No wonder the ancients emphasized having a “righteous cause” when taking action. This “justification” for people is like alcohol for the timid—both can boost courage. Those mountain dwellers, previously anxious, believing they had committed the indecent act of digging up someone’s coffin—quite an inauspicious deed—instantly felt they were doing a good deed and accumulating merit after Meng Qianzi’s explanation. Indeed, who would want their grave to be constantly soaked in water? With no relatives or friends, helping choose a better burial site and relocating them, where else could one find such a good deed?

So, abandoning their previous dejection, they inserted the incense sticks and once again took up their shovels, digging with even more vigor.

A deadlock was lifted, resolved so effortlessly. Shen Gun at the other end breathed a sigh of relief, while Jiang Lian here also felt this approach was quite clever.

As he continued walking and livestreaming, he reached Meng Qianzi and complimented her: “That was very smart.”

Meng Qianzi didn’t look at him and pretended to be modest: “I don’t know what being smart means. I just have a good heart, that’s all.”

Jiang Lian didn’t contradict her to avoid encouraging her arrogance.

Many hands make light work. Seven or eight strong laborers wielding shovels like flying, digging up a coffin was a small matter. Soon, everyone worked together and lifted the coffin out, respectfully placing it to one side.

A mountain dweller who enjoyed joking greeted the coffin: “Elder, no need to thank us.”

Everyone burst into laughter.

Only Road Three Bright looked at the coffin with puzzlement, seeming to want to say something but swallowing his words.

After raising the coffin, they naturally continued digging. Those who had been standing on the side took up shovels for this second round. Jiang Lian felt uncomfortable being idle and wanted to help, but Pi Xiu quickly pulled him back, repeatedly saying, “You sit down,” “We’ll handle it.”

Jiang Lian didn’t insist: being close to Meng Qianzi, everyone considered him to have a special status and didn’t dare treat him as manual labor. If he forced himself to work, it would only make others uncomfortable.

Digging soil hardly warranted continuous livestreaming. Jiang Lian wanted to pause, but Shen Gun disagreed, afraid of missing something crucial: “If you’re tired of holding it, just put it in your pocket and take it out when something happens.”

That worked. Jiang Lian put away his phone, not forgetting to mock Shen Gun through the walkie-talkie: “A phoenix nest wouldn’t be under a coffin, would it?”

The phoenix was, after all, a divine bird. Being pressed down by a grave would be too stifling.

Shen Gun still struggled: “It depends on the situation. What if the phoenix nest was deeply buried by continuous landslides? Our current ground level is far from the ancient ground level. Some ancient city ruins are several meters or even more than ten meters deep below modern cities.”

…

Meanwhile, this second group of diggers, having rested for so long before starting, worked with great enthusiasm. In just about half an hour, the pit was almost chest-deep, but nothing was found. Gradually, everyone became less enthusiastic about the idea that “a phoenix would fly out from underground.”

Just then, one of the mountain dwellers thrust his shovel down forcefully, and another dull thud was heard.

This sound was identical to the earlier one when they had hit the first coffin.

Several people instinctively stopped digging, looking at each other with growing unease. One of the younger ones said, “I don’t believe in this nonsense. Let’s dig a bit more and see.”

Meng Qianzi sensed something was amiss. She exchanged a glance with Jiang Lian, and they both walked toward the edge of the pit.

After just a few steps, the situation in the pit became clear. Someone looked up and shouted: “Miss Meng, it’s… another coffin.”

His voice trembled slightly.

Coffin stacked on coffin, directly one above the other—things couldn’t be this coincidental.

Meng Qianzi stepped on the mounded soil at the pit’s edge to firm it, crouched down, and leaned in for a closer look. Indeed, it was another coffin.

Road Three Bright finally approached: “Miss Meng, look at this coffin…”

He pointed to the one dug up earlier, now placed to the side: “It’s very crude, not polished, not painted, just the basic outline of a coffin. Who knows how long it’s been buried here? But the rainy season in the mountains is long. Despite years of water soaking, it shows no signs of decay.”

Indeed.

They had been so focused on moving the coffin and digging that they hadn’t noticed these details. Ordinary coffins in such an environment would show at least some decay after a few years of rain soaking. But the one dug up, including the one still half-buried, seemed to have no such issues.

Others also gathered at the pit’s edge, whispering and discussing among themselves.

Someone said, “Is this borrowing feng shui? I’ve read in novels that if a place has excellent feng shui but is already occupied by a grave that can’t be moved, later arrivals who want to borrow the feng shui would build their tomb above the earlier one, pressing down on it.”

