A cluster of dim and unusually twinkling stars caught Duncan's attention.
That cluster of faint light was slightly different from the surrounding starlight. Its illusory and weak light was like a transparent phantom, and its flickering appearance gave people a feeling that it would disappear at any time. Duncan had seen faint flashes in this chaotic space before, but even if those flashes were weak, they would not appear to be so illusory and disappearing.
He frowned slightly.
A faint flash often means a body that has just died, but it is so faint and yet so illusory that it is almost transparent...what does it mean?
He stretched out his finger and gently touched the light.
The next second, he felt his consciousness suddenly crossed a long and endless boundary and was projected from the Lost Homeland into a brand new body. A cold and numb feeling spread from his limbs to his bones, and then the numbness gradually faded away. He began to feel the touch of his skin and the slow beating of his heart.
But for some reason, he always felt that this new body was extremely heavy, and it seemed as if there was a thick curtain between him and others when he was trying to control it. It took him a lot of effort to barely move his fingers, and it took the same amount of effort to open his eyelids a crack.
Everything was dark before my eyes.
Is he blind? Or is he blindfolded?
Duncan subconsciously fumbled and raised his hand, wanting to check the condition of his eyes. As soon as he raised his hand, he felt his arm hit something hard and cold. Then he raised his other arm and hit it as well.
He felt around and finally realized that he was trapped in a...container.
It's a coffin.
Duncan lay quietly in the darkness. After a long silence, he sighed, "Okay, that makes sense..."
Being trapped in a coffin when possessing a corpse is indeed a very reasonable development - the previous two consecutive unrestricted possessions were a rare situation.
But why did it become reasonable at this moment?
A feeling of both laughter and tears welled up in his heart. Duncan seemed to understand a little bit why Agou and Vanna were so shocked and speechless when they faced the "reasonable development on the Lost Homeland". But now was obviously not the time to continue sighing - he had to find a way to get out of this coffin.
Otherwise, he would have to give up this body that he had chosen with great difficulty, and choose another object to possess in that dark and chaotic space, and he would most likely be trapped in another coffin.
Duncan began to move his hands and feet, trying to push open the cover on his head while getting familiar with the perception of this unfamiliar body. Just now, by knocking on the surrounding coffins, he had confirmed from the feedback of the thudding sound that this coffin was not buried in the ground. It might just be temporarily parked somewhere, which meant that as long as he pushed open the cover on his head, he could get out of this place.
However, the coffin lid was more difficult to deal with than he had imagined - the lid was nailed shut and there might even be additional locks, and the body he was currently occupying was too "inferior", and the feeling from his limbs was even weaker than the corpse he had first occupied at the sacrificial site in the sewer. Even moving around seemed extremely difficult, let alone pushing open a nailed coffin lid.
What a weak dead person this was?
"Hey! Is there anyone outside? I think I can still save him! Come on, a doctor - or a medical examiner if that doesn't work..."
Duncan pushed the lid of the coffin above him and shouted helplessly. He didn't mind if this would scare anyone or cause any trouble - after a brief period of adaptation and feeling, he had confirmed that the condition of this body was extremely bad and it was not suitable for long-term use. It was probably the same as the "sacrifice" he occupied for the first time. This was just a disposable body. Since it was disposable... there was nothing to worry about.
No matter who he attracted, as long as he could get up and take a look around, he could even collect some information if he was lucky. Anyway, the worst case scenario was that he would be trapped to death in this coffin, which couldn't be worse.
At this time, he even had time to think about random things, wondering if he should ask Alice for her experience - how did the doll escape from the coffin when the lid was nailed shut and several circles of iron chains were tied around it? Was it just relying on natural supernatural powers?
In the dead silence of the cemetery morgue, the banging sounds and the hoarse, low calls seemed particularly abrupt.
Of course, the guard would not ignore this sudden strange movement.
The door of the guardhouse was pushed open, and the light of a lantern illuminated the path outside the wooden house leading to the morgue. A gloomy old man with sinister eyes and hunched back walked out of the house. He held the lantern in one hand and a high-powered double-barreled shotgun in the other. His yellow and turbid eyes stared at the direction where the sound came from.
