Volume 5 Chapter 39 The only exit

The tunnel sloped downward, the angle getting steeper and steeper. Me and Fatso shone our flashlights down, but we couldn’t see any sign of an end.

I was a little panicked. We had already gone a long way down, deep into the interior of Changbai Mountain. If we kept going like this, where would we end up? The center of the earth?

But even if it is the center of the earth, we must go on because the signs left by the oil bottle clearly indicate that he went in this direction.

We have no choice but to go on. After walking for more than 20 minutes with the flashlight, Fatso said to me, “Wu, have you noticed that it’s getting a little warmer in this tunnel?”

I nodded and said, “Maybe our destination is close to the volcanic activity area, where there is lava or hot spring activity, and the temperature will gradually rise. Where did Wang Zanghai dig in the end?”

Fatty was unable to answer this question either.

After walking for a while, Fatty suddenly turned around and asked me, “Tell me honestly, what kind of special relationship do you have with that little brother?”

I was taken aback by Fatty’s question and didn’t know how to answer. I immediately thought that I had misunderstood, and that he wasn’t asking about the kind of relationship I thought he was.

The series of events just now happened too quickly, and I actually didn’t fully react to it. Now that I think about it, the fat guy didn’t know that my blood had already shown the same phenomenon as the blood of the Muming bottle in the Qinling Mountains. In order not to show off in front of Aning, I didn’t ask him at the time. Now that there are only two of us, he naturally has to ask. But given his personality, it was impossible for him to ask me seriously. He was probably just wondering why my blood could also “drive away insects.”

According to the cold counselor, the strange ability of my blood should be related to the unicorn blood that I ate from the corpse, but I really can’t remember if I’ve eaten this kind of thing, and I don’t know anything about unicorn blood, so I can’t answer him for sure. Moreover, I was also surprised just now, and it was an unconscious act, so I can’t just conclude that it was my blood that was working.

The fat man saw that I was not answering and thought that I agreed with him. He said, “He might be your long-lost brother, younger brother, or cousin, or your father’s illegitimate child. Your family has inherited this special ability.”

I scolded, “Don’t talk nonsense. My father only had one son. If his kind of pedant had an illegitimate child, then there really wouldn’t be a man in the world to rely on.”

The fat guy still thought there must be something fishy about it. I really didn’t want to discuss it with him, so I changed the subject.

After walking for a long time, the tomb passage finally came to an end. When I stepped out of the tomb passage, a warm breeze suddenly blew, refreshing me. I quickly turned on my flashlight and looked around. I found that this was a veranda built on a cliff, just like the sacrificial altar of the fake Ling Palace that we saw in the ice dome when we came here. The floor beneath our feet was supported by pillars on the cliff. In the middle of the veranda stood a huge black tripod. One of its feet had sunk into the stone floor, presenting a posture of about to topple. Obviously, we had to be careful when walking on this platform. The stones underneath were all aging.

The edge of the platform is a cliff, and it is also pitch black, with no way to see above our heads.

The fat man grumbled, “How come… it’s the end again? There’s no way out, and there’s still no coffin. Where the hell did this King of Ten Thousand get to?”

I said, “That’s not the strangest thing. We followed the little guy’s markings, and there were very clear clues along the way. But look, there’s no one here. Could it be that these people found this to be a dead end and went back? Or…” I looked into the darkness, “flew away?”

We walked to the edge of the balcony, and suddenly the flare burned in the sky, like a small sun in the pitch-black space, illuminating the situation in front of us.

With the magnesium light of the flare, I saw that this was actually a huge mountain crevice. The balcony we were on was built on the cliff on one side of the crevice, and on the other side of the crevice, more than 200 meters away, was the cliff on the other side of the crevice, facing each other, giving the feeling of being on a cliff in the huge rift valley in Africa. We couldn’t help but let out a cry of surprise.

The flare gradually fell, landing below the balcony, illuminating the scene below us. Once again, a shocking scene appeared before us. We saw countless bronze chains as thick as a bowl, spanning both sides of the bottomless rift, connecting the rift together.

As the light source fell, twenty meters below the balcony, to the depths of the chaotic rift, I didn’t know how many such chains were there, and there was almost no sparse place to be seen. On the chains in the depths, there were also many things hanging densely, like many bells, but it was too far away to see clearly.

At this time, the fat man found a climbing rope at one end of the balcony, which hung down from one end of the platform, all the way down to the top of the nearest bronze chain below, where it was tied.

The fat man frowned and said, “That’s enough. The young man is persistent. It looks like he’s going to climb down. Do we have to follow him and learn to be a monkey?”

I said, “Judging from the density of the chains below, it shouldn’t be difficult to climb. But what is this place? Why is there such a strange setup? Could it be that the coffin of the King of Ten Thousand is under this rift valley? Have you ever thought about how they could transport that huge coffin down there?”

The fat man said, “It’s possible, but the ancients always had their own ingenious methods. Should we go up and notify the foreigners, or should we go down first?”

I said, “After going down, we don’t know if we can come back up. We don’t need to be their pathfinders. If we call them down, they will have better equipment and technology than us, and we will benefit from it. Besides, Pan Zi is still up there. Anyway, Uncle San has already found it. We can spend a little more time.”

The fat man thought of Kirk’s muscular body and agreed with me. We retraced our steps, knowing that the way was long, and we unconsciously picked up the pace.

