Chapter 489: Another Corpse of the Young Master

Although the corpse was already completely rotted, we still recognized the tattoo as a Qilin tattoo. But on closer inspection, we could tell it wasn't Zhang Qiling. Because although the tattoo was very similar, it was much rougher, and the skin was much darker. Most importantly, this person had a lot of white hair.

We put the corpse back into the water, because the smell was just too foul. The moment it sank into the water, I realized that this corpse was actually Old Pan Ma.

He must have followed Poker-face's team into this place, I thought. I have no idea why he died here.

The last time I saw Old Pan Ma, he seemed to have been stimulated into madness. I don't know if he was really crazy or just pretending. He never appeared again after that, and I lost interest in his affairs. Someone like him—who could kill so many people for a few bags of grain and maintained countless connections with that ghost shadow—was definitely a person driven by small interests. Whatever his purpose was in following Poker-face's team, I had no interest in guessing.

The corpse slowly sank again. The entire body was swollen from soaking, looking incredibly terrifying. Old Pan Ma was a very old man. Now the water had swollen his body so that not a single wrinkle was visible. If Poker-face weren't right outside, I really would have thought this was Poker-face's corpse.

Pan Ma's whole life was a tragedy. But then again, he got what he deserved. Everyone has to pay the price for what they've done. That Pan Ma only ended up like this now was actually quite fair.

We climbed over, went up the steps, and walked into the curtain. After everything I had been through before pulling back that curtain, I was beyond caring, no longer hesitating or curious.

Inside the curtain was a large bed made of jade. The large bed was completely empty.

Fatty asked, "How come there's nothing? Such a big deal, and in the largest tomb chamber, there's nothing at all?"

I asked Fatty, "You've been in a lot of ancient tombs—do you think this is a coffin bier?"

"Judging by the height, it's very possible," Fatty said.

I said, "Look at this coffin bier. There are deep marks from prolonged pressure. Obviously, there must have been a very heavy coffin pressing on this jade bed. But that coffin is now gone." I touched the marks on the bier. These definitely weren't marks left by a wooden coffin. No matter how heavy the wood, it couldn't create such an effect, because this jade is extremely hard. To leave marks like this, it would have to be either a metal coffin, or a wooden coffin with a large amount of metal fittings on the outside.

I thought the latter was more likely, because all the coffins we'd seen upstairs were made entirely of wood, and the bodies inside had basically become bones. A completely metal coffin—if there were ores here, it could have been cast. But in this room, I didn't see any traces of long-term furnace use. In ancient times, if you wanted to smelt metal implements, it required no ordinary scale of operation. Also, smelting needs a lot of coal. Since the Zhang family designed this place with such a far-sighted plan of planting trees, it shows that wood must have been their first choice. This can be inferred from the fact that the wooden coffins we saw upstairs were made of the same wood as the ancient building.

Being able to build such an ancient building deep in the mountains was already impressive enough. A little lack of detail here and there was acceptable.

"Gone? Did the coffin grow legs and walk away on its own?" Fatty said. "These days, the coffins in the Zhang Family Ancient Building can become spirits? They've turned into Transformers Coffins! Damn, from now on tomb raiding is going to be a real pain!"

"I think the coffin was moved away. They cleared this space, probably to store another body," I said. I looked at the marks on the jade bed—these marks weren't left when the coffin was placed here, but when it was carried away. But I couldn't tell how long ago those marks were made.

I looked around the coffin bier and indeed found several holes drilled on both sides of the steps I had come up.

In ancient times, drilling holes in stone was a very clever technique, and many holes were polished quite finely. But these holes weren't drilled vertically; I could feel clear spiral marks inside. The holes were drilled very deep—this was impossible with ancient technology. Probably it was done with modern drilling machinery—I didn't know if it was manual or gasoline-powered. Obviously, some simple lifting equipment had been installed here. My deduction was right. Fatty nodded: "I get it. You're saying that the body they originally wanted to bring in was meant to be placed here, so they first moved the coffin that was here out. That's the so-called 'cuckoo taking over the nest.' But why is there nothing on it now? What about the body they brought in?"

Whether that body was successfully brought in, no one really knows. I regretted a little that I hadn't asked the ghost shadow more carefully. Had they actually succeeded in bringing the body in? But I thought it probably succeeded. Otherwise, given the organization's habits, if it didn't work the first time, there would definitely be a second. There was only one Banai archaeological dig, and from Agui's account, the leaving team seemed very normal, in the category of a triumphant return.

