Chapter 158: The Male Corpse

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

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

This was my first time leading a team underwater, and we were in the deep waters of the South China Sea. Moreover, I had Liang Si right beside me, so I hadn’t planned on letting people split up to explore from the start.

First, underwater is different from land; you can’t speak. If something went wrong, we wouldn’t be able to rush to help immediately. Second, the current visibility was very low. If we separated, it would be difficult to regroup, which would waste time. Third, there was the issue with Liang Si. If I called for a split search, he would definitely think I was trying to get rid of them to sabotage them behind their backs. If even the slightest thing went wrong, it would be my responsibility.

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

I swam back a bit to shine my flashlight, but I still couldn’t see the whole thing. I looked back at Bai Shenxian. He pointed 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 paddled over to my side. Without waiting for him to ask for my opinion, I immediately swam to one of the ears and signaled the team to gather and continue swimming down. However, just as I adjusted my posture to dive, that bastard Liang Si grabbed me again.

I was getting irritated by him. I wondered what the old guy was 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 streak past us, floating upward frantically. The speed was so fast it left me stunned on the spot. I looked closer and saw it was the Short Old Man that Liang Si had brought down.

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

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

I noticed a tube floating in the water alongside the Short Old Man. It looked very much like a respirator tube.

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

Following at the back of the team, I inexplicably began to feel a sense of sorrow. I started to regret it, wondering if I had done something wrong.

It turned out that a person really could completely abandon another. This Short Old Man had followed Liang Si for who knows how many years. He had seemed loyal to a fault, 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 interior of the ear together. The inside of the Tomb-guarding Beast’s ear was completely hollowed out. The three ears connected to a stone pipe at the back. It was quite dark inside and the space was narrow. As I followed the person in front 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 one person in Liang Si’s team would have their breathing tube snap in 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 the 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 screaming at me now, so I naturally couldn’t find any joy in it.

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

The stone walls ahead were significantly wider than the current passage. I guessed we were about to enter the head of the beast, so 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 traces of 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. Now they were starting to swim back up in trips. I looked closely and saw that each of them was carrying two or three jars and pots. Every item was covered in mud. They were likely funerary objects placed inside the beast’s head.

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

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

Bai Shenxian brushed 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. The items were all settled at the very bottom of the head.

I circled 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 a stone wall with a crack in it. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something flash past inside the crack. I leaned in close to look, but it was pitch black inside and I couldn’t see anything. The gap was too small for my flashlight to fit.

Just as I turned around to find Bai Shenxian for help, I suddenly noticed a very abrupt stone platform on the wall beside me. Directly beneath the platform, a corpse hung from a rope. The moment I saw that corpse, my mind felt like it was going to explode.

The corpse was bound with rope, and the posture and form of the binding were exactly the same as the female corpse I had seen in Gansu!

Thinking that the thing was tied up and shouldn’t cause any trouble, I cautiously swam over to inspect it.

It was a male corpse. The person was very thin, wrapped in four or five layers of silk. The body was suspended entirely beneath the stone platform by the rope. He wore a suit of embroidered dark blue feathered robes, and a gold-plated “Long Life Ruyi” lock hung around his neck. The body must have been preserved before being submerged, as his complexion was merely a grayish-blue rather than the horrifying bloated look of a typical drowning victim.

I was quite frightened at first, but after getting closer, that fear slowly vanished for some reason. The feeling this corpse gave me was one of profound sorrow, even more so than the previous female corpse.

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?