Cataclysm Chapter 72: Grave Relocation 5; Human Nature

Chapter 72: Grave Relocation 5; Human Nature

Translated by Shiya of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

 

When entering through the narrow cave entrance, one had to bend down to fit in. It took about five or six minutes for the view to widen as the raft was being paddled. Chen Yang could sit up straight, but he could still reach the top of the cavern with his hands and they could not stand up.

Inside the cave was so narrow and cramped, it was so dark that he could not see his fingers. Kou Xuanling took out three headband flashlights and handed them to Chen Yang and Lu Xiuzhi, who put them on and turned them on.

The cave walls were wet and water was still seeping from the wall above the head. The river beneath the raft was dark and deep. When a fork in the road appeared ahead, Kou Xuanling asked Chen Yang, “Which way to go?”

Chen Yang took out the map and looked at it: “To the right.”

Kou Xuanling and Lu Xiuzhi then rowed the raft to the right and entered the tunnel. The cave was quiet and the water was calm, but suddenly there was a slight sound in the water. Kou Xuanling said, “There is something under the water?”

Chen Yang alertly stared at the water surface: “Obviously. Give me a fire talisman.” Kou Xuanling handed him a fire talisman. Chen Yang took it, ignited it, and threw it to a place three meters in front of the raft. They could clearly see that there were countless black madness swarming far away from the fireball on the water surface.

“There are black snakes in the water, they are afraid of light.” Chen Yang retracted his gaze, and as the raft moved forward. He saw a corpse with black snakes wrapped around it at the side of a crevice in the cavern where only one person could stand. As soon as the light shone through, the black snakes wriggled away from the white bones. “Let’s go quickly, these black snakes eat human flesh.”

Kou Xuanling: “Okay.” The three of them paddled faster and faster, but found that the raft was getting heavier and heavier, to the point where they could barely move it. “What’s going on?” Kou Xuanling looked down through the gap in the raft and saw black shadows flashing under the water. “The belly of the raft was full of black snakes.”

Those black snakes wrapped around the raft under the water so dense that almost all of them had swarmed over. The raft became so heavy that it began to sink and would capsize before long. Although the black snakes were afraid of lights, they were hidden at the back of the raft so the lights could not quite reach them.

Chen Yang: “It seems that these black snakes wrapped around the back of the raft so that the raft could turn over and they could eat the people on board. I’ve brought mugwort with me, so I can light it and use the fire charm together to drive away the black snakes.”

Lu Xiuzhi also took out the mugwort from the cloth bag: “I also brought some mugwort, Ah Xuan, what about you?”

Kou Xuanling: “I have brought some mugwort wine.”

“That’s enough.” Chen Yang said calmly. “Old Kou, when the black snakes leave the raft, we paddle quickly, and you use the fire talisman to ignite the wine. Throw it into the water where the black snakes gather.”

Kou Xuanling nodded his head: “Good.”

Igniting mugwort can make the snakes weak and dizzy, and the effect is better than mugwort powder and mugwort wine. The snakes hate the smell but will not be harmed by the pungent smell of mugwort alone. These black snakes grow up eating meat and are much more ferocious than ordinary snakes. He was afraid that the mugwort derivatives alone would not be able to drive them away.

Chen Yang lit the mugwort. With each hand holding the mugwort and smoked over the water,  soon the cave was filled with the smell of mugwort. The black snakes under the raft began to wriggle restlessly, their tails fluttering and slapping under the water. The bamboo raft almost tipped over because of the splashing water around it. Chen Yang and Lu Xiuzhi stabilized the raft, and the black snake under the raft gradually left.

Kou Xuanling slowly rowed the raft away and looked back to see the water surface was full of dense black snakes. This group of black snakes were all smoked out of the water by the mugwort. Chen Yang: “Old Kou! ” Kou Xuanling quickly reacted by grabbing two jars of wine and putting the fire talisman into the wine, and then quickly throwing the wine jars into the place where the black snakes floated.

The jars exploded on the water surface, spreading a layer of fire. Most of the black snakes floating on the water surface were ignited, the air was filled with a burning stench. Kou Xuanling covered his nose: “They really are evil things that grew up eating flesh and blood, the smell is so foul.”

