This Damned Thirst for Survival

Chapter 196 - Back from the dead and suffocating in life

Teng Bi scouts ahead of them as they descend the stairs with their eyes closed, holding onto the wall with one hand and clutching the clothes of the person in front of them with the other, carefully taking one step at a time.

The three men were not affected by the hanging soul ladder until they stepped onto level ground.

After the hanging staircase, the space opens up and the surrounding mud walls become stone walls, with a wide, circular space in front.

There are old furniture and furnishings, as well as many antique utensils that are worth a lot of money at first glance. These were arranged in the form of an ancient hall, and each of them was worth ten thousand gold when taken out. At the back of the hall is a stone door with a pair of couplets carved on the left and right of the door. On the left is the inscription: "A case of death has not yet been committed", while on the right is the inscription: "One can still hope to live after entering the hall".

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

Teng Bi turned back and looked at him suspiciously.

Jiang Luo explains, "These two lines are a couplet written by some literati in the late Ming Dynasty for Hall of Hades, meaning that if you can get through to the underworld after death and meet a competent acquaintance, you can return to your body and become a human being again before your body decays."

Teng Bi wrote down the meaning of these two phrases and said, "I have not heard that one."

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

Teng Bi nodded gently.

Jiang Luo walked up to the stone door, "An ancient tomb of this size is usually divided into three parts, the first part is the underworld hall, the middle part is the bedchamber where the coffins were placed, and the back is where the burial goods were placed. Looking at this place, the owner of the tomb should not have died very long ago, perhaps in the Qing Dynasty, or possibly in the Republic of China."

He looked carefully at the carving of a bodhisattva 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 the owner of this tomb is, just the fact that he could build a tomb in the eye of a dragon makes it pretty unbelievable."

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

Jiang Luo nodded, "If not a feng shui master, he is at least very involved in this area."

There is no point in speculating here, so Teng Bi pushes the stone door open with brute force, but instead of a chamber with a coffin, there is a long passage behind it.

Jiang Luo and Teng Bi move forward side by side, less anxious now than they were before they found the dragon's eye. The tomb is suppressed by a dragon vein, so no evil spirits will appear.

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

Jiang Luo smiled and said sagely, "It wasn't very early, I only knew you weren't a deadbeat anymore when you started calling me by my first name instead of my friend in the trainee dorm."

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

"You don't have to say sorry to me," Jiang Luo put away his smile, " Teng Bi, I never fully trusted you. Your deception did not hurt me much. But some people are different, and you should go and apologise to someone who really trusts you, not say that to me."

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Teng Bi only felt as if a stone was weighing on his heart, a stone that was getting heavier and heavier, weighing him down so much that he could barely breathe. He said dryly, "He ......"

Jiang Luo and Teng Bi know who they are referring to without having to say "his" name.

Jiang Luo suddenly feels a bit annoyed. He and Chi You, for example, and Teng Bi and Lu Youyi, for example, give him an uncathartic stifling feeling when he thinks about them, and he wants to smoke again.

"He sees you as a real friend," Jiang Luo suppressed his annoyance, "his first experience of back-stabbing from a friend, and you've kind of added a valuable life experience to him."

Seeing Teng Bi's ugly face, Jiang Luo finally said, "After you left, he was sad for a long time."

He had only a few words, but they made Teng Bi's lips purse and pull into a straight line. The living dead man's brow furrowed and his hand unconsciously clenched into a fist, a look of pain that words could not describe.

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

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 senses overpowered the desire and Jiang Luo pursed his lips as he and Teng Bi walked on in silence.

Behind them, a bouncing Li Sha suddenly stops in her tracks, as if she has heard something.

Li Sha listens sideways and after a few seconds, her soulful eyes slowly become lost in thought. After a few more seconds, Li Sha straightens up and continues to follow Jiang Luo and Teng Bi.

The little girl did not look the least bit different, but her eyes were dull.

*

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

A sarcophagus is placed in the middle of the large chambers. The sarcophagus is so tall that it appears to be more than twice the size of a normal coffin. When Jiang Luo looked closer, he saw that the sarcophagus had a design of the twenty-eight stars carved into it.

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

Jiang Luo sees the auspicious clouds in Sanskrit at the bottom of the sarcophagus from the twenty-eight stars on the sarcophagus, "The most essential thing in the dragon's eyes is of course the dragon's tears, or Longquan, as Taoist Master Wei He said. Longquan can quench the body, but the power is so pure that it can have the effect of overdoing it. If we find Longquan, we will only take the amount of one water bottle and that will be enough."

Teng Bi looks at the glass of water on the side of his rucksack and nods. He glances in all directions, listens half-heartedly and sniffs again.

His five senses were keen, but about the time the tomb was littered with thick stones that blocked the transmission of sound, Teng Bi did not hear any water or smell any dampness.

He shook his head towards Jiang Luo.

Jiang Luo tsked, looked around the chamber, and then looked at the coffin of the tomb's owner. The owner of the tomb was so mysterious that he wanted to open the coffin to satisfy his curiosity, but Jiang Luo could not lift the lid of a coffin for the sake of his curiosity.

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

In the next instant, Li Sha lifted the coffin with a single push.

The heavy lid of the sarcophagus hit the ground with a loud bang, stirring up a cloud of dust. There was another coffin in the sarcophagus and Li Sha, without blinking, placed her hand on the second coffin and was about to follow the law when Teng Bi quickly grabbed her hand and threw her out, saying defensively, "Li Sha, what are you doing?"

