I found myself struggling for breath, my limbs useless, the submachine gun in my right hand utterly impossible to lift. The Fatty and Shirley Yang behind me should arrive soon, but if there were two more seconds, I’d be done for.

My neck was choked tight, forcing my head back. All I could see was the blinding white quartz rock above; I couldn't make out what kind of thing was strangling me. Suddenly, a sharp slap landed on my back, and I gasped, a sound of pure alarm. My wrists and neck throbbed with near-breaking pain, yet the hand gripping me vanished like a nightmare.

It turned out the one who slapped my shoulder was the Fatty. “Commander Hu,” he drawled, “that pose just now was something else. Head up, chest out, looked just like the fervor back during the Great Leap Forward when we were pushing production through revolution.”

Shirley Yang caught up just then, saw the scene, and asked what had happened.

I touched my neck, utterly bewildered, unable to find the words, just gulping huge drafts of air. After catching my breath for a moment, I recounted the events of those few terrifying seconds.

The Fatty seized the opportunity to mock me again, accusing me of daydreaming. I turned to Shirley Yang and the Fatty. “If this was a dream, what the hell is this?” I asked, holding my arm out flat for them to see the dark, bruised fingerprints on my skin. “I’ve felt it all along—this Tomb of the Tribute King is structurally sinister, full of things that have no place in an immortal’s cavern. There’s definitely a ghost in this wall.”

Shirley Yang asked, “Don’t you have some consecrated amulets on you?”

I patted the jade Buddha pendants on my chest. “These things are useless. If they weren't so damn expensive, I’d have tossed them on the roadside already, save them to charge those foreign collectors later. If I wear one of these again, I’m a son of a bitch.”

That shut the Fatty up too. Looking closely, the painted woman on the mural actually protruded distinctly from the flat surface, as if a corpse were embedded right beneath the painting, seemingly fused with the white quartz rock itself. Was she the harbinger of disaster? The Fatty turned to me. “Anyway, this wall blocks the only path to the burial chamber. Might as well go all the way—don’t we still have explosives? Let’s set off a little ‘earth airplane’ and blow whatever’s in there to dust.” With that, he dropped his pack and started preparing the charges.

Our supplies had been constantly depleted on the journey, so the Fatty’s pack was already more than half empty. He’d been grabbing anything he saw in the tomb, so it was still bulging. Right on top lay that bronze mirror. I thought, since this mirror could suppress corpses, maybe it could do something to a ghost. So, I bent down, casually picked up the mirror, turned, and aimed it at the painted woman.

The moment I turned, before I could even fully raise the mirror, I felt a sudden, violent tightening around my neck—choked again, and this time with far greater force. In the blink of an eye, I couldn't make a sound. The Fatty and Shirley Yang were digging through the pack for explosives, completely oblivious to me being silently throttled. But this time, I saw clearly: the hand strangling me belonged to the very woman in the wall painting.

Once my neck was locked in that grip, my limbs went dead. It was the same feeling as when a hanged man kicks the stool away—he can no longer lift his hands. At this point, I couldn't even signal for help with the slightest movement.

Just as I was about to lose consciousness, the wall in front of me suddenly collapsed. Something shot out from the breach, knocking me backward with immense force, sending me tumbling down the spiraling ramp of the newly revealed opening. My neck loosened just enough for me to snatch a breath, and as I rolled back, I shoved the thing still gripping me backward.

The opponent’s force was so violent it actually burst through the wall. Had it not been for that, I’d have been strangled to death within seconds. My body was still involuntarily flipping backward when a hand grabbed me. I looked up to see it was the Fatty, who, along with Shirley Yang, had managed to dodge the thing that tumbled down first. Seeing me fall too, they instinctively hauled me back.

Everything had happened too fast; no one grasped the situation. My neck and arm bones felt like they were on fire. I managed to ask, “What the hell just fell down?”

Both Shirley Yang and the Fatty shook their heads—it was too quick, they hadn’t seen clearly. They only saw a flash of white before their eyes, and if they hadn’t moved when they did, they would have been pulled down too. We were positioned at the top of a vast white cavern; the darkness below swallowed any view of the path down. I told them, “That painting—the Tribute King’s wife—it suddenly came alive and almost choked me to death. Fire a flare down there quickly and see what’s going on.”

