Chapter 106: Sneak Attack

The strange eerie sound that had led us here suddenly appeared behind me. Though not loud, in the silence of the coffin chamber it was like a thunderclap, incredibly clear, making my whole body shudder, the muscles on my forehead tighten, and another cold sweat break out.

This coffin chamber was about six or seven meters long, neither particularly long nor short. Judging by the sound, the source should be no more than a meter away from me, practically pressing against my back, at a distance where it could tap my shoulder. "Drip... drip..." Regular, rhythmic sounds, exactly like listening to someone knock on a door panel. A chill ran from the back of my neck straight down to my heels.

For a moment, all my muscles were frozen stiff, unable to move. I considered whether to turn and look, or pretend I hadn't heard the sound and ignore it. But soon I came to my senses, both amused and exasperated. I bit my tongue to remind myself: calm down. At a time like this, there really is no choice but to face it. Fear and making excuses are just ways of waiting to die.

After a moment of stalemate, the ghostly sound remained unhurried, neither approaching further nor fading away. I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and gripped my short knife tightly, slowly turning my head to see what was behind me.

As I turned, the strange sound abruptly stopped. I looked carefully, but in the gray mist behind me there was nothing. The direction from which the strange sound had come was still a blur of gray, only disturbed by my movement, creating some eerie air currents that quickly settled back to the same uniform stillness as before.

I swallowed, feeling somewhat surprised. I shone my flashlight around, but there was nothing unusual. The sound seemed as if it had never occurred.

The sound had been so close to me, I heard it extremely clearly—it was definitely not an illusion. My turning motion took only about a second. If it had been made by some moving object, it couldn't have disappeared that quickly. Could it be that the sound came from somewhere else? Was my judgment wrong? I subconsciously stepped forward, wanting to find the source of the sound. Suddenly, a figure lunged at me from the mist beside me. My eyes were quick and I just caught the movement; I hurriedly ducked. The figure didn't grab me, but still knocked me to the ground. I rolled aside and looked back. The person who had knocked me down was stout and fat, exactly the Boss Wang who had pulled me in here.

I cursed, drew my short hunting knife, intending to settle things with him, but unexpectedly he dodged back into the mist and disappeared from sight.

I spat contemptuously. In the earlier struggle, his dagger must have fallen outside. Now, wary of the short knife in my hand, he didn't dare confront me directly and instead hid in the mist, waiting for me to get close for a sneak attack—completely different from his previous arrogance. Damn, he was definitely a coward.

But then again, the situation here was so eerie, this guy's nerve was not ordinary. If it were me, without a flashlight or weapon, how would I dare to ambush anyone? I'd have long curled up in a corner trembling. Fortunately, the mist here was thick as water—whenever something moved, it left a very clear trail. It wouldn't be so easy for him to succeed in ambushing me; otherwise, that last move would have already pinned me down.

Thinking of this, I found it strange. In that case, if the owner of the strange sound had been moving in the coffin chamber, it would have left traces of movement. But when I looked just now, the mist was smooth, not like anything had moved. Could it be that it had no form? Was it a ghost?

While guarding against Boss Wang's next ambush, I stood up. The space inside the coffin chamber wasn't large. From the roll just now, I didn't know where I had ended up. I needed to quickly retreat to the edge and find a way to climb up.

The place wasn't big overall. Looking around now, I found I had approached the center of the coffin chamber. Through the mist, I could see some things in the center—shadows that looked like many ropes hanging from the top of the chamber down to the bottom. I thought they were aerial roots from branches attached to the ceiling. Taking another step forward and shining my flashlight, I discovered they weren't. Those things were bronze chains as thick as a wrist, covered in fungi and banyan root tendrils, winding from top to bottom. But the chains seemed only to be fixed between the chamber's top and bottom, with nothing tied below.

This stone coffin chamber was said to be huge, but I knew such dimensions had been found in several Western Han and Five Dynasties noble tombs with raised ceilings. Strictly speaking, this thing was called a coffin chamber, but it should more appropriately be called a "guo shi" (outer coffin chamber). In a traditional earth burial, the formal inner coffin should be placed in the center of this outer chamber. For wealthy families, the stone outer chamber would be lined with over a dozen layers of wooden inner coffins, all the way to the innermost coffin.

