My blood froze in an instant, and several people were left dumbfounded. Panzi reflexively reached for his gun, while Fatty slowly raised the rhino horn lamp in his hands. The ceiling of the tomb chamber was extremely high; the light from our wind lamps or smokeless stoves barely reached up there. If it weren’t for the sudden brightness of the smokeless stove’s flame caused by the burning rhino horn, we would only see darkness when we looked up at the ceiling. However, this illumination was still quite limited. The black figure of a child was extremely blurred in the firelight, resembling a black jellyfish clinging to the top of the tomb, swaying with the “sea currents.”

For a moment, I couldn’t be sure whether the shadow above us was cast by the “rhino lamp” or if it had always been there, unnoticed by us. When we entered the tomb chamber, although we had briefly glanced at the ceiling, my attention was completely captivated by the dazzling treasures here, and I had no idea what I was seeing. Perhaps that “child” had already been hanging above us; we just hadn’t paid attention.

Fatty cautiously raised his gun, turning to us and asking with lip movements, speaking very slowly, “Is… it… this… thing?” I waved my hand, signaling him not to act rashly. In fact, there was no basis for saying that this thing was causing trouble. Maybe the black child was just passing by and happened to rest above us. But at that moment, how could we think of such things? The situation, which had felt aimless, suddenly had a target, and people were already on the verge of losing their minds.

However, we still didn’t know what that thing was or whether bullets would work on it. If we acted recklessly and let it escape, we wouldn’t have a second rhino horn to burn.

A few of us carefully stood up. Fatty hung the stove on the gun barrel and slowly pushed it up. The ceiling of the tomb chamber grew brighter, but this was exhausting. As Fatty lifted it a bit, his hands began to tremble, and Panzi hurried to help him.

The black “child” became clearer and clearer, gradually revealing a distinct shape above us. As I watched, I suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. The shadow’s form was gradually taking shape; the “child’s” head grew larger, and slowly the entire black figure transformed into the shape of a giant-headed fetus.

This… wasn’t that large-headed corpse fetus we saw in the corpse storage room? How did it follow us here? Had it been following us all along?

I suddenly recalled our encounter with the wall of ghosts in the main hall, and I was struck with horror. Wasn’t this thing originally hidden in the compartment beneath the main hall? Could it be that this predicament, which transcended physical limits, was created by the corpse fetus?

Fatty and Panzi recognized it too. Fatty grinned and, with exaggerated lip movements, slowly said to Panzi, “Damn, it looks like your black girlfriend can’t bear to let you go.” His mouth moved in a comically exaggerated manner!

Panzi was furious and retorted with lip movements, “Damn it, you’re the one who looks like this!”

I waved my hand at them, pointing at the smokeless stove. The firelight was gradually dimming. If the rhino horn burned out completely, we would truly be in a hopeless situation. We had to deal with this thing all at once.

The chubby man nodded, gently pulled back the bolt, and aimed slowly, but there was a smoke-free furnace hanging at the gun’s muzzle, which made him a bit anxious. After several attempts, his hand was shaking, so he simply opened fire in a burst. Shun Zi beside him also raised his gun and aimed in the dim light.

The light was getting dimmer, and I was breaking out in a cold sweat, but they just wouldn’t fire. I knew what was going on; it meant that both the chubby man and Shun Zi were indeed quite professional with guns. The light from the smoke-free furnace above was too flickering. In fact, we could see with the naked eye that its position was off, which was why they didn’t dare to shoot recklessly. They had to wait for the flames to gradually die down, for the light to dim, and for the shadows to stop moving for that brief moment to aim accurately.

I didn’t dare to speak, just watching as the chubby man’s hand shook more and more violently, while Pan Zi below supported him. The shadow above gradually blended back into the darkness.

I didn’t know how those tens of seconds passed. The speed at which the light faded was almost impossible to adjust to. Just at the moment when the corpse-like figure suddenly disappeared, the chubby man and Shun Zi fired simultaneously.

There was a series of gunshots, ten bullets fired from the guns. I didn’t know how many hit, but it instantly splattered dark liquid everywhere, and the thing fell to the ground. The chubby man couldn’t hold onto the furnace anymore, and it crashed to the ground, scattering embers everywhere.

