The bookshelves in front of me collapsed in pieces, and the clanging of metal against metal sounded like a death knell to me.

I don't know what the problem is, but I know that given the construction methods of the Demonic Monk's Tomb, the collapse of these bookshelves is no accident.

To prevent any problems with the weighing stones later, I stuffed the immortal scripture into the sealed bag I carried with me and ran back as fast as I could.

The moment I stepped onto the horizontal stone, a large bell fell from the sky.

"Thump—"

The bell crashed to the ground, shattering the stone slab behind me. The tremors and the sound of the bell made me stumble and fall onto the crossbeam.

Song Laosan and the monkey were also affected by the noise. They didn't know who had caused the problem, but the horizontal stone suddenly tilted to one side.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pottery jar hurtling towards me. I don't know where it got the strength, but it spun around on the tilted stone slab.

Although I dodged the falling pottery jar, my body slid to the other side along the stone slab covered with a thin layer of ice.

As my body sank, my view of the stone walls on both sides was immediately replaced.

Just when I thought I was about to die, Song Laosan suddenly appeared in my sight and grabbed my arm: "Hold on tight!"

Driven by a strong will to survive, I grabbed Song Laosan's arm with all my might. At that moment, the monkey also ran over and grabbed my clothes on the shoulder.

With their combined efforts, my body was gradually pulled up, but before I could even grab the edge of the rock wall, I felt a hand grab my leg and pull me up by my clothes.

I turned my head and saw a man's corpse. His facial skin had rotted away, leaving only half a face. His sunken eye sockets and gaping mouth were filled with worm-like fleshy growths, which, like flies attracted to rotting flesh, were wriggling wildly toward me.

At this moment, the horizontal stone is still tilting downwards, and the pottery jar on it has shattered in the collision, with all the burial objects inside sliding down the stone slab.

In the chaos, I reached out and grabbed at something, which I found was a stick. I hurled it at the corpse puppet.

"Bang!"

The stick struck the corpse puppet's head with a dull thud, and its rotting flesh splattered onto my face, filling my nostrils with a nauseating stench, but its movements remained completely unaffected.

"Bang! Bang!"

Before I could swing my arm again, two gunshots rang out above my head, and the puppet's two hands broke off. Then I was dragged up.

The gunshots made my eardrums ache, and as soon as I climbed up, I felt a huge tremor from the ground.

I knew this meant one end of the boulder had hit the bottom, and I yelled hysterically at the two of them, "Run! Run!!"

Actually, I didn't need to shout; they could sense that something was wrong because the entire hall started shaking. So the three of them began to run towards the hall's exit.

"Splash!"

Just then, we heard the sound of iron chains swaying behind us.

I instinctively turned my head to look and found that something was wrong with the lotus platform.

The lotus flower made of gold had now turned from a blooming flower into a closed bud, and the corpse sitting on it was gone.

It was only then that I realized that the evil monk had already prepared for the tomb to be robbed.

Once the mechanism here is triggered, his body will be drawn into the coffin below.

And this pagoda of bliss, built at the cost of countless slave lives, will become his tomb.

Just as I was about to look away, I saw several corpse puppets leap out from where the horizontal stone had sunk and rush toward us.

Although these corpse puppets look like humans, they run like monkeys, and the exaggerated twisting of their limbs is chilling.

"Bang bang bang!"

Song Laosan fired continuously, but when he realized he couldn't kill them, he turned and ran.

The shaking of the main hall made every step we took difficult, and I don't even know how I got to the exit.

Although I knew the dangers of this tomb extended far beyond this main hall, I still felt inexplicably excited when I saw the hall's entrance so close by.

Just as I was about to charge out in one go, the monkey next to me let out a scream and was pounced on by a corpse puppet.

"Bang!"

I swung the stick in my hand and smashed it violently on the head of the corpse puppet, knocking it off the monkey. Immediately afterward, another corpse puppet pounced on me.

"Gulp!"

With no way to avoid it, I was violently pounced on by the corpse puppet, and I could see white worms surging between its nose and eyeballs up close.

The corpse puppet pressed me to the ground, opened its mouth wide and made a sound of bones grinding, and raised its two hands high, grabbing at my neck.

I didn't have time to resist, and I instinctively closed my eyes.

A second later, I felt nothing unusual in my body. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the puppet's hands were flailing about five centimeters in front of me, but it couldn't get any closer. However, the worms it was spitting out were getting longer and longer.

"Bang!"

A foot wearing a leather boot appeared in my line of sight and kicked the corpse puppet away.

That's when I realized that the puppet was dragging an iron chain behind it, limiting its movement to the entrance of the main hall.

"Stop standing there and do your damn thing! You really think I'm Rambo?"

Old Song kicked the corpse puppet aside, grabbed my collar, and dragged me out of the main hall.

"Splash!"

The corpse puppet inside seemed unwilling to let its prey escape, and continued to charge forward, dragging its chains, before being smashed down by a falling boulder.

"Boom!"

As the pillars inside collapsed, stones from the top of the hall began to fall like raindrops.

"Run! Keep running!"

I scrambled to my feet and ran headlong toward the temple entrance.

The tremors from the collapse of the main hall triggered the security mechanisms in the courtyard, sending arrows flying everywhere.

After rushing out of the courtyard, to prevent everyone from being accidentally injured by the traps, I pulled the two of them to squat in the corner.

Hearing a thunderous roar behind him, the monkey gasped, "Damn it, what's going on in this tomb? There are actually dead people who can come back to life! That thing is incredibly strong. After it pinned me down, I didn't even have the strength to resist. Luckily, they were chained up, or we would all be done for!"

"Whoosh!"

I leaned against the wall, panting heavily. The intense activity during the escape made me feel like I had swallowed a piece of burning coal; my lungs were burning, and my stomach was churning, making me want to vomit.

I'm not celebrating my survival right now; I'm pondering what the monkey said.

Since there are corpse figurines in this tomb, the tomb owner should have used them as tools to guard the tomb. Why then did he imprison them with iron chains?

Unless, of course, these corpse puppets were not meant to kill tomb raiders, but rather to serve as living mechanisms to pull the chains behind them.

But what kind of mechanism could be even more terrifying than these corpse puppets?

Before I could figure it out, Song Laosan suddenly shoved my arm: "Xiao Duan, look up at the top of our heads!"