A red shadow flashed past, and Zhang Xianyu gave chase without a second thought.
But the figure’s speed was too fast; after a few steps, Zhang Xianyu quickly lost sight of them.
He had originally thought this was just an ordinary tomb.
Now, considering the external formations and the elusive red shadow, he immediately raised his guard to the highest level and grew increasingly worried about Lin Wushui’s continued absence.
Zhang Xianyu looked around anxiously and realized that although the tomb entrance seemed small, its interior was vast, filled with formations all along the way that could easily mislead someone.
He worried that Lin Wushui might have been trapped within the formation as well.
After some thought, he sat down on the spot, took out talisman paper from his bag, and quickly drew talismans.
He folded them into the shape of Paper Cranes and released them to search the area.
As for himself, he carefully ventured deeper into the unknown tomb.
This tomb was unlike the usual historical tombs.
Apart from the chamber where he saw the man in blue, there were no other burial chambers.
Instead, the tomb passage twisted and turned like a vast maze.
Zhang Xianyu cautiously distinguished the passages and slowly pressed deeper inside.
After wandering through the maze-like passages for an unknown length of time, Zhang Xianyu felt the labyrinth growing larger, as if it had no end.
A vague irritability began to stir in his heart.
His eyes blurred for a moment before he snapped to attention, immediately sitting cross-legged to regulate his breath—silently reciting the Qingxin Mantra.
After circulating the Small Celestial Cycle, the clouded spirit platform instantly cleared.
Zhang Xianyu’s gaze scanned the crisscrossing passages, searching for the most correct path.
After careful observation, he smiled with satisfaction and resolutely took the leftmost path.
Behind him, as he stepped onto the left passage, the other paths instantly vanished, including the path he had come from.
Zhang Xianyu didn’t look back.
The deeper he went, the stronger the strange feeling in his heart grew, even faintly familiar.
He closed his eyes and silently recited the Qingxin Mantra again, but his steps grew more determined with each pace.
Before long, he quickened his pace through the complex tomb paths.
In less than half an hour, the atmosphere around him noticeably changed.
The chaotic, agitating feeling disappeared.
He slowly opened his eyes and found himself in a burial chamber.
Judging by the size and location, this should be the main chamber.
The bronze door of the chamber, either from age or previous visitors, was cracked open.
The door was carved with a huge, strange eye pattern.
The eye stood upright, with four lines on the left and five on the right, resembling human eyelashes above and below an eye.
The symbol consisted of simple lines, but at a glance, it looked as if a real eye was watching from the bronze door.
Zhang Xianyu approached and examined it carefully, confirming that he had never seen anything like this in any book records.
There were many historical eye-related symbols, but none like this.
He studied the door for a while, found no related information in his memory, and then pushed the bronze door open to enter.
Inside the chamber, the first thing that caught his eye was a coffin suspended by chains in the center.
The coffin was made of bronze, covered with green patina.
Thick chains hung the coffin in midair.
On the stone slab directly beneath the coffin was an eye carving identical to the one on the door.
The eye was roughly the same size as the coffin.
Zhang Xianyu stared at the eye for a while, feeling a certain sensation, then looked up.
On the ceiling opposite the coffin was another eye carving, identical in size and shape to the one below.
The coffin hung suspended in midair, two eyes stared at it from above and below, plus the enormous eye on the door…
Zhang Xianyu vaguely felt this was some kind of unknown sealing technique.
In ancient times, totem worship was common, with different totems representing various deities.
Among them, eye-shaped totems were numerous.
A famous example was the eye-shaped artifact discovered at Sanxingdui, representing the ancestor of the Shu People, the Zongmu God Can Cong.
Ancient people widely believed totems of gods and ancestors held protective power.
But judging from the current scene—this coffin suspended by chains, with eyes carved on the coffin, the slab beneath, and the bronze door—it seemed less like protection and more like an attempt to use the power of ancestors or gods to guard and suppress the person inside the coffin.
