Chapter 166: Layers of Illusion

But this time, the situation was different from before. My consciousness wavered for only a fleeting moment before I snapped back to clarity. My flashlight lay beside me, and I was lying alone on a large rock, half-submerged in water. Looking up, I could see the giant turtle poking its head out from the caisson ceiling.

This was the side chamber where Bai Shenxian had dived and left from at the very beginning.

It felt incredibly real. I could even smell the saltiness of the seawater. Subconsciously, I began to roll up my sleeves, pushing them all the way to my elbows. I immediately discovered that there wasn’t a single scar on my body. It seemed that seeing Tian Xiaoqi earlier had just been a thrilling, terrifying dream.

I picked up the flashlight from the water and stood up. The sensation was so authentic that I felt dazed for a moment, unable to distinguish what was real. Once again, I shone the light on the pile of funerary objects, knelt down, and turned the porcelain vase whose base was embedded in the ground.

As before, after a half-turn, the stairs reappeared in front of me. I paused for a second, then headed down the stairs with my flashlight. Just like my first time entering, after five or six steps, the stone wall behind me automatically sealed shut.

However, I didn’t intend to go back and pry at the door this time. Instead, I continued forward, turning into the corridor. Everything was still shrouded in silence. Following my memory, I accurately opened a door. Once inside, I reached into the pillowcase, but my hand found nothing inside.

My heart sank. Suddenly, I heard the sound of people running back and forth in the corridor outside. I followed the noise to the doorway to look. At some point, the corridor had become brightly lit. A second later, I saw a team of New China intellectuals dressed in military green walking past me.

I hurried to catch up, feeling that the back of the leader looked familiar. I chased after them, desperately trying to get a clear look at the person at the front. Yet, no matter how hard I pushed forward, I couldn’t get through. It wasn’t until I heard someone behind me call out “Master Gan” that I stopped in my tracks.

The man at the front, who was being pulled aside to look at documents, turned his head. The moment I saw him, the world began to spin.

This young man was my grandfather. I clearly saw his epaulettes and a chest badge pinned to his clothes with “434” written on it. The person behind me who had called him “Master” brushed past me, and I was astonished to see that his badge clearly bore the surname “Tian”.

By the time I reacted, my grandfather and the others had already turned the corner at the end of the hall. I swallowed hard and followed quickly. Opening the door, my grandfather waved at me, signaling for me to close it immediately. This place was like a laboratory, quite large in area. Those old experimental instruments were now discarded in the utility room next door, replaced by small cranes and various ropes.

I walked over to my grandfather’s side. I watched as he put on his glasses and then his gloves. I followed his gaze and saw a Giant Golden Silk Phoebe Coffin^[1] placed right in the center of the laboratory.

Why call it a giant coffin? Because this outer coffin was two sizes larger than any I had ever seen before. Looking at the layers of coffin boards inside, there had to be at least four layers. The top three layers and the heaviest outer lid had already been cleared away, and the funerary objects from those layers were gone. What they were about to open now should be the final layer, the one containing the body of the tomb owner.

I could see that the expressions of the archaeologists around me were very tense. They all held their breath, watching the young men who were separating the coffin lid from the body. After waiting for an hour, the final layer of black coffin board was finally separated. They lifted the entire board and set it aside.

Everyone instinctively crowded around, including me. At a glance, we were all shocked. The coffin was filled almost to the brim with coffin liquid. Water in a coffin wasn’t unusual; what amazed the team members was its color. From bottom to top, the liquid showed a blood-red hue.

How can I describe it? The liquid wasn’t murky, but a clear, pure red without any impurities. Leaning over, one could even see the corpse lying flat, submerged in the fluid. There wasn’t the slightest stench of decay. Instead, a faint, ethereal fragrance floated into my nostrils, though I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the coffin liquid.

The scent was addictive, and I inhaled a few more breaths. Just then, my grandfather suddenly clapped his hands, his expression turning grave. “This is bad! There’s something wrong with this scent. Everyone, get out of here immediately! Hurry!”

I immediately backed away a dozen steps, but the people who had been standing beside me didn’t move an inch. When I turned to look, I was shocked to see them frantically diving into the liquid inside the coffin. Some people tried to pull them back, but they pushed the rescuers away as if possessed. The scene instantly plunged into chaos. Those trying to help ended up falling into the liquid and went mad as well.

“Ascension! Ascension! Drink this liquid and achieve Ascension to Immortality!” I heard one person, frantically cupping the liquid to drink, suddenly scream like a lunatic.

For a moment, all sound around me faded away. As if hypnotized, I walked over to the Giant Golden Silk Phoebe Coffin. Upon touching it, I realized the coffin was coated in a layer of gold dust, and the inner walls were actually inlaid with jade.

The liquid in the coffin was already half gone. My gaze drifted unconsciously to the corpse inside. Through layers of gauze-like silk, I saw a wooden plaque hanging at its waist. That strange character was still carved upon it. In that instant, a stroke of clarity struck me, and a character suddenly popped into my head.

Ji. This character was the seal script for “Ji”.

I immediately looked at the corpse’s neck. A strangulation mark was clearly visible, already dark and bruised. This was the exact same body I had seen inside the Tomb-guarding Beast!

In an instant, a flood of complex information overwhelmed my mind: the stories Lu Ayao had told me, the tales of the outsider returning from the dead, and the eerie geomancer recorded in the Lu Clan’s ancient texts.

Master Jiyun? This was very likely Master Jiyun’s coffin. But if this body really belonged to Master Jiyun, why had I seen him hanging above a stone platform inside the Tomb-guarding Beast earlier?

I clutched my head, feeling as though it were about to burst. It made no sense. Wasn’t this seabed tied to the Gune Kingdom? Why would Master Jiyun’s coffin be here? Whose tomb was this, anyway? And where had this coffin been dug up from?