Chen Yang retracted his gaze and asked: “Do you have explosives with you? “

“No.” Kou Xuanling rowed the raft and said, “The decision was made in a hurry, if you want to buy explosives, you have to go to a special market.” He paddled the raft and leaned to Chen Yang to look at the map he had spread out on his lap: “Are you thinking about how to open the tomb door?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to use explosives, but I was worried that the explosives would collapse the whole cavern. Forget it, we’ll talk about it when we get there.” Chen Yang folded the map and put it away, he said, “Continue to paddle forward, from here, turn a corner and the field of view will become more open. This map seems to have been drawn several decades ago, so the difference should not be too big.”

When they turned the corner ahead, the view became more open to look like a big lake. The top of the cavern was about four meters above the water, so they could stand up and see the ground. The three of them looked at the ground ahead and ignored the back of them. At that moment, a thick shadow, like a bucket, appeared at the bottom of the water behind them. It was moving silently towards the raft.

Chen Yang’s brow jumped slightly and found that the ancient copper coin in the middle of the red line between his wrists was shaking violently. At the same time the compass pointer in Kou Xuanling’s hand also began to shake chaotically after pointing straight towards the rear.

The three had calm expressions, but the next moment the water surface shook violently and splashed. The bamboo raft was knocked up by a huge black snake that was as thick as a bucket and of unknown length. It was attempting to overturn the raft and shake the three people on it into the water. Chen Yang and the others acted at the same time. Kou Xuanling threw his peach wood sword to Lu Xiuzhi, who received the sword and stabbed towards the gap on the raft fast and accurately. The sword was ruthlessly poked into the body of the black snake. The black snake was in pain, it swung violently and the water surface bubbled like a boiling soup. Chen Yang took off the red rope and flung it to the stone pillar on top of them, then used the other end tied it to the raft to stabilize it.

The water splashed up and drenched everyone. The black snake’s tremendous force carried everyone and the raft tumbling toward the water. The raft was held in place by the red rope but soon it could not support the force. They could all hear ‘crackling’ sounds from the raft. Chen Yang said, “The raft is going to crack soon.”

Lu Xiuzhi lowered his head and pulled out the peach wood sword. Black blood instantly stained the entire surface of the water, however, the water was also black, so they could not even see the change in color, yet they could only smell the strong scent. The giant snake sank to the bottom of the water to peer at the tiny raft on the lake using the strong scent of blood to hide its whereabouts instead. The copper coin in the air shook violently to almost form a shadow.  The compass pointer was also chaotic, they could not come up with a specific location for the snake as well.

Lu Xiuzhi’s eyes gazed downwards steadly, looking at the seemingly calm water. When pulling out the peach wood sword, his face was splashed with a few drops of blood.  At this moment, he almost looked like a jade-faced Yaksha ready to kill. He said, “I’ll go down and kill it.”

“No.” Kou Xuanling immediately opposed, pulling Lu Xiuzhi’s hand, “It’s too dangerous.”

Chen Yang said, “If that black snake attacks again, the raft won’t hold.”

Lu Xiuzhi looked at the hand holding his own. He broke free from Kou Xuanling’s hold and grabbed his palm, he gave it a gentle squeeze then laughed, “Do not worry.” After saying that he jumped into the water and quickly submerged under the lake. Kou Xuanling anxiously looked at the water, Chen Yang retrieved his red rope and said: “You do not have to worry, brother Du said Lu Xiuzhi is someone special. I think Lu Xiuzhi himself is also sure that he could kill the black snake.”

Kou Xuanling frowned: “I am worried that he would get hurt.”

Chen Yang stared at the water: “Let’s go to shore first.” It was only a black snake that had no spirits or intelligence, Lu Xiuzhi could deal with it easily. In addition, Chen Yang felt that with the cultivation of Lu Xiuzhi, if he wanted to deal with the black snake, he didn’t need to use such a complicated means of going into water. He surmised that Lu Xiuzhi has an ulterior motive, and it is deeply related to Kou Xuanling. Of course old Kou was easily fooled.

After the two went ashore, Chen Yang leisurely surveyed the environment while Kou Xuanling stood near the shore to watch the calm water. In a short time, the calmness of the water was disrupted, and Lu Xiuzhi emerged from the water. His black hair disheveled, his clothes soaked, and the body of the black snake floated up behind him.

Lu Xiuzhi walked up with slow and steady steps, it was extraordinarily sexy. He was pure sex appeal pulsating right in front of them. Kou Xuanling coughed twice and moved his gaze away. His cheeks were a little hot, and he did not dare to look at Lu Xiuzhi. Kou Xuanling felt that his brother was a bit delicious…… No, not that, he just thought his bro’s complexion was good. Kou Xuanling kept convincing himself to use an open and pure attitude to look at his good brother’s beauty.

