Ancient tomb excavation traces

Wang Yu! The person in front of me is Wang Yu, the son of my benefactor! I silently stood up. The scene before me was perplexing. They couldn't see me. I felt like an outsider watching a video playback.

I stared at him in disbelief. He was dressed in dark, close-fitting clothes, carrying grave-digging tools on his back. His hair was simply tied up with a wooden hairpin, and he looked rather young. The two men beside him were surnamed "Liu," clearly the male members of the Liu family the young Taoist had mentioned.

At that moment, they frantically closed the ever-burning lamp mechanism on the bronze wall. Judging from their route, they did not seem to have come from the same place as us.

Wang Yu turned to an older man named Liu Guan and said, "What should we do? Uncle Liu has already been captured, and his body is covered in insects... What if we... what if we are captured and end up like that?"

Liu Guan grabbed Wang Yu's collar, glaring at him and warning, "No need for further explanation. My brother Liu Yin is dead, and Ge Yun, who brought you here, is nowhere to be found. Now that we've reached the main coffin chamber, we're about to make our fortune. Don't give me any more nagging, or don't blame me for being impolite!"

Wang Yu was immediately taken aback and nodded repeatedly.

At that moment, a man about the same age as Wang Yu appeared before me, his name engraved on the wooden plaque: Liu Yuan. He grabbed Liu Guan and said, "Father, there seems to be a bronze wine vessel here..."

Upon hearing the word "wine," Liu Guan immediately followed Liu Yuan to the table, bent down, and said, "It's terribly cold down here. Let's quickly drink this wine and then open the coffin." Liu Guan smiled, a smile driven by greed.

Liu Yuan nodded, and the two impatiently opened the bronze wine vessel, taking deep sniffs. Liu Guan smelled the wine, his expression exactly the same as Chen Yi's earlier intoxicated state. He took out the knife from his waist, dipped it in, tasted it, and said, "Sweet and delicious, good wine!" After speaking, he picked up the bronze wine vessel, tilted his head back, and gulped it down.

After drinking quite a bit, he shared the wine with his sons Liu Yuan and Wang Yu. Liu Yuan drank heartily, but Wang Yu seemed a little timid, afraid that he might accidentally anger Liu Guan again.

The moment they lifted the bronze vessel, I saw a mark on its bottom. The strokes of the mark looked familiar, and upon closer inspection, I realized it was the same vessel that Chen Yi was holding.

They drank more than Chen Niu. After drinking, their faces were flushed, and the veins on their faces were visible, which looked terrifying, as if something was wrong.

Liu Yuan cried out in panic, "Father, my skin feels like it's on fire... Ah..." He screamed frantically, scratching his skin until it was raw and bloody.

Liu Guan sensed something was wrong; his skin had turned a purplish-brown and was somewhat swollen. As an outsider, seeing him like this, my hands and feet couldn't help but itch. When Wang Yu saw Liu Yuan suddenly turn into that, he loosened his grip, and the bronze vessel fell to the ground with a deafening echo.

At this moment, Liu Guan also started to act up. His little fingernail was extremely long, and when he scratched his skin, it would cut a large gash. Even so, he did not stop what he was doing, as if he were possessed.

In an instant, large splatters of blood splattered onto Wang Yu's face. Terrified, he stumbled and staggered to the corner of the wall. But soon, his body also began to turn a purplish-brown, the color like blood rapidly decaying. Wang Yu leaned against the wall, screaming in despair, his fingers digging into his face, tearing at his skin. His skin looked like a pile of mud; every time he dug his fingers in, large chunks were scraped off.

I had never seen such a despairing scene. I moved backward in unease, and at the same time, I saw something moving on the ground. It was moving mechanically, tiny and numerous, like ants that had been scalded to death by boiling water and were still struggling.

The scene was like a 3D movie; though I couldn't touch it, I still avoided the tiny bubbles. At that moment, I found the thread that connected all the answers. Before my eyes flashed an image of seven modern tomb raiders transformed into the living dead, fighting us. I pieced together all the events leading to their transformation into resurrected corpses, and suddenly remembered something Chen Yi had said earlier: "Boss, last time in Wu Xia's tomb, you stopped me from drinking, and in the end, Lao San drank all the wine; I didn't get a single drop..."

Alcohol! Could the key to "the living are dead, the dead are alive" be alcohol? I stared at the three of them in shock, as if suddenly enlightened, my mind clearing up instantly.

They suddenly had an attack, rolling on the ground, screaming, choking themselves, their eyes rolling back. I watched them in immense pain, but I was powerless to help and could only feel my heart aching.

A scream pierced my heart; I covered my ears, unable to bear watching. Just then, a faint light appeared on the east side of the main coffin chamber. The door opened, and from the shadows, a burly man emerged from the crack. The man was covered in wounds. Seeing the person lying on the ground, he was utterly shocked. It took him a long time to recover before he dared to kneel down, grabbing Wang Yu and saying in disbelief, "Brother Wang, what...what happened? You..."

Wang Yu couldn't speak, only letting out mournful cries as his mouth opened and closed. Before long, the three men with ferocious expressions were lifeless. Their deaths were gruesome; their bodies were curled up, their fingers were claw-like, their eyes were bloodshot, and their mouths were split open, making them look extremely bizarre.

Ge Yun instinctively pushed Wang Yu's corpse away, staring helplessly at the scene before him. After calming down a bit, he trembled as he checked their breaths, but as soon as he got close to Wang Yu's nose, Ge Yun pulled his hand back as if he had been electrocuted. He stared at the three corpses in utter terror. What devastated him even more was that, despite confirming that the people were dead, the corpses inexplicably started moving again not long afterward.

Alone in this eerie place, Ge Yun could not bear such a strange sight. He sat on the ground, backing away, and finally screamed and staggered away.

Not long after he fled, four people entered through the entrance to the main coffin chamber. Among them, two were hunched over, and two were dressed in purplish-black priestess robes... They coldly stared at the strangely twitching figure on the ground, a smug smile spreading across their lips.

Seeing this scene, the truth became clear in my mind, but when one of the masked witches looked at me, I trembled all over, as if they had discovered my presence and were preparing a fatal blow for me in a sinister way.

I gasped. In this situation, I desperately wanted to tear it apart and escape. The witch grinned at me, as if saying, "You've finally come..."

Suddenly, I awoke from this nightmarish world. Lan Quexi said, "Young Master Feng..."

I stared blankly at her face; it was gloomy. I instantly realized something was wrong, so I quickly got up and looked into the firelight. There lay three people on the ground, silent and as if burned. And I smelled a familiar odor on them—the stench of decay.

My heart skipped a beat. Soon, something even more terrifying happened: the ancestors were convulsing, just like what had happened to Wang Yu and the others earlier.

My breath caught in my throat. The young Taoist priest said coldly, "They must be killed."