Chapter 476: At Last, Zhang's Ancient Tower

Fatty patted me; he was shivering all over, just like me.

I thought to myself, we've finally made it. Damn, it wasn't easy. I could almost cry.

The entire building was dim, with no light source at all, giving off an ominous atmosphere. I had never imagined that the Zhang Family Ancient Tower would be such a huge building.

Where are they? My urgency burst out all at once: "Zhang Qiling!" I yelled.

Echoes came back from the hollow cavern. I yelled several more times, and the echoes nearly filled the entire space.

I told myself: There's no way they didn't hear. If they were still alive, there's no way they couldn't hear.

I waited until the echoes slowly faded, and the whole space returned to a chilling silence.

I gasped for breath and waited, waiting for a response from anywhere.

But I waited a very long time, and the silence remained unbroken. My unease began to churn, along with the nightmare that had always lingered in my heart.

What if they were all dead? The question I had never wanted to consider was now right in front of me, and I could no longer avoid it.

No echoes. Everything was deadly quiet, as if we were the first visitors in thousands of years, unable even to rouse the sleeping spirits.

"Let's go," Fatty patted my shoulder. "Dead or alive, we have to see for ourselves. Isn't that what your uncle said?"

I lit a cigarette, took three puffs in a row, then threw it to the ground. "Let's go!"

The door of the Zhang Family Ancient Tower was entirely ash-gray. I touched it and found it was all dust. The door was severely decayed; the window paper on it had completely rotted away, revealing the darkness inside.

I looked at the lattice windows—typical Qing dynasty architecture. It was indeed the handiwork of the Style Lei.

"Here," Fatty said to me. I saw that on the window lattice, the dust had been smudged off in several spots. Fatty went up and pushed; the door swung open.

The door hinge let out a harsh creak, and then dust surged up everywhere.

Fatty and I immediately stepped back, covering our mouths, waiting for the dust to slowly settle.

Fatty and I exchanged a glance. He made a "you first" gesture. I tilted my head and said, "Didn't you used to take the lead?"

Fatty said, "Isn't this giving you a chance to shine? If you can't handle it, then I'll go."

I took a breath. "Alright, then I won't stand on ceremony." And I stepped into the door.

Inside was pitch black. I swept my flashlight around and saw an enormous space. It was a huge floor with four pillars standing in the middle of the hall.

There was nothing on this floor. I only saw a lot of equipment spread all over the middle of the room.

We walked over and found that they were indeed Poker-face's equipment bags, all covered in white dust.

Fatty looked up at the beams overhead, which were completely in Qing dynasty architectural style. The ceiling was covered with countless patterns. Now, no matter from which angle you looked, the whole building was a ghastly white.

"How can this place be so big?" Fatty crouched down and shook a bag. I saw it was a food bag.

The white dust on the bag billowed up as he shook it. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable and immediately pulled Fatty back.

Fatty covered his mouth and looked at his hand; it was already burning red.

"Strong alkaline dust," he said. "That deformed buddy didn't lie to us. Looks like Little Brother and his group encountered it once too, otherwise the equipment wouldn't be covered in such thick powder."

"The stuff is here, but where are the people?" I said, thinking they couldn't all have dissolved away; even if they did, there would be traces. I felt the atmosphere was a bit eerie, but I couldn't pinpoint the problem. Fatty told me to treat my wounds first, since there was alkaline dust and if it got into the wounds, it would be trouble.

In the chaos just now I hadn't noticed, but the places where the insects bit me had stopped bleeding. However, if I didn't treat them, they could easily fester.

After I bandaged up, I glanced at Fatty's watch. Fatty asked if we should split up to search. I thought it over and still felt it was a bad idea.

Who knows what might happen in this building. If we're going to die, we die together; that would be the end of it, and far less trouble.

Fatty shined his flashlight and slowly shook the dust off the equipment piece by piece. He saw that many bags were open. He went over and checked, then said, "The gas masks and flashlights are missing. They must have dropped their gear here and gone exploring lightly equipped."

In the center of the ceiling of the ancient tower's hall was a huge hole, likely caused by corrosion. The edges of the hole were very irregular.

On the ground there were also many pieces of rotted wood, all turned into something like cotton wadding, covered under a thick layer of white powder.

We shone our flashlights upward and could see that the ceiling of the floor above was the same.

The first floor was clear at a glance, so we walked toward the edges. According to feng shui theory and the consistent design habits of Style Lei, the best location for stairs in an ancient tower should be at the edges, usually on the east side.

Of course, such a large building should have stairs in all four directions; otherwise, the distance to run around would be too long and too troublesome.

But we searched the hall carefully several times and found no stairs going up. Fatty muttered, "Could the stairs be outside the ancient tower? There's a kind of stairway designed for viewing in ancient architecture, winding up around the tower."

I thought to myself, damn it, what's there to see in this place? After taking a look around, I found that Yangshi Lei and I were on the same page—there was nothing worth seeing, and there were still no stairs outside.

Damn, were all the Zhang family members like Ximen Chuixue, just lifting their pants and going upstairs without needing stairs at all?

Back inside the building, Fatty went to look for the rope in their luggage but found it was gone. He said, "Maybe this place really doesn't have stairs. They took the rope with them; maybe they used it to go upstairs."

"But there has to be a place to use the rope," I thought to myself. The place was covered in strong alkaline dust. Without a gas mask, any disturbance would send dust everywhere. Even if you didn't inhale it, if you narrowed your eyes, you could go blind instantly.

Just as I was thoroughly perplexed, I suddenly remembered what Xiao Hua had told me by the lake about the feng shui of this place.

The Zhang family ancient building was located in a place that sucked the marrow out of the bones. The so-called dragon towers and treasure halls were all built for long-lasting peace, but the Zhang family building was the opposite—it devoured the qi of the dragon vein and destroyed its momentum.

I seemed to have heard before that some places needed to eliminate stairs to achieve a certain feng shui effect.

But "eliminate" didn't mean they didn't use them at all; it just meant they didn't build visible stairs but would mark hidden ones. There must be a way to get to the second floor here.

We kept searching, and soon our attention was drawn to several pillars. The pillars were carved with qilins, their bodies resembling dragons, and the heads of the qilins were very prominent.

Fatty kicked a few times, knocking off the loose dust, then dodged to the side. Only after the dust settled did he wrap his mouth and nose with his clothes and start climbing up.

It was indeed the spot. Stepping on the heads of the qilins, we quickly climbed to the top of the pillar. When we pushed, we found the floorboard above didn't budge.

"It's wedged shut," Fatty said. As he spoke, a large amount of white dust fell from above. Fatty immediately turned and jumped down to get away, coughing incessantly. The phlegm he coughed up was already tinged with blood.

"We can't stay long in this place. Even if the mechanisms don't trigger, our internal organs will rot if we stay too long," he said.

As soon as he finished speaking, there was a sudden crack, and the qilin he had stepped on earlier moved. Then, a staircase descended from above.

Fatty and I exchanged a glance, then carefully climbed up. When we shone our flashlight, our hearts both trembled.

We saw that on the second floor of the ancient building, there were countless shelves. In just a glance, we could see hundreds of them, each like the upper, middle, and lower berths of a train, but with even more layers.

What made us very uncomfortable was that we could clearly see that the shelves were filled with iron funerary figures lying down.