“Ah Xuan?” Lu Xiuzhi waved his hand in front of Kou Xuanling and asked with a hint of confusion, “What’s wrong?”

“No, nothing.” Kou Xuanling was startled and answered him hastily. Kou Xuanling’s eyes caught his wet clothes and hair, so he took off his own short-sleeved jacket and draped it over Lu Xiuzhi, “You should change, don’t catch a cold.”

Lu Xiuzhi took the jacket and looked Kou Xuanling straight in the eyes. His voice was deliberately soft, it almost sounded like a hook, seducing a person’s heart, “Thank you, Ah Xuan.”

Kou Xuanling was flirted with so hard that his face was all red and his heart was jumping. Then he almost wanted to bury himself in the ground from guilt. How can he be so sinful as to imagine his good brother in this way? 

Heh, good brother. Chen Yang retracted his gaze, just now he was very fast and snapped a quick picture of Lu Xiuzhi coming out of the water. Then he quickly sent it to Du Shuo: [Wet seduction skills, old Kou’s virginity is in danger.]

After a while, Du Shuo sent a reply: [Immodest, delete it.] After the message was another picture, it showed the great Fengdu emperor showing his abs. The picture was followed by several successive messages: [You only need to look at mine, do not look at him.], [Such obscenity, ugly.], [Stay away from them.]

Chen Yang twitched the corner of his mouth, he saved the photo of old Du showing off his beauty and then sent a message back: [You old single men are all uncouth and shameless.]

The emperor frowned and stared at the phone screen with a serious expression, even his action of handling official documents stopped. Chen Xiao Yang was getting more and more brave, scolding other people was fine, but he also scolded him. Such bad influences.

The emperor was thinking, sliding his phone he again saw Chen Yang’s picture of Lu Xiuzhi’s soaked body. He just felt like it was stabbing his eyes and quickly deleted it. He sent a few more messages to warn Chen Yang: [Next time you see stuff like this, remember to turn your head away. The damage to the eyes is great, if you want to look, then look at me.]

After sending it, he saw Chen Xiaoyang’s indifferent reply: [Oh.]

The emperor was annoyed, Chen Xiaoyang is really getting more and more bad.

The seventy-two officials of hell peeked at the emperor. They saw that the emperor looked more and more serious and thought he was reading official documents and encountered some big case. He had been like this before and was furious at the time. Therefore, the seventy-two officials underneath were all scared and fearful that the emperor would suddenly become angry. However, the next moment they saw the emperor’s pleasant expression, and his breath became lighter and happier.

The seventy-two officials secretly glanced at the emperor, knowing in their hearts that it must be the sister-in-law who texted. It is strange that the Emperor’s companion should be called the “Queen of Fengdu”, but they don’t know how the name ‘sister-in-law’ was spread throughout Fengdu either.

Chen Yang followed the map to find the door of the tomb which was a stone embedded into the cave wall. The diary depicts the door in detail, with a hole in the middle that can be opened with a key. Kou Xuanling touched the mossy chamber door and asked, “Are you sure this is the chamber door?”

“Look for holes in the door.”

Kou Xuanling wiped off the moss and did see a t-shaped hole in the center of the chamber door: “There is a hole here.”

Chen Yang looked at the hole and said after confirming that it was a key hole: “This is the door of the tomb.”

Kou Xuanling: “How do we go in? Was it written in the diary?”

“Explosives. It says to use explosives, but I’m worried it will cause the cavern to collapse. You can see the soil is wet, the surface is soft soil.” Suddenly a drop of water from the top of the cavern dripped in front of Chen Yang, he looked up at the top of the door for a long time, he handed the map and diary to Kou Xuanling, “I will go up to see.”

After speaking, he climbed the wall of the cave to the top of the door and saw a pit above the chamber door. Below the pit there was a hole about 10 cm in diameter, and the hole was cone-shaped. Looking from above, he could see the scene behind the door of the tomb. Maybe this pit was dug by the tomb raiders in the past. Chen Yang shouted towards the two people below: “There is a hole up there, digging at it should open the door eventually.”

Kou Xuanling went up to look and agreed with Chen Yang’s suggestion: “Use the detonation charm.” He took out a folded talisman from his pocket: “Use a small amount of power, a little more powerful than a cannonball. The explosion can not kill people.” Kou Xuanling pasted nine talismans near the entrance of the cave, and then jumped on the ground with Chen Yang to detonate the talismans.

