The Lost Tomb Vol. 3

Chapter 8: Commotion

As soon as I saw Poker-Face's expression, I knew that he definitely wasn't joking. He didn't even show this kind of expression when we encountered the blood corpse back at the Seven Star Lu Palace, so I knew the situation must be very serious.

But now wasn't the time to ask him what was wrong. With no other choice but to do as he said, I started to call the others to run away.

I thought that I was thoroughly carrying out Poker-Face's instructions, but when I turned to look back, I found that Ye Cheng and Fatty had already run into the corridor. Heartless bastards! I thought to myself before hurriedly following after them.

We rushed through the corridor, pushed our way through the jade door, and reached the main hall, but the rustling sound intensified instead of receding. At this time, it was obvious that the sound was coming from the ceiling, as if countless feet were shuffling across the beams overhead. It was enough to make my skin crawl.

But when I looked up, all I could see was endless cotton-like darkness; I couldn't see anything up there, let alone whatever was making that sound. Standing under such darkness was nerve-wracking, as if we were all sitting on pins and needles. We didn't want to stay in this place a second longer, so we all ran like hell.

I believe everyone is familiar with the part of human nature where you instinctively run away when you encounter something scary in the dark. If you're by yourself, you won't run very far before you stop, but if you're with a group, things will definitely get out of control. Your imagination and fear of being left behind while everyone else runs away together will push you to keep going even when you want to stop.

But people had different running speeds—Ye Cheng was so scared that he ran faster than a rabbit, and even Fatty wasn't slow. In fact, the two of them were so fast that they quickly took the lead, the rest of us struggling to keep up with them. We could hardly tell who was who in the dark, and soon the distance between everyone quickly increased. I was barely keeping up, only knowing what direction to go in thanks to the small dots of light from their flashlights up ahead.

I didn't know how long I ran, but my strength was almost exhausted, and my speed involuntarily slowed down. I looked at the dots of light in front of me, and saw that they had gradually slowed down as well—it seemed that the exit was coming up and I could relax a bit. Fortunately, my stamina was much better than before. Otherwise, I would have definitely been left behind.

When I ran over, I saw that Ye Cheng and Fatty had stopped and had their hands on their knees, trying to catch their breath. But the stone door that was supposed to take us outside was nowhere to be seen; there was only more darkness in front of us.

I asked them what happened and why they stopped running.

Ye Cheng was still gasping for breath, the veins on his forehead looking like they were about to burst as he said, "Wrong... something's wrong—I noticed earlier that the main hall is five hundred paces long. My stride length is one meter. At the rate I was running, I should have covered the hall's distance in less than two minutes. But I'm positive I ran longer than that just now. I should have at least seen the jade door, but there's still nothing ahead. Something's wrong here!"

"Could you have counted wrong?" Fatty asked. "How can anyone's stride length be exactly one meter?"

Ye Cheng smiled proudly, "There's absolutely no mistake. My stride length is one meter, and the range of error is no more than one centimeter. If you don't believe me, we can make a bet. I ran almost a thousand meters just now, so there must be something wrong."

The others who had been lagging behind saw that we had stopped running and slowed down. They were all carrying heavy equipment and wearing thick clothes, so when they finally reached us and stopped, they were so exhausted and out of breath that they almost collapsed. Monk Hua was gasping for breath, but still managed ask, "Why did you stop? Hurry up and run. We can rest once we're out of here."

Ye Cheng explained the situation in one sentence. Monk Hua's expression immediately changed, and he wiped the sweat from his forehead while saying, "What's going on? We didn't make any turns when we came in. Why can't we find the way back?"

I thought about it and realized that we must have fallen into a trap—there was definitely some technique here that we weren't familiar with. "Sure enough, Little Brother was right," I said to them. "Wang Zanghai didn't want us to make it out of here."

"What should we do?" Fatty asked. "Let's change direction and run to the left!"

I looked at our surroundings, "No, since we can't go back to the original path, running in any direction will give us the same result—we'll just keep running without ever reaching the end. Let's not waste our energy."

Ye Cheng was horrified, "Damn, does that mean we're stuck here until we die?"

I had experienced the terrible power of these kinds of mechanisms in the undersea tomb, but we had managed to find a way out at that time, so I told Ye Cheng that such a thing wouldn't happen. With so many people here, we could definitely find a way out. As long as we put our heads together and brainstormed, there shouldn't be any problems. After all, Wang Zanghai was human—he could only build these traps within the scope of his own abilities. No matter how sophisticated they were, there would definitely be flaws. But I was more worried that Wang Zanghai's intention wasn't to trap us here. That strange noise above our heads was what we really needed to worry about.

I looked up again—the rustling sound had intensified to the point that it made people feel itchy and panicked. Ye Cheng swept his flashlight back and forth overhead, but all we saw was a gray surface and the vague image of the painted beams. The feeling of not knowing what was up there was enough to drive us crazy.

"Staying here is not an option," Monk Hua said. "How about we separate into four groups and run in two directions so that at least one group can make it out. That way, the whole team won't be wiped out."

"Are you blind?" Fatty shouted. "There are only a few of us here. How can we divide into four groups?"

When everyone heard this, we all looked around and counted the flashlights. Sure enough, we were stunned to find that several people were missing—Poker-Face, Chen Pi Ah Si, Lang Feng carrying Shunzi, and Pan Zi hadn't caught up yet.

Fuck, I thought they were standing around us, but it turns out that half of our team is gone.

Everything was so chaotic when we were running just now that we didn't even notice when they fell behind. I looked back but didn't see any of their flashlight beams, so there was no way to figure out where they were. Could they have strayed off the path while running and ended up running into the darkness? That would be troublesome. Getting lost in this situation was basically tantamount to suicide.

I pinched my brow and carefully recalled everything that happened just now. Fatty and Ye Cheng had been in the lead but Monk Hua and I definitely weren't the last ones. Of all those people in our group, Pan Zi always made it a habit to be the last one due to his training as a soldier (that way, he could monitor everyone's actions), Chen Pi Ah Si was old and had clearly been behind us, Lang Feng was carrying a person on his back so he would have difficulty moving and running fast, and Poker-Face was a professional-level missing person. He would habitually stay at the rear of the group whenever we encountered situations, and then suddenly disappear, but that was totally normal behavior for him.

These people had all been behind us. They obviously weren't far from us when they disappeared, but we were so focused on running just now that we didn't notice at all.

After suddenly losing their leader, Monk Hua and Ye Cheng didn't know what to do. Fatty, on the other hand, shouted at the top of his lungs, "Old Pan! Where are you guys?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, we suddenly heard Lang Feng's voice come from somewhere off to the side. We couldn't tell what direction it came from, but it was extremely loud, "Shit! Hey, Monk Hua, turn off your flashlight and look up!"