"Thank you." Qinghan's gaze showed no trace of anything unusual.
My thoughts revolved around him twice. Even though he knows I'm a zongzi, he hasn't rejected or harmed me, nor has he been driven to the brink of madness only to talk to me.
So even if he sees through my identity, it doesn't hinder us from continuing to cooperate.
"You're welcome." Apart from the 'Oops' I shouted when I fell earlier, this is the first thing I've said in the tomb.
"Hmm? Little Fu spoke?"
"Weren't you mute—?"
"It's nothing to be surprised about. She's had a speech loss from living alone for a long time, and now she might be adapting back." Qinghan explained on my behalf.
He clearly didn't want the others to know my identity, so earlier he deliberately lowered his voice to talk about the characteristics of the phosphorus firefly, preventing them from knowing that I don't have a living person's body temperature.
In fact, I can't suddenly start talking just as he said, since I've communicated with the Tomb Robber for many years and still haven't been able to speak.
But Wen Jing and the others immediately accepted Qinghan's explanation and asked me a lot of questions.
"There are monsters in the lake." I kindly reminded them, suggesting they focus more on dealing with it rather than worrying about me.
"No worries, if it dares to come out, I'll dare to turn it into sashimi. Watch me perform a bullet fish cut."
"Can't you stop bragging? To deal with monsters, you'd better rely on the weapons I crafted from the Ban Shan Sect ~"
"Oh? What weapon?" Miss Scream, who had ignored Shunfeng, showed some curiosity upon hearing about unique weapons.
Rarely getting attention, Shunfeng was now hyped up as if he was going to shoot up to the sky. It was Miss Scream paying attention to him.
He pulled out something wrapped in soft leather from his backpack. It looked like a rifle with a scope, except the barrel was somewhat short.
"Wow, you really have a secret weapon!" Wen Jing's eyes gleamed, giving Shunfeng a slap that nearly knocked him down.
"Does the Ban Shan Sect use guns?" In the tomb, I've seen many Mountain Mover Taoists, and none seemed to wield modern weapons.
"Keeping pace with the times, if you don't progress, you regress. To do a good job, one must first sharpen their tools."
Shunfeng untied the leather strap and carefully opened it, revealing a brightly colored water gun with a liquid clip, extremely easy to operate!
"You better give me a reasonable explanation." Wen Jing squeezed his fist, baring his teeth and glaring at Shunfeng.
"The gun is not the focus. The focus is on what's inside the clip." Shunfeng pointed to the water gun clip, which was already filled with liquid.
"What's inside? Holy Water? Divine Water?"
"Nope, it's a homemade super-concentrated 'Plus paraquat'—fatal dose for elephants!"
Taking pesticides into the tomb, he's one of a kind. Although others have brought secret insect repellent powder, the formula is complex, and users won't disclose the powder's ingredients.
He spoke about the simplest recipe in a TV shopping tone, making me want to punch him, what to do?
"Ah~" Shunfeng clutched his head in anguish, while everyone watched my still-raised hand that hadn't yet dropped.
I blinked, trying my best to look innocent. It's not my fault my mind and body are so in sync...
"Good hit, Brother Shunfeng. Note that people who are too high-profile are prone to lumps on their heads." Wen Jing said gleefully.
"Who hit me? Who?" When Shunfeng raised his head, my arm had already swiftly lowered, and it seemed everyone was upset with his act of bluffing, so no one sold me out.
"Did a stone hit me?" Shunfeng looked up into the darkness above, "Uh uh uh uh uh..."
"Hey, did you get a concussion? Why are you mimicking goose calls?" Wen Jing slapped Shunfeng again, who immediately grabbed Wen Jing's sleeve, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling.
Wen Jing and the rest of us followed his gaze upwards, finding to our horror there was a corpse hanging above.
The corpse swayed slightly, most likely strangled by something around the neck.
Drip... Drip...
Water was dripping down from the body; no one noticed before, mainly because no one realized there was someone above.
We chatted here for so long, and it turns out there was a dead person hanging above us the entire time.
When you think about it... it's not unusual at all, as this tomb is filled with corpses everywhere; they're omnipresent, like decorations in an ancient tomb.
But this corpse is fresh; when I encountered the Qin Family, he wasn't here yet, which means he showed up when I went back to deliver the message.
"The corpse has water on it and might have come up from the lake, dying not long ago." Qinghan exhibited no trace of fear or foreboding, he approached the corpse and illuminated the deceased's face with a flashlight, examining it for a while.
"Could it be the monster hung the person here?" Wen Jing stepped back two paces, his body the most robust, wielding a weapon of mass destruction, yet he was quite fearful of the corpse.
"If the monster doesn't eat him, what's it hanging him here for?" Shunfeng retorted with a bad mood.
"You don't get it, do you? Monsters find it difficult to catch people in the lake, it catches one once in a while and makes jerky out of them, to eat slowly."
"Get lost, have you heard of any monster that makes bacon~"
"There's salt on the corpse's surface." Qinghan slashed through what's suspending the corpse, causing it to fall.
This corpse wore no clothes, its body's surface indeed had a layer of white crystalline matter, though the granules were coarse.
"Ahem... perhaps it's a saltwater lake..." Wen Jing became less confident in his speech, there's no sunlight underground, and the water was still dripping off the corpse, not much time had passed since I left. Even if the water on the corpse is saltwater, it couldn't possibly have evaporated so quickly.
To even take it a step further, even if it evaporates, it wouldn't possibly result in such a thick layer of salt.
The corpse felt as if it had been rolled in a bucket of salt.
I touched my head, feeling like my mind sharpened up, ever since the 317 group descended into the tomb, my changes have been increasingly significant.
"This person died from drowning, no other wounds on the body, hanged post-mortem." Qinghan analyzed the corpse meticulously, stating, "The salt on the body shows signs of being smeared, not naturally attached."
"Professor Chen, I recall you weren't a medical student? Are university professors nowadays needed to take side jobs? Is the gardener's life so tough?" Wen Jing disbelief riddled his face.
"He's not a professional, but his observations are meticulous and precise, combined you guys wouldn't measure up to even a tenth of his level." Miss Scream, who was silent for quite some time, started showering Qinghan with praises.
I beg to differ, Qinghan certainly has his merits, but it's the contrast with the others that accentuates his grand image.
Their attention was fully absorbed by the corpse; Qinghan felt intrigued by its mystery, eager to learn who's responsible for turning the corpse this way.
Meanwhile, a few tentacles silently emerged from the lake's surface, ghostly in nature, making no noise this time as they broke the water.