Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 59

After an hour of continuous work, Tang Yu was thoroughly exhausted. Even with a blade as sharp as Startling Dragon, the earth had to be dug out one scoop at a time. The cramped space severely restricted her movements, and the dull ache in her back grew more intense until every motion tugged at her injured ribs.

Tang Yu crawled out of the crevice and slumped against the wall, her legs giving out beneath her.

She was done. She wasn’t going to do any more.

She raised a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow, panting heavily. The cave had poor ventilation; staying inside for so long made it stuffy and hot. Her black tank top, which had never fully dried, was now soaked through again. She desperately needed to stay put and slowly regain her strength.

The best way to recover stamina was to eat, but their supplies were pitifully scarce. Tang Yu’s tool bag held only a climbing pick, a camping lantern, and her Startling Dragon. Song Lengzhu was no better off; her tool bag contained two empty magazines, two grenades, the viper fang, and the snakeskin. The only other things she had were her customary firearm and golden dagger.

There was no water or food.

Song Lengzhu took a step forward, stopping in front of Tang Yu. She pointed to the hammer-like climbing pick and said, “Let me take over. I’ll have to borrow your pick, though.”

Song Lengzhu used the word “borrow,” which implied she intended to return it.

After a long hesitation, Tang Yu decided to try trusting her and held out the pick.

Song Lengzhu took it without another word, bent down, and prepared to squeeze into the narrow passage.

Both women were already stained with dust and bl00d, looking far from neat and tidy. This was especially true for Song Lengzhu. Her hair tie was gone, and her semi-dry hair hung loosely around her shoulders, a stark contrast to the usual clean-cut, formidable Captain Song.

Long hair would get in the way while working. After a moment’s thought, Tang Yu called out to Song Lengzhu, then took off her own hair tie and offered it to her.

Song Lengzhu was visibly stunned and didn’t immediately reach out to take it.

“My hair is shorter. You can use it for now.” Tang Yu ran her fingers through her hair as if combing it, then gestured to its length. Her dark, thick hair fell just past her shoulder blades, much shorter than Song Lengzhu’s.

Song Lengzhu took the hair tie and casually gathered her brown hair into a ponytail. “This is borrowed, too,” she said.

She bent over and squeezed into the hole Tang Yu had carved out. Soon, the rhythmic clanging of metal against rock echoed from within.

While Song Lengzhu worked, Tang Yu contacted Jin Ye to update her teammate on her situation. Jin Ye gave a brief report of her own, her voice sounding muffled, hoarse, and rushed.

“To make a long story short, we’ve found the tomb entrance and are trying to figure out how to get in. Li Chengjian injured his arm. Tang Yu, be careful. We’ve run into a lot of things on our way here that are beyond comprehension.”

Jin Ye said a lot in one breath but didn’t specify what had happened. Tang Yu couldn’t imagine it, but tombs were always eerie. Jin Ye’s warning made Tang Yu silently raise her guard.

“Have you found Xiao Li?”

“No…” Jin Ye’s voice was tinged with disappointment. “We’re going to head into the tomb to check. We saw blast marks on the tomb entrance, but it’s embedded so seamlessly into the rock wall that it didn’t break open. We don’t know how Chen Deming got inside.”

“What about the Old Blind Man?” Tang Yu suddenly thought of the corpse centipedes and wondered if the Old Blind Man could control insects.

“He refuses to enter the tomb and is furious right now… None of us expected that using the wolf to lead the way would require a bl00d sacrifice, or that the mechanism couldn’t be reversed once activated. He lost one of his wolves, so he’s extremely agitated and almost came to blows with us.”

Tang Yu was silent for a moment. “Alright. Try to calm the Old Blind Man down, and don’t let him go back and give Fu Mengqing and her sister any trouble. You all be careful, too. Let’s regroup as soon as we’re inside the tomb.”

“Okay,” Jin Ye replied. From the sounds in the background, it was clear she was also engaged in physical labor.

Tang Yu refocused her attention, listening toward the passage. The sounds of metal striking rock were frequent and intense. Song Lengzhu’s stamina was much higher than hers, giving her an advantage even in manual labor.

Over the next five hours, the two of them took turns several times before they finally managed to chip a small hole through the sealed, viscous mortar. As Tang Yu gradually widened the opening, a musty, stale air that had been trapped for centuries rushed out to meet them.

The tomb was sealed remarkably well. The air inside was dry but also exceptionally stuffy and hot. When Tang Yu poked her head through the opening, she felt as if her brain had been instantly encased in a glass dome, dulling all her senses.

Lack of oxygen.

