The Sea of ​​Lights Returns to the Ruins

"The Sea of Lights Returns to the Ruins" One sentence introduction: One hundred thousand copper lanterns are lit up every sixty years in Guixu, Nanhai. Everyone who sees the sea of lanterns will lose their mouth little by little, starting with their lips. And I was born without a sense of taste and had a black mark on the base of my tongue - that black mark was both a key and a wick. --- My name is Shen Yan, and I am a corpse collector from three generations of my ancestors. Before my grandfather died, he left me a box of old photos. All the people in the photo have no mouths, and the background is the same black sea. The sea is full of copper lamps, densely packed, like open eyes. There is only one sentence written on the back of the photo: "Don't count lights." I always thought it was crazy. It wasn't until twenty years later that a man named Lao Pan came to our door and said he was my grandfather's teammate back then. He brought with him a fragment of bronze fished out of the South China Sea, with a tongue engraved on it. In the middle of your tongue is my name. He said: "The sea of lights has opened. Your father died there back then. The lock on your tongue is the only key that can open the tower." I followed them out to sea. The ship is an old iron-hulled ship, and the crew has their own agenda. Lao Pan said he was going to fish for "sea goods", but everyone secretly hid the same sea map - what was marked on the map was not an island, but nine tombs. On the third night, the sea was really bright. Thousands of copper lamps floated from the bottom of the water. The flames of the lamps were green and not hot, but they swam towards the side of the ship like living creatures. Some people say it's like a tongue licking an iron shell. I counted, and there was only one lamp with a human face carved on it. That face has no mouth. We went into the sea. There is no sand on the bottom of the sea, just tongue-shaped black rocks. Between the rocks, a nine-story black tower hangs upside down, inserted from the seabed into the center of the earth, like a nail. The first floor tower door is warm. When he pushed it open, blood gushed out from inside. There is a transparent coffin hanging in the tower. The person in the coffin is wearing modern clothes, with a bronze whistle of the same style as his grandfather pinned to his chest. His face had no mouth, and the skin was smooth, as if a mouth had never existed. Lao Pan suddenly covered his face and said his mouth was bitter. Then, his lips became thinner and thinner, and his teeth fell out one by one. We watched helplessly as his mouth slowly opened and closed, like a wound healing. He finally struggled and wrote in blood: "Ta is eating. Don't talk." But there was a sound from the bottom of the tower - not the waves, but billions of mouths opening and closing at the same time, saying the same sentence: "You guys are here to count the lights." Only then did I understand. We are not here to rob graves. We are here to "retaliate". For generations, the Shen family has not been a corpse hunter, but a "Haikou seal craftsman". There is a "mouth tomb" locked under Guixu in Nanhai. The ever-burning lamp on the top of the tower has the tongue of the Shen family as its wick. My sense of taste was not born without it, it was removed. Now, the lights are going out. Tower was about to speak. And I have to give back the tongue before everyone turns into faceless corpses - or, the tower can never open its mouth. --- There is no immortality or bronze door in this story. There is only a tower that can eat its mouth, and a night sea that dare not count lights. Everyone's secrets lie in their throats. Purpose: Visiting the tomb