Who this coffin’s owner was, and what he had done to be denied rest after death, remained unknown.
Though curious, Zhang Xianyu didn’t immediately inspect the coffin.
Instead, he scanned the chamber’s surroundings.
The chamber was large but empty, with no burial offerings at all.
However, some faint and blurred Wall Paintings adorned the walls.
After confirming there were no traps, Zhang Xianyu stepped forward to study the faded murals.
Eroded by time, the originally abstract paintings were now unclear.
Frowning, Zhang Xianyu studied them from beginning to end and roughly understood they told the life story of the coffin’s owner.
And his guess was correct—the person inside was suppressed by his own people.
The murals began with the birth of the coffin’s owner.
He was the son of the Qiang’a Chief but had been able to speak and walk from birth.
Even as a child, he was adept at hunting and combat.
In the first half of the murals, the tribe revered him, prioritizing him in everything, almost worshiping him as a deity.
But later, for unknown reasons, the coffin owner’s image transformed into a beast-headed, human-bodied monster.
The murals depicted him as bloodthirsty, killing many people.
A small child holding a spear taller than himself stood atop a pile of corpses like a killing god.
As the child grew, the tribe grew fearful and believed he was an evil demon.
A war erupted within the tribe.
The coffin owner was defeated; his body was placed in the bronze coffin, chained and suspended in midair, sealed by divine power to prevent his soul from finding peace or reincarnation.
The murals were simple, but Zhang Xianyu pieced the story together.
His gaze fell on the suspended coffin—ancient people believed that only burial in the earth brought peace; suspending the coffin meant he was denied rest.
After hesitation, Zhang Xianyu decided to open the coffin.
Using talismans to seal the chamber against accidents, he summoned Palm Lightning to shatter the chains.
The bronze coffin crashed heavily to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
The chains hanging from the tomb ceiling swung, producing dull clanging sounds.
Zhang Xianyu cautiously stepped forward, pushed aside the chains, and slowly opened the heavy coffin lid.
The lid slid open slowly.
The first thing he saw was a red garment.
Zhang Xianyu’s eyes tightened as he pushed the lid open further, revealing only a skeleton wrapped in red cloth inside the coffin.
For some reason, Zhang Xianyu thought of the red shadow from earlier.
Looking at the skeleton inside the coffin, he felt unsure whether to be disappointed or something else.
He closed the coffin lid again, silently recited the Mantra for the Dead several times, then turned to leave.
Just outside the chamber, a familiar red shadow flickered at the corner of his eye.
Zhang Xianyu’s gaze sharpened, and he chased after it faster than before.
The red figure’s form flickered and floated like a ghost, elusive and unstable.
It was the only living thing in the tomb.
Thinking of the missing Lin Wushui, Zhang Xianyu’s eyes hardened.
Lightning flashed from his palm—he had to catch him.
The red figure seemed unprepared for the sudden attack, hesitated, but did not fully dodge.
Its movements grew sluggish instantly.
Zhang Xianyu’s gaze fixed.
Several talismans shot out consecutively, instantly sealing off the red-clothed man’s escape route.
The red-clothed man tried to flee but was too slow.
He refused to fight back and was trapped.
“Who are you?”
Zhang Xianyu gathered lightning in his palm, cautiously approaching.
The red-clothed man stood with his back to him, posture straight like a pine or cypress.
Zhang Xianyu stared at him, the familiar feeling swelling even stronger.
Standing two steps away, Zhang Xianyu said coldly, “Turn around.”
The red-clothed man didn’t move.
Impatient, Zhang Xianyu struck lightning at his feet, sending flying stones scattering.
His voice grew colder, “Turn around.”
He was relentless.
The red-clothed man’s lowered hand clenched and unclenched before slowly turning around under his pressure.
The familiar back, the familiar face revealed.
Lin Wushui looked at him with complex eyes, throat moving but silent.
