Chapter 4: Corpse Accumulation Ground, Corpse Beetle Terror
As he was speaking, a small boat rowed out from the waterway cave.
The cart-driving old man pointed at the ferry:
“You all, this is the boat that can take you in. Just follow the boatman in!”
Da Kui went over and quickly negotiated the price with the boatman, and then everyone boarded the boat.
Once on the boat, Uncle Wu San whispered:
“Everyone be careful, this boatman is strange!”
He smelled a corpse stench on the boatman, and he was very sharp when bargaining with Da Kui, so he became suspicious of him.
But he was speaking Hangzhou dialect, which only Da Kui and the others could understand.
Soon the wooden boat entered the waterway, the surrounding light gradually dimmed, Da Kui stood in front shining the flashlight, but he saw deep darkness ahead, and the air was filled with a damp, cold yin energy.
After rowing forward for about ten minutes, the water flow suddenly became rapid.
The boatman suddenly lowered his voice and said:
“Gentlemen, don’t speak carelessly later. If you anger the mountain god inside, none of us will get out!”
As soon as he said this, Wu Tianzhen and the others all showed expressions of shock and uncertainty.
Uncle Wu San also had a grim expression, his eyes always fixed on the waterway ahead.
Su Mo, however, had a calm expression without a ripple.
He knew what was in this waterway and what trick the boatman would pull, so he wasn’t panicked at all.
The wooden boat soon passed several sharp bends, the water flow ahead gradually stabilized, but the waterway became even narrower. Pan Zi, being tall, almost hit his head several times and couldn’t help cursing.
At this moment, Uncle Wu San suddenly lowered his voice and said:
“Shut up!”
Pan Zi immediately stopped cursing upon hearing this and turned to look at Uncle Wu San.
He saw Uncle Wu San listening intently, as if hearing something.
Immediately after, everyone heard a rustling sound, like someone whispering deep in the waterway. In this dim space, it sounded especially eerie.
Wu Tianzhen couldn’t help asking the boatman:
“Brother, what is this sound?”
He asked, but found no one responded.
He turned his head and saw that the boatman at the stern and the cart-driving old man had disappeared at some point.
Everyone couldn’t help but feel a shock in their hearts.
All along, the boatman and the cart-driving old man had been at the stern rowing, and Uncle Wu San and the others hadn’t heard any sound of anyone falling into the water. How could these two people suddenly disappear?
Could it be that they had turned into ghosts?
“Stop looking!”
Su Mo, who had been sitting silently on the boat, suddenly spoke and pointed above his head:
“There are many tomb raiding holes inside. Those two climbed up through the tomb raiding holes just now when we weren’t paying attention!”
After entering the waterway, everyone had seen many circular outer and square inner tomb raiding holes inside the waterway. Because it was near Lu Wang Palace, there must have been many tomb raiders over the thousands of years, so no one paid attention.
Hearing Su Mo explain now, everyone suddenly realized that the boatman and the cart-driving old man had secretly climbed in through the tomb raiding holes when no one was watching.
“These two bastards, are they trying to screw us over?”
Fat Kui cursed angrily.
Pan Zi even pulled out the gun from his waist:
“Damn it, if these two guys want to cause trouble, I’ll make them stay here forever!”
Uncle Wu San, however, looked at Su Mo.
Su Mo just smiled faintly:
“Just two petty thieves, how much trouble can they stir up!”
Along the way, although Su Mo didn’t talk much, his expression was always calm and composed, and just now he directly pointed out where the boatman and the cart-driving old man had gone.
Hearing Su Mo speak so casually now, everyone immediately felt relieved.
Uncle Wu San chuckled:
“Master Su is right, just two petty thieves, what is there to fear!”
As soon as he finished speaking, Pan Zi in front suddenly cried out in alarm.
Uncle Wu San couldn’t help but slap him on the head:
“What are you startling for!”
Pan Zi rubbed his head with a aggrieved expression:
“No, Third Master! Just now a shadowy figure swam past underwater, it looked like a big black zombie!”
Hearing Pan Zi say this, everyone couldn’t help but tense up.
Even Su Mo’s expression became somewhat serious.
He knew there were corpse beetles and corpse puppets in this corpse accumulation ground water cave, but how was there also a big black zombie?
At that moment, Little Brother suddenly raised his right hand and stabbed into the water like lightning, quickly pinching a black insect out of the water with two fingers and throwing it directly onto the boat deck.
“Is this it?”
Everyone looked closely and saw it was a black corpse beetle about a foot long.
This kind of corpse beetle growing in the corpse accumulation ground, because it constantly devours dead flesh, grows particularly huge. After being thrown onto the boat by Little Brother, its several pairs of chelicerae were still waving nonstop.
Da Kui stepped forward and stomped it to death, cursing:
“Damn it, there’s actually this thing, what bad luck!
Pan Zi couldn’t help scratching his head:
“Could it be that I saw wrong?”
As he was speaking, everyone suddenly heard a rustling sound from above their heads, like a sudden heavy rain.
Everyone quickly looked up.
Upon looking, Wu Tianzhen and Da Kui couldn’t help crying out in alarm.
They saw a bloody face suddenly hanging upside down from a tomb raiding hole above their heads, a pair of eyes wide open in death, staring at everyone, with expressions of pain and fear still lingering in the eyes.
It was exactly the boatman’s corpse.
Wu Tianzhen’s cry of alarm had just sounded when the boatman’s corpse suddenly fell from the tomb raiding hole, its bloody body crashing directly onto him.
Only then did everyone see clearly that the boatman’s lower body was gone, and below, a three-foot-long black giant corpse beetle was tightly gripping his intestines, gnawing on them with crunching sounds.
The rustling sound everyone heard earlier was not ghost whispers or rain, but the sound of the corpse beetle eating dead flesh!
This corpse beetle fell with the boatman’s remains and suddenly turned in mid-air, opening its chelicerae to attack Da Kui nearby. Da Kui hurriedly drew his short knife and stabbed at the corpse beetle, but the knife tip hit its carapace like striking iron and stone, unable to pierce at all.
At that moment, Little Brother suddenly reached out with two fingers, the fingertips instantly piercing into the corpse beetle’s carapace, and with a twist and turn, he suddenly drew out a snow-white strand like vermicelli from the corpse beetle’s body.
This was the corpse beetle’s central nerve, directly extracted from its body with Little Brother’s Fa Qiu finger.
The three-foot-long corpse beetle twitched, then its claws spread and it fell into the water.
“Little Brother is awesome!”
Pan Zi and Da Kui couldn’t help exclaiming in admiration.
Little Brother flung the corpse beetle’s central nerve directly into the water, then kicked the boatman’s remains into the water as well.
Splash!
The remains hit the water, immediately dyeing a circle of red on the surface.
As the fresh blood entered the water, a huge ripple suddenly appeared underwater, as if some terrifying giant creature was startled by the blood and rapidly swam toward the small boat.
Everyone on the boat saw that huge ripple stirred up and once again felt their hearts in their throats.
Da Kui and Pan Zi quickly shone their flashlights over, but as soon as the light hit the water surface, the ripple suddenly disappeared, and underwater was pitch black, with nothing visible!
