Volume 1 chapter 9: The Ancient Tomb

The phone must have been dropped not long ago. I picked it up and saw that it was covered in blood. I thought, “It seems that there are more than just us here. It looks like someone else was injured. This phone definitely didn’t fall from the sky.”

I opened the phone’s address book and saw that there were only a few numbers inside, all of which were overseas numbers. There was no other information. Uncle San said, “No matter what, we can’t go looking for them. We should just keep going.” I looked I looked around, but there were no clues, so I had to continue on my way. But seeing such a modern thing in the middle of nowhere always feels a bit strange, so I asked the old man if anyone had entered the forest recently.

The old man laughed: “A group of people, about a dozen, entered the forest two weeks ago, and they haven’t come out yet. This place is dangerous. Grandpas, we can still turn back now.”

“No It’s just a monster,” said Da Kui. ‘I’m telling you, our little grandpa, even the thousand-year-old zombies have to bow to him. With him, any monsters are no match, right?’ He asked about the oil lamp, but the oil lamp didn’t react at all, as if he wasn’t even there. Da Kui hit a wall and couldn’t help but feel unhappy, but there was nothing he could do.

We walked until it was dark, and before 4:00 p.m., we finally reached our destination.

We We saw a dozen or so military tents that were almost intact. The tents were of very good quality, and although they were now covered in rotting leaves, they were still very dry and clean inside. There were many household items in the tents, and we casually flipped through them. There was a lot of scattered equipment, but no human corpses. The old man must not have lied.

We We even found a generator and some gasoline. The engine was wrapped in oilcloth, but most of the parts were rotten beyond recognition. I flipped through it and found that all the labels had been torn off, even the trademarks on the tents and their backpacks. I thought it was strange. It seemed that these people didn’t want others to know where they came from.

We made a fire in this camp and had a simple dinner. The old leader ate while looking warily around, afraid that the monster would suddenly rush out and hang him, too. The taste of the compressed food was really bad, and I almost drank a few sips of water.

The stuffy oil bottle ate while looking at the map. He pointed to a place on the map where the fox monster’s face was drawn: “We must be here now.”

We all gathered around, and he continued: “This is the place of sacrifice. The sacrificial altar should be below. The sacrificial offerings may be buried here.”

Third Uncle squatted down, grabbed a handful of dirt, put it under his nose and sniffed it, shook his head, walked a few more steps, grabbed another handful and said, “It’s buried too deep. We need to dig a few shovels.”

We We connected the threaded steel pipe and attached the shovel head. Uncle San stamped his foot on the ground to indicate where the shovel should be placed. Da Kui first fixed the shovel head, then used a short-handled hammer to start digging. Uncle San put one hand on the steel pipe to feel the situation below. When he had hit a total of 13 sections, Uncle San suddenly said, “There it is!”

We We pulled the shovel up section by section, and finally brought out a handful of soil. Da Kui removed the shovel head and walked over to the fire to show us. When we saw it, we both turned pale, and even the mummy gasped. It turned out that the soil was like it had been soaked in blood, dripping with a liquid that looked like blood.

Uncle San He took a whiff of it and frowned. My uncle and I had both read about blood-soaked corpses, but we couldn’t accurately deduce the specific situation from my grandfather’s notes. However, since there was blood in the mud, the tomb underneath must be something special.

I looked at my uncle and wanted to see how he would decide. He thought for a moment, lit a cigarette, and said, “No matter what, let’s dig it up first.”

While Pan Zi and Da Kui didn’t stop digging. Da Kui took a few more shovels and then handed them to Uncle San. Uncle San sniffed each shovel and used a trowel to connect the shovel holes on the ground. I watched them busy positioning. In a short while, the general outline of the ancient tomb was drawn on the ground.

Exploring the cave Locating is the basic work of a grave robber. Generally speaking, the tomb below is sure to look like the one above. Very few grave robbers would make a mistake, but I looked at this outline and felt that something was wrong. Most Warring States tombs did not have underground chambers, but this one clearly had one, and it was even topped with bricks.

Uncle San Uncle measured with his fingers and finally determined the location of the coffin. He said, “The bottom is a brick ceiling, so I can’t dig with my shovel. I can only mark a general location based on experience. This underground palace is so strange. I don’t know where the bricks are thin. I can only follow the experience of the Song Dynasty tombs and start digging from the back wall to see. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to start over, so I have to be quick.”

