Ancient tomb excavation traces

If you don't confront your fear, it will become a demon, possessing your body and turning you into a cowardly puppet.

公元2014年11月5日——月破日，大事不宜。此时的时间为：18:43分。

Heavy breathing filled the air. Liu Baochai held up his bicycle light, while Chen Yu, Tie Niu, and I watched nervously as Xue Wei rammed into the cellar door. However, time ticked by, and the wooden door, besides thumping unsettlingly, showed no sign of opening. Suddenly, Xue Wei stopped, controlling his breathing, and pressed his head against the cellar door.

"What's wrong?" Liu Baochai asked cautiously. "Did those people hear us?"

"Shh—" Wei Zi made a shushing gesture, which made my heart jump into my throat.

"ah--"

Suddenly, a piercing scream came from behind the cellar door, as if it were coming from an old radio. Chen Yu and I looked at each other, both stunned for a moment.

"Liu Hua! Liu Hua!" Tie Niu was the first to react. He rushed to the cramped wooden stairs in the cellar, as anxious as an ant on a hot pan.

What exactly happened?

Just as the question was being asked, a man's roar filled the cellar, a sound like the agonizing screams of someone being burned alive in a movie.

I touched my arm; the goosebumps were clearly visible, and an ominous premonition welled up inside me.

"Something must have happened outside." Wei Zi looked at us seriously and said, "Although the cellar is located in a hidden part of the house, we still used desperate measures to break down the door. Logically speaking, they should have noticed. Something must have happened."

"That's a creepy thing to say." Bao Cai shuddered. For some reason, Xue Wei's words reminded me of that eerie stone door. The things from my nightmares lingered before my eyes, refusing to leave, as if they were real. My heart pounded wildly, and I couldn't help but glance suspiciously at the dark corner behind me, as if something was watching us from there.

Breaking down a door on a wooden ladder was certainly impractical, but Xue Wei was a reliable and capable man, and being with him always gave me a thousandfold sense of security. I don't know how much time passed, or how much effort he expended, but finally, he managed to break a crack in the stubborn wooden door.

"Phew—" Wei Zi breathed a sigh of relief. With his last bit of strength, he opened the door. After the door made a strange sound, we saw a faint light and felt the fresh air.

"Great!" Liu Baocai was relieved to have escaped.

After leaving the cellar, we passed two empty rooms, which contained some weapons. Xue Wei, Lao Tiao, and Tie Niu took machetes, Liu Baocai took a long nail, and I chose a Luoyang shovel.

The group carefully walked through the long corridor, feeling a sense of familiarity, like when they played Counter-Strike together in high school.

At this moment, the screams had stopped, and as we approached the front hall, we heard a woman crying. Tie Niu was agitated and was about to rush forward when Xue Wei stopped him.

The front hall and the courtyard were connected; just around the corner, the battle was about to begin. However, as we prepared to strike, everyone's legs went weak, and they retreated. It was an extreme sense of disbelief and fear. I even felt that at this moment, everything before me was still a dream.

"My God!" Bao Cai was completely panicked. He and I leaned against the wall, our lips turning purple with fear. To be honest, seeing the horrific scene in the yard, my mind went completely blank.

"What the hell is going on?" Chen Yu shrank back, gripping his machete tightly, and swallowed hard. "What are those things?"

"Who...who knows?" I was so frightened that I could barely speak. "They were writhing on the ground...they looked like people, but not quite."

"Could those tomb raiders have brought something incredible from underground?" Chen Yu speculated. "But if it were a corpse from underground, it wouldn't be covered in blood."

"Ah!" Liu Baocai exclaimed, suddenly realizing what the old man meant, "Could it be that he was tortured to this extent?"

Tie Niu, standing to the side, said in a daze, "Punishment, it's punishment."

"Don't talk nonsense, it's terrifying." Bao Cai glared at Tie Niu resentfully and shrank back.

