Chapter 487: The Mysterious Coffin

The size and scale of the stone chamber were utterly ordinary, with no polishing or relief carvings. I clearly noticed that my flashlight's beam instinctively searched for a passage to continue forward, while Fatty's beam was scanning the things inside.

All around were wooden boxes; if you didn't look closely, you'd mistake them for short coffins! In the middle of these boxes sat another coffin. This one looked especially strange—not in its shape, but as if it didn't belong here.

The boxes around it were a mess, as if someone had moved them aside to clear a space and placed this coffin here. The problem was, the coffin wasn't even set straight; it was haphazardly placed at an angle.

Fatty was especially interested in the boxes. He kept saying we should just check one, but I firmly stopped him. We went to the edge of the coffin and saw many strange tools rusted to hell beside it, but one look told us they were modern tools.

"Someone's been here before, but not Zhang Qiling and his crew. Looks like a long time ago."

Fatty kicked at the tools. Looking at them, I realized they were small fittings for props, hoisting, sliding, and carrying—seemingly used to transport this coffin.

"Should be from that archaeological team in the late seventies. Looks like they brought this coffin out from somewhere."

Fatty picked up a small part from the ground, blew on it, and said, "Could it be they wanted to haul this coffin out?"

I turned my gaze to the coffin.

The coffin was made of wood, with iron sheets wrapped around the four corners for protection. It hadn't been opened, sitting there almost exactly as it was.

"Why?" I said. "This coffin isn't that conspicuous, and… they didn't manage to take it out!"

"Don't say that. Don't try to guess what the archaeological team was thinking—if you do, you'll just end up screwed." Fatty said, "Forget it, let's keep going. If heaven wants you to know something, you'll find out. If we could figure out where this coffin was carried from, that clue would add something."

"Wait!" I said. I suddenly noticed something strange on the coffin's surface. "Have you seen this pattern somewhere before?"

"Where?" Fatty asked, puzzled.

I said, "Upstairs. On the coffin in Zhang Qiling's tomb chamber, there was the same pattern. Could this be another generation of Zhang Qiling?"

"If it's here, then it's the first-generation Zhang Qiling." Fatty said. Then he looked at me, clicked his tongue, grabbed my hand, and said, "Hold on, Tianzhen, I need to remind you of a few things."

"What?"

"This coffin—could it be one the archaeological team tried to haul out of an ancient tomb, and maybe it's the first-generation Zhang Qiling? If so, do you think inside this coffin there might be some key secret hidden? Of course, this is all just my guess. But think about all the troubles you've had. We're at this point now; once we get out, we'll never come back in. I'm standing in your shoes, thinking for you. Do you want to open this coffin and take a look?"

"You're the one who wants to open it, aren't you?" I asked him.

Fatty shook his head very seriously. "No, right now I just want to get out safe. I'm thinking about your past days. Maybe the answer is in this coffin. Open it and you'll know. Tianzhen, it only takes three minutes to open it. Since you want to know, you should give it a try."

I looked at his expression and realized he didn't seem to be joking. Still, everything he said was right, and his reasoning was sound.

"You're right." I looked up at the ceiling; nothing seemed to be happening, so I said, "Damn it, let's do it. Open it and see."

Without tools, prying open a coffin was a pain. We took out the iron spikes and found that the wooden coffin's lid was sealed so tightly that not even a gap could be found. In the end, Fatty's sharp eyes spotted something. He looked underneath and said, "It's placed upside down! The coffin's been put in backward. Damn, they really had no respect!"

I looked down—sure enough, the coffin was completely flipped over. Since it was a square coffin, no matter how it was placed, it didn't look odd.

Fatty and I gestured to each other and realized that with just the two of us, there was no way we could flip the coffin over. With the angle as it was, we also couldn't pry the lid off. Fatty said, "Forget it, let's drill a hole from the bottom. Break through the coffin base!" We used the iron spikes as hammers, pounding away bit by bit. Fatty went all out, maybe trying to stick to his three-minute promise. Soon he smashed a crack in the coffin bottom. Once we had a crack, it was easier. We wedged the iron spike in and pried. In a little while, we made a crack in the bottom as long as an arm and as wide as a Coke bottle.

Fatty stuck the iron spike into the crack and stirred it around. I said, "Push everything inside to one side. I want to see the family tree on the back of the coffin lid." Fatty said, "Pushing it to one side means we have to pull everything out!"

Fatty was really good at snatching things on the sly. I couldn't be bothered with him and told him to hurry up. He reached his hand directly into the coffin, grabbed something, and pulled it out in one go. He only got it halfway out when he let out a loud yell.

What he pulled out was the hand of a wet corpse.

"Don't get all jumpy. It's not like you've never seen one!" I said.

"It's not that. Look at the fingers." He said. I saw that every finger on this hand was wearing a ring. The rings glowed with a very strange light—neither like gemstones nor like metal. And the rings were oddly shaped—one glance told me they absolutely couldn't be of Central Plains style; they were probably from the Western Regions, or even from the Nepal region of that time.

The wet corpse's fingernails were long, but they didn't seem dangerous. Fatty pried off the rings one by one and stuffed them into his own pocket, saying, "I was startled by how flashy this hand was! I thought the Zhang family was a particularly simple and low-key clan, like Zhang Qiling—just living on air and dew every day."