"…The cemetery is too busy tonight."
The old man muttered unkindly, casually hung the lantern on the iron buckle at his waist, then drew a triangular emblem on his chest, picked up the double-barreled shotgun and slowly walked towards the coffins.
The coffin was still banging, and the dead man in the coffin was knocking on the barrier between him and the world of the living quite persistently, and while knocking he asked the people outside to help him escape.
"Anyone? Come and help me, I think this is a misdiagnosis!"
"Be quiet!" The guard held a double-barreled shotgun, and the click of the safety being released sounded particularly crisp in the night. The hunchbacked old man stared at the coffin and shouted angrily, "You should sleep - you belong to another world now, and there is no place for you in the world of the living."
The knocking in the coffin suddenly stopped.
Duncan judged the sound outside. It should be an old man, very close to him, and there was also a slight sound of a financial institution bumping into each other, perhaps the sound of a weapon.
It will be easier if you have someone to help you - this way, whether you can go out or not, you will have an extra way to get in touch with information from the outside world.
"Hello, I want to know what's going on here," Duncan cleared his throat, thinking about how to make the most of this body so as to get more information from the people outside the coffin. "I'm trapped in this...coffin, but there must be some kind of misunderstanding. I'm still alive. Listen, my voice is actually quite strong."
"Breathing is a common illusion of the dead. Attachment to the world of the living is a subconscious paranoia left in the cerebral cortex. It is indeed not easy to accept, but Bartok has prepared a better destination for your soul." The old guard stared at the coffin, one hand still holding the shotgun, and the other hand had already quietly outlined the emblem of the god of death in the air. Then he took out a small bag of dry powder from his arms, smeared part of the powder on the barrel of the shotgun, and scattered the rest on the ground. "Lie down quietly, you should have felt sleepy. That is the call of the Lord of Death. Obey it. It is good for both of us."
The content of the teachings of Bartok, the Lord of Death - Duncan silently memorized this part, then cleared his throat and continued to negotiate: "...But I still think I can save him, what if it's a misdiagnosis?"
The old guard holding a shotgun frowned. For some reason, he felt that this "restless man" tonight was different from the ones he had encountered in his career. The voice in the coffin sounded a little too rational, and he even knew how to bargain. But he soon shook his head and put these messy thoughts behind him:
"Excuse me, you slipped and fell from the guardrail of the mine shaft, and fell straight into the mine tunnel a hundred meters deep. The back of your head burst open, and the undertaker took a lot of effort to piece your skull back together. Sir, in my opinion, the difficulty of misdiagnosis is... extremely high."
Duncan listened to the sound coming from outside the coffin and silently raised his hand to touch the back of his head.
"...Okay, I admit that I seem to be seriously injured. This physical condition is indeed not suitable for leaving this coffin." He sighed, "Excuse me."
The old guard was silent for a few seconds, then quietly lit another spare lantern on his waist and hung it on a wooden stake closest to the morgue. He said calmly, "You're welcome. Compared to most restless people, you are still polite."
"Oh? This happens to you often?"
"Every year there are always a few corpses that are unwilling to stay in the coffin. Most of them will try to escape in a violent way, and only a few will try to negotiate to solve the problem," the old guard muttered, "but even those who know how to negotiate are just uttering insane nonsense. The dead always think they can come back to life, but in fact... the door of the great Bartok is not so easy to cross."
The old guard shook his head and kept talking while paying attention to the flame of the lantern on the wooden stake next to him - he knew that the dead had no real sanity, that was just the afterglow of the ghost's obsession, and during the conversation, this "afterglow" was consumed particularly quickly, and when the sanity of the person in the coffin was exhausted, his "extra overtime" for the day would be over.
"The restless, the living dead, and the resurrected, these are three completely different concepts," the old man rambled on, "crossing these boundaries requires amazing strength, great pain, and an extremely rare opportunity. Sir, don't make it difficult for yourself, you can't cross it."