Now I had taken a few steps. Given the size of the chamber, I should at least be able to see the general shape of the inner coffin. Yet all I saw were a few chains, and nothing on the ground. Could it be that this outer chamber was completely empty? Then where had the sound come from? And where did that strange radio interference come from? I was stunned for a moment, then took another step forward, wanting to go to the middle of the bronze chains to see if there was a trapdoor on the chamber floor where they were anchored. But as soon as I stepped out, the ground suddenly gave way beneath me, and I fell. I quickly grabbed the bronze chain in front of me, sliding several meters before stopping. I was drenched in cold sweat from the scare.

"What's going on? Damn, it's like stepping into thin air?" I thought, still shaken. I shone the flashlight down but couldn't see the ground. The mist below was especially thick. When I kicked my foot down into the fog, I couldn't touch anything—there seemed to be a deep pit. "There's indeed something off," I thought. This outer chamber was set into the sacrificial platform atop the bronze tree by about two meters, with nothing in the middle. It might be like the multi-layered embedded coffin method from the Warring States period. There might be a depression in the center of this chamber, called a "coffin well," with the real coffin below. I didn't know how deep this coffin well was. That was close—if I had fallen in just now, I might have died.

These few bronze chains might be part of a lifting device used to lower the coffin into the coffin well. The inner coffin containing the body should be directly below me.

Just as I was thinking this, there was another disturbance beside me. Boss Wang rushed over again. This time he was holding some kind of weapon and lunged fiercely at me. With the mist so thick, he was probably locating me by the beam of my flashlight. Seeing this was bad, I instinctively shouted, "No! Stop!"

But it was too late. Boss Wang cried out "Aiya!" and stepped into empty space, falling straight down. I felt the iron chain below me give a violent jerk—he must have grabbed it. At the same time, a squelching sound came from my hand, and my body began to slide downward.

I turned my head and saw that the mushroom-like fungi above had been squeezed by my hand, producing a lot of slippery, oily, waxy juice that made the bronze chain as slick as if it had been oiled. I mentally cursed, and quickly tried to jam my short knife into a hole in the chain. But damn it, it wouldn't go in. After a few fumbles, the knife got stuck in the tree roots. I twisted it hard and finally stopped my descent. By then I had slid at least ten meters down, entering the interior of the coffin well, inside the trunk of the bronze tree.

Boss Wang was bleeding from his head, hanging on the bronze chain below me, about one foot away. He couldn't hold the chain either, so he threaded his belt through a chain link to barely stop his fall. I shone my light on him; he cursed and

I saw that he wasn't a threat to me for now, so I went to check the coffin pit. The inside of the bronze tree trunk, like the outside, was carved with deep cloud-thunder patterns. Tree roots wound down from above, following the patterns all the way down. The mist inside was much thinner than above. I looked around, urgently wanting to know the size of this coffin pit at the center of the outer coffin chamber. If it was too big, climbing out would probably be a big problem.

The coffin pit was rectangular, four meters long and two meters wide, just enough to accommodate a coffin set loosely. I could touch the walls of the pit with my hand. Perhaps because of the mist, the tree roots here were not infested with large amounts of fungi, and I could see their natural color. A strange odor floated in the air of the coffin pit. Maybe because it was so foggy outside, the filtering medium inside the gas mask was starting to get damp and lose effectiveness. I could feel the odor growing stronger, stinging my nose. Judging by this, Boss Wang must be suffering too.

Looking down, I was startled. I could see iron chains hanging all the way into the darkness below, to where my flashlight couldn't reach—very long. From here, the whole coffin pit seemed bottomless, as if it went straight down without any end.

No way, I thought, and a feeling arose in my heart. Could the entire bronze tree be hollow? We had climbed up at least three hundred meters, and we didn't know how deep this bronze tree went underground. If it was hollow, then what was at the bottom? The center of the earth? Hell? And what was the meaning of this giant hollow cylinder being inserted here?

Boss Wang was also very astonished. Neither of us spoke, staring straight down. Suddenly, "Click... click... click... click," two explosive sounds—that eerie knocking sound suddenly appeared around us again!

Boss Wang and I exchanged a glance, and our gazes all turned to the pitch-black abyss below. That sound—it was actually coming up from this abyss beneath us.