The sound was not too loud, but it still echoed non-stop in the cave. The original small hole was now big enough to fit a person. The three of them went into the crypt one by one. Behind the door of the chamber was a five-meter-long corridor, and outside the corridor was a horizontal hall. The stone tiles on the corridor were intact and unbroken, and the oil lamps on both sides were not lit.

Chen Yang’s index finger wiped the oil on the oil lamp, his face a little gloomy: “There is still oil on it, the wick also has signs of ignition.”

If this is an ancient tomb of the Warring States period, the oil in the oil lamp would have long since dried up. The wick should not have traces of use, unless there is still something living in the tomb. Kou Xuanling stared at the porcelain oil lamp and suddenly said, “If it was from the Warring States Period, it should be a copper bowl oil lamp.” The porcelain oil lamp only became popular during the Song Dynasty because it saved fuel.

After Kou Xuanling reminded him, Chen Yang realized that the oil lamps on the corridor were all porcelain oil lamps. They continued to walk forward and heard the sound of water gurgling. After walking out of the corridor, the view widened in front of them. There was a deep pool of water to the back, and in front of it was a river flowing to the left of the tomb.

Chen Yang was about to walk along the river towards the group of tombs when he suddenly heard a commotion from the pool behind him. The sound was like bubbles coming out of the water and suddenly cracking. Turning back to look at the pool he saw a wet corpse wearing a white robe floating on the pool. Other wet corpses emerged from the pool one after another.

The group of wet corpses were all dressed in white, there were men and women, old and young. He doesn’t know if they were burial attendants or craftsmen who were killed to build the tomb. They were buried in the pool for a long time and became wet corpses that did not decay or rot.

The group of wet corpses soaked in water had swelled and became transparent with black hair scattering in the water. When Chen Yang’s foot moved, the group of wet corpses in front of him suddenly turned their heads to face him. The faces of the corpse were blurred as the features could not be made out, but it was as if the corpses could see the three of them. This scene was undoubtedly scary and weird. The water pool was covered densely with wet corpses, and the group of wet corpses were staring at him.

The next thing Chen Yang and his team found was that the wet corpses floating at the top were  being pulled down. The ones who were dragging them were the other wet corpses at the bottom of the pool. The other group of wet corpses wore, not white, but dark clothes similar to those of the Warring States period. They were so dirty that the original color could not be seen. They picked up the wet corpses above them and crouched down on the water surface, staring straight at Chen Yang.

Suddenly, the wet corpses let out a cruel wailing sound and crawled towards the shore. Originally, the speed was quite fast, but the race to trample on each other slowed down the speed. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the three people rushed to run along the river. When they looked back, they could still see the group of wet corpses crawling on the shore with twisted arms and legs like a wild animal.

Only when they were far away from the pool, and could not hear the wailing of the wet corpses,  did they stop to catch their breath. Kou Xuanling said while panting, “Why do I feel like there are two eras of people in this tomb? The bronze coffin, the black colored clothes from the Warring States period, and the porcelain oil lamp and white clothes from the Song Dynasty. Combined with the Buddhist scriptures about Tiewei Mountain, the eight hells, and our ancestors’ hints, is it possible that there are ancient tombs from two dynasties buried here?”

Chen Yang: “Very likely. The original Warring States Tomb is a thirty-six Guangsha Formation; there are at least thirty-six ancient tombs in Tiewei Mountain. The whole Tiewei Mountain is a group of ancient tombs. As a prosperous capital city, many nobles of the dynasty would choose Ping City as a burial place. So it is very likely that some nobles were constructing a new tomb here, during construction they found the ancient tomb of the Warring States with the Thirty-Six Guangsha Formation. It might have been a truly unfortunate event. Perhaps all the people who witnessed the tomb at that time were not spared and all died in the tomb. Those things that were supposed to be buried as funerary objects in the new tomb were also collected into the Warring States Tomb.”

Kou Xuanling: “So at that time, something already existed in this ancient tomb.”

Chen Yang looked grave. They probably all had the same speculations in their hearts. What thing would bury the bronze coffin within the Kou family’s ancestral tomb, and rearrange the Thirty-Six Guangsha Formation, as well as re-creating the real Tiewei Mountain and the Eight Hells? There was no one else but what was inside the ancient tomb.

When they reached the end they found a stone urn, which was sealed. They did not know what was worshiped inside. Behind the urn were steps, and down the steps were subsidiary chambers. The subsidiary chambers were usually where burial objects were, but perhaps the tomb they entered happened to be unusual. The subsidiary chambers contained not burial objects, but human sacrifices.

