Volume 5 Chapter 7: The Game

I looked at Chen Pi’s expression and suddenly felt that something was wrong. This old guy had been quiet all the way over, only saying a few words at critical moments, and never had any angry expressions, but now, it was obvious that he was really angry.

Hua also noticed this and became nervous, asking, “Old man, what’s going on?”

Chen Pi Asa’s face was very ugly, and he said to us, “Someone has tampered with the dragon vein here. This three-headed dragon is fake, and the direction of the dragon’s head is wrong.”

I was startled, and I quickly took out my own compass to see. Sure enough, no matter how I turned it, the needle pointed to the black stone turtle. Obviously, this strange thing was extremely magnetic.

I immediately understood what Chen Pi A-si meant: for those who read the lines of the geomantic omen, the direction is very important. Just now, Chen Pi A-si relied on this compass to determine the direction and direction of the dragon vein, but there was a magnetically carved object buried here. With such a large volume, when we approached the mountain, the north-south direction in the compass must have been affected.

The three-headed dragon pattern was judged under this false premise, so it must be false!

In other words, there is no dragon head here, and there is no theoretical basis for the existence of the “Kunlun fetus” or the huge ice dome outside. It’s all an illusion! It’s all a psychological hint that leads us into this trap!

Wang Zanghai must have thought that anyone who could find this place in the future would definitely have considerable feng shui skills, so he had already made preparations. Before we had entered the tomb and had not been on guard for four or five hours, we had already fallen into his trap.

I suddenly felt a sense of powerlessness. The “Kunlun fetus,” the ice dome, such a clever design, was actually just a trap! Wang Zanghai really has a deep understanding of tomb raiding. I have always laughed at architects who believe in feng shui. Feng shui has not brought any blessings to the tomb owner, but has instead become an invisible direction for tomb raiders. But we have made the same mistake, setting up a hard-line for an ancient person.

Now we are playing a game with someone who has been dead for hundreds of years, and we have already lost the first game before it even started.

Fatso and Pan Zi still don’t understand. When I explained the situation to them, Fatso still didn’t believe it, saying, “Impossible! How could there have been such a large magnet back then?”

I sighed. “This stone turtle must have been carved from a magnetic meteorite. This thing is of extraordinary value, but Wang Zanghai used it to weigh down the tomb. It seems that in order to protect the Yunding Palace, Old Wang went to great lengths.”

“Fuck, that’s impossible.” The fat guy still refused to believe it, saying, “It’s so well-built here…”

He realized halfway through that the style of the building was indeed formal, but there was nothing inside that was necessary for a spirit palace. In fact, we had discovered the flaw long ago, but no one had thought that the entire spirit palace would be a trap. It was just because his style was too formal.

Chen Pi’s face turned pale, and he didn’t say anything, just staring at the stone turtle with a terrible look in his eyes.

I and Hua and the monk were there, and we thought that we were finished. Our food was definitely not enough to turn around and go to the Three Saints Mountain. This time we were afraid that we would have to go back to the village to rest. This time we had to go back and forth, and it was completely in vain. Moreover, we were all very injured. We estimated that it would take time to rest when we got back to the village. We couldn’t afford to lose this time. Even if Ning and the others walked slowly, they would have arrived.

We still don’t know the purpose of these arrangements by Uncle San, but no matter what angle we look at it from, we are already at a disadvantage.

Thinking about this, I can’t help but feel a little irritated. No one is to blame for this, but when people encounter setbacks, it’s always good to have someone to blame. Otherwise, there’s nowhere to vent your anger, and you’ll just be depressed. The other people’s faces don’t look good either, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.

The fat guy looked at us and said, “Forget it, let’s go back quickly. We just took the wrong road. Let’s go out again. There are only a few people in the group, so they can’t carry everything out. Let’s move faster, and there will be more to pick up!”