Was everything I was seeing really just an illusion?

Or had someone always wanted me to discover something-specifically wanting only me to find it?

A mouthful of water choked my throat, and I surfaced with a splash, coughing violently. I wiped my face and looked up, only to see that caisson turtle flicking its tongue at me once more. Panic instantly seized me. I scrambled back onto the dry ground and found myself back in the side chamber, still half-lying on the large rock.

This was truly sinister.

Another illusion.

I didn’t want to trigger the mechanism again and enter that building for a third time, so I began searching for another way out. After feeling around the four corners, I found that besides the one porcelain vase that could be turned, the others were indeed just ordinary vases.

At this moment, I was like the villagers in the legends, trapped in the endless loop of the “Outsider’s Path.” Staying here was definitely not an option, so I was forced to activate the mechanism once more. I walked down the stairs, the stone wall closed behind me, and I turned into the building’s corridor again.

This time, as soon as I stepped inside, all the lights in the corridor flickered on. I could even smell the fresh paint on the walls. Archaeologists moved back and forth like figures on a revolving lantern^[2], and the air was filled with the clamor of their voices, though I couldn’t make out a word of what they were saying. Standing in the middle of the corridor, I felt completely out of place.

My ears hurt so badly they felt about to burst. I covered my ears and crouched down, a voice inside me screaming over and over: What do you want? What do you actually want from me?!

I snapped my eyes open. It had to be that corpse’s doing! I had seen him in both hallucinations. He was definitely the one behind this!

An unprovoked rage flared inside me with nowhere to go. In an instant, all my composure and logic were thrown to the winds. What I feared most was this cycle of hallucinations repeating endlessly. How many more times would I have to endure this? How much longer until I could return to reality? I refused to be trapped in an illusion for the rest of my life!

I kicked open the door to a room labeled “Tool Room” and pulled a saw off the wall at random. After weighing it in my hand, I rushed toward the room at the far end of the corridor.

The door there was wide open now. Clearly, the “plot” had progressed past the opening of the coffin, and most of the preservation fluid had already been drained.

I pushed past the chaotic crowd and rushed toward the Phoebe zhennan wood coffin. I raised the saw high, preparing to hack down at that thousands-of-years-old uncorrupted corpse, when I suddenly heard someone calling my name from outside. My movement froze mid-air.

“Gan Ji! Gan Ji!”

Listening closely, the voice grew clearer. It was He Yu!

I was nearly moved to tears of joy. I dropped the saw immediately and ran out the door, shouting with a sob in my voice as I bolted toward the sound. “He Yu! I’m here! Don’t leave me behind, take me with you! Wait for me, wait for me!”

When I truly woke up, He Yu was feeding me water, one arm tucked under my head as a pillow. Seeing that I was regaining consciousness, he called out to the others, then grinned at me. “What are you mumbling about? We’re all right here. Besides, wherever we’re going, we’d have to wait for you.”

I opened my eyes and stared at him in a daze. My surroundings were completely unfamiliar. At He Yu’s call, Lu Ayao, who had been tending a fire nearby, walked over quickly and crouched down to check on me.

“Is this still a hallucination?” I asked blankly.

Hearing this, He Yu and Lu Ayao exchanged a look. He Yu asked him, “Old Lu, you didn’t say this poison had side effects. Look at the kid, he’s gone soft in the head.”

“What hallucination? Did you have another one?” He Yu turned back to ask me.

I realized instantly that this wasn’t an illusion. They had come to save me! All the pent-up anguish inside me erupted at once. I threw my arms around both of them, sat up, and began to wail.

“I’m not dead! I’m not dead! You came to save me, thank God! I thought I was going to die in this hellhole and never get out!” I howled and sobbed until my throat went hoarse.

Lu Ayao, whose neck I was strangling in my grip, gave my arm a gentle pat. I let go, and He Yu clapped me firmly on the back. “Alright, alright, stop crying. We’re here now. Listen, you just got the toxin out of your system, so don’t get so worked up.”

I gradually came to my senses and calmed down after a while. “Right, where’s Tian Xiaoqi? I was down in the hole with her before I passed out.”

He Yu pointed toward a corner of the side chamber. I looked over and saw Tian Xiaoqi leaning against the wall, fast asleep. He said, “Well, I misjudged her before. I’ll admit, she’s actually pretty reliable. She dragged you out of that hole and gave you two days’ worth of food while she only ate one day’s worth of crackers. By the time we found you, she was about to faint from hunger.”

As I watched, Lu Ayao took out his thermal blanket and draped it over Tian Xiaoqi. Then he sat back down by the fire, staring into the flames and occasionally poking them with a branch.

He Yu continued, “Old Lu says the poison you were hit with is different from ours. The antidote Bai Shenxian gave us can only suppress it at best. To clear it completely, we’ll have to find a way once we get out.”

“Don’t worry, your Fourth Brother is fine now, though his recovery is a bit slow. We were frantic to save you, so we came down first. But the situation inside the Tomb-guarding Beast had changed. The two of us ran around like headless chickens for ages without finding you. Instead, we ran into Liang Si and his bunch of bastards. They were begging and pleading for us to lead them out, so we had no choice but to tie them all up and send them to the surface.”

I lifted my hand to look at my wounds. They had stopped bleeding and were neatly bandaged. This didn’t look like He Yu’s handiwork.

“We were delayed for too long. By the time we got back down, it was already the second day. Old Lu didn’t even consult me before he started planting explosives. I don’t know where he set them off or how much he used, but half the Tomb-guarding Beast is blown to bits now. The bastard nearly blew me up with it, but it’s a good thing he did. Otherwise, you’d definitely be a goner this time,” he said.