Chapter 196: Dead and dying, living and suffocating

Teng Bi is scouting ahead, and they descend the stairs step by step with their eyes closed, one hand on the wall and the other on the clothes of the person in front of them.

Until they stepped onto level ground, the three men were unaffected by the Spirit Staircase.

After the Spirit Staircase, the space opens up, the surrounding mud wall turns into a stone wall, and in front of us is a wide, circular space.

Here there are old furniture, and many antique utensils that are worth a lot of money at a glance. These things were arranged into an ancient hall, each thing out, are worth ten thousand gold. At the back of the hall was a stone door with a pair of couplets carved on the left and right sides of the door. On the left side is a couplet that reads: "I have never died before", and on the right side is a couplet that reads: "I can still hope to survive after entering the door".

Jiang Luo, after reading these two sentences, said thoughtfully, "The Hall of Hades."

Teng Bi turned back and looked at him suspiciously.

Jiang Luo explains, "These two lines are a couplet written by a certain literati in the late Ming Dynasty for the Hall of Hades, meaning that if you can get through to the Underworld and the Undertakers after you die, and if you meet a competent acquaintance, you can return to your body and become a new person before your shell decays."

Teng Bi memorized the meaning of these two sentences, saying, "I have not heard this."

Jiang Luo said, "When you died, it should have been before the end of the Ming Dynasty, right?"

Teng Bi nodded gently.

Jiang Luo walked to the stone door, "Such a big tomb is usually divided into three parts, the first part is the meditation hall, the middle part is the bedchamber where the coffin is placed, and the back is the place where the burial goods are placed. Looking at the appearance of this place, the owner of the tomb should not have died for a very long time, perhaps in the Qing Dynasty, or possibly in the Republic of China."

He looked carefully at the Bodhisattva carving on the stone door, "Buddhist Sanskrit ...... I don't know much about ancient tombs, but the tomb owner should believe in Buddhism. I'm actually curious about who this tomb owner is, just the fact that he can build a tomb in the eye of a dragon makes it pretty unbelievable."

Teng Bi muses, "Could it be someone from the industry?"

Jiang Luo nodded, "Even if it is not Mr. Feng Shui Geomancy, at least it is deeply involved in this area."

It is useless to speculate here, Teng Bi pushed the stone door open with brute force, but behind the door there was not a bedchamber where the coffin was placed, instead there was a long passageway.

Jiang Luo and Teng Bi went forward side by side. Compared with the anxiety before they found the Dragon's Eye, Jiang Luo is not in a hurry now. With the dragon vein suppressing the tomb, no evil spirits will appear, so they just need to pay attention to the mechanisms in the tomb.

It's a long way to go, and Teng Bi asks coldly, "Did you know I'd regained my memory?"

Jiang Luo smiled and said with poise, "It wasn't that early, from the moment you started calling me by my name instead of my friend in the trainee dormitory, I knew you weren't a deadbeat anymore."

Teng Bi didn't expect himself to be exposed so early, he didn't know what to say for a while, and after a long time, he whispered, "I'm sorry."

"There's no need for you to say sorry to me," Jiang Luo put away his smile, "Teng Bi, I've never fully trusted you. Your deception didn't hurt me much. But someone is different, you should go and apologize to someone who truly trusts you, not say this to me."

Teng Bi only felt as if there was a stone pressed in his heart, and this stone was getting heavier and heavier, pressing him almost out of breath. He said dryly, "He ......"

Jiang Luo and Teng Bi knew who "he" meant without having to say his name.

Jiang Luo suddenly felt a little annoyed. This kind of annoyance is not directed at Teng Bi, but for reasons he can't quite explain. For example, he and Chi You, for example, Teng Bi and Lu Youyi, every time he thought about it, it would give him a kind of stifling feeling that he could not let out, and he wanted to smoke again.

"He sees you as a true friend," Jiang Luo suppressed his annoyance, "His first experience of back stabbing from a friend, and you've kind of added a very valuable life experience."

Seeing Teng Bi's ugly face, Jiang Luo put away the sting in his words and finally said, "After you left, he was sad for a long time."

He only had a few short words, but he spoke Teng Bi in such a way that his lips pursed and pulled into a straight line. The living dead man's brow furrowed and his hand unconsciously clenched into a fist, an expression of pain that could not be described in words.

Jiang Luo looked at him for a few seconds and said to himself, "Do the living dead know sadness?"

Teng Bi opened his lips, "...... will."

