Chapter 151: Royal Tombs
Half an hour later, the diagnostic scan on Lin Huai’s war scythe was complete.
Old Wang returned the long blade to Lin Huai and immediately set to work compiling the bill of materials needed for its upgrade.
Naturally, the other members of the squad were clamoring for their own custom weapons, which meant he would need to spend hours analyzing their gear and drafting individual blueprints.
Understanding how much work lay ahead of him, everyone tactfully stopped bothering him and phased back to their respective lanes. Only the Young Miss stayed behind in the trailer.
She planned to draft a comprehensive commercial roadmap with Old Wang, turning his new mobile workshop into a thriving revenue stream for the guild.
Ever since Little Yellow and Old Wang had unlocked their transformative upgrades, everyone in the Elite Squad was brimming with ambition, desperate to trigger breakthroughs of their own.
Lin Huai was no exception. Her hearse and the blood jade coffin would only experience a true qualitative leap once they hit Level 7.
Opening the dimensional chamber of the coffin, Lin Huai peered inside.
For reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint, Dong Xiaobao had fallen into a deep, peaceful slumber, sleeping continuously for days on end.
Seeing that the child’s spiritual condition was remarkably stable, Lin Huai chose not to wake her.
She suspected that by the time Dong Xiaobao stirred, the little ghost’s powers would have grown substantially.
Because an unclaimed corpse was still lying inside the chamber, Dong Xiaobao had curled up in the corner closest to the golden gate, keeping as much distance from the body as possible.
Whenever Lin Huai found a free moment, she would step through that golden gate into the secret realm to clear away mines.
At present, the exploration progress etched across the portal had reached 26 percent—a steady and promising pace.
Lin Huai stepped through the archway, completed her daily sweep of the uncharted zones, and returned to the main chamber to deal with the corpse she had almost forgotten.
It was the female body she had brought out from the morgue back during the hospital incident.
Pressed for time earlier, she had only managed to deliver the fallen police officer to the Martyrs’ Cemetery. Right after that came the trial run, the district consolidation, the arena matches, and the high-speed rallies. In the whirlwind of events, the jeweled corpse had slipped completely from her mind.
Reaching into her pouch, Lin Huai pulled out the crystal orb that held the woman’s extracted memories.
She ran her thumb lightly across the polished surface. A moment later, the orb began to project the deceased’s dying obsession into the air.
The scene played out in a vivid, first-person perspective, showing the final hours of the woman’s life.
She had been wearing a hiking jacket, trekking along a rugged mountain trail.
Near the waist of the mountain, a loose boulder shifted beneath her boot, sending her tumbling over the edge of a sheer cliff.
The fall hadn’t killed her outright; it had only shattered her leg.
For hours, she dragged herself across a desolate, sunbaked river valley, fighting desperately for survival, but she could find no path leading out of the gorge.
Eventually, she dragged herself into the mouth of a dark cavern. Inside, the ground was littered with hundreds of armored skeletons—an ancient vanguard of soldiers who had died there centuries ago.
Seeing the mass grave, sheer despair had washed over her.
An ancient battlefield like this had clearly remained undiscovered for generations. If no modern expedition had ever set foot here, no search party would ever find her. She was doomed to starve in the dark.
Yet as she crawled deeper, she stumbled upon an anomaly hidden behind the bones.
It was a massive stone door sealed behind a wall of fallen skeletons, its frame linked to an intricate counterweight mechanism.
Lin Huai watched as the woman tested the levers repeatedly. In a stroke of blind, miraculous luck, she actually tripped the hidden latch.
The heavy slabs groaned open. Through the dying woman’s eyes, Lin Huai saw a vast chamber packed with ornate, jewel-encrusted treasure chests glittering in the gloom.
In the next heartbeat, a storm of iron ballista bolts whistled out from the dark interior, piercing her chest in a spray of red. The projection snapped shut.
To be completely honest, Lin Huai was sorely tempted by the thought of so many ancient treasure chests. But if the woman’s final obsession was simply to claim that fortune, Lin Huai was at a loss.
She didn’t even know which coordinate held that ancient battlefield, let alone how to track down the tomb.
Besides, what kind of ghost had a dying wish that boiled down to “I want to be rich”? Even if Lin Huai managed to shovel the gold out of the cavern, was the woman going to happily hop back to life?
