Vollständiges Metamorphose-Handbuch

Kapitel 22

"What's so strange about it?" I asked back. In fact, I was also incredibly shocked. Could it be that this long iron chain was meant to lock up this bronze human figure? But that doesn't make sense! Generally speaking, if it's meant to be buried with the deceased, and the bronze figure is made in the shape of a warrior, the original intention is to guard the tomb owner. Why would it be locked up with an iron chain?

The young master shook his head and said, "Old Xu, how much do you think this thing would be worth if we sold it?"

I scoffed at his words and sneered, "Young master, you might not even be able to save your own life right now. Whether we'll ever see the light of day again is uncertain, yet you're still thinking about making a fortune? Besides, once this bronze figurine is unearthed, it'll probably be as famous as the Four-Sheep Bronze Zun. If you want to sell it, hehe, just wait to eat free government food."

The girl sneered, "If you want to sell this thing, it's probably not as simple as just eating free government food."

I knew the maid was right, so I nodded without saying a word. Looking at the severely corroded scales on the servant's body, an idea struck me, and I instructed the young master, "You two keep an eye on things up here, I'm going to dive down and take a look." As I spoke, I didn't care whether they agreed or not, and holding the maid's waterproof flashlight, I dived into the water.

The groundwater was incredibly murky, like the rolling Yellow River, carrying the stench of rotting sand. I held my breath and dived down. It wasn't very deep, only about two meters, below which lay the putrid sand. I shone my flashlight around underwater; it was much darker than the surface. I touched the bronze human figure as I slowly descended. Sure enough, just as I expected, the upper half of the figure above the water was completely human-like, but the underwater part was rather terrifying—it was a tangled mess of snake tails.

I followed the snake's tail and found that the base was coiled in a circle, but hollow in the middle, as if something had originally been coiled there. Now, due to the passage of time, that thing was gone. I don't know if it was never put in at the beginning, or if the snake crawled away later.

Thinking about it, it makes sense. Even the young master and I, in such dire straits, were tempted by the bronze figurines, let alone others? If we can't take the big items, we'll naturally steal the smaller ones.

I searched the snake's tail for a while longer, still finding nothing. Just as I was about to climb out, my feet stirred up the rotting yellow sand at the bottom of the water, revealing a round, white object. Curious, I swam over, and upon closer inspection, I was terrified.

That white, round object was actually half a skull. An empty eye stared at me, and half of its teeth were exposed, like the fangs of a canine—it was indescribably unsettling. The concepts of the living and the dead are completely different, especially the dead who have already turned into skeletons.

I had held my breath until I reached my limit, and my lungs were throbbing. I hurriedly surfaced from underwater.

"Huff, huff..." I gasped for breath, wiping the water droplets from my face. Just as I was about to tell the maid and young master about my underwater discovery, I looked up and saw that everything around me was pitch black; there was no sign of them anywhere.

"Girl...Young Master..." I panicked. There was nowhere to hide in this dark passageway. Where had the young master and girl gone? Could it be that the girl had an upset stomach again? I thought to myself as I looked around frantically, but I still couldn't find them.

My vest, already soaked through, felt like it was about to burst into flames. My body temperature rose rapidly, but my heart grew colder and colder. In this dark, enclosed space, I was all alone. To live was perhaps more painful than to die. Fear surged within me, suffocating me so much that I could hardly breathe.

"Girl! Stop playing around, come out now!" I felt my voice trembling, trembling with the urge to cry. But in the dark tunnel, only my echo reverberated, "Come e e out..."

I stood there in the water, staring blankly to the side. The bronze statue's empty, lifeless eyes swept coldly over me, as if it were alive…

I don't know how much time has passed. No, in this silent, dark underground passage, I feel as if time has stopped, as if everything has come to an end. There was no beginning, and no end.

Suddenly, a loud sound rang out, startling me so much that I almost jumped out of my skin. In fact, if I hadn't been in the water, I probably would have jumped up already. I blankly looked up towards the source of the sound and saw the massive bronze figure slowly moving to one side, causing the connecting iron chains to rattle.

Behind the bronze figure, a dark, tall hole, more than a person high, appeared, from which a ray of light shone. Then, half of the girl's pretty face was revealed.