We immediately stepped back several paces, and the corpse let out a scream reminiscent of a baby’s, violently knocking the rolling smoke-free furnace aside and darting into the darkness behind the tomb’s entrance like lightning.

“Damn… it can still run?” the chubby man exclaimed.

“We can’t let it escape, or we’ll be in trouble!” Pan Zi shouted. “Quick, chase it!”

The four of us scrambled up and chased after it, passing through the tomb gate. In an instant, we suddenly saw that the wall paintings in the tomb had returned to their original patterns; the ghostly wall had failed!

“It’s out!” the chubby man exclaimed joyfully. “We’re not trapped anymore! It really was that mantis shrimp’s doing!”

“What about that ghostly thing?” I turned on my flashlight and immediately saw the corpse-like figure stop deep in the tomb passage. Upon seeing our flashlight, it dashed into the darkness of the tomb at an astonishing speed, running toward the other end of the passage.

We immediately chased after it, knowing we absolutely could not let it escape. If it stopped, we would likely fall back into that situation, and I really didn’t want to experience that again.

Just as we were thinking this, in what felt like just a few minutes of running—about seven or eight minutes—we had covered roughly a kilometer of the tomb passage, and I was out of breath. The end of the passage appeared before us: a staircase leading downward. The black blood of the corpse flowed all over the ground; clearly, it had darted down in a flash.

I felt a moment of frustration here, as I instinctively recalled that we used to see the stone door marking our return point; now we faced a staircase, which felt unfamiliar. But in the next second, I truly breathed a sigh of relief. The chubby man pushed me from behind, and we rushed in without caring about any traps or mechanisms. If we were to die, so be it; even if only one of us remained, we would take that thing down to relieve our pent-up frustrations!

Almost ten sections merged into one, we dashed down like kangaroos. However, running down the stairs was inevitably slower than running on flat ground, and that corpse didn’t slow down at all, disappearing into the darkness below the stairs in almost an instant. I knew I had no hope of catching up, but I couldn’t stop myself. When I tried to halt, my left foot tripped over my right, and I tumbled down several times, ending up at the bottom of the stone steps, my head bleeding and my flashlight flying away.

I cursed under my breath and was just about to get up when the fat guy stumbled down from above and rolled right over me. Fortunately, it wasn’t my first time, so I let out a muffled grunt and quickly scrambled to my feet to avoid further trouble. However, halfway up, something snagged my pants, causing me to fall again, and my butt stung painfully.

I scrambled to get up, falling several times in the process, only to realize I had been caught by something. Meanwhile, the fat guy managed to get up, shined his flashlight in my direction, and suddenly let out a sound of surprise.

With the light from his flashlight, I saw what had snagged my pants: behind me was a row of barbed wire fences made of concrete, spanning the entire tomb chamber. Then, I heard gunshots coming from one side, and they were very dense, unlike the sound that could come from just the fat guy and Shunzi’s two guns.

As I got up, I noticed a beam of light coming from one side, but it wasn’t very strong. Just as I was about to step out, Panzi and the fat guy, who had been following me, caught up.

I wondered why they were running so slowly. The fat guy explained that Shunzi had gone back the way we came when they reached the intersection; his father had also found a lot of gold and didn’t want to take any more risks with us. He said he would wait for us in the snow-capped mountains for a week, and if we didn’t come out by then, he would go back on his own.

I cursed that ungrateful guy in my heart, but he had already endured so much hardship with us. At that moment, the fat guy also heard the gunshots and became alert.

We shone our flashlights around and discovered that at the end of the stairs on the other side of the tomb passage was a platform, with several long corridors outside. This meant that it was an entrance to a huge two-level tomb chamber, but there was no ceiling between the two levels; only a few suspended corridors allowed a direct view of the lower level.

This was called a “Sky Corridor.” It looked intricately carved with dragons and phoenixes but was actually functional, serving as a mechanism to suspend coffins in the massive tomb. It seemed that directly below the Sky Corridor was likely a coffin chamber, from which the dense gunfire was emanating, and outside, flashlight beams flickered everywhere.

We were puzzled about what was happening. Could it be that the corpse had jumped down earlier, causing this chaos? With so many shots being fired, even if the elephant had fallen, how could they miss a single corpse?

