“Yo, my little grandpa, don’t scare me. I’m big, and I’m most afraid of things I can’t figure out. You say it’s just a bunch of horse thieves; I, Da Kui, don’t take them seriously. But this thing, I don’t know what it is, and look, my legs are already weak.”

I thought to myself, staying here isn’t a solution, and I had a very uncomfortable premonition that kept coming and going. I didn’t know if it was the oppressive atmosphere of the cave affecting my mind or what. So I said, “No matter what it is, the most important thing now is to get out quickly. Right now, we’re going against the current; it should be faster to go back. I think we’ve been in this cave for less than ten minutes, so getting out shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Right, right, what the Third Young Master said is right.” Da Kui quickly agreed, “Third Master, just say the word. At worst, after we get out, we’ll cross the mountain. I’ll carry everything; I’m strong. Even if we delay a day or two, it won’t make much difference, right? We can dig the cave a bit faster to make up for it!”

The Third Master looked at the oil bottle and asked, “Little brother, what do you think?”

The oil bottle replied calmly, “If we want to get out now, it’s probably already too late. Those two people who let us in must be very confident that we can’t get out.”

“Not going out? Are we just going to wait here until we die?” Panzi looked at him. The oil bottle glanced at him and turned his head away to rest his eyes. Panzi was left in the lurch and could only say to the Third Uncle, “I think this way: we absolutely cannot go forward. Look at Da Kui; he’ll be scared to death. We should go back. The way we came in isn’t complicated; maybe we can get out. If we really encounter some strange tricks, we’ll think of a way!”

“That’s the only way,” the Third Uncle nodded and said to Panzi, “Light up a mining lamp in both directions. You pack up those hunting rifles; Da Kui and I will use them to pole the boat. Panzi and the big nephew will keep an eye on the back, and little brother, you’ll help me find the way.” We all agreed. Panzi took out another mining lamp and shone it behind us. When the light hit the bull on the second boat, it let out a cry, and Panzi cursed, “Third Master, we need to drive that bull into the water; otherwise, we can’t pole the boat!”

Since the mining lamp had been directed forward earlier, we hadn’t noticed that we had forgotten about the boat we were towing behind us. Now seeing it, we couldn’t help but be startled. It seemed that those two old thieves had really thought this through. The height of the cave was such that the bull couldn’t even stand up. Not to mention driving the bull into the water, with the gear and the bull, the water level was already very high. If we got on top of it, not only would we be unable to pole the boat, but it might also sink. In this way, the boat we were towing behind us acted like a cork, blocking our way.

At that moment, I vaguely heard strange sounds coming from the depths of the cave, and they were clearly much closer than the last time. The sound was like the whispering of countless little ghosts, making everyone extremely uncomfortable. Everyone fell silent, and the atmosphere became eerily tense. Suddenly, all my attention was drawn to this sound. I tried several times to pull my mind away, but I was immediately drawn back in. My heart sank; something was off about this sound! Although I was aware of it, I couldn’t snap out of it, and my mind was filled with that sound. Just then, I didn’t know who kicked me hard, and I lost my balance and fell into the water.

Immediately, the sounds in my head vanished. Almost simultaneously, I saw Panzi fall in as well. Then came Third Uncle and Da Kui, and finally, the dull oil bottle with a mining lamp jumped down too. In the water, the sound became much more muffled. We were not much affected, but seeing things with the naked eye underwater was very blurry. I squinted and could only see a rough outline. The dull oil bottle pointed to something underwater, then shone the lamp; the water wasn’t very deep, and I could see a layer of white sand at the bottom. He swept the area and found no plants or fish, etc. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and poked my head out of the water for a gasp. Just as I shook the water off my eyes, I suddenly saw a bloody face hanging down from above, with two eyes staring intensely at me.

I stared at him, and he stared back at me. I recognized him as the middle-aged man who had been rowing the boat for us. When I looked up, I found that he only had his upper body left. A large black worm on the cave ceiling was gnawing at his intestines, occasionally shaking itself. I was instantly terrified; wasn’t this just a gigantic, horrifying corpse bug? My God, how many dead bodies must it have consumed to grow this big?!