Tang Yu pulled back from the passage, returning to the cave they were in before.

“How is it?” Song Lengzhu asked.

Tang Yu pinched her nose and made a choking gesture.

“We’ll have to wait a while before going in,” Song Lengzhu replied. They didn’t have a candle to test the tomb’s oxygen levels, so the safest method was to wait.

By now, nearly half a day had passed since their separation from the team. It was likely nighttime outside, but within the stone walls, day and night were indistinguishable. The system panel didn’t display the time, so their sense of its passage was vague.

When they felt enough time had passed to enter the tomb, Song Lengzhu took the lead and squeezed through the opening first.

The mortar-poured passage was about ten meters long and connected to another rectangular chamber, this one as large as half a basketball court. Unlike the previous cave, this place was unmistakably part of the tomb. Shards of porcelain littered the ground, and there were even intact pottery jars and bowls in the corners.

The moment Tang Yu emerged from the passage, a quest notification was triggered. She opened her panel to see a prompt that was as vague as ever, condensed into two words: “Explore Tomb.”

Tang Yu guessed the completion criteria for this quest were likely flexible. Exploring a single chamber would count, as would a deep dive through the entire tomb complex. The system would probably offer different rewards based on the extent of their exploration.

Having completed two quests before, Tang Yu was gradually getting a feel for the system’s quirks. If they encountered anything novel, it would likely trigger new sub-quests or special quests.

The air in the tomb chamber had circulated slightly, but the smell was still foul. The tomb was constructed entirely of stone, with no dirt on the floor. Aside from an accumulation of dust that had fallen from the ceiling over a long period, the ground was surprisingly clean.

The floor and surrounding walls were one with the mountain rock. This tomb hadn’t been constructed but was carved directly out of the mountain itself.

Neither of them could fathom the immense manpower and resources such an undertaking would have required.

Tang Yu clipped the camping lantern to her belt and walked a lap around the chamber. Its contents were completely different from what she had imagined. To the left were numerous pottery jars, porcelain bowls, chopsticks, and spoons, all exquisitely crafted with intricate patterns. Some bowls still contained blackened, unrecognizable lumps of food. In total, there were at least a hundred such items.

On the west side were large bronze and iron cooking vessels: a bronze mou, a bronze fu-zeng steamer, and a chain-handled stove. There was even a long utensil that resembled a roasting fork. These bronze artifacts were perfectly preserved, their designs extravagant. Upon closer inspection, even the simplest bronze spoon was adorned with intricate, coiling dragon patterns.

The vessels weren’t neatly displayed but were propped up over a pile of ash, one of them still holding a half-full pot of thick soup with blackened-green turtle feet floating on top.

It looked as if someone had just finished a meal and hadn’t had time to clean up.

Seeing such a vividly recreated scene of daily life inside a tomb wasn’t comforting; it was just eerie. It was as if the tomb’s occupant had been living here all along and might pop out at any moment to greet them and invite them for a drink.

Or attack them.

Tang Yu backed away from the bronze vessels filled with food and made a rectangular shape with her hands for Song Lengzhu. “Where’s the coffin?” Why is it all food? Is this what a tomb is supposed to look like?

“It looks like a rear storage chamber. There’s no coffin,” Song Lengzhu said.

The tombs of royalty weren’t simple burials. Their palaces were often recreated one-for-one, or even on a grander scale, as underground mausoleums with numerous, complex chambers filled with all manner of things. Song Lengzhu judged that they were likely in a peripheral, rear section of the main tomb.

“But there are sacrificial burials,” Song Lengzhu said. Behind the pile of bronze artifacts, she had spotted a row of five neatly arranged corpses.

Tang Yu went over for a look and was startled. The bodies were perfectly preserved. Though their skin was dry and blackened, there were no signs of decay. Even their eyelashes were clearly visible, making it seem as if they could reanimate at any moment.

Tang Yu had never seen clothing like theirs before. The intricate robes were of a peculiar design—not opulent, but clearly fastidious. The bodies were laid directly on the ground without coffins, suggesting they were of low status, likely servants and maids buried with their master.

As the two of them were staring at the corpses, the outermost female body suddenly changed. The hand resting at its side abruptly turned palm-up.

The hairs on Tang Yu’s arms stood on end. She hadn’t expected to run into ghosts the moment she entered the tomb. Both of them quickly backed away from the bodies, drawing their weapons.

But the female corpse remained still. Under the beam of the light, its skin began to decay and wither. The once-intact face started to peel away in an instant, the skin cracking and flaking off in layers like old wallpaper. Even its eyelids disintegrated, leaving only two round, staring eyeballs.

