Chapter 181: The Wall of the Dead

But how could there be people talking inside the walls!

The realization made my entire body go rigid. Lu Ayao didn’t loosen his grip on me at all, clearly afraid that if my terror reached a certain point, I might bolt and crash into the stone.

My eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness by now. I opened them wide, desperately trying to see if any strange new figures had appeared in the tunnel. Unfortunately, despite my searching, nothing new had emerged. Instead, with the light extinguished, the large-headed faces on both sides looked even more lifelike in the dark.

I tried to shift slightly, but Lu Ayao held me too tightly. Those whispering voices seemed to hover all around us. I couldn’t speak, and in the pitch black, I couldn’t even signal Lu Ayao with my eyes. Left with no choice, I strained my ears to listen to the movement around us.

The voices were definitely coming from inside the walls. They were everywhere—on all sides, and even above our heads. I tried to focus, wanting to hear exactly what they were saying, but I couldn’t make it out. I could only tell that this was absolutely not a sound produced by animals; it was the distinct effect of humans communicating in low voices.

I attempted to exhaust every bit of scientific knowledge I’d learned over the past twenty years to explain the cause of these voices, but the sound was simply too eerie. These voices weren’t gathered in one fixed spot; they were constantly moving around us. Sometimes they sounded far away, and sometimes they felt as if they were speaking right against my ear.

The few of us remained completely motionless for nearly fifteen minutes. Both of my legs had gone numb, yet the voices continued to fill my ears. They grew louder and louder until it felt as if we were trapped in the middle of a crowded marketplace. If I listened any longer, I felt like my ears would explode.

Suddenly, I felt Lu Ayao’s wrist move rapidly. This was followed by a series of crisp sounds of falling stones. The voices in my ears stopped abruptly. Then, I heard what sounded like a tide of people surging toward the back of the tunnel.

Once the voices faded away, Lu Ayao clicked his flashlight back on with a sharp snap. Brightness instantly returned to my vision. Lu Ayao let go of me, and I saw He Yu quickly shuffle forward a bit before hurriedly turning on his own flashlight.

Soon, the area around us was illuminated, but those large-headed faces painted on the walls didn’t disappear.

He Yu opened the conversation first. “What the hell was that just now?”

Tian Xiaoqi was so scared she was nearly paralyzed where she lay, but she was too intimidated by the figures on the walls to move, so she remained flat on the ground. “I saw those paintings a long time ago,” she said. “But we’d been crawling for so long without any reaction from you guys that I didn’t dare say anything.”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. “Same here. These wall paintings appeared suddenly after we went down that steep slope. What was that noise just now?”

“I don’t know, but there’s a high probability this passage wasn’t meant for us,” Lu Ayao said, his nerves clearly still on edge.

“Not for us?” He Yu sucked in a breath of cold air. “Holy crap, you don’t mean it’s for those things just now, do you? A ghost hole?”

Lu Ayao shook his head. “It was likely meant for a specific group of people. I’ve heard that during the Republican era, the Lu Clan once trained a special branch of descendants. These people were usually from collateral branches of the family and were born with disabilities. Some had eye problems, others had ear problems. They would be sent down to explore dangerous tombs that living people couldn’t enter.”

As he spoke, he turned around and continued crawling forward through the tunnel.

I found it hard to believe. “How can disabled people explore tombs? Your ancestors were a bit too heartless. In a place this dangerous, there are situations even normal people can’t handle, yet you actually sent in people born with disabilities?”

He Yu suddenly sighed from behind us. “I remember now! You’re talking about the ‘Can Tong,’ aren’t you? I’ve heard of this!”

“Master He, you’re a man of great experience. Why don’t you explain it to a person of no knowledge or culture like me?” I lowered my body to avoid a stone pillar that had suddenly appeared ahead.

He Yu and I chatted as we crawled. A large part of the reason for talking was to help distract ourselves. It was difficult enough to maintain a calm mind while crawling through such a long tunnel, let alone with all those pale, large-headed faces watching from the walls.

Lu Ayao didn’t stop us; he just tried to speed up the pace of our crawl. It seemed that, to some extent, he tacitly approved of our attempt to distract ourselves.

