1TWITF[C Chapter 84

Chapter 84

Lin Chu was still confronting An Ru.

An Ru repeated again, “I am An Xingyu’s father, An Xingyu is my son.”

Lin Chu was, of course, perfectly aware, but… the mission was absolutely not to be revealed.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Heh…” An Ru let out a hoarse, mocking laugh from his throat. “No, no, no, I know you. You’re very clever and understand what I’m saying.” He slowly took out a gun from his pocket, his expression both manic and calm. “I advise you not to play tricks.”

Lin Chu revealed a look of shock and anger. “Dare you?”

The muzzle of the gun was revealed a little, then retracted, but An Ru’s hand remained in his pocket, revealing its shape.

“I’m afraid I have to ask Miss Lin to come with me.”

Since his wife had also left him, An Ru had been numbing himself with alcohol and cigarettes day and night when he wasn’t busy, his voice becoming as rough and grating as sandpaper, but he didn’t care at all. “Miss Lin, a father who has lost his child is capable of anything.”

Lin Chu’s body stiffened slightly, and she had to take her left hand out of her pocket.

She picked up the books piled on the table and walked step by step towards the bookshelf.

To return the books to their original places, she inevitably needed to observe the bookshelf. With her extraordinary memory, Lin Chu scanned it and keenly noticed some anomalies.

Why… were some of the books out of order?

“Please hurry up.”

Lin Chu said, “Okay.”

The bookshelves were divided into functional areas and then sorted alphabetically. When Lin Chu put the last book in her hand back in its place, her whole body tensed up.

After the last book was put in… the first characters of the books on the shelf at her eye level, when read together, sounded like – You all go to hell.

Was it a coincidence?

There was a book that should have been on the other side of the back of the bookshelf. Who put it there?

Lin Chu reached out and slowly took down that book. She wanted to put it back on the other side. But… when she pulled the book out, she saw a red eye in the gap! That eye was staring at her intently!

Lin Chu’s chest rose and fell violently several times. She said, “I didn’t, I just saw…”

Wait, what did I see?

“Nothing.” Lin Chu shook her head and put the book back. “Let’s go.”

She also noted this abnormal phenomenon. Logically speaking, she couldn’t have palpitations for no reason.

So, why did her heart suddenly beat faster? She must have seen something, but then forgotten it.

What did she see?

The place An Ru had agreed with Yu Gaoyi was a private room in a restaurant. Yu Gaoyi had arrived early, and when An Ru escorted Lin Chu into the private room, he was holding a cup of hot water, waiting quietly.

“This Miss Lin Chu is the sixth person who disappeared in the case.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Yu Gaoyi’s gaze towards Lin Chu was filled with shock and scrutiny.

Lin Chu was very calm.

An Xingyu’s disappearance could barely be considered her responsibility, but what did Yu Huan’s death have to do with her? An Ru wanted to deliberately mislead Yu Gaoyi, making him think it was related to her. Dream on.

However, it would be a bit troublesome to escape today…

She knew that she couldn’t escape suspicion, and the mission absolutely couldn’t be revealed to others.

*

The team in the cemetery didn’t notice the strangeness behind them. They were still moving forward, following the “murals” to understand the story that had happened.

Resurrection from the dead could be called a miracle!

From then on, this place became their forbidden area. Everyone no longer feared death, because they all knew that it didn’t matter if they died, every sixty years, the dead would be resurrected.

And what that “King” liked most was a jade pendant.

The murals clearly depicted the appearance of a jade pendant, like two fish connected head to tail, with hollowed-out spaces in the middle.

It was exactly the same as the jade pendant Lu Yanli had hidden.

“No one knows where he took out that jade pendant from. According to the memories of the old people at the time, there was no such thing among the burial objects.”

Looking at that jade pendant, Lu Yanli finally remembered something.

His mind was filled with a throbbing pain, and memories surged. He wanted to remember those things, but the scene was blurred. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t remember…

He subconsciously raised his hand to cover his head, enduring the needle-like pain, clenching his fingers so hard that his fingertips turned white, almost digging into his scalp, but he still endured it, not crying out.

