The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 57: Something Else in the Coffin

As he struggled to get up from the pile of heads, Li Cu stumbled in his haste to run away and didn't know that he was stepping on the heads. He had just managed to get up, when he slipped and fell back again.

Upon looking down and seeing that his feet were tangled in the hair, Li Cu completely collapsed and kicked the hair off.

It took less than two seconds for all of this to happen, but before Li Cu could get up again, the cardboard box nearby moved again. The thing as thick as an arm popped out of the pile of boxes and hit Li Cu in the neck.

He reflexively grabbed at it with his hand, only noticing that it felt slimy before he flung it to the ground.

It unexpectedly bounced back up like a spring and instantly lunged towards his chest. This time, he felt a pain in his chest and hit it very hard. Obviously, this thing was a little strong.

Li Cu was completely enraged and tore the thing off with a big curse. When it fell to the ground this time, he stepped on it without waiting for it to bounce back up.

The thing instantly coiled around his foot, so Li Cu grabbed the head that was sitting beside the coffin and smashed it at the thing.

He continued smashing until the thing was leaking brown juice, and only gradually slowed down when its movements seemed to stop.

When Li Cu pulled his foot back from that thing's body, he saw that it was a black snake as thick as his arm. The reason it was so big was because it was covered in something that looked like black hair.

Now it had been smashed into two pieces and was still twitching, but it was gradually weakening.

He took out a long piece of cardboard from the nearby box pile and poked it.

It was at this time that he heard someone come up behind him and gasp in surprise. Looking back, he saw Su Wan and Yang Hao staring at him. They had obviously heard the noise and rushed up to see what was going on.

As Li Cu looked at them, and they looked back at him, he found that Su Wan's eyes weren't on the strange snake, but on his hand. He looked down and found that he was still holding the head he had used to smash the snake. He shivered and tossed it back into the coffin.

"Are you having a T-virus flare up [1]? Did you bite or smash it?" Su Wan asked, looking at Li Cu with red eyes. He immediately added, "Good zombies don't eat their brothers."

Li Cu pointed to the thing on the ground with his chin, and the other two finally noticed the snake. But they still didn't approach, and Yang Hao asked, "What is it?"

"If you still have the ability to ask, that means you're better off than me. Come and take a look." Li Cu replied.

Yang Hao shook his head and took the long piece of cardboard from Li Cu's hand. As he fiddled with the snake for a bit, he revealed a puzzled expression, and said, "It looks like a snake."

"It is." Su Wan said. "The question is: what's up with these hairs?"

"New breed."

Yang Hao threw away the cardboard and looked at Li Cu, who told them what had happened just now: "It may have climbed in while they were loading the corpse. The inside was frozen with ice, so these things must have come from the wilderness, and there were snakes there that look like this."

Yang Hao took a good look at the coffin: "Then why don't you stop? Maybe there are still some inside."

Li Cu kicked several coffins, but there was no further movement. He shook his head and said, "It's not always that coincidental. If there are snakes in every box, then did they send so many to hurt me?" He didn't think there was any need to go to such lengths.

If this was Wu Xie, however, he wouldn't agree. Li Cu was still cautious, but he just thought that things were strange. Where the hell did these things come from for there to be such strange snakes?

After they stared at each other in silence for a while, Li Cu's eyes focused once more on the coffin.

He put out the cigarette he had been smoking and said, "We have to keep going." Looking back, he saw the two men retreating behind him again at a speed comparable to Usain Bolt.

He sighed and told himself that he was careless in making friends. When things get tough, you can only depend on yourself.

Even if he had boundless courage, Li Cu didn't dare put his hand directly into the coffin to bring out the rest of the heads. He approached it with trembling hands, thinking that this was really different from the dried corpse from before. That had been very light, and often gave off the illusion that it was fake and completely different from him. But these corpses were still very full and hadn't lost any of their fluids yet, and it was almost as if they would talk to him. Moreover, there was a strong sense of drag when he went to lift them up since there was so much water. He felt like he couldn't get a good grip on them, and they might fall on him at any time.

He tried several times, but failed to get the heads out of the water. He had no other choice but to use the aesthetic fatigue method, forcing himself to constantly stare at the heads in order to gradually get used to his antipathy towards them. But most of the heads were on their sides or face down, hidden by all the hair. He was especially afraid of the moment when he lifted the head up, the hair fluttered away, and the face suddenly appeared.

Who knew what these people looked like when they died?

This couldn't go on. Su Wan and Yang Hao had practically retreated to Wangfujing, and if the deadlock continued, they'd reach Hebei by tonight. [2]

Li Cu stirred the heads with a stick he had found in the warehouse and turned one of them face up, finding that it was a woman's head.

What he didn't expect was that these people's faces were very young, young enough to be their age, in fact. Li Cu originally thought that he would see middle-aged or even elderly people, because in his worldview, people who had experienced such things would definitely be older. He didn't expect to see people around the same age as him.

He saw the bloated face as he pulled the hair away from it, but his legs went soft when he realized that the face was vaguely discernible. He looked back and said, "Su Wan, come here."

"Li Cu, I haven't done my homework yet. I'll go back first." Su Wan said. Li Cu looked back and saw that he had already called a taxi to the door.

"Bastard!" Li Cu shouted, "If you dare to leave, I'll reveal everything about you dismembering a corpse, hiding guns, and reading adult manga!"

"Shit, that's you! Like I'm to blame! You have no conscience!" Su Wan shouted back.

"Get your fucking ass over here, or I'll hang the both of us on the beam of your house and die with you!" Li Cu was furious: "You left me here alone; you're the one with no conscience! Think about who helped you take the blame when you crashed your dad's car."

There was silence on both sides, and the taxi behind Su Wan drove away silently. Yang Hao was off to one side and looked at the two of them before asking Su Wan, "You're the one that wrecked your dad's car? It wasn't Pear that did it?"

Su Wan's face turned red and he held out for a long time before he said, "Fine, what do you want?"

He walked up to Li Cu while holding his nose and Li Cu pointed to the head and asked him, "Look at this face, have we seen it before?"

It was a very young girl. Her appearance wasn't beautiful, but at the time, girls who looked like that were considered fairly pretty. She looked a little younger than Li Cu.

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Notes:

[1] Resident Evil reference. Basically the zombie virus infection.

[2] Basically two places that are far apart. Li Cu is saying they keep retreating further and further away from him.