?

  The water is icy cold and there's a strange smell in the air, like the smell of a sewer.

  I tried to swim a few more strokes, but my right wrist was still weak and had been numbed by the cold water, I couldn't even feel any pain. All I could do was try to move my knee joint. Just as I started swimming again, I suddenly felt something hard and stiff, I thought I had reached the shore and tried to climb up with my hands, but when I applied some force, that thing slipped away from me with a "plop" sound, and all I heard was the sound of water splashing, and I fell back into the water.

  What's wrong?

  I hastily reached into my pants pocket for the lighter, fortunately it was waterproof. I managed to light the lighter and suddenly a warm orange glow appeared before me. At this moment, I noticed that not far in front of me, there was a vague object floating back and forth on the water's surface. However, due to the weak light from the lighter, I couldn't see clearly for the time being. Just as I was about to swim over, the thing swam towards me by itself.

  My heart skipped a beat as I thought of the human-faced fish that Fatso had mentioned. This underground river was the source of the icy river, could it also have such creatures? I subconsciously reached for the dagger at my waist, only to find that it had long since disappeared, and now I didn't even have a single defensive weapon left.

  Gradually, I found something was not quite right. The thing that floated towards me seemed to be inanimate, because I didn't hear any sound of water splashing, and the surroundings were eerily quiet. That thing appeared to be drifting towards me with the current.

  I knew it wasn't a living thing, so I slightly calmed down, and just then, that thing floated closer. I took one glance over, and my scalp exploded instantly. A corpse with a pale face was slowly sliding towards me. In an instant, I thought of the thing I touched earlier. After messing around for half a day, I had actually been crawling on a corpse.

  As I saw the corpse sliding towards me, I felt a sudden movement to swim aside and avoid the water flow. The corpse brushed against my arm as it slid downstream. After this fright, I quickly raised my lighter to see the situation around me clearly. As soon as I looked, I was stunned, seeing that the water surface where I was now floating was densely packed with corpses. These corpses were indistinct in the darkness, only visible as human-shaped black shadows. Due to the water flow, they were now drifting towards my position in a queue-like manner, scattered all over the place.

  I suddenly felt my scalp tingling, and thinking about the few mouthfuls of water I had just swallowed, I suddenly felt a wave of nausea, feeling so sick that I could have vomited. But now it's clearly not the time for me to throw up, in this brief moment, several corpses have floated past my body, touching the skin of the corpse, only feeling a stiffness and coldness, as if something had drilled into my skin through the point of contact.

  I shuddered and felt that the yin energy here was unusually heavy. I narrowly avoided the corpses that kept floating by, and caught a glimpse of an landing point upstream. I immediately went against the current to head upstream, where there were constantly bodies of various shapes floating over. The clothes on these corpses had long since rotted away, and most of them were exposed, with both male and female corpses present. Most of them were dry and stiff, and due to the temperature, there was no sign of decay.

  As I swam forward, I pondered, why are there so many corpses here? Were they slaves used for burial sacrifices? But I've never heard of anyone placing sacrificial bodies in water; it's already a taboo to have a tomb passage connected to water, let alone putting the sacrificed people in the water. This behavior is also known as "water pouring on the head", and the descendants of the tomb owner will surely suffer great calamity.

  As I pondered the origin of these corpses, my consciousness was distracted and I collided with one of them, instantly feeling a numbness in my chest as if something had crawled inside. I hastily dodged to the side, letting the old man's corpse pass by, just as I was about to examine my chest, the glow within the cave suddenly dimmed, and everything around me turned into a dismal cyan color. My heart skipped a beat as I looked up at the lighter held high, its flame, which had been burning steadily, now only the size of a soybean, yet it crackled and danced in the absence of wind, and at that moment, the bean-sized flame was green.

  I suddenly felt a chill down my neck and thought of what Fatso said about the ghost blowing the lamp, damn it, so many dumplings, which lamp should I light?

  At this moment, I really wanted to slap myself twice, but before I could even lift my hand, the lighter's flame went out with a "pfft" sound.

  The cave suddenly fell into darkness again, and then I felt as if someone was blowing air on the back of my neck, cool and creeping into my collar, scaring me so much that my scalp went numb. I couldn't help but let out a loud cry, and hurriedly tried to light the lighter, striking it several times before the flame finally reignited, still a faint, eerie green color, as if it might go out at any moment.

  I turned around and suddenly stiffened all over. The corpse that had collided with me was now staring straight at me.

  His entire body was floating on the water's surface, his face should have been buried in the water with his head down, but at this moment, his face was lifted up, half of his chin was in the water, and a pair of eyes stared straight at me from his pale white face.

  This corpse should have flowed downstream with the water, but at this moment, it turned a corner. When all the other corpses were drifting away, it was slowly sliding towards me.

