The coffin shook harder and harder, as if something inside was trying to pound its way out.
The director hurriedly swung the camera toward Lưu Viện, but she was trembling and could only back away, unable to utter a word.
Remembering the candle I’d just lit, the director quickly turned to me. “Miss Bạch, can you do anything? Hurry and figure out how to save everyone!”
I thought for a moment, then pulled a sealed bag from my backpack. As soon as I opened it, everyone covered their noses. “What stinks so badly?!”
Inside were several hand-sized, furry things that reeked horribly. I peeled away the plastic wrapping, and Lưu Viện screamed in panic.
They were a few rats that had been dead for a long time, their bodies rotting.
She shrieked and ran to hide behind the director, her face deathly pale. “Are you crazy? Why are you carrying such disgusting things around?!”
I didn’t bother arguing. I took the biggest rat and placed it on the coffin lid. At once, the shaking eased considerably.
“The cương thi is shaking the coffin because it can smell us. These dead rats mask the scent of humans, making everything in the tomb think there are only rats running around, so it won’t wake up.”
After hearing my explanation, a few of the film crew still looked doubtful. But when they saw the coffin had gone quiet, they reluctantly picked up the rat corpses and grimaced as they stuffed them into their backpacks.
Lưu Viện covered her nose and glared at me. “How long have those rats been dead? And you expect us to carry them around?!”
“If you don’t want to, then don’t. No one’s forcing you.”
I replied coldly. Her face flushed with anger, but when she saw everyone listening to me, she grew even more displeased. “You didn’t plan all this in advance, did you? Why did you already have these things with you?!”
Her question left me speechless.
5
With tens of thousands of people watching the livestream, I couldn’t tell them that this was basic tomb-raiding knowledge.
The chat exploded:
[Isn’t the film crew just staging this for publicity?]
[What jiangshi? If they were real, they’d have been studied ages ago!]
[Poor rats. Is this animal abuse?]
The director began to suspect me and came over to ask, “Miss Bạch, have you been here before? If you want to get famous, go on some other show. Don’t spread feudal superstition like this!”
I didn’t bother explaining. I walked over, picked up the rat corpse on the coffin, tossed it aside, and backed away a few steps.
Sure enough, the coffin began to shake violently, and the pounding from inside grew louder and louder.
The director immediately stumbled back in fright, and his earlier suspicions vanished in an instant.
But Lưu Viện clearly still didn’t believe me. Her face pale, she pointed and said, “Maybe there’s a smell sensor installed inside. The mechanism activates whenever someone gets close!”
My patience had run out. Seeing the crack in the coffin lid, I shoved her forward. “If you don’t believe me, open it and see for yourself.”
As soon as I said that, the people who’d been making a commotion fell silent. Lưu Viện froze in place, standing rigidly in the middle as she swallowed hard.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you dare?”
“You said this was a science program. If you don’t believe me, prove on camera that I’m lying. Wouldn’t that be better?”
Provoked by my taunts, Lưu Viện flew into a rage. Eyes wide, she stepped forward. “Fine, I’ll open it! If this is some mechanism you set up, I’ll make you apologize in front of every viewer!”
The coffin rested over an octagonal well. The lid alone must have weighed dozens of pounds, and it was nailed shut at all four corners with nails as thick as wrists.
Lưu Viện turned to grab a shovel and wedged it into the crack. But before she could even put her weight into it, a loud bang rang out.
The noises inside the coffin abruptly stopped. The nails seemed to be pushed out by something. With a thump, they popped loose on their own.
“I haven’t even used any force. How did the coffin lid open by itself?!”
Lưu Viện set the shovel down in confusion. As she lowered her head, she heard the nails hit the ground. There were exactly eight of them.
At the same time, the iron door behind us suddenly slammed shut. A sense of dread welled up in me, and I hurriedly grabbed her. “Turn around! Don’t open the coffin!”
Lưu Viện frowned and jerked my hand away, sneering. “What’s wrong? Afraid I’ll expose you? Too late!”
It was too late indeed. But not for me—for her life.
The coffin lid burst open and smashed into the wall behind it. Before Lưu Viện could move her face away, a stream of green smoke billowed out and blew straight into her face.
“What is this? It stinks!”
She coughed violently and stumbled back a few steps. When she opened her eyes and looked at what was inside the coffin, her face instantly turned deathly pale. “What is that?!”
