Chapter 279: Long Life and the Birth of a Son (Part 3)

Cui Fengji found it hard to imagine what kind of person Qu Zhang’s friend might be, but he figured they must have been close. Otherwise, Qu Zhang wouldn’t have shown such a relaxed smile.

Cui Fengji began removing unnecessary items from his pack, and the bag slowly deflated. By the time he tied it back up and put it on, Qu Zhang beside him was already rolling his shoulders and steadying his breath, preparing for his second dive.

“Be careful. If there’s anything you’re not sure about, just swim back,” Cui Fengji said, stepping back two paces to put as much distance as possible between himself and the dried corpse floating on the water.

Qu Zhang didn’t reply, diving back into the water with a splash. A few bubbles rose to the meter-deep surface, and then all trace of him vanished. In an instant, the entire space fell dead silent, leaving Cui Fengji as the only living soul alongside a floating corpse.

Darkness was gradually falling. The mouth of the well was too small for sunlight to reach down, and the cramped, pitch-black space brought on waves of restlessness. Before Qu Zhang went in, Cui Fengji hadn’t felt this anxious. He counted the seconds with a touch of impatience, forcing himself not to lock eyes with the dried corpse.

Having counted a full minute, Cui Fengji immediately pulled down the diving goggles on his head. Taking a couple of steadying breaths, he took a deep gulp of air and plunged into the water as well. Only after going under did he realize how murky the water was, with extremely limited visibility. He wasn’t even sure if Qu Zhang had brought a flashlight before heading into the tunnel.

Cui Fengji swam forward through the narrow robber’s hole. Sure enough, there was a section where the tunnel abruptly narrowed. Cui Fengji took off his backpack and pushed it ahead of him as he kept swimming. An ordinary person would find it nearly impossible to squeeze through an underwater robber’s hole, but Cui Fengji had extensive field experience and managed to overcome the mental barrier.

After swimming dozens of meters in a single breath, the passage ahead suddenly opened up. Just as Cui Fengji was about to surface, he felt his shoe get caught on something. He let go of his backpack and turned around to fix his shoe, but when his headlamp illuminated the spot, he gasped in terror and swallowed a mouthful of water.

Catching his shoe was none other than the corpse that had been at the bottom of the well. The dried body had its mouth wide open in a bizarre posture, looking as if it had crawled out of the underworld to drag Cui Fengji away, its fingernail hooked right into his shoelace.

How did this thing follow me here!

Having inhaled water, Cui Fengji reacted quickly by clamping his mouth shut, but the tickle in his throat was impossible to suppress. Survival instinct drove his limbs to thrash involuntarily underwater, but the more he thrashed, the tighter the shoelace became entangled.

Just then, splashing sounded from above. Qu Zhang swam down toward Cui Fengji’s headlamp with a flashlight in hand. He swam fast. Cui Fengji reached out to grab him, but missed completely; Qu Zhang dived straight past him toward the corpse below.

Cui Fengji felt him approach his legs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Qu Zhang deftly grip the flashlight between his teeth and draw a claw knife from his lower back. A swift slice severed the shoelace. Free at last, Cui Fengji’s oxygen was completely depleted, and he thrashed desperately toward the surface.

His head broke the surface with a spray of water. Cui Fengji clung to his backpack, coughing violently with bloodshot eyes, his throat so hoarse he couldn’t utter a word. If it hadn’t been for Qu Zhang, he would have definitely suffocated down below.

“Th-thanks… cough, cough… thanks!” Cui Fengji rasped out between coughs.

Qu Zhang surfaced. Without waiting for him to finish coughing, he hauled both Cui Fengji and his backpack onto the bank. Pushed up onto dry land, Cui Fengji scanned their surroundings. He realized it wasn’t so much a riverbank as the edge of a moat. A stone arch bridge spanned the water, flanked by two massive bronze beast heads that looked vaguely menacing in the dark.

“She wants you to carry her out,” Qu Zhang said, wiping the water from his face. He crouched down, staring at the calm surface of the moat.

“Wh-what?!”

Cui Fengji turned pale with shock. Before he could even stand up, bubbles suddenly broke the surface within his line of sight. Right after that, the female corpse that had been submerged at the bottom shot straight to the surface, the splashing sound leaving Cui Fengji weak in the knees.

Qu Zhang saw it too, but he barely reacted. He just crouched there calmly, watching the dead body. For a few moments, Cui Fengji almost thought the two of them were communicating via brainwaves.

“I thought I was a magnet for this kind of thing, but it seems you’ve got me beat.” Qu Zhang gripped his karambit, using his right hand to scoop up a handful of water, which trickled back down through the gaps in his fingers.

The female corpse slowly drifted a bit farther. Qu Zhang finally stood up, took something from around his neck, and handed it to Cui Fengji. The headlamp was getting dim, so Cui Fengji couldn’t see what it was clearly before instinctively taking it. It felt ice-cold in his hand, likely jade or some kind of stone.

