Book 3: Chapter 8: Ghost Banquet


    Fatty sometimes said some absolutely crazy things, but there had been a few times when he was very urate. I was right in the middle of thinking that this scene was a little strange, so when he said that, I suddenly realized why.


    As I had pried all the porcin items from the corpses hands and put them in one ce, I had a momentary impression of their quantity and style. It really was like a banquet configuration.


    I went over to the ce where the porcin was piled up and started grouping them ording to the ancient dining etiquette. By the time I was done, I had separated them into ten whole sets and three iplete sets, bringing the total to thirteen sets.


    In other words, there were tenplete sets of tableware consisting of wine vessels, utensils, andrge and small tes. This banquet set had four or five dishes and two wine vessels, which indicated that it had been for a big, joyous feast.


    All the tableware was made in the same style, which really showed that they came from the same banquet. But there wasnt any food residue on the tableware; they were all just standard funerary objects that hadnt been used. The whole situation was really very strange.


    "Its weird, Mr. Nave," Fatty said to me. "Its like a huge make-believe event where anyone who yed all became possessed. Then, they came to this grove and buried themselves in the holes they dug in the ground."


    I didnt know what the specific situation was yet, nor did I know what had happened to these grave robbers. Maybe there was a banquet-like burial chamber in the worlds second most valuable tomb that they had ransacked. But why did they only steal the banquet porcin? Did that tomb only have one dining-themed burial chamber?


    I continued arranging the porcin sets into groups and ced them in a circle until it seemed like there was a banquet being held on the forest floor. Only three sets were iplete, which meant that either some people hadnt been dug up yet or they werent dead.


    I nced at Ping Lian. The dog was exhausted andying off to the side in a daze, so I knew that it would be impossible to force him to continue.


    But why this forest? What was so special about this ce? Why did all these people choose to die here?


    I looked at the sky. The light was dimming quickly and it was getting darker out, which made the fear in my heart increase.


    Jin Wantang came up to me and asked in a trembling voice, "Little Master Three, am I in trouble?"


    "Don''t panic, you only lost a quarter of the people you hired. It''s not the time to give up." I was a little relieved that Xiao Hua wasnt among them, but this was already a high-casualty incident. Jin Wantang''s savings would have to act as pensions and be used topensate these peoples families, so hed basically lose his whole fortune.


    "What do we do now?" Fatty asked me.


    I nced at Poker-Face, who pointed to the area outside the forest. I knew that we couldn''t set up camp among the trees and had to leave before it waspletely dark, so our group got on our horses and temporarily withdrew.


    In order to continue the investigation, Fatty carried one of the corpses out. We set up camp a hundred meters away from the forest and lit a fire. I continued studying the corpse with the help of a shlight and the firelight.


    This was the first body we had dug up. I stripped its clothes off and saw some crappy tattoos, but I still couldn''t find any signs of trauma. I pressed my hand against its stomach and found that it was bulging.


    It seemed that this person had ate his fill before he died, which I found surprising. Generally, we didnt eat very much when we were out in the wild.


    The degree of satiety of this corpses stomach was that of someone who had eaten at a banquet. In fact, the whole stomach was erged.


    When I turned my head and saw Fatty cooking, I hesitated on whether to cut the corpses stomach open to see what was inside. I briefly wondered if this person just happened to be full and the others stomachs were normal. It still wasntpletely dark yet, so I called Poker-Face over and went back to the grove to check the other bodies.


    If it was before, I would have called Jin Wantang to go with me. But now I definitely only did side tasks with Poker-Face.


    The two of us walked back to the forest again and found that it was already very dark inside. In fact, I was a little regretful. It got dark too fast here and now there was a huge dark pressure that had been generated.


    We turned on our shlights and walked quickly until we had returned to the ce where we had stacked the bodies earlier. At this time, all my hair suddenly stood on end.


    The bodies were gone. The ce where we had left them waspletely bare.


    Under my shlights glow, I saw that all of the bodies werent in their original positions and the ce was empty. I swept my shlight around to look for them and immediately found them all in another ce.


    Somehow, they had all moved to the ce where I had set up the banquet tableware and were now sitting around it.


    I froze and immediately realized that the banquet was still going on!


    But they all kept their heads down and remained silent in the darkness.


    I hadnt been that scared for a long time and all the hair on my body was standing on end, but it was mainly because I had been caught off guard.


    <em>Damn it, I broke my past record. This time Ive revived a dozen zombies at once. </em>I cursed inwardly and tried to pull Poker-Face back, but he grabbed my hand and stopped me. Before I could react, I noticed that he had a solemn expression on his face. He looked around and then turned off his shlight.


    I was just about to ask him what was going on, but he hushed me and turned off my shlight before saying, "Hide."


    "Huh?" I was taken aback for a moment


    He very carefully dragged me through the trees and walked around the outer edge of the corpse banquet. Then, he did something that really creeped me outhe found a small table with few people and made me sit down.