Chapter 1: The Ghostly Shadow of the Ancient Tomb

  A multitude of ancient tombs buried countless secrets, and numerous national treasures wrote out millions of colorful legends. Many kings, nobles, heroes, bandits, and high-ranking officials created countless legendary treasure-hunting secrets that have been passed down for thousands of years. Humanity's innate curiosity and relentless pursuit of precious treasures drove many treasure hunters to endure hardships and difficulties, even risking their lives to solve the mysteries, searching tirelessly for the location of hidden treasures or the keys to them, dreaming of becoming the new owners of these treasures. Greed can lead to chaos and forgetfulness of propriety; extreme desire can lead to strife and resentment. Thus began a battle over treasure...

  The night was already very deep. The sky above was as black as ink, and not even a crescent moon or a single star could be seen. The fields were like being covered by a large iron pot lid, dark and suffocating. In front of a mound of earth that had been ravaged by the years and lost its original shape, several vague shadows could be seen waving their tools in the dim light. Their movements were very skilled, obviously accustomed to this kind of work. Before long, they dug out a large pit three feet square and more than two people deep. The ground around the pit was covered with a thick layer of cloth-like material, on which was piled the newly excavated soil. After working for over an hour, they heard the sound of iron shovels hitting stone. The person below lit candles, and he asked the other two to throw down steel chisels, saws, and axes. He used force to cut open the thinnest part of the stone door, and with just a slight push, the dark tomb passage unfolded before his eyes. Perhaps they had dug too hard earlier, and the person below was panting heavily from exhaustion.

  "He lightly shouted upwards: 'First get me up there and let me rest for a while. I'm exhausted, I'm exhausted...'"

  Two men pulled him up, and three of them stood at the entrance of the cave talking.

  "Judging from this, it's at least a tomb of a seventh-rank official."

  "Who knows, maybe we'll really get rich tonight..."

  "Unfortunately, we can't keep all the goods for ourselves. When we go back, we still have to hand them over to the big boss, sigh..."

  "It's not bad, but since we got a lot of stuff, our reward can be a bit more, enough for us to have a few drinks..."

  "Alright, alright, stop nagging, it's time to get to work. Old Fourth and Toad, the coffin may not be easy to open. This time, both of you go down, I'll take care of things up here."

  "One person is enough, why two..." The toad-like man lazily refused to budge.

  "Still listen to big brother's words, call you down and you'll go down, hurry up, quickly." Old Fourth urged.

  Two men, with ropes tied around their waists, were lowered into the cave. They lit the lanterns in their hands and took a step forward, trying to move cautiously. A faint, unpleasant smell wafted up, and the two men quickly covered their noses and dodged away...

  Two men grasped axes and chiseled a small hole in the upper part of the coffin's lid, then used sharp saws to saw back and forth. Before long, a seam was sawed open on the left side. Next, they did the same thing on the right side. Finally, with one strike of the axe, the lid opened, and the coffin creaked open...

  A gust of dark wind carrying a strong stench rushed towards Lao Si. Before he could react, the corpse inside sat up straight. Its face was twisted and hideous, with a purple-black complexion that seemed to stretch for a foot. Its eyes snapped open, revealing a pair of gleaming white teeth as it let out a blood-curdling scream: "Wahahaha, wahahaha..." Lao Si let out a loud cry before fainting dead away. The frog-like creature crouched on the ground, shouting "Ghost! Ghost... Corpse resurrection! Corpse resurrection!" in terror. It hastily turned around to look for rope, but was dragged down to the ground in the chaos. The two of them fled in disarray without even gathering their belongings...

  Two people rushed back to Jiangyue Manor in one breath. Without waiting for anyone to report, they burst into the main house and fell to the ground, unable to get up...

  "What's wrong with you two kids? Look at this mess!" the master of the house scolded.

  Two people lay on the ground, panting heavily, still unable to speak. The master of the house picked up a toad with both hands, but felt his hands were wet and saw that the ground was full of water. As soon as he loosened his grip, the toad fell heavily to the ground again, letting out a "ouch" cry. The master of the house put his hand over his nostrils and smelled a foul odor.

  "You two kids are scared like this, is it to the point of peeing your pants? What's going on? Speak quickly... Where's Lao Si?"

  "I've encountered a ghost, I've encountered a ghost......" The toad kept muttering to himself.

  "Go to hell, where's the ghost? Are we, in this line of work, still afraid of ghosts? Two useless things..."

  The two of them stuttered and stammered for half a day before they finally made sense of what had just happened. "Take them back to rest first," the master ordered his servants. The two were carried out by four strong men...

  The master of the Jiang family was called Leng Jiangbo, the head of the Jiangyue Mountain Villa, known as "the master". He was eight feet tall, with a tiger's back and waist, leopard-like head and eyes, swallow's chin and whiskers, and purple copper-colored skin. When he spoke, it was like thunder, comparable to Zhang Fei of ancient times. Under the guise of running a leather goods station, he secretly engaged in the tomb raiding business. He was skeptical about the two encountering ghosts. Could it be that there really were ghosts in this world? For many years, nothing had happened, but recently, tomb raiding and ghost encounters had been happening one after another. What was going on? He decided to take matters into his own hands.

  The next morning, he brought several followers to the tomb quickly and carefully examined it. The followers beside him shouted: "Master, weren't those few kids deceiving you yesterday? Maybe they didn't even dig up the grave."

  "You're really hopeless! How do I usually teach you? Don't just look at the mound, it may seem like nothing has been touched, but that's because we put the dug-up wet soil on the cloth we brought with us. After digging, the wet soil was filled back into the grave. The mound looks like it hasn't been disturbed at all. You'd better learn from this!" The subordinate scratched his head and hung it in shame.

  "These two kids ran away without filling the soil, who actually filled the grave? Did they really encounter a ghost?" Leng Jiangbo thought deeply and decided to dig up the grave again at night.

  He brought three hands down to a place about half a mile away from the white day's grave and stopped, crawling on a mound of earth to look ahead. Because he also had no bottom in his heart, fearing that he would encounter the two little boys again, saying that he might be scared to death. So it's better to be stable. He had just climbed down for a while, only to see two black shadows suddenly appearing from behind the tomb, each shadow over one zhang high. The black shadows were sometimes high and sometimes low, and occasionally flipped their heads, as if chasing and playing. A nearby hand was scared and shouted "Wow". Leng Jiangbo quickly covered his mouth with his hand. The little boy tightly pressed himself to the ground, not daring to move.

  The ghost seemed to have heard the noise and jumped one by one towards the place where they were hiding, slowly approaching them.

  "The ghost is coming! Big, big... our home's... still, still... run!" The other two henchmen were so scared they couldn't catch their breath.

  "Wait until we get closer and see what it is." Leng Jiangbo pretended to be calm.

  Suddenly, a fireball spewed out of the ghost's mouth and got closer and closer to them... Several subordinates couldn't hold on anymore, turned around, mounted their horses and ran away... Leng Jiangbo also trembled all over, "Wait for me..." He shouted, pulled over his horse, mounted it and escaped hastily.