Chapter 158: The Male Corpse

I must have been blind to miss a Tomb-guarding Beast of that size, I scolded myself inwardly.

I also had to admit I was overly tense. Sometimes, the more a person prepares for the worst, the easier it is to mess things up. I was just that kind of person.

This was my first time leading a team underwater, and in a place as deep as the South China Sea, no less. Besides, with Liang Si right beside me, I hadn’t planned on letting people split up to search from the start.

First, underwater is different from land: you can’t speak, so if something went wrong, we wouldn’t be able to rush over immediately. Second, underwater visibility was very low right now; if we separated, regrouping would be difficult and waste time. Third was Liang Si. If I told everyone to split up and search, he would definitely think I was trying to send them away to sabotage them behind their backs. If even the slightest thing went wrong, it would be my responsibility.

I signaled, and the team gathered around me. Before us stood a hideous Tomb-guarding Beast. It had three ears on each side, its head facing forward with wide, glaring eyes, and its left leg raised slightly as if about to charge at any second. This was easily the largest Tomb-guarding Beast I had ever seen; the head alone was a full fifty meters wide from front to back.

I swam farther back to shine my flashlight, but I still couldn’t see the whole thing. Looking back at Bai Shenxian, I saw him point at the beast’s three ears. I knew what he meant. Fourth Brother had told me before that he and Lu Ayao had entered the beast’s head through its ears.

Liang Si swam over to my side. Without waiting for him to ask my opinion, I immediately swam over to one of the ears and signaled for the team to gather and keep swimming down. But just as I adjusted my diving posture, that bastard Liang Si grabbed me again.

He was getting on my nerves. What was this old guy up to now? Didn’t he know our oxygen tanks could only last an hour at most?

Before I could even turn my head, I suddenly saw someone from the team shoot past us, ascending frantically. They were moving so fast that I froze on the spot. I looked closer and saw it was the Short Old Man whom Liang Si had brought down.

Underwater is a high-pressure environment. At our current depth, both descending and ascending required extreme caution, because rising too fast could easily cause one’s lungs to burst from the pressure. But the Short Old Man’s speed far exceeded a normal ascent.

Just as I thought, once the Short Old Man reached a certain height, blood bled from his nose and he drifted back down, clearly a corpse now. Bai Shenxian swam up a short distance, caught him, checked his pulse, and shook his head at me.

I noticed a tube floating in the water alongside the Short Old Man, looking very much like part of a respirator.

I turned to look at Liang Si beside me. He hadn’t swum up to catch the man. Instead, he stared at the ear of the Tomb-guarding Beast below, hesitated for two or three seconds, and then waved his hand, signaling me to ignore the Short Old Man and hurry the others into the ear.

Bringing up the rear of the team, I inexplicably began to feel a sense of sorrow. I started to regret things, wondering if I had made a mistake.

It turned out a person really could completely abandon another. This Short Old Man had followed Liang Si for who knows how many years, appearing loyal to a fault and following his every command. Yet no matter how loyal he was, he ultimately couldn’t compete with that tiny bit of greed in a person’s heart. Liang Si hadn’t even hesitated.

Only after Bai Shenxian let go of the Short Old Man’s body did we enter the ear together. The inside of the Tomb-guarding Beast’s ears connected straight through, all three ears leading into a stone pipe at the back. It was quite dark inside and the space was narrow. Following the person ahead of me, my mind began to wander.

Bai Shenxian swam down alongside me. He wrote a line on his waterproof slate and showed it to me: “That man’s breathing tube broke. He must have been suffocating, which is why he swam up so frantically to survive.”

I only glanced at the words on his slate and didn’t respond. Before we went into the water, I had already anticipated that someone in Liang Si’s team would have their breathing tube break right down the middle.

Because I was the one who had tampered with it. But when I did it, I didn’t actually think my scheme would succeed. After all, Liang Si was an old hand in the underworld. How could he be so careless as to give a clearly damaged breathing tube to one of his men?

But that was exactly what he had done. He had even given that damaged tube to his most capable subordinate.

I didn’t consider myself the type to do such wicked things. Besides, it wasn’t like people hadn’t done the same to me before. My conscience and morality were fiercely condemning me now, so I naturally couldn’t bring myself to smile at all.

Seeing no reaction from me, Bai Shenxian tapped me and pointed ahead.

The stone walls ahead were noticeably wider than the current passage. Guessing we would soon enter the beast’s head, I shone my flashlight on the walls to either side. As the light hit them, I saw that the stone walls of the head still bore patterns painted in oil colors.

The colors were incredibly vibrant, clearly visible even in the murky water.

Liang Si and his men swam into the beast’s head, and now they were starting to make trip after trip back up. Looking closely, I saw that each of them was carrying two or three jars and pots. Every item was covered in mud, likely funerary objects placed inside the beast’s head.

I didn’t stop them because I was thinking about something else.

How could these oil paints submerged in water for so many years maintain this level of brightness? The funerary objects the men were carrying out were painted with the same materials. Although covered in mud and barnacles, the colors painted on them remained vivid.

Bai Shenxian swam past me to check on Liang Si, who was standing at the bottom of the beast’s head. Liang Si was directing his men as they carried out the funerary objects one by one, all of which had settled at the very bottom of the head.

I swam a large loop around the stone walls inside the head alone and found the structure very strange. It seemed that swimming here was the end of the line. The stone walls were solid; there was no passage inside the beast’s head that connected to a burial chamber.

I felt along a stone wall that had a crack in it. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of something flashing past inside the crevice. I leaned in close to look, but it was pitch-black inside and I couldn’t see a thing. The gap was so narrow I couldn’t even fit my flashlight inside.

Just as I turned around to get Bai Shenxian’s help, I suddenly noticed a striking stone platform protruding from the wall beside me. Directly beneath the platform, a corpse hung from a rope. The moment I laid eyes on that corpse, my mind felt like it was about to explode.

The corpse was bound in rope, and the posture and way it was bound were identical to the female corpse I had seen in Gansu!

Figuring that since it was tied up, nothing bad should happen, I cautiously swam over to inspect it.

It was a male corpse, thin and gaunt, wrapped in four or five layers of silk. The entire body was suspended beneath the stone platform by the rope. He wore an embroidered dark blue feather garment, and a gilded long-life ruyi lock^[1] hung around his neck. The body must have undergone preservation before being submerged, as his skin was merely a grayish-blue, without having bloated into anything too terrifying.

I was pretty frightened at first, but after getting closer, that fear gradually vanished for some reason. The corpse gave off a feeling of profound sorrow, even more tragic than the female corpse before.

Whose body was this? Was it a sacrificial offering? If so, why was there no Ship-Burial Coffin? And why was it hanging inside the head of the beast?