Volume 5 Chapter 24 The underwater tunnel

The square hole was half a person tall, square in shape, and very roughly hewn. There were broken stones the size of watermelons all around the edges, and there were also quite a few inside. Obviously someone had blocked the hole before, and the inside of the square hole was pitch black, with no idea where it led to. It was a bit like the culverts we often see in the reservoirs in the south.

In the pile of broken stones on one side of the square hole, there was a relatively flat stone with some very crude characters carved on it. It was very hastily carved and very shallow. If it weren’t for the fact that the characters were English letters, they would have been very glaring in this kind of imperial tomb and Shunzi wouldn’t have been able to find them. Unfortunately, it was impossible to figure out what was carved.

Did Uncle San carve it for us to recognize the way? That’s what I thought at the time, but Uncle San’s English was very unreliable. How could he think of carving English as a secret code? This really wasn’t his style.

The fat guy was curious and went over to take a look. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Hey, Wu, these distorted English characters, we seem to have seen them somewhere before.”

I also went over and took a look. I couldn’t help but jump.

It wasn’t like that. We had seen these symbols before. It was when me and Fatso were in the underwater tomb, going down to the pool of stone tablets, that Fatso saw them on the pool wall. After seeing this symbol, Muddy Oil Bottle suddenly rushed down to the pool of stone tablets, and then he remembered what happened in the underwater tomb. How did it suddenly appear here again?

At the time, I always thought that the symbol was carved by one of the people when Uncle San brought Wenjin and the others down here, but it suddenly appeared here again, so obviously something was wrong.

Looking at the traces of the carving, it was done with a climbing pickaxe, and the traces were so fresh, so it must have been left by either Uncle San, or by Mian Youbing or Ah Ning, because only these few people had climbing picks, and whoever left this symbol must have already entered the square cave.

At this moment, I suddenly had a thought. I thought to myself, “Could it be that the foreign language symbol in the underwater tomb was carved by Mian Youbing, so that when he saw this symbol, he would know, ‘I’ve been here before.

This is really possible. When he appears again, I’ll have to ask him.

Pan Zi looked at me in a daze and asked me what was wrong. I told him about the symbol that I and Fatso saw at the bottom of the sea. Pan Zi also felt very curious. But he said, “I’ve been with Master San for ten years, and I’ve seen at least fifty tombs, some of them quite large. I’ve never seen him leave a secret message, and Master San can’t even read all the letters of the alphabet. This definitely wasn’t left by Master San.”

I thought to myself that it must have been Ning or Mian Youping, and I turned to them and said, “Anyway, it looks like we’re on the right track. Someone has already gone into this cave, so the entrance to the underground palace should be down here. Should we go in right away?”

“Let’s go!” The fat guy immediately said, “What are we waiting for? Several groups of people are ahead of us. I’ve always been the vanguard. I’ve only been the rear guard because I’ve run into a few unlucky kids. Let’s not dawdle. If we don’t hurry, they’ll all be out of here and we won’t have the face to compete with them.”

Pan Zi said to me, “Don’t ask us. Are you physically fit?”

I nodded to indicate that I was fine. “The fat guy is right. We can’t delay. Anyway, if we encounter the Zongzi, I’ll die no matter if I’m injured or not. Now that I’m injured, I’ll just die a little faster, so I’m not afraid.

Fatty had already taken off his backpack when he heard me say this. He said, “Tsk, why can’t you say something auspicious? Don’t you see where we’re going?”

I glared at him and said, “It’s useless to have two door gods on your forehead. You should take care of your hands first.”

We each prepared our own equipment. We had just packed for marching, but now we put all the lanterns, fuel, and other things into the bag, and then took out the cold fireworks, cold light sticks, and explosives, and tied them to the armed belt. The fat man and Pan Zi each pulled the gun bolt, removed the magazine, and loaded the bullets into the gun. After the bullets were loaded, the hunting knives and daggers were returned to their places.

The May Fourth gun is too long and may not be able to turn around in the square hole, so the fat man gave the gun to Shunzi and took out the climbing pickaxe himself. Several people tested the brightness of the flashlight, and the fat man took out his own talisman and bowed to the sky.

Shunzi is also an expert in using guns. After taking the gun, he “clicked” a few times to get familiar with it, feeling nostalgic. Then he said to us, “Bosses, I don’t understand your line of work, but I want to remind you that when drilling holes on Changbai Mountain, you have to be careful of snow mites. If you see something wrong, first use cotton to plug your ears. This thing Now the shells are not hard enough to drill through, so you can only drill through the ears. In the summer, when the shells are hard, you can drill straight through your skin, exposing two rear hairs. If you pull on the rear hairs, they will break, and the whole bug will break inside. You have to dig open the wound to dig it out. Also, this thing also drills the anus. Be careful when sitting.

The fat man looked at Shunzi with disgust, tightened his belt subconsciously, and said, “Now the bugs have this hobby too?”

