Surviving the Game as a Zombie - Chapter 63

An altar is a place for worshipping gods and praying for blessings. Why would one be set up in this catacomb, placed in the same area as a coffin?

Tang Yu’s gaze fell upon the white bones. These skeletons were quite old, but not all had completely decomposed. In a corner illuminated by the light, some haphazardly discarded remains still had remnants of clothing and shoes. Judging by the style, they were not much different from the attire of the game’s NPCs; they were clearly modern people.

Upon closer inspection, the degree of decay varied among the bones. It seemed these sacrificial victims were not all buried at the same time the tomb was constructed. Instead, it was as if people were thrown in here periodically.

But the tomb chamber clearly hadn’t been ventilated for a long time, and no one had entered it. Could it be that this so-called “altar” in the catacomb had a separate exit?

Tang Yu turned and carefully surveyed her surroundings. The natural cavern was quite large, and the light couldn’t reach its edges. As far as she could see, there was no sign of an exit.

She didn’t dare step off the bluestone slabs. The uneven, primitive rocks were a deep brown, reflecting a strange luster under the light that looked somewhat ominous.

Song Lengzhu was staring at the altar high above. She estimated the distance; the pit of bones was about three meters across. With a full-force leap, she could grab the edge of the passage. The bones in the pit were piled high, so wading directly through was also an option, but there was no telling what else lay beneath. It was best to avoid stepping on them if possible.

Tang Yu glanced at Song Lengzhu, who was already preparing for a running jump.

However, Song Lengzhu’s leg injury was severe. When she crossed the bone pit, she wasn’t as light and agile as she had imagined. Her right leg inevitably landed in the pile of white bones.

The bones were loose and chaotically arranged. Under the force of her step, they collapsed with a loud clatter. The sound of joints knocking together was infinitely amplified by the cavern, even creating an echo.

As her foot sank into the gaps between the bones, Song Lengzhu managed to grab the stone platform at the edge of the pit. She pulled with all her might, tightened her core, and climbed out of the bone pit.

Before she could even steady herself, the eight iron chains suddenly moved without any wind. The chains trembled slightly, and then, a strange, muffled groan suddenly echoed from within the bone pit.

It was distinctly a human voice.

Could it be that these bones had come back to life?

Tang Yu’s muscles tensed instantly. She gripped her knife and looked toward the source of the sound. The abrupt noise came from the left side of the altar. Due to the angle, the camping lantern could only illuminate a dim pile of bones.

Under the light, that pile of white bones churned continuously, as if something was about to emerge from beneath.

In just two seconds, a bloody human hand shot out from the pile of bones, its arm still covered in flesh and bl00d.

Tang Yu’s pupils dilated abruptly, her mind buzzing. What was this? A bl00d corpse?

The moment the bloody hand appeared, Song Lengzhu, on the other side of the bone pit, fired two shots. The bullets accurately pierced the palm, eliciting a high-pitched, ear-piercing scream. A stream of strange, gurgling language then erupted from beneath the bones, like the sound of a broken bellows being pulled.

Song Lengzhu stared intently at the bloody hand and took a moment to ask Tang Yu, “One of your companions?”

Tang Yu shook her head, knife in hand. Although the sound was very similar to the gurgling of zombies, she couldn’t understand what it was saying.

The bloody hand paused for a moment in pain, but soon, the pile of bones began to stir again. This time, what emerged was a head that could no longer be called human.

It was as if the head had been flayed alive. It was a bloody, mangled mess, with only two bl00d-stained eyeballs and a constantly opening and closing mouth. “It” reached a hand toward Tang Yu, muttering something, its body still buried in the pile of bones, staining the surrounding skeletons crimson.

An immense sense of unease gripped Tang Yu and Song Lengzhu’s stomachs. As they watched, the flesh on the bl00d-man’s face began to rapidly melt, dripping down like liquid. “It” didn’t attack, but instead roared at them in an extremely agonized manner.

Tang Yu heard it clearly. “It” was pleading, “Save me… save me…”

It wasn’t some bl00d corpse, nor was it a zombie. “It” was speaking a human language.

Song Lengzhu heard it clearly too. She lowered the muzzle of her gun toward the ground and stopped firing. Unexpectedly, the bl00d-man began to weep at this gesture. “Its” throat was already destroyed, making it impossible to distinguish its gender, and it pleaded with Song Lengzhu like a wailing ghost.

“Save me… no, kill me… kill…” Toward the end, bl00d flowed into its vocal cords, and its words became unintelligible.

Both of them were stunned. The bl00d-man was begging for death. “It” was still alive, enduring the agony of being flayed and having its flesh fall off. The emotion conveyed by the bl00d-man was so intense that Tang Yu felt her own skin begin to ache, forcing her to look away.

