Volume 4 Chapter 12 Hundred-legged Dragon

I brushed the snow off my eyes and didn’t know where I was for a moment. I only felt the sharp rocks on my back, and Ye Cheng was right below me, yelling.

I calmed I calmed down and subconsciously looked to see what Ye Cheng was afraid of. I looked down carefully and found that we were now leaning against a steep slope of rocks, five or six meters from the bottom of the slope. The rope around my waist was hanging on a rock corner, and we had not rolled down directly. The bottom of the slope was full of snow and rocks that had just slid down with us. Inside the snow, several black, slender claws were exposed.

I felt I felt a sense of suffocation and unconsciously pressed my back against the rock behind me. Looking along the claws, I could see a black, thick-bodied object coiled in the snow. The segmented body was covered in scales, some hidden in the snow and some exposed. At first glance, I thought it was a hibernating snake, but on closer inspection, it looked more like a centipede. This thing thing was clinging to the rock, not moving at all. I didn’t know if it was dead or alive, and I couldn’t see its head or tail, nor did I know how long it was.

I was wondering, this was already above the snow line, and there were very few living things here. What kind of creature was this? Looking at those centipede-like claws and its size, I felt instinctively uncomfortable.

Pan Zi insisted on going down, Ye Cheng kept calling, and the fat guy also saw what was down there. He took a ball of snow next to him and smashed it on Ye Cheng’s back of the head, and whispered, “You motherfucker, keep your voice down!

I looked I looked around. This should be a small, enclosed valley, filled with snow, but because the rocks here were too messy, there were a lot of bubbles. The fat guy went up and stepped on the fragile snow layer, causing a chain reaction. The snow layer collapsed all at once. As a result, we all brought him down. The snow was still collapsing. After such a collapse, the surrounding snow would often flow together like quicksand, burying the collapsed area again. Many mountain expeditions have lost members in such situations, and the entire team would disappear in a matter of seconds.

Fortunately, the snow on the side was still quite solid, probably because we were tied together with ropes.

This was the leeward side, and the wind was significantly weaker, so it wasn’t as cold as before. I had to breathe a sigh of relief, carefully sat up, and moved down a few steps. Although it was very steep, the slope was covered with broken stones, some as big as the head of a truck, and some as small as a ping-pong ball.

Pan Zi and Mian Youping had already untied the rope. Because they were not far from the bottom, they both jumped down with a splash, and after landing, they rolled to cushion the impact and rolled to the bottom of the slope. The two climbed up carefully, one after the other, and moved towards the black thing. Our hearts were in our throats.

After a few steps, both Pan Zi and Mian Youping straightened up, visibly relaxing. Pan Zi looked at Mian Youping, shrugged his shoulders, and made a gesture for us to come down.

We We were surprised to see that the fat man had untied the rope and rolled down. Mian Youping had already swept the snow off the stone sculpture on the ground. It turned out to be a stone dragon lying on its back. It was carved from black stone and the cliff carving was very vivid. If it was hidden in the snow, it was really hard to see.

We We went down one after another. Chen Pi A Si saw the stone carving and his face changed noticeably. He couldn’t stand up straight and called out to Hua Monk to help him. He walked straight to the front of the stone carving and touched it. This dragon was different from the others. Under its body, there were countless legs like centipedes. It was obviously not a carving from the Central Plains. It should be a dragon alienated by the nomadic people nearby.

The fat man asked me, “Why is this dragon so ugly? It looks like a worm. It looks evil and is much uglier than the dragon on the Imperial Palace’s dragon jade. It must be broken.”

The monk Hua said, “Don’t talk nonsense if you don’t understand. This is a hundred-legged dragon, not a coiled dragon. In the early days of the Dongxia Kingdom, all dragon carvings looked like this. In the early days of China, the ancient Chinese dragons had very different shapes. Some dragons even had pig snouts. This is not surprising. The evolution of the Chinese dragon was a long process. At the beginning, the dragon was a crawling animal. Any animal with a snake body and a beast head was considered a dragon. At that time, each tribe had its own dragon totem, and each tribe evolved separately. In the end, the dragon’s form was also different. Later, when the Han culture spread and the Yi and Xia cultures merged, the image of the Han dragon began to mix with the dragons of the various ethnic minorities, and in the end the dragon gradually unified into the present-day coiled dragon.