Another person spat: “You call this good feng shui? Mountains on all sides, a depression in the middle—I’d find it oppressive just staying here for a while…”

Someone else was fearful: “Don’t you think this is… Maybe we should stop. What if we dig up something sinister…”

…

All sorts of opinions poured into Meng Qianzi’s ears.

She frowned, saying nothing.

It was unlikely to be borrowing feng shui, as both coffins appeared to be made of similar materials and in the same style, as if produced in the same batch, equally crude.

Should they continue digging?

She thought of all the hardships they had endured, following one thread after another to reach this point. Giving up now would be maddening.

Damn it, keep digging.

Meng Qianzi took a deep breath and said, “Bring more incense!”

As before, she led everyone in bowing three times with incense. This time, she didn’t bother with too many formalities, only saying: “You two are used to being neighbors. If we’re moving one, we’ll move both. At worst, we’ll refill everything as it was and offer you both incense money for eight or ten years.”

After inserting the incense, she called Road Three Bright over and instructed him to assign two people to specifically guard the excavated coffins.

The group that had dug up half of the coffin returned to the pit, but this time with less enthusiasm. They dug in silence, with only heavy breathing and the soft sound of shovel tips pressing into the compact soil.

Jiang Lian walked a few steps to the edge of the site and told Shen Gun what had just happened.

Speaking of Shen Gun, while he was well-versed in all kinds of mystical legends and allusions, he was somewhat clueless about funeral rituals. He had never heard of coffins stacked directly on top of each other like this.

As for the age of these coffins, he had no idea: “In the primitive clan period, they used burial pits—men and women of a clan were all placed in one large pit. But by the time of the Yellow Emperor, there were already coffins and outer coffins. So, finding a coffin underground doesn’t tell us much about when it’s from. Go closer and see if there are any carvings or paintings on the coffin…”

Jiang Lian advised him to give up this idea. Although the second coffin hadn’t been completely unearthed, it visually resembled the first one, both very crude. Forget about carvings or inscriptions; even the edges weren’t smoothed properly.

After waiting a while longer, the second coffin was also excavated. The pit was now a person deep, making it impossible to lift the coffin out directly. People connected hemp ropes for suspension, lifting, supporting, pulling, and calling out in rhythm until they finally got the coffin up. Then, not just respectfully but even somewhat fearfully, they placed this coffin alongside the previous one.

The two coffins stood there, dark and imposing, making everyone feel extremely stifled.

The second group took a break, and the first group went back into the pit. Looking at the time, it was almost midnight.

At such an hour, in the eerie mountains, having dug up two coffins…

A chill ran up Meng Qianzi’s back, and she unconsciously bit her lower lip.

Jiang Lian came over and handed her an open bottle of mineral water, but said nothing. He knew Meng Qianzi was already under pressure. It would be best if this expedition yielded something worthwhile. If it ended with just digging up two coffins, it would surely be a significant loss of face.

The people in the pit could no longer throw the dug soil up directly. A circle of people stood at the pit’s edge, using hemp ropes and canvas to form simple hoisting bags to lift the soil in piles.

Meng Qianzi tilted her head back and gulped down more than half the bottle. The slightly cool water flowed down her throat into her stomach, cooling her frustrated inner fire a bit. After drinking, she crumpled the upper half of the bottle, making it crackle: “I refuse to believe this. Let’s see if they can dig up another coffin for me.”

Jiang Lian, however, was thinking about something else: “After Madam Duan visited the Five Hundred Alley Village, she ‘disappeared’ several times—she met Yan Luo and also checked the mountain registry of Phoenix Mountain, so she must have been here too. With clues provided by Yan Luo, it wouldn’t have been difficult for her to discover the Phoenix Right Eye. Do you think she dug here at that time?”

Before Meng Qianzi could answer, he shook his head: “Probably not. This place doesn’t look like it’s been dug before.”

Meng Qianzi enlightened him: “Dug and undug soil can show differences in the short term, but don’t forget, even if my Grandmother Duan had dug here, it would have been more than forty years ago.”

“After forty years of rain, wind, water soaking, and insects burrowing, how could you tell if it had been dug? And if it was my Grandmother Duan who dug, she would have refilled it very well—that’s the Mountain Ghost sect’s rule…”

Just as she finished speaking, Pi Xiu’s near-frantic shout came from the pit: “Miss Meng, it’s another coffin, the third one!”

Holy crap, Meng Qianzi almost laughed from exasperation. Another one—were they trying to stack like acrobats?