Three people lined up and went to the balcony. The corridor outside was very narrow, and we carefully climbed up. Looking down, we discovered a huge circular tomb chamber, measuring at least five to six hundred square meters. To my surprise, An Ning’s team was right below us. Dozens of cold fireworks were thrown around, illuminating the entire tomb chamber. They were gathered in a circle, continuously shooting at something around them, but I couldn’t see clearly what it was. Upon closer inspection, I realized they were all thick centipedes, filling the tomb chamber densely, almost like an ocean surrounding An Ning and her team in the middle.

In the center of the tomb chamber, there was an inverted pyramid-shaped coffin pit, with eight massive black coffins surrounding a translucent giant jade coffin in the middle. The jade coffin had already been opened, and under the illumination of the cold fireworks below, it shimmered with colorful light, reflecting an eerie glow. I saw that the centipedes seemed to be crawling out from this coffin in an endless stream.

A chill ran down my spine as I thought, could this be the Nine Dragons Carrying the Corpse Coffin mentioned in the records of the Snake-Browed Copper Fish? The treasure chest that held the remains of the King of Ten Thousand Slaves? It seemed that this group of amateurs had triggered some mechanism or had simply stepped on a centipede.

At this moment, there was no time to think about that. The dozen or so people below were already exhausted from dealing with the situation, but the centipedes surged up like a tide, making their efforts futile. Killing one only made the others more frenzied.

“Should we help them?” the fat guy asked me.

Panzi shook his head, “Let them die a few more.”

The fat guy laughed, “You might as well shoot them directly; they’d die faster.”

I felt conflicted. It wasn’t really a question of whether to help or not; it was about what would happen to us if we did. An Ning had already tried to kill us in the underwater tomb; we had narrowly escaped by luck, and I had saved her before, but that didn’t guarantee she would show us any mercy. However, if I didn’t help, watching so many people die right before our eyes would leave me with guilt for a lifetime.

Moreover, there was the question of whether we could even save them. Shooting from above wouldn’t help; the only way to rescue them was to pull them up with ropes. But they were barely managing to defend themselves with all their firepower, and if we lowered a rope, there would definitely be casualties below.

Just as I was hesitating, I suddenly saw a foreigner in An Ning’s team carrying someone who looked very familiar. I immediately tapped Panzi and pointed it out to him. As soon as he saw it, he exclaimed, “That’s Uncle Three!”

“Are you sure?” I looked too, and while it resembled him, I wasn’t certain. But Panzi’s words made me feel more convinced, so I took a few steps closer to get a better look.

Unexpectedly, after just one step, I felt something was off under my feet. Looking down, I saw that the corpse I had just escaped from was dangling beneath the stone corridor. I had unwittingly walked right over it, and its dried-up hand suddenly grabbed my foot and pulled me down forcefully.

I was furious, thinking that it must have held a grudge and was always causing us trouble. But standing on the stone corridor, my balance was poor, and as it pulled me, I lost my footing and fell onto the corridor.

Panzi and Fatty raised their guns at the same time. This guy really doesn’t learn his lesson; at such a close distance, his head was instantly blown apart, leaving only half of it. Then, the claws gripping the lower part of the corridor let go, and the entire corpse fell into the space below, dragging my foot along with it.

When such a heavy thing yanked me, I let out a scream and fell down as well. The corpse landed first among Aning and the others, who were all focused on the centipede beside them. They didn’t pay any attention to what was happening above, and immediately, they were terrified, scattering and falling all over the place. Then I fell down from the air too.

Later, Fatty said that my fall looked like I had jumped down voluntarily. But I truly had no choice but to fall down. I landed hard on the already smashed head of the corpse, and black blood splattered everywhere.

Fortunately, the stone corridor wasn’t too high; otherwise, if I had fallen down like that, I would definitely have twisted my ankle. However, after I fell, I only staggered slightly before regaining my balance. Looking around, I immediately noticed that the centipedes were fleeing in all directions as if they had seen a ghost. In an instant, the swarm of centipedes retreated like a tide, and soon the ground was left with only the bodies of the centipedes.

I was so scared that it took me a long time to come to my senses, not understanding what had just happened. When I looked up, I saw that everyone was staring at me, their faces filled with horror, as if they had seen some kind of monster.