Chapter 9 The 30th Person Inside the Bronze Coffin
“Why is it that… we have an extra person?!”
“Who… who is it?”
The voices of the people inquiring were all trembling.
All the cell phone’s lights lit up. Everyone looked around at the people around them with fright, terrified that a strange face would appear before them.
Everyone who was familiar with each other grouped together. They trembled in fear as they scanned the people around them.
At this time, everyone finally managed to confirm that there was an extra person in the not so distant corner.
“Who…who are you?”
“Are you human or are you a ghost?”
In the mysterious bronze coffin, something like an evil monster was definitely possible. Everyone present was extremely worried.
A rough coughing noise echoed from the pitch-black corner. The dark figure’s body started moving, and a low and hoarse voice slowly came from him, “Ghost… ghost….”
The coarse voice echoed throughout the bronze coffin. At this moment, everyone’s bodies felt cold and their hair stood on end. An eerie chilliness pervaded the air.
Everyone felt as if they had been encased in ice and their courage trembled. Some female classmates went further and let out ear-piercing shrieks and wails. Some of them practically went limp on the floor.
“Ghostly…place…” The voice was weak, and they could sense the dark figure was greatly exhausted. His swaying body seemed like it wanted to stand.
“It really is…a ghastly place, where are we… inside the bronze coffin?” The dark figure in the corner stood up as he asked a couple confused questions. Gradually, his voice became a bit stronger.
Seeing that tall dark figure stand up, many people involuntarily drew back.
The dark figure walked over, once again speaking, “It’s me, Pang Bo.”
“Stay where you are! Don’t come over here!” Everyone lifted their cell phones and relied on the faint light as they observed this new person.
Ye Fan split up from everyone else, slowly walking forward. “Are you really Pang Bo?”
“You can’t even tell from my voice?” The light from the cell phones’ pierced the darkness, allowing them to see a familiar figure holding a cell phone with bushy eyebrows and big eyes, as well as a wide and strong body.
Pang Bo was Ye Fan’s best friend in university. Due to some personal matters, he couldn’t rush over to the reunion. Everyone felt some misgivings with him conveniently appearing now.
“I don’t believe you! Pang Bo didn’t even come to the reunion. Just…who are you?” a trembling voice came out from the rear.
A person who simply shouldn’t have even appeared was now standing inside the bronze coffin. This caused quite a few people to feel like their scalp had turned numb.
“Of course I am Pang Bo. Who amongst you has water? I’m thirsty enough to die.” The dark figure continued to walk forward.
“Stay where you are!” Everyone still had trouble believing it.
Pang Bo didn’t have any other option than to stand still. In order to prove his identity, he did his absolute best, speaking about things that had happened in university.
“I believe that he is Pang Bo,” Ye Fan firmly said. He walked up beside Pang Bo. The two of them had already not seen each other for a while. Even though they were in such a situation, they still both strongly embraced each other.
“At the beginning, due to a family matter, I wasn’t able to come to the reunion. Later on, I heard that you guys were coming to Mt. Tai, so I quickly took care of the matter and rushed over…”
Pang Bo received Ye Fan’s water bottle, and only after taking several large gulps did he begin to explain how he got here.
While he was rushing over, everyone had already stepped onto the mountain. He followed a cableway and took a cable car in order to go up.
He actually could be considered lucky; when the nine dragon corpses and huge bronze coffin landed on Mt. Tai, he was luckily on the cableway, ensuring his safety. He didn’t follow everyone fleeing down the mountain, and instead tenaciously climbed up a large tree and waited for it to calm down, so he didn’t suffer any injuries.
He then saw Ye Fan and the others fall into the huge pit, so he ran over just in time to see all the ancient characters shining in mid-air. As with everyone else, he was locked in place and unable to move. When the huge bronze coffin began to tremble and its lid opened up, he was sucked into the coffin along with everyone else.
He didn’t know whether it was due to being outside the five-colored altar, but when Pang Bo fell into the coffin he landed on his back and temporarily had the air knocked out of him.
Only now did everything gradually dispel their misgivings. Their taut heartstrings finally relaxed.
“We have to think of a way to save ourselves. It’ll be difficult for us to not be nervous while we’re stuck in this coffin. For a while now, I’ve been having a bad feeling…” Li Xiaoman’s face was somewhat pale as her beautiful eyes gazed into the black abyss inside the coffin. Compared to the other female classmates, she and Lin Jia appeared to be much more level-headed.
Hearing these words, many of them felt a cold chill run up their bodies.
“Everyone stay together. Don’t go off on your own,” Zhou Yi staunchly proposed.
Everyone drew close together. With the help of their cell phones’ weak lights, they studied their surrounding circumstances. Sticking closely to one side of the bronze coffin, they could make out the indistinct bronze carvings. There was a savage nine-headed divine bird spreading its wings and soaring; there was a huge vicious beast with thorns a foot long roaring towards the heavens….
The rusty bronze carvings unexpectedly had some savage, ancient desolate beasts from the Classic of Mountains and Seas such as the Taotie, Qiongqi, Taowu,¹ and others like them, with huge bodies and fierce appearances. They appeared vivid and lifelike, intimidating and overwhelming people who looked at them.
Following along with bronze coffin’s inner wall, more carvings appeared in front of their eyes, these of man from the most primitive eras, as well as some gods of ancient times. Right after, the group found a vast stretch of bizarre designs: numerous and densely packed starry dots, appearing like a large stretch of the starry sky.
The huge bronze coffin was twenty meters long and eight meters wide, and the carvings that they were seeing were only one corner of it. They didn’t continue examining the carvings because at this moment everyone felt a strange existence in the depths of the bronze coffin.
All the cell phones were raised together. Everyone gathered their courage and walked forward. They could vaguely see that there was some kind of rectangular shaped entity located in the pitch-black center of the coffin.
They clearly saw that this entity wasn’t a skeleton, but it also didn’t appear like something alive. This reassured everyone, and they continued walking forward.
“Inside the coffin is another coffin, it’s actually another bronze coffin!” When they finally could see the object in front of them, quite a few people let out a cold breath of air.
In the most central point was another bronze coffin whose size did not exceed four by two meters. It was unadorned and dull, with carvings of ancient images on it. A layer of rust covered it, showing the hardships and times it had gone through. At first glance, it intimidated everyone who looked at, causing people to feel chilly.
“It’s not that there’s a coffin within a coffin. This is the real coffin that is used to store a corpse. The bronze coffin on the outside is called the outer coffin used to encase the real coffin. Together, the two coffins are called the inner and outer coffins,” Pang Bo explained the concept of inner and outer coffins to those who didn’t know about it.
Hearing that it was actually the coffin in front of them that was used to store a dead body, many people recoiled in fear, the dread in their heart rising to the extreme.
Just what kind of person would be buried in such a mysterious bronze coffin? Everyone was both bewildered and frightened.
When those of them who knew something about archaeology compared this coffin to the tombs of old emperors, the old emperor’s burials seemed like practically nothing.
Who else had seen a twenty-meter long bronze inner and outer coffin set? Who else had seen a mysterious and huge coffin fall from the sky? Who else had seen nine dragon corpses pulling a coffin? It all caused people to wonder if what was inside was really just a corpse. It was practically unimaginable what kind of entity would be buried in it.
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¹In Chinese mythology, there are four evil fiends: the Taotie, Hundun, Qiongqi, and Taowu. They are opposed on the opposite side by the four holy beasts, the Azure Dragon, Vermillion Bird, White Tiger, and Black Turtle.