Chapter 25: The Corpse Tied Down

  As the water flowed down again, the last chain that bound the female corpse fell off. The corpse dropped from a height of ten meters and landed right in front of me.

  I stood there for a moment, relieved that it didn't land on me. At such a high distance, even an egg would be enough to hurt me, let alone such a large corpse. I might have had to go down and accompany her if it had hit me.

  Ma Si Zhe and I stood still, not daring to move. After a while, seeing that the female corpse had no movement, just lying face down, Ma Si Zhe and I both let out a sigh of relief.

  "It was just a scare, I'm so anxious" Ma Si Zhe sat on the ground and wiped his sweat. The vines on the ground somehow retracted at some point. Ma Si Zhe went to pick up his shoes and put them back on while sitting on the ground. He also threw my shoes over to me.

  "Let's get out of here quickly, who knows when that pesky Treant will pop out again."

  Just as Ma Si Zhe and I were about to walk around the corpse, it suddenly stretched out a hand and touched my ankle. A cold sweat rolled down my spine from the vertebrae. My scalp felt like it was being pinched together.

  Ma Si Zhe walked a few steps back and looked at me without moving 'Come on, what are you lingering for'

  I stiffened my body, slowly turned around, and made a face at Marx Zhe, sticking out my tongue. I forgot that we had never been on the same wavelength before. Marx Zhe didn't understand what I was doing at all, raised an eyebrow and looked at me 'Are you scolding me?'

  I felt like someone had shot me with a fierce gunshot, the feeling of being hit in the head was so real. With teammates like Ma Si Zhe, even if I died, it would be my own fault.

  I looked down at my feet, and the corpse was looking up at me with a pale face that didn't look like a mummy at all, but rather like it had been soaked in water. The face was full of wrinkles, and if not for the long hair, I couldn't tell whether it was male or female. The fingernails were extremely long. At this moment, they were tightly wrapped around my ankle.

  Ma Si Zhe followed my downward gaze and saw the change in the corpse on the ground. He cursed, looked up at me, and mouthed "what to do".

  I shook my head silently and said 'no'. She was just touching me like that, which was fine, but I was afraid she would get up and do something to me.

  At this time, I felt her hand grasping my ankle slowly using force, and slowly feeling up. Just as she touched the root of my thigh, I quickly stretched out my hand to cover my crotch, frowning and pursing my lips, silently thinking, not here, not here. In our old Sun family, I am the only seed, can't cut off the back.

  The female corpse didn't respond, continuing to grope upwards. Her body moved along with her. Like a snake, she wound her way up from the soles of my feet and arrived in front of me. When I felt that the thing on my body was no longer moving, I carefully opened one slit of my eyes and saw that face, which had been soaked by water until it was wrinkled and pale, stuck right in front of me. It's hard for me to describe her appearance at this moment; her two eyes were almost popping out of their sockets, and her nose was twisted to one side.

  A few strands of scattered hair fell in front of me, reminding me of Ye Huamama's face when Marx Zhe first arrived at the village and I saw her through the door crack.

  I felt like my pores were electrified and my hairs stood on end.

  Ma Si Zhe quietly asked me from behind, "Is this your former lover in the village?" I looked at the face in front of me and didn't dare to speak, afraid of startling her.

  She didn't move, I didn't move, and Ma Si Zhe didn't dare to move either. We just stared at each other with deep affection. I felt a slight itch in my nose, but my hand was tied up by the corpse and couldn't scratch it. After holding it in for a while, the itchiness rushed from my nostrils to my brain, and I involuntarily let out a loud sneeze, causing the female corpse in front of me to jerk backward.

  She seemed to be startled, and suddenly became violent. She opened her bloody big mouth to me. The degree of her mouth opening was not something that humans could do, from the corner of her mouth, all the way to the root of her ear. I saw something in her throat slowly drilling out.

  Upon closer inspection, it was a black-striped snake that slowly crawled out of her throat. I felt my throat itch and tried to push my face back, but the corpse's grip on me didn't loosen at all, choking me to the point of suffocation.

  Just as the black-striped snake was about to crawl out, Ma Si Zhe tightly grasped the female corpse's neck from behind. This move separated the female corpse and me. I was flung to one side.

  Ma Si Zhe and the corpse were entwined together, Ma Si Zhe used his two feet to hold her in place, but the female corpse was like it had no bones, easily breaking free from Ma Si Zhe's legs and pinning him down by the neck. Just as I was about to go over and help, Ma Si Zhe struggled to say 'There are black donkey hooves in my bag, take one...cough...stuff it into her mouth, quickly!'

  I turned around and saw Ma Si Zhe's backpack that had fallen to the ground during the struggle. I opened the zipper and indeed found several black donkey hooves the size of a palm inside. I quickly grabbed one, lifted up the female corpse's head, and stuffed it into her mouth.

