Murals on Two Doors

The stone carvings are incredibly lifelike; the slight differences are due to the material, making it impossible to achieve perfect uniformity.

On the stone carving, Yu Xing's face showed no trace of being frightened by these terrifying things, but rather a hint of disgust, as if she felt only helplessness and rejection towards their existence.

From this perspective alone, the statue's personality is quite similar to Yu Xing's.

But it was precisely because of this that Yu Xing felt something was amiss. He felt the environment was familiar on the ground because the forest above was very similar to the forest in Coffin Village, which gave him a premonition that there would also be an ancestral hall here.

Yu Xing had absolutely no recollection of this underground space; he was certain he had never been here before.

When was that sculpture created?

He reached out with some doubt, his pale fingers touching the surface of the sculpture, but he didn't pick up much dust.

His hands weren't too dirty when he was putting the stone carving back together, which means that the sculpture was not only recently broken, but also relatively new.

Not long ago, someone erected a sculpture of Yu Xing here?

Yu Xing found it unbelievable. Logically speaking, within the Heavy Yin Mountain area, the only people who knew him were Carlos, Alice, and Shi Jiu.

Putting aside other possible strategists, he couldn't think of anyone who would have the leisure to create this thing here, especially since it was so well-carved, clearly indicating someone with artistic talent.

Everyone who might know him should be on the surface of the earth right now.

... wrong.

There is a question.

Time.

Yu Xing recalled that after emerging from the black coffin, he lost all sense of time.

He didn't know how long he had been lying in the black coffin; perhaps it wasn't just a few minutes as he thought, but a day or two?

It's very likely that some special mechanism within the black coffin prevented him from feeling hungry, which is why he mistakenly thought the time was short.

In the past day or two, other teams have already found the entrance to the tomb. Have they been here?

You never know...

"..." A subtle suspicion arose between Yu Xing's brows. He suppressed all his thoughts and moved his hand to the statue's head.

The statue's head is completely intact, without any obstruction, just like the corpses in the coffins on the stone walls. It's unclear what special meaning the head holds in the tomb.

He pressed his hand against the stone sculpture head, which was almost as tall as him, and looked at the face that resembled his own, his fingers gradually tightening.

The cave was impassable earlier, and the only movable part at the entrance was a broken stone statue. Therefore, Yu Xing guessed that after piecing the statue back together, they could obtain a mechanism from it to open the real path.

If that mechanism truly exists, it can only be the head... The hint is already very clear.

With a flick of his finger, as if snapping his own neck, he turned the statue's head to one side.

Strangely enough, when we were assembling the stone statue, the head was also divided into several parts, but when we rotated it, there was no stiffness at all, as if it were a natural creation.

As the stone statue's head was "twisted off," the sound of machinery whirring came from inside the statue. Yu Xing coldly stared at his "severed neck" and took two steps back.

The ground shook as if an earthquake had struck. Yu Xing crouched down slightly to steady himself. When the shaking finally stopped, he looked around and saw what had changed.

The stone wall is still a stone wall, and the cave is still a cave; at first glance, they seem to be no different.

But a faint light could be seen coming from inside the cave.

Yu Xing looked up, leaving the uncomfortable stone statue behind, and went back into the cave.

This time, the cave seemed to have been expanded, with the surrounding stone walls receding by nearly half a meter and the stalactites raised, allowing him to walk in upright.

The light kept changing, and one small point of light flew out from the depths of the cave and landed on Yu Xing's shoulder.

It was a firefly emitting a green glow.

Yu Xing quickened his pace and entered. The layout inside had been completely transformed. Stone statues stood on both sides of the road, and fireflies gathered together, bringing a clear light.

The cave was illuminated by a soft glow, the stone walls cast shadows, water droplets clung to the stalactites, and the shallow water at our feet reflected this rare and bizarre spectacle, making it a truly beautiful sight.

He turned off his flashlight and examined the statues for a while.

"Interesting." Many people were reflected in Yu Xing's pupils.

These statues depict many faces he recognized.

Carlos, Alice, Shi Jiu all have statues here. In addition, Yu Xing also unexpectedly saw statues of Ling Heng and Ghost Faith.