She walked to the pit’s edge to look.

The pit was now about two meters deep. At the bottom, the lid of a coffin was exposed. From its color and material, it appeared similar to the previous two.

A flash of impulse crossed Meng Qianzi’s mind: she wanted to open all these coffins to see who was inside and why they were playing this trick.

But after consideration, she restrained herself: digging up someone’s grave was already immoral; opening a coffin would be even more excessive, like breaking into someone’s home and then stripping them. She couldn’t bring herself to suggest it.

The mountain dwellers in the pit had practically given up. Although they still had physical strength, psychologically, they had reached their limit. Some leaned against the wall, others sat down heavily, but all unanimously turned their faces toward her, with the same question on their faces.

Should they continue digging?

Pi Xiu had a mournful expression: “Miss Meng, if we keep digging up coffins one after another like this, we could dig until dawn and still not finish.”

Hearing about the third coffin, Shen Gun on the other end was also speechless for a long time. Finally, he asked Jiang Lian: “From what you can see, can they continue digging?”

Jiang Lian said quietly: “The mountain dwellers are starting to show emotions, but if Qianzi insists firmly, they should be able to continue.”

Shen Gun pondered for a moment: “Three coffins, stacked directly one above the other in a straight line, don’t resemble any funeral ritual. It seems deliberate, with a sense of sorcery. I’m not sure exactly how many coffins there might be, but in ancient times, there was a saying called ‘three upon three, never ending.'”

“On the surface, it means that one divided by three will never have a finite result. But it aligns with the concept of ‘the Way begets one, one begets two, two begets three, and three begets all things.’ Three represents infinity. If it’s some kind of sorcery using three coffins to represent countless coffins, then this third one should be the last.”

But this was just his speculation; he didn’t dare make a definitive conclusion: “Why don’t you talk to Miss Meng and suggest persisting a bit longer?”

Jiang Lian responded affirmatively: “Having come this far, it would be a shame not to continue. It would be like abandoning a task when it’s almost complete. I’ll talk to Qianzi and see. If necessary, let the mountain dwellers rest, and I’ll dig further.”

Shen Gun exclaimed excitedly: “Count me in, too! I’ll go as well.”

Jiang Lian smiled, put away the walkie-talkie, and looked up to see that the nearby mountain dwellers had already guessed Meng Qianzi wouldn’t give up easily and were again offering her incense.

This time, she didn’t even take it, saying sternly: “Things don’t go beyond three. I want to see what other tricks this mound can play. Keep digging!”

Then she turned to Road Three Bright: “You go down. Replace those who can’t dig anymore. And when you can’t dig anymore, I’ll take your place.”

Hearing her resolute tone, Road Three Bright wouldn’t dare object. He grabbed a shovel and went down. Jiang Lian felt he should also lead by example, picked up a spare shovel from the ground, and also entered the pit.

Seeing this—the boss nearly rolling up her sleeves to join in—everyone knew things were getting serious. They stopped grumbling and enthusiastically set to work again.

Soon, it was time to lift the coffin.

The usual method was to thrust a shovel at the edge of the coffin’s bottom to loosen it completely. But when the shovel went in, it produced a harsh, metallic sound.

Jiang Lian found this strange. He crouched down, reached out to brush away the loose soil, and felt something ice-cold.

The people opposite had already noticed the anomaly and were so shocked they stammered: “It’s bronze, is it bronze? Cast bronze?”

This coffin was normal on the left, right, front, back, and top, but the bottom was invisible because it was completely welded to bronze. It felt as if the coffin had fallen into a shallow pool of molten bronze that had quickly solidified, thus sealing the bottom.

While Jiang Lian was pondering, the people nearby had already cleared away all the loose soil. It was indeed bronze—a bronze cover. They could hear the harsh sound produced by the shovel tip scraping against the bronze surface. Someone even excitedly stomped on the bronze cover, producing a heavy, muffled sound.

Meng Qianzi exhaled deeply: finally, they had dug up something. Fortunately, their persistence hadn’t been in vain.

Just at that moment, Jiang Lian shouted angrily: “Don’t speak! Everyone, be quiet!”

Throughout their journey, Jiang Lian had never been so severe in tone and expression. Everyone was startled and immediately fell silent: partly due to Jiang Lian’s shout, partly because… they had also sensed something unusual.

There was a faint, traversing scraping sound coming from below their feet. Whether it was an illusion or not, it gave people the feeling that the entire ground was exhibiting a weak tremor.

There was something underneath.

This thing, certainly… was not a phoenix.