System murmured, almost bored, “Tsk. This setup looks like it was meant for future generations to pay their respects.”

  “For future generations?!” My knees went weak. “Who the hell leaves an entire graveyard of coffins lying around just to scare people?! That’s sick!”

  My throat felt drier than sand. Staring at the dozens of coffins ahead, my mind was a scrambled egg. “No way… Are these things actually occupied? Or empty? Or—are they arranged as some kind of formation?!”

  Lian walked to the nearest coffin, expression blank, and reached out as if to lift the lid.

  “What are you doing!!!” I shot up like a spring-loaded trap, clinging to his arm, voice cracking. “You can’t just open a coffin raw like this! Aren’t you supposed to bow, scatter rice, knock three times?! You open it like that and even the ancestors will pop up to complain!”

  Lian didn’t even raise an eyelid. “You can’t stop me.”

  The moment he finished speaking, Hua flicked the tip of his folded fan, lazy and precise. With a long creak, the lid slid open by itself.

  Next second—

  “Pff—!” A jet of black mist spewed out, sickly sweet and serpent-fast, straight toward our faces.

  I yelped, stumbled back three steps, and dropped flat on my backside. “Poison gas! Poison gas!”

  Lian frowned, raised a sleeve to cover his mouth, slammed the lid shut with a heavy thud, trapping the black fog back inside.

  He turned and shot me a cold look. “Don’t block me again.”

  “I blocked you so you wouldn’t DIE! Now look—I almost got buried with you!” I hacked and coughed, eyes watering from the stench.

  Hua tapped the coffin lid with his fan, thoughtful. “It appears these coffins were not meant to be opened casually.”

  I barely had time to exhale in relief when—

  Swish, swish, swish!

  Sharp sounds sliced the air like a rain of needles.

  The second coffin wasn’t even half open when a row of long, thin silver darts shot out, stabbing into the spot where we had just stood. The floor turned porcupine in an instant.

  I folded myself into a ball and screeched, “This isn’t a coffin—this is a weapons depot! Keep opening them and we’ll all end up horizontal!”

  Lian ignored me, only lifting his eyes slowly, gaze cold as a blade. “Maybe you should be the one to lie down in one.”

  I nearly bit my tongue. “Huh?! Are you serious right now?!”

  Hua’s lips curved faintly, somewhere between amusement and cruelty. “If this really is a formation made with coffins, you may be the only one it’ll accept.”

  My skull buzzed. “Accept my ass! More like it’ll accept me and never return me!”

  Just then, a soft scraping sound came from the wall—like someone carving into stone.

  I jolted so hard my soul nearly evacuated. “Oh hell no—there’s someone ALIVE in this tomb?!”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  As the scratching ceased, two lines of ancient script slowly surfaced on the wall, strokes blood-red, as if freshly written.

  “Life and death, a single dream; the bold shall live.

  A century of slumber; the mistaken shall be entombed.”

  A chill crawled down my spine. “What does that even mean?! Life and death, a dream… Are they hinting we’re supposed to—lie in a coffin?!”

  Hua laughed softly, tapping his palm with his fan. “If one must lie down to pass the trial, then the creator of this place has quite the refined taste.”

  “Refined my ass!” I almost dropped to my knees. “This isn’t refined—this is treating us like corpses! What kind of sick puzzle is this?!”

  Hua’s eyes glinted. “The meaning seems clear. Choose correctly and we leave. Choose wrong and we stay here forever.”

  “Stay here forever?!” I was losing my mind. “Are you kidding?! There are dozens of coffins—how am I supposed to know which one to crawl into?! If you force me, I’d rather dig a hole right here and bury myself!”

  Lian finally spoke, calm as a winter pond. “If you choose none, you simply die here.”

  I huddled in the corner, shivering. Finally, I peeked out. “…So what now? Do we keep opening them? Or should we start praying to see if any ancestors feel generous today?”

  Hua sighed and flicked his fan open again. “Prayers won’t help. This place is older than our ancestors.”

  Lian crouched and touched the floor, as if calculating. His voice was cold. “There is logic here.”

  I blinked. “…Wait. You can do fortune-telling now?”

  He ignored me and instead swept his gaze around the room. “Chaotic as it looks, the coffins follow certain lines. See—three in the southeast: their wood grain faces inward. In the northwest, they face outward. There is intention.”

  I stared. “Are you saying… if we read the direction right, we can escape?!”

  The system chimed in at that moment. “Or perhaps the author just wants to see how lucky you are.”

  “Nonsense!” I hissed back. “I’m a trash-tier protagonist—how lucky do you think I am?!”

  I rapped irritably on the nearest coffin lid. Dong dong.

  It creaked open on its own.

  A paper figure drifted out slowly.

  “AH—!” I launched backward, nearly crashing into Hua. “It’s alive! It’s alive—!”

  The paper figure didn’t attack. It trembled stiffly, shoved a slip of paper into my hand, then floated as awkwardly as someone delivering a breakup letter to their ex.

  My hands shook so hard I almost dropped it.

  Hua, interested, opened the slip. “Huh. Interesting. It says, ‘Two paths, Yin and Yang; only blood reveals the truth.’”

  Lian’s eyes sharpened. He drew a short blade from his sleeve and slit his fingertip. A drop of blood hit the nearest coffin lid.

  No reaction.

  My soul nearly jumped out of my body. “You’re bleeding already?! What if the paper man was lying?!”

  Hua frowned. “If it meant harm, it wouldn’t bother writing. It’d just curse us with little paper dolls.”

  Lian tested another coffin. Still no reaction.

  I crossed my arms triumphantly. “See? Sometimes you should listen to me! Now, let’s think—”

  I pointed at the red-script poem and began bluffing with absolute confidence. “Look. First it says life and death are one dream. Then it says Yin and Yang divide two paths. If life and death are both dreams, why care about Yin and Yang? Contradiction. Clearly one statement’s fake and—”

  “Wait.” Lian cut me off.

  I froze. “What?”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I said it contradicts itself.”

  “Before that.”

  “Life and death are one dream, why care about Yin and Yang?”

  “That.” Lian nodded, eyes darkening. “If both lines are true, then this ‘Yin-Yang’ might not refer to life or death at all. It might mean…”

  I leaned in. “Mean what?!”

  He gestured around the tomb. “Look—the coffins. Half lean toward the north, half toward the south. And there are exactly ten straddling the boundary. Yin and Yang divided—likely referring to those.”

  I slapped my thigh. “So the coffin we need is among those ten?!”

  Hua arched a brow, amused. “Sounds entertaining.”

  Before I could protest, he took Lian’s blade, pricked his fingertip, and let a drop fall on the first of the ten lids.

  Hiss—

  White smoke curled up instantly, eating into the wood.

  My scalp crawled. “Holy—so it does react?!”

  Hua, apparently deciding the best way to gamble with fate was recklessness, tested all ten at once.

  Only two reacted. The other eight stayed dead silent, like corpses too lazy to wake.

  I hugged myself like a terrified turtle. “Only two?! That means we’re missing something, right? Are the smoking ones the right ones, or the wrong ones? Are we really going to LIE DOWN in one?!”

  Hua tapped my forehead with his fan, maddeningly calm. “Little Gonggong, you talk too much. Right or wrong—you’ll know once you lie down.”

  “Easy for you to say!” I exploded. “Why don’t YOU lie down?!”

  Lian, however, didn’t contradict him. He simply glanced at me and nodded once. “He’s correct.”

  I stared at them both, betrayed. “…You two can’t be serious. You're actually planning to lie in there?!”