A few crew members crept closer. The moment they looked inside, they screamed, “Why does it have Miss Lưu’s face?!”
The camera swung over, bringing the thing inside into clear view. It was the intact corpse of a woman dressed in red, wearing a phoenix crown, though she had been dead for a thousand years. The strange thing was that her face looked exactly like Lưu Viện’s!
Lưu Viện’s face flushed red. She threw her bag to the ground and turned on me. “You did this, didn’t you? You cursed me, didn’t you?!”
I rushed over and clamped a hand over her mouth before she could say anything else. “If you want to live, shut up! That thing is about to wake up!”
She tried to struggle, but suddenly her eyes widened.
Right behind us, the corpse in the coffin abruptly sat upright and turned its head to stare in our direction.
The sight drained the color from everyone’s faces.
6
The director came over scowling and reprimanded me loudly. “That’s enough. Quit fooling around! You’ve taken this too far!”
I went cold and turned around to glare at him. “I told you I didn’t do it!”
“Then who put her face on it?”
“That isn’t a human face!”
I pulled them toward the corner of the wall and pointed ahead. “Look closely. What’s on its head isn’t a human face—it’s insects!”
Whether they believed it or not, everyone was trembling with fear. The camera fell to the ground, the image frozen on the corpse’s face.
On their phones, the livestream audience could see it clearly too. The face looked exactly like Lưu Viện’s, but both cheeks kept twitching, and the eye sockets were pitch-black, with no eyeballs at all.
The comments flew by at dizzying speed, until someone finally noticed something strange:
[Is this show real? Are the props really that convincing?]
[That can’t be a prop! Look—the “human face” keeps twitching!]
[That’s not a face. It’s a swarm of insects rising up to form the shape of a face like hersface!”]
[Exactly! I’ve seen these human-faced insects back home. They cling to corpses’ faces, making it look like a face has been pasted on!]
The film crew fell silent at once. Lưu Viện was so terrified that all the color drained from her face. She huddled up, trembling. “Then that foul green vapor from earlier… could it have been…”
“That’s right. Those are human-faced insects from inside the coffin. They clung to your face to memorize its shape.”
By then, the jiangshi had crawled out of the coffin. It looked like a giant spider, propped on four limbs as it crawled along the ground, sniffing.
I immediately turned back to warn them. “Cover your noses and mouths. It can smell the living.”
The director huddled in a corner, his face deathly pale. He held his bag up in front of him and stammered, “What is that thing? A zombie?!”
I shook my head. “It’s called a jiangshi. Those human-faced insects grew out of its corpse. After absorbing the breath of the living, they blasted off the nails securing the coffin.”
The director looked utterly bewildered. Still holding his bag up as a shield, he fired off another question. “What are these securing nails supposed to be?!”
“The nails that just fell down!”
Ordinarily, people used seven nails when burying someone. They were called descendant nails, and were meant to ensure the prosperity of future generations. But there was a kind of forbidden magic that called for eight nails to be driven into the four corners of a coffin, to pin down the soul, preventing the dead from reincarnating and condemning them to eternal confinement.
The director sucked in a sharp breath. “Isn’t this his wife? Why would anyone use such a cruel method?”
It was indeed hard to understand. The master of this tomb was Thọ Vương, an emperor whom history had hailed as “the immortal legend.”
Back then, Tây Vương Mẫu had intervened to stop the chaos of war. Discovering a border kingdom of a hundred people caught up in the conflict, she was moved with compassion, revived the entire kingdom, and raised a barrier, turning the place into a carefree paradise.
The person buried here should have been Thọ Vương’s consort. But why hadn’t she been given a proper burial? Why had she instead been sealed away with such a cruel spell?
The comments went quiet for a moment after my explanation, then suddenly erupted:
[Good Lord, it’s like I’ve just been given earth-shattering knowledge!]
[Is this scripted? Can things really get this bizarre?!]
[Someone should look into Bạch Chu Chu. She’s definitely more than an ordinary actress!]
[Wait, that thing looks like it’s crawling toward us!]
Before I could think it through, Lưu Viện suddenly screamed. The jiangshi had caught our scent and was slowly crawling toward us.
“It’s coming! What do we do?!”
I looked at her. “It can smell you.”