"We can't worry about that now. I think this place is strange. No matter what's lying on the ground, we have to get out." Xue Wei was at the front of us. He turned his head to look at the scene outside, his brows slightly furrowed. At this moment, dark clouds covered the cold moonlight in the sky. The earth was gray, and the wind was cold and merciless. The branches in the shadows looked like thousands of withered claws reaching into the courtyard from outside.

Liu Baocai kept chanting "Amitabha, Amitabha" beside me.

The most frustrated among us was Tie Niu. After Liu Baocai's various deductions, he stuck his head out and anxiously scanned the yard until he saw a certain spot. His eyes lit up with joy, and he suddenly got up and ran over there.

"Feed..." I called him anxiously, but he went straight ahead without turning his head. With no other choice, we gritted our teeth and followed Tie Niu to the front yard.

The people lying on the ground were indeed human, their bodies curled up, their faces contorted, their skin inexplicably turned a cold white, like a pile of dead flesh, and their hands and feet were still twitching mechanically.

Chen Yi examined them closely and said to us, "Seven of them, they're from that tomb raiding gang."

"Tomb raiding?" Upon hearing this, I was slightly taken aback. The incident happened on November 4, 2014, and it's the 5th now, only one day later. How could they have become like this? With this question in mind, I looked at Liu Hua, the only one who might know the truth.

"What happened?" Tie Niu asked her with concern.

Liu Hua stared blankly at Tie Niu, then slowly raised her hand, pointed behind us, and a sinister smile crept across her lips: "The ancestors are unleashing their power, unleashing their power..."

Her eyes were fixed on what was behind us. A chill ran down my spine. Following her gaze, I turned around and saw that eerie stone door.

The horrific images I saw while I was unconscious flashed through my mind instantly, along with that cold, drawn-out warning:

"Those who recklessly trespass into the tomb will have their bones rot and be forever condemned to the underworld..."

I stared blankly at the seven people lying on the ground, recalling their tomb raiding activities and the strange smell emanating from them when I first saw them… Could it be…? A chill ran down my spine. Was it really punishment? It must be, otherwise how could these people have turned out like this? I felt a shiver of horror at my own conclusion. How could it be? How could a door possess such power?

Liu Hua suddenly laughed, and Tie Niu hugged her, repeatedly apologizing. Chen Yi, preoccupied with the silk, disregarded the gruesome sight of the rotting corpses and diligently searched for the silk.

The silent door stood in the corner, and from a distance, only the strange patterns carved on it could be seen. Bao Cai, who was beside me, stared at the stone door, then slowly stood up and, as if bewitched, stretched out his hand.

Bao Cai was already a thin, monkey-like man, and now he stood in front of the stone gate as if he was about to be swallowed by darkness.

"Interesting, it's like an alien." He had his back to me, lost in his own world.

"Alien?" The first thing that came to my mind was the classic American movies that have been made several times.

Liu Baocai stretched out his hand, pointed to the mottled stone gate, and turned to me as if giving a lecture: "The upper body is a phoenix with outstretched wings, and the lower body is a fish. This combination is too strange. It looks like a monster that has been forcibly pieced together."

"Perhaps it has some symbolic meaning, after all, the worldview of the ancients is different from ours," I said after thinking for a moment.

Bao Cai nodded, carefully examining the stone gate, and said, "It might be. If we have more information, we can figure out what this thing is."

"Don't get caught up in studying those plants and animals again. Some things can't be known by mere speculation. I think you should just take a time machine back to ancient times and ask the craftsman what this pattern means." Old Cai knelt on the ground, searching through the silk without looking up, and couldn't help but tease Bao Cai a few times.

"Get lost! If I were in ancient times, that would be..." Bao Cai chuckled, glancing at Lao Cai before returning his gaze to the stone gate. He seemed to notice something and exclaimed in surprise, "I was so focused on the patterns that I didn't notice the writing on the gate. But what does it say?" As he pondered, Wei Zi stood up, walked over to him, and studied the writing for a moment before saying, "On each of the left and right gates, there are four characters written vertically. Between the two gates, there are four horizontal characters, thick at the beginning and thin at the end..."

Wei Zi pondered that, besides his title as a world champion in combat sports, his other identity was that of a graduate student in archaeology.

