Chapter 180: Whispers

As soon as he said those words, I clearly heard Tian Xiaoqi and He Yu gasp behind me. I was the only one who didn’t have much of a reaction; his statement was within my expectations.

I had already entertained this hypothesis, though I hadn’t sought confirmation from Lu Ayao. On one hand, I felt the matter was harmless. If a Lu Clan ancestor truly had been involved in building this tomb, and our team happened to include the current Clan Head, it should be a good thing for our chances of getting out.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to question Lu Ayao about it again. Based on what I’d learned of him recently, he had a very strong sense of personal boundaries and likely didn’t appreciate being interrogated. My previous attempt at doing so had ended quite unpleasantly, so unless it was absolutely necessary, I didn’t want a repeat performance.

After a moment’s thought, I said, “If it’s someone from your family, then it should be even more beneficial for our escape.”

Lu Ayao nodded. “In reality, however, the members of the Lu Clan held many different ideas, and some were quite extreme. They were capable of using anything that might induce hallucinations to create illusory realms. This stone tunnel is the only passage into the Main Hall, so something extremely dangerous is bound to appear ahead.”

“Does this ‘extremely dangerous thing’ refer to anything specific?” He Yu swallowed hard.

Lu Ayao didn’t answer him. He simply turned to stare into the darkness deep within the cave ahead. As I sat there, a cold wind swept across my back, sending a layer of goosebumps crawling up my arms.

This kind of vague warning was the most terrifying. It wasn’t just the fear of the unknown; it was the fact that you knew something horrible was coming, but had no idea what it would be. Your mind would then involuntarily start conjuring images: an old woman with a cat’s face^[1], or a faceless woman with long hair.

We rested for a few more minutes until our blood cooled down. Lu Ayao continued to lead the way forward. He Yu took the knife I was carrying, claiming that since he was at the back, he needed more protection. He said if some perverted ghost came along to blow on his backside, he’d stab it and scatter its soul.

He Yu had found some peace of mind, but I was starting to lose mine.

Out of the four of us, I was the only one with neither a light source nor a weapon. If some unknown entity managed to slip in among us, I wouldn’t even have room to fight back.

After another half hour of crawling, a second steep slope appeared ahead. This one went downward. To save power, the others deliberately dimmed their flashlights before we began the descent.

The slope was quite steep, so we couldn’t use the same crawling method as before. We had to go one by one. Lu Ayao went first, sliding quickly down from our position. Once he was safe, he would clear the way for me and tap the stone wall twice with his flashlight. That would be my signal to slide.

Less than a minute after Lu Ayao went down, the tapping sound echoed up. I adjusted my posture and followed suit, letting gravity take me down the steep incline. The stone passage was rough, making my slide less than smooth. Halfway down the dozen-meter slope, I actually came to a halt on my own.

It was pitch black all around, with only a faint glimmer of light from Lu Ayao’s flashlight at the bottom. I braced myself against the stone walls and began to inch downward. A beam of light flashed, and something caught the corner of my eye.

For a split second, I thought I saw something on the stone walls that hadn’t been there before. I squinted, but it was too dark and dim to see clearly. He Yu was urging me on from above. Thinking it might just be drawings left behind by the original builders, I didn’t pay it any more mind and took a few quick steps before sliding down to the bottom.

Tian Xiaoqi was light and had an advantage sliding through narrow passages like this. Once she was down, He Yu followed impatiently. Upon landing, he started groaning and clutching his backside in pain, insisting his skin was delicate and that he’d scraped it during the slide.

I told him that judging by his expression, it didn’t look like a scrape; it looked more like a flare-up of hemorrhoids. He cursed at me but stopped his dramatic wailing.

The narrow passage ahead remained empty. We adjusted our positions and continued crawling. As we moved, my mind began to wander uncontrollably. There was no specific reason; I just found myself thinking about that hand-drawn map tucked inside the notebook.

The traps here hadn’t been triggered, which proved indirectly that the 434 Archaeological Team hadn’t explored the same path we were currently on. They had likely explored a different stone tunnel, one that ran roughly parallel to this one.