Seeing my genuine panic, the Fatty knew I wasn't kidding. He immediately pulled out his gear from the pack and loaded the signal pistol. Shirley Yang pointed down and to the right: “Over there, five o’clock.”

The Fatty shot the flare upward. The empty cavern was instantly flooded with light. In the stark white glare, we saw a female corpse lying upside down on the narrow ramp below. It was a stout figure, motionless, but as the blinding light hit it, it suddenly seemed to electrify, jerking upright right where it lay.

The Fatty jumped straight up in fright, and my heart seized too. I immediately aimed my "Chicago Typewriter" at the target. How could this corpse be embedded in the wall? I muttered to the Fatty, “The old hag has reanimated…”

But before I finished speaking, I saw clearly that the woman’s body hadn't sat up; it was swelling and bloating, like a balloon being continuously inflated, making the corpse look fatter and fatter.

Shirley Yang observed this and said to me, “When a person dies, internal qi gets trapped, causing putrefaction and swelling. This body has been dead for at least two thousand years. Even with perfect preservation, it shouldn't start swelling from qi right now, should it?”

I responded, “Why are you still worrying about such academic questions? Besides, it doesn’t look like qi expansion. It looks like… something inside her.”

The corpse swelled rapidly; its skin and flesh became almost translucent in an instant before the body burst open with a loud pop. Countless moths sprayed out from within—some large, some small—flapping their wings and swarming toward the flare, immediately smothering the light.

Moths spawned from dead bodies are far more aggressive and resilient than ordinary ones. They dive at any light source, and their bodies carry corpse powder, which causes skin eruptions in the living. Thousands of these "corpse moths" poured out of the woman's body. She must have been tampered with in life to nurture so many. With our equipment, there was no way to eliminate them.

The only light sources left in the cavern were the headlamps on our three bodies. The cloud of smoke, thick with corpse powder carried by the swarm of "corpse moths," flew straight toward us. Although we wore gas masks, our arms and legs were exposed; one touch of that powder meant poisoning. We had no choice but to turn and flee upward. The white stone wall that had blocked our path now clearly showed a human-shaped gap. This opening looked natural, and it seemed the woman’s body had been used to seal it. That must have been the entrance to the final burial chamber. I snatched up the bronze mirror that had fallen by the doorway and hustled the Fatty and Shirley Yang back inside.

Because the corpse moths flew so fast, they were on our backs in moments. The Fatty had to use the last of his butane sprayer, unleashing a wall of fire to halt them. To our dismay, the moths were ferociously aggressive; even when scorched, they charged forward until their wings burned off, then landed, still twitching and crawling.

This onslaught of fire-dodging moths was fierce and scattered, making it hard to inflict mass casualties. Moreover, seen up close, the moths’ bodies bore an unsettling resemblance to tiny human forms, which made the hairs on our necks stand straight up. The Fatty’s nerve began to waver. When the butane ran out, he intended to bolt into the final chamber without looking back, but in his panic, his foot slipped, and he tumbled down from the highest point of the ramp. If he hadn't reacted fast enough to hook his arm over the edge of the earthen slope, he would have fallen straight into the abyss below. This small mishap was nothing major, but the feeling of unstable footing unnerved him immediately. He yelled out, “Commander Hu, for the sake of the Republic, pull your brother up!”

I had already retreated into the furthest chamber. Seeing the Fatty lose his footing and dangle in the air, I had to turn back with Shirley Yang. While shouting, “Hold on for two more minutes!” I hauled him up, pulling and dragging. Just then, the second wave of several hundred remaining corpse moths swept in, following the first scattered, burning group.

We scrambled into the chamber beyond the human-shaped breach. We didn't have time to examine the surroundings, only an urgent need to find something to block the opening. To the left sat a small, trapezoidal bronze coffin. Without a second thought, the three of us wrestled it over and jammed it against the gap. It fit perfectly. The Fatty stuffed the two slightly smaller fissures with black donkey hooves. Even though we moved as fast as possible, dozens of corpse moths squeezed through just behind us, but the small number posed no threat; we squashed them into paste with our entrenching tools.