  My scalp exploded, and I couldn't care about so much anymore. I swam towards the shore with all my might, while corpses kept floating over to me. I didn't care about that either, muttering "excuse me" in my heart as I stretched out my hand to push them away, blocking that old corpse.

  Just as I was about to reach the shore, a hand suddenly landed on my shoulder. Without looking, I knew what had happened. I was on the verge of tears. The lighter in my hand flashed its green light at this critical moment and then went out again.

  At this time, I felt a stiff and cold body sticking to my back. Immediately after, a numbness spread from the skin, as if something was crawling onto me. The hand that had been placed on my shoulder didn't have much strength, and at this moment, I couldn't care about being scared. I directly threw off the hand and hastily tried to swim towards the shore. However, before I could take a few strokes, a sudden sound of rushing water came from within the cave, as if something was swimming in the water.

  The corpse's hand was thrown open by me, and for a moment it left my back. Before I could catch my breath, the whole person suddenly rose up, turned over in the water, and choked on even more water, making me feel so nauseous that I almost threw up.

  As I struggled in the water, my palm touched something slippery, seemingly a big fish, which reminded me of the man-eating fish in the Qinling Mausoleum. My whole body tensed up instantly, and just as I was about to surface, the thing in the water suddenly charged at me, sending me tumbling all over the place. Due to the darkness, I couldn't see what was attacking me, but I felt that it had tremendous strength, seemingly trying to drown me in the water.

  I was already holding my breath for a long time, and if I continued like this, I would either be suffocated or drowned. Suddenly, I summoned up all my strength, feeling that the thing had swum to my back, seemingly wanting to bump into me again. This time I was fully prepared, and as soon as the water moved, I punched out with one fist, hitting a soft and fluffy mass of flesh. The water flow immediately became chaotic, and I took advantage of this turmoil to quickly surface and gasp for air.

  I don't know what this thing is, I suspect it's probably the man-faced fish that Fatso met. If the man-faced fish lives here, what does it eat? Thinking again about the corpse in the cave, I suddenly feel a chill. If Fatso knew about this, he would make a big fuss.

  I took a deep breath and quickly swam further away, the other hand hurriedly went to light the lighter, it took half a day to ignite, this one look suddenly overjoyed, originally I had already swum to the shore, just need to push my hands to get up.

  I immediately climbed ashore, and didn't even care that my whole body was cold as ice. I hastily retreated to a place farther away from the water, and squinting my eyes, looked into the water under the faint light of the fire.

  All I saw was that the water was still not calm, and that old turtle that had ambushed me earlier was now strangely swimming in circles in the water. Suddenly, I saw many things running out from under the old turtle's body. Upon closer inspection, they were black insect-like creatures similar to beetles. There were thousands of them, all emerging from under the old turtle's body and scattering in all directions.

  That old corpse didn't have any bugs, and suddenly the whole person started sliding down with the water flow. I let out a breath, it seems that earlier was just myself scaring myself, there's no ghost blowing the lamp, I reckon it was just these bugs hiding in the corpse, controlling the movement of the body. And the anomaly when the lighter appeared earlier can also be explained, this lighter has been used for over ten days, and the fuel is almost gone. Depending on the environment, the light emitted by the lighter when there's a lack of oxygen is also different.

  Just then, the lighter in my hand went out again, and the surroundings suddenly fell into darkness.

  I cursed silently, what to do now, it's completely dark, I couldn't help but look up, only to find that the faint flames above were no longer visible. Had the fire dragon on top been extinguished? Damn it, when will that dead fat guy come down?

  I stood on the shore and took a few deep breaths, with a strange smell in my nostrils that wasn't just the smell of corpses, but seemed to be something else.

  After some thought, I decided to make a torch first. I held the lighter in my hand and shook it vigorously. It's said that when a lighter runs out of gas, shaking it violently several times can cause a chemical reaction inside, allowing it to spark once more. I've never tried it before, so for now, I can only hope that's not just nonsense made up by some bored person.

  I shook it vigorously for over twenty times, and tried to light it. To my surprise, the lighter lit up with a normal flame color. I was overjoyed and quickly looked around to find something that could be used as a long-lasting light source. But what I saw made my heart skip a beat - all around me were piles of corpses, which were constantly being washed away by the water flow, then carried downstream, drifting off to who-knows-where.

  I suddenly realized that this might be a tomb pit, but after thousands of years of evolution, the underground river water rose, causing the corpses to be swept away by the dark current. At this moment, I was standing among these piles of corpses. The position where I stood had been washed away by the rushing water, and there were no more corpses, but behind me, the ground was densely packed with corpses. Where the light reached, the shapes of the corpses were strange and varied, and further away, it was a vast darkness, and I didn't know how many more there were.