Chapter 180: Whispers

As soon as he said those words, I clearly heard Tian Xiaoqi and He Yu gasp behind me. I was the only one who didn’t have much of a reaction; his statement was within my expectations.

I had already entertained this hypothesis, though I hadn’t sought confirmation from Lu Ayao. On one hand, I felt the matter was harmless. If a Lu Clan ancestor truly had been involved in building this tomb, and our team happened to include the current Clan Head, it should be a good thing for our chances of getting out.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to question Lu Ayao about it again. Based on what I’d learned of him recently, he had a very strong sense of personal boundaries and likely didn’t appreciate being interrogated. My previous attempt at doing so had ended quite unpleasantly, so unless it was absolutely necessary, I didn’t want a repeat performance.

After a moment’s thought, I said, “If it’s someone from your family, then it should be even more beneficial for our escape.”

Lu Ayao nodded. “In reality, however, the members of the Lu Clan held many different ideas, and some were quite extreme. They were capable of using anything that might induce hallucinations to create illusory realms. This stone tunnel is the only passage into the Main Hall, so something extremely dangerous is bound to appear ahead.”

“Does this ‘extremely dangerous thing’ have a specific name?” He Yu swallowed hard.

Lu Ayao didn’t answer him. He simply turned to stare into the darkness deep within the cave ahead. As I sat there, a cold wind swept across my back, sending a layer of goosebumps crawling up my arms.

This kind of vague description was the most terrifying. It wasn’t just the fear of the unknown; it was the fact that you knew something horrible was coming, but you had no idea what it would be. Your mind would then start involuntarily conjuring images – perhaps an old woman with a cat’s face, or a faceless woman with long hair.

We rested for a few more minutes until our blood cooled down. Lu Ayao continued to lead the way forward. He Yu took the knife I was carrying, claiming that since he was at the back, he needed more protection. He said if some perverted ghost came along to blow on his backside, he’d stab it and scatter its soul.

He Yu had found some peace of mind, but I was starting to lose mine.

Out of the four of us, I was the only one with neither a light source nor a weapon. If some unknown entity managed to slip in among us, I wouldn’t even have the space to fight back.

After another half hour of crawling, a second steep slope appeared ahead. This one went downward. To save power, the others deliberately dimmed their flashlights before we began the descent.

The slope was quite steep, so we couldn’t use the same crawling method as before. We had to go one by one. Lu Ayao went first, sliding quickly down from our position. Once he was safe, he would clear the way for me and tap the stone wall twice with his flashlight. That would be my signal to slide.

Less than a minute after Lu Ayao went down, the tapping sound echoed up. I adjusted my posture and followed suit, letting gravity take me down the steep incline. The stone passage was rough, making my slide less than smooth. Halfway down the dozen-meter slope, I actually came to a halt on my own.

It was pitch black all around, with only a faint glimmer of light from Lu Ayao’s flashlight at the bottom. I braced myself against the stone walls and began to inch downward. A beam of light flashed, and something caught the corner of my eye.

For a split second, I thought I saw something on the stone walls that hadn’t been there before. I squinted, but it was too dark and dim to see clearly. He Yu was urging me on from above. Thinking it might just be drawings left behind by the original builders, I didn’t pay it any more mind and scrambled down the last few steps to the bottom.

Tian Xiaoqi was light and had an advantage in sliding through these narrow passages. Once she was down, He Yu followed impatiently. Upon landing, he started groaning and clutching his backside, complaining of the pain. He insisted his skin was delicate and that he’d scraped it during the slide.

I told him that judging by his expression, it didn’t look like a scrape; it looked more like a flare-up of hemorrhoids. He cursed at me but stopped his dramatic wailing.

The narrow passage ahead remained empty. We adjusted our positions and continued crawling. As we moved, my mind began to wander uncontrollably. There was no specific reason; I just found myself thinking about that hand-drawn map tucked inside the notebook.

The traps here hadn’t been triggered, which proved indirectly that the 434 Archaeological Team hadn’t explored the same path we were currently on. They had likely explored a different stone tunnel, one that ran roughly parallel to this one.

