I sighed and said to myself,

That being said, I still couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. How long had it been since I last opened a coffin? I took a deep breath and walked over, immediately noticing that the inside of the sarcophagus was in a strange state. Generally, coffins either had rotten cotton wool or a pool of black water with fungus in them. The inside of this sarcophagus, however, was like a reef parasitized by barnacles. The layers of densely packed barnacles looked like calluses, and the corpse was lying on its side on top of them. All the exposed bones were also covered in barnacles, so it was impossible to see what the body looked like.

I carefully examined it and found that it was an undecayed skeleton. The head looked like it had been mummified, the lower body had already turned to white bones, and the barnacles had flourished so much that they were even in its mouth. When I shined my flashlight there, I could see that they had even grown all over its throat, which immediately made my own throat ache.

Fatty tapped the corpse with the crowbar and found that the barnacles had formed a kind of husk in many places. But the most bizarre thing was the corpse’s ear.

We could see that on the side of the corpse facing us, there were seven ears. They were arranged in a particularly strange way and seemed to extend all the way to the neck and back of its head. I initially thought it was some kind of strange mushroom, but Fatty pried the corpse’s head up with a crowbar and looked at the other side, which turned out to be normal.

The seven ears were facing the big sound amplifier above the coffin. There was the constant rumble of thunder outside and it sounded like countless people were talking all around us. Fatty swallowed and looked at me, at a complete loss for words.

I looked down and found that each ear had a hole in it like a normal ear. But when I took a closer look with my flashlight, I saw that these ears had been artificially made from the ear bones, mandible, and skull. The shape of the ears was really just skin that had been cut with a knife.

This person didn’t have a deformity. In fact, the seven ears seemed to be a special kind of decoration that was similar to a tattoo.

Such a wild and ancient form of worship was rare in the Central Plains, but everything seemed to indicate that this ethnic group worshiped sound.

The tomb owner's clothes had rotted away, but I could tell that this was a burial style of the Central Plains. Fatty tapped on the bottom of the coffin with the crowbar to see if there were any funerary objects underneath. The barnacles broke apart as soon as he hit them, allowing him to reach the bottom of the coffin.

But the bottom was empty.

It wasn’t uncommon for a coffin to be empty, but Fatty still seemed excited for some reason. He appeared to have found something and quickly shined his flashlight on it. Generally, the space under coffins was used to hide gold and luminescent pearls. It was often only palm deep, and had buckets filled with pearls or gold dust. But the space under this coffin couldn’t be illuminated with our flashlights.

"It’s a fucking well," Fatty said. He used the crowbar to continue poking around the rest of the coffin bottom. We found that there was a deep, rectangular well under the coffin with a stone pillar sticking up from the bottom. It was apparently the only thing holding the body up in the air since the whole area around it was empty.

There also seemed to be something hanging on all the well walls.

I didn’t know if the stone pillar supporting the corpse was strong or not, so I didn’t dare step on the corpse. I grabbed Fatty’s belt as he placed two feet on the edge of the coffin and poked his head into the gap between the coffin and the corpse like he was doing push-ups. He used one hand to hold his flashlight as he looked down. He was gasping for breath and trembling as he said, "It's all bronze pieces of varying sizes. They look like scales." He handed me his flashlight and then took a few pictures with his phone before coming back up and showing me the photos.

I pulled him up and started looking at the photos, which showed an amazing sight. Row upon row of countless bronze scales were neatly hung on the well walls below. Many of them had fallen to the bottom of the well, and some places had been damaged enough to reveal the rock wall behind.

Almost all the bronze scales had corroded into one solid piece, and thousands of layers of rust bloomed everywhere.

"It's time to test your ability to talk nonsense after all these years, Mr. Naïve. If you don’t come up with a theory today, I’ll definitely lose sleep."

I lay down on the edge of the coffin, trying to get into the same position as the corpse so I could listen to the thunder. At this time, the sound seemed completely different. The thunder above reached my ear and mixed in with the echoes in the underground well. The whispers that were originally incomprehensible seemed to become clearer, like people talking.

Although I still couldn’t hear them clearly, the talking sounded so very realistic that I broke out in a cold sweat. I realized that this thing might be a device for translating thunder. By using this bell and the deep well below, we could translate thunder into sounds that could be understood.

It was fucking nonsense, but it still felt amazing.I took Fatty's crowbar and tried to knock off all barnacles on the body and inner walls of the coffin. Without these obstacles, the sound became clearer and even resonated throughout the ancient tomb. I actually felt that this wasn’t thunder, but the mountain talking to me through the resonating thunder.

And it seemed to be a human voice that was becoming clearer and clearer. As I listened carefully, Fatty said, "Maybe the thunder here speaks in the Fujian dialect. I’ll listen."

Just as I got out of the way so that he could listen carefully, a loud clap of thunder suddenly sounded outside, instantly echoing in the tomb. Even I heard it clearly this time.

Wu ~ Xie ~ Wu ~ Xie ~ Wu ~ Xie ~

The voice that was calling seemed to be saying "Wu Xie".

Fatty and I looked at each other, and then he grabbed me and ran away. “What are you doing?!” I shouted.

"You idiot, it must be haunted! Run!" Fatty said.

He had a point. How was it possible that thunder was calling my name? If someone was calling my name in that tomb, then it really was haunted. When we rushed out of the grave robbers’ tunnel and into the rain, Fatty started cursing, "I fucking told you we can't come by ourselves! See?! We already ran into a problem! I don’t even have any donkey hooves!!!”

We scrambled out, rolling and crawling as we rushed into the dark, wild forest. But before we had gone a few steps, lightning flashed and we saw a man in a poncho standing with his head bowed in the rain.

There was another flash of lightning right after that, and Fatty and I screamed in terror, "Uncle Yang!!!”

The two of us didn’t bother stopping as we rushed past the man while protecting our heads. But the man caught the back of our collars at the same time, pulled us back, and dropped us to the ground.

As it rained harder and another flash of lightning lit the area, he lifted the hood of his poncho. Poker-Face looked down at us with an expressionless face.

****