We held our breath and peered into the coffin, hearts pounding with anticipation.

Inside was… nothing.


No gold or silver treasures, no preserved corpse, not even a single jade burial artifact. Only a thick layer of dust, dancing in our flashlight beams.

Time froze.

A crushing wave of disappointment seized our hearts like an invisible fist.


"No… impossible…" Mike broke first. He collapsed to his knees, pounding the floor with his fists. "It's bullshit! All of it! FUCK! We've been played!"

Leo stood frozen, gripping the coffin's edge, his eyes vacant. All his knowledge, his deductions, his scholarly confidence had led to this empty, mocking conclusion. Everything he believed in crumbled in that moment.


I felt hollowed out, the sheer absurdity of our journey leaving me too numb even for anger.

While Mike raged and Leo stood catatonic, my eyes caught a tiny detail.

In an obscure corner of the coffin's interior, beneath the dust, something was… embedded.

A black scale, no larger than my thumbnail and thin as a cicada's wing. Though pitch black, it reflected light with an otherworldly sheen, distinct from the surrounding bronze and dust.

What was it?

Just as I opened my mouth to alert the others, everything changed!

The fully opened coffin lid had triggered some hidden mechanism.

RUMBLE!

The entire floating palace—the entire cavern—began to shake violently! Stone fragments rained from the ceiling as cracks spiderwebbed across the jade floor. One by one, the iron chains connecting us to safety snapped with thunderous cracks!

The whole structure was collapsing!

"RUN!" Leo's desperate shout broke our paralysis.

We had to get out immediately!

As I turned to flee, something snapped in my mind—I couldn't leave empty-handed!

Acting on pure instinct, I clawed at the black scale, prying it from the coffin wall with my fingernails. I clutched it tightly in my fist.

Without looking back, we sprinted toward our only escape route.

We burst from the crumbling palace, leaving behind the empty coffin that had brought us nothing but disappointment and destruction. The last chain snapped, and the entire jade structure plummeted into the abyss with a thunderous roar.

With no way back, we could only press forward toward the entrance. With our last reserves of strength, we ran for our lives.

The entire tomb complex shuddered like a dying beast, roaring its final defiance.

The ground heaved beneath our feet. Rocks and stalactites crashed down like deadly rain.

We tore through the Seven Star chamber. The bronze coffins had burst open, spewing not treasure but jets of caustic black smoke.

We raced through the Echo Stone cavern, where the shattering formations no longer mimicked our voices but screamed with the combined sounds of a thousand tortured souls.

We sprinted beneath the puppet dome as thousands of wooden figures crashed down around us like macabre hailstones.

We charged through the mushroom chamber, where the massive purple growth had shattered, releasing a deadly cloud of spores. We held our breath and ran blindly forward.

We dashed across the clay warrior pit, where the animated figures were being crushed by falling rocks yet still reached for us with undying hands.

We slipped through the Eight Gates chamber as the bronze doors slammed shut behind us, nearly catching our heels.

We splashed through the River of Forgetfulness, now flowing backward into the cave, not caring whether the centipede creatures still lurked beneath.

Finally, we reached the almond-scented passage. The tunnel convulsed around us, stones raining down from the ceiling, threatening to entomb us with each passing second.

Daylight gleamed ahead!

A heartbeat before the tunnel collapsed behind us, we burst through the waterfall entrance, our bodies slick with blood and filth.

The frigid cascade pounded our shoulders, washing away blood and grime, shocking our frayed nerves back to sanity.

We had survived.

Exhaustion hit us like a sledgehammer. We collapsed at the pool's edge, letting the cold water numb our battered bodies. I couldn't have lifted a finger if my life depended on it.

Back in Xi'an, we spent days recovering.

Strangely, our brush with death never became a topic of conversation. Instead, it became a taboo none of us would touch. We developed an unspoken agreement to treat the entire adventure as a complete failure, best forgotten.

Mike remained himself—still devouring steaks and downing beers, still referring to himself in the third person. But if conversation drifted toward our adventure, he'd cut it off: "Bad luck to talk about that mess!" and change the subject. Leo threw himself into new research areas, never again mentioning pre-Qin occultism, as if the tomb where his knowledge had failed was merely a footnote in his academic career.

They were both, in their own ways, desperately trying to forget and move on.

Only I couldn't forget.

I couldn't shake the vision of the beautiful woman, couldn't forget the whisper that had echoed in my mind beneath the mushroom, couldn't erase the memory of the puppets' strange caresses. And I couldn't forget the black scale I'd pried from the coffin—the scale I'd kept hidden all this time.

A week later, I locked my bedroom door and examined my only "souvenir" under the dim glow of my desk lamp.

The scale was tiny—no larger than my thumbnail and thin as a cicada's wing. Though pitch black, it caught the light with an otherworldly sheen.

I held it closer and gasped. Beneath its mirror-smooth surface were countless intricate patterns, finer than human hair and seemingly natural rather than carved. They resembled either an ancient script or a miniature star chart—impossible to decipher.

I traced my fingertip across the cold surface. A drop of blood welled from a cut I'd received days earlier while cleaning my gear.

The crimson droplet fell directly onto the scale.

What happened next defied explanation. The blood didn't spread across the surface—instead, like water on parched earth, it was instantly absorbed, vanishing completely.

In that instant!

An arctic chill exploded from my palm, racing up my arm and surging toward my skull with unstoppable force!

Simultaneously, that ethereal feminine voice whispered directly into my mind.

But this time, it held no warning—only ancient resentment and terrible satisfaction.

Pop!

Without warning, the bulb above me shattered with a sharp crack.

Darkness engulfed the room.

A voice whispered against my ear: "Found you at last, my love… debts of passion from past lives must be repaid in this one."