Chapter 56: The Bronze Crying Face

Everyone immediately raised their flashlights and shined them toward the swarm of red eyes.

Their scalps tingled violently!

Not far straight ahead was a wall, upon which crawled dozens of children with furry faces, pointy, monkey-like mouths, and eyes weeping blood. Their bodies were entirely hidden in the darkness, devoid of visible limbs, floating suspended in mid-air.

I shouted at the top of my lungs.

"Fall back, get out of here!"

Everyone was just about to turn and run backward.

Suddenly!

Strange, piercing shrieks of "trrr-trrr-trrr" echoed in our ears, accompanied by the beating of wings.

Like dozens of miniature airplanes, the red-eyed children swooped down toward the crowd at lightning speed. Without the slightest hesitation, they launched a ferocious attack upon us.

At this moment, everyone finally managed to make out their bodies.

They were not children at all, but ferocious flying raptors with human-like faces.

There was no escaping now!

They had blocked off the entrance through which we had just come!

"Ah!"

A miserable scream rang out.

The scar-faced bodyguard covered his head with his hands, an expression of extreme agony contorting his face as blood instantly seeped out between his fingers.

Mantis Luo shielded Jiang Sheng'er with one hand, his dagger flashing like a silver snake as it darted up and down in a blur of cold light.

"Slash, slash, swish..."

Several sounds rang out.

Three or four raptors were either stabbed to death or severely slashed, tumbling down onto the ground.

With my shovel, I batted one away and drove off several others, reaching out with my other hand to press Xiaoyao's head tightly against my chest.

"Light the torches!"

Just as my voice fell.

"Crack!"

A raptor that attempted to attack my head was deflected by a backhand swipe of mine. Its body veered off course, but its razor-sharp beak happened to strike my arm. With a fierce peck and a wrench, it actually tore a chunk of flesh clean off, sending spasms of intense pain racking through my entire body.

Fatty Dong was relatively lucky. Because his position was closest to the corner of the wall, he had escaped their assault and managed to ignite a torch first.

The torch flared up abruptly!

The moment these creatures caught sight of the firelight, they showed extreme terror. Abandoning their attacks one after another, they let out bizarre screeches and scurried about in panic.

Taking advantage of this golden opportunity.

Everyone else quickly lit their torches.

The brilliant firelight illuminated the entire underground secret chamber down to the tiniest detail.

Terror-stricken to the core, the creatures flapped their black wings and surged outward like a tidal wave, vanishing completely into thin air in the blink of an eye.

The ground, the walls, and even our clothes were covered in the foul-smelling excrement of these flying beasts.

As for the place where they had previously roosted, it turned out to be a large movable wall, densely riddled with forty or fifty honeycomb-like cavities where these fierce, monstrous birds rested.

No wonder we had only been able to see their faces earlier without spotting their bodies—their entire torsos had been completely concealed inside the nesting holes.

Everyone breathed a slight sigh of relief.

Aside from Fatty Dong, Xiaoyao, and Jiang Sheng'er, everyone else had sustained injuries.

Especially A-Long, the scar-faced man, whose head was bleeding profusely, causing him immense distress.

The fellow prepared to pull out the Yunnan Baiyao hemostatic powder and bandages from his pack.

It was far too dangerous here, so I couldn't be bothered to deal with them. I walked quickly toward the movable wall and called out to Fatty Dong.

"Push it open!"

The wall, which functioned like a revolving door, was covered in bird droppings and grime, yet through the passage of years had somehow retained a degree of lubrication. The two of them pushed it open without exerting too much effort, revealing a passageway behind it.

Upon seeing this, Jiang Sheng'er and the others didn't even dare to bandage their wounds anymore and hurriedly hurried over.

Once past the wall, seeing that the movable panel had automatically swung shut again, cutting off any possibility of the raptors charging through, I finally relaxed and came to a halt.

Xiaoyao hurriedly produced ointment and bandages to dress my wound.

With a disgusted expression on his face, Fatty Dong wiped the guano off his hands onto the wall.

"Little Meng, what the hell are these things? Owls?!"

They were not owls, but tomb-owls.

The *Classic of Mountains and Seas* once mentioned the owl, describing it as a malevolent bird that devoured its own mother, born in dark and gloomy nether realms, and deathly afraid of fire.

These things were most likely a mutated subspecies of owl.

In Han dynasty tomb murals, images of tomb-owls were sometimes painted, as the ancients believed they could not only suppress tombs but also serve as guides for the soul, leading the tomb owner to ascend to heaven.

However, no one had ever kept real tomb-owls inside a mausoleum.

For no other reason than that they were utterly perverted, specializing in eating the eyes and brains of humans and animals alike, and indiscriminately devouring the living and the dead alike (which was precisely why I had instinctively pressed Xiaoyao's head against my chest in the very first second).

