Three Knocks

Carlos didn't know when Yu Xing discovered his return; he believed he had been quietly staying there without making a sound.

It's truly amazing that Yu Xing could still expose him without even turning her head.

Fortunately, Carlos wasn't one to dwell on such trivial details for long. He glanced disdainfully at the damp ground and asked, "What kind of help?"

"Keep an eye on the outside for me. I'm going to lie down in the coffin for a while." Yu Xing finally turned around and saw that the paper figure was not moving. She simply grabbed the paper figure and placed it at the end of the coffin.

Having finally managed to steal the house, he couldn't wait to go and see it.

"You're going in by yourself?" Carlos, somewhat surprised.

Although their Mutation Path often defy common sense, they still come in different types.

He himself is a rather cautious person. Even if he takes an unconventional approach, he will only do it when he is confident in his abilities. After all, he is a Magician, and he must ensure the success of his performance before he starts.

Yu Xing's approach is like the legendary suicidal exploration; such people always risk their lives, placing themselves in the most dangerous situations, seeking clues and the truth within traps.

Such Mutation Path are the fewest, because most of them fail.

Carlos was very interested. He didn't intend to say a word of dissuasion, but instead encouraged, "Sure, lie down in there and experience the pleasure of being a corpse. I'll guard it for you."

Yu Xing smiled enigmatically, "If I come out later and become ruthless, tearing you apart, remember to remind your team to avoid me."

Carlos scoffed, "Trying to scare me again? Useless friend, give it a rest."

The little paper doll's expression was stubborn, as if it had already seen through Yu Xing's mischievous nature.

Not seeing any hesitation or even a hint of panic from Carlos, Yu Xing sighed regretfully and obediently sat down in the coffin.

He had already checked when he called Carlos earlier. Just by looking at it, there was nothing special inside the coffin. In fact, it was quite clean, without a single strange insect or burial object. It was as smooth as new.

The coffin was huge and heavy. When Yu Xing climbed in, he felt a sense of suffocation, as if the thick coffin walls had isolated part of his body from the world. The cold, damp air enveloped his legs and froze his toes.

Yu Xing couldn't help but shiver. Carlos, standing on the coffin lid, asked curiously, "Is it cold inside?"

"Just like the morgue." Yu Xing glanced at him, gave him a cryptic smile, then moved and lay down.

The paper figure was too weak, Yu Xing didn't expect Carlos to be considerate enough to cover him with a blanket. He supported the coffin lid himself and slowly placed it over his head.

As the light dwindled, Yu Xing focused his attention on sensing the unique features inside the coffin. He felt increasingly cold until the coffin closed completely, at which point he suddenly heard a "thump."

It felt like a long awl piercing into her brain, then being struck by an external force; as Yu Xing lost her sight, her head also buzzed.

My head suddenly started to ache terribly.

At the same time, a thought arose in Yu Xing's mind. Time was blurred at this moment. Although only a few seconds had passed, it felt as if he had been sleeping here for many years. He suddenly felt an overwhelming loneliness.

This feeling was irrational yet overwhelming; strange emotions seeped into his mind from the coffin, like a silent erosion.

In the endless silence, only darkness accompanied him, forever.

Yu Xing moved his arm, but since he couldn't see anything, he didn't know if he had actually moved it or if it was all just an illusion.

"This coffin seems to be able to distort a person's memories and perceptions..." he murmured to himself, "Like me now, I've started to doubt myself, wondering if everything I've been experiencing lately is just a hallucination caused by my loneliness."

He vaguely remembered that he had just lain down in, but a voice in the darkness was shouting—no, you didn't just come in, what you realize is just an illusion, in fact, you have been lying in this coffin for many years!

You can't leave; you can only continue lying here, experiencing the endless fantasy and the despair of its shattering.

"This coffin is incredibly powerful." Yu Xing felt his consciousness and thinking ability being continuously stripped away by an invisible hand. He chuckled softly, having no doubt about his memories.

He didn't believe in divine warnings, only in himself. His personality was formed through a series of events; if he had merely been lying in his coffin fantasizing, he wouldn't be who he is today.

