SES Chapter 149 Part 2

Luo Ren just grinned. “Trade secret. Even Aoki and Yuris tried to figure it out together—they never got it.”

Mu Dai pouted. “Not even going to tell me?”

Luo Ren pinched her chin. “Nope. I made up my mind long ago—pass it to sons, not daughters; to sons, not wives. You want to know? Ask your son someday.”

Mu Dai laughed out loud, and he joined her. After a while, he said, “Alright, let’s check out the tunnel.”

The opening wasn’t round or square—just big enough for one person to crawl through. When he shone the flashlight in, it was pitch black.

Luo Ren ran his hand along the tunnel wall and frowned.

Mu Dai asked, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s not dirt,” he said. “It’s stone.”

He had thought they’d broken through to softer ground that would be easier to dig—but he was wrong.
He pointed to the chunks of rock they’d just pulled out. “This tunnel—and the one we’re in now—they’re both made of stone. The dirt blocking the entrance must’ve been added later, from outside. There’s no soil connected here.”

He lifted the flashlight and examined the wall closely.

Mu Dai thought for a moment. “So this tunnel and the stone passage—it’s natural? Like one of those underground caves?”

She’d seen enough documentaries to know about spelunking—natural cave systems that stretch like veins beneath the earth.

Luo Ren gave a wry smile. “No. This was carved.”

The marks of chisels and hammers were clear—it wasn’t natural at all.

And judging by the sealed entrance, made with layers of soil and stone, this wasn’t someone trying to dig their way out. It looked more like someone had dug from somewhere else—toward this place.

And wherever that “somewhere else” was… it wasn’t a way out.
It was probably worse—a dead end.

Mu Dai realized it too. She looked up at him.

He looked back at her.

And then, for no reason at all, both of them burst out laughing.

When the laughter faded, Mu Dai sighed. “Just our luck.”

Bad luck for them—and for whoever had been trapped here before.

She slumped down to the ground, leaning against Luo Ren, head buried in his chest, too tired to move.

He gently ran his hand over her hair.

After a while, a faint beep-beep alarm went off. Mu Dai couldn’t even be bothered to wonder why. Then she heard the rustle of wrapping paper. Luo Ren brushed her hair aside and pressed a piece of chocolate to her lips.

“Dinner time. Here’s your meal.”

Mu Dai didn’t feel hungry.

Luo Ren said, “If we both went hungry starting from the same time, you’d starve before I would. And you’ve already gone without food longer than me. You’ve got to hold on and keep me company—that’s your mission.”

Mu Dai laughed, took a bite of chocolate, and sat up. “Don’t you ever get disappointed?”

Luo Ren shrugged. “It is what it is. Let’s see what’s inside.”

He stood, handed her the flashlight, snapped a glow stick for himself, and drew a knife.
“You wait here,” he told her. “When you see me wave the glow stick from the other end, then come in.”

“Be careful,” she said.

He smiled. “Do I really need to be told that?”

He exhaled, got down on his stomach, and crawled in.

The passage was tight and stifling—his chest felt crushed, making it hard to breathe. But it wasn’t long.

Mu Dai saw the dim light of the glow stick flicker from deep within the tunnel.

She crawled in right after him—faster, if anything. When she reached the end, Luo Ren grabbed her arm and pulled her up.
“There’s a body,” he said. “Brace yourself.”

Even with the warning, when the flashlight beam hit the pile of bones, Mu Dai still shivered violently.

She quickly turned the light away. The walls were stone. It looked like a pit—one side carved flat, covered in dense ancient characters. When she shone the light upward, she saw a bronze dome overhead, like an ancient canopy.

Her foot brushed against something. She picked it up—it was a flat, triangular arrowhead. Luo Ren took it, studied it, then suddenly threw it upward.

A clang rang out.

“Bronze,” he said.

He crouched, tapping the ground with his glow stick, then picked up a few more things—one was a round coin with a square hole, another long and narrow with a ring at the end, shaped like a knife.

Mu Dai blurted out, “That’s a Qi Kingdom knife coin!”

Luo Ren blinked. “How do you know that?”

Mu Dai looked surprised. “When I was in school, our class did a play about Qu Yuan. There was a scene where a corrupt minister accused him of taking bribes from Qi. The line was, ‘Grand Minister of the Three Families, you’ve taken the Qi Kingdom’s knife coins—now you speak for them!’ It stuck in my head. I even looked up what they looked like afterward.”

Not just Qi’s—she’d looked up all the ancient coins from the Warring States period.

She took the round coin from his hand, weighing it in her palm, tracing the raised characters around the square hole.
“This one’s a Ban Liang coin from the Qin Dynasty. After Qin Shi Huang unified the currency, this was the official coin across the empire.”

She looked toward the mound of corpses and instinctively inched closer to him.
“Luo Ren… is this a tomb? Were these people from the Qin era?”

With both the knife coin and the Ban Liang coin appearing together, it had to be early Qin, right after the unification.

“Right dynasty,” Luo Ren said, “but it’s not a tomb. No one buries people like this.”

He looked upward again. The pit beneath was stone, and above it, the bronze dome sealed tight—melted together with molten metal long ago.

Luo Ren knelt beside the bodies, fighting his revulsion to inspect them. Their clothing was indeed ancient, rotted almost to dust. Some were only skeletons, others were mummified husks. But each body was carefully arranged in stacks. Beside them were bronze weapons—swords, axes, halberds—all blunted at the edges.

He thought of the tunnel they had come through—it must have taken immense manpower and tools to carve.
Judging by the mud and stones sealing the entrance, someone really had dug their way out… and had carefully laid these remains here afterward.

Who were these people?

Luo Ren pushed at the topmost body, looking for any markings. Something clattered to the ground—a rectangular plaque, bronze, smooth on one side. He flipped it over—

—and froze. His heart skipped a beat.

It bore a single oracle-bone inscription: the character for “knife.”

A thought flashed through his mind, linking fragments together. He hurried to check the next body—same bronze plaque, but a different character this time: “water.”

Just then, Mu Dai’s voice came softly from behind him.
“Luo Ren, I recognize some of the characters.”

He turned and saw her kneeling by the carved wall, flashlight raised.

She looked over her shoulder. “Remember the photos Shen Gun sent last time—the bamboo slips from Yin Erma’s site? They were all in seal script. I studied them.”

Some of the characters, close to traditional forms, were easy enough to read.

And among them, several stood out clearly—

“Decree of the Great Master—Kill.”