Chapter 66: Funeral Procession
[Iron Egg]: I know you’re all in league with each other! No matter what I say, you won’t believe a word. How could I know what was hidden down the middle? But there has to be treasure there! If you don’t believe me, just wait and see!
[Cute and Sparkling]: Hehe! Wherever there’s great opportunity, there’s even greater danger. The Boss only dared to go in because her vehicle is already Level 5! Not letting you follow was entirely for your own good. The old saying about a dog biting the hand that feeds it truly never gets old!
[Fastest Hand at SF Express]: I’m genuinely enlightened today. That is truly disgusting. Isn’t this just the classic fable of the Farmer and the Snake?
[Flash Delivery Yellow Knight]: Unbelievable. To be this foolish and brainless, and still survive until today—she really has the Boss’s kindness to thank. An ugly face can never hide such simple-minded stupidity.
[Hungry Spirit Blue Knight]: Everyone step aside! I’m a professional trash-talker—let me handle the cursing! What brand of plastic bag are you, acting so fake?
[Hungry Spirit Blue Knight]: Try putting a few thoughts in your head; there isn’t even a drop of common sense in there! Didn’t your parents teach you basic gratitude? Are you an orphan? Did nobody raise you?
[Hungry Spirit Blue Knight]: If I can’t knock some sense into you, you must be completely hollow! Who forgot to zip up their pants in the bathroom and let you out?
[Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar]: Back when I was in school, girls like you were known as straight-up snakes! Go to hell! How dare you slander Sister Bone Ash? I ought to drive my ambulance over there and flatten you myself!
[Peace and Violence]: @Everyone, Boss Bone Ash is kind-hearted and has never demanded a thing from anyone. We aren’t expecting everyone to bow down in eternal gratitude, but having a basic human conscience is just common decency, isn’t it?
[Peace and Violence]: @Iron Egg, considering this is your first offense, we’ll let it slide for now. We will settle this once Boss Bone Ash comes out of the fork in the road. If you dare to stir up trouble and slander the Boss again, losing a few supplies will be the very least of your worries!
Normally, only the rank-one player held the permission to tag everyone in the public chat. However, the upgrade path for Peace and Violence’s mobile communications van focused entirely on information relay and signal surveillance. His vehicle console was linked directly to his system screen, granting him the rare privilege to broadcast an announcement to the entire lobby.
Meanwhile, deep inside the heavy black fog, Lin Huai was driving forward with her golden searchlights blazing, far too focused on the road to check her system interface.
The moment she crossed into the black mist, she had immediately engaged the vehicle’s internal air-circulation system. Cycling the cabin air from within prevented the thick, corrupting Yin energy outside from seeping in through the air conditioning vents.
Before long, the dashboard display indicated that the cabin temperature had already plummeted to minus six degrees Celsius. Lin Huai promptly switched on the climate-control heating system.
Fortunately, her vehicle had massive power reserves, so running the internal climate control and air filtration at full blast would not drain her batteries.
Normally, a road fork or side route faded away within ten minutes. Yet Lin Huai had been driving for nearly half an hour, and she was still surrounded by a blinding sea of pitch-black fog.
She could tell that she was no longer traveling along the ordinary highway.
After another thirty minutes of driving, a dim, blood-red glow slowly filtered through the darkness ahead. Red and white hues flickered eerily together through the dense mist, as though the gates of the underworld were cracking open right in front of her.
Lin Huai tapped the accelerator to push through the vapor. But the second the road ahead cleared, she slammed on the brakes with all her might. The heavy armored hearse shuddered violently to a dead halt, her spine locking stiff as cold sweat broke across her neck.
The highway was gone.
The rivers flanking the road had vanished as well.
In their place lay a boundless, desolate wasteland of burial mounds.
Mounds of pale yellow earth stretched as far as the eye could see, studded with cracked, crooked tombstones that looked like rows of rotting teeth chewing into the dark, barren earth.
A lonely graveyard alone would not have shaken Lin Huai.
What truly sent a wave of icy terror down her spine were the three massive funeral processions creeping silently across the mounds just ahead.
