The Lost Tomb : Extras & Special Stories

(Extra Story: 2009 Chinese New Year Special) Chapter 12: Heavy rain

"If you don't believe them, then how do you explain what happened to us?" I asked. The living snails in this coffin and the shadow in the stream were both mysterious. If it wasn't haunted, I really didn't know how to explain it.

"This is still unknown. I don't believe in ghosts and gods, but now that I know the origin, I have at least a direction to think." Uncle Two said, "Anyway, we don't have to worry too much about these snails now. We won't return to Hangzhou for another three days. I'll think about it and see what happens. If it's really the evil spirit of the woman's corpse, then our ancestral grave has been moved and the nameless woman's corpse has been buried in it. There's no reason to complain."

We all sighed. It seemed that there was nothing better we could do now. Biao Gong looked at the clock on the wall and stood up, saying, "Let's get busy then!" He went back to see if the dinner was over. My Uncle Two, Uncle Three, and I went back to rest.

There were also Xu A Qin's pickles in the car. I asked, "What should I do with these? I can't take them all the way back to Hangzhou. When I deliver goods, people will smell pickles all over the antiques, and the sales will be ruined." Uncle Three said: "Find a place to pile them up first. I love to eat them."

After tossing and turning for a while, I still felt uneasy, thinking about the legendary woman's rotten green corpse. I felt uncomfortable all over and checked all the sewers in the house again from top to bottom—the water tower connected to the tap water was in town so I thought that probably didn't matter. I couldn't think of any other places where water flowed, so I felt a little more at ease.

After yesterday's fatigue, staying up late, and getting up early in the morning to drive all day, I really couldn't help it and fell asleep at 8 o'clock. This was the sleep of pure exhaustion, and I slept heavily for once. I was so tired that I didn't even dream, and managed to sleep through the night.

When I got up at five in the morning, I was completely refreshed and rejuvenated, but I noticed the sky was very dark. I put on my clothes and went to the window to listen to the sounds outside when suddenly I froze, realizing that something was wrong.

I didn't know when it had started raining.

A sense of foreboding appeared in my heart and I immediately rushed out from under the eaves of the house and saw Uncle Two and Uncle Three standing there with ashen faces.

I followed where their eyes were looking—in the pouring rain, there was something standing in our yard.

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It was raining heavily and my line of sight was blurred. Because the sewer was blocked, the yard was full of accumulated water, and the curtain of rain under the eaves poured down with a majestic sound.

With the light of the street lamp, I could see that the object was in the shape of a person, but it wasn't very human-like. What could be seen in the rain was only a vague shadow, and all the details weren't very clear.

Even so, I guessed what it was. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva and said dumbly, "It actually has a human form—"

"What kind of human form is this? Aliens?" Uncle Three said.

"When did this happen?" I asked.

"I saw it half an hour ago when I got up to exercise." Uncle Two said, "It was still at the gate at that time."

I felt my heart quiver—this thing was now located in the middle of the yard, about 10 meters away from us. That is to say, in this half hour, this thing had gotten closer to us.

When I saw that Uncle Three and Uncle Two's clothes were dry, I asked, "Didn't you go and look?"

"Why don't you go?" Uncle Three glared at me. I saw that they looked different and asked, "What's the matter?"

"This time it's a bit unusual." Uncle Two said, "Look at the rain."

I looked down at the accumulated water in the courtyard and found that the water was separated into individual puddles, and several of them had a layer of dark red things floating in them: "This is..."

"Blood." Uncle Two said.

I gasped and immediately felt a strong uneasiness, my hands also feeling a little cold. After a moment of silence, I asked, "What should we do?"

"Don't panic, I've already called my buddies and asked them to bring a weapon over." Uncle Three said. At this time, I saw him holding a sickle in his hand and his eyes were full of a fierce light. He said, "No matter what it is, I'll make sure it never comes back."

I nodded—my heart unwittingly uplifted— and immediately looked around for something to defend myself. At last I found a pole, immediately pretending that the Japanese devils were entering the village as I waited behind Uncle Three. (Translator's Note: guess he's imagining it's back in WWII where the Japanese raided villages, that's why he said "Japanese devils").

The rain continued for another ten minutes before it started to slow down. At this time, Uncle Three's buddies arrived, but no one dared to enter through the gate. They all handed the weapon in through the window of Uncle Three's room. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time. He thrust his sickle into his belt and shook off the oilcloth wrapped around the weapon.

I saw that it was a short-headed shotgun, new and shiny. "Look at this beauty. Bought it in Changjiang, the place where the Baisha uprising took place, and it's all the manual work of the local people. One shot fired... not to mention the snails, a mule's head will be blown off." Uncle Three grinned.

"You came back this time mainly to toss this thing?" Uncle Two asked.

"Nonsense, I'm not a poacher. My friend brought it for me." Uncle Three said as he loaded the cartridges neatly and covered the gun with the cloth again. "All right, let's go and see what's going on."

Uncle Two and I also followed behind him, and Uncle Two even calmly opened up an umbrella. We approached the thing in a few steps and didn't dare get any closer, stopping two or three meters from it. As I looked carefully at it, it gave me the creeps.

It was a huge "pillar" of black and white snails, vaguely shaped like a human being. But this wasn't the most terrible thing. That was reserved for the thing's huge head that unexpectedly had vague facial features that were distorted and deformed, making it look very ferocious.

Uncle Three looked at it coldly. We walked around the thing twice, but it didn't move. Uncle Three raised his gun: "Let's shoot it first?"

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Uncle Two stopped him and said to us, "Wait, this... there seems to be something inside."

"What?"

Uncle Two stared at it for a while, took my pole, and thrust it into the pile of snails. With a stir, the snails scattered, and unexpectedly a hand was exposed from the inside.

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