Shunzi said, “I’m not joking with you. If you get caught, you have to find a way to pull yourself out. Don’t ask me.”

We felt a chill in our lower bodies and nodded. The fat man took the lead and leaned forward and crawled into the square hole. We followed closely behind him, entering in an orderly fashion and beginning to advance toward the ultimate unknown world underground.

We had to walk with our backs bent in the square hole. The hole was dug parallel, so we had to look around while walking. Because the height was too low, we walked very slowly. The rock bottom here was very solid. Judging from the traces of chiseling, this tunnel was obviously dug using the most primitive method. I wonder how long it took to build a mausoleum of this scale? It must have taken more than 20 years. Many emperors began to build their tombs when they ascended to the throne. It was very difficult to dig this tunnel in 20 years. It seems that the people who fled at that time were a large group.

The further I went, the more traces of people I saw. There were more than one place where the prints of hiking shoes were found. There were no tracks of snowshoes, but I found some strange side tunnels on the top of the tunnel.

These holes are not very big, only big enough to fit one person, and the holes are bent 180 degrees. After going straight up for a while, they make a sharp turn downwards, forming a curved pipe that looks like the number “9”. There is probably one of these holes every ten meters.

Since I started working in this field, I have climbed through these holes countless times, but I have never seen a structure like this before. From an architectural accounting perspective, the amount of work required to build these holes is almost as much as building an entire tunnel.

Pan Zi said to me later, “Little Master, have you noticed that this tunnel looks familiar?”

“Familiar?” I paused and asked him why he was asking.

Pan Zi said, “When we were at the temple in Shandong, the tunnel we passed through to get to the corpse cave was the same. Didn’t the old man hide in the cave above to harm us?”

He said this, and I looked at the top of the cave again. At the time in Shandong, I was so scared that I didn’t pay much attention to the top of the corpse cave or the water pirate cave. But since Pan Zi said so, there should be no mistake. I was also curious and asked him, “Are you sure?”

Pan Zi was not sure either. He said, “We only knew about the hole above when we heard the old man’s words. It was dark when we passed through, so we didn’t notice it.”

I stopped and looked at these side holes carefully. I immediately understood their function and said, “Was the corpse hole also a water thief hole at that time?”

Pan Zi nodded and said yes. I said, “These side tunnels are actually used for breathing. You see, when water enters this tunnel, because of the curved structure of the side tunnel, there will be air in the side tunnel.

Pan Zi was surprised and said, ”Such a clever method. So, this tunnel was indeed underwater at the time?”

I said, “Not quite. It seems that the water tunnel at Guazi Temple may also have been dug by Wang Zanghai’s people.” On second thought, that’s not right. That tunnel is so old that Uncle San deduced that it was dug during the Warring States period, probably when King Lu Shang went into the mountains to build his tomb. Could it be that Wang Zanghai went there and saw it and learned from the ancient people’s technology? That’s also very possible.

After walking for a long time, I don’t know how far I’ve gone, the tunnel gradually became wider, and I finally saw the exit. We climbed out and found ourselves in front of a very deep canal, about ten meters deep and five or six meters wide. There was no water in the canal.

I looked at the canal and said, “This is a water diversion canal. The water from the moat is diverted here to keep the water fresh and prevent backflow.”

There was a bank on both sides of the canal for one person to walk on, and a stone bridge was built on top. We walked carefully across the river to the other side. The fat man asked, “Now what do we do?”

I said, “This canal is connected to the outside canal, so it should be considered one canal. We should follow the water.”

Pan Zi squatted down and looked at the traces of the water flow, pointing to the side, “There.”

We continued forward. After a while, on the stone wall on the side of the riverbank in front of us, a very regular square hole appeared.

The fat man lit a cold firework and threw it out, illuminating the black stone slab on the ground outside the square hole. It was obviously the sealing stone of the underground palace. The fat man crawled out and threw many cold fireworks around, then greeted us before we climbed out of the tunnel.

The place we came out was a tomb chamber made of black rock. It was not very high, barely tall enough for a person to stand upright, but it was very wide. There were many jars neatly arranged around the tomb chamber, probably wine jars used for burial. Each one was half as tall as a person. A rough estimate was that there were more than a thousand jars, and it seemed that Emperor Wan Nuo might have been an alcoholic.

On the four black walls, there are some simple reliefs, carved with the emperor’s banquets. The reliefs are not well preserved, probably because of the connection with the outside world. Although the volcanic gas here is not as deadly as Pan said, it is definitely more corrosive than ordinary air. It is already a miracle that the murals here have been preserved. Unfortunately, the pictures that have been preserved can only be seen in general.

On the left and right walls of the tomb room, there is a stone gate on each side, and behind it is a dark tunnel. A cold wind blew out from inside, and the fat man picked up two cold fireworks and threw one in, but he didn’t see the head.