Ning and the others had been waiting impatiently, thinking that something had happened to us. They were relieved to see us back. I took a sip of Pan Zi’s water and told them what I had seen.

As soon as she heard that there were bronze chains below, Aning quickly took out the photos she had taken from the underwater tomb and pointed to one of them. In the mural, many Dongxia warriors were seen carrying bows and arrows and climbing a cliff, while in the background were countless things similar to chains. It was obvious that the mural depicted the Dongxia people exploring the giant underground rift.

I said, “It seems that the chains were not set up by the Dongxia people. They must have been curious about what was going on under the rift valley that was blocked by the chains.”

The fat man said, “Could these iron chains be some kind of defense measure used by the ancestors who built this place to prevent something from crawling up from below? For example, the giant black soft-bodied thing depicted in the mural.”

I nodded and said, “It’s possible.” I asked Aning, “Which one is this mural? What’s the next one?”

A-Ning said, “According to the general rules for describing murals, this should be the sixth-to-last mural, and there are five more after this, in the following order…”

A-Ning spread out the last five photos, and I saw that the mural in the last photo was of many Dongxia warriors shooting arrows from their bows. It seemed that there had been a fierce battle, but there were no enemies visible on the mural, and I wondered what they were fighting against. I thought of the strange birds that I couldn’t see when flying in the air, and my heart tightened. I thought to myself, could there be such things down here?

The next picture shows many evil spirits emerging from the stone.

There doesn’t seem to be much plot connection between the murals, but it seems to give people infinite associations and a very conscious feeling.

Aning asked me, “Do you see anything strange again? Wu Chao Ren?”

I smiled self-deprecatingly: “I didn’t see anything, but look, behind the mural of the cliff climbers is a picture of a battle. I feel that this may be telling us that after we descend into the rift valley, we will encounter danger, and that those with weapons should prepare them.”

Everyone took me as their spiritual leader, and whatever I said was right. Kirk hurriedly picked up his M16 and made a gesture of wrapping it around his body. We packed up our bags and headed deep into the tombs of Changbai Mountain.

I followed the group at the back to see how Uncle San was doing, but he was still unconscious. I didn’t know what he had seen here, but Pan Zi reassured me, saying that even if he had to crawl, he would drag Uncle San out of this place.

As I walked along the tunnel, looking at the nervous group in front of me, I had a strange feeling. In the absence of Chen Pi A Si and Uncle San, I had to take on the role of leader for these people. But were my thoughts and decisions really correct? Was I pushing these people towards death? Thinking about this, I felt hesitant again.

Soon everyone was on the balcony, and the fat guy fired another signal flare to show everyone the spectacular scenery around the rift. Pan Zi and I took out the ropes and prepared to climb down. This was a very risky decision, but our way out had been completely blocked, and there was no other choice.

I don’t know what’s going to happen down there. The group of people led by Ning are not good people either. After I had taken out all the ropes, I pulled the fat man over and told him to be careful. Now that we were all in trouble, everyone seemed to be cooperating. Once we got down there and found a way out, we had to be careful that that bitch wouldn’t turn on us.

The fat man patted my shoulder and gave me a wink, meaning that he had already made a backup plan. He was afraid I wouldn’t be convinced, so he pulled open a corner of his shirt and let me take a look. He had ten detonators tied around his waist.

We tested it out. The rope that held the oil bottle was very strong. Pan Zi was the first to climb down. After he got down to the chain, he hung himself like a horizontal bar athlete and easily jumped to another chain below. He repeated this five or six times, and had already gone down more than ten meters. He gave me an OK sign.

A-Ning and the others were much better equipped than we were. Kirk had a headlamp with a wide beam, which made him look like a moving light bulb. The second person to climb down, we followed Kirk’s head as a guide, and climbed down the balcony one after another, to the world of suspended chains.

However, the chains were quite dense, and climbing was still very convenient. No matter what the original purpose of the bronze chains was, they had given us people a convenient ladder. After climbing for a long time, we became more and more skilled at the various movements and mastered some tips, feeling like the reincarnation of Spiderman.

Like a spider, a dozen people slowly descended, and nothing unexpected happened along the way. The strength of the chains also amazed us. After four hours, the balcony above our heads had become very small, and we had entered the depths of the rift, beyond our sight. Those things that were not clear from above, the giant bronze chains hanging like bells, appeared in my field of vision.

Out of caution, I blew my bat whistle to stop Kirk and Pan at the bottom. Using Aning’s night vision binoculars, I looked down and saw that the things hanging from the chains were all dead people who had been hanged there. A black thread like hair extended from the back of their necks and hung from the chains. Judging by the number, the chains below were densely packed, almost impossible to count.

According to the secret text of Wang Zanghai’s dragon fish, the kind of monster bird that we encountered, which we couldn’t see when flying in the air, only appeared when we landed, liked to hang their prey on branches to dry for later use.

There were so many corpses here, could it be that the nest was actually down there? No wonder the Mung Oil Bottle told us not to go down, but now we have no other way to go, if we don’t go down and take a chance, we’ll die anyway. I suppressed the fear in my heart, made a gesture, signaled everyone to be on guard, and continued down.

We’ve come this far, even if it’s hell down there, we have to go down with our heads held high.