Chapter 59: Let Fatty Ye Light A Candle First!
The three gathered around, squatting on the ground to observe the footprints they had left, discovering that there were only the ones from when they came in, and the footprints from when they had exited the well earlier were completely gone, along with the tracks left by Wu Sansheng and the others before!
Logically speaking, since shoe prints from a few days ago could remain until now, even if the temperature had risen too high in the previous hour or so due to burning the corpse, it was impossible for the moisture in the damp soil to evaporate completely during that time! Although the layout was similar, all the circumstances added up to only one conclusion—they were now in another side chamber!
Fatty suspiciously looked back at the path they had come from; it was still that white marble tomb passage littered with arrowheads, no mistake: “What’s going on here? Clearly there’s only one path—how could we have taken a wrong turn? Did you hear any mechanism activating sounds?”
Zhang Qiling shook his head: “No.”
Wu Xie narrowed his eyes: “Could it be a mechanism that operates automatically without needing activation? But what kind of mechanism could swap out the entire room? I was wondering earlier why there was this faint sense of wind. But if there’s a ventilation spot, this tomb should have been flooded with water long ago! I didn’t think about it carefully just now, but now seeing this side chamber, I understand—”
Wu Xie pointed to the ceiling of the side chamber. The three looked up and saw two huge snake-shaped relief sculptures entwined with each other, as if biting toward them: “This mechanism must have imperceptibly moved the entire room away! When we came in before, I observed that the carving overhead was a Yin-Yang star map, not two snakes! How to explain it… Uh, you’ve all ridden elevators, right?”
Lin Yan and Fatty nodded, while Zhang Qiling remained silently still.
Wu Xie pointed to the junction between the side chamber and the tomb passage: “Now the entire side chamber is like a huge elevator. If I’m not mistaken, it moves in one direction at regular intervals, either up or down—we don’t know which—and the passage we face at that time might be different.”
Zhang Qiling thought for a moment and spotted a flaw in his words: “If that’s really the case, then this side chamber should be a singular existence, but side chambers in ancient tombs are always symmetrical left and right, even up and down—except for the main tomb chamber. So the side chamber symmetrical to this one should logically be on the opposite side.”
Among the four, only Wu Xie studied architecture, while Zhang Qiling could spot the tomb chamber structure at a glance due to his rich experience. Lin Yan was a complete newbie, and Fatty relied more on brawn than brains. They were fine at analyzing people, but for something intricate like mechanisms, it was just two words—clueless.
So the two with limited knowledge could only huddle together for warmth, and by the time Zhang Qiling returned with Wu Xie after surveying the opposite tomb wall, they had actually started eating!
Wu Xie looked at the scene before him quite helplessly; he knew that wherever Lin Yan and Fatty were, the atmosphere would never be serious! They were still in the midst of serious tomb raiding! He rubbed his forehead with his hand: “What are you doing? Wasn’t last night’s meal enough for you?”
Fatty swallowed the food in his mouth and nodded: “Last night we ate our fill, but we didn’t eat this morning! Man cannot live on rice alone—one missed meal and hunger strikes. It’s been hours now, and Fatty Ye’s stomach has been growling loudly!” Lin Yan nodded along: “Yeah, yeah, forget breakfast today—even last night’s dinner I only ate half full. All told, it’s been over ten hours since I last ate! If we don’t eat something soon, we might not get trapped to death here, but starve to death down below!”
Wu Xie smiled wryly and shook his head, watching them eat heartily with aromas wafting everywhere; he actually felt a bit hungry too. What kind of situation was this! Wasn’t the top priority now to find a way out and locate his Third Uncle? How did it turn into a tea party again?
For some reason, Wu Xie had a premonition that this kind of situation today would likely repeat countless times in the future.
Helplessly sighing, Wu Xie still walked over to sit beside them, taking out dry rations from his backpack to join in—there was no helping it; watching them made him hungry, and his stomach was really protesting! Now only Zhang Qiling standing nearby was left; Wu Xie and the other two sat in a circle, leaving an empty spot, but this three-man game didn’t seem to have any desire to join.
Gradually, Lin Yan and the others’ eating speed invisibly kept accelerating, eventually almost gorging themselves—no one could withstand that scalp-numbing threatening gaze from Zhang Qiling staring at people, let alone Lin Yan who was right across from him. When he secretly glanced up, he saw Zhang Qiling’s eyes full of “Why aren’t they done yet? Would it be faster if I held a knife to their necks?”
