Vollständiges Metamorphose-Handbuch

Kapitel 46

I was startled and quickly tried to calm myself down. I didn't care about anything else and stepped into the tomb. There was no water in the tomb. As soon as I stepped into the tomb, the white tentacles wrapped around my feet withered and fell off, like insects being roasted by fire. Then, Huang Zhihua pulled the girl in and came in as well.

But at that moment, the young master cried out in alarm, lost his balance, and leaned forward, about to fall into the water. On the surface of the water, rings of white tentacles raised their heads, waiting for fresh flesh and blood.

I rushed out in a panic and grabbed the young master just as he was about to fall into the water, but my feet were once again entangled by countless tentacles.

I held onto the young master with all my might, feeling his body grow heavier and heavier. The stone door to the tomb was only a step away from me.

"Brother Xu," the girl was about to cry. She had already cried many times today. Her bright, lively eyes were red and swollen.

"Old Xu, let me go, you can leave." In that instant, the young master's body was covered with dense white tentacles. These things were extremely heavy in the water. Now, even my hands were covered with dense tentacles, and they were crawling towards my head.

We are all wearing waterproof suits and plastic gas gloves, but our faces are not covered at all. How can we resist the attack of these tentacles?

I sighed in despair—am I really going to die here today?

"Old Xu, catch!" Huang Zhihua pulled a rope out of his backpack and threw it at me. Because it was very close, I grabbed the rope and held it tightly in my hand, as if I had grasped a lifeline.

“We’ll pull you up!” Huang Zhihua said.

I nodded, while holding onto the young master tightly with my other hand. As Huang Zhihua pulled the rope, I yanked hard, lifting one foot and pulling the young master a step along with me.

The maidservant hurriedly threw it over, helping Huang Zhihua pull hard on the rope. With their help, my pressure was greatly reduced, and I struggled to move my feet. It took us about three minutes to cover a distance of one meter. When I finally pulled the young master close to the tomb chamber, the tentacles wrapped around him were less than three inches from his neck. If it had been any later, the young master's life might not have been saved.

As the tentacles on his body withered, the young master leaned against the stone door of the tomb, panting heavily. My clothes were completely soaked with sweat, and the heavy water jacket I was wearing made me very uncomfortable. My heart was pounding wildly.

The girl was trembling all over; clearly, the terrifying scene she had just witnessed had greatly frightened her.

The young master paused for a while, finally catching his breath. He patted the stone door next to the priest and smiled at me, saying, "Old Xu, you've survived a great calamity, you're bound to have good fortune later, hehe, you'll be rich later."

I could only laugh at the young master's theory, but just as we were talking, Huang Zhihua suddenly shouted, "Come and see!"

Just now, all our attention was focused on how to get rid of the tentacles. Although the stone door of the tomb was open, no one had a chance to carefully look at the contents inside. Only now that the danger has subsided a little have we had time to come back to our senses and examine this ancient tomb from a thousand years ago.

All the miners' lamps above our heads were dim, and the young master's and maid's had long since broken, so we had no choice but to take out the spare flashlights.

This is a very large tomb chamber, estimated to be more than 20 square meters. The size of the tomb chamber is completely disproportionate to the magnificence of the outside. On the two walls, there are a large number of plain reliefs, while on the ground, there are still smooth white stone slabs, which faintly show a translucent color, just like beautiful jade.

It was very similar to an ordinary tomb, almost without any unusual features. However—what sent chills down our spines was that in the center of the tomb floor, a person was kneeling upright, his back to us. We couldn't see his face clearly at first, but it was a very complete body, both in terms of clothing and other details.

Opposite it is a relief of a young girl, just like the relief on the stone pillar in the tomb chamber we just entered. The pure and innocent expression of the young girl is vividly depicted on the wall. However, the most important thing is missing from the entire tomb chamber—the coffin!

Yes, there was no coffin inside this tomb!

Such a scene is indescribably eerie. I would rather encounter a mutated corpse like a police officer than see a living person in the tomb.

The beams of light from the wolf-eye flashlights in the young master's and maid's hands shone directly onto his slightly hunched back, and the interplay of light and shadow added to his eerie aura.

I swallowed hard and turned my neck to look at Huang Zhihua beside me. I saw the same fear in the soldier's eyes.

"Who...who...who are you?" The young master's voice trembled.

In an ancient tomb—a tomb buried for a thousand years—could there still be a living person? That's absolutely impossible. The young master's voice echoed in the empty tomb chamber. The person remained kneeling upright on the ground, motionless. The four of us couldn't help but exchange bewildered glances.

