Lu Zong followed, with the two girls right behind him. Ma Xiong, seeing the only other male blindly forging ahead, felt his own objections lose their strength, so he reluctantly trailed after them.

Only when their torchlight illuminated every corner of this vast space did they realize it was entirely filled with coffins. While some were clearly damaged, a significant portion remained arranged with meticulous order.

The Ge Mei sisters clung fearfully behind the Fatty, who grinned broadly and shielded them with his arm, proclaiming, "Follow me, and you can't go wrong."

Ma Xiong approached one of the coffins, brushing dust from its surface. "It hasn't been opened or disturbed in ages," he noted. "It seems the tomb robbers never made it this far."

Lu Zong asked with curiosity, "Then why is the whole place such a mess? Did the coffins move by themselves?"

The Company Commander peered around as well and agreed, "Yes, it feels like tomb robbers ransacked this area. Look, the arrangement here doesn't match the blueprints. Take the coffin right next to you, for instance—it wasn't in the drawing, yet here it stands. How do you explain that?"

Ma Xiong took the blueprint and checked. Indeed, the spot where his feet rested should have been empty, but a coffin sat squarely beneath him. The drawings couldn't be wrong; the problem had to be the coffin itself.

He moved to the coffin and examined it closely, noticing it was newer than the others, looking as if it had been placed here within the last few decades or centuries. Yet, Cao Cao's tomb was over 1,800 years old.

He retraced his steps along the array of coffins, scanning them from head to toe, and was astonished to discover that the further back a coffin was, the older it appeared.

What did this imply?

Fatty took the blueprint next, compared it with the interior of the tomb chamber, and remarked, "Haven't you noticed? There are at least fifty percent more coffins in this chamber than there should be."

"What? Fifty percent more? Where did the extra half come from? Could later generations have placed them here?" Lu Zong asked, puzzled.

Old He chimed in, "Maybe when Cao Cao died, he brought his entire immediate family with him for burial—a live burial, perhaps. They were given enough food and water to live down here, and after they died, their bodies were interred right here."

Fatty shook his head. "No way. That bastard Cao Cao wouldn't be that cruel; it's an obvious path to ending his own lineage. Even if he managed to inter his descendants here, there's no guarantee they’d live this long. Look at the coffin right at the front—maybe a few hundred years old at most. Do you believe they could live for a thousand years?"

The Company Commander chuckled lightly. "Right. Unless he was a monster."

The word "monster" dropped like a bomb into everyone's mind. It was true, weren't the Demon Tower and everything in it filled with monsters? A stray one or two wouldn't be entirely unexpected.

As this was spoken, a sense of dread began to envelop them. They were certain they had encountered something unnatural, if not a true monster, then at least a corpse-monster.

Fatty broke the awkward silence. "It's not impossible, though. Who knows if he was involved in some illicit relationships down here and fathered a child? That child then had offspring, and maybe they could keep the line going for a few thousand years. A thousand years is just ten or so generations; it’s entirely possible through the power of love, the power of sex."

The Company Commander and the others were momentarily stunned by Fatty's impassioned speech. If Lu Zong and Ma Xiong hadn't been long accustomed to Fatty's habit of using shock tactics to ease tension, they might have been genuinely terrified. Ma Xiong quickly clarified, "What he means is, these might be the consequences of Cao Cao's descendants engaging in intimate relations."

The Company Commander and the rest were nearly moved to applause by the explanation.

Fatty approached the newest coffin, rubbing his hands together eagerly. "Today, your Uncle Fatty is going to see exactly what kind of thing you are to be so formidable."

With that, he took the sniper rifle from Dawei, strained mightily, and managed to pry the lid off the coffin. A thick cloud of white mist erupted, making Fatty jump back, cursing, "Oh my god, what intense corpse miasma!"

Ma Xiong asked curiously, "Hey, why is the corpse miasma white? Was this fellow poisoned to death?"

Lu Zong leaned in for a better look. After the white fog dissipated, he saw a perfectly intact human corpse lying beneath the coffin—no, it seemed to be more than one, as he vaguely discerned several hands. Due to the age and the liquefied remains soaking the body, it wasn't perfectly clear. However, the outlines of the shoulders were distinct; there were clearly several arms, symmetrically arranged on both the left and right sides.

Lu Zong called out in astonishment, beckoning the others over. "Look here! This coffin holds the bodies of two people! What in the world is going on?"

The Company Commander and the others crowded around. The dense fog had mostly evaporated by now, leaving only a shallow layer of yellowish corpse fluid bathing the bulky remains.

The Company Commander examined it. "Yes, definitely two bodies. But I have a strange feeling there’s only one head."

Ma Xiong scoffed, "Impossible."

He hurried over for a closer look and saw, indeed, beneath the thin layer of fluid, the faint shapes of two sets of legs and two sets of arms—and two sets of genitals. But, just as the Company Commander had said, there was only one head.

He forced down his rising fear, affecting an indifferent smile. "Damn it, Fatty, come over here and look! This guy really only has one head. How is that even possible?"

In truth, a flicker of fear had crossed Fatty's face, but with the two young women behind him viewing him as a hero, he couldn't bear to act like a coward. He managed a smile mirroring Ma Xiong's disbelief. "Haha, how could that be? Let your Uncle Fatty have a look too."

He stepped forward, closed his eyes, bent down, and looked. "Holy crap, it's true! What is going on here?"

Seeing everyone staring blankly at each other, he frantically sifted through his memory for any lore regarding one body with two sets of parts, but came up empty. Finally, he searched for references to one corpse growing multiple legs and feet, which only brought up one term: a spider spirit. That meant a monster. Could this fellow truly be a monster?

Old He, noticing Fatty’s concentrated frown, asked, "Fatty, any breakthroughs?"

Fatty declared, "How about we tip this guy out of the coffin and have a look? I refuse to believe this thing actually has two people's worth of parts."

Seeing no objections, he took it as assent. He spat into his palm, took a deep breath, and walked toward the coffin.