He absolutely did not want to have a knife held to his neck!
So under Fatty and Wu Xie’s strange gazes, Lin Yan quickly finished off the food in three or five bites, stood up, walked briskly two steps to the wall, and urged them: “Looking at his gaze, why don’t you eat faster?”
Hm? What gaze? Wu Xie and Fatty turned back to look at Zhang Qiling.
One minute later, they lined up against the wall, full of vigor: “How do we proceed downwards?”
Zhang Qiling:
Heh heh!
Exiting the tomb chamber, sure enough, it was still a white marble tomb passage, but the difference was that a door had appeared opposite the side chamber! And during this time, they really hadn’t heard any unusual sounds at all, yet the space they were in had already changed!
The searchlight shone over, revealing a massive golden silk nanmu coffin inside!
At first Wu Xie didn’t recognize it, but upon approaching, he jumped in fright: “This is golden silk nanmu?” He incredulously circled the coffin: “It really is golden silk nanmu! Such a huge golden silk nanmu coffin… how could it be here? This should just be a side chamber too!” He could hardly believe it; a coffin of this caliber wasn’t even placed in the main tomb chamber? Even nobles’ coffins were only of this spec! Could they have stumbled upon a big shot by accident? What big shot would use a golden silk nanmu coffin and be buried under the sea?
“Hm? Golden silk nanmu?” Lin Yan also got interested; he realized that after spending so much time with Fatty, his thinking was endlessly approaching Fatty’s. His first reaction was actually: Is this coffin particularly valuable? Can it be taken? How much could it sell for?
But looking at the coffin’s massive size… forget four of them; even twice as many people might not be able to carry it! Forget it, let it stay here, but could the treasure inside…
While he was still pondering feasibility, Wu Xie was speculating on the tomb owner’s identity, and the moment Fatty saw the coffin, he had already started hands-on!
“Pa!”
A crisp sound rang out, and at the same time entering Wu Xie and Lin Yan’s ears was Fatty’s wail: “Ouch, what are you doing?”
They turned to look; Fatty was clutching his arm and gasping, while Zhang Qiling had just taken his knife in hand, apparently having smacked Fatty with the back of the blade. He glanced at the two: “Don’t touch it randomly; this is a corpse-raising coffin.” With that, he walked to the coffin holding the knife, tracing along the coffin seam inside, as if looking for some mechanism.
Smacked by him, Fatty saw his actions and thought they were about to open the coffin, so he hurriedly rummaged through his backpack: “Ouch, I say you’re unethical, little comrade—not letting me open it but opening it yourself? This is ‘officials can set fires but commoners can’t light lamps,’ got it? Hey, open slower; per our Mojin rules, wait for me to light a candle first!”
Saying that, he held up a candle, checked the direction, and headed toward the southeast corner, drawing black lines on the faces of the other two. Wu Xie helplessly stopped him: “Alright, Fatty, no candle. The oxygen in here is probably limited as is; lighting one wouldn’t accelerate our death?”
“Exactly! Hm? Oxygen running low?” Lin Yan suddenly caught the key point, looking blankly at Wu Xie: “Why would oxygen be low?”
Wu Xie laughed wryly: “Weren’t you listening to my whole analysis earlier? I originally thought there were vents, but then realized it was air convection from the mechanism movement. This is a sunken ship tomb—how big can the ship be? Plus the space taken by mechanisms and tomb chambers inside, the air is even less! Third Uncle and them came once before and consumed some oxygen; who knows if anyone else has been here other times, or how long the remaining air will last us—naturally, the more we save, the better!”
This… Lin Yan only now thought of it; his experience was too little, and he hadn’t realized the air in this underwater tomb was finite! Thinking about it made his face turn green; good thing he hadn’t lost his mind and given Wu Yong a cremation or something, or they’d probably have suffocated by now…
No, it’s all A Ning’s fault! If she hadn’t come looking, how would they have gone down?
“Holy shit!” A sudden yell from Fatty in the corner; before they turned, a “big black rat” whooshed over to them. Turning, they saw Fatty pale-faced: “Holy shit, what was that thing!”
Lin Yan and Wu Xie looked with the searchlight; a black shadow crouched there. Looking closely, it was actually a dead cat of unusually large size!
PS: Thanks to Kunlun Xuzhu for the tip!