He Yu cleared his throat at the back of the line and explained, “The Can Tong often appear in folk tales and unofficial histories. The records that mention them are almost always from regions where major tombs have been excavated. According to those records, these Can Tong were children born with physical disabilities. Initially, these children were just used as tools to probe dangerous mausoleums, no different from common cats or dogs. Later, the ancestors of the Mojin Xiaowei discovered that these disabled children’s other senses would become highly developed.

“For example, a child born deaf was said to have a much more developed sense of touch or sight. Some could notice things that us ordinary people would miss. It all sounds pretty mystical.

“Anyway, whether it’s true or not, someone back then really did train a group of such children specifically for tomb raiding. I heard they even favored the blind ones—ideally born blind, the kind who couldn’t see a speck of light. They say these kids had incredible skill with their hands. They could touch a piece of Mingqi and know exactly which dynasty it was from and how much it was worth just by the feel. It’s exactly like what Old Lu just said; those are the so-called ‘Can Tong.’ Pretty twisted, right?”

I listened in stunned silence. I couldn’t imagine what those so-called “Can Tong” must have endured in the early years. Just to satisfy human greed, they might have been sent down to terrifying places like this at the age of five or six to touch the belongings of the dead. If they couldn’t find anything, they might even have been beaten to death.

Up ahead, Lu Ayao spoke up. “In the early years, there were many disabled children who were abandoned at birth. The Lu Clan would often arrange for people to check those deserted mountains. If they found such a child, they would bring them home for training. But later, during the years of hiding and wandering, that training stopped. This place is very likely a passage specifically designed for the Can Tong to travel through.”

“Then what was the deal with that sound above our heads? It made my skin crawl,” He Yu asked.

Just as He Yu finished speaking, Lu Ayao suddenly stopped. I was keeping about an arm’s length between us, so I managed to stop in time to avoid another “rear-end collision.”

I poked my head out to see what was happening. One look, and I froze. I never imagined this hole could be so sinister. What I saw was beyond my current understanding of the world.

Following the beam of Lu Ayao’s flashlight, about ten meters ahead of us in the stone tunnel, a wall appeared that had been completely sealed with stones. This wall fit perfectly against the tunnel sides, but the most incomprehensible part was that several wrists and arms were protruding from the surface of the wall.

Yes! It wasn’t a poor choice of words—these dead arms and hands were literally sticking out from behind the wall. When this wall was built, living people must have been bricked up inside it. They must have struggled desperately, thrusting their hands out through the stones in hopes of finding a way out, only to have their arms emerge before they suffocated to death inside.

Lu Ayao shone his light on those hands and arms, his brow furrowed deeply.

“Was this something you expected too?” I whispered.

Lu Ayao stared ahead in silence and shook his head. Clearly, this wasn’t something he had anticipated. Perhaps even he hadn’t expected the only tunnel leading to the Main Hall to hide so many nasty secrets.

“Holy crap,” He Yu muttered, having crept up beside us at some point. His mouth was hanging open in a perfect ‘O’ shape, staring at the scene ahead so stunned that he couldn’t speak for a long time.

Lu Ayao and I watched from below, while Tian Xiaoqi and He Yu leaned over our shoulders to peer from above. The four of us were huddled together in a tight bunch; none of us had ever seen anything like this before.

Suddenly, He Yu blurted out, “How many bodies do you think are behind this wall?”

With that one sentence, the three of us shifted our gaze toward him. I thought to myself, You really know how to ask a question, don’t you? His words sent a chill down everyone’s spine, but it was a crucial point. If there were only a dozen or so people crammed into the tunnel, it probably wouldn’t have reached this state. Considering they were packed in so tightly they’d suffocated to death, the number of people behind that wall had to be substantial.

“Those voices we heard chatting in our ears earlier… they wouldn’t happen to be the souls of the people up there, would they?” He Yu added in a low, eerie voice right above my head.

I swallowed hard and said, “From the looks of it, I’d say so.”

If it had been the old me, I would have laughed myself silly if someone tried to tell me something so supernatural. But after everything I’d experienced lately, I really had no choice but to consider the possibility.