Chapter 37: The Return of Wu Yu

"What... is going on?" Fatty and Tianzhen gasped, unable to believe that all of this had occurred silently right before their eyes.

"And over here, too!" The young man gestured toward a door on the other side.

Sure enough, after passing through it, the two were stunned. What met their eyes was a large pool! They had been so mesmerized by the bronze coffin upon entering that they hadn't noticed anything else.

"This is wrong! This isn't the one we came up from before!" Tianzhen exclaimed. "We fought there for over two hours; the traces of the battle were heavy. But this place? It’s completely different. It’s as if these two locations are exactly the same!"

"Yes, you're right," Fatty nodded. "I remember I struck a blow here and left a notch."

"Then what is this? A ghost wall?" Tianzhen couldn't help but ask. "But with the Young Master's Qilin blood present, those things shouldn't dare to come near us."

"It's a mechanism," the young man analyzed. "From the moment we found our way in from the outside, to the path behind us disappearing just now... This shipwreck, after thousands of years of drifting in the bottomless ocean, is still operational! Its core remains, so the mechanisms on board continue to function even after all this time, even with no one left to operate them."

Tianzhen and Fatty nodded, finding this explanation logical. It was the only way to make sense of it all.

"If that's the case, then there should have been people living on this shipwreck originally!" Fatty suggested, arriving at a startling possibility.

"If so, the danger level of this ship is even higher!" Tianzhen struggled to recall any clues, but found none. "Honestly, what did Third Uncle come here for? Taking such a huge risk..."

"For Third Aunt, of course."

The water in the pool churned, and Wu Yu rose into the air, stepping on his Chengying sword to land gracefully before the three of them. "Third Uncle organized a team to excavate this shipwreck years ago, but they failed. A-Ning mentioned this."

"But what A-Ning didn't know was that the mission cost us almost all the most outstanding disciples of the younger generation of the Nine Gates. Only one survived... and that was Third Uncle! That is why, all these years, he has been obsessed with this underwater wreck, wanting to get to the bottom of it once and for all." As he spoke, Wu Yu took out a notebook and handed it to Wu Tianzhen. "Chen Wenjin—I once heard my father say that if it weren't for that incident, she would have been our Third Aunt."

"Brother, are you alright?" Tianzhen stepped forward, excitedly giving Wu Yu a firm hug.

"Yeah, Master Yu, you are truly incredible!" Fatty added, giving a thumbs-up. No one could have imagined that Wu Yu would be able to rush in under such conditions.

"Are you okay?" the young man asked.

"Yes, no problem," Wu Yu nodded.

Sensing the turbulent, surging power of the curse within Wu Yu—which was clearly not as calm as he appeared—the young man walked silently behind him. He knew that by staying close to Wu Yu’s Cursed Eye, the curse would settle down; it might not disappear, but at least it wouldn't cause any trouble.

Noticing this, Wu Yu marveled at the young man’s empathy. After handing the notebook to Tianzhen, he said, "You can take a look at this. It was written by our Third Aunt back then. I found it on the ghost ship. If I’m not mistaken, that so-called ghost ship was the very vessel Third Uncle and his team used when they set sail."

"Good, good. You take a rest, brother, I’ll look at the notebook!" Tianzhen was even more curious now. Meanwhile, the young man sat beside Wu Yu, closing his eyes to meditate. It seemed he was resting, but Wu Yu knew he was looking out for him.

Fatty, however, looked left and right before his eyes fell on the strange bronze coffin. His eyebrows arched. "As the saying goes, 'Mercury spots preserve the burial goods; dragon halls have their count. Sealed coffins and bronze caskets—don't approach unless your horoscope is hard.' My instincts tell me there’s treasure inside!"

However, this bronze casket had no seams at all. It was clearly a legendary "Whistle Coffin." What was inside had to be someone significant to deserve such a burial. There was definitely something valuable, but such caskets usually contained powerful, restless corpses.

Looking at the hole in the top, Fatty wore a lecherous expression. He glanced at the three people in the other chamber, stepped up, and began to undo his belt. "Hehe... let this big stiff taste some of Fatty’s virgin urine first!"

*Whoosh!*

Before he could finish, a cross-shaped projectile was flicked over, striking Fatty in the lower abdomen. His urge to urinate vanished instantly.

"Damn, that stung!" Fatty fell straight off the coffin. "What are you doing, Young Master!"

"It's filthy!" The young man glared at him. "A bronze coffin can only be opened from the inside. The only way is to reach into that hole and fumble for the mechanism. But if you make a mistake, you'll lose an arm at best, or trigger a corpse transformation at worst! And once 'yang' energy enters, the thing inside will likely wake up. There’s no second chance."

"It's that dangerous?" Fatty frowned. "Then why stop me?"

"Because the young man knows how to open this," Wu Yu said with a smile. "The Zhang family's 'Faqiu Finger' from the Nine Gates is the best at opening such caskets. One of the two events that made the Great Buddha Zhang famous was opening seventy-two bronze caskets with his bare hands!"

"Seventy-two?" Fatty was shocked by the number, but his next words made Wu Yu laugh. "Damn, how much treasure did he get!"

"Come to think of it, Master Yu... what do you think about paying tribute to our predecessors? Since the Nine Gates have produced so many legendary figures, why don't we give it a try?" The more he spoke, the more excited Fatty became. "It would definitely be better than us struggling to find ancient tombs!"

Thinking it was a brilliant idea, he slapped his thigh, only to look up and see three pairs of bizarre gazes fixed on him.

"Cough, Fatty, you want us three descendants of the Nine Gates to plot something like this?" Even Wu Tianzhen was left speechless. While Fatty was greedy, he couldn't believe he’d come up with such an absurd idea.

"Wouldn't that be the same as grave robbing our own ancestors?" Wu Yu asked. "Do you really think the nine great families wouldn't have thought to defend against that?"

"Besides, are you stupid? The Nine Gates rose to power within the last century. Even if there were belongings, they wouldn't have taken them to the grave. The predecessors who died either perished in tombs, or those who died of old age were cremated. Any treasures were left to their descendants or sold off. Who would follow the ancient ways and take their wealth to the coffin?" Wu Yu really had nothing to say to Fatty’s logic.

"Sigh, it seems Fatty’s path to riches has been cut short," Fatty sighed helplessly.