The men in grey grew impatient, shoving me toward that patch of ground where the water hadn’t seeped in. Their boss fixed his cold, predatory stare on me and said:

  “Since you’re the one who can sniff out the bronze trail, you’re the one who’ll start digging. Move. If you hold up our fortune, your head will roll.”

  I wailed inside, but my hands still had to take the tools.

  It was a rusted iron shovel. I drove it into the ground.

  Clang!

  The tip hit the earth—and rang like metal on stone. The shock nearly snapped my wrist clean off.

  I hunched my shoulders and forced a grin. “So… the soil’s a bit tough.”

  “Quit yapping and dig!”

  I gritted my teeth and pushed down with all the strength in my body. The wooden shaft creaked—then snapped in half with a miserable crack. The iron head stayed wedged in the ground.

  I stared at the stump in my hand.

  Right. Brilliant. Failed before I even started—Kongming would’ve cried for lack of tools.

  Cursing, the grey-clad men tossed me a second tool—a pickaxe.

  I tried again. And within two swings—crack!—the head flew off the handle and nearly smashed into my forehead.

  Silence. Thick enough to choke on.

  Cold sweat drenched me. This was it. I was dead. One of the men already had his blade half-drawn, his eyes darkening by the second.

  Just then, out of the tail of my eye, I saw Lian.

  He looked indifferent, almost amused, as if none of this had anything to do with him.

  But when they threw me a Luoyang spade and I put my hands on it—his fingers twitched ever so slightly.

  No one else noticed. But I felt it.

  A faint tremor ran up the handle, like a pulse responding to mine.

  My grip tightened. And I drove the spade straight down.

  Crack!

  No jarring rebound this time. Instead, the hardened earth parted like soft bean curd.

  A chorus of gasps erupted around me. “It broke apart! It actually did!”

  As the layers of soil peeled away, a wave of cold, clammy air seeped out of the widening crack, snuffing out the warmth in my throat as if someone had pressed an icy hand against my windpipe.

  I shuddered.

  The entrance finally emerged—a slanted passageway dipping into darkness, yawning wide like the throat of some sleeping beast waiting to swallow whoever stepped too close.

  No one dared go down first.

  One of the grey-clad men quickly dug out a short length of hemp rope, lit a tinder tip, and tossed it in.

  Sss—

  A spark flared—then died with a soft pop, leaving behind a wisp of acrid white smoke.

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  I sucked in a sharp breath. “That—that wasn’t poison gas, was it?!”

  The man snorted. “If it were poison, you’d already be dead. That’s dead air—centuries of trapped rot choking the place.”

  They lit a small oil lamp next. The flame flickered wildly, shrinking, wavering as if something in the darkness was sucking the life out of it. Only after a long moment did it settle—dim, weak, but at least alive.

  They exchanged glances and murmured, “We can go.”

  I nearly swore aloud. Go? With a flame smaller than a bean sprout? What were we supposed to see—ghosts?

  Ignoring me completely, they brought out a long wooden pole wrapped in oil-soaked cloth, forcing the flame brighter. It pushed back the dark only by a few steps. The deeper shadows swallowed the light like a starving mouth.

  The wavering glow revealed moss-slick stone walls streaked with faint reddish-brown trails—dried blood, if my gut wasn’t lying. A strange smell wafted out: damp, decayed, with a faintly sweet metallic tang.

  My chest tightened. A knot of dread twisted in my stomach.

  Was this a place humans were meant to enter?

  But the grey-clad men, eyes gleaming like wolves catching scent of prey, were already eager to rush in.

  “A jackpot! A royal tomb!”

  “Move! Inside!”

  They shoved me to the front. My knees were shaking like a pair of drumsticks. I shot a desperate look back at Lian and Hua.

  Lian’s expression was cool, as if everything were unfolding exactly as he’d anticipated.

  Hua, fan still in hand, looked for all the world like he was sightseeing.

  I cursed them both inwardly.

  You two could stay calm atop a collapsing mountain. I’m just a nobody, all right?! If I die down there, I don’t even have a proper epitaph prepared!

  But the torches pressed at my back, heat prickling my spine.

  In the end, I clenched my teeth—and stepped into the gaping mouth of darkness.

  Cold slammed into me the moment I crossed the threshold. Water seeped down the stone walls, dripping along the moss.

  Drip-drop, drip-drop——

  The sound echoed down the passage like the beginnings of a nightmare.

  The path underfoot grew unnervingly narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Cracks snaked between the old stone tiles, the marks of centuries wearing them thin. Every step felt like treading across the backs of the dead.

  I muttered under my breath, “Great. Fantastic. This place screams afterlife on every level… System, for once, say something useful! Is this actually a place people walk into and come out alive?!”

  In my ear, the System replied with its usual glacial indifference:

  “Host, remain calm. The foulness grows stronger deeper in the passage. Please prepare yourself for potential death at any time.”

  I almost coughed up blood.

  How was that any different from saying nothing?!

  But I couldn’t stop now. The grey-clad men glared daggers from behind, and in front of me the darkness gaped like an endless pit.

  Step by step, pulled forward like a puppet on a string, I walked deeper into the unknown tomb.

  The torchlight wobbled, barely pushing back the dark, while shadows stretched wildly along the walls—so many elongated silhouettes it felt like an army of “me” creeping together.

  Suddenly, a draft drifted from further down the corridor.

  It wasn’t strong, but it tunneled straight down my spine, icy cold—like a damp hand brushing the nape of my neck.

  I shuddered hard and forced myself to call out:

  “…Who’s there?!”

  Silence.

  Only the soft “crackling” of the torches echoed back.

  No answer. As though the darkness swallowed my voice whole.

  I trembled, but my feet still slid forward on their own. The passage narrowed further; the walls seemed to press inward, tightening like the jaws of a trap.

  And just when I thought—maybe I’m imagining things—the torchlight flickered and lit up a corner ahead.

  My eyelid twitched violently.

  That wasn’t stone.

  And it wasn’t the wall.

  It was scattered, bone-white.

  When my eyes focused, I stopped breathing for half a beat.

  It was a pile of skeletons.

  Bleached bones strewn about in chaos: skulls split in half, grinning teeth bared in a grotesque smile; limbs twisted at odd angles; finger bones still clutched around rusted blades, frozen mid-struggle as though the dead had fought to their last breath—and failed.

  A cold wave crashed over me. I nearly screamed.

  Dead bodies. Actual dead bodies!

  Could these… could these be the tomb robbers who came in before us?!

  One of the grey-clad men snorted. “Quit shaking. These are ancient guardians who got themselves killed ages ago. They’re nothing but dust now.”

  He kicked aside a skeleton, and the bones clattered across the ground. But as they fell, something beneath shifted.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click—

  A series of deep, grinding sounds rumbled from under our feet, the stone floor trembling like buried gears were waking from a centuries-long sleep.

  My face went deathly pale.

  “Hell—there’s really a trap—”

  Before I even finished shouting, the ground beneath me dropped away.

  A stone panel gave out with a violent lurch, and I barely had time to scream before I plunged straight down.

  “Gong!”

  Lian’s voice tore through the air, sharp with a panic I had never heard from him.

  Too late.

  The walls blurred past me, the torchlight shrinking rapidly above, then vanishing entirely.

  I fell alone, swallowed by a pit of absolute darkness.

  Only the roar of wind in my ears and the thundering of my own heartbeat kept me company as I plummeted deeper and deeper into the void.