Yu Xing resisted the intense will emanating from the coffin for a while longer, thinking to himself, "Completely denying myself—is this the price of the resurrection technique researched by the demon daoist?"

Although the dead can be "resurrected" in their coffins, once resurrected, because their past has been negated, the person who comes back to life is, in a sense, "Another person." Can such a resurrection truly be considered a resurrection?

Aside from the changes in her heart, this chilling aura also affected Yu Xing's body.

He was so cold that his senses became dulled, and his whole body felt as if it didn't belong to him, especially his legs and lower body.

Ordinary people, or even many divination practitioners, probably wouldn't be able to keenly perceive the changes in Yu Xing inside the coffin. But Yu Xing sensed them. He was also a cheat-like person with a natural ability to reverse his powers, so he wasn't completely unfamiliar with the power inside the coffin.

His leg was cracked.

Yes, literally cracking. Yu Xing could vaguely sense that his leg was peeling away its skin little by little, revealing the writhing flesh inside.

Will he turn into a hunchbacked monster too?

Yu Xing somewhat surprised, but also very much looking forward to it.

He hasn't looked any different since he escaped from the Lingren's laboratory.

Not only does her face remain at the age of her early twenties, but her figure is also the same. She won't gain weight even if she eats a lot, and she won't lose weight even if she doesn't eat. If she gets injured, her body will recover to its original state in a very short time.

Apart from my hair, which grows naturally, everything else has remained unchanged over the years.

Yu Xing wondered, if this coffin could change his appearance, did it mean that the resurrection technique researched by the demon daoist was more advanced than the rules governing the "sacrifice" he had brought with him?

If not, then do the opposite.

He waited a while, and when he felt that the time was about right, he raised his hand and tentatively knocked on the coffin lid above.

Three tones, no more, no less.

A dull thud echoed in her ears. Yu Xing confirmed that her hand was still normal, and then she prepared to open the coffin.

He needs light to observe the current situation.

Outside, Carlos probably thought he was just playing around and returned three taps, though the taps were very faint. Yu Xing estimated that this was the best Carlos's paper hands could manage.

Yu Xing tried to push open the coffin lid as gently as possible, but a drop of water fell from above and landed right on the tip of his nose.

He paused for a moment, squinted, and adjusted his eyes to the brightness of the surrounding environment.

It was still dim, but it seemed different from the dimness of the ancestral hall; at least... it felt much more cramped here.

Wait... where am I?

The damp air from the cave hit you in the face, and the stalactites hanging overhead looked like sharp knives suspended in the sky, with water dripping from the sharp points of the stalactites.

He opened the sealed coffin, and the constant intrusion of his consciousness by suggestions and hallucinations ceased. Yu Xing's mind cleared for a moment, but he was even more surprised.

He lay down on the hunchbacked man's bed for a moment, then got up again, and...

We've arrived at a cave?

No, it's not a cave either. So where is this?

Yu Xing felt a little dazed, as if he were still half asleep. He sat up, took out a high-powered flashlight from his pants pocket, and casually shone it around.

This photo made him raise an eyebrow.

He's now stuck in a cliff face, stuck in the middle, in a very awkward position.

This is a large mountain wall, with sharp stone walls that often bulge inwards or outwards.

Yu Xing is still in the black coffin. The problem is that the black coffin is in a recessed part of the mountain wall. The stalactites on it have been there for who knows how long. To his left is a solid stone wall that can't even fit his arm, and to his right is a bottomless abyss!

Does this coffin also function as a portal? The hunchback was sleeping the whole time, and nothing happened.

Or perhaps, the hunchback's sleep is just an illusion, actually concealing the secret of entering this place from the black coffin?

Yu Xing guessed wildly and continued to push open the coffin lid. His legs were revealed, but to his disappointment, they hadn't grown as long as noodles. They were still the same legs he knew, and he couldn't even find the cracks he had felt earlier. His pants weren't even dirty.

Upon arriving at this unfamiliar place, the sense of being spied on, which had been absent for a while in the ancestral hall, suddenly reached its peak. This time, Yu Xing could even sense the direction from which the spying was coming from.

He slowly stood up from the coffin, bending very low to avoid being poked in the head by the stalactites above.

Yu Xing looked towards the other side of the abyss in this posture, shining a powerful flashlight in his hand.

