The place was completely and utterly empty. There was nothing present, not even a chair. It was absolutely bare, to the point where it looked like someone had cleaned the place. There wasn’t even any dust in the corners.

A strange expression could be seen on Xu Qing’s face. Ning Yan blinked a few times. Wu Jianwu’s eyebrows danced up and down.

Ling’er leaned over to Xu Qing and loudly whispered, “It’s so clean!”

The Captain spun to look left and right, feeling increasingly flustered. Something was definitely not right here. However, he managed to maintain superior control over his facial expression, and continued to talk in a very relaxed and casual manner.

“There was never anything on the first floor. Considering how many years have passed, you would expect things to look a bit weathered. In any case, my really good stuff is all on the second floor. I put special protections in place there.”

The Captain hurried to the opposite wall, where he flicked his sleeve. Rumbling sounds echoed out as a stone door appeared. Seeing that the door was undamaged, the Captain breathed a sigh of relief. Placing his hand in front of his mouth, he started licking it to cover it in saliva. At the same time, he provided an explanation for Xu Qing and the others.

“This door can only be opened with my saliva and palm print. Without those two things, nobody can open the door.” The Captain put his hand directly on the door. “Open!”

The door vibrated a few times, but in the end, it didn’t open.

Xu Qing blinked a few times. Ling’er looked at the Captain. Wu Jianwu and Ning Yan were also looking at the Captain.

Surprised, the Captain retracted his right hand. After giving his left hand a thorough licking, he tried again. The door vibrated even more dramatically, but it didn’t open. Beads of sweat were now visible on the Captain’s forehead. Aware that everyone was looking at him, he cleared his throat.

“It’s been a really long time. I guess some parts have broken over the years. It’s fine! It’s totally fine. I have other ways of getting inside.”

The Captain put both hands on the door and pushed, and though the door vibrated even more dramatically than before, it still didn’t open. The Captain’s eyes went wide. Biting his tongue, he spat out some blood. The blood made the door shake violently. But it didn’t open.

Eyes glittering, Xu Qing took a step forward, clenched his hand into a fist, and punched the door. It shook even more violently.

The Captain inhaled sharply. He was starting to get anxious. “What are you people standing around for? Help me! Something is freaking wrong here. Somebody changed the lock on my house!”

Wu Jianwu muttered to himself apprehensively, but in the end, still summoned some of his children.

A bear appeared, as did a parrot, as well as a host of other strange-looking animals. They charged toward the door.

Ning Yan was starting to get a very bad feeling, and started to back away. But then the Captain reached out, grabbed the vines growing out of his belly, and yanked Ning Yan through the air to slam into the door. A boom rang out. Ning Yan had very thick skin, so he wasn’t hurt. And thanks to the force being focused on it, it finally opened a tiny crack.

Looking very nervous, the Captain started spitting out mouthful after mouthful of blood onto the opened part of the door. His blood was apparently an all-purpose tool in dealing with things he had set up in a previous life….

Thanks to the blood, the crack grew wider. Rumbling sounds echoed out as the door eventually swung open, revealing a cave temple beyond.

It was… a complete mess.

A thief had clearly been here. There was junk tossed around everywhere, including broken medicinal pill bottles and overturned book cases. There was also a faint scent of decay. .𝒎

The Captain looked around, flabbergasted.

Xu Qing’s eyes shone as he stepped into the cave temple and looked at the chaos.

Wu Jianwu sighed. Given what he was seeing, he couldn’t hold back from reciting some poetry.

“The delighted ox took the long path back, only to find a home bare and miserable….”

“What Big Jianjian means, Elder Brother Erniu,” Ning Yan said quietly, “is that your home got robbed.”

The Captain turned to look at the two of them, and he seemed so furious that he looked like he might eat them. They quickly shut their mouths. That said, the Captain wasn’t in the mood to deal with the two morons. Looking at the devastation in the cave temple, anger began to bubble within him. That was especially true when he thought back to all the expensive things he had stored here in his past life.

Finally, he sighed, and pretended to be very relaxed. “I predicted years ago that something like this could happen,” he said loftily. “After all, a lot of time has passed. It’s normal for unexpected things to happen. And that’s why I made sure all the best stuff was actually on the next floor, by the coffin.

“This is the second floor, and what’s gone is gone. My coffin, on the other hand, is on the third floor. It’s definitely going to be untouched. Other than me, no one in heaven and earth exists who could open the third floor. Not even a god!”

With that, he strolled to the middle of the stony cavern, where he performed an incantation gesture. The cavern trembled, and then a circular door appeared.

Some of what the Captain said, Xu Qing believed. But he didn’t believe the part about gods being unable to open the door. However, he didn’t say anything. He scanned the floor, then looked at the door thoughtfully. He was about to say something, but before he could, the Captain suddenly coughed up a huge mouthful of blood and staggered to the side.

Snarling viciously, he said, “Very interesting. Someone actually altered this warding spell!”