Her vehicle was an uninvited intruder, its powerful golden searchlights slicing straight into the ghostly vanguard.
Startled by the blazing golden beams, all three processions froze in place at the exact same moment.
Worse still, every single ghost carrying a coffin snapped its head around. Their pale, bloated faces were illuminated by the harsh glare, their dead, milky eyes devoid of any human light. Yet their gazes locked onto her with unnatural precision.
It was not mere curiosity, but pure, murderous hostility born of an interrupted ritual.
Lin Huai’s heart hammered against her ribs. Her trembling fingers darted rapidly across the dashboard—shutting off the golden searchlights, cutting the vehicle’s Yang energy barrier, and killing every active system that could leak the faint warmth of a living soul. She worked until the entire vehicle fell completely dark, resting in the dead wilderness like an enormous, lifeless steel casket.
In the suffocating silence, the ghostly processions scrutinized the strange machine, their eyes lingering heavily on the jade coffin resting upon its roof.
After what felt like an eternity, they seemed to accept this bizarre newcomer as another funeral contingent. Only then did the pale pallbearers slowly turn their heads back around, and the eerie procession resumed its silent march.
Lin Huai sank back into her seat, completely drained, and let out a long, trembling breath. Only then did she notice that her fingers had turned icy cold.
She dared not waste a single second. Silently slipping the hearse into the lowest gear, she let the dark machine crawl quietly forward, tailing behind the phantoms like an uninvited specter.
She watched closely, noting that the procession on the far left was built to the grandest specifications—and radiated the most terrifying pressure.
Sixteen pallbearers held the weight. That was an ancient funeral custom reserved only for feudal lords.
Sixteen towering ghost kings clad in tattered ancient armor walked in lockstep, shouldering a massive red sandalwood casket. The wood was stained a deep, dried-blood crimson and etched with bizarre, unrecognizable talismans.
Flanking the casket were dozens of chalk-faced paper boys and girls with bright red rouge smeared over their hollow cheeks, silently raising white soul-calling banners into the cold air.
Lin Huai had no idea what kind of abomination rested inside that blood-red casket, but judging by the sheer scale of the procession, it was an ancient presence far beyond anything she could currently face.
Just as a knot of dread formed in her chest, a paper girl walking near the rear suddenly twitched. With a sharp, dry crack, her neck twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees, snapping around to face Lin Huai directly.
The girl’s lips tore open like shredded paper, splitting wide into a hideous grin that stretched from ear to ear. Inside the dark, hollow cavity of her mouth, there was no tongue—only a bottomless pit of cold shadow.
Lin Huai’s breath caught in her throat.
She clamped her hands tightly onto the wheel, her knuckles turning bone-white. Forcing herself to look away, she kept her eyes fixed ahead, daring to watch the paper girl only through the very corner of her vision.
Do not make eye contact.
Do not react.
The moment she was marked as a living human in this graveyard of ancient dead, there would be nowhere left to run.
The ghostly procession drifted silently onward. Paper money fluttered through the freezing air, falling across the mounds like a shower of gray ash.
Gradually, the paper girl turned her head back to the front, as if nothing had happened at all.
Yet the cold sweat soaking the back of Lin Huai’s shirt refused to fade.
Letting out a soft, steady breath, she carefully slipped out of the driver’s seat. Under the joint guidance of the Yellow Springs Road Guide and the autonomous navigation module, the armored hearse continued to crawl forward at a smooth, steady pace, bringing up the rear of the three eerie processions.
Lin Huai slipped through the partition door into the rear compartment. With a quick mental command, she activated the coffin’s teleportation function, vanishing into the interior of the emerald jade casket resting on the roof.
She could not afford to sit passively and wait for disaster; she had to take the initiative.
Lying inside the cool jade chamber, she engaged the coffin’s Yin Energy Conversion feature. Allowing the thick, pure Yin aura gathered within the artifact to flood into her limbs and settle over her pulse, she masked her vital presence entirely before slipping back down into the driver’s cab.