"Let's go take a look," I said resolutely. There was no escaping this trouble; whether it was a person or a corpse, we had to go see. I supported the maid, Huang Zhihua held a gun, and we looked after the usually impulsive young master. The four of us walked forward step by step.

One step... two steps... three steps... The tomb was eerily quiet. Even the sound of our footsteps seemed to have been abruptly silenced by something, almost inaudible. The only thing I could hear was my heart, which was pounding in my throat with nervousness.

The girl's hands were trembling, revealing her intense unease. Finally, we walked around the figure and stood directly in front of it.

"So it was a corpse..." The young master visibly breathed a sigh of relief, and I also let out a long sigh of relief. It is very common to see a corpse in a tomb. Whether it is the owner of the tomb, a slave or craftsman who was buried alive, or even a tomb robber, they may all die in the tomb. Even if it is a corpse that has turned into a zombie, it will only cause us to be scared. But if we see a living person in the tomb, what does that mean? I really don't know.

I took two steps forward and carefully examined the corpse kneeling upright on the ground. It should be an old man, and judging from his appearance, he must be quite old... Moreover, he was wearing what looked like a long gown from before the Liberation. What surprised me even more was that there was a dagger stuck in the old man's chest, and the dagger was probably in the position of his heart.

An elderly man from before the liberation appeared in a Western Zhou tomb. Although I am not sure if the tomb was built in the Western Zhou Dynasty or even earlier, it is undeniable that the tomb has existed for over a thousand years. But... why didn't this corpse exposed to the air decompose? We almost thought it was a living person.

If it really died before liberation, then it should be nothing but a skeleton by now.

"This person... committed suicide?" Huang Zhihua asked me in a low voice.

I shook my head and then nodded... Under these circumstances, I couldn't figure out whether the old man had committed suicide or was murdered, and why he was still kneeling upright in the tomb after his death.

“Come and look, this relief…” The young master had been standing with Huang Zhihua, but upon seeing that it was just a corpse, he suddenly mustered his courage and turned to look at the relief on the stone wall. The young master had a particular fondness for reliefs; he had shown a strong interest in them since our first visit to the Yellow River Eye.

I was about to say something to him, but when I looked over, I was also taken aback... The stone carvings on the wall were clearly depicting a war between two countries. I even saw two countries, with different flags, holding some weapons that I couldn't tell what they were, hacking and slashing at each other.

As I looked around, almost all the stone carvings depicted the same thing. Finally, I managed to make out a little bit: one country held a flag that flowed like water, while the other held a flag that flashed like lightning. The stone carvings on the wall showed that these two countries were constantly at war, with each side experiencing victories and defeats. I was completely bewildered and couldn't understand a word they said.

There are also some bird-script characters clearly visible on these stone carvings, which are probably meant to explain something, but unfortunately I can't understand a single one. I do recognize one character, which is the bronze fragment we found in the Guangchuan King's Tomb last time. That character appears frequently on the reliefs here. The girl said it's the character "姬" (Ji).

Ji—nowadays it seems to be just a surname, without any special meaning. But what does this character actually mean in bird-script seal script?

Suddenly, the young master gently tugged at me. I was startled. He gestured to me, and I looked in the direction of his hand. The last two reliefs no longer depicted war, but rather a group of people surrounding a young girl as she walked up to a high platform...

I glanced at the shape of the platform; it seemed somewhat familiar.

"Look!" The young master pointed at the relief, his voice trembling slightly. "Look—doesn't this stone platform look like the high platform in the eye of the Yellow River?"

I looked at it carefully, and indeed, this white jade platform is strikingly similar to the high platform we saw in the Yellow River. But what exactly is this relief trying to express?

I hurriedly looked at the last relief, and sure enough—just as I expected, this relief was the same as the last relief in Huang He's eyes. The people who had originally gathered around the stone platform were all gone, leaving only a white platform.

“Come and look, there are words here…” Just as the young master and I were studying the reliefs on the wall, Huang Zhihua suddenly called out.

The young master and I were both invigorated upon hearing this. Our biggest problem right now is that neither of us can decipher these bird-script characters. Old Man Nanpaizi clearly knows something, but that old man is cunning and refuses to utter a single word, as if he won't be satisfied until the secret rots in his belly and is taken to his grave. If there are characters here that we can understand, it will be absolutely crucial in solving the mystery of the Yellow River Dragon Coffin.

We rushed around the old man's body, and sure enough, there were a few faint characters on the ground beside him. They were standard Chinese characters, but in traditional form, which I had some difficulty reading. I had to look to the girl for help.

The girl frowned and whispered, "Disrespecting the patriarch, commit suicide to atone for your sins!"

