Ancient tomb excavation traces

The four witches stopped their worship and sat kneeling before the altar, eyes closed, holding hands and chanting mysterious, ancient incantations. Lan Quexi could understand some of it, and immediately said gravely, "This is bad! They're chanting a resurrection spell. That blood shadow was probably the essence of the person inside the coffin. If the real body comes out, we're doomed..."

"Ah!" Bao Cai exclaimed in alarm, and hurriedly said, "What should we do? Can we strike first?"

Just then, a sudden gust of cold wind swept through the air. The hair of the four witches in front of me began to dance wildly, and all the fires flickered precariously, as if they might be extinguished at any moment. At the same time, a sense of menace emanated from the rare golden nanmu coffin. Although I had the Heavenly Eye Stone protecting my body from the evil energy, I could still feel the cold wind whistling through me, and my whole body felt incredibly heavy.

The young Taoist priest stared at the coffin lid and said, "An ancient corpse that even seven-inch nails couldn't suppress—if he foresaw this day as the day to break open his coffin, then it's impossible for us to pull him back inside!"

Just as the scene before me suddenly changed, and my heart pounded with panic, wisps of black smoke billowed from the coffin. It approached slowly, and sensing the danger, we cautiously retreated. Suddenly, the smoke exploded in front of us with tremendous force; we couldn't avoid it and had to cover our eyes and noses with our hands. When the black smoke dissipated, we heard the sound of the coffin lid hitting the ground. The patriarch and the young Taoist priest beside us stared intently at the golden nanmu coffin. The patriarch said, "Little Celestial Master, this time we truly have to fight with all our might!"

The old ancestor's expression was grave; it seemed what they had seen was no ordinary thing. I lowered my hand and looked through the swirling black mist, only to see a person sitting in the Golden Phoebe Wood Pavilion. He wore a red and black curved-hem robe and a tall crown adorned with pearls and jade of the finest quality, still gleaming brightly after a hundred years. From his exposed upper body, it was clear that he was tall.

Surprisingly, the person looked like a living person. Although his face and body were stained with blood, you could still see the rosy color in his skin. But this color would be fine on a living person's face, but on the face of an ancient corpse lying in a coffin, it was a bit eerie.

Based on his clothing, the ancestor said he must have been a nobleman of the Chu Kingdom in his previous life. But why was there a man in Mi Ling's main coffin? He looked like a living person, was incredibly strong, and could even sit up on his own! If he were a giant zombie, that would be one thing, but this person could still breathe! What else could he be but a human?

Bao Cai said, "Holy crap, wasn't Princess Chu in the coffin? How come such a magnificent thing popped out? Is the record in the silk scroll not true? Actually, Mi Ling was already married, and this person is her husband?"

Although Bao Cai's words were somewhat far-fetched, they did give me a clue. I speculated, "The quju shenyi was worn by nobles in ancient times, so this person..." I swallowed, composed myself, and continued, "Could this person be Sima Yan himself?"

From this point onward, the walls are adorned with dragon and phoenix motifs, even the eastern wing where treasures are stored has a more masculine style. When I gave this answer, Chen Yi gasped, "Are you kidding me? What about Princess Chu?"

I said, "The coffin is so large, it could hold several people. Princess Chu might be right next to Sima Yan!"

This answer resolves all questions; I can't think of a more suitable explanation. Sima Yan couldn't have Mi Ling in life, so how could he possibly miss out on his own greatest love after death? This kind of feeling is unimaginably deep, like the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, who wait their entire lives for a single meeting on the Magpie Bridge. Even after so many years, they still clung to their true love. Unfortunately, Sima Yan's affections were unrequited…

The four witches were overjoyed as they watched the person in the coffin stand up, as if a dream they had had for a hundred years had finally come true.

I stared at the ancient corpse. If he was indeed Sima Yan, as I suspected, then his appearance and physique were vastly different from what I had imagined. In my mind, those who could observe celestial phenomena and survey geography were like the little Taoist priests—ethereal and otherworldly, with flowing robes and a gaunt, frosty appearance. But this Sima Yan was much more robust than the little Taoist priest.

I asked the young Taoist priest if this strange occurrence was a case of a zombie turning into a monster. The young priest shook his head and said, "The atmosphere here is wrong. It doesn't seem like a zombie turning into a monster, but I can't quite put my finger on what's causing it."

An ancient corpse would either be able to move, or it would have become a zombie, or it would be like a small worm hidden in a bottle, capable of bringing a person back to life. But it would never be like Sima Yan, who retained his appearance and became a living corpse. Because if that were the case, then Qin Shi Huang's pursuit of immortality could have been achieved, which contradicts the natural law of human life, aging, sickness, and death.

Could it really be that the four witches used some kind of resurrection technique? There was blood in Sima Yan's coffin; did he absorb the blood essence during the solar eclipse and come back to life? Then why didn't Mi Ling wake up?

