Daomu Biji: Restart

Book 1: Chapter 38: In the Tomb Passage

Fatty patted his shoulder and Poker-Face used it to jump up to the tomb passage overhead. Once he threw the rope down, Fatty and I pulled ourselves up.

This tomb passage really had been abandoned. Looking at it from above, it was easy to see that there were obvious differences between the upper and the lower passages. The murals in this passage clearly werent finished. The lines and color blocks in many places were lacking and there were even a bunch of spots on the walls that werent flat.

The murals were still full of eyes, but we could at least see the contours of the various layers.

Fatty leaned close to the mural, scratched it with a knife, and sniffed it before saying, "The murals here arent finished, so they should be safe." He told us to get out of the way and then snapped one of his glow sticks so it would light up.

The yellow fluorescence was much brighter than our dim cell phone lights. You can never understand that feeling of suddenly going from a dark and oppressive environment to a bright and clear environment. In fact, the glow stick wasnt as good as a cold firework, but I still felt as if the whole space immediately became warm and open.

We looked at the murals for a while, but didnt notice any changes in the eyes. It appeared the photosensitive pigment hadnt been applied here since the tomb passage had still been in its construction phase.

We breathed a sigh of relief and then got out the rest of our glow sticks, snapping them one right after another. As the area all around us lit up, some of the oppressive atmosphere dispersed.

I looked down at my phone, but couldn't find Liu Sang's Bluetooth device at this distance.

I took this time to examine myself. I was covered in so much mud that it was even stuck to my hair and lips. And other than the towel tied around my crotch, I was practically naked.

I looked like a fucking caveman.

Poker-Face was better off, but he was still half-naked. His shirt was gone, but his sweatpants were still clinging tight to his lower body. The equipment bag at his waist was the most complete, but it was also covered in mud.

Fatty was completely naked, which I hadn't even noticed until now. I found that his equipment belt was slung over his shoulder and it was also missing some items. I had no idea when he stripped naked, but he didn't seem to care at all as he mindlessly scratched his crotch. We decided to make a comeback for the first time in years, but didn't expect to find ourselves in such a difficult situation.

The tomb passage on one side had been blocked by mud, so we decided to walk to the other side. After taking a few steps, I found that this abandoned tomb passage was very unusual. It was very long and had obviously taken a lot of manpower to build, so abandoning it must have been a huge waste.

We walked cautiously, but there was nothing in the tomb passage except for some gravel falling from the ceiling. Soon, we reached the end of the passage.

"What the hell?" Fatty was stunned when he saw it. There was a small hole at the end of the tomb passage that was only big enough for one person to crawl through.

The three of us noticed a stone tablet standing by the edge of the small hole that had seal script (1) written on it.

The stone tablet was actually a rock wall and many of the words had been smashed off. Since I was able to read seal script, I could roughly interpret it.

"Those who go more than a hundred meters forward will never return or see the light of day again."

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TN Notes:

(1) Small Seal Script is an archaic form of calligraphy. It was standardized by the Qin dynasty. More info here.

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I'm just sitting here wondering why the fuck they're naked lol. Like, your clothes don't just disappear like that. Poker-face is understandable because his shirt just seems to spontaneously combust whenever Wu Xie is around, but I thought Wu Xie at least put his pants back on after he took his underwear off??? And what happened to his shirt???? Fatty is Fatty so he probably just felt like being naked, who knows lol.

Anyways, we're around minute 10 of episode 8 of the drama for those who care.