  Who knew she suddenly spat out the thing in her mouth, turned around and flipped me to the ground. Grabbing Ma Si Zhe's feet, quickly dragging him backwards. I got up from the ground, picked up a stone, and heavily smashed it onto the female corpse's head. The female corpse's reaction was as if I had scratched an itch for her, loosening her grip on Ma Si Zhe's hand, slowly turning around, and pouncing towards me.

  She pinched me again, and opened her mouth once more. I was pinched by her to retreat backward. Suddenly my foot tripped on a stone, and without any warning, I fell backward with a loud splash, hearing a "plop" sound, the female corpse and I both fell into the pool.

  Just as she fell into the pool, her mouth slowly closed, and the snake in her throat slowly retreated. The female corpse's grip on my neck also suddenly relaxed, slowly releasing its hold. With a sudden burst of energy, I broke through the water's surface, letting out a blood-curdling scream that echoed through the empty tomb. I scrambled out of the pool as if it was filled with sulfuric acid, not water.

  I stuck my head out of the water. I saw that female corpse climbing up along the iron chain, like a snake, and again wrapped around by the surrounding chains.

  All of this happened so suddenly, Ma Si Zhe was lying on the ground, staring blankly at me 'What medicine did you give her'

  I looked at Ma Si Zhe and shook my head in dismay. Then I quickly swam out of the pool, picked up the backpack on the ground, helped Ma Si Zhe up and said 'Let's hurry and go, who knows when she'll come down again'.

  "Wait a minute," Ma Si Zhe struggled free from me and took our two canteens to the water pool, filling up two buckets of water.

  Then we two stumbled and staggered into the tomb passage.

  "What's the use of the water in the pool? Are you going to keep it for drinking? Thinking of the drowned female corpse that had fallen into it earlier, I felt nauseous, let alone drink the water from it."

  "Haven't you noticed that everything here is afraid of the water in the pool?" Ma Si Zhe wiped the water off the thermos and put it into his backpack.

  He said that, and I remembered that the white bones in the White Bone Cave were also like this. After my body got wet, I didn't dare to get close. This time, I got wet, but although the female corpse dared to approach, after falling into the water, she still stayed far away. It seems that the water here is indeed a bit special.

  "So let's prepare some first, who knows when it will be useful in the future"

  "I found that the female corpse and you might be relatives, both using this trick" Ma Si Zhe touched his own neck, wincing in pain.

  I'm busy smiling and don't dare refute a single word. Who made me owe them an apology first?

  "How come I feel like I've seen that female corpse's climbing posture somewhere before?" I thought with my head tilted to the side.

  "I told you she was your girlfriend and you didn't believe me," Ma Si Zhe said with a still bad attitude.

  "To be serious, I feel like I've definitely seen it before"

  It's really familiar, it should be not long ago. Where was it? I thought about the appearance of that female corpse just now. It seemed to have no bones, its body was soft like a snake. From the chain at the very bottom, all the way up to more than ten meters high. Like a snake, like a snake. I remembered! It was Ye Hua that I saw through the door gap that day!

  It was Yehua

  "What is Yuehua?"

  "Do you still remember what I told you before? One day I followed Ye Hua to his doorstep and saw him climb up the tree like a snake."

  As a result, I didn't see him climbing trees, but he performed a show of eating dog meat for me. Marx felt uncomfortable whenever he thought back to that night's experience.

  Ye Hua's movements were exactly the same as those of the female corpse that had climbed onto the chain just now.

  "Is that so? That would be interesting if it's true." Ma Si Zhe stroked his chin, saying with great interest. "Hey, do you remember that man-eating beast we saw in the mural before?"

  "Which one?" Ma Si Zhe suddenly became excited, leaving me bewildered.

  "It's those old men with their light-colored pants, who threw the struggling girl to that thing behind them that's like a dog and a lion. Didn't you think that the way it was eating looked familiar? It's exactly the same as Ye Hua's movements that night."

  Ma Si Zhe's reminder made two scenes flash through my mind at the same time, and they coincidentally matched perfectly. Indeed, the animals in the mural, whether it was their walking posture or their eating behavior, were exactly the same as Ye Hua's actions that night.

  The things that people in the village turn into at night, I've actually found their true forms here. Is this a coincidence or is there really some connection between them?

  "That is to say, people in your village will be controlled by something in the tomb at night, so they do some abnormal things." Ma Si Zhe speculated.

  "What kind of control method? Do they still have a remote control in their hands?"

  "Your grandfather didn't say that the villagers were trapped in a place called Wàngshēngmén, do you think there's something fishy about Wàngshēngmén that made them turn out like this?"

  That's what happened after they came out of the reincarnation door and were influenced by something in this tomb.

  "How did they come out of the pearly gates?"

  Ma Si Zhe asked like this, I just remembered that my grandfather said in his letter that he used 20 years of time and still couldn't find that place. Then how did these people come out?

  Is that place the Pearly Gates?