We checked our bodies and confirmed none of our exposed skin had touched the corpse powder. Only then did we relax and survey the room. Several peculiar artifacts were placed around—this had to be the final chamber. But we couldn't immediately discern their purpose. Remembering we had used a nearby bronze coffin to barricade the entrance in our haste, we wondered if that was the Tribute King's actual sarcophagus. However, it was small, oddly shaped, and weighed less than two hundred pounds—highly strange. I picked up my "Wolf Eye" flashlight and turned to look at the coffin we had just moved.

The bronze coffin was a mix of wood and metal, overall a dark brownish-black color, constructed from Zhennan wood and inlaid with complex bronze ornamentation. All four sides featured intricate, openwork miniatures of terraces, pavilions, and halls. A massive bronze bird was cast atop it. The lid wasn't sealed; inside, there was no body, only a suit of jade armor woven with sparrow feathers.

The Fatty casually pulled out the sparrow feather jade suit and found the craftsmanship exquisite, entirely sewn with gold thread. Seeing nothing else inside the coffin, I scraped the interior with my paratrooper knife—not even grave mud remained. This confirmed it was an empty coffin; even if a corpse had completely decayed, there should have been a thin layer of cinnabar-red earth.

Shirley Yang commented, “An empty coffin might be decorative, perhaps holding more symbolic than practical meaning. But what does it symbolize? That large bird looks like a Phoenix; maybe this was meant to hold the Phoenix Gall?”

I replied to Shirley Yang, “It could also be for the Tribute King’s wife. Based on the position of the shadow bones, the Tribute King’s coffin should be to the east of this chamber. And look at the artifacts and murals in here—all of the Tribute King’s secrets must be here. Let’s start a carpet search immediately.”

This chamber lacked significant artificial carving; it was a natural white cavern, not particularly large. The surrounding white quartz rock formed strange shapes with numerous holes. The cave wasn't entirely clear; white natural stone pillars stood everywhere, and some sections were extremely narrow. Focused on finding the Tribute King’s coffin, we temporarily ignored how to get back out. In this most secretive core chamber of the "Tomb of the Tribute King," who knew what else lurked inside? The three of us didn't dare separate and proceeded forward cautiously.

The outer chambers contained several simple murals, starkly different from the exquisite, large-scale colored paintings outside. Their composition and brushwork were extremely basic, suggesting the Tribute King himself had drawn them. The content was staggering…

The initial sections detailed the construction of the "Tomb of the Tribute King." The murals depicted how the Tribute King had vanquished evil gods on Mount Zhelong and subdued the local barbarians. The evil god in the painting wore clothing like bamboo leaves, possessed a ferocious, sinister face, and was covered in black hair. It hid in a very deep mountain cave—likely the remains of the "Mountain Gods" we had already seen.

The Mountain God, transformed into a demon by the Tribute King, possessed several divine artifacts, one being the Jade Womb. As we had speculated, the Jade Womb symbolized an ancient form of fertility worship, requiring the local barbarians to offer one woman to the Mountain God during every full moon.

Seeing this, the Fatty remarked, “When the moon is full, that’s the mating season for those monkeys in the forest; they don’t want female monkeys, only women. I suppose the locals got used to it. We actually wronged the Tribute King; he was working hard to save the people from deep water and scorching fire—a great leader.”

I cursed him, “Spit out your bullshit, Fatty! What happened to your principles and stance? I notice you’re getting fuzzy about human and demon distinction now. That tendency is dangerous! Think about it: yes, he killed two mountain demons that ate one woman a month, but why isn't it painted how he turned over twenty thousand barbarian women into mothers for his bugs?”

Shirley Yang interjected, “The Mountain God’s remains, along with artifacts like the Toad Palace and the Jade Womb, were sealed inside the Poison Dragon of Mount Zhelong. That Poison Dragon must be that huge worm. The murals largely match our deductions. Afterward, there are details about altering the Feng Shui layout—that’s nothing new. The most extraordinary part is here: it depicts the Tribute King divining celestial omens and the strange phenomena he witnessed. His obsession with immortality likely stems from this.”

Seeing no prominent coffin in the chamber, despite the expectation that the real body and the shadow bone should overlap, the bizarre topography of this final room made precise localization extremely difficult. If the Tribute King’s coffin was hidden somewhere, it wouldn't be easy to find. I had to patiently search for clues. Hearing Shirley Yang’s comment, I looked up at the "Celestial Omen Chart" and froze, unable to help exclaiming, “Isn’t this the Lake Gazing technique from Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism?”