My uncle My uncle and his men had been digging holes for thieves for more than ten years, and they were extremely fast. The three whirlwind shovels flew up and down, and in a flash they had dug seven or eight meters. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, there was no need to make soil, so we just turned the mud outside. After a while, Dakuai called out from below, “It’s done!”

Dakuai had dug a large hole in the bottom of the cave and cleared out a large brick wall. We put on our miner’s lamps and went down inside. When Mian Youping saw Da Kui knocking on the brick wall with his hand, he hurriedly held him down and said, “Don’t touch anything.” Mian Youping’s eyes were extremely sharp, and Da Kui was scared.

He He reached out two fingers and placed them on the wall, feeling along the brick seams. He stopped after a long time and said, “There is a security layer inside. When moving it, all the bricks must be taken out, not pushed in, and definitely not smashed!”

Pan Zi touched the wall and said, “How is it possible that there is not even a crack, and how is it possible to take these bricks out?”

Muyoubing was absorbed in his own thoughts. He touched a brick and suddenly exerted force, pulling the brick out of the wall. This earth The brick is so strong that it takes a lot of strength to pull it out of the wall with just two fingers. These two fingers are really something.

He carefully placed the brick on the ground, pointed to the back of the brick, and we saw a dark red wax wall behind it. He said, “This wall is full of alum acid used in alchemy. If it breaks, these organic strong acids will instantly pour on us and burn us to the skin.”

I swallowed I swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and suddenly thought of the monster without skin that my grandfather had seen. I was shocked. Could it be that it wasn’t a blood corpse, but my great-grandfather who had been doused in vitriol? Then weren’t my grandfather’s shots fired at my great-grandfather’s body?

The oil-filled The bottle made Fangkui dig another five-meter straight well. Then he took out an injection needle and a plastic tube from his bag, connected the tube to the needle, and put the other end into the deep pit. Pan Zi lit a firecracker and burned the needle red. The oil bottle was carefully inserted into the wax wall. Immediately, red alum acid flowed from the end of the tube into the straight well.

Soon , the dark red wax wall turned white, and it looked like everything inside had already been drained. We immediately started to move the bricks. Soon, a hole was made in the wall that was large enough for a person to pass through. Uncle San threw a firecracker into the hole and, using the light, observed the environment inside.

We We came in from the north side of the tomb and saw that the ground was covered with stone slabs, all of which were engraved with ancient characters. The slabs were arranged in a pattern similar to the Eight Diagrams, with the larger ones on the outside and the smaller ones in the middle. There were eight lamps around the tomb, which had of course gone out , and in the middle of the tomb was a square tripod with the sun, moon and stars engraved on the top. On the south side of the tomb, facing us, was a stone coffin. Behind the coffin was a walkway that seemed to lead downward, but we didn’t know where it led.

Uncle San He stuck his head in and sniffed, then beckoned us to go in one by one.

Uncle San looked at the characters on the ground and said to Mung Youbing, “Little brother, can you see what these characters say and tell who is buried here?”

Mung Youbing shook his head and didn’t say anything.

We We folded up several pieces of paper and threw them into the lamp, which lit up the entire tomb chamber. I thought of the monster I had last seen in Grandpa’s notes, and I remembered that Grandpa had repeatedly mentioned hearing a strange gurgling sound. At this time, Pan Zi actually climbed onto the tripod to see what was inside. Suddenly, he shouted, “Third Uncle, there are treasures here!”

We all climbed up and saw a headless mummy in the urn. The clothes had rotted away, and the mummy had some jade jewelry on it. Pan Zi was not polite and took it off and put it on his own hands.

“This should be the torso of a person left after the human sacrifice. They cut off the head to sacrifice to the sky, and then put the body here to sacrifice to the people. These should be prisoners of war. Slaves can’t have jewelry on their hands.”

Pan Zi jumped into the tripod at once, wanting to see what else was down there. It was too late for Mian Youping to try to stop him. He looked back at the stone coffin, but fortunately it didn’t react. Third Uncle shouted, “You little brat, this tripod is used by people to put offerings in. Do you want to be an offering?”

Pan Zi He laughed and said, “Uncle San, I’m not Da Kui. Don’t scare me.” He took out a large jade bottle from inside. “Look, there are a lot of good things. Let’s turn the tripod over and see what else is there.”

“Stop messing around and come out!” Uncle San said. He saw that the expression on the Mian Youbing’s face had turned white, and his eyes were fixed on the stone coffin, knowing that something might be wrong.

At this time, I heard a “clucking” sound. I turned I turned my head and listened, and I couldn’t help but feel a chill. The sound wasn’t coming from the coffin, but from the oil-filled bottle.