Chapter Fifteen: A Human Shadow

Purely in terms of odor alone, the bottle of lama oil that Peanut had was absolutely unmatched in the world.

Once everything was ready, the Fatty shoved his hand into the mass of corpses inside the coffin. The moment he pressed downward, I heard a hideous squelching sound that made my scalp crawl.

Blood and corpse fluid had mixed together, and those chunks of flesh looked like rotten meat coated in a thick glaze, so slimy it was enough to turn one’s stomach. Each inch deeper the Fatty forced his hand, another layer of gooseflesh rose across my arms.

"Damn it, what the hell is this? Something's blocking me..." His hand seemed to hit some kind of obstruction and stopped short. Seeing how sweat was pouring down his face, I knew this man was certainly not as relaxed as he pretended.

After a moment, I saw him slowly draw his hand back out. I thought he had decided to give up, but who would have guessed that this bastard actually dragged a half-rounded thing out from among the corpse pieces?

One look at it nearly made me cry out in horror. Dangling from the Fatty’s hand was half a human head.

The skull must have been split cleanly down the middle. There was still some minced flesh and brain matter clinging inside the cranium, and one eye was still open, the mouth beneath it hanging half agape. The Fatty grabbed the hair on its forehead and shook it back and forth, making it look as though it might lunge straight at me.

He was sickened too. Cursing, he flung the half head back into the coffin and once again reached inside.

This time his movements were noticeably faster, and the hissing, crackling sound I heard grew more and more intense. My stomach churned so violently I had no idea how I managed not to vomit right then and there.

"You’d better not keep looking," Peanut said to me suddenly. "I don’t know what those people over there are doing. Why don’t you go take a look? If they try to come over, you can help hold them off."

I wiped my face and was about to say, No problem, I can handle it. But when I turned my head, I saw the Fatty pulling a human leg out from the corpse pile, and in that instant I could bear it no longer. I turned and headed for the side doorway.

The moment I stepped into the second brick chamber, I could no longer suppress the urge to vomit. But I also knew that if I threw up on the floor and someone saw it, that would be a disaster. There would be no good explanation.

I must have looked ridiculous then, covering my mouth and darting about the chamber like a headless fly, desperate to find somewhere to empty my stomach completely. I was thinking of the clay jars beside the stone couch when the contents of my stomach had already surged into my mouth. Out of reflex, I grabbed the lid of the bronze incense burner in front of me and retched into it with a violent heave.

Fortunately, I had buried my face inside it, so the sound was trapped within the burner. Otherwise, Yang Lang on the other side would certainly have heard it.

After I finished and put the lid back on, I felt a little better. Once I caught my breath, well, oddly enough, after throwing up everything completely, I even felt a little relieved. But when I looked at the incense burner, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy again.

Damn it. When this place is excavated in the future, I wonder what the archaeologists will think if they find a puddle of vomit in this incense burner.

But at that point I could not think about so much else. I took my canteen from my backpack, rinsed my mouth, drank a couple of swallows, and then decided there was no way I could go back to watching the Fatty dig through the corpse pile. So I made up my mind to head into the chamber in the middle and see whether Yang Lang had discovered anything.

With that thought, I got up and walked forward.

A fluorescent lamp hung the whole way, bright enough without question, but I still found the shadow I cast on the wall, stretched and warped by the light, somewhat frightening.

The seven brick chambers stood side by side, their shape resembling a row of seven lowercase u's, while the side entrances opened at the center of each chamber. The fluorescent lamps hung inside, and my shadow naturally lay sprawled across the edge of the doorway.

Even though there were people both ahead of me and behind me, I still felt a strange chill seeping from the darkness at the entrance.

As I kept looking, the feeling in my heart grew increasingly odd. Then I found myself staring in that direction without meaning to. It was just a feeling, really; all I knew was that I was uneasy. Some of it was fear, and some of it was an indefinable eeriness.

Those opposing sensations arose without any reason at all, out of nowhere, and they made me deeply uncomfortable. It was almost as if something in the darkness over there was also watching me.

I drew in a deep breath and warned myself not to let my imagination run wild. Then I hurried forward with my head lowered, making for the fourth brick chamber.

By the time I was nearly past the third chamber, I heard Yang Lang still humming on the other side, though I had no idea what he was singing. Just as I was about to pass through that side doorway, something in that chamber suddenly caught my eye.

At once, my entire body went rigid.

Standing three or four steps in front of the side entrance, I was nailed to the spot. Since all the chambers were the same, and because of that strange feeling from before, I had been moving through here in a hurry.

I wasn’t sure what I had just seen in that glance, but it was definitely something absent from the other chambers.

At that moment, I was actually torn inside. Curiosity drove me to turn my head, while another voice in my mind kept warning me not to look.

In the end, curiosity won out. I swallowed hard and turned to look into the third brick chamber. With just one glance, I saw those things.

At that instant, it was as if I could no longer hear any sound at all. The entire space around the chamber seemed to contain only me. The glow of the fluorescent lamps felt strangely powerless in there, everything around me wrapped in murky darkness.

And before my eyes, on that white stone couch, three people were sitting upright and motionless... They sat straight as the people in the front row at a lecture, yet no matter how I looked, there was something indescribably eerie about the way they sat.

All three were facing me, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not see their faces. It was as though their faces were covered by some black, shadowy thing. The less I could see, the farther I stretched my neck, as if I would die before accepting that I had failed to make out their faces.

But when I finally understood what was wrong with those three people, my heart nearly leaped straight out of my mouth.

It was not because I could not see their faces, nor because the light was too dim. The reason I saw that black mass over their faces was that what I was looking at was not a face at all, but the backs of their heads.

At last I understood why their posture had seemed so strange. In an instant, I lost even the strength to shout. I went weak all over and collapsed onto the floor, staring at those three figures while edging backward with my hands, inch by inch.

I did not stop until I had crawled into the fourth chamber and could no longer see the stone couch. Even then, I was still sitting on the ground.

Yang Lang spotted me and rushed over at once.

"What’s wrong?" he said beside my ear.

I seemed to have lost the ability to speak. All I could do was shakily point toward the back of the side doorway. Yang Lang immediately ran over, but when he turned back, he looked at me in confusion.

"Mr. Yuan, what happened?"

As he spoke, Yang Lang forcibly helped me to my feet.