MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 306 Corpse Cave
Memories of the past surfaced on Zhang Biao's face, and a hint of unspeakable fear crept onto his scarred and grotesque features.

He was about to speak when he suddenly looked at Fang Zheng. After a slight hesitation, he made up his mind and began to slowly recount the story of the blood corpse.

Speaking of evil spirits, they are quite strange. To encounter one depends on fate.

Some people are fearless. Even if they commit murder and arson, or even sleep in a mass grave, they will never encounter any evil spirits in their entire lives. They may even think that such things are just deceptive ghosts.

Some people are prone to encountering ghosts and unspeakable evil spirits from a young age. After one encounter, they are as if they are entangled in a net, and they will always encounter those things again in their lifetime.

Among them, some people seem to have an extremely deep connection with it from birth, and will be entangled in related events for their entire lives.

Like a large net slowly tightening until it strangles the victim, it will continue to harm their descendants until the descendants are extinct. Only then will this strange curse temporarily end, but a new generation will trigger it again, and this curse-like fate will continue to be passed down.

If the connection is deep enough, even just hearing about related events will cause you to be entangled by those things in the unseen world.

This was also why Zhang Biao hesitated slightly. However, in his eyes, Fang Zheng was the son of that young doctor from back then, and he had probably inherited most of his skills. Since they were both in the same profession, there was no need to be wary of him.

If it were an ordinary person, it wouldn't work. Just letting them know about this kind of thing would make them more susceptible to being possessed by evil spirits.

The incident involving the blood corpse dates back to the very beginning of the story, a long, long time ago, when Zhang Biao was still just a teenager...

As he recounts his memories, reality begins to distort once again.

It's as if you've peeled away layer after layer of filters and then added new, distorted layers upon new ones.

Everything intertwined and together revealed Zhang Biao's past.

A partial view of the world, based on Zhang Biao's observations, begins to unfold.

……

When Zhang Biao was a child, it was a year of famine. A massive drought led to reduced grain production, and war exacerbated the famine.

According to later scholars, more than 500 million people died from famine that year alone, and the resulting mass exodus and the ensuing plague caused an even greater death toll that is difficult to calculate.

Since ancient times, whenever natural disasters or man-made calamities occur, just as rotting flesh breeds maggots, great disasters and calamities also breed numerous evil spirits.

On the barren, yellow earth, rivers had dried up, mountains were withered and yellow, and there was hardly any green or moisture to be seen. Tree bark and grass roots were dug up by starving disaster victims, and the remaining tree trunks were cut down to be used as fuel.

In this desolate wilderness under the dim moonlight, only the places where crows roost and a few patches of green remain.

Strangely, the disaster victims, who were willing to eat tree bark, dig up grass roots, and even resort to cannibalism to survive, did not touch that small patch of green.

Perhaps it's because the cost of doing so is far too high compared to the feeling of fullness brought by those small amounts of grass roots...

Caw caw caw—In the twilight of the setting sun, the cawing of crows echoed through the wilderness. They perched on withered trees, their eyes gleaming with a bluish-green light as they watched the arrival of three uninvited guests.

The leader was a tall, robust man, but somewhat thin from hunger, and a boy who looked exactly like him, with the same tall frame, but malnourished, like a skin covering the tall frame.

And beside them, a black hunting dog with glossy fur that didn't look like it belonged to this era at all.

"Father..." Young Zhang Biao breathed in the dry air, smelled an indescribable stench ahead, swallowed hard, and hesitated. "Do we really have to go down?"

"Of course we have to go down! You brat, you're afraid of a little bit of dirt and mess, how will you ever amount to anything!"

"Oh, right, remember to put this on later." Zhang Biao's father took off the large bag from his shoulder and pulled out two thick full-body protective suits.

"Is this foreign gadget really useful? Won't I suffocate wearing it?" Zhang Biao looked at the gas mask in his hand that resembled a pig's face, and the protective suit that looked completely airtight, and hesitated.

“Even your father isn’t afraid, what are you afraid of! You’re supposed to be young, and you don’t even know what high technology is,” Zhang Biao’s father urged his son. “If you don’t wear it and catch some disease down there, we won’t have anywhere to get treatment. I pulled some strings to get this thing. Wear it or don’t, it’s up to you. If you get sick down there, I can’t afford penicillin.”

"We're about to get some serious work done, so let's eat something to tide us over first." Zhang Biao's father patted his empty stomach, rummaged through his large bag and pulled out a package containing a thick stack of flatbreads.

Zhang Biao stared longingly at the rolled pancakes, swallowing hard. "Is this all the rolled pancakes Mom made left?"

Zhang Biao's father sighed, then rummaged through his bag and pulled out a few cloves of garlic, handing them to his son. "That's all we have left. It's not even enough to fill us up a little. We'll just have to bear with it."

"After we deal with this thing, we need to go and replenish our rations."

After quietly finishing their meal, the father and son gave their hunting dog some instructions, telling it to keep an eye on the surroundings, before going down into the burrow.

Their destination was a mass grave, a dumping ground used to dispose of corpses.