Zhang Xianyu frowned, guarding against illusion, but no matter how he looked, the red-clothed man before him was the Lin Wushui he knew.
He could not be mistaken.
Lowering his guard, Zhang Xianyu stepped forward with concern, “What’s going on? Why did you run when you saw me?”
Lin Wushui stared deeply at him, the same as always, yet somehow different.
Zhang Xianyu reached out to touch his forehead, whispering, “Possessed? And when did you come home?”
Before Lin Wushui arrived, his body had been safely kept in the villa.
Now, suddenly having a body, Zhang Xianyu was suspicious.
He studied his face, and after a moment, his gaze fixed behind Lin Wushui’s ear—there was a bright red eye pattern there.
A wide-open eye with four lines on the left and five on the right, exactly like the eye carvings in the tomb.
Recalling the red-robed skeleton in the coffin, Zhang Xianyu’s eyes sharpened instinctively.
He grabbed Lin Wushui’s hand, “What’s going on?”
Lin Wushui clasped his hand back, staring at him for a long time before hoarsely saying, “Come with me.”
Zhang Xianyu was pulled back to the main tomb chamber, where the coffin had been lowered.
He looked at Lin Wushui, then at the coffin, eyes full of confusion.
“You have a connection to the person in this coffin?”
Lin Wushui remained silent and led him to the murals, whispering, “This is left by the Qiang’a Tribe.”
His finger tapped the small child’s figure in the mural and continued, “This is the son of the Qiang’a Chief. Born with knowledge of all things and possessing extraordinary powers. He was the tribe’s bravest warrior. The Qiang’a people believed his birth was a gift from the gods.”
He guided Zhang Xianyu’s hand to the beast-headed boy, “But he was too fierce, killing like crushing ants. The tribe grew fearful and wary of him…Eventually, he became a monster in their eyes.”
His finger slowly moved and stopped at the abstract bronze coffin, saying in a low voice, “The tribe feared him and no longer saw him as a divine gift. Instead, they believed he was an embodiment of evil, a harbinger of disaster and war.”
“They rebelled, captured the chief’s family to coerce him, killed him, and sealed him in the bronze coffin with divine power, forbidding his soul from resting or reincarnating.”
At first, Zhang Xianyu felt nothing when seeing the murals.
But now, hearing the story again while being led through the tomb, his heart tightened, as if realizing something, and he looked up at Lin Wushui.
Lin Wushui smiled faintly and continued, “Maybe he really was an embodiment of evil. Even after being killed and sealed in the coffin, his soul did not die. It was imprisoned inside until many years later, when a band of grave robbers broke the tomb’s seal, releasing his soul.”
“After centuries of suppression, he was no longer the warrior who fought for his tribe, but a vengeful evil spirit. The first thing he did upon release was to find the descendants of the Qiang’a Tribe and annihilate them. From then on, the Qiang’a Tribe ceased to exist.”
“But his hatred was not quenched. With no outlet for his rage, he gathered countless malevolent spirits, declared himself a Ghost King, and disturbed the order of both the living world and the Underworld.”
Zhang Xianyu listened calmly, strangely unshaken by the tale.
Instead, he looked into Lin Wushui’s eyes and asked, “What’s his name?”
Lin Wushui lowered his head, meeting his gaze, then hesitated before struggling to say, “Wushui.”
They say “the highest goodness is like Water.”
Wushui means “without water,” implying no goodness.
After escaping the bronze coffin, he abandoned his old name and took the name Wushui.
Zhang Xianyu hummed but didn’t press further.
Instead, he asked, “Why did you run? I’ve been looking for you for so long.”
His tone was affectionate, with a hint of playful complaint, unaffected by the dark story.
Lin Wushui wasn’t sure what he was thinking.
He gripped Zhang Xianyu’s hand tighter and whispered, “You don’t remember, and I was afraid that seeing me would make you remember.”