Chapter 11: The Living Dead in Ancient Tombs

  I took the shovel and dug along the bright spot, and surprisingly, even the bone residue came down with it. I held my breath and carefully poured that lump of charcoal-like bone residue onto the ground, at which point Zhao Yuer took a water bottle and rinsed it off. As the mud dissipated, a pure white jade vase appeared. The jade vase was white with a fresh green glow, about the size of a key, very inconspicuous, but on top was carved a gourd shape. Similar to the gourd-shaped jade I brought, but with big differences, mine is a gourd-shaped jade, while this one is just a vase with a painted gourd on top.

  "That's great, we've found it! This must be the relic from before. Let's hurry and send it to Professor Wang right away, tell her the good news!" Zhao Yuner excitedly straightened up and almost bumped into the top of the tomb chamber.

  "Alright, let's hurry up and get out of here, it's damp and humid in here and I can barely breathe. Make sure to bring your own tools and don't lose them." After I finished speaking, everyone followed one after another and walked out. The one running at the front was still Wu Shi Rong, he was last when we went in, but always first when we came out.

  "Professor Wang, we found a coffin in tomb No. 7, which seemed to have been robbed before. We found this jade pot on the remains of the ancient corpse, and there's a picture of a gourd on it!" Zhao Yuner said, holding it up with both hands and handing it over to Professor Wang.

  "Are you Zhao Yuer? I saw your photo, Professor Liu said you're the top student in your department's freshman class, first place overall?" Professor Wang, with a shoulder-length head of hair and wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses, smiled as he looked us over.

  "Professor Wang, you're joking! I just happened to write the correct answers on the test paper, it's not like I'm a genius or anything. If I were really that smart, I would have gone to Tsinghua or Peking University long ago!" Zhao Yuner said with a bright red face and a humble tone.

  "You're the one who's really something, Tsinghua and Peking Universities may not necessarily have someone as great as you. Let's put this jade pot away and take it back to Haicheng to have the experts at the Cultural Relics Bureau appraise it!" As he spoke, Professor Wang took out a plastic seal bag and put it in.

  "Today, you've done quite a bit of work on your first day here. This morning, you cleaned up the silt, and this afternoon, you even found something valuable. This jade vase has some characters at the bottom, it's a treasure! Thank you all, now that it's almost dark, follow me and I'll show you where to rest." As Professor Wang led the way in front, we headed towards the dormitory area.

  The Ling Mountain Cemetery is not far away, just over 500 meters uphill, where a temporary iron house was set up. Next to it were several tents. The iron houses were all two-story and looked like the temporary houses on construction sites, with blue iron sheets and white iron plates. Our group of ten people followed Professor Wang and arrived there in no more than a few minutes.

  "You all just rest here for the next few days, the girls' and boys' dormitories are separate, absolutely cannot live together. Also pay attention to personal hygiene, don't run around randomly. Without my leadership, you can't enter the scene casually, just finish writing today's assignment and that's it, bye!" After finishing speaking, Professor Wang waved her hand at us, strangely, I didn't know when she changed into a short skirt, the tight short skirt wrapped around her plump buttocks, her thighs were also white. Professor Wang looked less than thirty years old, but she looked very young like an eighteen or nineteen-year-old girl.

  It's almost six o'clock in the evening, let's go to a canteen made of iron sheet together. There is a big pot with a large iron ladle beside it. The chef inside is stirring the contents of the pot randomly with the ladle. Next to it are rows and rows of big white cabbages, potatoes... It seems that being an archaeology major isn't a good thing.

  "Zhaoyu'er, how does this dish taste?" I ate a few mouthfuls and really couldn't eat anymore. Hurriedly asked her about her feeling.

  "How was it? You didn't know what you were eating yourself?" Zhao Yuner looked at me with a puzzled expression.

  "Haven't you tasted the iron wok flavor? Eating this dish must supplement calcium and iron, haha!" I smiled and continued to gnaw on the big mantou in the plate.

  "What are you talking about? Are you trying to disgust me?" Zhao Yuner asked, glaring at me.

  "Alright, if you don't believe me, come and see for yourself," I said, dragging Zhao Yuer along by the arm to the kitchen, where the head chef was standing next to a large pot, frantically stirring and flipping.

  "Heavens, isn't that the large shovel we used to clean up this morning?" Zhao Yuer said, covering her mouth and running straight out of the house... A rich young lady is indeed different, she can already endure a lot of hardship now, but the gigantic size of these tableware still exceeded her slightly smaller mental capacity.

  The next morning, the three of us continued to clean up No. 7 ancient tomb in a group. With various tools, wearing professional work clothes and shoes, we arrived at the entrance of No. 7 ancient tomb. Since our lights were already set up yesterday, the progress was very fast. Bending over and moving forward skillfully, it took about ten minutes to reach the entrance of No. 7 ancient tomb.

  "Yesterday you found a jade pot, today let's see if I can find something," said Wu Shi Rong, taking out a shovel and continuing to dig in the coffin. He carefully placed the remains into plastic bags for identification later. Zhao Yun'er and I quickly helped him put them into the collection box on our backs and labeled them with serial numbers.