Tang Yu was so frightened she held her breath. At that exact moment, Zhou Zhou’s voice suddenly crackled through the camp channel.

“Jin Ye, don’t move! The corpse is reanimating!” Her warning was for Jin Ye, but it made Tang Yu’s heart skip a beat.

Leave it to my good sister, she thought, for us to run into reanimating corpses at the same time.

Song Lengzhu was far calmer than Tang Yu. Seeing that the female corpse showed no signs of rising, she took a step forward to examine its desiccated face.

Before Tang Yu could pull her back, the other sacrificial bodies began to change one after another. In an instant, the five eerily lifelike corpses transformed into hideous, rotting cadavers.

Five bodies, ten eyes, all staring blankly. Tang Yu keenly sensed that their eyeballs were moving slightly.

Holy crap. Tang Yu scrambled forward, grabbed the sleeve of Song Lengzhu’s jacket, and let out a small whimper.

She was genuinely terrified, not faking it.

Song Lengzhu paused, glancing back at Tang Yu. “It should be… fine,” she said. “Perhaps the introduction of air and light caused them to oxidize rapidly.”

Tang Yu didn’t believe her. She pointed at the corpses’ eyes; their positions had clearly shifted.

“Displacement caused by decay,” Song Lengzhu answered succinctly.

Her tone was so certain that Tang Yu’s heart settled back into her chest.

For a moment, the light of science illuminated the tomb.

And just as Song Lengzhu had said, the eyeballs quickly began to decay from the bottom up, collapsing inside the skulls like melting scoops of ice cream. After that, there were no further signs of reanimation.

Tang Yu released her grip on Song Lengzhu’s jacket and took two steps back, still skeptical. Jin Ye’s warning echoed in her mind, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread.

Regardless, it was best to be cautious.

When the pull on her arm vanished, Song Lengzhu found herself momentarily stunned, a rare occurrence for her. She lowered her gaze, a flicker of amusement in her eyes. A zombie who was afraid of other zombies—that was certainly a first.

After confirming that the bodies were merely decaying, Song Lengzhu began searching for the passage to the main chamber. At the far end of the storage room stood a stone door, wide enough for two people, that was currently sealed. Piled on either side of it were heaps of some unknown type of seed, all of them blackened and rotten.

The stone door was carved. Tang Yu went over to look and saw a depiction of dozens of farmers toiling in the fields, harvesting grain. The carvings were deep, the lines executed with a controlled grace that spoke of the artisan’s profound skill. Though uncolored, the image clearly conveyed a scene of peace and prosperity.

At the very top of the scene were several rows of tiny, fly-head-sized characters. Tang Yu studied them for a long time but couldn’t decipher the script, and the game offered no hints.

Song Lengzhu said, “If this is a royal tomb, it’s likely meant to glorify the monarch’s rule—a golden age where the people lived in peace and enjoyed bountiful harvests.”

The artifacts in this rear chamber were mostly related to grain and food, so Song Lengzhu’s guess was quite reasonable. Tang Yu nodded in agreement as she listened.

The stone door had no handles, and they had no idea how to open it. They decided to try pushing it to one side with their combined strength, but the door didn’t budge an inch.

After fiddling with it for a long time, they discovered that the stone door pivoted on a central axis, like a revolving door. Pushing on one side created an opening just wide enough for one person to pass through.

Illuminated by their light, the passage beyond stretched forward into the quiet, profound darkness, its end out of sight.

They began to enter the passage from either side of the pivoted door. As Tang Yu lifted her foot, she caught a glimpse of the carving on the door out of the corner of her eye and realized it was distinctly different from the one she had just seen.

Tang Yu gasped and quickly called out to Song Lengzhu, who was heading into the passage.

This carving had been on the other side of the door, which should have depicted the same scene.

The farmers were the same, and the grain was the same, but in this carving, all the farmers’ heads had been replaced with the heads of snakes.

In the upper-right corner, a new element had been added: a group of monsters with human bodies and snake heads, riding on clouds and mist. They looked like deities, yet not quite celestial, and they surrounded a central jade palanquin. Seated upon it was a man in magnificent robes and a jade crown—the only human figure in the entire carving.

The rows of tiny characters had also changed, transformed into a completely different script that resembled writhing earthworms or serpentine patterns.

The two of them stood frozen before the stone door, an indescribable horror creeping into their hearts.

Despite being in the stuffy, airless tomb, the back of Tang Yu’s neck suddenly felt icy cold.

She instinctively glanced toward the corpses she had feared so much, only to find that they were gone.