Yu Nian stared at the eggs for a long time before answering, “These are corpse moth eggs. You don’t normally find them in common cemeteries — they favor damp places thick with yin and lingering malice. The adults lay their eggs inside corpses and feed off the remnants. The day one of those eggs hatches into an adult moth, the body will shrivel like a dead plant and blow away with the wind.”
Jiang Jin choked on the words. “Moths that feed on dead people?”
Deng Yang shivered. A bad idea crept into his mind.
“Master, do these moths... eat the living?” he asked.
Yu Nian lifted his head. His eyes were darker than the night around them. “They eat corpses because that’s all that’s available. Year after year they’ve sucked every last scrap of nourishment from those bodies. If live people walk into their midst, our yang will only speed up their transformation.”
It was like wheeling a sumptuous feast in front of starving men; the consequences were obvious.
No sooner had he spoken than the eggs stopped wriggling. A series of damp, sibilant rustlings rose from the dark.
Something terrifying happened: the eggs nearest them exploded.
A thick, glistening red grub wriggled free — palm-sized and ungainly, a row of coal-black eyes fixed on the intruders. The instant it touched the air it steamed, and in a heartbeat it shed its flesh and became a blue-gray moth. Its wings bore tangled, uncanny patterns and emitted a faint, indigo glow like a funeral flame.
The first few corpse moths that finished hatching let out a high, insistent buzzing.
Their hatchlings, encouraged, burst open one after another and poured into the cave.
In the time it took to blink, the black hollow was a swirl of thousands of blue moths, like a pale underworld come to life. Their broad wings beat in furious waves and sprayed sticky shreds of flesh and blood toward the group.
Deng Yang felt powder fall on his arm from a moth’s wing; his skin reddened and swelled at once, itching like fire. By bad luck, Jiang Jin inhaled some of the dust and choked — his throat seared as if with acid. The thought of those moths having crawled through corpses almost made him retch.
Corpse moths were vicious; once they latched on they didn’t let go. Guan Sheng flailed with his lantern, trying to bat them off. The moths were too small and nimble; the lantern only attracted more. They swarmed him until he was nearly buried in a living, fluttering mass.
Yu Nian watched the tide of moths without a flicker of emotion. He traced a quick series of hand signs and sent a paper talisman spinning into the air. It burst into a blossom of sparks, a blinding, burning light.
Everything stopped. One by one, the moths threw themselves toward the little fire-charm.
The talisman’s flames spread with ferocious power. Before long the moths were engulfed in fire; the popping of burning wings filled the cave, and a putrid stench rose with the smoke. A few scorched bodies fell to the floor, but even then the moths’ life was fierce — some twitched and writhed after the flames had passed.
Guan Sheng scowled at the remains and stepped over them without hesitation.
When silence returned the group examined the bodies. Feng Chengyuan picked up a wooden stick and nudged them. Two were animals; the rest were human. Their clothes varied — some in ancient robes, others in modern dress.
With a dull clack, a brown object fell from one of the modern outfits — a wallet.
Inside Yu Nian found some faded bills and a passport.
“Cao Fan? How could it be him?” Deng Yang stared, mouth agape.
“You know him?” Yu Nian asked.
Deng Yang nodded quickly. “Who in archaeology doesn’t? He’s infamous in the tomb-robbing world — supposedly descended from a long line of professional tomb-robbers. A few years back he pulled off a major score and was put on the most-wanted list. People thought he fled overseas, but he… he died in this tomb?”
The realization sent a cold weight through him. If someone as experienced as Cao Fan had died here, what hope did they have?
Yu Nian’s eyes narrowed. The other corpses were clearly the same: tomb-robbers who had stumbled in and never made it out. But what had happened to make them die with such panicked expressions?
He scanned the chamber carefully. People who died unwillingly often left spirits behind, restless and clinging to the place of their end. Yet the room felt empty — there were no spirits at all, only those moths.
They pressed deeper into the tomb. By the time they reached the eastern chamber the stench of rot faded; it was replaced by a sharp, almost cloying fragrance that stung the nose.
The floor here was tiled with stone slabs. A few were darker, arranged in an octagonal, bagua-like pattern at the corners, each carved with ancient characters none of them could read.
Deng Yang, a student in archaeology, stared at the inscriptions until his eyes blurred but could make nothing of them.
While they hesitated, Yu Nian spoke up. “The inscriptions tell the life of the tomb’s owner.”
Deng Yang froze. “You can read those characters?”
“I can make out enough,” Yu Nian said.
He read slowly, word by word. “The inscription records that the person buried here was a general. He served the emperor for many years and won numerous honors in battle. In his later years he died of illness, and the emperor buried him with the rituals due a prince.”
“So he was a general?” Deng Yang said, a mixture of indignation and bewilderment in his voice. “He led a life of glory, and because we dug his grave he wants to kill everyone in the archaeology department?”
Feng Chengyuan shook his head. “Not necessarily. If whoever haunts this place can restore tomb doors, altering the stone inscriptions wouldn’t be beyond them.”
He looked at Yu Nian. “Nian Nian, do you think the inscription is true?”
Yu Nian let his gaze drop. “Half true. The sheer quantity of burial goods shows the man’s status was very high — likely a prince or a marshal. But his hatred is intense. This is not the quiet death of old age.”
As they spoke, Deng Yang’s eyes flicked to the stone wall and he broke off, stunned. “Look… what is that?!”