Chapter 24: The Chamber of Echoes

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Although Cheng Xiangru had already witnessed Leng Ying’s talent for giving people “surprises,” he was still profoundly shocked when he saw her bring the hammer down once and smash a hole straight through the thick brick wall.

Now he finally understood why Big Tiger and his gang of scum were so terrified of Leng Ying. Even with superior numbers, they had still fled in disgrace.

So Leng Ying was not human at all! She was clearly a monster—a huge monster!

Leng Ying did not notice the utterly stunned expression on Cheng Xiangru’s face behind the billowing dust. She raised a hand and waved it in front of her face, then picked up the flashlight from the floor and brought it to the opening, shining it into the room beyond.

After staring for a while, she let out a soft exclamation. She seemed to have discovered something, but her voice was filled with confusion.

Cheng Xiangru came to his senses and stepped forward to see for himself.

Leng Ying moved aside and nodded at him, her expression somewhat grim.

Puzzled, Cheng Xiangru leaned toward the opening and shone his flashlight inside. His expression changed at once.

On the other side of the brick wall was another underground chamber. It too was filled with pottery jars scattered across the floor. Two of them had been smashed by the bricks Leng Ying had sent flying, and thick black liquid was slowly spilling everywhere. Whatever creature had emerged along with the liquid was blocked from view by the other jars.

Cheng Xiangru crouched slightly and raised his head, peering diagonally upward. He saw that there was not the slightest opening in the ceiling of the chamber.

There was no grave-robbing tunnel in the room next door. That meant no one could be inside.

Then where had the sounds they heard earlier come from?

“What do you think?” Leng Ying apparently decided there was no need to keep smashing the wall. She removed the hammerhead, wrapped it up again, and stuffed it into her travel pack. Then she twisted the metal rod, causing it to retract until it was only about half a meter long.

Cheng Xiangru furrowed his brow and carefully recalled the sounds they had just heard, but they now seemed hazy, almost as though those sounds had been nothing more than an illusion.

Yet one person might hallucinate sounds. Two people hearing the same hallucination was another matter entirely.

“Could there be another brick wall on the other side?” Cheng Xiangru asked quietly.

Leng Ying shook her head and answered with absolute certainty, “No.”

A chill crept up Cheng Xiangru’s back, leaving him shivering with dread.

There obviously could not be anyone in the room next door. Could it be… haunted?

At that thought, Cheng Xiangru widened his eyes and looked at Leng Ying. His lips moved and his throat bobbed, but before he could say the words “haunted,” he swallowed them back down.

If the place really was haunted, there probably was nothing to fear. Surely even ghosts would be afraid of a monster like her, right?

Leng Ying noticed his strange expression. Frowning, she raised a hand protectively in front of her chest. “What are you trying to do?”

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The question brought Cheng Xiangru out in a cold sweat. “I… I want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

This doubtful tomb was simply too bizarre. Strange insects were being raised inside the pottery jars, and they could even faintly hear voices and footsteps in the chamber. Cheng Xiangru did not dare imagine what even stranger things might happen if they stayed any longer.

Besides, if Boss Zhou and the others were definitely not in the room next door, then they were very likely connected to the gunshots and screams they had heard earlier. They might even already be facing a life-or-death crisis.

The thought made Cheng Xiangru unwilling to remain there for even another moment. He only wanted to return to the surface as quickly as possible and investigate the place from which the screams had come.

“Let’s go!” Leng Ying disliked the environment as well and wanted to leave as soon as possible.

However, when the two of them returned to the grave-robbing ladder in the center of the chamber, they once again heard those faint yet eerie sounds at the same time.

They exchanged glances. Neither climbed the ladder. Instead, they held their breath in unspoken agreement.

“Rustle, rustle… gurgle, gurgle… tap, tap, tap…”

The sounds were faint, but complicated.

Cheng Xiangru looked around, trying to determine where they came from, but he could not distinguish their direction at all. It felt as though the sounds were coming from every side.

Forget it. There was no time to worry about them!

Just as Cheng Xiangru was preparing to climb the ladder, he suddenly noticed something and froze.

The thick black liquid was still flowing slowly, and all of it was moving toward him. His position was precisely the very center of the chamber.

Suddenly, a flash of insight illuminated his mind.

He remembered that the Mechanisms Scroll had once described a special kind of chamber: lower in the middle and higher on all four sides, with a gently curved floor and a domed ceiling. It was called an echo chamber.

Inside an echo chamber, anyone standing at the very center could hear sounds from every corner, and the chamber would amplify them as well.

Cheng Xiangru suspected that this was very likely an echo chamber.

To confirm his theory, he slowly walked to one corner. Bracing himself, he gradually crouched down and listened to the sound within one of the pottery jars.

He had no idea what was inside, but a faint “gurgle, gurgle” came from within, as though bubbles were constantly forming.

Cheng Xiangru leaned closer to another jar. This time, he heard a faint tapping sound, as though a fly were mindlessly flinging itself against the inside.

Just as he thought!

Cheng Xiangru stood up and let out a long breath of relief.

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“What did you discover?” Leng Ying noticed that the panic in Cheng Xiangru’s eyes had faded somewhat and hurried to ask.

Cheng Xiangru returned to the center of the chamber and explained what he had discovered.

This was an echo chamber, and each pottery jar contained a different creature, producing a different sound.

Those sounds were amplified within the echo chamber and ultimately converged at the center. Blended together, they formed noises resembling human speech and footsteps—so much like a haunting that they had mistaken them for ghosts.

Leng Ying was somewhat surprised after hearing Cheng Xiangru’s analysis. “How do you know so much?”

Cheng Xiangru did not want to reveal anything about the five copied volumes, so he could only brush the question aside. “I learned it from my father when I was little.”

“Oh, that explains it.” Leng Ying nodded repeatedly, apparently accepting the answer without suspicion.

With the mystery of the strange sounds solved, the two of them no longer had any misgivings. They climbed the grave-robbing ladder one after another.

The ladder was set inside the grave-robbing tunnel, with its sections joined together at angles. It was not easy to climb.

Cheng Xiangru had never undergone this kind of training. On top of that, the travel pack on his back was heavy, and his bulky clothes made it difficult to move. He climbed with great effort.

By comparison, Leng Ying behind him was far more agile. Not only did she climb swiftly, she even helped him at the end, forcefully lifting and pushing him until he reached the surface.

Cheng Xiangru felt embarrassed to be helped by a girl. But then he remembered that this girl was a giant monster, and the embarrassment vanished.

What ordinary girl could possibly be this ferocious?

The air outside was fresh and cold. It invigorated Cheng Xiangru, but also made him shiver.

He lay on his back in the snow, gasping heavily. Only after resting for quite some time did his breathing gradually return to normal.

He stood up again and slowly closed his eyes, hoping to hear some sound that might help him determine which direction to take next. At the same time, however, he was afraid of hearing gunshots and screams again.

Leng Ying sat on the ground, listening intently with a furrowed brow. She seemed to be struggling with the same conflicting emotions.

Yet the thing one feared most often came to pass.

At that moment, gunshots rang out from the southwest, tearing through the stillness of the night and reaching Cheng Xiangru’s ears with startling clarity.

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