Jiang Luo suddenly had a strong desire to ask another question, would the evil spirits be sad?

But his reason suppressed the desire, and Jiang Luo pursed his lips as he and Teng Bi walked forward in silence.

Behind them, a bouncing Lisa suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, as if she had heard something.

Lisa listened with her ears, and after a few seconds, her soulful eyes slowly became lost in thought. After a few more seconds, Lisa stood up straight and stiffly continued to follow Jiang Luo and Teng Bi.

The little girl didn't look the least bit different, but her eyes were dull.

*

Walking out of the long corridor, they came to the bedchamber where the coffin was placed.

A sarcophagus was placed in the center of the large bedchamber. The sarcophagus is very tall and looks more than twice as big as a normal coffin. Jiang Luo close to see, found that the sarcophagus is also carved above the 28 star pattern.

Teng Bi gathered his other emotions and looked at Jiang Luo, "What are we looking for in the Dragon's Eye?"

Jiang Luo saw the Sanskrit auspicious clouds at the bottom of the sarcophagus from the twenty-eight stars on the sarcophagus, "The best thing in the eyes of the dragon is of course the tears of the dragon, which is what Taoist Master Wei He called the Dragon Spring. The Dragon Spring can quench the body, but the power is too pure, instead it will have the effect of overdoing it. If we find the Dragon Spring, it will be enough for us to take only the amount of one water bottle."

Teng Bi looked at the glass of water on the side of his backpack and nodded. Then he looked in all directions, listened sideways for a long time, and sniffed the air with his nose.

His five senses were keen, but about the time the ancient tomb was filled with thick stones that blocked the transmission of sound, Teng Bi didn't hear any water or smell any dampness.

He shook his head toward Jiang Luo.

Jiang Luo gave a tsk and looked around the bedchamber, then looked at the coffin of the tomb owner. The owner of the tomb was too mysterious, making him want to directly open the coffin to satisfy his curiosity, but Jiang Luo couldn't lift the lid of someone else's coffin for the sake of his curiosity.

He was about to check the bedchamber for the presence of a funnel when he saw Lisa walk straight to the coffin and reach up to touch it.

In the next instant, Lisa exerted her strength and directly lifted the coffin.

The heavy lid of the sarcophagus hit the ground with a thud, stirring up a cloud of dust. There was another coffin in the sarcophagus, and Lisa, without blinking, placed her hand on the second coffin and was about to do what she was supposed to do when Teng Bi quickly stepped forward and yanked her hand, throwing her out, saying defensively, "Lisa, what are you doing?"

Lisa steadies herself, lifts her lifeless eyes to look at Teng Bi, and suddenly extends her left hand.

The soft little girl's fingers spread out, and fish-like webbing appeared in them. The film wrapped her palms one by one, and Lisa's fingers also became as thin as bones, and her nails became sharp and slightly curved, becoming sharp claws in the blink of an eye.

A strong fishy odor filled the chamber.

Teng Bi drew out the large sword on his body and said in a deep voice, "Jiang Luo, hide to the side."

As soon as he spoke, Lisa charged at him with no expression on her face.

Lisa's claws and Teng Bi's sword clashed violently, sending out blinding sparks of starlight. Lisa's combat power was not as strong as Teng Bi's, and she quickly lost the battle. However, Lisa seemed to be unaware of the pain, no matter how badly she was hurt, she still rushed forward in the next second without a care in the world. Teng Bi dodged her heart claw and struck Lisa's back knee with the blade of her knife, Lisa's legs gave out and she fell to the ground. But she quickly raised her head and spat out a fish fry from her mouth.

The fish fry were spat onto Teng Bi's body, they quickly drilled into Teng Bi's clothes, continuously tearing Teng Bi's skin, trying to penetrate into Teng Bi's flesh and blood. Teng Bi's movement was interrupted, he could only stop for the time being to pinch the fish fry on his body one by one, taking this opportunity, Lisa got up and rushed to the coffin, his claws plunged into the second layer of the coffin's lid, and forcefully overturned the lid to the ground.

The lid of the coffin hit Jiang Luo's side with a loud bang, and the rounded face of the coffin was turned upside down, just like an overturned tortoise, with the inner part of the coffin wobbling and aiming at Jiang Luo.

There are many, many fingernail scratch marks in the inner shell.

Jiang Luo froze, crouched down and took a flashlight to carefully illuminate the scratches, reach out and mold, uneven traces of layers and layers.

This is the traces ...... that were scratched out of the coffin This means that the person in the coffin was still a living person when he was locked in the coffin.