Song Lengzhu’s gaze darkened. She acted swiftly, raising her hand and firing two shots into the bl00d-man’s head, ending its life.

The bl00d-man stopped moving. Its face was frozen in a smile of release as it hung over the pile of white bones. On its exposed shoulder, strips of cloth from its clothes were still stuck.

Song Lengzhu maintained her posture for a long time before speaking to Tang Yu. “He was a player. I received a system notification.”

Tang Yu gasped, wondering what kind of psychological trauma one would suffer after enduring such torment.

Tang Yu deactivated her precognition ability and looked at the bl00d-man’s corpse with lingering fear. It was a bit far, so she had to enhance her vision to see the fragments of clothing clearly. It was a dark green camouflage uniform.

It was identical to the attire of the corpse she had found in the stream earlier. This was one of Chen Deming’s men.

Had Chen Deming already reached the altar? Tang Yu scanned her surroundings warily, but apart from the bl00d-man’s corpse, no one else appeared.

The bl00d-man had crawled out from under the skeletons. There had to be something beneath this pit of bones.

At that moment, the eight iron chains on the altar swayed again. Fearing further trouble, Tang Yu quickly crossed the bone pit and reached the stone platform where Song Lengzhu stood.

They stood side by side, looking toward the center of the altar.

The altar was concave, with an octagonal stone slab set in its center. It was surrounded by eight steps, on which were placed many stones of various sizes tied with gold thread, resembling a gladiatorial arena. Eight iron chains passed through the last step of the altar and extended downward.

Looking at the sunken stone slab, it was large enough to accommodate ten people. Apart from some carved marks, the slab was empty. Tang Yu examined the carvings closely. They were thin lines of varying lengths, divided into eight sections, encircling the slab. In the very center were two small, carved snakes, head to tail, forming the eye of the design. Combined with the surrounding marks, it resembled a yin-yang symbol.

The eight iron chains, as thick as a person’s arm, were still swaying slightly. As they got closer, the two noticed that the chains were engraved with patterns. The carvings were as fine as a mosquito’s leg, identical to the serpentine script on the bluestone slabs under their feet.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t read this type of script and didn’t know what it meant.

There was something alive beneath these chains.

They exchanged a look and decided to go to the octagonal stone slab in the center of the altar. They walked around the stones on the steps and reached the final tier.

For some reason, the stones on the last step had been knocked over, clearly indicating that someone had been here and disturbed them.

Tang Yu shifted her gaze to the octagonal slab. There was a dark red liquid in its carvings. The amount was small, but every groove contained it, and there was a faint scent of incense.

Song Lengzhu spoke abruptly, “It’s bl00d.”

The smell of bl00d in the air was very faint, almost completely masked by the scent of incense. Only after she said that did Tang Yu notice the abnormality.

The bl00d hadn’t dried yet; it was still flowing along the grooves as if it had just been dripped onto the slab. Aside from the bl00d in the carvings, not a single drop had been spilled elsewhere. It was clear someone had carefully poured the bl00d into the grooves.

Was this some kind of formation?

Tang Yu suddenly remembered Jin Ye saying that they needed to offer wolf bl00d as a sacrifice to find the great tomb. Was this wolf bl00d?

Or human bl00d?

Just then, the chains shook again. Unlike before, the movement was violent this time. The chains hummed and vibrated as if a powerful force was pulling on their other end. Tang Yu felt the stone step beneath her feet tremble as well.

At the same time, something unusual happened in the camp’s group chat. Tang Yu heard Jin Ye exclaim, “Watch out for an ambush!” followed by a barrage of gunfire.

The sound of the guns was immense. Jin Ye’s group didn’t have any firearms that would produce such a roar, which meant there was another group of people in the tomb.

Could they have run into Chen Deming’s people too?

Tang Yu was confused. From the current situation, Chen Deming’s group should have been near her. How could they also be near Jin Ye?

Tang Yu tried to contact Jin Ye and Zhou Zhou, but they were too busy to answer her questions.

At that moment, a fair hand suddenly landed on Tang Yu’s back. Then, the hand pushed with such force that it sent an unprepared Tang Yu stumbling toward the center of the stone slab. She had deactivated her precognition ability earlier and was caught completely off guard.

As the tips of her feet landed on the octagonal slab, Tang Yu twisted around sharply. She saw a slender figure standing in the darkness, a meaningful smile on the half of its face illuminated by the light.

It was an unfamiliar male face. The man had appeared behind her and Song Lengzhu like a ghost, almost without them noticing.

