Chapter 3654: Ghosts Everywhere (26)

Ning Shu continued to stimulate Song Mo by pricking him with a needle like Granny Rong,¹A villainous character from the famous Chinese drama My Fair Princess. but he wouldn’t wake up. He kept struggling, but his soul seemed rooted in the illusion. Was it because 2333 had taken the stone?

Ning Shu asked 2333, “Is it because you took the stone that these people can’t wake up?”

“No. The world stone is responsible for constructing the illusions. Since these people can’t find their way out, they’re just waiting to die,” 2333 said bluntly before falling silent again.

Clearly, he didn’t care at all whether these people lived or died.

Ning Shu continued to jab Song Mo’s fingers, but he still didn’t wake up. Although his eyeballs were moving under his lids and his fingers were twitching, he simply couldn’t open his eyes.

Ning Shu poked every single one of his fingers, yet even that level of pain couldn’t bring him back. Beads of blood began to well up on all ten of his fingertips.

Sitting on the floor, she looked helplessly at the man. She turned her attention to the others, but she couldn’t wake a single one of them.

It seemed they really couldn’t wake up. In the original storyline, the entire group, including the entrustor, must have been wiped out.

Even Ning Shu had almost failed to escape.

Going through it over and over, unable to distinguish reality from fiction because every layer felt so real… it was exhausting.

Ning Shu sat on the ground and searched the comatose people. She found several IDs. They were archaeology experts—licensed tomb raiders.

The entrustor was likely here as part of the archaeological team. All those details in the dreams—biopharmaceuticals, criminal psychology, hypnosis—were just a load of nonsense.

But what if this current situation was also a lie?

Ning Shu was at a loss.

Since she couldn’t wake them with pain, she began flipping through the bamboo slips to see if there was any record of how to escape the mirage stone’s influence.

She wondered which emperor had done all this for the woman in the coffin.

Ning Shu wasn’t an archaeologist and had zero interest in the history.

She flipped through the bamboo slips. They were very old. They must have been soaked in some kind of medicinal fluid, as there were very few insect holes. However, the binding threads were rotten and snapped at the slightest touch.

Ning Shu carefully turned the slips, but she found no method for waking someone from the illusion. Likely, no one knew the way out.

What was she supposed to do now?

She sat cross-legged, trying to see if she could absorb any spiritual energy. Fortunately, the tomb was safe enough. The mirage stone was the ultimate weapon in it. No one was supposed to ever walk out of its illusions.

The spiritual energy here was very scarce. After cultivating for quite a while, Ning Shu only had a sliver of energy in her internal core.

She funneled this tiny bit of energy into Song Mo’s body to help repair it.

To be honest, if everyone else stayed in a coma while she was the only one awake, it was basically the same as them being dead. The blame would likely fall on her.

She didn’t know their specific status, but judging by their IDs, they were likely famous figures in the field of archaeology.

After infusing Song Mo with some energy, she went back to jabbing his fingers. They were covered in blood, and she reopened the wounds that had just started to clot.

Song Mo’s fingers moved slightly. His body was trying to resist the external harm by curling his fingers to avoid the pain.

Still, he wouldn’t wake up. Was he destined to become a vegetable?

“Professor Chen, how are things over there?” a voice crackled from a walkie-talkie in the chamber.

Ning Shu retrieved the device from one of the bodies. She shouted into it with a voice full of panic and terror. “Help! Help! There are ghosts! There are ghosts in here! Ah! Don’t come near me!”

“We finally got a response. You were silent for so long, we thought something had happened.”

“Should we head down?” The voices on the radio discussed the situation for a moment before the transmission ended.

Since this was an archaeological team, there were more than just the people in this room.

Ning Shu waited for the rescue team to descend. While waiting, she replaced the coffin lid, making everything look as if it had never been opened.

She had taken the mirage stone, and she was the only one awake. It would be very easy for suspicion to fall on her.

She didn’t touch a single item on the remains. Everything was left exactly as it was.

She had to be cautious.

Soon, people came down. They saw the bodies on the ground and Ning Shu’s dazed, vacant expression. Based on her current memory, she didn’t recognize any of these people, including the ones on the floor—except for Song Mo. She didn’t even know if Song Mo was actually his name.

The rescuers asked her, “What happened?”

Ning Shu looked at them with a blank stare. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Where is this? Who am I? What am I doing?”

The rescuers looked at one another. They hurriedly moved to help the comatose people. When they saw the sheer number of burial objects, they couldn’t help but gasp in amazement. Some of them began carrying the unconscious team members out of the tomb. However, the first person to be taken out stopped breathing immediately.

“Professor Chen! Professor Chen!” The professor’s heart stopped the moment he was carried out of the chamber.

Ning Shu’s face contorted as she screamed, “You can’t go out! You can’t go out!”

“Stop! Stop!” she cried.

It had to be the change in the magnetic field. Moving the comatose people was essentially sending them to their deaths.

They couldn’t leave like this.

The rescuers stood there in confusion, unsure whether to leave or stay.

Ning Shu acted like a madwoman, grabbing onto people to prevent them from leaving.

They were forced to set the bodies down. “An Liya, you can’t do this. They need medical treatment. Professor Chen died because he didn’t get help in time. If you delay the others, will you take responsibility for their lives?”

Ning Shu clutched her head. “We can’t leave! We can’t leave! There are ghosts here! If we go out, we’ll die! We can’t go out!”

The others looked at Ning Shu as if she were a lunatic. They didn’t know what had happened in this tomb to leave so many people in comas and the only survivor mentally unstable.

The tomb was very simple. There were no traps or poison. It was just a plain burial chamber. How had it come to this?

Ning Shu blocked their path. “Listen to me! You’re not allowed to leave! None of you! There are ghosts here, and once we leave, they’ll kill us! They’ll kill us all! Haha…”

She looked like a total madman, laughing and crying all at once. The rescuers were beginning to lose their patience.

“They need treatment right now. Ignore her.” Someone restrained the hysterical Ning Shu. “An Liya’s mind is clearly broken.”

Ning Shu froze.

An Liya? Wasn’t I Shi Mei?

Her identity was changing so fast.

She really couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake anymore. Even her names were enough to cause a mental split.

“You really can’t go! There are ghosts! They’re everywhere! They’re behind you! Behind all of you!” Ning Shu pointed at the space behind them and twisted her face in terror. “You can’t leave! You can’t leave!”