I heard him talking about the foreign goods, and suddenly a nameless anger welled up in me. I shook my head and said, “You know nothing. Uncle San sacrificed his business to slow down Ah Ning and the others, but we are still a step behind. If we go back and come back again, I don’t know how much we will fall behind them. Uncle San may be in danger. You only know about the foreign goods, and you don’t care about anything else. Don’t yell here.

The fat man was not happy either, and he wanted to choke me. Ye Cheng held him down, “Okay, okay, now is not the time to argue.”

The atmosphere was suddenly very awkward. The fat man shook off Ye Cheng, cursed, and walked over to smoke. Hua Monk waved his hand and said, “It’s a waste of time. Everyone is not comfortable. Now the main thing is to find a way to remedy it. Let’s stay calm and think about what to do?”

The fat man said, “What remedy? I don’t think it matters. With such a big magnet here, anyone who comes here will be unlucky. You dare to say that Ning’s gang didn’t get caught? Maybe their location is all wrong. They’ve already been beaten to a pulp by the border guards. We should go through here, take everything we can, and then return as quickly as possible. Don’t waste time. Since we’ve already been caught, how can we not face reality?

I know that the fat guy is actually right. Maybe we will have to go back the same way he said in the end, but his argument is not welcome here.

Pan Zi immediately shook his head: “It’s easy to say. If you have to go back the same way now, are you sure you can go back? Even if you know the way, we have been walking for a day. You are thick-skinned and don’t feel tired, but we can’t take it. Even if we have to go back, it will definitely be tomorrow morning. Little Master San’s worries are justified. If we delay like this, all of Master San’s plans will be in vain.

As soon as he heard this, the fat man immediately went crazy: “Master San, Master San, fuck Master San! You don’t even know what the old man is thinking, and you’re still talking about dick eggs. Why do I have to get involved in your family affairs? I’m here to find out what’s going on. I don’t care anymore. I’ll go after I’m done. You can go die with that old ghost.

With that, the fat man grabbed his bag, turned on his flashlight, and walked back down the hallway. But after only two steps, the stuffy oil bottle stopped him in front of him and wouldn’t let him continue.

The fat man was a little wary of the stuffy oil bottle and didn’t want to startle him, but he didn’t want to lose face, so he asked, “What are you doing? Don’t stop me from getting rich, damn it.”

The stuffy oil bottle said, “Don’t you think it’s strange? When we got here, it seemed like everyone was in a bad mood, even Wu Xie was angry.”

When Mian Youbing said this, the fat man was stunned, immediately turned his head and looked at me, and everyone’s faces changed. I also felt a thump in my heart.

Yes, the nameless fire just now suddenly came up, and it made no sense at all. I don’t know how, suddenly there was a burst of irritability from my heart. The fat man was like this before. I’ve heard all the unreliable things, how did I get angry? This is not my character.

In my way of doing things, even if someone really said something unpleasant, I wouldn’t go after him in this situation, and the fat guy’s reaction was too big just now.

Could it really be influenced by the surrounding environment? I turned and looked around, and it was pitch black everywhere. The flashlight shone, and only our flashlights were bright in the entire dark space. The darkness in other places surrounded us like a black fog, and it was very depressing. But depressing as it was, I felt that this was not the source of inexplicable anxiety.

“What’s going on? It seems that just now there was something really strange, and suddenly I got angry.” The fat man also realized and asked Mian Youping.

Mian Youping said to us, ‘I’m not sure, but I think this is not just a magnet. Now we must be calm. Your argument just now was useless. Since this is a trap…’ He paused: ”Wang Zanghai spent so much energy setting this up. Since he was able to let us in, I don’t think we can necessarily get out.”

My inner restlessness suddenly came back, and when I thought about what Mian Youping had said, I suppressed my anger and said, “So what do we do now?”

Mian Youping didn’t say anything, but just glanced at Chen Pi’s Fourth, who also glanced at him. He said, “Since we’ve already fallen into the trap, we can only take things one step at a time. It’s too early to draw any conclusions about whether we can get out, but no matter what, we have to destroy this turtle and search around here to make sure there are no more of the same kind, otherwise we’ll be here again and again.”