  "Wu Shirong, you despicable little man!" Zhao Yuer mocked and patted his shoulder. Wu Shirong was frightened and quickly squatted down.

  "How am I a despicable person? What makes you say that about me?" Wu Shirong scratched his head in puzzlement.

  "How did you manage to run ahead of us today, when yesterday you were still following behind? Is it because the lighting is better today and you're not afraid of the dark? Come take a look if there's any gold, silver or jewels around?" Zhao Yu'er said with a wink at me.

  "It's not, yesterday my glasses had water droplets and I couldn't see clearly, today they're gone so of course I can see clearly now!" Wu Shi Rong patted his own chest, puffed out his chest and pretended to be calm as he shouted at us.

  "Alright then, you deal with this yourself. How about I go to the 8th door on the side with Nie Yu?" Zhao Yuer said as she and I backed out.

  "Go ahead and go, do you think I'm afraid? I'm not a coward." Wu Shi Rong said so, but still lowered his head to sneak a peek at us, then looked around and shrunk his body back.

  Is there a ghost in this ancient tomb? If I encounter a ghost, can't I ask them and understand everything? Thinking of this, I took out the tool bag of my second uncle. I took out the prepared willow leaves, applied cow tears to them, and stuck them on my eyelids. At the entrance of No. 8 tomb chamber, I looked left and right but saw nothing, guessing that they had all been reincarnated many times.

  We arrived at the entrance of Tomb No. 8, and it seemed that the door was intact and had been opened by the previous engineering team. As we walked in, Zhao Yuer set up the electric lights while I accompanied her. She occasionally took out her notebook to record notes on the topic. The classmates next to us in Tombs No. 5 and No. 4 were busy with their heads down, and when I glanced at Wu Shirong in Tomb No. 7, Zhao Yuer and I exchanged a knowing smile.

  "Let him temper his courage, it's good to be in the archaeology major with such a small gallbladder, seeing a corpse would make him pee his pants!" As soon as I finished speaking, Zhao Yuner pinched my arm.

  "You're so naughty! He peed his pants and it flowed onto the stone slab, it'll damage the cultural relic, haha!" Zhao Yuer said with a loud laugh. I thought to myself, Ah! This young lady is even more imaginative than I thought.

  Inside the No. 8 tomb chamber, the space is very large, and in front of us is a stone brick road. On both sides of the road are deep pits used to prevent grave robbers, possibly because it's been too long, the wooden mechanism inside the pit has rotted and become ineffective. The space inside is very large, I can stand up straight and still not reach the top of my head. I'm holding a lamp, Zhao Yuer is behind me laying down electric wires, in just a few minutes we arrived at the inner chamber. In the center of the inner chamber is an enormous coffin, the coffin seems to have never been moved, with a thick stone cover on top, and then something unexpected happened.

  "Help... help..." A clear but faint voice seemed to come from the pit next to me, I was startled and took out the talisman ready to fight the ghost, at this time Zhao Yuer suddenly hugged my back.

  "Nie Yu, do you hear that? It sounds like a ghost! Let's hurry up and get out of here!" She whispered, pulling me backwards as she spoke. I quickly took out the willow leaf and looked around, but didn't see any sign of ghosts anywhere.

  I and Zhao Yuner slowly backed away, I was wondering how earlier I clearly heard someone calling for help but now it's gone? Myself and Zhao Yuner didn't dare to stay any longer, we turned our bodies and were about to leave the tomb chamber, but at this time something unexpected happened, from the dark pit a black hand stretched out and grabbed my ankle...

  "Ah! Ghost!" Zhao Yuner saw the black hand stretched out and shouted loudly, running out without looking back. I quickly used a iron shovel to hit the hand, the hand seemed to be afraid of pain, I hit it once and it shrunk back, I was afraid that the ghost would get up and grab me, so I randomly hit it a few more times, then there was no sound. I felt something was off, if it were a ghost, it wouldn't be so easily dealt with, so I turned the flashlight over. Only to see in the deep pit, half of a person was buried in mud, on top of the mud, a person was lying with their eyes open, wanting to speak, probably dazed from my earlier hits.

  I took a closer look and it was Zhou Wen!

  "Are you Zhou Wen? I know you, aren't you Lena's boyfriend? What are you doing here, what exactly do you do?" A string of questions suddenly burst out, and I hastily asked him.

  At this time, Zhou Wen slowly lifted his head, propped himself up on the ground, one of his legs seemed to be stuck in the mud and couldn't be pulled out. He was over 1.7 meters tall, wearing a black mountaineering suit.

  "Not bad, I'm Zhou Wen, and Lina is my girlfriend. It's all because of me that she's in trouble, but I don't want to harm her. I came here to find the ice jade that can break the curse." He said, looking down at his trapped legs.

  At this time, Zhao Yuner brought Wu Shirong over, they looked at me chatting with someone and slowly walked over.

  "You've arrived, he's a human not a ghost, it's Zhou Wen. Let's pull him up first and talk later!" I put down the iron shovel and grabbed one of Zhou Wen's arms. Wu Shi Rong also grabbed one of his arms. However, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't pull him out. Zhou Wen kept making painful cries, it seemed like his legs were stuck in a pit in the muddy ground.