This was unexpected. It turns out that Ling Heng and Ghost Faith also participated in this deduction. What a coincidence!

But wasn't Ghost Faith already dead? Did Ling Heng really find a way to resurrect her? Or... is the resurrection of the tomb palace the reason that attracted these two people?

Yu Xing discovered an unexpected "familiar face" and became somewhat curious. At the same time, he also noticed that all the statues in the cave were similar to his statue at the cave entrance, all entwined with bone vines and enveloped by insects and birds.

On these people's faces, some were terrified, some were calm, and some were smiling. Yu Xing specifically looked at Carlos's statue, where he saw that Carlos's statue was holding a paper figure in its hand, and many others were lying at its feet, all shrouded in different ways of death.

The paper figures suffered all sorts of pain for Carlos, innocent and pitiful.

Even though many paper figures had been used up, the Carlos statue still wore a smile, just like his unpredictable and eccentric personality.

In a corner, Yu Xing found a sentence carved on the wall that had been there for who knows how long and was now somewhat blurred.

"If there are stones in its mouth, only by cutting off its head can it survive; if it turns wrong even once, it will be devoured by a hundred insects and die."

In other words, there are broken stone carvings at the cave entrance, and the mechanism requires turning one's head to find a way out. If you turn the wrong way even once, many dead tree worm-like insects will devour the person who tries to do it.

Yu Xing, who hadn't worried at all about making a wrong Yu Xing, "..."

He brushed the dust off the words and thought the handwriting was actually quite nice.

"If the opening is a switch, then what do these statues here mean?" Yu Xing stood in front of the statue and tried to twist the neck of the Carlos statue.

It won't turn.

It seems that only the one at the cave entrance can serve as a mechanism.

Yu Xing didn't know where Carlos and the others were now; perhaps they had already entered the tomb.

He pursed his lips and walked deeper into the area.

He had just reached this point when he was turned back by the narrow passageway that required him to crawl, but now that the path is fully open, he can continue to go further in.

The statues were arranged in neat rows. Yu Xing memorized everyone's faces and then left the statue hall.

Further in, there was another narrow path, with a few stray fireflies scattered around. Yu Xing followed the path and realized that she was going downhill.

The road slopes downwards very gently; without exceptional sensory abilities, it would be difficult to detect.

As the rock layer gradually became shallower, Yu Xing walked for more than ten minutes until the ground beneath his feet turned into mud. He tapped and knocked along the cave walls on both sides, searching for any possible interlayers.

The soil on the ground was soaked with water and turned into a thin mud, making it sticky underfoot and difficult for Yu Xing to walk.

He heard faint whispers carried on the wind, a continuous stream of murmurs coming from deeper within the cave. No, at this point, it could no longer be called a cave; it was more like a tunnel.

When he finally stopped, a stone door blocked his way.

The stone gate is about two meters high, and the gate is carved with stories like murals. In the very center of the gate is a hideous ghost face. The ghost face's eyes are cold and eerie, and its huge mouth is wide open, like a hungry demon.

Yu Xing knew nothing about the history of this supposedly fictional world, but he was a proper painter and had some knowledge of artifacts like murals.

He can easily understand the content of the murals.

On the left half of the door, there is a painting depicting the story of a withered tree.

Long ago, a young woman in a Daoist robe in the mural obtained a piece of dead wood. She carefully protected it, but everyone around her wanted to take it.

Gradually, the people around them changed from normal to greedy and wicked; their bodies became hunched, their heads flattened, and their fingers turned into claws.

These people were driven to become vengeful ghosts by their own obsessions.

They approached the woman and demanded she hand over the piece of wood. When she refused, these beings, who could not be called human, tore her to pieces and threw her off a cliff outside the tribe.

The piece of wood ultimately didn't end up in their hands. A boy who loved the woman stole it after learning of her fate and threw it off the cliff as a tribute to her.

To everyone's surprise, the woman came back to life at the bottom of the cliff.

She not only pieced together her own body, but also regained her senses and found a good spot to bury the piece of dead wood that had landed on her.

Originally, the dead tree remained unchanged. The woman applied glue to the small tree in vain, making daily wishes at the bottom of the cliff that no one outside would ever find her or the small tree again.