"Brother Xu..." The girl jumped out of the cave. I felt like I was dreaming, having a terrifying and thrilling dream. I looked at the girl in disbelief, and behind her, the young master appeared. Both of them were holding ordinary flashlights, and the two beams of dim yellow light made the dark tunnel seem much brighter.

I shook my head vigorously, rubbed my eyes hard, and twisted my thigh at the same time. The intense pain slowly awakened my nerves, which had been on the verge of exhaustion and madness.

"Old Xu, are you alright?" The young master had already walked up to me, waved his hand in front of me, and said, "Don't scare me, will you?"

Beside him, the girl asked anxiously, "Brother Xu, are you alright?"

The girl is alright! The young master is alright too! It took me about a minute to recover. I immediately hugged the girl and the young master tightly and yelled, "You two bastards, you scared me to death!"

The young master and the maid were both taken aback. After a moment, the young master said, "Old Xu, don't mistake this cheesy talk for something funny. You think we were trying to scare you? Just now, after you dived into the water, for some reason, this bronze figure moved silently, almost scaring the maid to death. After the bronze figure completely moved away, a dark hole was revealed. The maid said she wanted to go and take a look. As a result, we had just climbed over when we found that another bronze figure was blocking the hole. The maid and I racked our brains to find the mechanism and reopened the hole."

The girl nodded hurriedly, saying that this bronze human figure was similar to the bird-shaped vessel from before, both controlled by double-sided mechanisms; otherwise, it probably wouldn't have been able to be opened. I was filled with suspicion and immediately told the two of them about my underwater discovery.

The young master said, "It's normal to find skeletons underwater. After all, this is a large burial site—the practice of using living people as funerary sacrifices seems to have always existed, regardless of the dynasty. Besides, this might be a burial pit." The girl showed no interest in the skeletons underwater, only asking me, "Is this bronze human figure really a human-faced snake?"

I was also curious. Why was a perfectly good bronze human figure made to look like a monster? Or did it have some specific meaning? In legends, the ancestor of humankind, the goddess Nuwa, had a human face and a snake's body. But Nuwa was a woman. If this bronze human figure was modeled after the legendary Nuwa, it should have been made in the form of a woman. But this is clearly a man?

I shared my thoughts, and the girl burst out laughing, saying that I didn't understand history and only knew that the legendary Nuwa had a human face and a snake's body, but didn't know that the legendary Fuxi also had a human face and a snake's body.

Her words only fueled my curiosity. Fuxi is a legendary god. According to mythology, he invented the Five Elements and the Eight Trigrams. It can be said that the dawn of ancient civilization began with Fuxi. Fuxi's origins predate the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, and in the legends of every dynasty, he is a positive deity, deeply believed in by the ancients. If this bronze figurine is indeed modeled after the legendary Fuxi, it should enjoy the treatment befitting a deity.

Some earthly emperors, hoping to ascend to the celestial realm after death, often had murals of legendary immortals and other figures painted in their tombs, depicting themselves as immortals after their deaths. However, this is the first time I have ever seen an image of an immortal as a slave or prisoner, guarded by iron chains.

The girl said she wanted to dive down and take a look. The young master and I were worried, but she insisted, so we gave her our only waterproof flashlight. The young master and I stood guard beside the bronze figurine, watching as a splash appeared on the water's surface before she dove in. For some reason, I had a vague sense of unease, as if some danger was about to unfold.

Fortunately, the girl surfaced again less than thirty seconds after diving down, shaking her head repeatedly and saying, "It's really strange, I can't tell what era this bronze figure belongs to?"

I said, "Girl, who cares about the era? Now is not the time for archaeology. If you want to do archaeology, wait until you come back and have the power to do so. Then find a way to uncover the secrets of this place and make it public. Wouldn't that be great?"

The young master also said, "Our most urgent task right now is to leave as soon as possible."

The maid shook her head, pondering without speaking. I then asked the young master what the other side of the passageway looked like? What was there? Although it was only separated by a wall, for some reason, I always felt that this place was very eerie, indescribably strange, and leaving as soon as possible was the right thing to do.

The young master said there was another large pond next door, a very spacious area. Their flashlights were too dim to see clearly, and they were busy looking for mechanisms, worried I might have trouble here, so they hadn't looked closely. However, one thing was certain: the chains extended all the way over there, and it seemed there were also bird-like figures and servants.

