Chapter 80: Waiting Until One Thousand Years Later

Summer, New Calendar 1026.

Dark clouds obscured the moon, and a light breeze brushed by.

On the outskirts of Green Forest City.

In the fresh wilderness, the chirping of insects could be heard from time to time, and occasionally, fireflies could be seen dancing.

A dim, yellowish light flickered in the night, emitting a warm radiance.

Holding the Lamp was a tall, thin man; he wore coarse, ill-fitting clothes stained with all sorts of grime, his hands were covered in calluses and scars, and his face was dusty—clearly a member of the lower class engaged in heavy manual labor.

Beside him, a man of shorter stature, dressed in indigo laborer's clothes, was carrying a shovel and grumbled with a complaint: "Lao'er, are you sure this is the place? I spent my precious rest time to accompany you on this wild goose chase; if I get fired by my stingy boss tomorrow, it must be your fault!"

He was a dock laborer who had to work more than ten hours a day, with his wages settled weekly.

Most people like him had no savings and even had to share a bed with others; once unemployed, the consequences were unimaginable.

Lao'er, holding the Lamp, turned his head and said earnestly: "Bill, I can swear that I truly found a treasure... It seems to have appeared by chance due to a previous landslide and ground collapse; the place is very remote, but there are traces of man-made structures, possibly an ancient tomb."

Grave robbing was a serious crime at this time, the kind punishable by immediate execution.

But for the lower class, they did not fear it.

Bill had once been a farmer, but later the landlord reclaimed his land, forcing him to work in the city; there were countless people like him, leading to a supply that exceeded demand, factory owners desperately suppressed wages, machines greedily devoured lives, and the air was filled with dust and coal smoke—all of this caused the average life expectancy of the poor living in the Lower City District to be no more than 20 years!

A tiny minority in high society lived in luxury, while a vast number of the lower class suffered from occupational diseases and death from overwork...

Steam engines roared, and the light of civilization had been conceived, like a dawn about to break in the darkness.

This was the worst of times, and the best of times!

"As long as we can fish out a few precious burial objects... that would be countless Pounds..." Bill said fiercely: "When that time comes, I must go to the 'Hongmofang' to play for a month! How about you?"

"Cough, cough... I just want to get away from that dust, buy a plot of land in the countryside, marry a wife, and have a few children..."

Lao'er coughed a few times: "We're here!"

Bill looked ahead and saw a collapse; it seemed to have been affected by the heavy rain of the previous days, and a large chunk of the ground had sunken in.

But within the soil, a corner of a strange structure was exposed.

It was composed of irregular stones and banyan tree roots, which together formed the shape of a wall.

Those banyan roots grew directly into the rock, resembling the vascular network of human muscles, carrying an indescribable, Weird beauty.

However, it certainly did not look like a Natural formation.

"Lao'er, it seems you really did find a ruin; looking at it like this, it might even be the tomb of some noble lord!"

Bill became excited: "Hurry and work, don't wait until dawn!"

He raised his shovel and dug into the ground with all his might.

Clang, clang...

The wall made of rock and tree roots was very hard, but the soil was loose; along the wall, one could find huge gaps, all filled with collapsed mud inside.

It was as if... that place had once been filled with a large amount of things, and then... those things had Weirdly disappeared.

After several hours of digging, a tomb passage made entirely of rock and tree roots appeared before the two of them.

Bill swallowed a mouthful of saliva: "Who is buried in here? A Duke or some King?"

"The tombs of such great nobles are all in churches, and there are dedicated Gravekeepers; you're thinking too much..."

Lao'er was clearly also very surprised, but he was more interested in the potential treasures.

Unfortunately, the two dug all the way without finding a single burial object; as for some inexplicable stone carvings on the rock wall, they were ignored by them.

"Damn it, we need at least ten people."

Bill paced around anxiously: "It's too big... did we dig up some palace buried underground?"

"We have to rush back to work as soon as it's dawn; are we supposed to come every night... although this place is remote enough and not easily discovered, but..."

Lao'er kicked the rock wall beside him in anxiety.

Boom!

It seemed the soil layer here had been dug to a certain limit; in this final vibration, the thin layer of soil instantly opened up, and the two clumsy thieves screamed as they fell in.

"Ah!"

Bill, bruised and battered, scrambled up in a sorry state, screaming: "Lao'er, Lao'er... where are you?"

"Damn it, the Lamp went out..."

Lao'er struggled to look around.

Although it was pitch black, there was a faint, firefly-like glow.

After their eyes adjusted, the two realized they had fallen into a space resembling an underground karst cave, but the walls were square, clearly a man-made structure.

And in the center of this space was the source of the Light.

"Crystal?!"

Bill's ecstatic voice came through: "Such a big crystal? We're rich!"

"That's not a crystal!"

Lao'er climbed to the front and saw a semi-transparent block of ice as big as a bed, with what appeared to be a stone coffin inside.

The coffin was not closed, so one could still see a young man lying inside.

He looked less than twenty years old, tall and well-built, with handsome features, wearing a sable coat with a golden collar ring; he looked extraordinarily magnificent and imposing with nobility.

That faint light source was, in fact, emanating from within the ice block.

"I bet this sable coat is worth at least ten Pounds, no, twenty Pounds!"

Bill muttered.

"This is a corpse... a corpse preserved with ice?"

Lao'er's eyes were filled with the fluorescence: "It's too beautiful... and, a corpse that hasn't decayed for hundreds of years, you don't know, it might be worth more than those garments and burial objects; those Archaeology experts and collectors will go crazy for it!"

"This isn't ice, it's crystal; how could ice not be cold?" Bill swung his shovel.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

Lao'er was shocked and terrified.

"Of course, I'm knocking off a piece first. Whatever it is, as long as it can be exchanged for money!" Bill grinned hideously. "And the clothes inside, the burial objects, and the corpse... even if collectors don't want them, they can be sold to the medical school!"

Due to the development of medicine and anatomy, the medical school in Green Forest City had a great demand for corpses, and would even allow poor students to use corpses as tuition.

On the black market, the price of a corpse ranged from about 1 pound to 5 pounds, depending on how well-preserved it was.

"You don't understand..."

Lao'er wanted to stop his companion, but with his injured leg, he was completely powerless and could only watch helplessly as his companion swung the shovel, striking the surface of the ice coffin.

Clang!

After the crisp sound, the shovel was deflected, and the ice surface remained completely undamaged.

No!

Not only that, Lao'er seemed to see the youth inside the stone coffin move his eyelids.

This made him rub his eyes involuntarily, suspecting he was hallucinating.

And the next moment, the ice curled inward and vanished... yet a layer of chill surged violently in all directions, almost capable of freezing the soul.

"Ch-chatter... it's clearly summer... why... is it so cold?"

Lao'er exhaled a puff of white mist, and he and Bill were frozen to death simultaneously, collapsing to the ground.

And Aaron, inside the ice coffin, suddenly opened his eyes.