The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 151: Open the Coffin

"We can't one hundred percent guarantee it's like we said." The merchant laughed, "But abnormal longevity is practically a landmark feature. As long as that occurs, we're almost ninety percent sure that there's a special ancient tomb nearby. There are a lot of possibilities that longevity is caused by exposure to ancient tombs, but tomb robberies are the first thing that comes to mind. Especially in relatively arid mountainous areas. All these characteristics can be found here, so we've basically determined that our theory is correct. And whether you like it or not, you'll bring out something from that kind of special tomb when you rob it, because it isn't so easy to steal from that kind of tomb. But we still need to open all the red urn coffins before we can come to a final conclusion. If they all have the same thing, then we're approaching the truth, because it's impossible for so many long-lived people to be robbers at the same time. Plus, the things they robbed were all similar. The point is: in a place like this, it's absolutely abnormal for everyone with the same burial objects to live long."

At this point, the merchant took out a jade thumb ring from among the burial objects, looked at it with the flashlight, and then tossed it to Li Cu.

When the black-clad person carrying Li Cu caught it and handed it over his shoulder to him, the merchant said, "Your first experience, keep it as a souvenir."

Li Cu felt nauseous. The ring was very bright, and when he carefully grabbed it, he found that it wasn't as dirty as he thought. The ring was dry, and looked exactly the same as if it had come from a store counter. It was green, and very beautiful.

He put his two fingers into his pocket, and everyone laughed. "Look at you, you're not one who masturbates with orchid fingers [1], are you?"

The young man also smiled, and the leader sighed and looked at Li Cu. The merchant asked the young man, "Seeing this kind of thing for the first time today... did we pop his cherry [2]?"

The young man shook his head: "Today can only be regarded as watching porn."

The leader clapped his hands, told them to shut up, and pointed to the urn coffin. The merchant simply turned back around and started sorting it out.

Li Cu was somewhat embarrassed, and looked at how he put the ring into his pocket before he started cursing himself.

He was put back into the car, and the ensuing process was very boring. The urn coffins were opened one by one, the buried objects inside were quickly taken out and sorted, and then they were wrapped in newspaper and put into a styrofoam box.

A total of seventeen red urn coffins were uncovered from below. As they had expected, all the coffins had similar burial objects, and there was a lot of gold and jewelry.

Li Cu fell asleep while they were opening the fourth coffin, and stayed like that until the car started. He woke up for a brief moment and then went back to sleep. When he woke up again, he found himself already in the hotel room. No one was there, the curtains were drawn, and it seemed as if there was only a little light in the sky.

He was lying in a wheelchair, covered with a smelly brown blanket that was a staple in Chinese hotels. He had wondered why the blanket was brown when he was young, up until he saw his father vomit on it once.

He flung the blanket off. Even if he had an unhappy childhood, he still had standards of cleanliness when it came to things like this.

He rubbed his eyes, turned around, and saw that everything they had dug up was piled in the corner of the room, and on the last bed. There were a lot of them.

At the same time, he noticed that there was one among them that looked the most out of place.

It was a dark cyan urn coffin, so dark it was almost black.

The dark cyan color was a bit like old bronze, but it was a little rougher. The coffin hadn't been opened yet, and was quietly sitting in the corner of the room.

He could see many gray "scars" on the surface of this urn coffin, which looked like acne.

What the hell? Li Cu asked himself. How did they manage to bring everything back? What happened later, was it too late to open the coffin?

But they were looking for the red urn coffins, so why was this dark, gloomy thing here? At a time like this, it was too creepy leaving it in such a place.

Li Cu swallowed and continued looking around the room to see where those people had gone. They must have been afraid of waking him up, but it seemed unlikely they'd get breakfast now.

That's very sweet, but don't leave me with these dead things. I'm not a burial object!

He took a deep breath, and turned to leave the room, thinking he could at least stay in the corridor. But when he pushed the door, he found that it was locked.

He twisted the door handle hard, but all he ended up doing was tiring himself out and breaking out in a sweat. He couldn't help being angry, and wanted to send a flying kick at the door, but his foot had no strength at all.

He turned his wheelchair so his back was to the door, and looked at the black coffin urn on the other side of the room. He didn't know why, but he suddenly felt as if all the warm air in the room was sucked in by this thing.

He stared at it, feeling more and more frightened and uncomfortable. He kept feeling like this thing was giving off an ominous vibe. He didn't want to look at it, but found that he couldn't turn his head away, as if there was some kind of compulsion to look at it.

His blood pressure was getting higher and higher, he was feeling more and more uncomfortable, and breathing was becoming a little difficult. He saw the blanket he had thrown off his body not long ago, and slowly wheeled himself over. He picked it up, ready to throw it over the coffin urn and cover it up.

He approached the black jar carefully until he could just barely reach it, but the wheelchair couldn't go any further because the ground was full of burial objects.

Li Cu took a deep breath, and got a closer look at it. It made him even more uncomfortable, and the strange feeling made the back of his scalp tingle. There was a chance it was all in his head, but he couldn't overcome it. He used his unbroken let to force himself out of the wheelchair, and threw the blanket over the urn.

He breathed a sigh of relief once the blanket was in place, but suddenly heard the sound of claws scratching the side of the urn. It was coming from inside.

Li Cu quivered, instantly lost his balance, and the wheelchair slipped backward. He fell into the pile of burial objects, and hit his head on the urn coffin with a "pong" sound.

There was already a hole in his skull, so when he fell down, every muscle in his body mobilized to turn the hole away from the impact. But the shock still hurt a lot more than before, and he felt as if his brains were spilling out of the hole.

He scrambled back in a panic. The jar was still covered with the blanket, but he saw something he hadn't noticed just now. The bottom of the black jar wasn't placed directly on the floor, but was very carefully padded with folded copper coins so that the bottom stayed hoisted in mid-air.

The copper coins were very small, so it wasn't easy to maintain the jar's balance, and when Li Cu hit it, one leg had shifted and the jar touched the ground.

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Notes:

[1] No English equivalent for this term that I know of. It's a hand gesture unique to Chinese dance and opera where the thumb and middle finger are joined, and the remaining fingers are extended. Characters are 兰花指 and pinyin is "lanhuazhi".

[2] Another way of saying Li Cu lost his tomb robbing virginity (Lol!).