Lin Huai let out a quiet sigh.
Seeing the corpse draped in so much gold and jade earlier, she had assumed she was rescuing an aristocrat who would grant a handsome spiritual inheritance. As it turned out, the true legacy wasn’t on her person at all.
“Yellow Springs Road Guide, lock onto my registered burial plot. Destination: Cemetery!”
“Calculating route…” the automated voice responded. “Cemetery transit point detected 100 meters ahead. Confirm entry?”
“Confirm.”
Since she couldn’t squeeze any useful inheritance from the remains, she decided to do the decent thing and lay the woman to rest in the general cemetery.
After crossing through the stone archway, Lin Huai steered her vehicle toward Shoukang Garden, the public zone designated for common souls.
High above, a black raven perched in the dead branches merely cast a lazy glance in her direction, not even bothering to spread its wings.
To give the woman a proper burial, Lin Huai had to spend her own Yin energy crystals to buy a standard wooden casket from the cemetery inventory—a complete financial loss on her part.
Driving her hearse back toward the highway, she caught sight of the three-way marker at the main crossroad. Her eyes naturally lingered on the arm pointing toward the far left: [Royal Mausoleum].
Royal Mausoleum?
The secret cavern hidden beneath an ancient battlefield… the legions of armored soldiers who had guarded it with their lives… the floor packed with boundless gold…
Lin Huai’s eyes widened. In ancient times, what kind of place required an army of imperial guards to seal it away while hiding an endless sea of treasure?
An imperial tomb!
Acting on pure instinct, Lin Huai barked an order to the navigation system: “Take the left branch. Head straight into the Royal Mausoleum!”
The moment the hearse turned onto the imperial approach, a flock of massive ravens burst from the canopy, tailing her from above. Leading the flock was an enormous, glossy-feathered bird that flew uncomfortably low.
Lin Huai glanced at her rearview mirror, feeling a sudden prickle of guilt.
What if the lost valley really was hidden back here?
Wouldn’t breaking in be considered grave robbing?
Would the cemetery guardians execute her on the spot for trespassing?
Would she even have enough time to summon Old Hei for emergency backup?
Letting her imagination run wild, she leaned against the driver’s window, taking in the scenery outside.
The grandeur of the Royal Mausoleum far exceeded that of the Martyrs’ Cemetery. This was the final resting place of ancient dynasties; its opulence rivaled that of the grandest palaces.
Driving for half an hour, she passed only three sprawling tomb complexes. Some were built as grand above-ground palaces with sweeping tiled roofs, while others led into massive underground vaults sealed behind carved marble gates.
The hearse wound its way through the rolling hills of the imperial grounds until, rounding the shoulder of a barren mountain, Lin Huai caught sight of a dry riverbed.
It was the exact canyon from the woman’s memory!
It was actually tucked away here!
Surprised and thrilled, Lin Huai moved to steer down into the gorge, but a blur of feathers dropped out of the sky, cutting off her path.
The large raven landed with a heavy thump, shifting into a tall, armored woman whose plate mail gleamed with a cold sheen under the dull sky. Her voice was flat and hard: “The Royal Mausoleum is forbidden ground. No entry without an imperial token!”
Lin Huai hopped down from the cab, putting on an earnest, respectful smile. “Sister Raven, could you tell me what kind of token is required to pass? I can see if I can track one down.”
The guardian sighed, looking at her with genuine concern. “This is an unmapped boundary. That valley only surfaced a moment ago through a spatial rift. Nobody knows what rests inside or whose tomb it belongs to, which is precisely why entry is forbidden.”
She crossed her arms, her tone firm: “If you walk into that gorge, I fear you will not walk out alive. And if you die here, I will have a very difficult time explaining myself to Old Man Ren.”
Lin Huai’s eyes lit up.
Waving her hand, she called the blood jade coffin down from the vehicle’s roof, sliding the heavy lid back to reveal the jeweled woman resting within.
“I brought a body,” Lin Huai explained smoothly. “This woman met her end right inside that cavern. As an undertaker, it is my solemn duty to return her remains to where she fell.”
The raven lowered her gaze, peering into the open casket. Her sharp, martial brows furrowed with mild helplessness.
As a high-ranking tomb guardian, she could easily tell whether a corpse’s spiritual residue matched the land.
With a resigned breath, she stepped aside. “In that case… you may pass.”
