Chapter Thirteen: Reunion (Part One)

  Xia Yifei didn't expect this underground palace would be so big.

  She followed Xia Zezhao from behind, occasionally stopping to identify the blurry marks and determine if they were directional signs. Eventually, she walked along a predetermined mark towards a not-too-spacious tomb path. After a short period of silence, Xia Zezhao couldn't bear the stillness and returned to his talkative nature. Xia Yunfei couldn't help but want to rub her temples, wondering how she had endured walking for so long.

  As a matter of fact, she did ask him that, and the result was that he came all the way singing, with an innocent look in his eyes, asking what's wrong with that.

  After thinking about Xia Ze's singing skills, Xia Yanfei said she understood why he hadn't encountered any zombies or snakes along the way. The reason was simple: those creatures would have died again if they still had their hearing and heard such a shocking and ghostly voice.

  But girl, your ability to sing off-key is no less than his, really.

  Not long after walking again, Xia Zezhao just wanted to open his mouth and say something when he was lifted by Xia Yifei's hand gesture not to make a sound. The girl herself gently closed her eyes, as if carefully listening to some kind of sound coming from the darkness.

  When there was no sound, the tomb passage they were in became exceptionally eerie, even the strong light of the wolf eye flashlight couldn't penetrate the thick darkness that seemed to have a physical presence. The chill unique to ancient tombs seemed to have finally found its chance and swarmed up, like thin blades slicing through skin and directly invading the bone marrow, making Xia Zezhao, who didn't like this, shiver involuntarily.

  When he couldn't help but lower his head, he found that the snake-shaped rice dumpling on Xiaoyan's arm, which seemed to have a name, had somehow awakened from its dormant state. A pair of eyes stared straight at him, and under the faint light, those vertical pupils actually emitted a faint greenish-blue glow.

  Xia Zezhao was so frightened that a cold breath got stuck in his throat, and he couldn't swallow or spit it out. He could only shift his gaze back to the endless darkness. In his heart, he was silently crying while a million grass mud horses galloped by: In this era, even snake rice balls dare to scare people openly, is there no human rights? This place is so eerie, I want to go back to Earth QAQ.

  But Xiaoyan's next move made him feel eerie and scary: "Hey, hey! Ayan, I'm telling you, what kind of thing has possessed you?"

  Xia Yanfei turned around and looked at him with a cold glint in his eyes, making him shiver from head to toe again: "Didn't you hear the knocking sound just now?"

  "Knock it off, sister! I didn't hear anything!" But Xia Zezhao couldn't help but listen carefully, and just as he was about to give up, he seemed to have heard a long, drawn-out knocking sound coming from the wall.

  That sound was extremely faint, and between each one, there seemed to be a strange rhythm, making Xia Zezhao's hair stand on end: "I'm telling you! Is this a ghost or what?!"

  It's human.

  Xia Yanfei simply finished speaking and started using the knife handle to continue the eerie rhythm, slowly tapping it down. The tapping sound that was heard seemed to have gotten a response, changing its rhythm, and the sound became much louder than before, and the rhythm began to become urgent!

  "I reckon there's a mechanism on this tomb passage, and the person making that noise is probably Fang Ying." Xia Yanzhi put away his knife and started feeling along the wall of the tomb passage for the mechanism. "Learn from this, next time before we descend, let's agree on a signal with our teammates. The wall's acoustic properties are pretty good, and knocking is much more energy-efficient than shouting your head off. However, the prerequisite is... you have to be sure that among your remaining teammates, there's someone who can disarm mechanisms."

  After hearing this, Xia Zezhao shook his head and waved his hand repeatedly: "Forget it, I'll just follow the professor down. This time, coming down alone and running into you again has made me feel that my curiosity about the Inverted Coffin has been completely consumed, replaced by a fear that I don't know when it will be dispelled."

  "Save this for your father, he'll be delighted to death."

  "Ah, come on! Are you going to kill me or what?"

  "Will die, suffocated to death."

  While arguing with Xia Zezhao, Xia Yanyan was deciphering the mechanism she had just found. The mechanism wasn't difficult to crack, and any of her fellow disciples who knew a thing or two about mechanisms could have cracked it. What made it difficult was that the mechanism was hidden in such a secretive location. She furrowed her brow, wondering how many times Fang Chenhao must have come here to discover this tiny detail that she had almost overlooked.

  Before long, Xiaoyan flew over and opened the entire mechanism. She called out to Xia Zezhao to come and help her move it, and with their combined strength, they finally moved away the heavy stone slab.

  Behind the organ was a small, cramped space that could hardly be called a room. A lone lamp on the wall cast a dim light over the entire space, and judging by its shape, it seemed to be the same as the one on the road she had walked earlier. And who else but Fang Ying could be lying on the ground?

  Xia Ze's relationship with Fang Ying is much closer than Xia Yanfei and Fang Ying, seeing Fang Ying collapse on the ground and a white skeleton beside him, he couldn't help but worry and quickly went up to want to support him: "Hey! Fang Xiao Houye, how are you?!!"

  He moved too fast and Xiaoyan was completely unable to stop him, but before he stepped into that space, he waved his hand and shouted loudly: "Damn it! This snake rice ball bites people!"

  The noise finally stopped, and Xiaoyan let out a sigh of relief as Ao Yuan jumped back onto her arm. With a lazy tone that sounded like he was gloating, Ao Yuan said, "Take one more step forward, and you can directly enter the abyss of no return."

  "Don't be skeptical." Seeing Xia Zezhao's expression, Xia Yifei had to speak up, "Look at the thin line under your feet."

  Upon hearing this, Xia Zezhao lowered his head to look and found that on the surface of his calf, about one millimeter away from his skin, there was a thin line that looked transparent under the illumination of Lang Yan's flashlight and Chang Ming's lamp, reflecting a faint light that was easy to overlook. If he hadn't just adjusted the flashlight downwards slightly to see clearly what was below his feet, he wouldn't have noticed this thread at all.

  This line stretched across the entire entrance, wrapped around a nail and went straight to the other end of the space. Following the line, you could see a crossbow placed there, with its shiny arrowhead raised at a 45-degree angle, pointing directly at Xia Zezhao, who was already sweating coldly!

  At this time, Xia Yu Fei had already crouched down to carefully examine: "This line was added later, and look at that crossbow arrow, it's also a modern thing. I reckon it was Fang Chen Ye or one of the people under him who did it, if Ao Yuan hadn't reminded me just now when we opened the door, I wouldn't have noticed."

  She let out a slight cough, and the chill she had felt from the beginning made her rub her hands together to seek some warmth. Xiaoyan's voice was cold, like an icicle hanging from the eaves of a house in winter: "This move is really ruthless, seeing Fang Yu's first reaction must have been to go over and help him up, who would notice their feet? And yet they used such a subtle thread, it's clear that they wanted to put someone to death."

  "Fang Chenye, it seems he can't stay after all."