The echo of the last blow still lingered in Li Muye's ribs.Somewhere behind the walls, the sound of chains grinding against bronze rolled like distant thunder. Then the entire tomb drew one long breath — a hiss through stone, through dust, through the hollow throats of statues that should not move.
No one spoke.The only light came from the flickering torch at the mouth of the corridor, its flame bending toward the main chamber like it was being pulled by something unseen.
"Hold positions," Li队 ordered, his voice low but cutting through the air like steel. His face glistened with sweat that had nowhere to fall. "Check for damage. Breathe slow. We're not done."
Old Yu wheezed out a laugh that broke halfway into a curse."Not done? Captain, the mountain's already singin' at us. How much deeper you wanna dig?"
"Until we find the source," Li队 said coldly, already scanning the ground. His boots left faint prints in the layer of ash and dust that covered the floor like snow.
The others fell silent.Even Zhou Zhan, usually unable to keep his academic excitement contained, could barely whisper as he scribbled into his notebook."The resonance… this isn't random. The symbols on the floor are vibrating at the same interval as the drum tone—"He stopped, pen trembling in his hand. "No… correction. The walls are breathing."
Li Muye had already felt it — a faint pulse in the air, steady, patient, ancient.Each beat matched the rhythm of the runes burned beneath his skin.He pressed a palm against his chest, feeling the hidden sigil under his ribs throb like a second heart.
The tomb was alive.Not in the way of flesh or flame, but in the deeper sense — an organism made of bronze and echo, held together by memory.
"Captain," Li Muye whispered. "It's syncing with me again."
Li队's eyes flicked to him, sharp and assessing. "How strong?"
"Like... something listening from under the floor."
That was when the first drop fell.A single bead of condensation — no, not water, but something heavier — slipped from the ceiling and splashed on the stone with a hiss. The smell of rust thickened.And from somewhere deep below came a slow, deliberate thud.
Thud.
Like a drum struck by a hand too vast for human measure.
Every man froze.
Old Yu swallowed audibly. "...Was that—"
"Not echo," Li Muye cut in, his voice unsteady but certain. "It's calling."
The torchlight wavered. Dust drifted in lazy spirals, and one by one, the runes carved into the walls began to glow faintly, each stroke of the ancient characters filling with dull red light — the color of drying blood.
Zhou Zhan gasped. "These are containment seals, not decorative glyphs! They're… breaking sequence!"
Before anyone could respond, one of the bronze chains anchoring the far wall let out a shriek, links shuddering as though yanked by some massive force below. The chain went taut — then relaxed again — then pulled harder.
A new fissure split across the stone floor.
"Formation!" Li队 barked.He moved first, weapon drawn, sliding to one side of the corridor as Old Yu and Zhou Zhan backed up. Li Muye and A'Chuang took the other flank, the younger man's blade gleaming dully in the firelight.
For a long heartbeat, nothing happened.Then the crack deepened. From within it rose a faint mist, luminous and pale, carrying with it a hum — a resonance that struck the bone instead of the ear.
Li Muye's vision blurred for an instant.Through the haze, he saw figures. Not living ones — outlines of men and beasts tangled in perpetual motion, like shadows fighting in slow motion across the floor. And through them, he saw runes — whole sentences in an unknown script, revolving, rewriting, vanishing.
The sigil in his chest responded before his mind could.He stumbled, gripping the wall. Pain lanced through his arm, hot and sharp. Lines of faint gold flared along his veins, pulsing toward his fingertips. His reflection in the bronze surface of the chain shimmered — his eyes momentarily burning the same dull red as the runes on the wall.
"Li Muye!" Li队's shout cut through the haze. "Stay with us!"
He gasped, pulling himself upright. "I— I can feel what it's trying to say."
"Say what?" Old Yu barked, aiming his rifle uselessly at the floor.
Li Muye's breathing quickened. The world around him pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat — thud, thud, thud — until all sound became the same note, and in that note he heard words that weren't words.
A whisper in a language older than speech:
"The heart remembers. The vessel endures."
The fissure burst open.
Bronze dust exploded upward in a cloud, and from it rose a shape — not a creature, not a ghost, but a construct: a set of interlocking arms, all carved from bronze, bound by runes that flickered and bled light. They reached upward, groping toward the ceiling, as though desperate to climb out of their own grave.
Li队 didn't hesitate. "Fall back! Fire line!"
The men moved. But as they did, the air thickened — literally thickened, like honey turned to glass. Movement slowed, breath caught in the throat. The ancient tomb had changed the air into something heavier than death.
Zhou Zhan fell to his knees, clutching his head. "It's— the resonance! It's rewriting the pressure! The sound isn't sound anymore!"
A'Chuang sliced at the bronze arms with his blade, sparks scattering like fireflies. The weapon barely scratched the metal."Whatever this thing is," he hissed, "it's not done waking up."
Then came another thud — louder, closer, inside their bones.
The drum had found its rhythm.
The second thud rolled through the chamber like a pulse beneath the world.The light in every rune flared at once, searing red-white, and the tomb's silence shattered into a living roar.
"Move! Back to the outer ring!" Li队's command cut through the noise. His boots hit the stone with a dull echo, the sound instantly swallowed by the pressure of the air.Old Yu and Zhou Zhan stumbled behind him, their outlines warping in the flickering light. The bronze construct writhed, its many arms dragging against the ground with the sound of grinding bone.
The chains that bound the sarcophagus rattled again, harder this time, until sparks burst from the links.