“What is this?” Cui Fengji didn’t dare take his eyes off Qu Zhang for even a second, terrified that the man might abandon him here on a whim. Though the youth was a good deal younger than him, Cui Fengji knew he possessed far more experience.

Flashlight in hand, Qu Zhang vaulted onto the nearby arch bridge with one arm. “To ward off evil,” he said. “Otherwise, that female corpse would have kept following you. I’m only lending it to you, though. Remember to give it back once we’re out.”

Cui Fengji squeezed the piece of jade, unstrapped his dying headlamp and tossed it aside, shouldered his pack, and switched to a new flashlight. He scrambled up onto the bridge after Qu Zhang, fiddling with the warding jade as he walked. He couldn’t tell much about its craft, only that the jade was remarkably clear and the carved double-bird pattern looked beautiful—clearly an old piece.

Cui Fengji scratched his head and hung the jade around his neck. Looking up, he saw that Qu Zhang was already a dozen meters ahead, so he hurried to catch up. “Why was she following me?”

Qu Zhang didn’t look back, but his pace slowed down. “She was a funerary sacrifice for this tomb. I don’t know if previous grave robbers knocked her out of her coffin into the water, but she put a hand on your shoulder when you came down. She probably wants you to help her get out of this tomb.”

“Then why did she pick me and not you? Based on age and looks, you’d think you’d be more her type,” Cui Fengji said, following him with a look of complete bewilderment.

Hearing this, Qu Zhang stopped in his tracks, looking thoroughly speechless. He shined his flashlight up and down over Cui Fengji and said, “Can you stop asking so many questions? Are you like this at home, too? Doesn’t your wife get sick of you?”

“How did you know I have a wife?” Cui Fengji grinned shamelessly, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Qu Zhang had lost all interest in talking to him. He stepped closer with a teasing smirk. “What about you? Do you have a girlfriend? I bet you don’t, right?”

Qu Zhang stood where he was and moved his flashlight away, ignoring him.

“Hey! Looks like I guessed right. Though, for a guy like you, finding a girlfriend should be easy enough. Don’t set your standards too high, kid; it’s not easy to land a wife these days,” Cui Fengji began, launching into a long-winded lecture.

He rambled on for a full ten minutes. Just as he finished speaking, a massive boom echoed from directly above. The sudden noise made Cui Fengji jump, and he instinctively grabbed Qu Zhang, who was standing closest to him. He swept his flashlight around wildly. “What happened? What was that? Did we trip a trap?”

Qu Zhang used his flashlight to signal him to look ahead.

Only then did Cui Fengji notice the two white marble doors standing several meters high before them. The doors were of immense artistic value, with white marble inlaid on the outer layer and solid stone forming the core.

At the very center of the marble doors sat a massive lock. This lock incorporated the Twenty-Eight Mansions of the constellations along with the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches^[1]. It functioned like a giant safe, while the stone beasts outside served as the guardians of the main burial chamber.

The lock had already been disengaged. Cui Fengji hadn’t even noticed when Qu Zhang had made his move, but it was already open. The two sides of the giant lock had rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, triggering the sealed stone doors within. As the two doors ground open, they produced a terrifying sound of stone scraping against stone.

Cui Fengji was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when Qu Zhang suddenly gave him a violent shove. He tumbled clumsily to the ground as eight arrows whistled through the gap in the doors, grazing past his ears in unison. His entire body went stiff. He only dared to look back once he heard the arrows clatter onto the floor.

Qu Zhang gripped the edge of the stone bridge, vaulted up from beneath it, and picked up one of the arrows. He lowered his head to sniff the tip. “Likely poisoned,” he said. “Grave robbers aren’t welcome here. Tomb owners often set these kinds of traps inside the doors as a deterrent.”

Cui Fengji looked ready to cry. “Are we going to have to deal with more traps like that?” he asked with a tremble in his voice.

Qu Zhang dropped the arrow and gave Cui Fengji a meaningful look. He let out a small smile, then raised his flashlight and stepped over the threshold of the main burial chamber first. “Those poison arrows were triggered automatically,” he reminded him. “The trap fires regardless of who opens the door. As long as you listen to me and follow close behind, you won’t trip any traps.”

Cui Fengji didn’t know where Qu Zhang got his confidence, especially since this was clearly Qu Zhang’s first time here as well. Nevertheless, he rolled up off the ground and scrambled to keep pace with him.

“Don’t go so fast! Wait for me!”

Beneath the stone bridge, the female corpse floated directly under the center before sinking back into the water and vanishing once more.

In a corner of the stone bridge unlit by the flashlight beam, four beast heads were carved with gaping maws. Directly above their tongues sat arrow launchers, conspicuously installed. On the bridge surface where Cui Fengji and Qu Zhang had just walked, the green bricks were fitted together to form a mountain-shaped Ruyi pattern^[2].

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival.