Rumble!!
The stone door blocking the narrow tomb entrance slowly sank into the ground.
The two rats stopped in front of the doorway, looking left and right to inspect the area.
Bang!
Bang!
A flurry of hurried footsteps echoed from the darkness, rapidly approaching their position.
"Jerry, Mickey, get out of the way!"
Hearing Arata's voice, the two rats immediately leaped to the sides of the tunnel.
Whoosh~ The sound of rushing wind began to echo from the tomb entrance. The howling wind grew louder and louder.
In a matter of moments, a massive amount of wind gathered at the mouth of the tunnel.
Through extreme compression, the wind transformed into a barrage of invisible, controllable wind blades.
"Go!!"
Swish!!!
Several invisible wind blades shot through the tunnel and down into the tomb below, quickly vanishing into the pitch-black darkness.
Clang!!
The sound of a weapon dropping heavily to the floor echoed out from inside the tomb.
Clang!! The exact same sound rang out again.
As the wind blades pushed deeper and deeper into the tomb, the clatter of weapons hitting the ground grew increasingly frequent.
A short while later, the wind returned from the tomb, carrying information about the situation inside back to the surface.
"Jerry, Mickey, continue the mission."
"Squeak!!"
Carrying their light sources, the two rats scurried further inside.
Very quickly, they spotted a long spear lying discarded on the ground.
Jerry stepped onto the spear and sniffed it carefully. Finding nothing unusual, they continued moving forward.
However, every five meters or so, they would find another spear lying in the dirt, as if a soldier armed with a spear had been standing guard at each of these spots.
The two rats finally stopped in their tracks when they encountered another stone door blocking the path ahead.
As their lights shined onto the stone door, a tall, imposing human figure gradually came into view. The stone carving looked majestic and armed with a weapon, resembling a Door Guardian.
"Try and see if you can dig underneath it."
Following Arata's instructions, the two rats started digging a hole right where they stood. Since the dirt on the tomb floor was soft, they easily dug out a small pit.
After digging a full three feet down, the rats tried to tunnel forward and slip past the stone door.
But the door extended far into the ground, and digging any deeper simply wasn't working.
By now, the front paws and snouts of the two rats were bleeding, making it impossible for them to keep digging.
They had no choice but to climb back up to the surface.
But the moment Jerry crawled back up to the ground...
Bang!!!
Something completely unknown stomped on him, flattening him into a rat pancake. Arata instantly lost his shared vision with Jerry.
"Mickey, watch out!" Arata yelled.
Mickey, who had just been about to poke his head out, hurriedly shrank back down into the hole. But he was suddenly grabbed by something and hoisted high into the air.
Through the light source on the rat's back, Arata saw the face of a stone statue. It looked completely identical to the Door Guardian carved onto the stone door.
"Squeak! Squeak!"
Mickey struggled violently, his flashlight illuminating the space behind the stone man. There was now a human-shaped cutout missing from the stone door. Unsurprisingly, this stone man was the exact carving that had been on the door just moments ago.
"Squeak!!!"
With one final squeak, Mickey's intestines and internal organs were squeezed right up to his mouth.
Up at the tunnel entrance, Arata stood up.
"Arata, were you controlling those rats just now?" Hak Foo asked.
"That's right. It's the Corpse-Lover Devil's ability. By eating a rat's corpse, I can control one or two rats and make them follow my commands."
"This Corpse-Lover Devil has some pretty versatile powers."
"What, feeling tempted?"
"Yeah, if it's possible, I'd definitely want to contract with it." Hak Foo still couldn't stop thinking about the Corpse-Lover Devil.
"Arata, what did you find down there?" Jackie asked, interrupting their chat.
"There's definitely a devil living inside this tomb." This was the one thing Arata could confirm with absolute certainty.
"Do you know what kind of devil it is?"
"Not sure, which is why I need to go down there and take a look for myself."
"We'll go with you."
"No need, I can handle this alone."
"Then be careful down there. We'll stand guard at the entrance. If you need anything, just shout." Jackie knew Arata possessed a form of immortality, so he felt relatively at ease.
"Wait for my signal, Jackie. I might just wrap up this Terracotta Army case for you this afternoon."
"That fast?!!"
The two of them watched in astonishment as Arata crawled into the tomb tunnel.
After crawling through the dirt tunnel and dropping onto the tomb floor, Arata pulled Rats Number 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 out of the mirror he brought with him.
Just like the previous ones, each rat had a flashlight and glow sticks strapped to its back. Grouped together, their combined light sources could illuminate the path two meters ahead of them.