Li Muye's body trembled. The sigil under his ribs burned like molten iron. He could no longer tell if the sound around him came from the drum — or from inside him. Each thud tore through his veins like thunder trying to find its way out.
"Li Muye!" A'Chuang's voice was sharp, distant, like from behind a wall. "Focus!"
He couldn't answer. The world had started to tilt — walls stretching, ceiling bending away into impossible angles. The lines of the tomb's carvings rearranged themselves into something almost alive.From the far wall, dozens of eyes — carved, painted, inlaid — turned to look at him.
He is the key, something whispered. He opened the gate.
The next drumbeat came not as sound but as force.It hit the group like a wall of wind. Zhou Zhan was thrown against the floor, his notebook skidding away, pages tearing loose and spiraling upward. Old Yu hit a column with a grunt, coughing blood. Li队 dug his knife into a crack on the floor to stay upright, his teeth gritted until they squeaked.
And in the center of it all, Li Muye was lifted from the ground.
For a heartbeat, he hung suspended in midair, runes across his arms and chest blazing gold, his eyes glowing with a feverish light. His body formed the exact same pose as the statue on the far wall — hands open, palms up, as if holding an invisible sphere.
The runes on the wall responded, shifting into a spiral of fire and light around him. Each ancient symbol disintegrated into dust and then reappeared, fusing with the next, forming new characters no one living could read.
A'Chuang stared up, his jaw tight. "He's not resisting… the damn thing's using him."
Li队 spat grit from his mouth. "Then cut it off. Whatever it's doing."
"No." Zhou Zhan's voice was hoarse but firm as he crawled upright, wiping blood from his lips. "If you stop him now, you'll collapse the resonance field. The chamber will implode."
"Speak simpler!"
"He's stabilizing it," Zhou Zhan gasped. "He's the counterweight!"
The glow reached its brightest point, filling the chamber with blinding brilliance. Then, just as suddenly, the light snapped inward — like a wave reversing course. All the power that had been expanding out collapsed back into Li Muye's chest, slamming into him with enough force to drive him to his knees.
The drumbeat stopped.
Silence fell like a hammer.
For a moment, no one breathed.Then came the echo — faint, hollow, but unmistakable — from beneath the bronze sarcophagus.
Thump... Thump... Thump.
The rhythm was slower now, more deliberate, almost curious.It was no longer the sound of awakening — it was listening.
Li Muye lifted his head. Blood dripped from his nose, from the corner of his mouth. His skin glowed faintly beneath the dirt. He looked dazed, eyes unfocused.
A'Chuang crouched beside him, blade still in hand. "You alive?"
"I… think so." Li Muye's voice cracked like dry parchment. He pressed a trembling hand against the floor. It was warm. "It's… calmer now. Like it found what it wanted."
"What does that mean?" Old Yu growled, shaking dust from his shoulders. "It found you?"
Li Muye didn't answer.He looked toward the sarcophagus instead. The chains had stopped moving, but the bronze was no longer dull — faint veins of gold light now ran across its surface like blood pulsing under skin. And at the very center of its lid, a small, almost invisible handprint glowed — the size of a human palm.
"That wasn't there before," Zhou Zhan murmured. His fingers twitched toward his pen, then hesitated. "It's marked him."
Li队's expression darkened. "We pull out now. Mark coordinates, seal what we can, and get back to the ridge. Whatever this thing is, we're not fighting it in a hole."
Old Yu barked a bitter laugh. "You think we'll make it that far?"
Before anyone could answer, the drumbeat changed again.
Thump… Thump-thump.
A double-beat. Faster. Closer.The floor vibrated beneath their feet. Dust rained from the ceiling. From the dark corners of the chamber, something began to move — stone scraping against stone.
The statues around the perimeter — the ones that had stayed silent through the chaos — now began to stand. Their joints cracked like frozen wood. The hollow sockets of their faces lit with the same gold as the sarcophagus.
"Contact, right flank!" A'Chuang shouted.He slashed downward, his blade cutting through one statue's arm, but three more stepped forward, weapons raised. The air filled with the shriek of metal meeting metal.
Li队 charged, moving like a soldier possessed. His knife sliced through one statue's throat — if it could be called that — and the stone figure crumbled into dust. Another lunged; he parried, twisted, drove his blade upward into the seam of its chest, splitting the rune carved there. The statue froze mid-step, then fell.
"Back to the corridor!" he ordered again. "Fall in pairs!"
Li Muye pushed himself to his feet, the runes on his body flickering like dying embers. The sigil beneath his ribs pulsed once — and the nearest statue shattered without him touching it.
Everyone stopped for a half second.
Even the drum paused.
Li Muye stared at his own trembling hands. "It… reacted to me."
Zhou Zhan's voice was a whisper of awe and terror. "You're its echo now."
A crack of thunder drowned out the words. The ceiling split again, showering the room in debris. The ancient tomb howled — not from wind, but from the vibration of the drum resonating through its bones.
Li队 seized Li Muye by the collar, dragging him toward the exit. "Move! You can study it when we're not dying!"
The group sprinted through the passage as the drumbeat accelerated, shaking the walls. Blue and gold light flared behind them, the tomb's murals collapsing inward, as if the very stone was being rewritten.
As they crossed the threshold, the light winked out — sudden, total. The tomb fell still.
Only one sound followed them into the corridor:A heartbeat, faint and steady, echoing from within Li Muye's chest.
Thump.
Thump.