"That old man really did commit suicide, how foolish!" The young master, with his big mouth, had no taboos and sighed on the spot.

The girl shook her head, and after a long while said that there seemed to be a few more words before, but they were under the old man's body... The implication was that if they wanted to know the truth, they would have to move the old man's body.

Upon hearing this, the young master jumped back slightly and shook his head repeatedly, saying, "You must never ask me to do something like this."

Although I had no intention of desecrating a corpse, I frowned and said with a wry smile in order to find out what had happened. "I'll do it!" I said, and walked to the old man's corpse. I bowed deeply and murmured, "I am in trouble now. Please guide me, senior."

Perhaps it was because the old man's body had been kneeling in the tomb for too long, or perhaps it was just a coincidence, but right after I finished speaking, the old man's body suddenly fell straight down, which startled us.

The beam of the flashlight in the girl's hand involuntarily fell on the old man's face, but the beam trembled slightly, revealing his fear. As expected, he was indeed an old man, probably eighty or ninety years old. His skin was dry and clung to his bones, and his eyes were slightly open; I could even see the whites of his eyes.

I don't know if it was just my imagination, but I felt like it was also observing me. This was the only corpse I had seen in the ancient tomb that hadn't been cursed to death; the old man had committed suicide. However, I wondered, could an eighty- or ninety-year-old man really be a tomb raider? Suddenly, a thought struck me: could this old man be the same one who disappeared on the Yellow River dragon coffin years ago?

"Look, there are words here!" the young master exclaimed. I hurried over and, sure enough, several Chinese characters were carved under the old man's body. They were still in traditional characters. I understood that simplified characters were only improved after the liberation, while traditional characters—still used by some people today—were not surprised. It's just that those of us who are used to simplified characters find them a little unfamiliar.

Having worked in archaeology for many years, the girl was naturally very familiar with this handwriting. She immediately read aloud: "Heaven and earth are incomplete, the sexagenary cycle is disordered, the shadow of Kunlun is broken, the Yellow River's eye is dry, the ghost coffin opens, the demon king appears..."

"What do you mean?" Young Master and Huang Zhihua asked at the same time.

The girl shook her head. What did she mean? I didn't know what it meant either, but I understood somewhat. This old man—the protagonist of my grandmother's story, the old man who disappeared on the high platform, the elder of Nanpaizi's sect. Perhaps he discovered something and entered the Shadow Kunlun Eye of Wind, but why did he say Shadow Kunlun was broken? What puzzled me even more was that he had also come into contact with the Yellow River Dragon Coffin, but why didn't he die from the curse, but instead committed suicide? And how did he preserve his body from decay? And what exactly did this word "broken" mean? Did it refer to breaking open the tomb chamber, or something else? However, the heavens and earth are incomplete, the sixty-year cycle is incomplete. I had already guessed from the imperfections of heaven and earth that a sixty-year cycle was originally sixty years, but now it is a full sixty-one years. We, the younger generation, have entered the Shadow Kunlun Eye of Wind. If our entry is considered a break, then what do the Ghost Coffin and the Demon King represent? The old man from the south said that the Shadow Kunlun Wind Eye is not suitable for burying men, so the corpses buried here must be female corpses, but—I have never heard of a woman turning into a demon king.

"What the hell does this bullshit mean?" The young master sighed, his gaze falling on the opposite wall, where there was a relief of a young girl, the carving exquisitely crafted. The young master looked at the relief, then turned away, looking at the girl again, and after a long while said, "What do you think this relief is about?"

"Don't talk nonsense!" I quickly stopped the young master. I had just noticed that the girl in the golden robe looked very similar to the maid.

“Like me!” The young master didn’t say it, but the maidservant continued.

I quickly tried to comfort the girl, saying that it's normal for people to look alike, and there's nothing wrong with it. But the girl did give a nervous laugh, a laugh that was indescribably eerie, and her once bright eyes were now filled with a kind of lost madness. I was secretly worried that something might happen to her at this moment.

Huang Zhihua, who had been silent until now, suddenly asked, "Who do you think is the most famous demon king in history?"

The most famous demon king in history? I thought about it for a while, and finally said, "It should be the legendary Chi You."

“No!” Huang Zhihua shook his head. “Although I don’t understand history, Chi You is definitely not a figure from mythology, but a real historical person. Since the Yellow Emperor can be the ancestor of the Chinese people, how could Chi You, his old rival, be a legendary figure?” As he spoke, he walked to the stone wall in front of him and pointed to a battle scene, saying, “If we consider this as a battle between two tribes, wouldn’t many things be easier to understand?”