Arata then turned completely invisible and followed behind the rats, retracing the route.
The first stone door acted more like an automatic sensor door. The moment he touched it, the stone door slid open on its own.
Bang!!
Bang!!
Before he could even see anyone, the sounds echoed out first. The exact same heavy footsteps from earlier rang out again.
Arata, currently invisible, stalked forward like Freddy Krueger, his eyes locked on the darkness ahead.
After a short moment, a Terracotta Warrior armed with a long spear gradually materialized from the shadows.
It thrust its spear straight down toward the rats on the floor.
Clang!!
Arata kicked the spear away with a single fluid motion. Bringing his bladed claws up from below in a vicious uppercut, he sliced a massive gash right across the Terracotta Warrior's chest.
The Terracotta Warrior's body instantly crumbled into a pile of loose sand.
Swish!!
Right at that moment, several more spears came flying out of the dark.
Arata dodged them with ease, snatching one of the flying spears right out of the air with his bare hands. His muscles bulged as he hurled the spear back into the darkness with several times the force.
Swish!!
The spear shot directly into the pitch-black void ahead.
Thud!!! A few seconds later, the loud crash of metal slamming into a stone wall echoed through the tunnel.
At the exact same time, the sound of running footsteps in the dark vanished completely.
"Let's go!!" Arata ordered.
The five rats scurried forward once more until they ran into the second stone door, the one carved with the Door Guardian portrait.
With a wave of his hand, one of the rats on the ground flew straight into Arata's palm.
He held the rat like a makeshift flashlight, shining the beam directly onto the stone door.
The full appearance of the Door Guardian was revealed right before his eyes.
Clang!!
Arata ruthlessly drove his bladed claws straight into the Door Guardian's head, but the attack did absolutely zero damage.
Instead, the Door Guardian's carved eyes suddenly flickered with a faint glow.
A split second later, the stone door moved.
The Door Guardian physically stepped out from the carving, fully coming to life.
Unable to see Arata, it bent down, reaching a massive hand toward the rats on the floor.
But Arata naturally wasn't going to let it succeed. He swiftly swung his bladed claws right at the Door Guardian's neck.
Clang!!
The grinding sound of metal striking solid stone echoed out. Arata's bladed claws were completely incapable of inflicting any damage.
Furthermore, even though the Door Guardian was made of stone, it clearly possessed some level of sentience.
Sensing that it had just been attacked, it suddenly stood up straight and stared directly ahead.
By this point, Arata had already backed up several meters away from the Door Guardian.
Being completely immune to physical damage was more than enough to stump any ordinary tomb raider, but Arata had more than one trick up his sleeve.
Suddenly, endless streams of wind began pouring into the tomb from the tunnel entrance. Up on the surface, Jackie and Hak Foo also noticed the bizarre changes happening inside the tomb.
Down in the chamber, Arata tossed a mirror onto the ground, and the five rats sensibly scrambled inside to take cover.
Arata then took a massive, deep breath and stepped right up to the Door Guardian's face.
"Ahhhhh!!!!"
An ultrasonic blast fired from point-blank range completely shattered the Door Guardian into a pile of crushed rubble.
But at the same time, the deafening sound wave carried all the way into the deepest depths of the tomb.
Huuu~
Arata could swear he heard the sound of heavy breathing echoing from the abyss ahead.
Suddenly, the entire tomb began to violently tremble.
Hmph!!!
Ha!!!
Two booming voices erupted from the depths of the tomb, one right after the other.
"The Heng and Ha Guardians?" Arata didn't waste time overthinking it.
The five rats crawled back out of the mirror and resumed taking the lead to scout the path ahead, with Arata following closely behind.
After walking for about twenty meters, the path ahead suddenly opened up into a massive space.
A large stone stele stood right in the middle of the path, carved with the words: 'The Living Are Forbidden.'
Arata ignored it completely, bypassing the stele and stepping into a grand hall.
This room was easily five times the width of the tunnel.
A place this enormous definitely had an elite monster guarding it, if not a mini-boss.
"Wait!!" Arata ordered the rats to stop.
He snapped a glow stick and hurled it toward the center of the pitch-black hall.
As the glow stick tumbled through the air, the grotesque, ferocious faces of armed Arhat statues flashed in the darkness.
The glow stick eventually landed right on the belly of a Laughing Buddha statue in the center.
Arata quickly chucked several more glow sticks into the room.
Gradually, the complete forms of Eighteen Arhat statues emerged from the shadows of the grand hall.
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