This This hundred-legged dragon is a hybrid of a dragon and a centipede. But for some reason, seeing so many arthropod legs growing from the body of an ordinary dragon not only fails to give people a sense of majesty, but also makes people feel very uncomfortable and a bit eerie.

After listening to the introduction of the monk, the fat man laughed and said, “Brother Scar, I didn’t know you were so literary. Then this stone must be from the Dongxia Kingdom, right?”

The monk looked at the stone carving and then looked up at the top of the hill, puzzled: “Yes, but where did this stone carving of a dragon come from?”

It was already dark, so we each turned on our flashlights and swept the snow off the stone with them. We found that the stone was almost a huge slab five meters high and three meters wide, leaning against a rocky slope.

I looked I looked at the marks on the broken stone and said, “It may have fallen from above. Grandpa Si was right. The place we are going to is still up there. Look at the asymmetrical shape of the dragon. This is a double dragon playing with a pearl. There should be another side to this kind of stone carving, usually carved on a stone door, one on each side.”

Chen Pi A Si coughed and said weakly, “Fart, half-baked, big talk, what stone door, this is the tombstone in the tomb.”

He said He pointed to the dragon’s mouth, and Hua immediately went over, put his hand in the dragon’s mouth, and pulled. He actually pulled out a black chain as thick as a wrist. The fat man looked at it and said, “Oh, no, you pulled out the dragon’s intestines.”

Chen Pi A Si said, “This is the horse chain used to pull the sealing stone when the tomb was sealed. This side is the side facing in.”

The fat man He blushed and looked around, saying, “Ah, it really is. I was wrong. But how did the sealing stone appear here?”

Hua Monk pulled the chain hard, but the stone did not move at all. Chen Pi A Si’s face also flashed a trace of doubt. He shook his head and looked up. I let out a sigh of relief, knowing what he was worried about. If this sealing stone fell from above, that meant the tomb passage above was severely damaged. Even if we found it, could we still enter?

The snowstorm above The snowstorm was raging, and it was already dark. I looked at my watch and wondered when the storm would end.

Finding this stone sculpture had increased our confidence in finding the Heavenly Palace, but I didn’t know whether to be happy or depressed. Hua Monk took a picture of the stone sculpture, and Chen Pi A Si’s spirits returned. He told us to take care of our things first, take a break if we needed to, and that we could take shelter here from the wind.

We We organized our equipment, and Hua went to take care of the wounded soldier. I was looking through things, and he came running over to tell me that there was a problem. Shunzi was basically unresponsive.

We laid Shunzi down and shook his head. He could only mumble a dull “hmm,” and his consciousness was vague.

“We have to start a fire, or he won’t last long,” Panzi said. “If he falls asleep, he won’t wake up.”

I looked I looked around, but there was no firewood at all. I was afraid that if I lit a fire, I would burn the sled. But we needed a lot of equipment to go to the snow mountain, and without the sled, I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to go down the road.

Hua looked at Chen Pi A Si, and obviously didn’t dare to make a decision on his own. The latter’s face was very sullen, I don’t know if it was from the cold or something, he frowned and said, “Don’t let him die for now, I still have things to ask him.”

I I breathed a sigh of relief. Hua Monk unloaded the things on the sled and prepared to pull out the wooden planks for firewood. However, the sleds were all soaked in snow, and I didn’t know if they could be lit.

I suddenly smelled a sulfur smell. I didn’t know where it came from, and my mind jumped. I told Hua Monk to stay still and stood up to smell it carefully. The others also smelled it at the same time, and they all stopped what they were doing. The fat man took a deep breath and said, “Comrades, it smells like a hot spring!”

Chen Pi A Si gave Ye Cheng and Lang Feng a wink, telling them to go out and look for it. The fat man picked up his backpack and said he was going too, but all three were stopped by Pan Zi. The fat man asked, “What for?” Pan Zi pointed at the Mian Youbing with his chin and said, “Don’t panic. Don’t forget that we have a master here.”

At this time Muyoubing had already bent down and used his two long fingers to touch the bottom of the stone one by one. Suddenly, he frowned and said, “Hmm?” and turned to the hundred-legged panlong stone.

We came to the front of the panlong stone. There was no smell here before, but now the smell of sulfur was very obvious. Muyoubing touched the dragon head and looked behind the stone. He put his hand on the dragon head and pressed it, saying, “Strange, the back of the dragon head is empty.”