No tomb occupant wanted to end up as contents in their bellies.

I briefly explained this to Fatty Dong.

Jiang Sheng'er frowned and asked.

"Little Meng, since tomb-owls feed on eyes and brains, why were so many of them kept in the secret chamber beneath the main coffin of the Marquis of Guo Wu?"

I retorted ungraciously.

"Why don't you make a phone call and ask the Marquis of Guo Wu!"

I found this matter deeply bizarre as well.

The secret chamber had been specially constructed with a wall of tomb-owl nests, clearly serving as a massive animal-based anti-theft barrier designed to deter people from entering this passageway. Once intruders broke into the chamber and caught sight of dozens of red-eyed children's faces, the faint-hearted would be scared off immediately, while the bold ones would be gouged blind and slaughtered alive.

To set up such a defensive barrier proved that the Marquis of Guo Wu was intimately familiar with the ferocity of tomb-owls, and naturally, he also knew their vicious habit of joining the feast even if it meant devouring the tomb owner himself.

Why on earth would the Marquis of Guo Wu rather have his own corpse destroyed than let anyone enter?

There was only one possible reason: behind this passageway lay something far more important than the Marquis of Guo Wu himself!

At the thought of this, a fierce fighting spirit surged deep within my chest.

This Western Zhou tomb had caused both my older brother and sister to perish in utter defeat; I was damned well going to turn this place upside down!

Having just encountered the tomb-owls, the group remained terrified that some other ghost-like apparition might suddenly pop out, and as they walked forward, no one dared to extinguish the torches in their hands.

The passageway sloped steeply downward and was coated in slippery moss, making it impossible to stand upright.

The six of them could only slide downward like people grass-skiing down a high mountain.

Upon hitting the floor, we arrived at a narrow space where only two people could walk abreast. While not particularly long, it gave a heavy sense of claustrophobia and oppression, and the sound of waves lapping against a shore seemed to echo faintly in our ears.

Xiaoyao's pretty face wore a look of curiosity.

"Brother, could this passage be built inside an underground river?"

I shook my head.

"I don't know."

Having advanced merely ten meters or so.

We noticed that the walls were embedded with a vast quantity of bronze masks, densely covering both sides like some museum gallery showcasing mask culture.

They were remarkably well preserved.

Shamans, ghosts, spirits, and demons—all kinds of images were present. Their expressions were exaggerated and grotesque, yet every single one of them had their eyes tightly closed, with tear grooves carved into their cheeks, presenting a deeply unsettling sight.

I instantly halted my steps.

"Something's not right!"

Fatty Dong asked, "What's not right?"

I turned to Jiang Sheng'er and demanded.

"Are you certain the Marquis of Guo Wu was a man of the Western Zhou?"

Jiang Sheng'er replied with unshakeable certainty.

"The bottom-of-the-chest treasure clues passed down by the Old Skin Sect—how could they possibly be mistaken about the identity of the tomb's occupant?"

I pointed at the bronze masks lining the wall.

"Several key characteristics of Western Zhou bronze masks: bronze inlaid with jade, dignified and solemn majesty, and cast using the piecemeal mold method."

"Yet not a single one of these masks is inlaid with jade, their appearances are demonic and chaotic, and they were crafted using the lost-wax method and gilded craftsmanship—a technique that simply did not exist during the Western Zhou period!"

Historical textual research showed that gilding technology (mercury amalgamation gilding) first appeared in Warring States tombs.

For example, some of the bronze wares in the Marquis Yi of Zeng tomb in Suizhou bore traces of gilding.

The two eras were separated by six or seven hundred years.

It was tantamount to a modern smartphone suddenly appearing on a burial goods inventory from the Ming dynasty.

It completely defied logic.

Everyone listened in utter bewilderment.

I had no desire to elaborate further.

"These are typical Warring States bronze masks!"

Hearing this, Jiang Sheng'er and the others exchanged glances in dismay.

Fatty Dong scratched his head.

"Well... Little Meng, these gilded bronze masks—wouldn't they be worth a lot more if we pried them off?"

Before I could answer Fatty Dong.

Xiaoyao suddenly tugged at my sleeve.

"Brother, they've opened their eyes, and they're crying. They look so pitiful."

We shined our torches upon them.

A spine-chilling and horrifying scene unfolded before our eyes.

The bronze masks, which had previously been tightly shut-eyed, were now all staring at us with wide-open eyes, gazing at us with infinite grievance. Their expressions seemed immensely sorrowful and aggrieved, and silver-gleaming tears were welling up and dripping down plop by plop!

Fatty Dong's complexion altered drastically as he raised his hand and dealt a vicious slap across the cheek of a bronze mask beside him.

"Damn it! Your Grandpa Dao hasn't even started prying you off yet, what the hell are you crying for?!"

An ominous premonition suddenly surged violently in my heart!