Though the world corresponding to the "tomb" possessed intensely lethal air,
it still maintained a normal day-night cycle. Its days were slightly longer than those on Earth, roughly thirty hours.
Han Dong and the doctor awoke at night, which was also when the villagers were active.
Once daylight arrived, not a single villager could be seen in the village. They all slept in their homes... Families in better circumstances even prepared coffins capable of nurturing corpse miasma and used them as beds.
Meanwhile,
when daylight came, Han Dong also felt weak and limp, clearly an effect brought about by this corpse body.
Besides,
their nightlong search had yielded some discoveries, and they had gained a certain understanding of the village.
Deep within the Huang Family Mansion, which had been abandoned for two hundred years, Han Dong and the doctor discovered a highly suspicious basement.
The basement contained a precision machine powered by Steam Power, resembling a combination of a "grinder" and a "distiller."
Inside the machine, they found a tiny amount of residual refined product—corpse oil.
Based on the basement's style and the hanging ropes on either side, they could roughly infer that this was the Huang family's secret—Corpse Refining.
"Some organization provided this village with steam machinery, along with the technique for refining corpse oil... The reason we were able to revive, or rather, the reason these villagers were able to revive, should be closely related to this technology.
"Someone deliberately transformed a village of living people into a village of corpses, offering these villagers terms or demands they could not refuse.
"Perhaps the Dragon Boat due to arrive is connected to the mysterious organization carrying steam and corpse transformation technology."
While Han Dong analyzed the situation, the doctor was already examining the device's structure and discovered an extraordinarily