Volume 5 Chapter 30 The Path of Shadows

Shunzi and Panzi were dumbfounded and said to themselves, “Fuck, what’s going on? Did we go to the wrong door?”

“No!” Both of us had experience and immediately knew what was going on: “The tomb passage has shifted. When we were inside the tomb chamber, the old tomb passage moved to another place, and a new tomb passage moved here.”

“Can this be done?” Panzi opened his mouth wide.

“Yes!” Both of us nodded vigorously, thinking to ourselves that this was not surprising, considering what had happened in the tomb designed by Wang Zanghai.

I was a little scared, but also a little relieved, because as soon as the tomb passage changed, I suddenly understood why Shunzi’s father and the other mummies were trapped alive in the gold. If we didn’t know Wang Zanghai’s plan, the strange changes in the tomb passage would have driven us crazy. We were almost fooled into losing our minds in the underwater tomb, but once we knew the principle of the sudden change in the tomb passage, it wasn’t scary at all.

Once the tunnel changes, the crossroads where we came from will no longer exist, and it will be impossible to go back. Although we don’t know what the end of this new tunnel is, if we stay here and don’t leave, we will end up just like those corpses.

At the time, I thought that at most, there would be nothing at the end of the tunnel, and it would be a dead end. This wouldn’t be a big deal. The reason those corpses were trapped here was probably the same reason. Without explosives, the road we came from suddenly disappeared, and they naturally became overwhelmed and showed that desperate expression.

In hindsight, I was still too young. The depth of the despair on the faces of the corpses indicated that what they had encountered was more incredible than I had imagined, and I had thought too simply at the time.

I told my idea to the others, and explained to Pan Zi and Shunzi the principle of the changing tomb passage, and they finally realized what was going on, and showed a look of “so that’s it.” Pan Zi thought a little further, and said, “If that’s the case, theoretically the structure of this underground palace will be infinitely complex. Will we be like being trapped in a Rubik’s Cube, and once we enter, we can’t get out?”

I reassured him: “I don’t think so. Wang Zanghai’s trick was just to put psychological pressure on the tomb robbers. It’s not easy to really trap someone to death. I think in the end, many people died of mental torture.”

Anyway, we have to take a look at this new tunnel and think of a way out. If we really can’t get out, as the fat guy said, we can first determine a direction and then blow our way out step by step. Now that we have explosives, our backs are a lot stronger.

I took the lead and walked into the tomb passage, and the fat man and the others followed closely behind. Suddenly I felt something was wrong. The murals around were so chilling, with so many big heads, it was as if the place was full of such things, making people extremely uncomfortable. I suddenly thought, is it possible that there is such a thing at the end of the secret passage, and when its shadow falls on the wall, we will definitely not be able to find it.

But we had already walked in, and it would be too embarrassing to turn back. I had to pluck up my courage and walk in front, trying not to think about these things. Soon, the tomb door behind us could no longer be seen, and we had reached a place where we were at a loss.

Pan Zi, who was behind us, asked Shunzi about his father and the expedition as we walked. Shunzi told him a little bit, and Pan Zi said to us, “Just now, as we came all the way here, all the sealing stones were blasted out of the cave with directional blasting, which is the latest technology. This shows that they did not come in the same way we did. It seems that there must be more than one way out of here.”

I said, “Of course. You see, Ning and the others are going so fast. They can even get here before us by taking the same route. We still lost because we had too little information.”

We just don’t know where Ning and the others are now. They should have been in the treasure room just now. Did they also come out and encounter the tomb passage moving? Is it the same as the one we entered? More, is it the same for Uncle San?

I really don’t know what to think. We have already followed Uncle San’s secret code to enter the underground palace. He didn’t give us any follow-up secret code. It seems that after entering the underground palace, he may also be at a loss.

We walked for about 20 minutes, and then we saw a reflection in the light of the flashlight in front of us, which proved that we had reached the end of the tunnel. We all became nervous, and immediately calmed down, slowing down and walking over little by little. Soon, at the end of the tunnel, there was another jade door.

When the jade door first appeared, I was suddenly shocked because this jade door was exactly the same as the one just now. Then I thought, most of the doors in the ancient tombs were made by the same craftsman, so of course they would be very similar. The stone material of the door was still very good, and there was also a hole at the bottom of the door, which was also blown out by people.

It seems that someone has been here before. That’s good. No matter who has been here, it’s a good thing for us. At least it proves that there are no traps.

We entered again in a line, because there were not many cold fireworks left. This time, the fat man did not want to light cold fireworks, but instead lit a few firecrackers. We looked around and were stunned.

Behind the tomb door was a room exactly the same as the treasure room we had just seen. Inside the tomb room were piles of gold and silver treasures piled up like a small mountain.

I thought to myself that there must be more than one room like this in the underground palace, and I wondered how much treasure was piled up. No wonder the Dongxia Dynasty was so weak but still managed to build such a magnificent tomb. It turned out that the hoarded treasures were so many. I think that all dictatorships have this habit. Genghis Khan’s spirit is buried under the grasslands of Mongolia, and Hitler’s Nazi gold is said to be buried in Tibet.

I was thinking about this when suddenly a fat man on the side yelled at me. The sound was so loud that it scared me.

I thought something was wrong and looked at him. I saw him standing on a mountain of gold with his mouth wide open, trying to speak but unable to say anything. I ran up to take a look and was shocked to see several bodies curled up in the treasure.

I asked curiously, “Shunzi, how many fathers do you have… ah, no, how many people are in your father’s team?” Before I finished asking, I suddenly saw a phenomenon that made my hair stand on end. I saw a bunch of things neatly arranged in a pile of gold next to the pile of corpses. I shone my flashlight on it, and it was exactly some of the things we had just sorted out in another treasure room. The order and categories were exactly the same.

The fat guy couldn’t stand it anymore, and he lit up the entire tomb chamber with a flashlight. We walked down and took a closer look. These things were clearly the things we had just taken out.

The fat guy exclaimed in horror, “What’s going on? Someone is imitating our actions…?”

I frowned, stood up, and looked around. A familiar feeling came over me, and I said dumbly, “No… we came back on our own. This is where we started!”