Jiang Luo's face couldn't help but look serious, but he soon realized something new was wrong.

The marks were clearly new and old, one on top of the other, and what made one's head spin a little was that the newest fingernail marks actually looked a little like they had been scratched out just today.

Jiang Luo himself scratched in the lid of the coffin, and in terms of the newness of the marks, it was surprisingly indistinguishable between his fingernail marks and the latest ones on the coffin.

That's scary.

It's simply not something that people can do.

Could it be that the owner of the tomb never died and was kept in the coffin for hundreds of years? Or was it that the tomb owner died and lived again, lived and died again, and was hardened and suffocated in the coffin countless times, thus leaving countless scratches, old and new, different from each other?

Either of these two possibilities is terrifying. Jiang Luo looks up at the coffin, and Lisa, who was standing next to it, switches targets after opening it and fights Teng Bi again.

Lisa's not in the right state either. She's obviously being controlled.

Besides the three of them, there was only one "person" here, the tomb owner, and if she was controlled, she could only be controlled by the tomb owner.

Jiang Luo looked grave, he carefully got up and slowly approached the coffin.

Inside the coffin lay a man in a robe and coat.

The man's face was white, his lips were blue and purple, his chest did not rise and fall, he was obviously a dead man. Looking at his clothes, it should be someone from the Republican era, yet by now, this corpse didn't even have a trace of decay, except for the lack of breathing, this man was as if he had slept through the night.

The man also looked distinctive, with a few flame-like marks on his face that looked similar to Lian Xue and Lian Bing when they were under the control of the style gods.

Jiang Luo covered the mouth and nose, reached out to the tip of the man's nose to test, not breathing.

Since it's not breathing, where did these old and new scratches come from?

Jiang Luo frowned and looked towards Teng Bi and Lisa who were entangled in a fight.

Lisa's other paw is also webbed, and her two hands are extremely sticky, allowing Lisa to lie like a gecko on walls and curved ceilings. She can always find the most tricky angle to rush to Teng Bi's shoulder and take a bite of flesh, then quickly leave, and after a few times of back and forth, Teng Bi also becomes bloodied.

Teng Bi's power was suppressed quite a bit by the Dragon Vein, and the most obvious thing was that the speed at which he recovered from his injuries became much slower. Jiang Luo wanted to help very much, but he couldn't use his power or he would make the body collapse again. Just as he was thinking about how to sneak attack, the body in the coffin suddenly breathed.

Jiang Luo found the body in time, he immediately took out a dagger and put it across the neck of the body, staring at the body.

The corpse's breathing went from weak to strong, and it was as if he had come back to life. Two minutes later, the corpse opened his eyes, which were also the color of red like flames. At the sight of Jiang Luo, the corpse froze, and then asked in ecstasy, "Who are you, are you the one sent by the predestined one?!"

Nemesis.

Jiang Luo's eyes darkened.

He tugged up his lips, "Yeah, I'm the one sent by the Fated, what do you have to say to me?"

The corpse almost wept with joy, he trembled his hand to touch the air, the original coffin lid has disappeared, he finally saw the light of day. The tormented and almost crazy corpse was completely unaware of the dagger Jiang Luo put on his neck, he incoherently said: "The coffin was opened, finally opened ...... I'm relieved, I finally do not have to die over and over and over again and live again, do not have to absorb the power of the dragon vein here! ...... Predestined Man, is Predestined Man successful? Did the predestined man become a god?!"

The information in the words could be described as shocking, Jiang Luo coldly laughed, "Yes, the predestined man-"

The body suddenly fainted.

Jiang Luo stopped abruptly and stared at the body more warily.

A few seconds later, the corpse opened its eyes again.

Obviously it was the same face, but the eyes of the corpse this time made Jiang Luo look extremely familiar.

Compassionate, forgiving, the look that belongs uniquely to the predestined.

This look is not a human look, but a look belonging to God. But when he saw Jiang Luo, the eyes of God, which are loving and unfeeling, rippled slightly.

With that, the Fated Man smiled, "It's been a long time, Jiang Luo."

Jiang Luo stabbed him in the neck without mercy.

The Fated Man's neck was penetrated by him, and the False God who had descended here still had the appearance of a slight smile, only that there was some helplessness in the smile. He suddenly stretched out his arm and grabbed Jiang Luo's hand, yanking him into the coffin.

The figures of the two men disappeared into the mechanism at the bottom of the coffin.