Endless Road of Corpse

I was so scared that my heart almost stopped. I frantically tried to shake it off, but the hand was so strong that it gripped me like a pair of pincers. I felt a sharp pain and my wrist bones were about to shatter.

Then I heard a stuttering woman's voice, and my heart skipped a beat and I stopped struggling. I followed the line of my hand and stood on tiptoe, and sure enough, MaggieQ was lying on her side, face down in the crevice between the coffins.

I quickly pulled her up with San Mao. MaggieQ had obviously been stuck inside the coffin for a long time, pale and weak, but at the moment we didn't have time to ask her why she was in such a sorry state. MaggieQ had also just sat up when she called for us to continue opening the inner coffin we were wearing.

We will continue to open the lid of the third layer, but there won't be a fourth layer inside. According to the funeral and interment ceremony back then, the Son of Heaven's Coffin was placed in the fourth layer and the Dukes' King was in the third layer. It seems that King Xu Yan still doesn't see himself as the Emperor's Son.

I thought that the coffin would eventually contain at least one skeleton, as well as all kinds of clothes that had rotted into mud, but the moment it opened, I could no longer sense the stench I had imagined. I scanned the coffin with my light and only saw something that looked like a box in the middle, while the rest were empty.

"Hurry up and enter!" MaggieQ shouted at us.

I turned and saw that the living dead were already on their way up the steps, the nearest just a few feet away. I grabbed the top edge of the coffin with both hands and climbed up.

"Catch!" San Mao carried Mao Tou and raised him high above my head. I took him in my hands and threw him into the coffin in the center. Then she grabbed the Taoist's hand and pulled him up, just as San Mao climbed up by himself, we all entered the coffin in the center. Then we grabbed the outermost lid and struggled to close it again.

Then I heard a crackling sound outside, and even though we were in the innermost layer, I felt a vibration in the coffin's walls, and I knew that the living dead had run into it.

We curled up inside the coffin, not daring to breathe. Luckily, this coffin was heavy enough, even though it was very noisy, it didn't shake at all. I exhaled and relaxed.

The coffin was very spacious. MaggieQ and I sat on one side while San Mao and the Daoist sat opposite of us, facing each other but not even touching their knees. As Mao Tou sat at one end, it was as if we were all eating at a Western style table.

"Will we suffocate to death?" Mao Tou suddenly said.

I turned to look at MaggieQ, who was next to me. She was only shaking her head slowly, and I felt it carefully, and it seemed to me that it was sealed, but not very stuffy. I reached out and probed around, and found that in the corner of the coffin, a cool breeze was blowing in, and when I shone my flashlight on it, I saw that there were several tiny vents that led directly to the outside. It occurred to me that the blowout lamps must have been caused by these vents. The difference in air pressure between the inside and the outside caused the air to flow and extinguish the candles.

I asked MaggieQ why she was stuck here alone. She was silent for a while before she gave a brief answer.

MaggieQ had come here to investigate the incident of the living dead. (She wouldn't give me a straight answer about what she was investigating, even if I asked her again.) She opened the coffin and went in, but didn't expect there to be another layer inside, just like what we had seen before, stuck between two layers of the coffin. Although she had leaned on one of her hands, which was exposed above the coffin, and closed it with a single hand (I have just seen her strength, so I believe that with a single hand, she could pull the heavy coffin lid away), she was unable to move. She took out her phone to call for help, but unexpectedly, she couldn't hold it properly. When the phone fell into the crack below, she could only touch it with the tip of her finger, but luckily she set up my fast dial button, and after fumbling for my number, because she didn't want the Zombie outside to hear her, she gently tapped the inner wall of the coffin, issuing a password for help.

MaggieQ answered as if this had happened to someone else, but we couldn't help but be moved. It had been almost two days and two nights since I'd received the call for help, and for so long, she'd been stuck in such a narrow gap that it was hard to imagine.

I sighed, took out a couple of Snickers from my bag, and handed them to MaggieQ along with my glass of water. She took the food, took a few sips of water, then ripped open the Snickers and began to nibble, not at all like someone who had been hungry for two days.

"Hey, I say, how are we going to get out?" MaggieQ was eating, Mao Tou asked.

At this time, the Zombie were still continuously pushing and patting the coffin. The creepy moans made one's hair stand on end. Hearing Mao Tou's words, my heart also became dejected. We have found MaggieQ, but we are also trapped in this danger zone, it seems that we have no way of escaping.

"Why was there no zombie when we came down?" the Taoist asked MaggieQ.

MaggieQ slowly swallowed the last mouthful of food in his mouth, took another sip of water, and handed the cup back to me. "They seem to have a time limit," he replied, "which will disappear every two hours or so, and then only a few more hours. When I first came in, I was afraid of making a sound that would cause them to surround the coffin, so I didn't dare to speak to you.

"Oh …" The Taoist nodded and said after a while, "It must have something to do with this clock array. It must have been when the water was retreating that something on the other side attracted these zombies, so every time it was time for them to go back into the pool and follow the flow of the water to the other side."

"But what's the use of getting out of this coffin?" Mao Tou then said: "There is no exit into the cave outside, why don't we just die of fatigue?"

The Daoist waved his hand and said, "Don't worry about this. If you want such a big cave, these steps, water pools, and even such a big coffin, they all need to be dug out and constructed. At the time of construction, it is impossible that there were no exits and we did not see them, probably because they were sealed after the construction was completed.

After hearing that, we finally had a plan. I put on my flashlight and said, "We still have two hours. We need to save energy and rest for a while."

Everyone nodded in agreement and switched off the flashlight. The coffin was suddenly pitch-black. We did not speak, and could clearly hear each other's breathing. After being silent for a while, San Mao suddenly opened his mouth and said:

"Why is the coffin empty?"

I thought of the casual glance I had taken just before I stepped inside, as if I had seen a square box inside. Where was it? I turned on the flashlight and took a look around, but the coffin was completely empty. Where did this box come from?!