What have I forgotten?

Jade pendant… tomb… museum…

Outsiders, strange worlds…

“I…” Yi Jun met those eyes and suddenly began to feel dazed.

“Close your eyes.” His voice was even gentler. “You are walking on a long road… When you hear a snap, open your eyes, and you can be awake…”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

With a crisp “snap,” Yi Jun, Wang Pengfei, and Jing Tao suddenly regained their senses, looking around in surprise and uncertainty.

“We just…” Yi Jun still remembered her previous hazy state. Jing Tao tugged at her sleeve, signaling her to look at the others.

The leader was still explaining. In the dim underground passage, his back looked like a flickering candle, unclear. The faces of the others were also somewhat blurred.

And the murals on the wall… Where were the murals? There were only black and cold walls, stacked with blocks of stone, which had come into contact with people again after who knew how many years.

“I heard it too. Should we go back and take a look?” Wang Pengfei asked.

Yi Jun looked at the darkness behind her and shook her head. “There’s probably no need. It’s on the mural, and he said it was the tomb owner’s personal item. Maybe this jade pendant is in the main tomb chamber. It’s no use for us to go back.”

Jing Tao thought what she said made a lot of sense, and nodded. “Besides, the lighting tools are all in their hands. If we leave rashly, there might be danger.”

Even if these archaeologists seemed abnormal now, being together could dispel the fear in their hearts to some extent.

So, they continued forward.

“But later, everything changed.”

“Our King was tired…” The leading expert’s voice gradually became erratic, and his title also changed. “He no longer wanted to be immortal. He hated the days when he could only stay in the mountains. He wanted to go outside the mountains to see, but he couldn’t leave.”

“Evil spirits walked out of the back mountain!”

“This is the price of immortality…” At this point, the narrator’s voice choked up.

“Later, the King simply fell into a deep sleep.”

“Many villagers became smart. They went to other places and married people from outside, returning once during the New Year and festivals, and calculating the time to have their wives give birth to children in other places. In this way, their children could at least live outside.”

“However, one villager leaked the secret. He attracted many thieves who coveted the treasure…”

“Those people had guns and various weapons that everyone had never seen before. Everyone went to the forbidden area for shelter as before, but they didn’t know that the King was asleep. It was useless for them to escape to the forbidden area…”

As he spoke, they passed a pile of bones.

It seemed that the pile of bones had been there for a long time. The clothes had rotted, and many had become waxy. The terrified expressions on their faces could still be vaguely seen, and they died with their eyes wide open. Some had directly turned into white bones, and their movements were obviously struggling.

It was hard to imagine what terrible things they had seen before they died, and even after many years, they could still make outsiders see their terror clearly.

Was it a deterrent? Did they want them to leave quickly?

Jing Tao also felt that it was necessary. If this continued, no one knew what these staff members would become.

In previous missions, there had been examples of people being bewitched by ghosts and gradually turning into ghosts themselves.

Lu Yanli didn’t care. After discussing with the three of them, they dispersed and tried to wake up the archaeologists.

“Wake up, wake up…”

When they got closer, they found that the bodies of the archaeologists were emitting a cold aura, as if they had been chilled by the cold wind. Yi Jun tiptoed closer to an archaeologist who was far away from the leader, pinched her hand hard, and called her to wake up in her ear.

Soon, the staff member’s eyes gradually regained clarity, and she shook her head, puzzled. “What happened to me just now?”

Yi Jun explained to her in a low voice, and she immediately reacted, with fear in her eyes.

Gradually, more and more people woke up.

Yes, no one woke him up, and even his teammates defaulted to this approach.

Everyone followed that person and walked through one tomb chamber after another.

After they passed, the doors of those tomb chambers opened slightly, and one corpse after another that had been dead for many years walked out.

They were buried here, never to see the light of day.

But now, they had been awakened.

Like the villagers who were trapped in the mountains many years ago, they were trapped in this vast underground palace.

“Did you hear anything?” one of them asked softly.

A very faint sound came from behind them.

It wasn’t an illusion. The sound behind them was getting louder and louder, and gradually approaching.

It was the sound of footsteps.

