Chapter 483: Everyone Died

After Fatty went up, I heard all kinds of sounds—his coughing, the dragging of various things. These sounds lasted for over ten minutes.

I finally grew impatient waiting below and asked uneasily, "What's the matter? What's the situation? How are they?"

I felt especially anxious. When I heard that the old woman and Xiao Ge were both there, my heart tightened. Then Fatty told me that if I came up, I might not be able to handle it.

Would I really not be able to handle it? Not necessarily. I really felt that not necessarily. When I entered the ancient building, I had already told myself very clearly in my heart that I would likely face some deaths—I had that kind of expectation. On a larger level, I had been building up my psychological preparedness for their deaths from the very beginning. So, I could face death; it's just that the process wasn't particularly comfortable.

I asked several times before Fatty poked his head out and said to me, "Come on up."

I thought to myself, just say casually that everyone's dead—what's the problem? I have to go up and see for myself.

I grabbed Fatty's hand, braced myself against the burnt edge of the coffin, and managed to climb up.

Above was a very, very small mezzanine, about one meter twenty or thirty in height. I saw it was packed with people, all from Old Mrs. Huo's team.

The entire mezzanine had an indescribable stench—the smell of excrement and urine mixed with the smell of decay, almost impossible to distinguish.

I covered my nose and mouth and saw many dried traces of liquid on the floor. The liquid must have flowed from where these people were lying; it had dried on the wooden floor, leaving dark red marks.

Fatty coughed incessantly and said to me, "Mostly all dead."

I looked around; it was hard to identify anyone in the darkness. The first person I recognized was Old Mrs. Huo, because her features were very distinctive. I crawled over to her side. I found that she had been dead for quite a while—even her eyeballs had become cloudy, turning an amber color, her mouth wide open, her facial expression looking especially uneasy.

She must have died with great reluctance, I thought. I sighed. To be honest, I had no particular feelings for Old Mrs. Huo, but she was still an elder. Seeing someone I knew turned into a corpse, I couldn't suppress the sorrow in my heart.

I continued to look to the side. I saw several faces I recognized, but now they were all stiff. After death, urine and feces flowed everywhere. These experts who had once dominated their scenes were now all in this state—somewhat unsightly.

"Where's Xiao Ge?" My heart had completely sunk; I knew it was all over. Although it was different from what the ghostly figure had said—they seemed to have found a place to avoid the alkaline mist—the result was still the same.

Surprisingly, I didn't feel sad, but I could sense a very intense emotion that could burst out at any moment. This emotion transcended all feelings; its name was "collapse." But I forcibly suppressed it. I don't know if my ability to escape reality had reached a certain level, or if my mind simply couldn't accept such information and chose to bypass it.

Fatty shone his flashlight at a corner nearby where there was a pile of clothes and said to me, "Don't look at that first. Let's see if there's anything valuable here. It's too stinky."

I cursed inwardly, "Can you be any more heartless? Xiao Ge is dead, and you're still complaining about the smell." Thinking this, I walked over and pulled aside the clothes. I immediately saw Xiao Ge's face curled up in that pile of clothes.

I froze, instantly stiffening. At that moment, my mind went completely blank.

I couldn't describe the blankness in my heart. Suddenly I didn't know what I should do.

Dead?

You're joking.

Really dead? Hey, what kind of international joke is this?

"Wake up, we're going home." I patted his face. Suddenly I found it very funny. I turned to Fatty and laughed: "Look at Xiao Ge."

"I know," Fatty said from the side, his voice very low.

Then my hand began to tremble uncontrollably. I looked at my hand and found no sadness in my heart—my consciousness hadn't reacted yet—but my body had already instinctively sensed despair.

I thought, damn it, it's confirmed. He's really dead. Poker-face is really dead! This kind of thing actually happens in this world. Even Poker-face can die.

This Zhang Family Ancient Building is really too powerful. I had always thought the ghostly figure was exaggerating, but now I felt the world spinning.

Poker-face was a miracle. His death suddenly made the whole world feel incredibly real and cruel: In this world, can no miracle be eternal? Or maybe there was never such a thing as a miracle; everything was just coincidence, and now the coincidence has finally ended.

Instinct was forcibly suppressing the emotion of collapse, but all kinds of uncomfortable feelings were still leaking out from the "pressure cooker" of emotion. I felt that I couldn't let my emotions loose. Once I started grieving, I might also die here.

The feeling in my heart was especially strange, not just sadness. I don't know if others can understand this complicated mood of mine.

First came despair, then more a kind of disbelief in what I was seeing. My mind was blank for a long time before all kinds of emotions flooded out.

I had always thought before, if Poker-face died, what would I feel? I imagined maybe extreme sadness, maybe numbness from overthinking and too much psychological preparation, thinking I could fully bear it. But now that it had actually happened, it turned into a strange feeling I couldn't even process myself.

After that, I was in a state of entanglement, not knowing whether to grieve or to pretend to be calm and hold back the pain. In the end, the former gradually took over. I did nothing by his corpse, just stared blankly.

But just as I felt tears about to fall, I suddenly saw Poker-face's hand move, scraping across the floor! Fatty shouted from one side, "What are you doing? Stop staring and come help!" My tears still fell out of habit, but the feeling inside was extremely complicated. I turned to Fatty and stammered, "He, he, he seems to be reanimating!" "Damn, if Xiao Ge reanimates, he'd be one hell of a zombie—the king of zombies," Fatty said. "Don't bullshit me, hurry up."