The young master scoffed at Huang Zhihua's explanation, dismissing it with disdain. But I remained silent, thinking for a moment before saying, "Are you saying this isn't a Western Zhou tomb, but possibly the tomb of a demon king?"

I'm not sure about burial practices before the Western Zhou Dynasty, but it's reasonable to assume they existed long before the dawn of human civilization. However, historical records state that the Yellow Emperor's era was a period of republicanism, where all property was communal. How could such a massive tomb have been constructed in such a primitive era with extremely low productivity? Even with modern technology, designing the star map and depictions of thunder and rain outside the tomb would be incredibly difficult. Before the Western Zhou Dynasty, the Yellow Emperor and the great demon Chiyou? I'm confused!

The girl suddenly said quietly, "In fact, according to legend, the Yellow Emperor's original surname was Ji."

"Ji!" Damn it, it's that damned "Ji" again. I sighed. Right now, our mission is simply to break the curse of the Yellow River Dragon Coffin and get out of here alive. As for the true reasons in history, it doesn't seem to have much to do with us. So, I thought for a moment, frowned, and said, "Don't talk about that. Finding a way out is the most important thing."

The girl pointed to the relief of a young girl on the wall and said with a wry smile, "If there's a mechanism, it should be there."

"I'll do it!" The young master volunteered and walked to the relief sculpture. This relief sculpture was clearly carved to life-size, with exquisite craftsmanship and lifelike detail. The young master's large hands rummaged around on the relief sculpture, but he couldn't find the so-called mechanism. I had been watching the young master the whole time, but just then, suddenly my vision blurred, and a pale green ghostly shadow silently pounced towards the young master.

"Watch out!" I exclaimed in alarm. Heaven knows what this thing was, it had been relentlessly following us, appearing to attack whenever we relaxed our guard even slightly. In a flash, I lunged at the young master, a nauseating, rotten stench filling my nostrils. Guided by instinct, I swung my ancient bronze sword fiercely at the ghastly green shadow.

A mournful cry, "Waaaaah!", rang out above us, like the unwilling lament of a midnight ghost.

"Damn it!" the young master cursed angrily. Huang Zhihua seized the opportunity and fired a shot into the air, but the bullet hit the wall and almost bounced off me. This scared Huang Zhihua so much that he dared not fire randomly again. After all, this tomb chamber was too small and was not a suitable place for a gunfight.

I tilted my head back, searching for any trace of the ghastly green shadow. Suddenly, my nose caught that nauseating stench again, right to my left. I closed my eyes, relying entirely on my sense of smell, and swung my sword—

The bronze sword flashed with a cold light, and right beside me, I clearly heard a shrill cry. This time, the bronze sword struck something.

"Ah..." A scream came from beside me. I quickly opened my eyes and looked over. Good heavens, what was that? Scattered on the ground were what I thought were corpses? Yes, that should be considered a corpse. I had chopped it into pieces with a single sword strike, the limbs and remains scattered everywhere, emitting a nauseating stench of decay. What shocked me even more was that—after the corpse fell to the ground, it began to decompose rapidly into pus, even bubbling with green pus. I was somewhat surprised. This ghastly green ghost that had been causing us so much trouble had actually been killed by me so easily?

The heavy clanging of chains echoed through the tomb. Something stirred behind me, and I jumped in fright. I was leaning against the wall—could it be—the girl on the wall had come back to life? I quickly jumped back. The stone wall where the girl had been carved was slowly rising, revealing a dark, gaping opening. I stood at the entrance, staring blankly, momentarily forgetting to go in. The young master, still shaken, walked to my side. He first looked at the pale, greenish-brown ghostly figure that had turned to pus, then at the dark opening. For some reason, I felt an inexplicable eeriness about this opening, a heavy, ghostly aura that struck my heart with a chilling force.

Huang Zhihua licked his chapped lips and asked me in a low voice, "Want to go in?" Although the question was a bit silly—at this point, how could I not go in?—I couldn't manage a smile. I just nodded with difficulty, took the flashlight from the girl beside me, and was about to enter when she suddenly called out to me. I looked at her, puzzled. She rummaged through her backpack and pulled out a candle, lighting it. Not refusing her kindness, I took the candle and tossed it into the entrance. I saw the candle light up briefly before going out. Thinking it over, just to be safe, I pulled out my gas mask, put it on, and bent down to squeeze into the tomb entrance. The girl followed closely behind, the young master followed behind, and Huang Zhihua brought up the rear.

I held up my flashlight and examined the tomb chamber—it should be a tomb chamber, because I saw a coffin, although the coffin was indeed a bit eerie.