Li Sha steadied herself, lifted her sightless eyes to look at Teng Bi and suddenly extended her hand.

The soft fingers of a young girl open up, and fish-like webbing appears in them. The membrane wraps around her palms one by one, and Li Sha's fingers also become long and bony, her nails sharp and slightly curved, becoming sharp claws in the blink of an eye.

A strong, fishy smell permeates the chamber.

Teng Bi drew out the large knife he had on him and said in a deep voice, " Jiang Luo, you hide to the side."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Li Sha rushed towards him with an expressionless face.

Li Sha's claws and Teng Bi's sword clashed violently, sending sparks of starlight into the air. Li Sha was not as strong a fighter as Teng Bi and she was soon outgunned. But Li Sha seemed unaware of the pain, and no matter how badly she was wounded, she charged forward in the next second. Teng Bi dodged her gutting claw and struck Li Sha in the back of the knee with the blade so hard that Li Sha's legs went weak and she fell to her knees. But she quickly lifted her head and spat a fry out of her mouth.

The fry were spat onto Teng Bi's body and they quickly burrowed into his clothes, tearing at his skin and trying to burrow into his flesh and blood. Teng Bi's movements were interrupted and he had to stop one by one to squeeze the fry off his body.

The coffin lid slammed into Jiang Luo's side, the rounded face of the coffin reversed, like an overturned turtle, and the inside part rattled against Jiang Luo.

Inside the inner shell there are many marks from nails scratching.

Jiang Luo froze and knelt down with his torch to shine a light on the scratches, reaching out to make a mark that was uneven and cascading.

This is the mark of scratching out of the coffin ...... This means that the person in the coffin was still a living person when they were locked in the coffin.

Jiang Luo's face grew serious, but he soon noticed something new was wrong.

The marks are clearly new and old, one on top of the other, and what makes one's head spin a little is that some of the latest nail marks look like they were scratched only today.

Jiang Luo himself scratched inside the coffin lid, and it was surprisingly indistinguishable from the latest nail marks on the coffin, in terms of the newness of the marks.

That's scary.

This is 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 did the tomb owner die and live, live and die again, being suffocated in the coffin countless times, thus leaving countless scratches of different ages?

Either of these two possibilities is a little scary. Jiang Luo looks up at the coffin and Li Sha, standing next to it, switches targets after opening it and fights with Teng Bi again.

Li Sha was not in the right state either, she was clearly being controlled.

If she was controlled, she could only be controlled by the tomb owner.

Jiang Luo looks grave as he cautiously rises and slowly approaches the coffin.

Inside the coffin lies a man in a long robe and waistcoat.

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 dress, he should have been from the Republican era, yet by now, the corpse was surprisingly without a trace of decay, except for the lack of breathing, the man looked as if he had fallen asleep.

The men are also distinctive looking, with several flame-like marks on their faces, looking similar to Lian Xue and Lian Bing when they were controlled by the gods of the genre.

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

Since there is no breathing, where did those old and new scratches come from?

Jiang Luo frowned and looked at Teng Bi and Li Sha who were tangled up in a fight.

Li Sha's other paw is also webbed, and her two hands are extremely sticky, allowing Li Sha to lie on walls and arcs like a gecko. She always finds the most tricky angle to get a bite of flesh on Teng Bi's shoulder and quickly leaves, and after a few rounds, Teng Bi is in a bit of a pickle.

Teng Bi's power has been suppressed by the Dragon Vein, and the most obvious thing is that his recovery from his injuries has become much slower. Jiang Luo wanted to help, but he could not use his own power or he would break his body again. Just as he was thinking about how to sneak in, the corpse in the coffin suddenly breathed.

Jiang Luo spotted the body in time and immediately pulled out his dagger and placed it across the neck, keeping a close eye on the body.

The corpse's breathing went from faint 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 colour of red as fire. At the sight of Jiang Luo, the corpse froze, and then asked ecstatically, "Who are you, and are you the one sent by the Predestined?!"

Predestined people.

Jiang Luo's eyes darkened.

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

The corpse almost wept with joy as he touched the air with trembling hands, the lid of the coffin was gone and he had finally seen the light of day. The corpse, tortured to the point of madness, was completely unaware of the dagger Jiang Luo had placed around his neck as he said incoherently, "The coffin has been opened, finally ...... I'm free, I don't have to die and come back to life over and over again, I don't have to absorb the power of the Dragon Vein here ...... predestined man, is the predestined man successful? Did the Fated One become a god?!"

The message in the words was a shocking one, and Jiang Luo smiled coldly, "Yes, the predestined man-"

The body suddenly fainted.

Jiang Luo stops abruptly and stares more warily at the body.

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

It is clear that the faces are identical, but the eyes of the corpse this time look very familiar to Jiang Luo.

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

This look is not the look of a human being, but the look of a god. But when he sees Jiang Luo, the look of God's loving and unfeeling eyes ripples slightly.

With that, the Fatalist smiled and said, "It's been a long time, Jiang Luo ."

Jiang Luo stabbed him in the neck without mercy.

The false god who had descended here with the neck of the predestined man penetrated by him still looked slightly smiling, only there was something helpless in his smile. He suddenly stretched out his arm, grabbed Jiang Luo's hand, and dragged him into the coffin.

The two figures disappear into the mechanism at the bottom of the coffin.