Daomu Biji: Restart

The water drained away quickly, revealing that the floor of this strange room was full of barnacles. They were far thicker than those on the surrounding wooden boards and made the ground look like rotten coral.

As I set the bronze basin aside, I noticed that we had all been cut several times, especially on the soles of our feet. It was only in that moment that I felt the severe pain as my blood flowed down the barnacles to the low-lying section of the floor.

Poker-Face pulled up a bronze ring that was connected to a chain that seemed to drive the valve below. As the water continued to drain out, I looked carefully and saw that there were a lot of other objects among the barnacles. They seemed to be porcelain and decaying bronze pieces that had been bound in the barnacle shells. I could even see a lot of bronze rings among them.

They appeared to be funerary objects that also belonged to the South Sea King’s tomb, but I didn’t know where in the tomb we were.

We had climbed more than fourteen hundred meters just now—about one and a half kilometers— so it was reasonable to assume that we had already climbed out of the South Sea King’s tomb. The South Sea King was an ethnic minority king, so the ancient tomb couldn’t be that big. But even if this place was part of the South Sea King’s tomb, it was probably another burial pit.

Under the candle’s green light, I patted the decaying wood around me. All the water had finally drained out, so I could finally see the "man" that Poker-Face had just killed. I wanted to get a closer look, but Poker-Face immediately kicked it down the drainage hole.

"I just wanted a quick look at it." I didn't even get the chance to stop him. "You should've let me study it."

Poker-Face glanced at me, "You can't see the living things here."

"Why?"

He pointed to Fatty's eyes.

Under the green light, I could see that Poker-Face's and Fatty's irises were green, but they looked very bright. I thought something was wrong with them, but when I looked closely, I could see that there was something strange on their eyes.

"What the hell?"

"You hallucinated earlier, didn't you?" Poker-Face asked me. I nodded.

"I’ll explain it to you when we get out. We’re relying on you now. You’re the only one that can see the important things right now."

I was confused, "Why?"

"Because what we see is different from what you see. I already know who built this place. We have to go back to the original tomb passage immediately."

"Why?" I was even more confused now.

"We won’t be able to get out when the candle burns out. We have to find Liu Sang or we won’t be able to find what you want."

Although I still didn’t understand, it was creeping me out to hear him say so many words in one breath. The fact that he did so showed that we were really going to die.

Fatty said from off to the side, "What are you talking about?"

Poker-Face ignored him and said, "Go!"

Before I knew it, Poker-Face had jumped into the waterway and shouted, "Come down!"

Fatty looked surprised, "What happened to Little Brother? Did he eat the wrong medicine?"

I scratched my head and said to myself, forget it, let's go. Then I jumped into the waterway. There was a deep well below with a diameter of more than five meters. I could see countless stone beams in the well, along with more barnacles that were covering both the wall and the beams. Poker-Face had landed on a beam three meters below me, so he helped pull me down to his beam. After that, Fatty jumped down with the bronze basin in his arms. Poker-Face and I grabbed his armpits and dragged him to our beam.

Our feet were already hurting a lot, but all the pain seemed to come back with this jump and I couldn’t help but grimace. Before we had barely steadied ourselves, Poker-Face immediately jumped again. He took our physical capabilities into account and only jumped one stone beam at a time. We followed him the whole way, jumping wildly in the green light until we saw a pool below. By this time, our feet were killing us. Poker-Face squatted down on the last beam and looked at the candles to ensure that we still had plenty left.

He took a deep breath and jumped into the water, which reached all the way up to his neck. Fatty didn't immediately follow, but carefully dropped the bronze basin to him. After Poker-Face caught it, Fatty and I both jumped.

As the three of us stood in the water and looked around, I noticed that there were water channels on both sides of the pool. This was the main drainage channel, but the water wasn’t flowing.

I could tell at a glance that the drainage channel here was very simple and made of stone bricks.

"Look carefully,” Poker-Face said to me. “What do you see?"

"Can't you see it?"

"We can't see it," Fatty said. "This is a drainage channel."

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I listened to Poker-Face and looked around. The surrounding area was very ordinary and didn’t look any different from the many drainage channels we had been in before. Feeling the pressure, I looked around three more times, but still couldn't see anything.

"No, I can't see it either."

"You can," Poker-Face said.

I took a deep breath and looked more carefully. Under the soft green light, I saw a single person standing there under the dark water.

The person’s head hadn’t breached the surface, so I thought it was a corpse at first. But when I looked more carefully, I found that it wasn't. Instead, the person was completely black.