It was the sound of many, many people’s footsteps.

The archaeologist walking at the back looked back in panic, but couldn’t see anything. All she could see was darkness.

What was in the darkness…

The range of the lighting was limited, and even gradually shrinking. In the end, everyone squeezed together and walked forward, not wanting to fall into the dark area.

The leader was still talking. He was walking at the very front, and no one had the courage to run in front of him to find out what was going on. They could only follow his back all the way forward.

“… This group of grave robbers killed many, many villagers and stole the treasures. They were also cursed. Hahahaha, retribution… They must also bear the curse of the villagers, and they will never be able to leave…”

“They bore the curse of the original villagers and also stole their immortality. They married the remaining women and had their children bury the bodies of their dead accomplices in the forbidden area as well. The next generation had a common bloodline, so they could enter. However, the guardian immortals they invited could not set foot in the forbidden area and could only wait… wait until the King completely disappeared, and they could take away all the treasures…”

Who exactly was the dead soul attached to the leader? Why would he say everything?

Lu Yanli had no way of knowing.

Clenching the two jade pendants wrapped together in his pocket, Lu Yanli knew that some of his doubts had not been resolved.

Just now, he said it was a jade pendant, and it had always been kept close to the “King”. So, where did the second one come from?

Also, since it had always been kept close to the body, it must have been buried with the body after death. In the last mission, why did the villagers of Shangxian Village get it? Did they enter the main tomb chamber?

Who took the jade pendant?

The voice in front gradually lowered, and the person walking in the front gradually slowed down.

His story was coming to an end.

The light of the spotlights used for lighting also slowly dimmed, and the remaining power tried to maintain a little light, so that they would not fall into complete darkness.

At this time, the ignored sounds behind them finally became dense.

It was a burst of footsteps, not only humans, but also various animals.

They even heard the sound of wheels rolling over the stone slabs, making a crisp sound of bronze hitting each other.

Something was chasing them!

“Ah–”

Even though the archaeologists were knowledgeable, they had never seen such a scene. The hundreds of black and white eyes were squeezed together, blinking.

“Run!”

The spotlights suddenly became incomparably dazzling, allowing them to see clearly what was behind them.

That was… all kinds of mutated corpses.

Simple waxification was already rare. Many corpses were separated, with four hands holding their heads and following slowly. Some were obviously human skeletons, but a long tailbone still extended from behind the spine; some had their lower leg bones joined together into a very long white bone, like the legendary half-snake people…

“Is this the curse they suffered? How could this be?”

“Where did these bones come from? We obviously didn’t open any tomb chambers just now.”

Yi Jun and the others were also caught in the fleeing crowd and asked loudly, “Where are we running now? Are we going to the main tomb chamber?”

“I don’t know! Let’s run first, and then we’ll talk about safety.” In the crowd, it was unknown which voice answered her.

Lu Yanli also followed and ran. In just that instant, he clearly heard a cold hissing sound like a snake spitting out its tongue. Immediately after, a figure behind him seemed to have been entangled around the waist by something and dragged back forcefully. That person didn’t even make a sound before completely disappearing.

The person running at the end glanced out of the corner of his eye and was immediately scared out of his wits, and continued to run forward desperately.

Not far behind him, the eyes densely distributed on a pile of soft flesh like frog eggs were blinking, advancing like flowing water.

They absolutely did not want to become like this!

“Let’s still try to find a way to go to the main tomb chamber now? Captain Cen has already encountered the curse, maybe we will also encounter the curse. Anyway, we are all going to die, so we might as well go to the main tomb chamber and break through!”

The person now running at the very front responded loudly: “Do you think I don’t want to? I don’t know in which direction the main tomb chamber is. There is only one road here, so let’s run first.”

They all stopped, gathering in front of the surface platform, a staircase only wide enough for one person to pass extended down to the entrance of the passage.

“There’s something strange below.”

Saying that, the spotlight moved forward, and they saw the appearance of the ground plaza clearly.

Unlike the smooth and solid stone brick road outside, the surface of the plaza was raised, showing one terrifying bas-relief after another.