Seeing that the girl still had no intention of leaving, I immediately instructed the young master to keep an eye on her while I went to check on the neighbor next door. The young master nodded, and I held up my flashlight and shone it into the dark opening that had been revealed.

In the dark cave entrance, under the dim light of a flashlight, a deathly pale face peered in. I could clearly see that it was a completely unfamiliar face—a sunken nose, no eyes, but a hideous, terrifying smile on its lips. I couldn't help but scream "Ah!"

Hearing me call out like that, the maid and young master asked anxiously, "What's wrong?"

"There's someone next door!" I could clearly feel my voice trembling. How could there be someone in a place like this?

"Where is it?" The young master shone his flashlight into the dark cave entrance, but saw nothing. In less than ten seconds, the pale face had vanished, and the cave entrance returned to complete darkness, like the gates of the underworld.

"Brother Xu, perhaps you're seeing things," the girl comforted me.

Am I seeing things? No way! I wondered to myself, but said nothing, remaining on guard. The maid pondered for a moment, then said she wanted to go down and check again. I disagreed, suggesting we leave as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the young master was only interested in pleasing the maid, saying I was making a fuss over nothing, and that checking wouldn't cause any problems.

So I watched helplessly as the girl submerged into the water again, standing guard beside her without daring to move. About a minute passed, and she still hadn't resurfaced. My unease grew stronger; the eerie skull and the serpentine bronze tail underwater were inexplicably strange.

Chapter Five: Bronze Mask, Nine-Tailed Serpent

I handed the flashlight to the young master without explaining anything and dove down. In the darkness, I vaguely saw a glimmer of light ahead and, thinking it was the girl, quickly swam over. But when I got closer, I found it was the girl's waterproof flashlight lying on the rotting yellow sand, half-buried, faintly emitting light, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.

I was shocked. In this pitch-black underwater environment, unless something had happened to the girl, she would never have left the flashlight behind. You see, in this darkness, a flashlight is absolutely crucial for us.

Instinctively, I opened my mouth to call for the girl, but I forgot I was still in the water. I could only hold up my flashlight, shining it haphazardly through the mud and sand as I groped my way towards the bronze figure. The girl had been drawn to this bronze figure; if anything happened to her, it would inevitably be related to it.

I quickly touched the round snake tail of the bronze figure. But upon touching it, I was so frightened I almost fainted on the spot. It... didn't feel like bronze at all; it felt like touching a living creature. Yes, I clearly felt that I had touched a large snake.

I scrambled to the surface, took a deep breath, and saw the young master craning his neck and looking around. I hurriedly said, "Young master, something terrible has happened! The girl is in trouble..."

"What?" The young master exclaimed in alarm, "What happened to the girl?"

"The girl is missing!" I whispered, telling the young master about my underwater discovery with considerable concern. He looked at me, then at the rusty bronze figurine, and asked in a low voice, "What do we do?"

I pointed underwater, signaling for us both to go down. The young master naturally had no objections; the girl was his lifeblood now. He immediately took out his crossbow, nocked a bamboo arrow, and dove in, and I followed closely behind.

The underwater environment remained murky, and our flashlights were of little use. Moreover, without any waterproofing, our eyes were stinging from being submerged for so long. Through the blur, I could clearly see that the bronze figure's tail was indeed slowly wriggling, not due to the water flow.

The young master was right beside me, pointing with his finger and casually asking me what to do. I shook my head; finding the girl was the priority right now. As for whether the bronze servant should be resurrected, that was none of our concern.

The young master and I, emboldened, swam forward a few more moments, and could now clearly see the bronze terracotta warrior's entire tail. But what I saw terrified me; the girl was completely coiled up by the bronze terracotta warrior's enormous snake tail. The empty space I had previously seen within the coiled tail was now filled by the girl…

So that's how it is... So that's how it is...

I was so shocked I couldn't speak. So, the thing coiled around by the snake's tail wasn't a bronze artifact, but a living person? Does that mean the skeleton I saw underwater earlier was also strangled to death by a snake's tail here?

I didn't have much time to find the right answer. I clearly saw that the snake's tail was wrapped around the girl's chest, and her chest was still rising and falling in the water, which proved that she was still alive! Our most urgent task now is not to study why the snake's tail of this bronze figurine has become alive, but to rescue the girl.

