Hua watched me darting my eyes everywhere like a terrified black-feathered chicken.

  He couldn’t help chuckling, tapping his folding fan lightly against his palm.

  “At this rate, before any trap kills you, you’ll scare yourself to death first. Now that it’s just the three of us, things are finally quiet. Come on—let’s see what our dear tomb owner thought was worth burying.”

  My stomach tightened.

  I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “And the gray-robed guys? Don’t tell me… they really got trapped in the mechanisms?”

  I’d only said it casually, but the memory of my nightmare flashed through my mind—the way those figures were swallowed by the stone walls. Creepy as hell.

  Hua tapped his palm again with the fan, lips curved in a half-smile.

  “And how did you know? After you fell into that pit, we walked through one more gate and immediately hit a flipping-floor trap. Whole slab dropped—below it a bed of iron spikes. The ones who fell… vanished instantly.”

  He paused, tone going cold.

  “More than half died right there. The rest barely managed to stand up before another trap hit—Fire Pit Chamber. Methane from below, spark from above, boom—instant barbecue. Bones and all. They scattered like headless chickens. No way they could stop Lian and me. We slipped past everything and found you here.”

  Cold sweat slid down my back.

  I clutched my chest.

  “In that case—since you found me—let’s get out! Staying here is asking to be buried alive!”

  Hua snorted, snapping open his fan with a flick.

  “Get out? Don’t tell me you’re naive enough to think you can crawl back out the same hole you fell through?”

  His tone was pure condescension.

  Lian, walking beside us with his hands behind his back, added coldly,

  “We are not here to wander aimlessly. We came to retrieve an item. Until we have it, even if escape is possible, I will not leave.”

  I froze, then it clicked instantly.

  “So that’s it! When those gray-robed men forced you down here, you didn’t resist at all—because you had your own plan!”

  Lian’s eyes tilted slightly, the corner of his mouth lifting.

  He didn’t deny it.

  My heart thumped.

  So my guess had been right.

  “What exactly are you two looking for?” I pressed.

  Lian finally turned his head to look at me.

  His eyes were cold as steel, but there was the faintest trace of a smirk on his lips.

  “It’s none of your concern. Just remember this—what we seek bears deep significance to my sect. If I leave this place empty-handed, I might as well remain buried here.”

  He said it lightly, but something in his tone shut my mouth completely.

  Instinct told me I’d get nothing but a death glare if I kept asking.

  So the three of us continued forward in silence.

  This part of the tomb was quieter than anywhere I’d been.

  Too quiet.

  The stone walls held only faded niches where lamps once burned.

  The soot stains remained dark as ink.

  Moisture dripped from the ceiling through thin cracks, landing with soft, rhythmic clicks that felt unnervingly like someone counting beads in the dark.

  My chest tightened further.

  After all the puzzles, traps, and axe-swinging stone golems earlier, this sudden stillness was even more terrifying.

  Hua strolled along with his fan, as relaxed as a guy out for a morning walk.

  Lian walked straight-backed and steady, not a hint of hesitation.

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  And then there was me—

  Looking like someone who’d accidentally wandered into a chess match between two grandmasters and was being dragged along as a sacrificial pawn.

  At last, the stone passage widened into a massive dome.

  The main burial chamber.

  One step inside and I nearly forgot how to breathe.

  The walls were covered in relief carvings—

  but not of celestial immortals.

  These were monstrous figures: human heads with beast bodies, creatures with wings and fangs, grotesque shapes that looked like every mythology threw up at once.

  The paint had long peeled away, leaving behind dried, rusty red streaks that looked disturbingly like old blood.

  At the front of the chamber stood an offering platform.

  Broken bronze vessels littered the steps.

  A censer lay on its side, filled with hardened black ash—untouched since the last rites.

  Above us hung a massive stone disc set into the dome, inlaid with fragments of jade and obsidian arranged into sun, moon, and stars.

