The things that the short guy Feng told me should be considered a turning point for why their company got involved in the restructuring of the Jude Company. Everything happened at a smuggling dock in Germany. At that time, their company had a batch of underground goods entering the customs through this channel, and he, as a liquidator, went to the site to take inventory.

This batch of goods was packed in twenty-four boxes, and when he opened them, he discovered that they contained twenty-four stone coffins. The seller of the goods was Jude’s company, and these items were used as collateral assets in the trade. In simpler terms, Jude’s company had borrowed four scientific research units from this German company, but then an accident occurred, and they could not pay the fees, so they used these ancient coffins as collateral.

This incident likely occurred on the eve of Jude Company’s bankruptcy, when the company was insolvent. When Feng and his team opened the coffins, the seams showed no signs of having been opened before, which pleased him greatly. As for what was inside and whether it could be used to settle debts, it was like gambling with stones; it all depended on luck.

The coffins were selected by experts from their company based in China, and the provenance and fundamentals should not have been problematic. So they found someone to open them. The first few coffins were fine, but by the sixteenth coffin, everyone had become complacent. As they opened it halfway, they discovered it was lined with a layer of bronze, but there was nothing inside.

They thought it was an empty coffin, but just as they were about to climb inside to search carefully, something emerged from within. The situation was exactly the same as before; the object was still wrapped in bronze and suddenly took shape in the air.

The consequences need not be elaborated. Feng asserted that this was definitely a deliberate design by Jude’s side; they had never encountered anything like this before. They later began to study the bronze lining inside the coffin and deduced many things from its patterns, which led them to prepare for the acquisition of Jude’s remaining assets.

The reasons behind all this were undoubtedly very complex, and I wasn’t particularly interested in hearing them at the moment, but I did pick up on some of the underlying reasons from Feng’s words. I asked him, “So, you came here with information, knowing you might encounter something like this?”

“Not entirely. We filled in the information along the way and corrected many of our previous assumptions. Of course, when I saw the image of the King of Hell riding a corpse, I knew we might encounter something.”

The fat guy pulled all the pins from the grenades and tried to see if he could strap them to his waist for easier handling. He asked Feng, “By the way, if that’s the case, did you manage to take down that thing you encountered?”

Feng nodded, “As long as it can be forced out of the bronze area, that thing will be harmed.”

The fat guy looked at the grenades and said, “Being able to harm it doesn’t necessarily mean we can kill it. Let’s not make taking it down our goal just yet; let’s see if we can lure it out first.”

I asked, “What do we use to lure it? Are we supposed to challenge it at the door? Besides, it was just about to come out earlier, but then it shrank back. Does it know it can’t come out of that opening?”

The fat man said, “Do you remember what they said about the young man before? The young man encountered a woman whose hands and feet had been broken in the lama temple. They said they would use this woman for sacrifice. Although I don’t know the specific purpose of the Kham people, it’s obvious that they are using such a woman as bait.”

After the fat man finished speaking, he glanced at Zhang Haixing. I said, “This isn’t right; after all, it’s a human life.”

The fat man replied, “There’s always a way to have the best of both worlds.” He made a gesture, “We don’t have time to waste here. I’ll deal with Zhang Haixing the same way I deal with that thing. You all come and help.”

In the young man’s experience at the time, the lama would use incense mixed with human bones to smoke the woman, and the woman’s joints would be broken. Clearly, we couldn’t do such things to Zhang Haixing, but we couldn’t just fool the ‘King of Hell’ inside.

The fat man tied Zhang Haixing’s joints tightly with her clothing, pressing her forearms against her arms, binding them so she couldn’t straighten her arms, and did the same with her legs. Then he placed burnt black mud around her, and afterward, he began to dig a trap around her.

Indeed, it was a one-size-fits-all strategy. The fat man tied a rope around Zhang Haixing’s waist made from all the fabric we had, and we used small stones to smooth the path behind her so that in case of an emergency, we could drag her a distance.

The fat man also set up many small traps around the pit. He placed grenades under the largest stones surrounding the pit, then piled countless stones on top of that stone, tying the pull ring to a large enough stone and gently placing it in the center of the trap.

Fortunately, there was a lot of that black mud around, and we completed all our work with enough mud left for lighting.

By this time, it had been at least several hours since we escaped from the cave, and we were all exhausted. After resting for a while, the fat man patted me and said, “Let’s go and challenge it.”

