9
Everyone turned to look in the same direction.
Lưu Viện’s face flushed red, but she still tried to defend herself. “I was only worried about everyone’s safety! I’m responsible for the safety of the whole group, too!”
I sneered. “Looks like ‘everyone’ doesn’t include me, does it?”
She was at a loss for words. Meanwhile, the comments section was flooded with scathing remarks:
[She’s obviously just afraid to die, and now she’s pretending it’s for the group. What a disgrace!]
[Bạch Chu Chu stayed behind to save her. What an ungrateful wretch!]
[A selfish actress wakes up to find she’s lost all her good reputation.]
[Went from a fan to a hater just like that.]
The director saw the livestream audience suddenly multiply a hundredfold. His face, pale with fear just moments ago, broke into a smile. He pointed the camera straight at Lưu Viện. “Miss Lưu, shouldn’t you apologize to Miss Bạch?”
For the sake of her reputation and the views, Lưu Viện looked at the crowd that had once cheered her on, now sneering at her. She shook with anger, but eventually had no choice but to turn toward me, her face stiff. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t reply. The director hurried to flatter me. “Miss Bạch, you’re the bigger person. Please forgive her. We’ll need your help to get out of here!”
The way in was completely blocked by an iron slab. Someone in the comments had already called the police, so all we had to do was wait for them to break through the door or dig a tunnel and let us out.
But until then, we had to make sure we were safe.
I lit a torch and looked around.
The space was arched. There were no coffins or burial goods, only a few rows of sculpted figures.
The director swung the camera toward them and suddenly shrieked, “W-what is this?”
As the light drew closer, the figures’ eyes came into view, cloudy gray and lifelike to an uncanny degree. They all had the same hairstyle, wore uniforms, and knelt upright in prayer.
“They… they look so real!”
“Don’t touch them!”
I shouted, stopping him, then pulled a medical metal case from my bag. Inside was a carefully sealed glass vial. I poured its contents over one of the figures. A moment later, white smoke billowed up. “These aren’t statues.”
“They’re human corpses.”
The director jerked his hand back and staggered several steps before falling to the ground.
“The liquid in the vial is nitric acid. Its reaction with the figure caused it to decompose, which proves they contain a large amount of mercury.”
“Mercury?”
The director’s face stiffened and went even paler. “Could it be… that stuff?”
“That’s right.”
I nodded and explained, “In ancient times, members of the royal class would often bury palace women and servants with them in their tombs, so they could save face even in death. They forced these people to kneel in prayer, then poured mercury into their bodies while they were still alive to preserve their flesh for thousands of years.”
“How cruel…”
Lưu Viện suddenly seemed full of compassion. She knelt down, her face stricken with grief, and reached out. “I’m not afraid. I’ll help them close their eyes.”
A chill ran down my spine. I rushed to stop her, but it was too late. Lưu Viện’s hand had already touched the forehead of one of the corpses.
The very next second, the corpse’s eyes suddenly moved, staring straight at me.
Lưu Viện let out a bloodcurdling scream, clutched her hand, and fell to the ground, writhing in pain. “It hurts! My hand hurts so much!”
Everyone knew mercury was toxic. To keep the corpses from decomposing, the ancients had also smeared who knew how many substances on them. But she’d gone and touched one just to play the “good person.” She deserved it.
Several crew members hurried to hold her down. In the light, the flesh on her hand was already eaten away and peeling, accompanied by a horrifying sizzling sound.
The director quickly poured alcohol-based hand sanitizer over her hand, then tore off a piece of his shirt and wrapped it tightly around the wound. I sighed and handed her an anti-inflammatory pill. “You should be grateful this is only chemical damage. Otherwise, they might have had to amputate your hand.”
Ancient poisons were a hundred times more terrifying. But even more worrying right now was…
The statue seemed to be coming back to life.
Everyone turned to look. The figure at the outer edge was still kneeling, but its arms had stretched straight out in front of it. Its eyes were fixed on me, unblinking.
“What do we do now? Is it… is it going to come over here?”
The director pulled Lưu Viện back, then suddenly seemed to remember something. He climbed the ladder and opened the iron door overhead. “The monster up there is dead anyway. Let’s get up there and hide!”
I watched the statue’s body begin to sway and suddenly realized something. I rushed over to pull him back, but it was too late.
