Chapter 128: Rapid Healing

I pressed my fingertips against my already broken shin, and a wave of pain broke into a cold sweat. But there was no way to keep pretending to endure it; I had to take action.

“Yao, what happened to you?”

Li Zijian hurried over. I shook my head.

“I’m fine,” I said.

When he heard that, he sat down beside me and watched as I pulled things out of my ring one by one—gauze, bandages, anything I thought might come in handy.

I bit down on a strip of gauze and slowly pressed my hand against the snapped bone. If I didn’t restore myself quickly, I wouldn’t last long. In the Ghost King’s game, danger might strike at any moment.

With a hard resolve, I forced the broken bone back into place.

I caught a sudden breath, and trembled as I stared up at the ceiling. Yet even that pain was too much to bear. Darkness crept in, and I fainted. At least I had set the bone before passing out—so I’d only faint, not worse.

Then I dreamed.

In the dream I saw a girl no less beautiful than Nangong Xi smiling at me. I couldn’t stop myself from stepping toward her, and she came toward me as well. She wore a flower-patterned long dress, and her healing smile was so heart-stirring that it moved me.

Suddenly, pain stabbed my calf and dragged me out of the dream, though I was still half-dazed. I could clearly feel a white sphere healing my already injured leg. It was cool and silky; at first it was unpleasant, but gradually I got used to it.

Most of the bone was already mending. I twitched, and woke from the dream.

It was still in the tomb chamber. Nearly everyone had fallen asleep. Only Chen Chen and Li Zijian sat by my side, smoking and chatting.

When they saw me wake, both dropped their cigarette butts and asked, “How are you? You looked badly hurt.”

I touched my leg, where pain still throbbed. “It should be mostly alright now. Nothing serious. You two should sleep for a while.”

Seeing I was steadier, they leaned against the wall and dozed off.

I sat in the corner, bored and restless, lit a cigarette, and watched the rain pour outside. The chamber seemed to block the rain itself—though the storm lashed toward the doorway, not a single drop seeped in.

Honestly, if I had spent the night in that tomb chamber with so many classmates, I still would have been badly frightened. Even now, though I wasn’t as scared, I was still uneasy, half expecting something to burst out of the great coffin at the center.

I checked my phone. It was past two in the morning, yet there was still no signal—likely another trick of the Ghost King.

Then I heard a faint creak. The sound was so slight that if the chamber had not been this quiet, I’d have missed it.

At first I had thought it was just a student stretching and dismissed it.

But before long I heard the same sound again. I went on full alert.

I nudged Chen Chen awake. Seeing his sleepy, bleary face, I whispered, “Shh...”

Chen, after all, had already been through the Ghost King’s trial, and he understood at once. A few seconds later I heard that same creak again—and so did he.

Chen woke Li Zijian as well. The three of us half-crouched, on guard.

“Could it be the coffin?” Chen muttered quietly. That one sentence clicked in my mind immediately. In this tomb chamber, nothing but the coffin boards could make such a sound.

I slowly stood and moved carefully toward it. I didn’t know until I got close: a heavy, oppressive chill seemed to leak out of the coffin.

I told Chen to take a rope from his ring and tie the coffin tightly all around. I didn’t know if it would help, only that it might quiet whatever was inside.

The three of us let out our breath in relief, but the coffin board creaked again.

This time I was truly startled. I grabbed more rope and wrapped it another few rounds. I waited by the coffin for a while, and when it stayed still, returned to the corner.

After all that fuss, none of the three of us could sleep. We smoked and talked idly for a long while.

I thought the night might pass safely without incident, but fate had other plans.

A little after three, the coffin sounded again. This time the noise was loud, waking some nearby students, and even the ropes around it seemed to twitch.

“Go wake everyone,” I ordered Li Zijian. He left at once.

I tightened my own knots again; from Li’s side the job was completed too.

“Hey, you were sleeping so soundly… what happened?”
“Yao, in the middle of the night, are you planning a bonfire party by the coffin?”
“And what’s with all these ropes around it?”

I ignored them and kept my eyes fixed on the coffin.

Suddenly it moved again, and that woke everyone.

No one had weapons out, but everyone rose quickly.

“Now you see it. This ghostly thing may be rising from the dead. Let those who are weaker stand outside and wait. The rest of you stay and face it with me.”

Everyone was already putting aside old grudges now. Our only hope was to survive; old resentments no longer mattered.

“Fine, I’ll stay.”
“I’ll stay too—let me lend you a hand.”
“I can do it as well.”

So they did seem less timid than Chen had said.

“Let’s see what it can do, then decide by the situation,” I said.

The air tightened again; several students drew their weapons.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The coffin planks kept jolting, and my heart pounded in time.

After several violent shakes, the side of the coffin split open with a wide crack. Then, all at once, it blew apart. Wood fragments flew in every direction.

I dodged first and, in the same motion, summoned my Snow Blade.

When the smoke cleared, I saw its form.

It was a gray-black corpse, skin wrinkled and drawn, almost reduced to skin and bone, yet with two enormous eyes that seemed ready to bulge out. Its hair hung in wild tangles. A green silk robe clung to it, suggesting it had once held some rank in life. Its nails, from corpse decay, had grown to nearly ten centimeters.

In that instant, it scared me—and everyone else in the chamber—more than any television zombie could ever do.

I lifted my Snow Blade high and slashed across its upper body, shouting to steady my nerve.

“Die!”

My shout pulled everyone back to alertness, and all of them drew weapons.

At that moment my blade had already cut a deep gash in it. This thing was not as strong as it had seemed.

But the next second, I was speechless. The wound was already knitting shut faster than mine. So this giant was far from easy to kill.

“Keep five people. Everyone else, get out.”

Li Zijian and Chen Chen would stay, without question. The question was whether two more classmates would have the courage to remain.

Thankfully, they did not disappoint. Two students of the Spirit-Flower Second Rank stepped forward willingly.