"What do we do now?" I looked around and found that there was no place to go. Also, I knew that all around us was basically quicksand. Our current position was in the middle of the quicksand layer we had just crossed. If my calculations were correct, the quicksand layer we walked through should be above our heads. At the time I thought it was strange that the quicksand layer was so shallow that my feet could touch the bottom. Now I realized that was entirely because the quicksand was wrapped around a tomb chamber, and what my feet touched was the chamber's ceiling. If you didn't know about the secret passage leading down, digging from anywhere else would be completely impossible. Such fine sand must have been specially treated; we couldn't do any engineering on it.

I asked Fatty what to do—this place turned out to be a dead end. Based on all the clues we had, the most likely scenario was that Poker-face had come up from the coffin bier, walked out from here, and taken the secret passage to the first floor of the ancient building.

But there was no exit around the coffin bier, so Fatty and I started searching the tomb chamber separately, trying to find any useful clues as quickly as possible. With so many people coming out of here, they couldn't have left nothing behind. I believed there must be some clues that could help us. Sure enough, Fatty found a cigarette butt near a wall corner.

"That's it, Innocent. They came out from here. This is a 'Yuxi' brand. I saw this kind of cigarette on one of the dead guys earlier," Fatty said. "That guy was carrying a whole carton of these. He must have been a heavy smoker. This cigarette must have been his."

I went over to Fatty's side, looked around the cigarette butt, and found several more butts stuffed into the gap in the tomb wall.

The butts were scattered—either a bored person smoking and stuffing them into the gaps one by one, or multiple people smoking here creating this scene.

I guessed the latter was more likely. But it was strange—why would they all gather under this wall to smoke? It's not like this was the foot of an old wall where people gather to smoke, chat, watch the sun rise and set, and kill time. There were plenty of other places to smoke here. So many people gathered here smoking—could the entrance be behind this wall? But that didn't make sense either, I thought. Who the hell said that where you come in is where you have to smoke? And according to Fatty, their entry process was very tense, many people were already poisoned—why would they smoke after coming in?

I said to Fatty, "Let's do a little scene reconstruction. If you were someone who had been poisoned, and you finally made it in here after all that hardship, what would you do?"

Fatty said, "I'd definitely be gasping for breath, lying down wherever I could. If the boss wasn't kicking my ass, or there wasn't some other danger behind me, I'd lie there until I recovered." "And when you recovered, would you smoke?"

"Damn, that depends on the timing! If I'd just been at it seven times in one night, when I recovered I'd not only smoke but also need a few bowls of bull penis soup to recharge! But if I was poisoned here and could barely breathe, smoking would be asking for death, right?"

I nodded. That was what I thought too. Fatty continued, "Why are you asking?" I told Fatty my idea. Fatty said, "Pfft. I'll tell you, looking at this whole place, the best smoking spot would be those steps over there. The view is open, and you can sit and smoke. But here, you either have to squat by the wall or stand—how uncomfortable! So this spot must have a reason. I tell you, it's a lot like a situation... like waiting for women to use the bathroom!"

"What bathroom?" I asked, puzzled. Fatty said, "Never been in love, huh? I tell you, women are especially troublesome. The time they take in the bathroom is enough for a man to play three rounds of mahjong. So if a few friends go shopping together and the women all go to the bathroom, the men have to find a place to smoke right away, usually by the bathroom wall. Imagine a scene—night wind whistling, a few men smoking, hunched shoulders, smiling bitterly at each other, chatting about things they want to talk about. When the women come out, that scene looks exactly like this place."

I scratched my head, unable to understand: "You mean Old Madam Huo and the girls in the team suddenly needed to use the bathroom, so the men had to step aside?"

"But the number of cigarette butts here doesn't seem right. Old Madam Huo wouldn't take a bathroom break to touch up her makeup at the same time, would she?" Fatty said. "I think it's something similar to using the bathroom, but whatever they were doing took much longer. But judging by this, it shouldn't be something like taking off clothes to treat injuries. If it were an emergency, no one would care about manners anymore—the men wouldn't need to step aside. So, I think the most likely possibility is—women changing clothes."

"Change clothes? Why suddenly change clothes? It's not some banquet with a distinction between first-half formal wear and second-half formal wear."

Fatty thought for a moment. Suddenly he looked toward the Coffin-Protecting River and said: "Wet, their clothes are wet! They came out of the water!"