Everyone glared at the turtle, obviously hating this animal more than ever before.

The big magnet was broken, but it had only become a small magnet, which would still affect the compass. To completely eliminate the magnetism, it could only be burned.

We took out the fuel for the smokeless stove, poured it on the turtle, then the fat man lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and threw it inside, and the fire started. The fuel for the smokeless stove was extremely hot, and suddenly we felt a blast of searing heat.

Hua took out the compass and watched the needle inside turn.

Soon the turtle was burning red, and even the surrounding bricks were also red.

There was no wood to burn here, and with the high-purity fuel, it was quickly used up. In about half a cigarette’s time, only hot bricks and a red turtle were left at the bottom.

“How is it?” I asked Hua, and when I leaned over to take a look, I saw that the needle was no longer pointing at the turtle, and the magnetism had disappeared. He took the compass and walked around a few times, making sure there were no other magnets underground, and then nodded and said it was done.

It was not a good place to stay for long, and since it was a trap, we had no more attachment. A few people packed up, and I thought about what the stuffy oil bottle had said: if we could get in, it didn’t mean we could get out. Could it be that something has changed since we entered this back hall? What unknown mishaps are waiting for us?

Several not-so-good images flashed through my mind, but I immediately dismissed them.

However, my hunches are always surprisingly accurate when I’m in trouble. Just as we were about to re-enter the corridor, suddenly, from some corner of the back hall, a series of “cracking” sounds came.

The sound of “cracking” was extremely crisp and very harsh, and we all heard it. Immediately, we all stopped and turned to look.

The sound did not stop, but continued. After listening for a while, I discovered that it was coming from the brick pit where we had burned the fire.

We were wondering what the sound was, and walked back carefully. Peeking, we saw that the turtle at the bottom of the pit had cracked open, and a large number of cracks spread across the turtle shell. At the same time, we saw a strange black gas floating out of the crack, rising quickly and expanding into the air, like a huge soft creature, squeezing out of the turtle’s body.

Then, the black gas and the darkness above us connected, writhing endlessly. Looking at the shape, it was similar to the black totem we had just seen in the main hall outside.

“This is… the immortal sky!” the fat man cried out in a pale face.

“Don’t scare people.” The monk Hua said, “Maybe the turtle was hollow, and it cracked open because of the expansion and contraction of heat and cold.

The fat man said, ‘Hollow? Then is the black smoke poisonous?’

”It shouldn’t be. There’s no way that—” The monk Hua was about to finish his sentence when the Mufeng suddenly made a gesture to silence us.

I was so scared by his gesture that I broke out in a cold sweat. I quickly covered my mouth, and everyone held their breath and looked around to see what was going on.

I turned my head around, and heard my heart beating like a drum. There was nothing unusual around, but I did hear, in this extremely quiet back hall, in addition to the sound of the stone turtle bursting, a very, very faint “sizzling” sound, coming from some corner.

I listened for a long time, but I couldn’t tell what the sound was, nor could I sense its direction. It seemed that the sound was directly entering my brain. This spirit palace was inside the ice dome, and it couldn’t be blown by the wind. This sound definitely wasn’t the sound of the wind.

The black smoke above was getting thicker and thicker, and the rustling sound was getting more and more intense. Soon, the sound came from all directions, and it made people itch all over.

The expression on Mian Youping’s face grew uglier and uglier, and he kept turning around, looking at the black smoke accumulating above his head, muttering to himself, “There’s something in the smoke!”

Hua Monk listened to the “rustling” sound and looked at the stone turtle again. It seemed that he had realized something, and his expression suddenly changed. “Is this smoke wuchangyu? There is wuchangyu inside the turtle! Wang Zanghai wants us to die.”

“What is wuchangyu?” I asked.

No one answered me, but I knew I would soon find out. Mian Youping pointed to Shunzi lying on the coffin bed, signaled Lang Feng to carry her on his back, and then pointed to the corridor in front of them: “Run, don’t look back! No matter what falls on you, don’t stop until you get out. Hurry!”