Chapter 173: The Dead Man’s Credentials

The passage ahead reached its first corner. He Yu stopped and shone his flashlight at the ground. “Whoa! Your analysis was spot on. Look at all this sand and these footprints. They’re a mess. Looks like quite a few people from that damn archaeology team made it in!”

I was leaning against He Yu’s back, my chest hurting too much to even stand up straight. I could only listen as he described the scene. “We’ve been seeing these footprints all along the way, but here they clearly come to a halt. They must have gathered here, stopped, and maybe taken a break to rest.”

Tian Xiaoqi also swept her flashlight around. After watching for a moment, she tilted her head. “I don’t think they rested. Look here—there are no marks on the walls or the floor suggesting anyone sat down or leaned against anything. Besides, resting usually involves eating or drinking, and there’s no sign of that either.”

At her words, He Yu stepped forward to take a closer look. He let out a soft “Huh?”

“You’re right. Footprints everywhere, but not a single person ate or sat down. So what the hell were they doing here?”

The two of them went back and forth, their descriptions vague enough to give me a headache. I tapped He Yu on the shoulder, signaling for him to let me down. He gingerly lowered me from his back. Having recovered some of my strength, I looked down and saw the footprints they were talking about.

The clusters of footprints were very obvious, almost completely covering the floor at the corner. Many were overlapping and chaotic. Judging by the prints alone, it was impossible to tell exactly how many people had been in this group.

I crouched down to examine the ground closely. “They must have lingered here for a long time,” I said.

As soon as I spoke, Tian Xiaoqi began scanning the surroundings with her light. “People don’t just stop here for no reason,” she said. “I have a really bad feeling about this place. Should we head back and see if there’s another way?”

I also found the arrangement of these footprints eerie. If they were resting, no one stays standing the whole time. Even if this was a highly disciplined team that wasn’t allowed to sit, they wouldn’t be forbidden from taking a sip of water during a break. With this many footprints, the area was simply too clean.

Before I could make up my mind, He Yu took a large stride over the footprints and rounded the corner into the tomb passage. Seeing his flashlight beam disappear, I immediately stood up and called out to him, “We haven’t figured this out yet! Don’t go off on your own!”

The moment his light vanished around the bend, I heard him let out a sudden “Yikes!” Sensing trouble, I didn’t care about the footprints anymore. I rushed into the passage in a few quick strides, slamming right into He Yu as he came running back.

The collision didn’t knock us down, but it left us both seeing stars. It took half a minute to recover. Rubbing my head, I cursed at him, “What the hell are you shouting for? Is there a Zongzi chasing you or something?”

He Yu was still dizzy, but he grabbed my arm urgently. “Quick, quick! I think I found the owners of those footprints.”

He dragged me a few steps into the passage and stopped, shining his light toward the middle section. At the sight, the hair on my arms stood on end. Several mummified corpses lay sprawled in the passage, leaning against the walls. Shovels and pickaxes used for excavation lay scattered on the floor, now a rusted mess.

“You think these folks look like the owners of those footprints?” Seeing me standing frozen and silent, He Yu swallowed hard and asked.

I reached out for his flashlight. He handed it over, and I turned the beam to its maximum brightness, using the wide aperture to illuminate the corpses in the distance. The air in the passage was thick with dust; the light revealed motes dancing in the air. Then, a glint caught my eye. The light had reflected off something on one of the bodies.

I had a good guess as to what it was—likely an armband or a badge. It didn’t take much thought to realize which era frequently used such items. “I think we’ve found them,” I said immediately.

Tian Xiaoqi poked her head out from behind our shoulders. The three of us were huddled so close we were practically stacked together. I squinted, trying to make out the details on the corpses, but the distance was too great and the dust in the air too thick. Everything was a blur.

I stared at the bodies and asked, “Who’s going over to check?”

He Yu and Tian Xiaoqi both looked at me. Realizing I was the “patient,” they probably felt it wasn’t particularly ethical to force me to go, so they quickly looked away.