There was also a row of stone walls there, pitted and uneven, and on the opposite stone wall there was a coffin, just a little above his height.

What's unusual is that the coffin was standing upright.

It was also a black coffin, but it was clearly much smaller than the Yu Xing was lying in. The coffin lid was missing somewhere, and the contents of the coffin were exposed to Yu Xing's eyes.

Unsurprisingly, there was a corpse in the coffin opposite.

The corpse's body was almost reduced to bones. Yu Xing also saw that its hands were neatly folded in front of its chest. Before the burial, its posture must have been properly corrected, so that it could die with the dignity of an aristocrat.

What confirmed Yu Xing's guess were the gemstones, gold chains, and other small objects of unknown purpose found between the bones of the corpse.

In other words, when Yu Xing lay down in the coffin in the ancestral hall and came out of the coffin again, he was already in a stone wall, where a corpse that would make countless tomb raiders drool was just brazenly appearing in front of him.

But Yu Xing estimated that even if tomb raiders came, they wouldn't dare to steal from this guy across the street.

There's only one reason—the steep cliffs and dangerous roads are all irrelevant. Just the bizarre state of the corpse—skeletal remains below the neck and flesh above—would deter tomb raiders.

The corpse's face was clean and white, almost fleshy, but the skeleton that had spread throughout the body was completely out of place with its face.

Its expression wasn't as blank as a dead person's; instead, it was quite lively. When it saw Yu Xing emerge from the coffin, its eyes darted around, looking particularly eerie.

Yu Xing stared at the corpse for several seconds, confirming that the feeling of being spied on had come from this corpse.

That wasn't all. He subtly shifted the flashlight beam, shining it haphazardly across the opposite stone wall.

One...

Two...

Seven bodies...

Twelve bodies...

As far as the eye could see, there were more than twenty coffins embedded in the stone wall, some lying flat and some standing upright, all with their lids missing, exposing the bodies directly.

The heads of the corpses were all intact, with vivid expressions, as if they were alive, while the bodies had rotted away and were reduced to bones.

"So it was you who were watching me." Yu Xing stroked his chin, muttering to himself, "Strange, I've never been to this place before. If this place has any connection to the surface of Heavy Yin Mountain..."

"Could it be that one is above ground and the other is underground?"

Yu Xing tried to calculate the location, but he didn't know how he got there and couldn't get a good result.

He grasped a rather sturdy stalactite and leaned forward to look up.

Below was an abyss, but the area above was clearly not as dramatic. A rough, uneven stone wall hung suspended in mid-air, marking the top of this space, which was quite close.

His hypothesis is not without possibility.

If this is the underground of Heavy Yin Mountain...

The reason why they could only sense someone spying but couldn't find them is because the spy was underground, and the tomb raiders naturally couldn't find them.

In other words... did he inexplicably end up in the grave?

Yu Xing thought for a moment about how to leave the stone wall. He had already seen that there was a path leading up to the pit on the other side.

--Between the vertical stone wall and the horizontal top of the wall, there is a space with a height of about two or three meters.

He didn't know if his own stone wall had the same path as the one on the other side, so he could only go and check first.

Although the arrival was unexpected, he was fortunate to be vigilant and had considered the possibility of monsters appearing inside the coffin before lying down, so he brought his Tang sword and backpack with him.

Now, he can explore the tomb directly without any problem, as he has all the necessary supplies.

What about Carlos?

Given the current situation, Yu Xing is basically certain that he did not arrive at the stone wall along with the coffin. Instead, he triggered something while lying in the black coffin in the ancestral hall, and was transported here in an unscientific way, entering another coffin that already existed on the stone wall during the process.

Carlos might still be waiting in the shrine for him to open the coffin lid and tell him what fun things were inside.

Yu Xing felt a pang of guilt when she thought of the paper figure.

It's one thing to enjoy playing pranks on people, but it's quite another to make someone wait for you. The former is a mischievous pleasure that he can control the consequences of, while the latter is a waste of other people's time and energy.

However, after feeling guilty for a few seconds, Yu Xing suddenly remembered something.

Now that he's already here, who was it that struck the coffin three times before it was opened?