Xu Qing prepared to step over and help, but the Captain waved him away.

“I don’t need any of your help. I refuse to believe I can’t handle this alone!” Everything he’d said on the way here now seemed like slaps on the face. With his self-esteem crashing and burning, the Captain gritted his teeth. Gruish faces appeared in his pupils, and the faces’ pupils also had faces in them. Apparently, that pattern went on forever.

The area was now surrounded with blue light, as well as an explosively frigid coldness. Approaching the door, he lifted his right hand and then shoved it out. His chest suddenly ripped open as a blue hand with bone spurs jutting off it emerged. There wasn’t just one. A total of eight hands burst out from inside him, along with terrifying fluctuations.

Wu Jianwu and his animal children trembled. Ning Yan was stunned. And the eight vicious blue hands shoved at the door.

Rumbling sounds echoed out. The Captain had set up the warding spells here, and though they had been altered, he still had a higher level of command over them than any other person. The door trembled as glowing cracks spread out over its surface to form a magical symbol. The magical symbol flickered a few times, and then a loud cracking sound could be heard. The door collapsed, revealing a roughly 30-meter cave temple. 𝘳𝑎.𝒸ℴ

Without the slightest hesitation, the Captain flew inside. A moment later, a howl of grief rang out.

It was an intense cry that prompted Xu Qing to rush into the cave temple. Once inside, he gasped. The mess on the third floor surpassed that on the second floor. If the second floor had been ransacked by a thief, then the third floor had been cleared out by a gang of thieves. Everything was in complete disorder. Worst of all, there were some dried-up piles of excrement in a few places.

There was a tall plinth in the middle of the cave, atop which the coffin would normally rest. The coffin had been smashed to pieces, although there was one small part of it still intact, laying off to the side. It was empty. There was no corpse.

The Captain sat down on one of the pieces of the coffin and looked around. He seemed numb.

Seeing that, Xu Qing sighed, walked over, and clasped the Captain’s shoulder.

The Captain looked at him with grief and indignation in his eyes. “Little Junior Brother, my past life… has been stolen.”

Wu Jianwu and Ning Yan entered, and they looked around, shocked.

“Eldest Brother,” Xu Qing whispered, “just calm down. Are you completely sure that your past life body was actually dead?”

He had no idea what it would be like to have your corpse from a previous life stolen. After all, not many people could experience something like that. But he could guess what the Captain was feeling.

Hearing Xu Qing’s question caused the Captain’s eyes to harden. He was a shrewd person, and though it had been a big shock to find that his past life body was gone, after Xu Qing’s question, he started noticing things. His expression turned cold.

“Do you mean that my body might have woken up and done all this? But if I didn’t die in that previous life, then how could I be here in this life? It doesn’t seem to me that your suggestion is very realistic. Unless….”

“Unless some unclean thing came and possessed your body,” Xu Qing said calmly.

“That’s right!” the Captain said, standing. Terrifying fluctuations rolled off him. “I’m the one who usually pulls a fast one on other people. This is the first time someone else has pulled a fast one on me! The chaos on the second floor spread from one spot, so it seems likely it was caused by a single person.”

“And then this third floor…” Xu Qing said, looking at the Captain.

A crazy look appeared in the Captain’s eyes. “Everything on the third floor is focused on the center of the cave. Given the damage here, it seems that the coffin exploded, creating a big shockwave. Only after the dust settled did someone search the place. For this unclean thing to open the doors and change everything shows that they must understand me very well….

“That lets us narrow things down a lot. It seems extremely unlikely that someone broke in from the outside. Instead, an unclean spirit that originated here seems like the most likely culprit. I had a lot of funerary objects in here. Maybe after all the years that passed, one of those objects had some sort of destined opportunity and ended up producing a spirit automaton!”

The more the Captain voiced things out loud, the more everything made sense. A cold light flickered in his eyes.

“That said, this unclean thing really should not have possessed my old body. I ensorcelled that body starting from when it was just born. What’s more, it’s linked to this specific location. Without interference from me, if it leaves the Unfinished Mountains, it’ll collapse into ash. And that means… if it’s still alive, it can’t be very far away!”

The Captain’s cold voice thrummed with killing intent.

Xu Qing nodded, looked at the cave walls around them, and opened his mouth to speak.

The Captain beat him to it. “We need to determine if this thing sensed that we were coming.”

The Captain performed a double-handed incantation gesture, causing streams of light to spring up everywhere, allowing him to connect to the warding spells. A moment later, he gave a cold harrumph.

“There are no signs of any fluctuations leaving this place. This unclean thing might have some control over things here, but in the end, this is my tomb!”

The Captain spat up another mouthful of blood, then lifted his right hand and snapped his finger. The blood he had just coughed up turned into a geomantic compass. The needle on the compass spun, then pointed it in one specific direction.

“Anything connected to my blood can be tracked using this bloodline compass!”

All of a sudden, the needle shifted to point at Ning Yan.

Ning Yan’s face fell.

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