He Yu spoke up quickly, “Miss Xiaoqi, you’re a heroine among women. Why don’t you go take a peek?”

Tian Xiaoqi glared at him. “That’s not just one body. If the ones in the back reanimate, there’s no way to escape at this distance. You want me to go? Why don’t you go?”

“Doesn’t that just show how much I respect your skills? If they turn into Zongzi, you can actually hold your own for a few rounds. Me? At most, I’d kowtow a few times and beg it to go bite someone else.” He Yu gave a cheeky grin.

I patted He Yu and said, “Alright, alright, stop bickering. These corpses are dried out like jerky; how are they going to reanimate? I’ll go.”

Without waiting for their reaction, I pulled off my backpack and shoved it into He Yu’s arms. I drew a machete from the straps, weighed it in my hand, and began to edge forward along the wall.

Seeing this, He Yu suddenly blocked my path. He snatched the blade from my hand, pushed me back, and said with mock bravado, “In Captain He’s squad, there’s no rule that says the wounded go into the minefield first. Come on, step back a bit. Don’t interfere with Captain He’s performance.”

Then, he hunched his back, stuck his rear out, and moved forward in a semi-crouch with the knife, keeping his center of gravity low against the wall. He looked exactly like a petty thief trying to steal a bicycle by the side of the road. The sight made me want to laugh. Tian Xiaoqi and I followed him, maintaining a distance of about a meter. If anything went wrong, we would turn and bolt.

He Yu’s posture wasn’t pretty, but he was fast. He soon reached the corpses. I looked down at the uneven floor for a second, and when I looked up again, He Yu had already stepped among the bodies. It was a dangerous move. I stopped, about to call out to him, but He Yu turned and made a shushing gesture.

I had blood on me, so it wasn’t wise to get too close to the corpses. I could only stand outside and worry. Tian Xiaoqi walked past me with her knife drawn, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze as if to tell me to stay calm. Two people checking the bodies was better than one.

The two of them moved among the pile of corpses. They were cautious at first, but soon grew impatient and began flipping them over more roughly. Finally, I saw He Yu pick up the bodies and line them up one by one in the passage.

Once they were organized, He Yu stood among the corpses and waved me over. Only then did I dare to approach.

“There really were quite a few of them. Eight in total, all squeezed together. Their clothes were practically stuck to each other. Man, that was exhausting.” He Yu wiped sweat from his brow.

Tian Xiaoqi remained crouched on the ground, searching through the items on the bodies. She opened several army-green canvas bags and emptied their contents onto the floor. I knelt beside her to watch. The owner of one bag must have been a girl; it contained leftover tissues, hand cream, a notebook, and a bulbous canteen.

“In the middle of nowhere like this… how did they all end up dead here?” He Yu scratched his head, standing before the row of corpses.

I did a quick inspection of the bodies. I couldn’t find any obvious wounds.

“There’s definitely something wrong with these corpses,” I said. “There are no injuries. Did they really just starve to death here?”

Tian Xiaoqi shook her head. “They didn’t starve to death.”

She held up a packet of compressed biscuits she’d just pulled from a backpack. The packaging had already turned black with age.

“They might have been poisoned,” she added.

Tian Xiaoqi stood up and crouched before the nearest corpse. She used her flashlight to highlight the body’s discoloration, signaling for me to observe. “These bodies are severely blackened. Even after all these years of decomposition, they still show this color. They must have ingested a massive dose of poison before they died. I was just looking for the container that held it.”

“What? Poison? A mass suicide?” He Yu asked, startled.

“So you’re saying these people took the poison themselves?” I asked.

Tian Xiaoqi shook her head. “I can’t be sure about that.”

This reminded me of the state of Uncle Chen Canghai’s body and the note he’d left in the side chamber. Was there a connection between the two?

I knelt on the ground and began flipping through the notebook I’d unearthed. Three backpacks, two notebooks. I hoped to find some useful information in them, but the pages were almost entirely blank, save for one notebook that had a hand-drawn sketch tucked inside.