But what I couldn’t understand was why the archaeological team had marked an “X” next to a passage on the map, followed by several question marks. Had they encountered some unsolvable mystery while exploring that other passage?

Could it be that because they ran into such an insurmountable problem, they decided to temporarily abandon that route and marked it on the map?

As I pondered this, I suddenly felt that something was very wrong with our surroundings. My crawling speed slowed down involuntarily. After crawling for so long, my eyes had mostly adjusted to the darkness. I turned my head to look at the walls that felt off, and what I saw nearly scared me out of my wits.

It was a ghastly pale, oversized human face, but it had no facial features whatsoever. These large-headed faces were painted one after another onto the blood-red stone walls.

At the same time, I discovered something even more hair-raising. The walls on both sides of us, as well as the ceiling above, were covered in these white, oversized faces. The background was entirely painted over in red. Crawling between these things felt incredibly eerie. Even though they had no features, it felt as if they were constantly watching us.

I stopped and squeezed my eyes shut. A terrified gasp rose in my throat, but I forced myself to swallow it down. Tian Xiaoqi and the others didn’t seem to have noticed that these horrifying things had appeared all around us.

I didn’t know if they truly hadn’t noticed or if, like me, they had and were simply suppressing their terror as they crawled on. Regardless, I had to stay calm. Screaming would achieve nothing good. I needed to think back and figure out exactly when these things had appeared.

They hadn’t been there when we were descending the steep slope, which meant they must have appeared on the walls after we reached the bottom. Painting such bizarre figures in such a cramped space was likely intended to terrify tomb raiders.

I steadied my breathing and caught up to Lu Ayao, continuing to crawl forward. I forced myself not to look at the oversized faces staring at me from both sides, trying to keep my mind occupied so I wouldn’t be paralyzed by fear, even though my legs were shaking uncontrollably.

As we crawled along, a sudden shout erupted from behind us.

“Holy crap! What the hell are these things on both sides!”

It was He Yu. The moment he shouted, I realized he had definitely seen the same large-headed human faces I had.

As soon as he cried out, Lu Ayao stopped immediately and turned around, clicking off his flashlight. He gave a stern command: “Lights out!”

I kept my eyes narrowed and my head slightly lowered, not daring to look up or glance to either side. Knowing myself, even though I knew full well how terrifying those things were, my peripheral vision would still try to sneak a peek until I scared myself so badly I couldn’t move.

Tian Xiaoqi quietly and obediently turned off her flashlight. He Yu, unsure how he was supposed to lie prone in the tunnel, had no choice but to follow Lu Ayao’s order and extinguish his light as well. In an instant, my surroundings plunged back into the cave’s most primitive state.

Like Tian Xiaoqi, I had originally been half-prone on the ground, but holding that posture for too long left me gasping for air. The surrounding space was tight, leaving me no room to move my limbs. To use a more technical term, I probably had mild claustrophobia; back in the cave in Yunnan, I had also suffered from breathing difficulties for quite a while like this.

Perhaps hearing my rapid breathing, Lu Ayao, who had been remaining perfectly still in front of me, grabbed one of my arms and pulled me up slightly. At the same time, I was brought much closer to the wall on one side. In that instant, I heard what sounded like people whispering inside the wall.

I recoiled immediately, clutching Lu Ayao with both hands as if he were a lifeline.

When a person is in a state of extreme panic and confusion, their mind loses all clarity. Unless someone has dealt with such situations a thousand times and possesses a profound awareness of their own consciousness, it is absolutely impossible to regain composure in an instant.

First, I gripped Lu Ayao’s arm for dear life, then frantically tried to pull away from the large-headed faces on both sides. These movements were purely subconscious reactions. Fortunately, Lu Ayao was prepared; he pinned me down firmly a split second before I could let out a scream.

He held me fast, twisting my shoulder so hard it felt like it might dislocate. I could only hear him whispering in my ear, “Shh! Don’t make a sound!”

My lost clarity slowly returned, forcing me back into a state of calm. In the pitch blackness, my sense of hearing seemed far more acute than usual.

I heard them. Deep within the cavern, behind the stone wall we were crawling along, a large crowd of people was whispering in low voices. What was more, the sound of their voices seemed to be drawing closer and closer to us.