"How could this be?" The young master was clearly shocked. Huang Zhihua and the maid stared dumbfounded at everything in front of them. If—if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, and someone told me that there was such a strange sight in an ancient tomb from a thousand years ago, I would have thought that person was crazy, or that it was just a fairy tale. But now, it was all real.

This tomb chamber was large, much larger than the one outside, and the space didn't feel cramped. Five exquisitely carved stone pillars supported it from all sides. In the center of the chamber was a pool of water, which wasn't unusual, as I'd seen plenty of water in this tomb before. However, in the center of the pool, flowers were now blooming. Yes, they were indeed flowers, and under the light of flashlights and miners' lamps, the blossoms were vibrant and beautiful, but they possessed an eerie color—blue. The shape of the flowers somewhat resembled peonies, or more specifically—their color was very similar to the paper flowers made in paper candle shops. They had no leaves, only stems supporting blooming blue flowers, creating a strange and bewitching effect on the ground.

"What...what kind of flower is this?" Huang Zhihua stammered.

I shook my head blankly. Everything here seemed too eerie. In the center, covered with blue flowers, knelt five bronze figures. Each of them seemed to be holding something in their hands. The one closest to me was a bronze mirror. The one not far away was probably a piece of wood. Further on, in the middle of the bronze figure that seemed to be holding something with both hands raised, was a coffin—if it could be called a coffin.

It must have been a large ironwood trunk, with even the bark intact on the surface. The trunk was split open from the middle two-thirds, and I think it must have been hollowed out in the middle, containing the tomb's occupant.

It wasn't that I had exceptionally good eyesight, but the dissected section was simply too obvious. A crack about an inch wide had split in the middle, and what was even more bizarre was that water was constantly flowing out of this crack. The water in the coffin kept overflowing, flowing into the pool and mixing with the water in the pool.

Water in the coffin? Liquid? I've heard of wet corpses before, but a corpse submerged in water is still a bit hard to accept. Moreover, it looks very eerie, like someone taking a bath in a coffin with too much water. If they move even slightly, the water in the coffin will keep overflowing.

Bathing in a coffin? I was startled by my own conclusion, a sense of indescribable horror rising within me. Could there be something alive in this coffin? Could it be that the person in the coffin hadn't died? Based on our judgment, the person in the coffin was at least a thousand years old. A person from a thousand years ago hadn't died and was even bathing in a coffin? If the water flowing out of the coffin terrified us uninvited intruders, then—the coffin itself was enough to drive any archaeologist mad.

What kind of coffin is this? In fact, it's not ornate at all, completely out of place with the grandeur and exquisite architectural style of the entire tomb. It can't even be considered a coffin; it's just a round log a little over two meters long, with rough bark on its surface. Two dark iron chains suspend it in mid-air, now—like many other tree trunks—fully saturated with moisture. Although the trunk itself is dead, countless parasitic fungi continue to survive, nourished by the moisture.

On this coffin, which evokes indescribable feelings, a plant—or rather, mushrooms—is now growing densely. I took the flashlight from the girl and shone it around; the beam of light finally landed on a particular mushroom.

In this sunless underground, the mushrooms also have a bizarre and strange appearance. First of all, these mushrooms are very large, as big as a human head, and their surfaces are covered with patterns that resemble human faces. Without exception, the surface of each mushroom is a human face, and the expression of these faces makes our hearts sink, sink, sink into an abyss.

I couldn't find any words to describe the eeriness before me. The human faces on each mushroom were grinning, laughing in a strange and ferocious way, just like the smiles of Wang Quansheng and the others after their deaths, as if welcoming us intruders.

If the tomb owner in the Shadow Kunlun Wind Eye is connected to the Yellow River Dragon Coffin, then what do these ghost-faced mushrooms represent?

This is not a long-silent, dead world. Everything here shows us a vibrant underground world, whether it's those bewitching blue flowers or these ghost-faced mushrooms.

I can accept those eerie blue flowers. After all, the world is full of wonders, and there are plants that can grow underground in the dark. The owner of the tomb was a young girl who wanted a nice environment after death, so it's reasonable to have some flowers buried with her. But there are plants on the coffin. Was it unintentional or deliberate? No one can give me an answer.

Just as all four of us were completely captivated by this bizarre underground world, I suddenly heard the rattling sound of chains being pulled. Startled, I knew something was wrong and quickly turned around to look. Sure enough, the stone door we had entered through was now slowly closing, leaving no gaps and trapping us all inside.

My mind went blank for a moment. Could it be that the owner of the tomb in the Shadow Kunlun Wind Eye actually wanted to leave us to be buried with him?