One day, a woman accidentally fell off a cliff, and her blood flowed into the ground beneath the dead tree. The tree finally began to take root and grow, and the dead tree miraculously came back to life. The woman was overjoyed, knowing that her resurrection was due to the tree that saved her, and she regarded the tree as a deity.

From then on, people would occasionally jump off the cliff, and their blood became the best nourishment for the sapling. Over the years, the withered tree grew into a towering giant.

The story ends here, seemingly unremarkable, not even as thrilling as a ghost story. But if you think about it carefully, you'll realize just how much blood it takes for a sapling to grow into a towering tree.

The woman who was resurrected is likely the one later known as the demon daoist. She has been using the bodies of fallen people as fertilizer to nourish her sapling. Is she truly mentally sound?

These murals were mostly carved by the demon daoist himself or by workers he demon daoist. It's hard to tell how much of it is real and how much is fake. Of course, his own people would do their best to beautify the demon daoist. Perhaps those so-called "people who fell off the cliff" were actually people who were captured by the demon daoist.

Yu Xing thought that since the demon daoist was forced to death in her previous life and died a tragic death, she must have become a fierce ghost after death. If she were to be resurrected, the possibility that she would resent humans and become ferocious would be much greater than the possibility that she would stay obediently at the bottom of the cliff and plant trees.

Yu Xing then looked to the right, where the story of the coffin was being told.

He had just looked over when he heard a soft laugh behind him. The laugh was ethereal; he heard it clearly, but he couldn't discern the timbre, as if the reactor in his brain had malfunctioned and he couldn't react correctly.

But Yu Xing knew who the laughter came from.

It could only be the person who had been following him and spying on him from behind.

And so it happened again. The other person was only a body length away from him, but every time he tried to pull them out, they would vanish instantly, like smoke and clouds.

Yu Xing's eyes flashed, but she stopped reacting and focused solely on the mural.

The story about the coffin is a sequel to the story of the dead tree.

Seasons changed, and after countless years, the tree grew tall.

The demon daoist was still so young, unchanged, yet she sensed a crisis. She told her followers who had come to admire her that she had to go to the underworld to escape divine punishment.

She cut down the big tree and made a coffin from its wood. The coffin was so heavy that no one could move it, and resentment and blood often flowed from it. The demon daoist said that this was her greatest reliance.

Surrounding this immovable coffin, the demon daoist and his followers built an underground tomb, which is the origin of the demon daoist's tomb.

The demon daoist lay down in the coffin and fell into a deep sleep.

The coffin lid was nailed with eighty-one nails, each painted with various fierce ghosts and evil spirits. The demon daoist fell asleep and never woke up again. Her followers died one by one, and this legend disappeared into the long river of history.

This is the story behind the door on the right.

Yu Xing stared intently at the pattern on the coffin. The image of the black coffin in the ancestral hall flashed through his mind; the two were so similar, yet different.

The coffins depicted in the murals are more complex and formal; just by looking at them, one can feel a chill, indicating that their power is far greater than that of the black coffins in the ancestral hall.

That's so strange.

He stroked the ghost face inlaid on the door, his doubts growing stronger. "In tombs, murals are generally used for recording. Even if they are autobiographical and inevitably biased, their original purpose is still to record."

"But... who made the record about the coffin on the right?"

As has been stated above, the demon daoist voluntarily lay down in the coffin while fully conscious. At that time, the tomb palace had already been built, and the things that had already been built should include this door.

In other words, this door existed before the demon daoist was buried, so how could it have foreshadowed the demon daoist's continued slumber, or even the deaths of his followers one by one?

After they all died, who carved the murals?

Yu Xing felt that the right half was not a record, but a prophecy.

Or, it could be something drawn by someone else later.

Yu Xing looked down at his hands. In fact, this painting, like the sculpture from before, demonstrated exceptional artistic skill. Upon closer inspection, both appeared remarkably lifelike. Moreover, its brushwork and sculpting style... were very similar to Yu Xing's.

He was quite certain that the person who did these things must be related to him, or at least had spent a long time with him to understand his painting and sculpting habits.