At the same time, Song Lengzhu was also attacked. She reacted quickly and dodged the blow, but her footing was unstable, and she too stepped onto the octagonal slab.

In an instant, a deafening roar echoed through the cavern. The iron chains clanged, and the octagonal slab flipped over in a flash. Tang Yu felt the ground beneath her disappear as she plummeted toward the space below the altar.

“Please, enjoy,” the man said softly. His voice was as gentle and refined as jade, yet his words were utterly chilling.

Tang Yu didn’t have time to see what was below. She curled her body in mid-air, twisting like a diver, and reached out to grab the nearest iron chain. The immense impact caused her palm to scrape painfully against the chain, sliding down four or five meters as if through a meat grinder.

As soon as she had a foothold, she reached for Song Lengzhu, who was also falling nearby. Ignoring her bloody hands, she just managed to grab the back of Song Lengzhu’s collar.

The downward force of their fall was tremendous, pulling Tang Yu into a rapid descent. She had to wrap her legs around the iron chain. Fortunately, the chain wasn’t smooth and had significant friction, allowing them to stabilize themselves.

At this point, they were barely ten centimeters from the ground.

And when they saw what was on the ground, they both took a sharp breath.

Beneath the altar was a snake pit.

Countless small snakes were writhing and overlapping, leaving no place to set foot on the entire ground. If they had fallen into this snake pit, they would have been swarmed by the snakes and reduced to a pile of white bones in less than five seconds.

And right now, the tips of Song Lengzhu’s feet were dangling just above the swarm of snakes.

Song Lengzhu immediately curled her body, using Tang Yu’s pull to grab the iron chain. At the same time, with incredible speed, she took off the windbreaker Tang Yu had touched, balled it up around the chain, and gripped a clean section.

They were both covered in wounds now, and Tang Yu’s bl00d was on the chain. If they made contact, the consequences would be unthinkable.

Song Lengzhu was wearing a black, tight-fitting T-shirt. Her forearms were slender and fair, but her body fat percentage was extremely low, leaving no excess fat on them. After steadying herself, she wrapped her legs around the chain, drew the short knife from her waist, cut a clean piece from the windbreaker into a strip, and tightly wrapped it around her palm.

Tang Yu looked up. The cavern beneath the altar was nearly ten meters deep. The flipped stone slab was now vertical, and a dark silhouette was holding a flashlight, leaning over to look down.

It had to be that sinister man. Tang Yu seethed with anger. This person wanted them dead.

Before they could make a move, a much larger silhouette appeared next to the man. That person said, “How is it? Did you lure it out?”

It was a deep, middle-aged man’s voice. They conversed without any attempt to be quiet, their voices echoing throughout the cavern, and the two women heard every word clearly.

The first man saw the light from the camping lantern still hanging on the chain and chuckled softly. “Not yet. These two sacrifices are quite skilled. They’re still alive.”

Sacrifices? Tang Yu looked up at the snakes below her feet. So she and Song Lengzhu had become offerings to feed the snakes.

These small snakes were just like the ones they had seen in the tomb chamber. Their eyes had almost completely degenerated into tiny dots, but they were extremely sensitive to movement. Sensing someone on the chain above, they were now raising their heads and flicking their tongues incessantly.

But strangely, although they could have climbed up the iron chains, not a single snake did so.

Tang Yu looked at the chain in her hand. It was covered in intersecting carvings. It was hard to tell if it was sprinkled with gold dust or if the raw material was just yellowish, but the chain faintly glowed with a golden light.

The deep male voice from above spoke again. “Captain Chen, why don’t we just throw the other sacrifice down too? Let’s get this over with and get out of the tomb.”

Captain Chen?

A chill ran through both Tang Yu and Song Lengzhu. That slender young man was actually Chen Deming?

“That one needs to be saved for the final bl00d sacrifice. Just wait patiently,” Chen Deming said unhurriedly, then pulled back.

A surge of fury rose in Tang Yu. She had never even met Chen Deming, nor did she have any grudge against him, yet she was being used as a sacrifice like this. And he had taken Xiao Li. Tang Yu took a deep breath and climbed one step up the chain.

When she got out of here, she was going to claw that bastard to death.

The iron chain swayed again with Tang Yu’s movement. The small snakes raised their heads even higher, gathering in layers beneath the two women.

Then, the iron chain they were clinging to was suddenly pulled taut by an immense force, shifting toward the left side of the cavern. Alarmed, they both turned to look into the darkness on their left.

A pair of scarlet eyes appeared in their field of vision, almost level with Tang Yu in mid-air.

Before they could even exhale, another pair of golden eyes appeared on their other side.