I thought to myself, supporting Zhang Qiling is expensive! For a big shot like him, even the phone bill for reporting a missing person to the police station would be far higher than several antiques. We're friends with Zhang Qiling—I've heard from some others that Yaba Zhang's price for leading a "jia lama" operation is terrifyingly high; his appearance fee is definitely higher than Jay Chou's, even though he can't sing a single song. He took off the last ring and handed it to me. "Here, Tianzhen, have a look. Estimate a price."

"Didn't you say you weren't after the valuables?" "I didn't say that. I said you should open it and look, but I never said I wouldn't pick up a thing or two. Opening the coffin takes three minutes, picking up trinkets takes just a few seconds—won't delay you."

I glanced at it. It was a jade ring, priceless. I said, "It's somewhere between garbage and a national treasure. I'll help you ask when we get back. Now hurry up and keep going."

"Don't need you to tell me." Fatty said. He grabbed the wet corpse's hand and slowly pulled the whole body out of the coffin bit by bit. When the corpse's head was yanked out through the gap, I couldn't help but take a sharp breath.

"Why is this corpse's hair so long?" I said. The corpse's hair was so long it wrapped around many parts of the body.

Fatty took a deep breath, pretending to be calm. "Ancient people all had long hair. So-called flowing locks, hair all over the place. Haven't you seen in many ancient dramas how criminals all have disheveled hair, good enough to be in a Pantene ad?"

I shook my head and said softly, "But not this long. With hair this length, you wouldn't need anyone's help to hang yourself, and it'd even be enough for jump rope."

Fatty said, "After many people die, their hair still grows for a long time. Nothing strange."

I thought to myself, how is that possible? For hair to be this long, it must have been growing for centuries. It's practically turned into seaweed! But I didn't want to overthink it, so I said, "Right, forget it. Hurry up!"

Fatty first touched the corpse with his iron spike and found no signs of it turning into a zombie, so he directly searched the whole body. Finding nothing else, he simply tossed it aside. After the corpse hit the ground, it seemed to oxidize and shattered into several pieces—it was already severely shriveled, and now it fell apart completely.

I thought to myself that this was too disrespectful and immediately apologized. Fatty completely ignored it and said, "A corpse that doesn't turn into a zombie is not a good corpse. For such an unambitious person, there's no need to be taboo." As he spoke, he raised his flashlight and continued to look inside the coffin.

"After all, this is an ancestor of the Zhang family," I said.

"Stop talking nonsense. Did you find what you were looking for?" Fatty asked me.

But at this moment, I noticed something was wrong. I grabbed Fatty and said in horror, "Damn! Why is the liquid inside this corpse green? Could it be a Miluotu corpse?" The dismembered corpse lay on the stone slab, its clothes completely rotted into clumps of decay, impossible to tell what they originally looked like. Liquid was seeping out from within, a sickening green. Hair covered almost every part, and only the gaping mouth on the face was visible. The corpse contained a considerable amount of liquid, continuously spreading across the stone slab.

It was the first time I had seen such a situation, and I was covered in cold sweat. Fatty said, "That doesn't make sense! This is a wet corpse; all the bodily fluids should have mixed with the liquid in the coffin. Where did this green liquid come from?"

"From the bones," I said, "There's green liquid inside the bones—probably in the marrow."

But what surprised me was that Fatty, such a reckless rogue, was also clearly very uncomfortable, shrinking backward. His previous arrogance vanished instantly.

I patted Fatty and said, "Don't you want to give me an explanation, or give me some advice—what should we do now?"

Fatty said, "Don't joke. Now is not the time for jokes. I've just remembered a past I don't want to look back on!"

I asked, "What past? Is this your old flame?"

"It's your old flame that's like this, your whole family's old flames are like this!" Fatty said. "I had a very good friend who died exactly like this corpse."

Fatty pressed the iron spike against the corpse's chest and tried to lift the hair covering it—a neck ring appeared before us. "Just as I thought," Fatty said.

"Spit it out already! We have serious business!"

"This person died from a severe case of corpse poison. This Zhang family ancestor must have died a particularly miserable death. He should have been buried alive after drinking Chinese medicine, and there were signs of corpse transformation after death. This green fluid should be caused by corpse poison entering the bones. Because he was buried alive, the cartilage was still soft, so the fluid was sealed in the marrow," Fatty said. "I've only seen this neck ring once. It's used to prevent corpse transformation, see. There are many ancient jades on it."

"Is there still danger now?" I asked. Fatty shook his head: "No. Shouldn't be. It's already like this. Even if it becomes a zombie, it's a disabled zombie. We don't need to be afraid. It's just that I'm worried these things are poisonous. If we inhale too much into our nasal passages, it could cause trouble. Our respiratory tracts are already damaged, so it's easy for something to go wrong. But, looking at this, this definitely isn't the first generation Zhang Qiling."

"Why do you say that?"

"He doesn't have the precious blood. Zhang Qiling wouldn't be poisoned by corpse poison."

"Then why are the patterns on his coffin the same as those on Zhang Qiling's coffin?" I asked.

Fatty said, "Maybe the pattern isn't a mark of identity. It could be a mark that he died accidentally."

This was impossible to determine now; no one knew what the situation was like back then. I looked around—on the way we came in, we hadn't found any traces of transport. This coffin must have been brought out from the inside. They moved it out and carelessly left it here. This was quite a massive undertaking, especially physically draining. If this thing really wasn't important, why would they go to such great effort to carry out something that seemed not particularly important?

"Tianzhen!" Fatty called me from behind. I turned around and said, "What?"

"I was wrong," Fatty said. "This thing is still dangerous." I turned my head and immediately saw that the corpse on the ground had grown inch-long black hairs, at first glance looking just like a large hedgehog.