If this were any other time, encountering something so bizarre and strange, I, who am not particularly brave, would probably have run away in terror. I would never provoke such a bizarre and terrifying monster if I could avoid it. But the girl is trapped in the snake's tail, and I absolutely cannot ignore it.

I gestured to the young master, signaling him not to fire the arrow rashly. I would swim over first and see if I could get the girl out. If I could pull her out, I would leave quickly.

The young master agreed, remaining fully alert and gripping the crossbow with the bamboo arrows nocked tightly in his hand. I slowly swam towards the snake's tail.

The closer I got, the clearer it became. The rust on the snake's tail seemed to have completely peeled off, and it had become much thicker, slowly wriggling. Its dark surface was covered with ugly scales. The scales looked somewhat familiar to me, and a thought struck me; I almost cried out.

The scales looked exactly like the ones on the bronze figure exposed on the water-dwelling man. How could I have dared to touch him just now? And it was slowly wriggling, tightening its grip on the girl. Time was of the essence. Without even thinking, I leaped up, taking advantage of the snake's blind tail, rushed towards the girl, grabbed her tightly, and pulled her forcefully.

No sooner had I caught the girl than the snake's tail twitched, and another lash came crashing down on me. Looking at the tail, barely thinner than a bucket, I felt a chill run down my spine. A single lash from such a tail would likely leave me severely injured, if not dead. I ducked, clinging to the girl, and dodged, but the snake's tail whirled around, as if it had eyes, and swept towards me again.

I couldn't help but groan inwardly—to dodge, I had to let go of the girl; but if I didn't, my human body couldn't withstand the snake's tail. In the brief moment of hesitation, the snake's tail swept towards my head.

I closed my eyes and muttered to myself, "It's over..."

But the instant I closed my eyes, the water beside me surged. Knowing something was amiss, I quickly opened my eyes and saw the young master gripping a bamboo arrow tightly in both hands, thrusting it fiercely into the snake's tail, splashing black liquid. The snake's tail's resurrection had both advantages and disadvantages. Originally made of bronze, it was naturally impervious to swords. However, once it transformed into a real snake tail, it was also made of flesh and blood, and thus vulnerable to harm from swords.

The snake's tail drooped limply in pain, but less than a second later, another tail shot up and lashed out at the young master and me.

At this point, I could see clearly that the one entangled the maid was a separate snake tail, while the one that attacked me earlier was another, which had submerged in the water after being injured by the young master. Now, the one attacking the young master was yet another snake tail.

Good heavens, how many snake tails does this damn bronze figure have? I'm stunned by this discovery. I was the first one to touch the water, and the bronze figure clearly only had one snake tail then. How did it grow so many now?

I panicked. Seeing the snake's tail coiling towards the young master with lightning speed, I tried to warn him, forgetting I was in the water. As soon as I opened my mouth, foul water mixed with rotting sand rushed into my lungs, nearly choking me to death.

I knew I had reached my limit, and the young master was probably in a similar situation. I immediately pulled the maid with all my might, and at the same time, I don't know where I got the strength and courage, I reached for the bamboo arrow that the young master had just handed me from my back, and stabbed it fiercely into the snake's tail.

Because of the excessive force, the bamboo arrow did pierce the snake's tail, but it couldn't withstand the force and snapped in two with a "crack." Fortunately, the snake's tail seemed to loosen slightly in pain. With all my might, I grabbed the girl and, I don't know where I got the strength, leaped out of the water and swam to the other side, panting heavily.

The girl's face was ashen, and she was breathing rapidly. I was anxious, so I pinched her philtrum hard and shook her vigorously.

"Ugh..." The girl spat out a mouthful of foul-smelling water, spraying it all over my face and head. I knew in my heart that the girl was truly blessed with good fortune; she had escaped death again and survived. I shook her while scanning the water's surface. The heart that had just settled for the girl jumped back into my throat for the young master. Because the young master hadn't come up yet.

The water was no longer calm. What had been still as a stone's throw into the tunnel was now turbulent. Especially near the bronze figures, large splashes of water were rising, indicating that the young master had made quite a commotion below. The girl coughed up a few more mouthfuls of water and finally came to her senses. Seeing me holding her, she couldn't help but start sobbing.

Worried about the young master, I immediately said fiercely, "What are you crying for?"

