Chapter 53: Sudden Crisis

"Wake up, Second Brother! Wake up!" Eldest Brother cried out in anguish, frantically shaking the second eldest in a desperate bid to rouse him.

Fighting back a wave of terror, I reached out and slowly pulled back the grey robe covering Second Brother's body.

Once we saw what lay beneath, the pupils of everyone present dilated instantly in sheer horror!

Clinging tightly to Second Brother's bare abdomen was a small, four-legged lizard with a yellowish-brown hide.

"You damned beast!"

Third Brother was the first to snap out of his shock. With a roar of fury, he lunged forward and grabbed the creature with his bare hands.

The creature showed no fear of humans at all, its body writhing continuously even as it was firmly gripped.

"Wait, Third Brother!" Sister Red's face turned ashen. Pointing at the unconscious Second Brother, she warned, "Don't move yet! Look closely at his stomach."

"What is that? A bronze tube?"

My eyes locked onto the spot. On the right side of Second Brother's lower belly, roughly five centimeters away from his navel, was a greenish, rusted bronze tube less than half a centimeter in diameter. One end of this rusted pipe was embedded deep into Second Brother's flesh, while the other end was connected directly to the yellowish-brown lizard. The gruesome scene looked eerily like a blood transfusion in progress. Paralyzed by fear, every single one of us stared blankly, utterly incapable of comprehending the nightmarish reality before our eyes.

Unable to take it any longer, Third Brother's patience finally snapped. Grabbing the skink, he brought his hand down like a cleaver and sliced the foul creature cleanly in two.

A gush of blood spurted from the cut, looking disturbingly like the slaughter of an eel.

Even after the creature died, the bronze tube remained jammed deep into Second Brother's flesh. Dreading the consequences, no one dared to pull it out blindly, as the depth of the wound was unknown and brute force could prove fatal.

Our priority remained saving a life; how Second Brother had managed to wander into the coffin on his own accord was a mystery we had no time to ponder. Saving him came first.

"Third Brother, watch that tube! Try not to bump it."

Third Brother nodded grimly. Bending down, he scooped up the unconscious Second Brother in his arms.

"Let's get out of here first. There has to be another way around—otherwise, how did Second Brother get down here? We need to hurry and get him to a hospital!"

Apart from Second Brother and that vile creature, the golden coffin and silver outer casket contained nothing else—not a single trace of funerary goods.

Though our minds raced with a thousand unanswered questions, without the victim himself to speak, we could only indulge in wild guesswork, forever ignorant of what had truly transpired.

*Click.* Without warning, Sister Red's right foot came down heavily on a flagstone, which instantly sank three full centimeters under her weight!

"Don't move!" Eldest Brother barked instantly upon realizing the danger.

"Third Brother, keep a close eye on Second Brother! Stay right where you are! Don't move an inch!" he commanded with a solemn expression.

Sister Red's face drained of color. Frozen in her posture, she dared not twitch a muscle.

Both Sister Red and I had previously witnessed the terrifying chime-chime mechanism made of human skulls. More than two thousand years ago, the ancients had already mastered the art of harnessing gravity and the magnetic pull of meteoric iron to engineer lethal traps.

Right at that moment,

from the tiny drainage holes at the base of the bronze figures—where the coffin fluids had previously pooled—wisps of white vapor suddenly began to rise for no apparent reason.

Within the span of a few dozen seconds, billowing white steam surged upward as if a gigantic subterranean steamer had been unleashed!

The rising vapor carried a potent medicinal scent. We had barely inhaled a whiff when a wave of intense dizziness washed over me, turning my legs to jelly and sending me crashing to the floor. The others suffered the same fate; Third Brother lost his grip on Second Brother and collapsed heavily to the ground.

A moment later, several flashlight beams cut through the gloom near the main tomb chamber's entrance—the very breach we had blown open with dynamite.

My head spun groggily as the beams grew closer. I fought through the haze, forcing my eyes open to peer from the floor.

About four or five figures were approaching, led by a man in the front—Chen Jiansheng.

