"Good heavens, the path the little brother pointed out is a dead end," Fatty squinted at it and clicked his tongue. "Could it be that the little brother never told us about his family's traditional customs, and specially brought us here to see Zhang family attractions – smoked jerky?"
"I don't think the little brother has your leisure, Fatty," Wu Tianzhen listened to the string of dish names coming out of Fatty's mouth, feeling the taste of the compressed biscuits in his mouth becoming even more bland. He couldn't even bear to look at those arms properly, so he forced himself to shift his gaze and walk straight towards the wall.
He wasn't as skilled at solving mechanisms as Zhang Qiling, but the differences on this wall were so obvious that even a dog would find them if it sniffed around.
...This was a wall without any cracks, only two conspicuous circular deep holes in the center.
"I think something should be inserted here..." Wu Tianzhen pondered, his eyes subconsciously falling on Fatty who was walking over.
Fatty shivered almost instantly under Xie Haiwang's gaze. He glanced at the two holes, his thoughts veering off into a place that couldn't be discussed in detail.
"No, no," he waved his hands repeatedly. "These holes are so small. My treasure, Fatty, is much thicker. It won't fit, it won't fit!"
Wu Tianzhen: ...?
He didn't react for a moment, and when he finally understood, his facial muscles almost twitched.
Wu Tianzhen took a deep breath: "I mean, these holes should require the uniquely long fingers of the Zhang family to open them."
"Holy crap, that's amazing?!" Fatty exclaimed, "This is too much of a decline in morals, tsk tsk tsk!" He faked teasing Wu Tianzhen's nerves again, then turned around and picked up the severed hand he had just slapped earlier from the ground.
Wu Tianzhen swept away the contaminated waste in his mind and tacitly made way for Fatty.
It wasn't that they didn't know that the mechanism might require the fingers of a living Zhang family member, but neither of them considered risking Zhang Qiling.
Since there were so many preserved Zhang family arms in this cursed place, they weren't in a hurry. Even if they tried them one by one, they would open the door!
Then, perhaps due to years of disrepair, exposure to wind and rain, and lack of maintenance, the arms shattered into pieces with a few "crack" sounds the moment they were inserted into the mechanism holes, before they could even turn.
Wu Tianzhen and Fatty: ???
"This shouldn't be happening?" Fatty took out another arm that had suffered post-mortem fractures, waved it a couple of times, listened to the sound of bone breaking like crushed dry noodles, and showed a disgusted expression, directly throwing the arm on the ground.
"I don't think this will work, Tianzhen," Fatty pulled down another lucky arm from the suspension rope beside him and said solemnly, "Little brother's fellow clansmen have too severe osteoporosis problems. Will this be hereditary? We need to give the little brother some calcium when we get back, maybe his height can grow a bit more, up to 1.9 meters!"
"I don't think the little brother necessarily likes you caring about his height..." Wu Tianzhen always felt that Fatty was dancing on the edge of Zhang Qiling's sanity every moment, and couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat for him.
But soon, he stopped paying attention to these minor issues.
Because they discovered that the sausages hanging from the ceiling seemed to have been broken like wafer biscuits by them.
The broken arms lay scattered on the ground like innocent victims who had been ravaged, looking like a pile of salted fish just pulled from the sea.
"Our direction should be correct, this thing needs the fingers of the Zhang family to open it," Wu Tianzhen concluded, "But the fingers we have are too brittle to withstand the internal pressure of the mechanism when it operates."
After analyzing a lot, he suddenly noticed that Fatty seemed to have zoned out at some point, his eyes staring blankly to the side.
Wu Tianzhen paused his voice in surprise and followed his gaze –
There lay a coffin.
Wu Tianzhen: ...
"Tianzhen," Fatty patted Wu Tianzhen heavily on the back, his tone filled with the relief and expectation of a sea king who had been nurtured for a thousand days and used for a moment, "Whether we can have firm and lively fingers depends entirely on whether you, Xie Haiwang, can unleash your power!"
"Quick!" With that, he moved Zhang Qiling, who had been leaning against the wall, to a safer place with agility that didn't match his physique, and gestured with his eyes for Wu Tianzhen to bravely step forward and open the coffin, "Go, Xie Haiwang, let it rise from the dead!"
Wu Tianzhen: ?!!
Wu Tianzhen wanted to speak but stopped, wanted to stop but spoke, stopped and spoke, finally squeezed some air in frustration, and then walked forward angrily.
He cautiously touched the coffin, but it didn't move at all.
So he tentatively said, "Uh... is anyone inside?"
The coffin remained still, as if it contained a simple dead person.
Fatty behind him had already started shouting encouragement. Wu Tianzhen repeated "family misfortune" a thousand times in his heart, then threw caution to the wind and casually said, "Please, please don't rise from the dead, I'm so scared—"
Then with a loud "bang," the coffin lid was kicked open from the inside!
It seemed that the person inside was indeed not a simple dead person, but a rebellious dead person who liked to go against others.
Wu Tianzhen made eye contact with the corpse, whose face was ashen and body oozing oil, looking like a tin can painted with cucumber paint, and decisively uttered "Holy crap" and dodged away with a rolling maneuver.
Fatty, who had been waiting for a long time, immediately followed up with an offensive. Wu Tianzhen only saw a flash of white light, and the Faqiu Seal, which had always been cherished on Fatty's chest, accurately smashed onto the cucumber-painted big brother, making him dizzy.
Immediately following was a rain of bullets that seemed to be free of charge. Fatty fired through several magazines, then let out a long sigh.
"Hoo—Look, Tianzhen, how was my result?"
"Why don't you look yourself?" Wu Tianzhen didn't want to applaud Fatty's showmanship. He perfunctorily clapped his hands and collected the right arm of the zombie, which had appeared and disappeared suddenly, and the Faqiu Seal on the ground.
"A real man never looks back at an explosion!" Fatty was still immersed in his own coolness. Since they found Zhang Qiling, the atmosphere between the two had become much more relaxed.
The hand of this zombie, clearly maintained the firmness and resilience that a reanimated person should have. Wu Tianzhen inserted it into the door hole, and in an instant, it felt as smooth as if a key had been inserted into the right lock.
"Click—"
A light sound came from inside the door hole, and then this seamless door wall began to rotate like a vortex, slowly revealing a new exit.