The girl's lips trembled when I scolded her, and she cried even harder. I gently placed her in the water and instructed her, "Hold on to the chains and wait for me. I'll go get the young master." I had saved the girl, but I couldn't let the young master be lost.

The girl wiped away her tears and quickly said, "I'll go with you!"

"No!" I roared. Ignoring the girl, I was about to dive into the water when suddenly a huge current rushed towards me. If I hadn't been holding tightly to the chain, I would have been swept away. Knowing something was wrong, I roared again, grabbed the chain, and swam towards the bronze statue.

On the surface, the bronze figurines were still ordinary bronze figurines; the parts exposed above the water were still covered in rust, showing no signs of abnormality. But at that moment, countless black snake tails surged out of the water, and simultaneously, a figure leaped out of the water like an aerial acrobat on television. The young master cried out in terror, "Old Xu, damn it..."

The young master was probably about to curse me, but the two snake tails behind him had already coiled around him, giving him no chance to speak. He thrust the bamboo arrow in his hand at the snake tails, while he moved towards us as quickly as an eel. I really didn't expect the young master to be so fast in the water.

I swam over to meet the young master. We all breathed a sigh of relief when we were about five or six meters away from the strange bronze statue. Looking at it from afar, the bronze statue's previously empty and dull eyes, I wondered if it was just my imagination, but now seemed filled with a bloodthirsty ferocity, staring intently at us, the uninvited guests.

"Damn it, that's insane!" the young master cursed, still shaken.

"What do we do now?" I asked the girl. I was puzzled. I had touched the snake's tail on the bronze human figure earlier, but touching it didn't bring it back to life. How come it came back to life the moment the girl submerged in the water? Could it be that this snake is a lustful snake, and when it sees a beautiful woman, it doesn't even care about pretending to be dead?

The girl shook her head and remained silent. I asked her again how she had activated the monster. She said she didn't know either. From the beginning, she felt that the bronze humanoid figure was strangely odd, but she couldn't pinpoint what was wrong with it. So she dived down again to find out. Unexpectedly, as soon as she entered the water, she was entangled by the snake's tail. She didn't even have time to call for help. If I hadn't gone down to find her, given enough time, she would have either been strangled to death by the strange snake's tail or suffocated underwater.

The young master gasped for breath and shouted, "Old Xu, think of something quickly, we don't have much time left. If we linger here any longer, even before the snake tail comes over, the curse under the dragon coffin will be enough to kill us."

Startled by the young master's words, I realized that our purpose in coming here was to find the epitaph of Liu Qu, the King of Guangchuan, and to break the curse beneath the Yellow River Dragon Coffin. Moreover, according to the birth chart written by the professor, our time was running out. The problem was that we had blocked our own escape route through the tunnel, and the professor, who had activated the corpse, was waiting for us. Furthermore, the path ahead was blocked by the bronze statues, meaning we would have to pass by them to get through.

"If only... it only had one tail!" The young master sighed when he saw me lost in thought.

I was also suspicious. When I touched the bronze figure just now, it clearly only had one snake tail. So why does it have so many snake tails now? At least the young master and I have seen three. What's the point of a snake having so many tails?

Of course, everything here is too bizarre to be deduced using common sense. Moreover, this is not a snake; its surface is still that of an ordinary bronze human figure, but beneath it lies a monster with multiple snake tails, and it is alive.

I shone my flashlight again into the dark hole behind the bronze figure. In a daze, I seemed to see a pale human face flash by again.

I shook my head vigorously; perhaps I was seeing things. Where else could there be a fourth face besides the three of us living people?

After resting for a while, the girl seemed to have recovered quite a bit. Just as she was about to speak, the young master suddenly shouted, "Oh no!" At the same time, he leaped out of the water as high as a fish.

Just as the young master cried out in alarm, I clearly felt something under my feet. Startled, I hurriedly jumped out as well. Beside me, I heard the maid's scream: "It's under our feet..."

Most women are afraid of snakes, and the maid was no exception. Moreover, she was far slower than the young master and I, so before she could finish speaking, her body had already sank rapidly into the water. The young master and I clearly saw that the maid was being pulled down by something.

"Damn it, I'll fight you to the death..." the young master roared, and then he dived underwater.

I was about to tell the young master not to act rashly, but I had no choice but to follow him down. Just as I was diving, an immense pressure struck my chest. My vision went dark as a snake's tail, as thick as a bucket, lashed out at me.