"He, he, he really reanimated!" I said, and suddenly countless associations flooded my mind. I thought, if Xiao Ge really turned into a zombie, what should I do? Would we have to go tomb-raiding with a zombie? That wouldn't be tomb-raiding anymore—that would be a diplomatic affair.

Fatty saw my strange expression and asked me, "What's going on?" As he spoke, he walked over. After only a few steps, suddenly another corpse beside him also moved.

Fatty wasn't scared at all; he walked straight over to me. I pointed at the corpse he had just passed and stammered, "That person moved too. Is this a corpse-raising ground? They're all reanimating." "What corpse-raising ground? These people are all still alive," Fatty said.

"Alive?" I couldn't understand. Fatty said, "I didn't say everyone here was dead! A lot of people are still alive. But the situation isn't good. Hurry up and see if there's anything useful around—water, medicine, stuff like that. Give water to the ones who are still alive."

Only then did I realize what he had just meant. I cursed, "Why didn't you say so earlier? You scared me half to death!"

"I'm different from you. All you care about is life and death, but what I care about is how many people can be saved," Fatty said. "Little Ge's pulse is still stable—I just felt it. A few here are definitely done for. Hurry up and give them some end-of-life care and try to revive them while you're at it."

I looked at Little Ge. His face was deathly pale, indistinguishable from the corpses around him. I went up and felt his neck—there really was a pulse. But the pulse wasn't strong, which meant his physical condition was already dire. In that instant, all my emotions receded like a tide, and my whole body went limp. I nearly blacked out and fainted, cursing under my breath: Damn it, you scared the hell out of me. Fatty patted my hand again to get my attention: "Save people quickly. Little Ge is fine. Don't just focus on him—these people all have parents too."

Fatty was right. In this situation, if I saved only Little Ge and not the others, it would go against my own principles.

I took a deep breath, letting the exhaustion from the violent emotional swings fade away, and steadied myself.

I walked over to the others, fished out their canteens—the water inside had been sitting too long and had turned a bit stale. We put disinfectant in the water, then one by one, we found those who still had a pulse and body heat, and fed them water sip by sip. Most of them were unconscious, their bodies weakened to the extreme. Some looked exactly like corpses.

"What's the cause? Poison?" I asked Fatty.

Fatty pulled back their hair and collars. I saw the ulcerated skin on their bodies.

"Look, all the gaps here are stuffed with cloth strips and wax, basically sealing the place. Even though the mist concentration is very low, that mist is still highly toxic. If you stay here long enough, you'll slowly inhale a lot and still get poisoned," Fatty said. "Falling into a vat of potassium cyanide kills you in a second; inhaling a whiff of potassium cyanide kills you in a second—same principle."

"Still get poisoned," Fatty continued. "Falling into a vat of potassium cyanide kills you in a second; inhaling a whiff of potassium cyanide kills you in a second—same principle."

"You illiterate bastard actually knows about potassium cyanide," I said.

"Of course, anyone who's read detective novels knows," Fatty said. "Potassium cyanide and Huo Yuanjia are both my idols."

I asked, "So what do we do with these people? Can you see anything useful among the medicine they brought?"

"If there was anything useful, they'd have used it already. But did you notice? None of them are wearing gas masks. Looks like gas masks are useless against this kind of poison gas."

I found it strange. Normally, in this situation, anyone who had a gas mask would put it on, even if it was useless—at least for psychological comfort. I saw several gas masks scattered around, no idea what had happened.

"Was it like this when you came up?" I asked. Fatty nodded.

I thought about it and said, "No, you're wrong. They must have been wearing gas masks before. But obviously someone discovered this place, checked their faces to see who was dead, and took off the masks."

Fatty nodded at that. "Makes sense. Who?"

I thought for a moment. The most likely scenario was that a disagreement had split the group into two—one led by Poker-face, the other by Old Mrs. Huo. Then Old Mrs. Huo ran into danger, and Poker-face came to rescue them. He found that Old Mrs. Huo was already beyond help, and at the same time, Poker-face got trapped.

That would explain the two different states of the people here—some already dead, others barely hanging on by a thread. Poker-face must have been poisoned when he entered. But the poison mist must have mostly dissipated, so he removed their gas masks to see who they were.

Given the current situation, I thought this was the most likely explanation. But then I realized something was off—it could also be Jude Kao's people who found this place.

I remembered that Little Ge's knife had ended up in Jude Kao's hands, said to have been brought out by one of his men. That guy must have been here. Even if he didn't come himself, someone definitely took the knife from here and gave it to him.

I recalled how terrifying that guy looked and the way he stared at me. I still found it strange—what did that look mean? No one knew, and there was no way to find out now.

We searched around the sealed chamber and found a hidden door leading out. This should have been a storage room for certain formal burial goods. When I opened the door, I saw the entrance was piled high with all sorts of strange blue-and-white porcelain vases. But the most valuable things weren't the vases themselves, but the scrolls of calligraphy and paintings rolled up inside them. All these items had been haphazardly stacked outside the chamber.

I understood at a glance why this chamber existed and why Old Mrs. Huo had come here. It was a painting and calligraphy room, likely filled with all kinds of precious scrolls. If those scrolls were exposed to the strong alkaline mist, they would never survive. The designer of Zhang Family Ancient Tower, Lei Siqi, must have specially designed this sealed little room to protect those works.

Old Mrs. Huo must have discovered this room from Lei Siqi's blueprints.

Truly a masterstroke. If not for this trick, they would likely have already completely dissolved, and I'd only see skeletons covered in dried meat. Then I'd have to judge which skeleton was Poker-face by the length of the finger bones.