Not long after, he exclaimed in realization, "It's Chu Wen!"

Chu script? Chu silk manuscript? Could they come from the same tomb? No, these tomb raiders are looking for the tomb of the silk's owner, not the one at this stone gate. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to capture Tie Niu and ask him for the location of their ancestors' tombs.

I looked up, my mind filled with questions, watching my two friends standing at the door. For some reason, I felt a chill run down my spine, as if the door was about to open. I was anxious and a cold sweat ran through me. Just as I was about to tell them to move away, Xue Wei watched intently, chanting, "Those who recklessly trespass into the tomb will have their bones rot and be forever condemned to the underworld!"

"Wow, I found it!" At this moment, Chen Yi stood up with a joyful expression, shouting happily, and in his hand was a piece of yellowed silk.

At that moment, in my eyes, the whole world seemed to be playing a silent movie, and everyone's movements slowed down.

The words Xue Wei uttered were exactly what I saw when I was unconscious. Had I really fallen into another nightmare? No! What would happen next? Would it be like a dream? My throat tightened, and I was completely bewildered.

Just then, I saw the silk handkerchiefs Chen Yi was holding suddenly emit a faint red glow, like the flowing sleeves of a classical dancer. The sleeves, soft yet resolute, rushed towards the stone door, like lovers reunited after a long separation. Upon touching the door, the red light obediently merged into the pattern Liu Baochai called an alien. In that instant, I heard it—I heard a voice from hell, that warning voice echoing in my ears. I covered my ears, unable to accept this reality.

The door opened, and slowly, inch by inch, lifeless eyes emerged from the darkness, staring intently at us, motionless.

At that moment, the world spun around, and the already dark clouds spread and swirled like ink in water, turning into wisps of breathtaking smoke. Then, I heard a deafening rumble of thunder, and bolts of lightning, like divine retribution, tore the night apart.

"They're here, they're here, the ancestors are here, hahaha..." Liu Hua suddenly stood up, opened his arms, and laughed wildly, looking completely insane.

At that moment, someone grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

"Feng Liu, quick, get up!" It was Chen Yi. I stared at him silently, and he said to me in an extremely serious tone, "Damn it, young master, don't stand there in a daze, or you'll be dead."

Dead? I shifted my gaze back to where it was, and there really was a crack in the dark door, from which countless pale blue hands reached out.

"Damn!" That was my first reaction, because besides those hands, the seven rotting corpses lying on the ground swayed and stood up, just like the nightmares of my childhood in the stormy autumn night.

"Ah—" The most mournful cry came from Liu Baocai, whose foot was being grabbed by the rotting corpse.

Upon seeing this, Chen Yi picked up his machete and charged forward. When this guy got brave, he really had a sense of invincibility.

Just as I was wondering if what I had seen while I was unconscious had become real, a rotting corpse suddenly appeared in front of me. The corpse was short, hairless, and had two Mongolian knives at its waist—it was the bald man.

Seeing this, I carefully took a few steps back and quickly picked up the Luoyang shovel from the ground.

"Fuck you!" Chen Cai, who had saved Bao Cai from a distance, was scratched on the back by the rotting corpse. Bao Cai helped him up and shakily dodged away. Wei Zi was in even more trouble, as he was fighting three people by himself.

Good heavens, everything is in complete chaos. We are too busy taking care of ourselves to be able to do anything else, and on Tie Niu's side, there are also rotting corpses with fierce eyes walking up to them.

My situation wasn't much better than theirs. The short, bald figure staggered toward me, a nasty growl emanating from his throat. To be honest, I was afraid of him. However, when a person is on the verge of death, there is no time for hesitation or fear; to live, one must confront death.

Finally, as the bald, decaying corpse's ashen face drew near, I gripped the Luoyang shovel in my hand, shouted, and slammed it down on his forehead.

That slap unleashed all the fear and screaming I felt. I watched as a head was smashed in front of me, like a watermelon that Chen Yi punched last summer. It took me a long time to catch my breath.