  Cracks ran across it like a web, letting in faint glimmers of light that made the entire chamber look like eternal twilight.

  And in the center—

  a coffin.

  Heavy.

  Black.

  Lacquered so dark it seemed to swallow light whole.

  The four corners of the coffin were inlaid with gold and jade, still smeared with a dark, dried stain—looked like cinnabar, but honestly… it also looked a little too much like blood.

  The entire coffin was carved with mythical beasts and divine birds, all baring claws and fangs as they pressed inward, as though determined to pin down whatever was struggling inside.

  A stone table stood before it. Scattered across the surface were the remains of a shattered jade cup, and an ancient sword lay broken clean in half, rust eating up most of it. Yet along the surviving edge, a faint cold gleam still lingered.

  The air was thick with a sweet metallic smell—blood, iron, something unpleasantly in-between—heavy enough to make each breath sit wrong in my chest.

  I swallowed and whispered, “So… this is where the tomb owner is buried?”

  Lian said nothing. He only stared at the coffin, gaze so deep it was unnerving—like there was something inside that he absolutely meant to take.

  Hua snapped his fan shut with a sharp crack, took two steps forward, and said with a cold little laugh,

  “We’ve reached the main chamber. The danger only gets worse from here. The two of us know that well enough, but you—”

  He glanced back at me, one brow raised in thinly veiled mockery.

  “Try not to fall behind.”

  My heart went hollow, but my pride refused to die quietly. I snorted back at him, though my feet absolutely refused to carry me any closer to that coffin.

  I just kept feeling—utterly unreasonably—that something inside was staring right at me through the lid.

  I was still staring at the coffin, my scalp prickling, when suddenly—

  “Click.”

  A sound so faint it was almost nothing.

  It drifted out from the pitch-black coffin, like a mechanism being nudged… or like wood drawing a breath.

  Every hair on my body stood up. My throat tightened. My feet backpedaled on their own.

  Hua’s fan halted midair before he gripped it hard, smile vanishing instantly as he went rigid like a drawn bowstring.

  Lian’s expression barely changed, but he quietly raised the hidden weapon from his sleeve, eyes locking onto the coffin with icy calm—as if he’d strike the very next second.

  My throat felt dry as sand. I forced down a gulp and squeaked,

  “It— it moved! Did you hear that?!”

  The coffin lay perfectly still.

  Not a twitch.

  The chamber was dead silent again.

  Only after a long moment—cold air seeping from the stone walls onto my face—did I finally start breathing normally again.

  Hua arched a brow, let out a soft huff, and said, half-smiling,

  “False alarm. Old coffin wood. It creaks.”

  Lian didn’t smile. He watched the coffin for a very long time before finally lowering his hand.

  “Stay alert,” he said quietly. “Places like this… don’t make noise without reason.”

  My courage leaked away like sand. I slipped behind the two of them and silently swore:

  If something really jumps out of that coffin, I am absolutely, definitely the first one running.

  Pressed between them, I watched them inch closer to that massive coffin. The metallic sweetness in the air only grew thicker; each breath tasted like someone had shoved a rusted nail straight up my nose.

  Hua walked in front, tapping his fan against his palm like he didn’t care at all, still laughing,

  “Look at you two. Honestly, if anyone dies of fright first, it’ll be you—scaring yourself to death.”

  Lian didn’t reply. His gaze remained fixed on the carvings beneath the coffin, and his pace was far slower than Hua’s—each step cautious and deliberate.

  Dragged along with them, my heart was pounding like a war drum. My mind was already imagining the coffin lid flying open, a corpse sitting up, maybe waving hello—and right then—

  Boom.

  A violent tremor blasted out from beneath the coffin. The stone bricks under our feet heaved upward as a hidden mechanism thundered open!

  “What was that?!” I shrieked, nearly shooting straight into the air.

  An instant later, a black shadow burst out from beneath the coffin, slicing through the air with a howl of wind, lunging straight toward us!