The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 159: Pattern

Li Cu used his remaining strength to frantically shake the van's body. He didn't know how much soil was buried on top of the car, but if it fell off after all his shaking, and the windows around him showed light, he could at least know that he wasn't buried.

But the weight of the vehicle's body pressing in on him made him desperate.

After the madness, he finally began to calm down. He sat there gasping for breath, and immediately realized that the air here wouldn't be enough to support him for too long.

He didn't know that the fall had been designed by Wu Xie, and that it was inevitable, whether he was there or not.

He wanted to smack his big mouth. He finally started to understand why adults objected so vehemently after people his age did something out of line, and thought themselves so cool.

Maybe it was only when you got older that you realized that anything could happen in life. If you didn't follow certain rules, a real accident only needed to happen once.

He leaned on the seat and thought carefully, realizing that the only thing he could do was wait for someone to save him. He couldn't act rashly, because he might really be the one to suffer if there was another collapse.

He swore silently as he recalled his way of thinking before and after the incident just now. He realized that once he got into an anxiety-inducing dilemma, it was easy to make a decision—if he decided that others were ignoring him, he might take extreme measure. Would he consider it "neglect"? Did others neglecting him trigger his impulses?

This could never happen again. He couldn't base his emotions on other people's attention.

At this time, he suddenly heard a strange sound coming from the soil to his left, and realized that someone had come to rescue him. He immediately patted the window beside him to let them know that he was still alive.

Light came shining in after a while, and Laborer leaned into the van and pulled him out.

Since the vehicle had been flipped over, Laborer princess-carried him to the undercarriage, where he saw the entirety of the collapse. Not only on his side, but the whole area including Leader's side had entirely collapsed into a huge pit, and everyone was totally disheveled.

The pit wasn't deep, however, so even if they had fallen into it without the protection of the van, they wouldn't suffer any harm. At most, they would get a mouthful of dirt.

Or shit. He saw that his makeshift toilet had collapsed into the soil and couldn't be found, but Farmer had some yellow and black spots on him. God forbid it was what he thought it was.

But no one's attention was on him. They were all looking at the bottom of the pit, where seven or eight highly decomposed bodies were. Some of the rotting and blackened figures were still embedded in the soil.

The corpses were all dressed in modern clothes, and when Merchant stepped on the hand of one of them, Li Cu saw that two fingers were missing.

"This is a demonstration. It's that man again." Merchant said, "They've been here before."

"Who are those people?" Li Cu asked Laborer.

Laborer answered, "It may be the enemy, or comrades."

Merchant pulled a corpse out of the soil and went to look at its tattoo, but found that the skin had basically rotted away. Based on the degree of decay in this kind of environment— along with the fact that it was covered in maggots— he figured the body had been here for at least half a year.

"Take all their belongings, cut off the jawbones, and burn the rest." Leader gave an order, "Let's see if there's anything left."

"Based on this scene, the things in this tomb must've been taken away. Should we clean it up?" Merchant asked. Leader shook his head and made a gesture to clear it out.

Merchant took out his knife and began flipping through the corpses' pockets. He then tore off their pendants, and used a strange method to quickly cut off their jaws with his knife and put them into a bag. Farmer quickly explored the surrounding soil to see if there were more bodies. Laborer carried Li Cu on his back as he made his way through the bodies, climbed to the top of the pit, and then started a fire. Unable to control himself, Li Cu began to vomit as the hot sun made the pungent smell even worse.

"There's a cell-phone here." When Merchant called out, Li Cu saw him take out an iPhone covered in slime from one of the corpse's pockets. Li Cu gave a "blargh", but all that came up was bile.

They soon had everything handled. Merchant shook the sack of rotten jaws in front of Li Cu's face, but Li Cu was already dry and couldn't puke anything else up.

They piled the bodies into the bottom of the pit and covered them with a lot of weeds and firewood. Laborer broke open the van's fuel tank and let all the oil pour out, and then lit it. The fire flared up in an instant, and the smell of burning fat from the corpses, mixed in with the gasoline, made Li Cu's eyes roll into the back of his head.

When he woke up, he was already in a new van, which smelled of decay. Li Cu was surprised to see that the black coffin hadn't been lost, and was still in the back of the van.

"This is why you're poor." He said weakly, "How many cars have you ruined?"

Gigolo was sitting beside him with wet tissue paper covering his nose, and leaning as far away from him as possible. The stench of diarrhea, puked up stomach acid, and a sack of rotten jaws was hell on his nose. He said with a sneer, "Says the bastard who drove into the grass just now."

When it came down to it, Li Cu couldn't deny that it was really his own fault, so all he could do was roll his eyes in response. He then thought about the car, the rotten jaws, and the dead crabs. They might as well be tonight's cold dishes and main course. He couldn't help but feel another wave of nausea hit, but he had nothing more to spit out.

Back at the hotel, Laborer went to wash the car, while the others went back to the room. Li Cu and Farmer took a bath first and then washed their mouths out, and then the girl finally got to go. Gigolo stayed in the room with the girl, while Leader took the others outside of the small hotel to sit beside the road and see what all they had brought back.

Even if they had been rinsed clean, Li Cu could still smell a strange sour odor coming from the trinkets, small tools, coins, watches, and knives. The cell-phone was charged, and there was only one number saved in it. It was a completely new cell-phone.

Leader dialed the number, but found that it was out of service. The number was very strange, and didn't look like a domestic number, but an international one.

"Not one of ours?" Merchant asked.

Leader didn't answer. At this time, Li Cu saw that there was a sticker on the back of the phone, and seemed to recall seeing the pattern somewhere before.

Because of the stench on the phone and the scene from before, he immediately remembered that the last time he had see this kind of graphic, it was also related to a corpse. Many of the corpses sent from Beijing had such patterns on them, but at that time, he couldn't understand the meaning behind them at all.