At that moment, Panzi’s head also emerged from the other side. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as lucky as I was; before he could figure out what was happening, the worm let out a screech and flung the corpse directly onto his head, raising a pair of large pincers that “snapped” into his scalp.

Panzi was quite a character; in such a situation, I saw him flip his left hand, and I didn’t know when he had already drawn a military knife. He directly jabbed the knife under the worm’s pincers, effectively digging one of them out. If it were me, after being hit by that giant worm, I would probably have gone to report to the King of Hell. The worm let out a miserable scream, and with Panzi’s forceful punch, the other pincer was pushed away. This whole series of events happened in the blink of an eye. Panzi didn’t even see me; he just pressed that worm onto my face.

I cursed inwardly; this Panzi was really inconsiderate. He usually said how he would protect me, but now that something was happening, he directly threw this deadly thing onto my face. You say you have a military knife, but I only have my hands—this was the end for me. The worm was indeed ungracious, directly using its sharp claws to slice off a piece of skin from my face. I gritted my teeth, trying to shake it off, but I didn’t expect its claws to have barbs that firmly hooked onto my clothes, with several even digging into my flesh, causing tears to stream down from the pain.

At that moment, the Mysterious Oil Bottle surfaced. Seeing that I was about to collapse, he hurried over and quickly inserted two fingers into the back of the worm. With a forceful tug, he pulled out something that looked like a white, hollow pasta. Poor worm, which had just been in the upper hand, was done for in less than a second. I tossed the worm’s corpse onto the boat, feeling as if I had just woken from a dream.

Big Kui gave a thumbs-up to the Mysterious Oil Bottle, saying, “Little brother, I, Big Kui, admire you. You managed to pull out the intestines of such a big worm. I can’t argue with that!”

“Come on,” Panzi, who had two bloody holes in his head but was lucky that the wounds weren’t too big, said while tearing off a piece of cloth, “Look at your knowledge; this is called the central nervous system. This guy managed to paralyze the worm directly!”

“Are you saying this worm isn’t dead yet?” Big Kui, with one foot already on the boat, put it back into the water when he heard that.

The Mysterious Oil Bottle flipped over onto the boat and kicked the worm aside. “We can’t kill it yet; we need it to help us get out of this corpse hole.”

“Do you think the sound we heard earlier came from this worm?” Uncle Three asked him. He had just heard the worm make a few sounds, but it didn’t seem like it.

The Mysterious Oil Bottle turned the worm over, and we saw that on its tail was a fist-sized hexagonal copper bell, sealed tight. We didn’t know when it had been planted there, but it was covered in a thick layer of green patina. Each of the bell’s six sides was inscribed with dense incantations. As Panzi wrapped a bandage around his wound, he kicked it lightly, and suddenly the hexagonal bell started moving on its own!

The sound it produced was the same as what we had heard earlier, but the previous sound was very ethereal, as if it were drifting from another realm. Now, this one sounded very real. It seemed that this bell was the source of that sound, but it needed to be combined with the vast echoes to have a mesmerizing effect. There must be some intricate mechanism inside this hexagonal bell, and it had endured for a thousand years without rotting, likely made of gold or silver. But how could it ring on its own?

As I pondered this, the bell began ringing even more wildly, as if a restless spirit trapped inside wanted to escape from this sealing artifact. Unfortunately, it was so small that it seemed somewhat ridiculous to me. Panzi finished bandaging his wound, doing it so skillfully as if he got injured like this every day. The bell was ringing loudly, and feeling annoyed, he tried to stomp on it. Unexpectedly, the bronze shell had aged terribly, and with a loud crack, the bell broke under his foot. A foul-smelling green liquid burst out from inside.

Uncle Three was furious and wanted to punch Panzi on the head. But then he remembered that Panzi had just had two holes poked in his head, and if he punched him again, he would probably end up like the bell, so he had to give up and switched to scolding: “You brat, can’t you keep your feet to yourself? This thing is at least a magical artifact, and you just went and ruined it with one stomp!”

