicted the construction process of the "Xian King's Tomb"—according to the painting, the Xian King how he exterminated evil spirits on Shielong Mountain, subdued the local barbarians; in the painting, the evil spirit wore clothing like bamboo leaves, face ferocious and vicious, black hair all over its body, hiding in a deep mountain cave—probably those "mountain god" skeletons we saw.

The mountain god, opened by the Xian King into a demonic entity, possessed several magical artifacts; one was a jade fetus, just as we had guessed, symbolizing ancient reproductive worship—it was said that every time the moon was full, the local barbarians had to offer a young woman to the mountain god.

Pangzi saw this and said: "When the moon is full, it's indeed the mating season of monkeys in the forest—they don't want female monkeys, but specifically women—I think this is just what the locals are used to; originally we wrongly blamed the Xian King, but it seems he was wholeheartedly saving the people from water and fire, a good leader."

I cursed: "Cut the dog's foul fart, you—do you still have any principles or stance? I see you're becoming indifferent to human and demon now—this tendency is dangerous, you'd better think carefully: he killed two mountain sprites that each ate one woman per month, but he turned over twenty thousand barbarian women into insect mothers—why isn't that painted?"

Shirley Yang said: "The mountain god's skeleton, together with the toad palace, jade fetus, and other magical artifacts, were all sealed inside the poison dragon's body on Shielong Mountain—this poison dragon must be that giant worm we saw; the painting's content matches our guess almost exactly; afterward come some alterations to the feng shui layout—nothing special; the most remarkable thing here is the depiction of the Xian King divining with the heavenly stalk, plus the strange visions he saw—he was obsessed with the path of longevity, and its root probably lies right here."

I saw no prominent coffin in the burial chamber—although the true corpse and shadow bones should overlap in position, but the final burial chamber's terrain is peculiar, extremely hard to judge accurately; if the Xian King's coffin is hidden somewhere, it would not be easy to find—so I gritted my teeth and searched carefully for clues. At that moment, hearing Shirley Yang's words, I looked up at the "heavenly stalk diagram," suddenly startled, and couldn't help but exclaim: "Isn't this just the Tibetan Buddhist lake-viewing scene?"