Chapter 13 of Yunding Tiangong: The Gap (Part 2)

From the time I heard Men Youping speak to the time I found him disappearing in front of me, it was definitely no more than five seconds. Even a mouse could not disappear from my sight so quickly in such an environment, let alone a human.

I immediately felt something was wrong and subconsciously took a step back, wanting to take a closer look. In a moment of distraction, I saw Men Youpingzi appear in front of me again.

The fat man was right behind me. He took a step back and was startled. He asked, "What's going on?"

I was confused for a moment and stammered, "No... nothing."

Men You Pingzi seemed to be unaware that something strange had just happened to him. He paused, called out to us, and began to crawl forward at a faster pace.

This disappearance and appearance happened in an instant, and although I felt it very clearly, when I saw the scene in front of me, I suddenly lost my confidence and was very confused. Could it be that the air here made me hallucinate?

The situation did not allow me to think too much. The fat man pulled my feet from behind to urge me. I followed him and climbed for a distance while wondering. When I climbed past the section where Monk Oil Bottle disappeared just now, I looked around carefully. There was no depression or place that could create an illusion for me. I vaguely felt that something was wrong.

After passing this section and moving forward for about ten minutes, Men You Pingzi suddenly relaxed his body and leaned out. I saw that the space in front became spacious and I knew that we had reached the exit.

At the end of the crack was a lot of rubble. After climbing out, Menyouping took out several fluorescent sticks and threw them around. The yellow warm light illuminated the whole place. I turned around and found that this should be the most spacious place in the whole mountain crack. It was about the width of four or five Jinbei minivans and about one and a half basketball courts long. There were all kinds of gravel underneath. They were all torn down when the crack was formed.

The fat man widened the aperture of the flashlight, looked around, and said, "It's strange, there are murals here. It seems that we are not the first group of people to come here."

We walked up and found that there was indeed a large colorful mural on the cracked mountain wall, but the mural was in very poor condition and the color was dull. The pattern on it could barely be distinguished as something similar to a flying fairy.

The entrance to this place is blocked by a huge stone, and there are murals inside. What exactly is this place? I was confused again.

After walking back and forth for a while, we found several small hot springs among the gravel. They were all shallow, but steaming hot and very tempting. However, we did not find any signs of other people's activities.

Further in, the crack gradually narrowed until it became a small crack that was two people wide. Going deeper into the rock, hot air blew out from the crack from time to time. I walked to the side and shone inside. It was bottomless and I had no idea where it led to.

We exchanged opinions and decided that there was no need to go in again. This was already a good place to avoid the snowstorm. Pang Le tested the air and found that there was no major problem. He lit a wind lantern for long-lasting lighting, and Menyoupingzi climbed back through the narrow gap to notify the people outside.

After a while, Hua Heshang and Ye Cheng came in one after another, and Shunzi was also pulled in by Pan Zi. I immediately went to check on him and found that because of the temperature here, his face had begun to turn rosy, but his hands and feet were still cold. I don't know if he can make it.

He led us all the way up. If he died, we wouldn't be unable to get down, but it would be a lot more difficult. Besides, I like this person very much, and I really don't want him to die innocently because of us.

Monk Hua checked his heartbeat and pulse, then asked me to step aside. He soaked a towel in hot spring water, placed it on a stone to cool it down slightly, and then wiped Shunzi's body. After his whole body was rubbed blood red, he poured some hot water into his body. Shunzi began to cough violently and his eyelids twitched.

We breathed a sigh of relief, and Monk Hua said, "That's enough, we won't die."

The atmosphere calmed down, Fatty and Ye Chengdu took out their cigarettes, lit them and started smoking. At this time, Chenpi Ah Si also came in with Pan Zi's help.

After this series of events, we were all exhausted and had no energy to talk, so we each found a comfortable place to sit down.

The snow on our bodies melted into water due to the change in temperature, and our clothes and shoes began to get wet. We took off our clothes and put them on dry stones to steam them. Ye Cheng took out the compressed cans and threw them into the hot spring water to heat them up for everyone.

While eating, I went to see the murals we had just discovered with Monk Hua. It was very obvious that this was formed naturally, and the space was narrow. Why would a mural be painted here? The sudden disappearance of the oil bottle in front of me just now, and the huge sealing stone at the entrance of the cave gave me a very unnatural feeling.

People who deal with antiquities are always very interested in things like murals and reliefs that pass on a lot of information. Others saw us looking and gradually came over.

However, there is not much information on the murals. Most of the murals of flying fairies are on gorgeous palaces or ritual vessels, which only show a beautiful scene of singing and dancing, and have no practical meaning. Most of the mural fragments here are such things. People here crawled out of ancient tombs. They have seen too many and lost interest at first glance.

I was just about to go back and rub my toes, which were numb and painful from the sweat I had put in. At this moment, I heard the fat man groan, stretch out his thumb, and start peeling off the mural with his hands.

I asked him what was going on. Although this thing has no value, it is a relic of our ancestors and you can't destroy it.

The fat man said, "What nonsense are you talking about? My nails are worthless? I don't peel off ordinary things. Come and see for yourself. This mural has two layers!"

"Two floors?" I said "hmm", frowned, and thought to myself, what does that mean?

Everyone gathered around him again and went to see what he was talking about. He asked us to look at his fingers, and we saw that red cinnabar had been scraped off. Then we looked at the area in front of him. Sure enough, there was an area in the corner of the mural with a composition that was obviously different from the ones on the sides, and the things painted on it were also different. It's just that this area was extremely inconspicuous, and if it weren't for the fat man's sharp eyes, it would have been impossible to see it.

This is obviously the result of someone painting a new layer on top of a mural, covering the original one.

The top layer gradually fell off due to exposure to the air, revealing the mural behind it, which is a common occurrence in oil paintings.

The fat man continued to scrape with his fingers, and some bright colors began to appear where he scraped.

I also scraped the mural with my fingers and found that this surface layer did not seem to have completed all the processes, so the fat man could easily wipe off the color with a casual scrape. Otherwise, if the complete steps were followed, the murals after the Tang Dynasty would have a layer of special clear material on the outside. This layer would protect the murals like varnish, making the color less easy to fade and peel off.

Chenpi A Si frowned deeply, and soon, a large piece of mural as big as a washbasin was peeled off. Behind the mural, half a carriage painted with colorful pigments appeared. The carriage was obviously floating on the clouds. Several women in Mongolian costumes were serving on both sides of the carriage. The owner of the carriage was a fat man, whose clothes I had never seen before.

This is a narrative mural, and I suddenly became nervous.

Apparently someone painted a narrative mural first, but for some reason, it was hastily replaced with another one, and time may have been very tight at the time, so the outer mural was not even completed in the final stages.

Chenpi Ah Si looked at the entire mural, then looked at the surrounding environment, and said to us: "This... is related to the Heavenly Palace. Clear the entire wall and see what the mural is about."

I had been wanting to start working on this for a long time, so I joined the others, wielding my fingernails and beginning the delicate work of peeling off the murals on the stone wall.

The murals peeled off in large pieces, and soon, a colorful and magnificent painting gradually unfolded before us. . . . .