Those bas-reliefs looked like they were carving scenes of the eighteen levels of hell, rivers surrounding the mountains, and one human after another with miserable deaths. Even in the dimness, one could see the lifelike bas-reliefs, as if one could still hear their wails.

“Don’t worry about the strangeness on the plaza, let’s escape quickly.”

“That’s right! At least there’s nothing chasing us in front, right?”

The urging behind them was severe. Immediately after, there was a scream.

A female archaeologist walking at the end was touched by the pile of flesh covered with eyes. Immediately after, her whole body melted and softened little by little. The people around wanted to save her, but they couldn’t. One of them wanted to drag her out, but there was another scream. He also suffered the unknown curse, and all the bones in his body seemed to be drawn out, softening little by little.

In the end, they turned into the same soft flesh. The newly born soft flesh gathered with the original, and bubbles bulged one after another on the pink epidermis.

The bubbles bulged more and more severely, and burst with a “pop,” turning into one eye after another, blinking and looking at the humans in front.

So, the archaeologist walking at the front had to step on the stairs and walk down.

Unexpectedly, nothing happened.

No, he was not completely pulled in. He was pulled in halfway, and his body was completely petrified, and the terrified expression on his face could still be vaguely seen.

He also became a part of the bas-relief.

“Teacher Zhou, don’t say that!”

“Go quickly.” Teacher Zhou just smiled and pushed her student forward. Her student grabbed the latter and moved forward, and just as she reached the staircase entrance, she found that the hand she was holding suddenly became empty.

Turning back, the latter had been dragged into the passage that had returned to darkness.

The two sides of the passage were gradually shrinking towards the middle.

They had no way back.

There were only about ten archaeologists left now, plus the four outsiders who had suddenly broken in, there were only nearly twenty people.

The tragic spirit in her words infected the others, and the team members all had tears in their eyes, and agreed.

“For our research!”

“Yes, for research!”

Even though several mission takers had seen life and death, they couldn’t help but be infected by their spirit. Wang Pengfei said, “Although we are not archaeologists, as long as we can get out, we will definitely bring the map out.”

They all concealed the fact that they could leave as long as they completed the mission.

It was good to give these archaeologists some hope.

“Okay, thank you.” one of them said.

Lu Yanli did not speak.

He had seen too many things, outsiders entering and risking their lives for their relatives and friends, willing to sacrifice for the great righteousness in their hearts, he had witnessed both the most beautiful and the ugliest side of humanity. But after death, they all turned into strange appearances.

Yi Jun also agreed, she carefully probed: “Just now, Captain Cen said that the King was wearing a jade pendant, and it is also on the mural. Could that thing be the key?”

“Maybe. Since it is carried close to the body, it may be buried with it. When we enter the main tomb chamber, maybe we can solve the mystery.”

The three mission takers couldn’t help but be excited.

But, just as they were happy, a team member walking in front of Yi Jun didn’t pay attention to his feet and stepped into the air.

Half of his foot fell outside the road!

The bas-reliefs surged, and the bas-relief hand closest to him held a crossbow, and the fingertip was already on the mechanism. With a release of the hand, a sharp arrow was fired. Piercing through his throat, he flew out with his whole body, landing in the center of the square.

One pale hand after another grabbed him, and after a while, there was one more person on the bas-relief on the ground. He stretched out his hand and grabbed the arrow that had pierced through his throat, his expression was painful.

“Everyone be careful! Don’t step out!”

The first person had already reached the end of the passage, carefully supported his body, jumped up, and landed on the ground.

Only when standing close to the tomb chamber can one realize how tall it is.

At the moment he stood on it, the two sides of the ground plaza were like open floodgates, and blood poured out.

“Quick! The ones in front, hurry up!”

“Ah–”

A girl walking at the back got blood on her feet, and she immediately screamed in pain.

“I can’t walk! You guys go quickly!”

I don’t know what was in the blood, but she was stiffened in place, and her face was twisted in pain. But she still remembered her mission, took off her backpack, threw it hard to the shore, and shouted loudly: “There are blank scrolls and tools inside!”

As soon as the voice fell, her whole body fell down.