But what I couldn’t understand was why the archaeological team had marked an ‘X’ next to a passage on the map, followed by several question marks. Had they encountered some unsolvable mystery while exploring that other passage?

Could it be that because they ran into such an insurmountable problem, they decided to temporarily abandon that route and marked it on the map?

As I pondered this, I suddenly felt that something was very wrong with our surroundings. My crawling speed slowed down involuntarily. After crawling for so long, my eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness. I turned my head to look at the walls that felt off, and what I saw nearly scared me out of my wits.

It was a pale, bloated human face, but it had no features whatsoever. These large-headed faces were painted one after another onto the blood-red stone walls.

At the same time, I discovered something even more hair-raising. The walls on both sides of us, as well as the ceiling above, were covered in these white, bloated faces. The background was entirely filled in with red pigment. Crawling between these things felt incredibly eerie. Even though they had no faces, it felt as if they were constantly watching us.

I stopped and squeezed my eyes shut. A terrified cry rose in my throat, but I forced myself to swallow it. Tian Xiaoqi and the others didn’t seem to have noticed that these horrifying things had appeared all around us.

I didn’t know if they truly hadn’t noticed or if, like me, they had and were simply suppressing their terror as they crawled on. Regardless, I had to stay calm. Screaming would achieve nothing good. I tried to remember exactly when these things had appeared.

They hadn’t been there when we were descending the slope, which meant they must have appeared on the walls after we reached the bottom. Painting such bizarre figures in such a cramped space was likely intended to terrify tomb raiders.

I steadied my breathing and caught up to Lu Ayao, continuing to crawl forward. I forced myself not to look at the bloated faces staring at me from both sides, trying to keep my mind occupied with thoughts so I wouldn’t be paralyzed by fear, even though my legs were shaking uncontrollably.

As we crawled, a sudden shout erupted from behind.

“Holy crap! What the hell are these things on the walls!”

It was He Yu. The moment he shouted, I knew he had seen the same bloated faces I had.

As soon as he cried out, Lu Ayao stopped and turned around, clicking off his flashlight. He gave a stern command: “Lights out!”

I kept my eyes squinted and my head lowered, not daring to look up or to either side. Knowing myself, even though I knew how terrifying these things were, my peripheral vision would still try to sneak a peek until I scared myself into being unable to move.

Tian Xiaoqi quietly and obediently turned off her flashlight. He Yu, unsure of what else to do while prone in the tunnel, followed Lu Ayao’s order and extinguished his light as well. In an instant, my surroundings returned to the primal state of the cave.

I had been crouching low to the ground just like Tian Xiaoqi, but holding that position for too long made it hard to breathe. The space around us was cramped, leaving me no room to stretch my limbs. In modern terms, I suppose I suffer from a mild case of claustrophobia; I’d experienced similar breathing difficulties for quite a while back in the caves of Yunnan.

Perhaps hearing my labored breathing, Lu Ayao, who had been perfectly still in front of me, grabbed my arm and pulled me upward. At the same time, I was moved much closer to one of the side walls. In that instant, I heard what sounded like people whispering inside the stone.

I recoiled immediately, clutching Lu Ayao’s arms as if he were a lifeline.

When a person is in a state of extreme panic and confusion, their mind loses all clarity. Unless someone has dealt with such situations a thousand times and possesses a profound mastery over their own consciousness, it is absolutely impossible to remain level-headed in an instant.

First, I gripped Lu Ayao’s arm with everything I had, then I frantically tried to scramble away from the large-headed faces on either side. These movements were purely subconscious reactions. Fortunately, Lu Ayao was prepared; he pinned me down firmly a split second before I could let out a scream.

He held me fast, twisting my shoulder so hard it felt like it might dislocate. I could only hear him whispering urgently in my ear, “Shh! Don’t make a sound!”

My scattered wits slowly returned, and I was forced into a state of calm. In the pitch blackness, my sense of hearing seemed to become far more acute than usual.

I heard them. Deep within the cavern, behind the stone walls we were crawling through, a large crowd of people was whispering. What’s more, the sound of their voices seemed to be drawing closer and closer to us.