Each chamber had many recesses cut into the walls, and in the recesses were human bodies that had been squeezed out of shape. The outside of the grooves were sealed with bronze blocks, and the human sacrifices inside could only be seen through a finger-wide gap. These holes were obviously much smaller than an adult, but the human sacrifices were all adult slaves.

So it must have been extremely painful for these adult slaves to be stuffed into the alcoves, and the bones of their whole body would have been broken in the process of stuffing them in. When the alcove was sealed up, they could not move and slowly died of starvation in great pain.

These human sacrifices’ souls were trapped here after death, the resentment was extremely heavy, they were hungry ghosts that were very difficult to deal with. Perhaps due to custom and worldview, these human sacrifices were born as slaves in life, and after death they still saw themselves as slaves. So they would only obey the words of the tomb owner.

“They were used as sacrifices to that stone urn up there, and many people died in this ancient tomb.” The more honored the status of the ancient tomb owner, the more burial objects they own. There could even be ten thousand sacrificial slaves buried here. Especially in the early periods, slaves were like livestock. Chen Yang said, “Since there are human sacrifices, there will also be human martyrs. I’m afraid there are even more of those in the tomb. I think we really may have reached the main tomb of this ancient tomb group.”

Only one of the thirty-six ancient tombs was the main tomb, the tomb of a nine-year-old girl.

At this very moment, there was an intermittent and extremely subtle ‘click’ sound coming from the tomb chamber. Kou Xuanling: “Do you hear that sound?”

Chen Yang looked into the alcove, the corpse bones inside were stationary, the arm moved steeply, and then there was a continuous ‘click’ sound, one after another. “It’s coming to life, run.”

The human sacrifices in the alcove pushed away the bronze blocks and crawled across the floor. Some of them crawled on the walls and the top of the burial chamber with unusual speed. Chen Yang had just retreated to the entrance of the burial chamber when a human sacrifice bounced in front of him and opened its jagged mouth, emitting an eerie whistling sound. Chen Yang used the red rope to flog it away, and then hand-pasted a five thunder spirit talisman and detonated it, leaving the chamber smoothly.

After running out of the tomb, he found that the human sacrifices in the other subsidiary chambers had come out to chase them, and they should have sensed their Yang Qi before suddenly attacking. Chen Yang strangled a human sacrifice with a red rope and wrapped it around his palm and shouted towards the others, “Go back to the stone urn and go to the main chamber.”

The main chamber contained the real master of the tomb, and this group of human sacrifices dared not offend the main chamber. Lu Xiuzhi escorted Kou Xuanling back to the room with the urn. Kou Xuanling waited for Chen Yang to come up and slapped the detonating talisman on the front group of the human sacrifices and detonated them to gain some time for himself.

They ran towards the front, passing by the two east and west side chambers where the accompanying burial objects were placed to reach the tomb door. The main tomb and the subsidiary chambers were separated by a tomb door, indicating the difference between the top and bottom of the hierarchy. The door was closed and could not be opened at the moment. The human sacrifices behind them crawled on hands and knees to the east and west side chambers, stopping there to watch them, showing their teeth and making threatening growls from time to time.

They dared not go further. Slaves were not allowed to enter the main chamber, not even near the tomb door. Kou Xuanling turned his back on the tomb door and asked Chen Yang: “Can the tomb door be opened?”

Chen Yang: “There is no keyhole, so it’s not opened with a key. It should be a mechanism, look for it.”

They were looking for the mechanism, and the main chamber did not respond for a long time. The group of human sacrifices outside seemed to have had enough of watching. Suddenly some sacrifices issued a loud growl and a few of them could not resist anymore. They went out of the two side chambers, after pausing for a while and noticed that they were not punished, they pounced on Chen Yang and the others.

Chen Yang and Kou Xuanling killed the human sacrifices that pounced on them, and behind them Lu Xiuzhi said, “I have found the opening mechanism, so be careful.”

With a loud bang, Lu Xiuzhi opened the door of the tomb. A section of the road ahead suddenly collapsed, Chen Yang grabbed Kou Xuanling in time to pull him back as the road ahead continued to collapse. Before the road fully caved, the three of them entered the main chamber, and the chamber door also fell down the pit. If they had not entered the main chamber in time, they would have been squashed into flat pie.

 

 

 

This Title is available for faster chapter releases through paid Patreon membership. Any proceeds go to keeping the website running. Check it out HERE.