As soon as the iron door opened, a gust of cold air swept down from above, carrying a few long strands of hair that drifted past the camera lens.
A moment later, a bloodied head dangled down, suspended in midair.
“Damn it!”
The director screamed and fell off the ladder. His legs trembled so badly he couldn’t stand.
“Wasn’t that thing dead just now? How did it come back to life?”
“Could it be impossible to kill? What do we do?”
I tossed over the backpack, then quickly shut the iron door.
I had no idea why it had suddenly come back to life, either.
10
Ever since my father’s time, my family had stopped tomb raiding. We only occasionally checked the feng shui of tombs, and whenever we recovered antiques, we turned them over to the government. So we rarely encountered corpse transformations.
Whether they were weak or difficult to deal with, in the end, they were still corpses.
But what I’d encountered today seemed to be alive.
More precisely… they were “demonic objects.”
I was still thinking when a piercing scream suddenly rang out behind me. Somehow, the statue had moved forward until it was almost touching my cheek.
“Hurry, think of something! What happened to the stuff you had earlier?”
I felt around my back. I’d thrown my backpack at the corpse earlier, and now I didn’t have a single tool left.
Lưu Viện was so frightened she dropped to her knees. The gold necklace around her neck glinted.
Gold.
I walked over, yanked the necklace right off her neck, then circled behind the statue and tied her mouth shut with it.
Her body shuddered, then immediately went still.
The director stared at me, eyes wide with shock. “That! Could that be a secret technique of the Mojin Sect?”
I blinked. “It’s chemistry from the high school graduation exam.”
When gold and mercury come into contact, they react chemically, disrupting the statue’s internal structure and rendering it immobile for a short time.
Once we’d calmed down, we returned to the livestream room. Only then did we see a comment from the police:
[We’ve pinpointed your location, but the risk of a cave-in means we can’t break through the door. Try going upstairs and see if you can get out that way.]
By then, the livestream room had also drawn a huge audience. It had even gone global, with viewers tuning in from different countries. Compared with the artifacts mentioned in the earlier promotional video, these unsolved mysteries were clearly much more intriguing.
I picked up the flashlight and pointed to the farthest corner. “Wait here. As long as you don’t cause a commotion, you’ll be safe for a little while.”
The director startled and hurriedly grabbed me. “Where are you going?”
“The rescue team needs a new way in. I have to go upstairs and see if there’s a way out.”
They stared at me, then looked around. “Go upstairs where? Is there another way out of here?”
I nodded and pointed behind the row of statues. A giant eye was carved into the wall. It was the entrance to the next tomb.
11
For generations, my family had been good at tomb raiding. We hadn’t taken many things, but there was one treasure money couldn’t buy.
The Eighty-One Demon Tombs.
It recorded tombs of all sizes—feng shui tombs in all kinds of shapes.
The tomb we’d come to today was one of them.
That was also why, despite all the abuse online, I’d still decided to join the show.
However, the records on this tomb were badly incomplete. What we knew about it was almost entirely limited to what the production team had told us. There was only one other thing: I’d once seen the tomb’s floor plan on the back of the page.
It was shaped like a giant gourd.
And the story from that time was incomplete, too. The Queen Mother of the West had resurrected the emperor, granting the people of his kingdom another 300 years of life. Delighted by his immortality, King Thọ began attacking other kingdoms. Even soldiers who died on the battlefield would be resurrected. That was how they became an unstoppable demon army.
But the 300 years were almost up. Wanting to extend his life, King Thọ continued refining elixirs and even built the tomb in the shape of a gourd to refine them. The slaves kneeling in prayer were only there to pray for King Thọ’s good fortune.
According to the tomb plan in the book, the door was most likely that eye.
King Thọ had to stand at the highest point, constantly “watching over” everyone praying for his blessing.
As I turned around, Lưu Viện suddenly followed me. “I’m coming with you.”
Her hand was still wrapped in bandages, but she insisted on following me forward. As she spoke, she kept glancing toward the camera.
Oscar-worthy acting.
I couldn’t be bothered with her. I pressed close to the wall and made my way behind the statues, then forcefully pressed the eye carved into it.
Sure enough, the stone slab suddenly trembled, then slowly slid upward.