In the darkness, someone was quietly weeping; someone else was trembling without cease. Every time their eyes closed, horrible images floated to the surface — skulls pierced through, blood spraying, brain matter spilling out — like a nightmare, or like a ghost that would not leave, hovering endlessly in the mind.
The sight of their classmates dying in agony could not be forgotten. Those brilliantly red blossoms of blood. That desperate, unwilling despair. Those eyes that could not close. Those young faces — surfacing in the mind’s eye again and again. Four years of shared study, thirteen living lives, all departing forever on the same day.
Though they were temporarily safe for now, many simply could not calm themselves — in fact the terror had only grown deeper. The classmates who had perished in agony, the savage divine crocodiles — they kept appearing in the mind. Perhaps for the rest of their lives they could never forget.
The interior of the Ancient Bronze Coffin was pitch black. Female classmates were crying; male classmates were sighing. Though they had escaped, the road ahead was shrouded in uncertainty, impossible to foresee.
Nine Dragons pulling the coffin — toward where? Where was the far shore? Where was any paradise? No light had been seen yet; already the sea of suffering stretched without end. Were they travelling along the ancient road once walked by the divine ones? The place where all the gods returned — what manner of place would that be…
Only after a long while did the interior of the bronze coffin grow quiet. By Earth’s reckoning of time, it was now deep in the night. Everyone was exhausted to the core, their spirits slack. One by one they drifted into a fitful sleep.
Many were still anxious and frightened in their dreams, their hands gripping the divine relics tightly — as though to gain from them some support and comfort.
It was a tormented night. Many found it impossible to sleep soundly, jolted awake repeatedly by nightmares. Some of the women woke from tears. It was not that they were too weak — what they had endured was simply too terrible. Many things, no matter how shocking they might sound, remain nothing more than a story when merely heard of. But when experienced firsthand, it is an entirely different matter.
A group of city-dwellers whose daily lives were utterly comfortable had been plunged without warning into such a nightmarish ordeal — an unimaginable shock to the mind. To witness with their own eyes the demons of legend; to see the bodies of their companions devoured; to watch the people around them die one by one — how could they not be afraid?
Even Pang Bo, a man who was usually carefree and boisterous, could not sleep — not from terror in his heart, but because he was repeatedly woken by the people around him. Ye Fan was the same, finding sleep nearly impossible: those beside him muttered in their sleep or wept through nightmares, making rest impossible.
After only five or six hours, the vast majority had awoken. After another two hours had passed, the mood of the group gradually settled into something slightly calmer. At this point, no one knew where the Ancient Bronze Coffin was traversing in the cosmos. Each person began to confront the practical questions before them.
The Ancient Bronze Coffin moved with remarkable steadiness, without the slightest tremor — as though it had long since come to rest somewhere in the stellar domain. Would there be a next stop? Perhaps it might go on drifting forever in the desolate depths of the universe.
“What kind of place will we reach?”
They had wept, they had vented — and even those classmates who were more delicate by nature had no choice but to begin thinking through this question.
“Will we reach the place where the divine ones returned?”
The Ancient Star Path had been pioneered by those who came before. In that far-off distance ahead, perhaps there truly were divine beings — it was possible they would reach a mysterious world.
“Do gods truly exist? We have already seen the Nine Dragons pull the coffin, seen the Great Thunder Sound Temple of legend, seen the Ancestral Crocodile of myth — there is no rational reason not to believe. Yet I still find it difficult to accept this reality. By my understanding, the divine ones may simply be a race — a people who perhaps once shared this Earth with us.”
As people of the modern era, almost none of them had believed in the existence of gods — and yet now they had no choice but to face the question. Hearing Wang Ziwen say this made it somehow easier to accept.
“Perhaps, for us, those divine ones are not entirely unfamiliar. They may be the product of a specific evolutionary path of humanity itself — possibly the very ancient figures whose names we have long known.”
“Whether it was evolution or a special race, we cannot deny that there are indeed divine beings in existence — and clearly the ancient ancestors of mankind had long since been in contact with them.”
At the summit of Mount Tai stood the Five-Colored Altar, built by those ancient ancestors. Countless ages ago, the Three Sovereigns, Five Emperors, and seventy-two kings had already ascended Mount Tai to conduct the grand sacrificial rites of Heaven and Earth — and this alone spoke volumes.
“Perhaps those divine ones were our own ancestors…”
The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors were god-like figures from the most ancient era — legend holds they were divine beings themselves. One could imagine, then, that ascending Mount Tai for the grand sacrificial rites was not so simple a matter — many possibilities existed.
Perhaps they were calling out to life among the stars, transmitting some kind of signal into the desolate cosmos.
Perhaps they truly could soar through the sky and burrow through the earth. Perhaps the ancient land had come to feel too constraining to them, too small — and so they climbed to the heights of Mount Tai and departed Earth, entering the vast depths of the universe.
Perhaps the Earth was nothing more than a way-station — a place where those beings, both human and divine, paused briefly — a single leg of a journey within their immeasurably long lives.
Perhaps…
What had truly transpired in that distant ancient age, no one could say with certainty. Everything was merely “perhaps.” Only one thing was undeniable: the ancient ancestors had already opened the star gate and ventured into the boundless depths of the universe.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
The Ancient Bronze Lamp had already been extinguished; the interior of the bronze coffin was pitch black. The group had not spread too far apart — everyone was at close proximity. Ye Fan noticed that the person right beside him had been leaning against the coffin wall in complete silence, and this drew his attention.
“What’s the matter — still bitter about the beating I gave you?” Pang Bo was highly displeased. He said with a cold laugh: “You nearly shoved Ye Fan off the Five-Colored Altar and almost cost him his life. A thrashing was getting off lightly — otherwise, tossing you into the midst of the divine crocodiles wouldn’t have been too much.”