"You better watch out, kid. Don't step on it. This thing is like a swamp. Once you step on it, no matter how strong you are, you'll sink in and won't be able to climb out. Who knows, there might be a few water ghosts hiding in here trying to drag you down."

"I understand, Father. Don't you trust your son's skills?"

On the sloping cave walls, the father and son were very careful not to touch the corpses below. Instead, like monkeys, they carefully moved deeper into the cave by using the gaps in the cave walls.

As the father and son moved, faint air currents created by their movements ignited will-o'-the-wisps in the cave, moving with them.

By the light of the will-o'-the-wisp, Zhang Biao could see several emaciated corpses, their flesh already partially rotting, scattered and piled up just inches below. Under the cover of these corpses, the decay was even more severe, turning into a semi-fluid corpse that had accumulated into a viscous paste, making one want to vomit just by looking at it.

Every now and then, accompanied by airflows from who-knows-where, howls and screams echoed through the narrow cave.

Zhang Biao could feel the canine tooth necklace he kept close to his chest getting hot, which meant that some weaker evil spirits had been blocked without him even noticing.

He couldn't help but ask, "Dad, are we really going to go down and deal with that thing? It's so deep down in the cave, it shouldn't be able to crawl out, right?"

"You know nothing!" Zhang Biao's father's eyes, hidden behind his gas mask, were very serious. He looked at the emaciated and rotting corpses and continued, "The greater the disaster, the greater the harm. You don't even look at these corpses. Why is no one eating them? Why are they just dumped here?"

"These corpses, which died violently from plague and famine, harbor the strongest resentment. If we're not careful, they can breed several plague demons and zombies. If they harm more people, and if they accidentally turn into drought demons, then we're truly doomed!"

Throughout history, the number of people who die directly from war is usually a minority; the majority die from famine and plague caused by war.

In this cave, thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of untreated plague and war victims were dragged away one by one and hastily dumped into this mass grave.

This natural cave, which has existed since ancient times, has thus become a huge petri dish for plague.

The miasma produced by the rotting corpses permeated the air in the cave and seeped into the soil. At the bottom of the pit, the rotting juices, pus, blood, and tissue fluids gathered into a foul-smelling swamp, and the underground pool at the bottom of the cave was polluted and turned black.

In this highly poisonous corpse cave environment, miasma permeates the air, and even maggots cannot survive in such a toxic environment.

As they gradually descended into the cave, Zhang Biao grew increasingly frightened.

Unlike the rotting corpses above the pit, some corpses floating in the black pool below the pit were remarkably well-preserved in a semi-rotten state.

These corpses, thrown into the Corpse Pit in the distant past, are still soaking in the foul-smelling swamp of corpse fluid to this day.

Some yellowish-white and grayish-white translucent substances enveloped the corpses, so that the corpses did not sink to the bottom of the pool, but remained floating on the surface, occasionally twitching slightly with the movement of bubbles in the pool.

He couldn't help but ask, "Adipocere? Father, how many years ago is this color from?!"

If a corpse is kept in a damp and oxygen-deficient environment for a long time, the fatty tissue in the corpse will undergo a hydrolysis reaction with water and combine with minerals in the soil to form a waxy substance similar to soap. Zhang Biao's father carefully observed the color of the adipocere and the hairstyle of the corpse wrapped in it, hesitated for a moment and said, "This is probably a thousand or two thousand years old. I remember hearing someone say that this place was a pile of corpses before the Song Dynasty."

"Biaozi, be extra careful when you go down there. There might be other stuff hidden inside!"

Even in this highly toxic environment, something still survives.

Zhang Biao suddenly heard a faint, sticky gnawing sound coming from all around him.

"Father? What's that?!" He looked around warily.

Zhang Biao's father listened carefully for a moment, and after locking onto a few figures in the distance, he breathed a slight sigh of relief: "Don't worry, they're just a pack of zombie dogs."

"If it were anyone else, it might be a bit troublesome, but who are we? We worship the Dog God. These corpse dogs would run away with their tails between their legs just from the smell."

Not far away, several relatively fresh corpses had been disemboweled, and a few wild dogs with somewhat deformed bodies were gnawing on their internal organs.

Generally speaking, in the early stages of a famine, it is rare to see wild dogs. People who are starving will eat anything and everything, and any wild dogs that can be found and caught have long been eaten. Only those wild dogs that escape to the wilderness can survive for a short time.

However, in the later stages, wild dogs become the most direct scavengers in the mass graves.

They gnaw on the corpses of plague victims, swallowing rotting flesh, entrails, and even pus containing deadly pathogens.

In times of war and famine when food was scarce, this was the only continuous source of "nutrients" they could obtain.

This will cause their numbers to increase significantly in the early and middle stages of the famine, at which point they will even form packs and prey on lone, weak refugees like wolf packs.

The long-term consumption of plague-infected corpses caused these wild dogs to undergo abnormal changes. Their fur fell out severely, or became covered with hard scabs, pus, blood, and adipocere, turning them into a filthy gray-green or dark purple color, and emitting a strong, putrid odor.

You could even say that these things are a kind of half-dead, half-alive evil spirit.

