I was puzzled as the bell rang more and more recklessly, as if there was a wronged soul inside trying to escape from the artifact that imprisoned it. Unfortunately, the thing was so small that it actually struck me as a bit ridiculous. Peter Clark finished bandaging his wound on his own, so skillfully it was as if he got hurt like this every day. The bell clattered noisily, irritating him, so he tried to stomp on it with his foot. Unexpectedly, the bronze shell was already so decayed that with a crack, the bell actually split under his foot. An extremely foul-smelling green liquid spurted out from inside.

Uncle Samuel was furious and wanted to punch Peter Clark on the head, but then remembered his head had just been pierced with two holes. If he punched him again, he might end up like the bell, so he had to give up and switched to scolding: “Can’t you keep your feet still! This thing is at least some kind of artifact, and you just ruined it with one stomp!”

“Third Uncle, how was I supposed to know it was so fragile?” Peter Clark still felt wronged. Uncle Samuel shook his head in exasperation. He used his military knife to pry open the bronze fragments, revealing a cluster of small bells inside, all different in size and shape like a honeycomb. These little bells were attached to a very delicate hollow sphere, which was now riddled with holes and had been cracked open. Inside was a large green centipede, its head crushed flat by the stomp. The green liquid had oozed out from the finger-thick centipede’s body.

Uncle Samuel used the tip of his knife to turn over the hollow sphere and found a tube on it, which was inserted directly into the part connected to the giant corpse centipede. He said, “I’m afraid when this centipede gets hungry, it crawls through this tube into the corpse centipede’s belly to eat. How did anyone ever come up with such a symbiotic system?”

The half of the boatman’s corpse floated on the water, bobbing up and down. Uncle Samuel sighed, “This is what you call reaping what you sow. They must have wanted to leave us alone in this corpse cave, wait for us to die, and then come back to loot our stuff. Who knows what went wrong today—they ended up dying at the hands of this giant corpse centipede themselves. Serves them right!”

“This is what you call a twist of fate. Looks like our luck isn’t too bad,” I said.

Peter Clark shook his head and said, “I doubt that thing’s claws could tear a person in half in such a short time. If it had that kind of strength, my brains would have been dug out by now. I’m telling you, there’s definitely more than one of these things. This one must have dragged the corpse over after it was already torn apart, wanting to eat it all by itself.”

Quentin Carter had just started to relax, but hearing this, he couldn’t help but swallow hard.

“Don’t panic. Didn’t this kid just say it? We have to rely on this thing to get out of the cave! We’ll put this giant corpse centipede at the bow of the boat and let it clear the way for us. This thing has eaten corpses its whole life and is full of yin energy—it’s a bane to things like zombies. In this corpse cave, they’re probably the overlords. With it on our boat, we’re sure to get out,” Uncle Samuel said. “Come on, let’s not turn back. I want to see for myself what’s up ahead that could breed such a huge bug.”

After hearing Uncle Samuel, I thought it made sense too. By now, we’d already spent quite a bit of time in this cave, and the place was so oppressive you couldn’t even lift your head. The few of us took folding shovels from the luggage in the back to use as poles, pushing against the stone walls to move forward.

As I rowed, I studied the cave walls and suddenly had a question, so I asked Uncle Samuel, “Look, these are all solid rock. How did the grave robbers of ancient times dig this out? Even nowadays, it would take hundreds of people to dig such a deep cave.”

Uncle Samuel said, “Look how round this cave is, and how ancient. I’d guess the ones who dug it were official grave robbers—a military unit specialized in tomb raiding. Looks like finding the tomb marked on the map won’t be as easy as we thought.”

“Third Uncle, how can you be so sure the tomb is still there? A whole army came and dug such a long tunnel—who’s to say they didn’t already clear everything out?” Quentin Carter said. “I bet when we get in, there won’t even be a coffin lid left.”

My Uncle Samuel grunted and said, “If the tomb was robbed thousands of years ago, then there’s nothing we can do. But you have to understand, this tunnel is clearly marked on the map, which means it already existed when the tomb owner was buried. The tunnel must be older than the ancient tomb we’re looking for. And there’s definitely more than one tomb in this area—who knows which tomb this tunnel was dug to rob.”

“So you’re saying,” I was already feeling a chill from my Uncle Samuel’s words, “everything we’ve encountered so far, including the giant corpse centipede and the age of the hexagonal bronze wind chime, their owners might be from even before the Warring States period?”

Uncle Samuel shook his head. “What I’m more concerned about is, why did our tomb owner choose to build his tomb right next to an already robbed tomb? Isn’t that a huge taboo in feng shui?”

Silent William suddenly waved his hand, signaling us to be quiet, and pointed ahead. We saw, deep in the cave where our headlamps couldn’t reach, a patch of green phosphorescence. Uncle Samuel sighed, “We’ve reached the corpse accumulation ground!”

Chapter Six: The Corpse Accumulation Ground