“Third Uncle, how was I supposed to know this thing was so fragile?” Panzi still felt wronged. Third Uncle shook his head in anger, using his military knife to clear away the bronze fragments. Inside were numerous small bells of various sizes and shapes, all attached to a delicate hollow sphere that was covered in holes. The sphere had been crushed underfoot, revealing a large blue centipede inside, its head flattened. The green liquid was oozing out from the body of the centipede, which was as thick as a finger.

Third Uncle turned the hollow sphere over with the tip of his knife and discovered a tube that connected directly to the part linked with the massive corpse. He said, “I fear this centipede must have drilled into the corpse’s belly through this tube when it was hungry. What a bizarre symbiotic system this is; I wonder how it was conceived.”

The half-submerged corpse of the boatman floated in the water, rising and sinking. Third Uncle sighed, “This is what you call ‘self-inflicted consequences.’ They must have intended to trap us in this corpse hole, waiting for us to die before coming to collect our belongings. Who knew they would meet such an unexpected fate and end up dead at the hands of this giant corpse? They really had it coming!”

“This is what you call ‘no story without coincidence.’ It seems we are quite lucky,” I said.

Panzi shook his head and said, “That creature’s claws probably don’t have the strength to tear a person in half in such a short time. If it did, my brains would have already been scooped out. I’m telling you, there must be more than one of these things. This one likely brought the body over to eat alone after the dismemberment.”

Big Kui, who had been relaxing, couldn’t help but swallow nervously at this.

“Don’t panic. Didn’t this young man just say that we need to rely on this creature to get out of this hole? Let’s put the giant corpse at the bow of the boat and let it clear the way for us. This thing has been eating corpses its entire life, and it carries a heavy yin energy, making it a guest star for those undead creatures. In this corpse hole, they are probably the overlords. With it on our boat, we will definitely be able to get out,” Third Uncle said. “Come on, let’s not turn back; I want to see what lies ahead that could give birth to such a large worm.”

Hearing Third Uncle’s words, I found them reasonable. We had already spent quite a bit of time in this cave, and it was too oppressive to stay in a place where we couldn’t even lift our heads. We took out folding shovels from our luggage at the back and used them as boat poles, pushing against the stone walls as we moved forward.

As I paddled, I studied the cave walls and suddenly had a question, so I asked Third Uncle, “Look at these solid stone blocks. How did the ancient tomb raiders manage to dig them out? Even now, I doubt a few hundred people could excavate such a deep cave.”

Third Uncle replied, “Look how round this cave is; it must be very ancient. The ones who dug this cave were probably government officials, specifically a military team dedicated to tomb raiding. It seems that finding the burial site marked on that map may not be as easy as we thought.”

“Third Uncle, how can you be so sure the tomb is still here? Look, an entire army came and dug such a long tunnel; it’s hard to guarantee they haven’t taken everything away!” Big Kui said. “I think, by the time we get in, there might not even be a coffin board left.”

My third uncle let out a grunt and said, “If this tomb has been robbed thousands of years ago, then we have nothing to say. But you must understand that this cave is indeed marked on the map, which indicates that this robbery tunnel existed when the tomb owner was buried. The age of this robbery tunnel should be earlier than the ancient tomb we are looking for. Moreover, there must be more than one burial site in this area; who knows when this robbery tunnel was dug and which tomb it was targeting?”

“So you mean,” I could already sense a chilling implication in my third uncle’s words, “that everything we are encountering now, including the giant corpse and the age of the hexagonal bronze wind chime, could potentially predate the Warring States period?”

My uncle shook his head. “What concerns me more is why our tomb owner would choose to set their tomb in a location surrounded by already robbed burial sites. Isn’t that a serious violation of feng shui?”

Suddenly, the oil lamp in the hand of the silent man signaled us to be quiet and pointed ahead. We saw a ball of green phosphorescence deep within the cave, where the miner’s light could not reach. My uncle sighed, “We’ve reached the corpse accumulation site!”