At the bottom of the pit, in a place where the miasma was so thick that an ordinary living person or dog would definitely be poisoned to death, these corpse dogs were completely unharmed and even used this horrific place as their den.

Zhang Biao watched as his father made several hand gestures through the thick protective suit, then chanted a spell. As a low bark echoed through the cave, several corpse dogs in the distance suddenly stopped eating, their scarlet eyes fixed on Zhang Biao and his son.

Both sides barked simultaneously, seemingly communicating. A moment later, the corpse dogs trotted off in a certain direction.

"Son, hurry up and catch up, they've agreed to lead the way for us."

The father and son followed the footsteps of several corpse dogs as they traversed the labyrinthine cave.

As he ran around, looking at the blood-red eyes of the corpse dogs beside him, Zhang Biao felt a chill run down his spine.

The corpse dog is no longer a normal dog; it is closer to an evil spirit. Not only is it incredibly powerful, but it also easily spreads disease. Its body carries a large amount of toxins, and even a small scratch from its teeth or claws can infect a person with the plague.

He wasn't afraid of just these few; they were nothing more than a few punches, or he could simply pick up a few stones and kill them.

Even through the thick protective suit, he could hear all sorts of subtle rustling sounds coming from the interconnected caverns.

Corpse dogs don't just eat corpses; they also eat people. With such a large cave and so many corpses, who knows how many they've fed.

After a few days, when all the fresh corpses have been eaten, the corpse dogs will have no food and will swarm out, likely causing another disaster.

He couldn't help but ask in a muffled voice, "Father, will we still need to deal with this batch of corpse dogs?"

"And what exactly is that evil spirit inside the cave? Do you have any ideas now?"

"As for these corpse dogs, there's not much to worry about," Zhang Biao's father replied after a moment's thought. "After we deal with that thing inside, I'll spend a few days asking a shaman to properly send those corpse dogs to the afterlife."

His gaze fell on a corpse dog beside him, noticing the pus and half an intestine oozing from a ruptured wound in its abdomen. "These things can hardly be considered living beings anymore; they're more like zombies. After I perform the ritual to release them from suffering, they'll all be dead in a few days and won't be able to harm anyone anymore."

“As for that thing in the cave…” Zhang Biao’s father frowned deeply, his keen senses already feeling the viscous corpse fluid writhing beneath his feet. “I suspect this is the corpse cave from ancient texts!”

The ancient book "Youyang Zazu" records: "Red liquid seeps from the tomb; the smell of it causes one's brain to split open, and within three days, the flesh and blood will turn into thick fluid."

The Lingnan Yiwu Zhi (Records of Strange Things in Lingnan) also describes a cave where "corpses swallow villages; at night, chewing sounds can be heard, and in the morning, white bones are seen piling up in the cave."

Zombies have been a common type of evil spirit since ancient times.

A violently deceased corpse filled with resentment, if crossed by a black cat, possessed by an evil spirit, or buried in a gloomy place, will rise up and become a monster that devours the living.

Ancient texts record that if a large number of mutilated corpses are piled up together in a place of yin energy, it may form an evil spirit known as a corpse cave.

These things are often difficult to move and are often buried deep underground. However, in years of great disaster or when they accidentally prey on a large number of corpses, these things may become a breeding ground for certain evil spirits.

It may even "give birth" to evil creatures such as drought demons.

After a brief conversation, the father and son continued their journey in silence. Although the journey was not far, the tall father and son had to bend over and even crawl on the ground in the complex terrain of the cave to keep up with the movements of the corpse dogs.

Soon after, the corpse dog stopped, and the father and son arrived at their destination.

"My God! Dad, is this the Corpse Cave? Can we really handle this kind of thing?!"

Deep within the narrow cave, the view suddenly opens up.

Through the flashlight, Zhang Biao saw an indescribably terrifying monster.

Hundreds and thousands of half-rotten corpses converged into a large pit along with the water flowing from the original underground cavern. The putrid fluids were almost gelatinous, intertwined together. Various hairs, nails, broken bones, and a few remaining pieces of clothing were all wrapped in viscous, rotting flesh, turning into a huge lump of rotting flesh.

At this moment, this thing actually had some holes on it, swallowing the fresh corpses that flowed in with the water and wriggling inside. With each wriggling, Zhang Biao seemed to feel a tremor like a heartbeat.

"This is it..."

"Luckily we arrived early. If he had actually conceived it, who knows how many people would have been killed."

"Wait!" Zhang Biao noticed something amiss as he shone his flashlight. "Dad? This looks like a tomb?"

The beam of the flashlight illuminated regular outlines around the cave of corpses—those were bricks.

"It really is a cemetery?"

Zhang Biao's father frowned deeply, observed carefully for a moment, and then said, "This style... it's actually from the Northern and Southern Dynasties period?"

He carefully brushed away the moss from the bricks, trying to discern the indistinct patterns.

"Horse riding!"

He cursed, "No wonder such a monstrous thing could appear here! This place is actually from the Northern and Southern Dynasties period. I wonder which bastard wanted to become a corpse-dissolving immortal and set this up!"

(End of this chapter)