“Hey, wake up — say something.” The person next to him gave him a push.
Yet what no one expected was that not only did this person fail to respond, but under that push, he toppled sideways to the ground with a heavy thud.
“You — what’s happened to you?!” The one who had pushed him recoiled in shock, stumbling backward several steps.
At this point, everyone sensed that something was terribly wrong. Even if someone were fast asleep, a fall like that would have woken them. Yet he still lay completely motionless, lying there quietly — like a piece of dead, withered wood.
“Wake up — wake up!” Pang Bo stepped forward and gave him a push. Seeing no response, he patted the man’s cheek — and suddenly cried out in alarm: “His skin is ice-cold — and his body is starting to go stiff!”
At those words, everyone felt a chill run from the crown of their head to the soles of their feet. A terrible premonition arose in each of their hearts.
Ye Fan felt something was gravely wrong. He reached out and felt at the man’s mouth and nostrils — and then stared blankly for a moment before speaking: “He’s dead. His breathing stopped long ago.”
“What?!” Everyone cried out at once.
How could a living, breathing person simply die like that? Not long ago he had still been muttering in his sleep, still suffering through nightmares — and yet now, silently, without a sound, his life had slipped away. It was deeply suspicious.
A crushing sense of tension and dread fell over the interior of the Ancient Bronze Coffin. In the darkness, the group breathed in ragged gasps, their bodies running cold. This was too sudden, too uncanny — inexplicable. Everyone gripped the divine relics in their hands tight.
“Light up your phones — let’s see exactly how he died.” As Ye Fan spoke, he raised his own phone, using its faint glow to peer forward.
What it illuminated was a pallid, ashen face — eyes protruding, wide open and staring, mouth hanging slightly agape. A few tiny threads of blood had seeped from the corner of his lips.
“He really is dead…” Everyone was crushed and terrified. This sudden death made every single person feel a chill creeping up their back. It seemed as though something frightening existed within this bronze coffin.
Several of the bolder classmates began to examine the body, looking for the cause of death.
“Look — his neck…”
His throat was a mass of dark bruising, the skin there mottled with traces of blood. It looked as though someone had strangled him — the dark violet marks were seared into the eye.
“A ghost — there’s a ghost inside the bronze coffin!” a female classmate said in a trembling voice, her inner terror overwhelming, her words soaked with dread.
Those words made not a few people’s scalps prickle. The dark violet bruising looked uncannily like fingerprints left by a vengeful spirit — it bore every sign of a person choked to death.
Especially in these circumstances — everyone locked inside such a coffin — the thought bred only more terrifying doubts and imaginings. The coffin within the coffin was not far away; it loomed like the gate of the underworld, sending cold into the marrow. Many took several involuntary steps backward.
Ye Fan frowned and reached out to feel at the body’s throat. He found that the Adam’s apple itself had shattered — soft and yielding there, the skin alone still intact, not torn open. Faint traces of blood marked his hand — vivid and eerie to behold, sending cold seeping into the heart.
“This was no ghost — someone killed him!” At that very moment, Liu Yunzhi’s voice came out, grim and flat, carrying these words — and his cold gaze swept toward Ye Fan.
Pang Bo noticed his eyes land on Ye Fan and immediately shot him a sideways look. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”
“Judging from the wound, he was strangled by a person’s hands. Who could do something like that without making a single sound?” Liu Yunzhi’s expression was icy. He stared at Ye Fan and Pang Bo. “Only someone sitting closest to him, with extraordinarily powerful hands, could have pulled it off!”
Those words left little ambiguity — the implication was clear. The suspicion was directed straight at Ye Fan, for it was known to all that he had been right beside the deceased, and his physical constitution was extraordinary, his hand strength unusually great.
“You’re talking complete nonsense!” Pang Bo was furious. He snatched up the Great Thunder Sound Temple’s bronze plaque, ready to bring it down on him.
Liu Yunzhi gave a cold laugh and looked at him. “So you want to help kill me and silence me?”
Ye Fan held Pang Bo back, stopping him from acting on impulse.
“It was Ye Fan — Ye Fan killed him!” The female classmate who had consistently taken Liu Yunzhi’s side, who had on multiple occasions spoken up for him and for Li Changqing, cried out in a panicked voice: “It must have been Ye Fan — this is revenge. Revenge for nearly being pushed off the altar!”
At those words, the others immediately thought back to the events that had taken place not long ago on the altar, and several of them instinctively stepped back several paces.
“That’s right — it was Ye Fan. He killed a classmate!” Li Changqing said through gritted teeth: “And perhaps there’s someone here who helped him!”
Pang Bo felt a sudden overwhelming urge to charge over and beat the life out of all of them.
Hmmm!
Liu Yunzhi raised the vajra treasure pestle in his hand, which suddenly emitted a metallic hum. The faintest traces of radiance flowed from it. Everyone was startled: the divine relics in their own hands had all lapsed into complete ordinariness, unable to emit any light at all — yet Liu Yunzhi’s vajra pestle still held divine power. That was far beyond what anyone had anticipated.
“Ye Fan, you are truly vicious. Even if he was in the wrong first, you had no cause to strike back with lethal force…” Liu Yunzhi gripped the vajra treasure pestle and advanced two steps.
“Do you believe me when I say I didn’t kill anyone?” Ye Fan swept his gaze across the group.
“I believe you — naturally!” Pang Bo was the first to step forward.
“So do I.” Zhang Ziling also came forward.
Ye Fan looked toward the others. “Do none of you believe me?” Then his eyes lingered on Li Xiaoman.