Chapter 97: The Lost Underground Palace

After counting, they found there were indeed forty-nine coffins.

“The person who built this underground palace must have been dreaming of immortality, of attaining the Dao and becoming a celestial being.”

“Attaining the Dao and becoming a celestial being?”

“That seems to be the case for now. When I looked at the name on the deed for this restaurant earlier, it seemed to have only recently passed into Xu Yaochuan’s hands.”

As Zhong Huayan began to inspect the coffins, the mechanism also started to move.

Her heart lurched. Turning around, she saw the room rotate straight into a tunnel lined with walls, sealing them inside.

“Xu Chuyin, do you think someone may be pressing the trigger?”

He stood perfectly still, his mind racing. Then he patted her shoulder and said, “I remember this restaurant now. My mother’s surname was Nian. It used to belong to the Nian family, and later they gave it to Fu Honglie!”

“Fu Honglie?”

“Didn’t you see the founding record at the entrance? Fu Honglie was Fu Yanyan’s biological father. They say he died in a tomb-robbing accident. Before that, he made a will, and this restaurant was left to the Xu family.”

Xu Chuyin continued speaking in an orderly way, even as the underground palace kept turning and shifting around them.

“I don’t think Xu Yaochuan made this. Look at the cobwebs, and the extent of the damage to Guanyin’s statue. This was probably Fu Honglie! He always believed in gods and spirits, and later he became lazy and ignorant, then developed a taste for antique curiosities. Maybe he built this place. He’d be the most likely one. My mother’s Nian clan never believed in such things; all they cared about was climbing higher in the world. How could they have the nerve for this kind of immortal-cultivator nonsense?”

Zhong Huayan suddenly remembered something.

When she had gone to Fu Yanyan’s treasure-filled estate, her body had also been laid in a coffin, lit by the same eerie blue light. Could it be that some gene had made the Fu family obsess over these Buddhist and divine methods of cultivation?

She could no longer care about the mechanism spinning around them. Standing beside Xu Chuyin, she said, “Dare you open this coffin for me? I want to see whether there’s a corpse inside.”

Xu Chuyin truly thought she had lost her mind...

“What if the person who lit the lamps is hidden in there? We just found fresh blood on the wall where the mechanism turned. That means someone has already been killed. If the murderer is hiding in one of these coffins...”

He thought it was madness, too.

But then Zhong Huayan’s own thoughts turned even darker.

“Impossible. If he were really inside a coffin, then why wouldn’t he kill us?”

“Because I’m a member of the Xu family. He wants to conceal his true identity.”

They stared at each other again, then drew a deep breath.

Together they stood up, looking up at a ceiling covered with talisman papers, and walked toward one of the coffins.

Three, two, one...

One person alone could not move it, so they worked together to lift it. Xu Chuyin even held a knife in his hand, just in case some monster sprang out from within.

“Move aside. I’ll push the stone lid to the floor. Step back.”

Zhong Huayan stepped away and watched as the coffin lid crashed heavily to the ground with a loud sound. The two of them hurried back, scanning left and right with intense concentration. When they found nothing unusual, they covered their noses and moved in to look.

Their hearts thudded violently, and what came into view was...

There was indeed a body in the coffin, its flesh already badly decayed. But the only shocking thing was the flower blooming from the corpse’s forehead, a bloom as beautiful and translucent as colored glass, emerging from the center of the brow in a way that was both eerie and strangely gorgeous.

“It can be concluded that this body belonged to a young girl. A hole was drilled into her skull, and then a flower bloomed from it. The person who built this underground palace really was bloodthirsty. He must have tried more than one method of attaining immortality. Many ancient Chinese texts preserve all sorts of methods that were never actually attempted. He probably wanted to try them all. If Fu Honglie was the one who did this, then he’s already dead! And yet someone still comes every day to light the lamps in this underground palace!”

Even saying this made her shudder. It was so horrifying that Zhong Huayan herself felt creeped out hearing the words leave her mouth.

Then another terrifying thought took shape in her mind.

“Xu Chuyin, do me a favor. Let’s open a few more coffins. I still need to confirm one thing.”

His face was covered in dust, yet he still looked clean and refined.

“Li Yanyan, if we can’t get out of here, can I kiss you once? Little mermaid?”

For the first time, his gaze shone with utterly devout sincerity. Sweat slid slowly from the crown of his head, making him unbearably tempting.

Little mermaid?

But she was not in the mood to listen to any of these damned romance stories.

Besides, she was hardly little.

“No. We’ll get out for sure.”

The light in Xu Chuyin’s eyes suddenly dimmed. Had he been rejected again?

And yet, seeing the longing in her face, he looked toward Guanyin not far away and silently decided that he would protect her, no matter what.

In his heart, he always called her his little mermaid.

Because the way she swam beneath the water, the way she danced upon the stage, was as vivid and lovely as a little mermaid. And her singing voice was equally beautiful, a sound beyond the mortal world, so transcendent that she seemed unlike any ordinary human being.

Without another word, he began prying open the coffins.

Zhong Huayan watched the opened coffins, pinched her nose, and examined each corpse inside. Then she looked up at the man in disbelief and said shakily, “Every one of these forty-nine coffins contains a young girl. I have an assistant named Sweet Potato. She just came of age, and she disappeared this afternoon, likely after being kidnapped. Later, the police discovered she had been transported by car to somewhere near this restaurant.”

“You think she was kidnapped here and used in some ritual? That doesn’t seem right. I suspect this formation was set up decades ago. Could someone be trying to revive it? Honestly, this has already gone far beyond normal human understanding. It’s absurd beyond belief!”

Zhong Huayan walked up to him, her gaze sharp, trying to catch even the slightest trace in his eyes.

“Xu Chuyin, I’ve never believed what you say. You may look young and gentle, but you’re nowhere near as open and aboveboard as Xu Yaochuan. Did your Xu family really kidnap Sweet Potato? Do you even know how to break this mechanism? If we keep wasting time like this, we’ll all starve to death.”

Xu Chuyin looked at her sincerely, raised two fingers, and swore with murmured urgency.

“I swear, the Xu family never kidnapped Sweet Potato. I do know about this underground palace, but I didn’t know there was a Daoist temple here, much less so many corpses! I only saw the mechanism in the restaurant trigger and feared something might happen to you, so I remembered what my mother once told me when I was little and pulled her into the hidden door beside it together! Maybe the blood we just saw belonged to the mercenary following behind you, who fell down below and was strangled to death by the mechanism!”

For the moment, Zhong Huayan chose to believe him. Then she blinked, full of hope, and asked, “Then think carefully. Did your mother ever tell you how to get out of here?”