Chapter Sixty-Five: Gold!!!

His voice was low, yet his tone was incredibly urgent. Without a moment's hesitation, we immediately switched off our flashlights, which were useless in any case.

"What's going on?" Fatty whispered.

"There's light ahead," Peanut said, stopping in his tracks.

I suddenly recalled something. "Wait, didn't Yang Lang hang up glow sticks in the brick chamber earlier?"

By my estimation, those sticks should still be glowing. However, after I spoke, I peered intently into the distance, only to see thick, impenetrable darkness.

"That's not lamp light," Peanut said from the front.

Fatty muttered, "Brother, I don't see anything at all."

Then, Peanut said something that made us want to cough up blood. "I don't see anything either."

"This... if you didn't see anything, why are you so sure?" I thought to myself that he was just making everyone nervous.

Peanut didn't answer, but Fatty chimed in, "What do you know? This is what we call 'instinct,' right, Flower?"

Peanut gave a faint laugh and continued, "It’s just a guess. The wax cocoons in front of me are getting thicker. These things don't like light; unless it's very bright ahead, they wouldn't congregate like this."

I understood Peanut’s intention immediately. He had us douse the lights to prevent us from being spotted instantly. Now that we were in the dark with the situation ahead unclear, we had to remain vigilant.

"I think these wax cocoons are coming to an end. Don't move yet; I'll go out and take a look." With that, Peanut seemed to let go.

Fatty, having been bored for ages, immediately lowered his voice and called out, "Erkang... don't go..."

"Are you sick?" I jabbed my knee into Fatty’s plump backside.

"Touching my butt won't help, miss. Our fate has come to an end; I must go after my Flower now." Fatty kept up the act, clearly a fan of Qiong Yao dramas.

He managed to amuse both me and Zhuge Xuan. However, Peanut had been gone for quite a while, and there was no response.

After waiting for a bit, I started to feel that something was wrong.

"Fatty, do you think something happened to Peanut?" I asked.

"What could happen to him?" Fatty replied. "Though, it might be that it's too dark here and he can't find his way back to us."

I grew nervous again. Zhuge Xuan suggested, "Should we just go out?"

"No, if we move, we might invite trouble." Whenever there was a disagreement, Fatty was sure to stand against Zhuge Xuan.

I also felt we shouldn't act rashly, so I turned to Zhuge Xuan and said, "Let's wait a little longer."

"Humph, what a man, not a shred of backbone," Zhuge Xuan said, her tone turning sour. "Always listening to others. Be careful you don't even know how you end up dead."

"Hey, come on. You don't have to target me like this." I felt quite depressed. "This isn't a game. One mistake and we could lose our lives. Do you think I enjoy being stuck in these dead men's webs?"

"Tsk, I knew you were this kind of coward from the start. Let me go, I'll go out myself." As she spoke, she began to pull her hand back.

At that moment, I really had the urge to just let her go. Damn it. Is my life easy? I was just an ordinary young man, forced by my ancestors to go grave robbing. The journey was dangerous enough, filled with things that defied all logic. My dad kept secrets from me, Peanut wouldn't tell me the truth, and there was a fatty ridiculing me. Now that I’d finally met a delicate girl, she was berating me for being useless. I...

Once I finished that thought, I realized I might actually be quite useless.

In the end, I suppressed my frustration and gripped Zhuge Xuan’s hand tightly.

"If I let you go, everyone might get into trouble. If you want me to let go, you’ll have to chop my hand off." I made my stance clear: I wouldn't let go even if I died. Aside from the reason I gave, deep down, I didn't want to see Zhuge Xuan in danger.

I had expected her to struggle desperately, but once I tightened my grip, she went still.

Just then, Peanut’s voice came through.

"You can all come out now."

Hearing that, it turned out he wasn't far away at all. This guy really... he’d been gone for so long without a word, causing me to get scolded.

I intended to let go, but suddenly noticed that Zhuge Xuan was gripping me tightly. Her behavior made me nervous, so as I walked forward, I kept an eye behind me, wary that she might suddenly bite me.

Sure enough, the further we went, the denser the wax cocoons became. They were light, but in that final stretch, they were so thick they actually provided resistance.

But these concerns were forgotten the moment I stepped out of the cocoon layer.

"Uh... oh, ah... uh..." Seeing the scene before us, Fatty nearly fainted.

Zhuge Xuan and I stood frozen, staring in utter disbelief.

As we stepped out of the cocoon layer, a golden light washed over us. Looking around, everything was flashing with gold, nearly blinding me.

We weren't looking at the seven brick chambers from before, but a relatively small burial chamber. The floor, walls, dome, and furnishings were all gold. In the center stood a dragon-eyed phoenix made entirely of solid gold. I didn't know how much gold was required to forge the radiance before us, but there was no doubt that everything here, even the dust on the floor, was gold.

Some say the luster of real gold is not blinding. But you cannot fathom how magnificent it is when the entire world around you is enveloped in it. In that moment, I even felt a sense of dread.

Surely, when Peanut first saw this, he must have been shocked as well.

Gold brings out beautiful fantasies in people. At that moment, facing the dazzling light and holding Zhuge Xuan’s hand, I felt like I was floating.

With so much gold, how much money would that be? Why worry about so many questions? With all this, would there be any mystery left in the world to trouble me?

Setting aside the gold bricks all around, the gold artifacts on the floor alone were enough to last us several lifetimes.

Especially that dragon-eyed phoenix in the middle; its value was beyond measure. I had previously thought those brick carvings held deep meaning; it turned out they were just a blatant expression of wealth.

"Why would this place be a treasury?" Peanut wondered aloud.

Fatty could no longer hold back. Like a man who had lost his soul, he stared blankly ahead and slowly walked forward.

Peanut still had his guard up and tried to stop him, but at that moment, he couldn't. Fatty had already lost his mind, becoming a servant to this gold.

If Zhuge Xuan hadn't been holding onto me, I would have run over too. I’d never lacked money growing up, but faced with such a scene, the greedy side of human nature was fully exposed. I was already hallucinating about my future life of luxury.

"Hiss... hiss..."

What was that sound?

My heart gave a jolt, and I snapped out of my trance.

"Hiss, hiss..."

The sound echoed, like the song of a phantom, and the more I heard it, the more familiar it became.

"Did you hear that?" I looked around.

Peanut looked at me, confused. "Hear what?"

I froze. "What? You didn't hear it?"

My hair stood on end. The sound I was hearing now was exactly like the low moan of the monster Fatty and I had heard in the circular corridor earlier.

Back then, we had both heard it clearly, and that thing had slaughtered tens of thousands of red-eyed rats in an instant. Now, the sound was even clearer, yet Peanut claimed he couldn't hear it.

This... I looked at Zhuge Xuan. "You can't hear it either?"

Zhuge Xuan finally pulled her gaze away and shook her head at me.

For some reason, I felt a deep, overwhelming sense of unease. Peanut told me to calm down, and I quickly recounted what we had encountered earlier.

Before I could finish, Peanut seemed to realize something. He looked around, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper.

Suddenly, an image flashed in my mind.

I remembered when we first came down, before Yang Lang died, he had written a single character... "Gold."

Gold?

A thought flashed through my brain, and at the same time, Peanut realized it too. We both shouted at Fatty, who was just about to reach out and grab the golden dragon-eyed phoenix:

"Stop!"