My lips twitched as I tried to force words past them, but no sound came out.

Then, darkness swallowed me, and I lost consciousness.

...

I had no idea how much time had elapsed, but when I finally came to, a splitting headache pounded behind my temples.

I tried to shift my limbs, only to find myself completely immobilized; both my hands and feet had been tightly bound with thick rope.

"Sister Red! Eldest Brother! Third Brother!" I thrashed about frantically, screaming at the top of my lungs.

"Well, well, youth is truly wasted on the young. Such a sturdy constitution—you're the first one to wake up," Chen Jiansheng mocked, flashing his flashlight across my face with a cruel, teasing grin.

Blinded by the glaring light, I squeezed my eyes shut and roared, "Chen the Earth-Worker, you're not dead! Why are you tying me up? Untie me right now!"

"Heh," he chuckled, lowering the beam and smiling wryly. "My superiors, come out and take a look. See if this punk is suitable to be a sacrifice. That Sun fellow really is useless; it's been five or six months now, and Jiehou's corpse still hasn't shown any reaction."

As his voice faded, several silhouettes emerged from the shadows.

I strained my eyes to focus. There were three of them in total: two middle-aged men and an elderly person. The old man had snow-white hair, but what struck me most was his stature—by visual estimation, he stood well under a meter and a half. So withered and tiny was he that he looked like a child. The man was a dwarf.

"Jiansheng, is this the young man you were talking about?" the elderly dwarf asked, looking me up and down.

"That's right," Chen Jiansheng glanced at me dismissively. "My lord, the echoing bug has already taken effect on this fellow."

"Oh? Is that so?" The dwarf seemed genuinely surprised.

Unable to make sense of their cryptic conversation, I shouted, "Chen the Earth-Worker, what the hell are you playing at?!"

"Playing at? Ha!"

Chen Jiansheng pointed at me and shook his head with a laugh. "Your name is Yunfeng, right? Truly wet behind the ears. Perfect. Sister Red, you're awake too. Why don't you say something? Go ahead, speak your mind."

I twisted my neck to look. Bound hand and foot, Sister Red was propped against the stone wall, having regained consciousness. She was glaring at Chen Jiansheng with murderous rage.

"Don't be like that, Sister Red. With a look like that, anyone would think you were about to bite my head off," Chen Jiansheng said with a casual shrug.

Taking a deep breath, Sister Red spoke through clenched teeth: "When you previously pretended to be mentally unstable, acting out and parroting my words—you did that deliberately to get close to us and lower our guard?"

Chen Jiansheng snapped his fingers. "Bingo."

Sister Red's voice turned icy. "The echoing bug that Yunfeng caught was planted by you on purpose."

Chen Jiansheng nodded candidly. "Spot on. The echoing bug reacted to this kid, though unfortunately, you lot discovered it a bit too early."

"Let me ask you this: you knew all along whether that tunnel was real or not, didn't you? In other words, those mountain macaques were trained by you, and the hats and clothes they wore were things you gave them on purpose?"

"Precisely. To train those beasts, I used to sit and tell stories to them every single day just to hone their intelligence. Of course, the ultimate goal of all this was to lure you right here—to lead you straight to the coffin."

Sister Red's chest heaved violently; she was trembling with rage. We had been played for fools all along.

The pieces finally clicked in my mind, and I flew into a fury. "Chen the Earth-Worker, we've had no feud or grievance with you in the past! Why on earth are you doing this?!"

"Oh? You want to know why?" The dwarf, standing under a meter and a half tall, slowly paced toward us. "You don't need to know why anymore. You're not going to make it out alive anyway, so there's no point in knowing."

"Jiansheng, finish it." The dwarf retrieved a bundle of red incense sticks from his robes, handed them to Chen Jiansheng, and stepped back a few paces.

"Understood, my lord, right away," Chen Jiansheng said as he pulled out three sticks of incense and lit them.

Holding the burning incense, he bowed mockingly toward Sister Red and me.

"Both of you from the Northern Faction, having breathed the smoke—"

"Please be on your way."