I thought for a moment and suddenly pulled him back, saying, “Wait a minute, we still have one thing left to do.”

The fat man asked, “What thing?”

I replied, “The lama uses smoke from a charcoal stove containing corpses to smoke the woman; there must be a purpose behind it. The smell of the corpse is crucial. Didn’t the picture say the King of Hell rides a corpse? If the old lady is covered in GUCCI perfume, can that thing come out? And how do you challenge it? Does it understand?”

“The smell of a corpse? Damn, you should have mentioned it earlier. There are bones everywhere. If I had known, I would have brought a few down. Now we’re all alive—what should we do?”

“Think carefully. The young man said it’s the smell of a dried corpse. What are the main components of a dried corpse? Fat, skin, hair, bones.” I looked at the fat man, “Think about it.”

“Teeth and hair, and skin can be obtained.” The short man Feng said from behind us, “As for fat, human feces contain oil, and the fatter a person is, the more abundant it is.”

The fat man rubbed his belly, “But I’ve been hungry for a long time; I can’t just squeeze it out.”

“You have to trust your intestines,” I said to the fat man, “You can’t clean out something like shit.”

The fat guy sighed and said, “Don’t expect me alone; do thin people have no stomachs? You go there, you go there, I’ll go there, and we’ll deliver in half an hour. Let’s see who contributes more; it might not be me.”

I won’t elaborate on the process, but I was thinking at the time that if I ever ran into the little brother or little flower again, I could boast in front of them: “I once held it in right in front of the bronze door.”

We appeared holding stones, then exchanged a glance of dismay before piling everything next to Zhang Haixing.

I don’t know if it was the time or the smell that woke Zhang Haixing up, but she turned her head and saw an astonishing scene. She didn’t say anything, but I knew she must have been devastated upon seeing those lumps.

“Alright, it will take a while for them to dry. Now let’s deal with our hair and skin.”

We took turns cutting each other’s hair and then started trimming our nails. After not having trimmed them for a while, cutting my nails was quite easy. While doing it, I felt like a medieval witch preparing herbs in front of a cauldron.

In the end, only the bones were left. The fat guy sighed, and I said, “Don’t worry, I’m fair; each person gets one tooth.”

The fat guy moved his jaw, then dug in with his hand and pulled one out, tossing it into his own waste, saying to me, “I’m not under pressure; this one was about to fall out anyway, it got knocked loose when that girl kicked it on the ground.”

The short guy Feng did the same, moving his jaw, but instead of using his hand, he licked one out with his tongue and tossed it in, saying to me, “It was also her doing.”

I thought to myself: These two idiots are pretty impressive. I licked my own teeth and found them all as hard as iron, thinking Zhang Haixing treated me quite well.

I picked up a stone and, lost in thought, almost instinctively smashed it against my own chin.

A wave of intense pain hit me, an unexpected agony that made me immediately drop the stone and cover my chin. My whole chin went numb, and when I slowly recovered and felt around with my teeth, I found they were still firmly in place.

The short guy Feng and the fat guy looked at me in silence. I said, “Two should be enough, and I contributed the most in terms of hair.”

“This isn’t business,” the fat guy replied, then picked up a larger stone and handed it to me.

I took the big stone, weighed it in my hand, and thought that if I dropped it, my chin would probably come off completely. My mind raced, trying to think of other methods, when the short guy Feng said to me, “Forget it.” He then spat out another tooth, “It fell out on its own; let’s just say it’s for you.”

I felt relieved and immediately went over to thank him with a handshake, thinking: This guy must have been beaten badly by Zhang Haixing.

Once we had everything sorted out, we started sending these things into the flames we had lit. Soon, a strange smell began to waft out. We fanned the flames vigorously, directing the smell towards the bronze door. Zhang Haixing asked, “What are you guys doing?”

“You’ll find out soon,” the fat guy replied, as we stared intently at the opening of the bronze door, thinking to ourselves: Come on, come on. We fanned for over ten minutes with no response, and the fat guy shook his head, “This is useless; your method is just stupid.”

His hair was very messy and looked quite unattractive. I felt quite irritated and was about to curse a few words when I noticed a few drops of water falling onto the胖子’s head. He felt it too, and we immediately looked up to see countless droplets of liquid starting to fall from the darkness above us. It seemed like it was beginning to rain.