Chapter 159: Ghost Possession

I swam a little closer, using my flashlight to scan the silk wrapping the corpse. The dark silk was heavily patterned with cloud motifs, and gold threads were woven into the fabric. Under the beam of my light, these gold threads floated loosely where the silk had frayed or torn. It was then that I noticed a rotted, discolored wooden plaque hanging from the corpse’s waist.

Only a single character was written on it. I hadn’t studied the scripts of various dynasties, so I couldn’t read it, but I did my best to memorize the shape of the character as quickly as possible.

I intended to go call the others, but the moment I tilted my flashlight upward, a wave of hair-raising dread washed over me. It felt as though the interior of the Tomb-guarding Beast had suddenly become incredibly dark. The darkness of the seabed earlier was something I could adapt to; it was, in a sense, a structured darkness.

But this darkness was unstructured, a pure and absolute void. I swept my flashlight around the surroundings and found that I couldn’t see any boundaries at all, as if every physical entity around me had ceased to exist.

My reaction was swift. Realizing something was wrong, I considered Bai Shenxian’s personality; given how long I had been here, he should have followed me up long ago. Furthermore, when I first entered the beast’s head, I hadn’t noticed any stone platform or corpse.

Besides, if there were a body, Liang Si would have been the first to know. I imagined the allure of a corpse would be far greater to him than any funerary objects.

I didn’t move, maintaining a distance of two meters from the body. As I watched it, I began to think back. This stone platform had appeared the very second after I saw the light in the crack. In other words, the moment I saw that light, I had already been lured into an illusion.

If my guess was correct, my physical self was likely still floating in the seawater. About half an hour had passed since we dove, and our oxygen tanks had a maximum supply of one hour. I had to get out of this illusion immediately.

I swept my flashlight back and forth, but I didn’t dare swim too far. The only thing I could currently touch or see was this male corpse in front of me. A thought occurred to me: was this thing the one that had pulled me into the illusion?

Strangely, I didn’t feel much fear. I paddled the water twice more, moving closer to inspect the body inch by inch. The rope suspending it from the stone platform had left a deep, strangling mark on the neck. It looked incredibly uncomfortable. Perhaps this fellow found it so unbearable that he had come to me for help.

With that thought, I reached out to steady the body, intending to remove the rope. But the moment I touched the silk on the corpse, goosebumps erupted all over my skin. I jerked my hand back, staring wide-eyed at the silk covering the body.

I had been wrong initially. This wasn’t a visual trick caused by a wasted body, nor was it the true reason this male corpse, wrapped in four layers of silk, appeared smaller than a normal body.

It was because this body had been processed. Every single internal organ had been hollowed out, which was why it was so light!

I swam behind the corpse and felt the shape of the skull with my hand, then pushed the hair aside. There was a distinct, extremely long incision on the back of the head, though after being submerged for so many years, the mark had become quite faint.

I swam back, feeling confused. The more I looked at it, the less this corpse felt like a sacrificial victim.

Setting aside modern preservation concepts, the greatest taboo in ancient China was dying without an intact body^[1]. To be hung here individually by a rope suggested he was at least a high-status sacrifice. If he was high-status, why would they hollow out his internal organs, sew the skin back up, and then hang him here?

This didn’t look like a burial; it looked more like the ancient practice of hanging a severed head at a city gate for public display. Suspended by a rope, this was clearly a deeply humiliating form of public corpse exposure.

Feeling a bit helpless, I scratched my head in front of the corpse, thinking to myself, “Come on, man, it’s been how many years? You can’t expect me to go get revenge for you.”

Just as the thought crossed my mind, my legs suddenly felt heavy. Something seemed to have entangled them. I shone my flashlight down and saw those white, tentacle-like things. Startled, I choked on a mouthful of water. Why did every illusion have to involve these things?

The White Whiskers suddenly attacked. I exhaled a string of bubbles, utterly defenseless as they dragged me straight down. In my desperation, I began to claw wildly around me, frantically grabbing the arm of the corpse closest to me.

As my palm made contact with the silk, I felt the skin beneath it crumple and wrinkle instantly. The rope holding the corpse snapped taut.

I couldn’t afford to worry about ethics now. I didn’t dare let go with one hand to reach for my knife because the pull of the White Whiskers on my legs was immense. If I let go, who knew where I’d be dragged?

I was ready to resign myself to fate, thinking that processed human skin couldn’t possibly be that strong. The White Whiskers had moved Tian Xiaoqi back on land, and those were White Whiskers that had only just awakened in the dark.

Though I wasn’t sure if the ones on land and the ones in the sea were the same species, I knew their natural predatory ability. They were fast enough to catch me before I could even swim away; dragging an adult man should have been effortless for them.

To my surprise, the situation remained in a deadlock for a long time. The White Whiskers pulled me down while I desperately clung to the corpse and pushed upward. The rope on the corpse was strained to the limit, but it showed no sign of breaking.

It wasn’t until I fumbled and found the male corpse’s wrist beneath the silk that I realized something was wrong. Logically, a rope soaked in water for so many years shouldn’t have such incredible pull. To put it unscientifically, it felt as though the corpse itself was pulling me upward.

As the stalemate dragged on, the White Whiskers on my legs seemed to realize the gap in strength. One by one, they began to release their grip. I moved past the corpse and swam upward. At that moment, I heard the sharp crack of the rope snapping. The corpse, along with its binding rope, plummeted into the darkness below.

I was quickly jolted awake by the water I had choked on. I sat up, coughing violently, and wiped the water from my face. The first thing I felt was the icy cold of the bluestone floor. Then, I saw Bai Shenxian, dressed in his diving suit, pacing around a large pool of water in front of me. Our oxygen tanks were piled in a corner. Directly above the pool was a massive caisson ceiling^[2], where a divine turtle extended its tongue from the opening.

Judging by the scenery, it looked as though we were already inside the tomb beneath the beast’s head.

“You’re finally awake. I was just thinking that if you didn’t come to, I’d have to take a risk, strap an oxygen tank on you, and carry you down on my back to explore,” Bai Shenxian said, whistling as he walked over to me.

He helped me up. “Another illusion,” I said to him. “How are you doing?”

“But the illusions here are clearly much more powerful than anything you’ve experienced before,” Bai Shenxian said solemnly.

I didn’t quite understand what he meant. After speaking, Bai Shenxian nodded slightly and continued, “Liang Si’s men were sloppy. They accidentally triggered a mechanism at the base of the beast’s head, and then everything started spinning. The sensation was like being flushed down a toilet into the sewer.”

“There must be many channels beneath the beast’s head. I grabbed hold of you, and we were swept into one of them. When I woke up, we were here. I think I was the first to regain consciousness.”

“But you were already awake before I came to. Do you know what you were doing when I opened my eyes?” Bai Shenxian suddenly asked me.

I found his words completely baffling and shook my head, signaling for him to continue.

Seeing that I truly knew nothing, the corner of Bai Shenxian’s mouth twitched. He gave an eerie smile and looked up at the divine turtle caisson ceiling. “That thing wasn’t there at first,” he said. “It only appeared after you walked a full circle around this tomb chamber and tapped open a brick in the wall.”

I looked up at the massive caisson, then back at Bai Shenxian, too stunned to speak.

“So, either you’re playing with me, or you’ve been possessed by something.” Bai Shenxian rubbed his chin and leaned in close, his gaze dark. “So, what kind of thing has possessed you?”