Just as I was thinking this, apart from the raging fire in the fire ditch, the fire on the remaining bronze figures and the human-shaped lamps all turned a ghastly green. It would be one thing if one or two candles turned like that, but the whole row of them did, giving the feeling that they were about to take us to the underworld.

The young Taoist glanced at the suddenly changing firelight around him and said solemnly, "I am now a dying candle, but I still have enough breath to hold off the living corpses. Manager Feng is poisoned; let's see if we can use this opportunity to find an antidote. In short, we should escape if we can, otherwise we will all be stuck here..."

The seriousness of the situation was evident in the young Taoist's words. The old patriarch drew his bronze scimitar and said righteously, "There are seven of us. If you're the only one dragging along these difficult zombies, the other six will have to live in the shadows to get out. I don't want Xiao Liuzi and the others to feel guilty and remorseful. Tomb raiding can never be a one-man job. It hasn't come to the point where someone has to be sacrificed. Besides, I, Feng Xie, am not the kind of person who would poison myself and have someone else die to obtain the antidote!"

Upon hearing the old ancestor's words, the young Taoist priest showed a hint of surprise on his face, but then regained his usual indifferent demeanor. He smiled, seemingly having reached a consensus with the old ancestor.

The black flames burned ever brighter, and Sima Yan, inside the golden nanmu coffin, turned his gaze to us. Even though he appeared indistinguishable from the living, his bloodthirsty red eyes betrayed him. How could a dead person be resurrected and become human again? How could someone with blood on their hands truly reach the heavens?

I used to think that ordinary people like us couldn't sense or see such supernatural things, and could only be secretly tormented. But now, facing Sima Yan's ancient corpse, I can feel unusual auras flowing around us. These auras are like blades of wind, invisible, yet they cause inexplicable panic.

I wondered if he really possessed some kind of divine power. Just as I was thinking this, Bao Cai exclaimed in surprise, "Holy crap... this person is changing again!"

Hearing this, I looked up. Bao Cai was usually quite observant, but I didn't notice anything. Bao Cai anxiously said to us, "Didn't you notice that the skin on Old Monster Sima's neck is a bit translucent?"

Upon hearing this, I looked down at his neck and noticed that his skin did indeed look a bit strange, almost like a crystal dumpling. I could vaguely see the blood vessels inside his skin. Soon, the changes in his body became obvious. Clumps of hair fell out, and his scalp, like his neck, became translucent. I could even see the blood inside his body.

Sure enough, he had absorbed the blood from the pool, and the blood had soaked him. But now, compared to before, his appearance was truly grotesque, as if he had just been soaked in formaldehyde. He staggered to his feet, looking like a child toddling along, bewildered and confused. He looked like a Frankenstein monster, but we were in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, and Sima Yan wasn't some research subject in a laboratory. How could he have turned into this?

A chill ran down my spine as I watched him slowly crawl out of the main coffin. His skin, which had been translucent, began to dry out, resembling a jagged mountain wall, forming vertical wrinkles. These wrinkles, along with his bluish-gray skin, truly sculpted him into a monstrous form. Yet, even in this state, the four young witches below the platform gazed at him with boundless longing, as if this monster could fulfill their ideals.

Bao Cai watched the thing slowly move down and said, "Is this a resurrected corpse? There's a saying among the Tibetans that when a person dies, their lingering karma isn't exhausted, so they keep thinking about completing what they did in life. That's why they preserve their corpse and wait for the yin energy to gather, as the fortune teller said, to wreak havoc on the human world?"

I heard about the "corpse rising" when I traveled to XZ, but the situation at Sima Yan was not similar to the description of the corpse rising by the locals. Moreover, if that were the case, then if he touched the top of our heads, we would turn into the same as him.

I immediately refuted Bao Cai's claim. Bao Cai said my understanding was too one-sided. He had read many books of strange tales, and there was a rather wild theory that there were several types of resurrection. Sima Yan's resurrection was described as first his skin changing, then his flesh becoming transparent, revealing blood underneath. This indicated that he had experienced three stages of resurrection: "skin resurrection, flesh resurrection, and blood resurrection." Normally, a resurrection only involves one stage, but Sima Yan's appearance suggested he had all three.

Whether or not he rose from the dead, for someone as arrogant as Sima Yan, knowing he had become like this would probably make him vomit blood. I don't know if he still harbors any aristocratic pride, but as Bao Cai said, his remnants are not yet gone. These remnants are probably his desire to ascend to immortality with Mi Ling, living a carefree life together, while the four witches are likely there to help him achieve his ideals.

Bao Cai watched as the thing walked up to the four witches and said, "This is too eerie. How are we supposed to retrieve Princess Chu's body from the main coffin with such a living monster right in front of us? How are we supposed to get the antidote?"