The Lost Tomb : Restart (The Sound Of Providence)

Chapter 29: Something In The Mud

"Stop taking pictures." Fatty was uncomfortable with the blinding flash, but I kept taking pictures anyways. But no matter how many I took, I still couldn't see it.

"There's a problem. Something's there!" I cried out.

Fatty turned his head to the darkness behind him, listening attentively for a moment before he said to me, "Is it that thing that was on my back?"

I looked at the photos on my phone, but they were too blurry. "Maybe it's the one that was on my back," I said to him.

Just now, we both had something on our backs, but the one on my back had fallen here and disappeared. It may have been hiding in the dark corner this whole time. I hadn't been under such pressure for a long time and didn't react in these last few minutes. If it was the me from before, I might have died a long time ago.

I thought of that lingering fear again and realized that I was in a state where I couldn't defend myself at all. I saw Fatty pull out three homemade pistols and hand them to me, which made me feel a little more at ease.

This kind of gun was a modified starter pistol [1], so the bullets had to be fired one by one. I opened it to see what the bullet looked like and found that it was a modified rifle casing. The bullet head was probably made from iron scraps. It was said that this kind of gun couldn't hit a target more than four meters away, but those within the four-meter range would be shredded like a cucumber. Since this was a rifle bullet, though, people with weak hand muscles might end up dislocating something.

"What the hell is it?" I asked him as I held my phone in one hand and the gun in the other.

Fatty spit, "Do you see these thunder god statues? They're all hollow. Look at them carefully, they weren't fired in a kiln."

"How'd you reach that conclusion?" I was back-to-back with him now, and his back was so thick that my sense of security immediately skyrocketed.

"Have you ever heard of corpse coral?" He asked me.

Corpse coral was a kind of hollow coral that looked like a person. The shape was so different that it almost looked lifelike. Legend had it that there were ancient corpses inside them, because the coral had grown along the corpses to form a human shape. Since they had been labeled exotic goods, they were brought to the brink of extinction and were very rare now. There was a saying among those who scoured the sea that corals produced "corpses", and most of those corpses carried treasures. The sea god was afraid that the treasures would decay after the corpses were sunk, so he had the coral encase them. If you found this kind of coral, you would often find treasure inside.

But I knew it was a lie, because I had made it up in order to sell a batch of coral beads when I was down on my luck before. But if there were too many false words, then we wouldn't be able to tell the truth from fiction. Fatty had also helped with the later part of this story, so I suddenly wondered if he had Parkinson's disease [2].

"It sounds like Old Jin's nonsense," I subtly shifted the blame.

"Old Jin's might be nonsense, but what I'm talking about isn't," Fatty retorted. "It's true that coral gives birth to corpses, but the most important thing is that these thunder god statues are really carved out of coral. And the coral is shaped like people."

I looked at the smashed thunder god statue. I had originally thought it was made of pottery because the colors looked like heated clay, but when I looked carefully, I saw that it was the texture of coral. I really had been negligent.

"In the past, the people here collected these corals and carved them into the Thunder God's likeness for this tomb. When you break them, you can see that there are layers of growth patterns inside," Fatty said. "I don't know if there were really bodies inside them, but don't you think these statues are like shells?"

I understood what he meant, "You mean, there are living things in the statues? Someone carved the statues into the Thunder God's likeness, which acted as a shell for these living things. As a result, it looked like the Thunder God was clinging to our backs?"

Fatty nodded and said, "It's hard to fucking talk to you, Mr. Naïve. You should get your brain checked when you go back."

"So, you mean to say we're dealing with a giant oyster now?" I teased him as I looked at the heads of the other thunder god statues with my phone light. There are so many here, I thought to myself. The South Sea country really was a maritime country. All of these must've been set up for tribute.

If they really were corpses, then many of them definitely weren't natural. I thought of the thunder god statue I had seen before, with its twisted and abnormal posture. If there was a corpse inside, then it must've died in extreme pain. Based on what I knew, these statues probably formed when the South Sea country killed a bunch of fish slaves. After the corpses were specially treated and sunk into the sea, they were slowly covered in coral. Then, they were carved into these thunder god statues.

I had initially wondered who would carve such strange gestures, but they probably had strange body shapes because rigor mortis set in after death.

"It's retribution," Fatty murmured. We did eat a lot of oysters before. Fatty was suffering from a little hair loss and it was said that eating them could help with hair growth.

Poker-Face's knocking was getting closer and there was no sign of any movement in the mud. I started to feel my stamina increase and told myself it was because I was thinking of oysters. At that moment, I suddenly noticed that there was a message in Poker-Face's knocking.

But Poker-Face didn't know the information contained within our secret code.

This particular knocking sound had a message, and I realized as I listened to it that it was saying, "Prepare for an explosion."

I paused and looked at Fatty before knocking back, "Who are you?"

"I'm Liu Sang," the other party answered.

"How do you know our code?" I knocked back.

"It's simple. I listened to it," Liu Sang replied.

The ground below us suddenly shook and a big bubble of mud burst forth. Then, the mud sank down as if a hole in the ground had been blown open. As the mud began pouring into the next level, I heard Liu Sang shout from below, "Hurry down. We've found the main tomb." As soon as he finished speaking, I saw a "thing" get swept along with the mud that was pouring down. Liu Sang shouted, "What the fuck is that thing?! Where did it go?!"

Fatty and I jumped into the mud and slid down to the next level. When I turned on my phone's light, I saw Liu Sang looking for something in the mud, "There was something here just now."

At this time, we all saw something lying on his back. It was a long face with all kinds of facial features. 

****************************************

Notes:

[1] A blank handgun that is fired to start track and field races, as well as competitive swimming races at some meets.

[2] Parkinson's Disease can lead to dementia.