The paper had been kept for so long that it was brittle enough to crumble. I didn’t dare touch it directly, so I simply turned the notebook around and used it as a tray to examine the drawing.

The drawing was abstract, consisting of several large circles piled together. Some of the circles were connected by lines. I have a bit of a talent for drawing, and I could tell immediately that these circles were very different from ones drawn freehand.

The circles on this paper had been drawn with a compass. They were extremely precise. To my eye, the placement of each circle seemed standardized, as if they were meant to be equidistant. I guessed the lines connecting them had been added later, as each one was drawn freehand with an oil-based pen. The entire diagram was already chaotic, and these lines only made it more so.

Furthermore, several lines didn’t connect to anything, stopping halfway. The person who drew it had even placed a few question marks next to these broken lines.

I did a quick count. There were thirteen circles in total.

My mind was a mess of conflicting thoughts. Several points of suspicion had already emerged.

First, why were all these bodies crowded together in this one spot?

Second, why were there only three backpacks for eight bodies? Whether it was food supplies or tools, it clearly wasn’t enough for a group that size.

Third, what did the thirteen circles on this map represent?

Fourth, were these eight bodies actually members of the 434 Archaeological Team?

“What’s this? Another map?” He Yu leaned over my shoulder to look. “If this is a map of the underground palace, then normally these people should have been able to find their way out. But instead, they all died here together.”

Tian Xiaoqi suddenly let out a sharp gasp. I turned and saw her holding up an identification card. I hurried over to look. the ID was so worn that the headshot was almost unrecognizable. The only things still faintly legible were the ID number and the name.

However, once Tian Xiaoqi and I saw the name, we both fell into a heavy silence. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but my heart was racing.

It was a personal archaeological ID belonging to a member of the “434 Archaeological Team” named “Lu Xiaosu.”

“What is it? Why did you guys stop talking?” He Yu grunted as he squeezed in to look. Once he saw it, he fell silent too.

I brushed my fingers over the scratched-up photo and shone my light on the faces of the corpses, trying to find any facial features that might link one of them to Lu Xiaosu. But it was useless. Every one of them had a hideous, distorted expression. The sheer despair etched onto their faces before death was enough to inspire a deep sense of dread.

After a long moment, He Yu asked weakly, “The person Old Lu is looking for… she wouldn’t happen to be among these eight, would she? But he’s not here, and we can’t tell just by looking. What do we do?”

I thought for a moment and said, “She might not be here.”

“What do you mean? The ID was right next to the bodies,” He Yu countered.

“A single ID card isn’t definitive proof that Lu Xiaosu is one of these eight bodies,” I said. “Besides, their faces are so badly decomposed. Wait… why are their faces so much more decayed than the rest of them?”

Clutching the ID, I knelt down again to examine the corpses. A quick look confirmed it: the degree of decomposition on every face was a level beyond that of their bodies. Much of the facial tissue had rotted away, which was why I couldn’t distinguish their features. If it weren’t for the fact that the female frames were slightly more slender, I wouldn’t even have been able to tell their gender from their appearance.

Tian Xiaoqi thought for a while before saying, “It could be an effect of the poison.”

Refusing to give up, I suppressed my revulsion and compared the ID to each of the two female corpses. The results were inconclusive; they both looked like her and yet didn’t. Looking at the ID, I suddenly felt exhausted, almost ready to give up. Then, my eyes caught the row of numbers at the very bottom of the card, which were slightly worn away.

4341951XXX.

“Holy shit!” I cried out in shock.

He Yu had been sitting nearby playing with the turtle, but my sudden shout nearly made him drop it.

He stood up, dusting off his pants, and started cursing. “Dammit, what now? You’re going to wake these old-timers up with that yelling!”

I waved him over urgently, holding the ID up for him and Tian Xiaoqi to see. “This ID number! Look at this number!”

Tian Xiaoqi froze when she saw it.

He Yu didn’t seem to think much of it. “What’s wrong with the number?”

I scrambled up from the ground, trembling with excitement. “This number has the exact same prefix as the project code for the Nine Rings Project!”