Chapter 49: The Only Exit

The tomb passage sloped downward, and the angle became steeper and steeper. Fatty and I shone our flashlights straight down, but we couldn't see any sign of the end. There was always deep darkness at the end.

I was a little panicked. We had walked a long way down and had already entered 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 keep going, because the guiding symbols left by Men Youping clearly indicate to us that he is going in this direction, and every step we take brings us closer to the truth.

We had no choice but to bite the bullet and go on. After walking for more than 20 minutes by the light of a flashlight, the fat man said to me: "Xiao Wu, have you noticed that it's a little warm in this tomb passage?"

I nodded and said, "Maybe our destination is close to the stratigraphic activity area of the volcano. There is lava or hot spring activity there, and the temperature will gradually rise. Where did Wang Zanghai dig out?"

Fatty can't answer this question either.

After advancing for a while, the fat man suddenly turned back and asked me: "Tell me honestly, what is the special relationship between you and that little brother?"

I choked when the fat man asked me. I didn't know how to answer. Then I thought that I had misunderstood it. What he asked about was not the kind of relationship I thought.

The series of events just now happened too fast, and I actually didn't fully react. Now that I think about it, Fatty didn't know that my blood had already shown the same phenomenon as Lao Menbao's blood in Qinling Mountains. How could he not be surprised when he saw it for the first time? In order not to show his weakness in front of Aning, he didn't ask at that time. Now that there are only two of us, he naturally has to ask. However, with his personality, it is impossible for him to ask seriously. He asked about the relationship between me and Menyouping, and he must have just been wondering why my blood can also "repel insects."

According to Master Liang, the strange ability of my blood should be related to the blood of the smoked unicorn, but I really can't remember whether I have eaten this kind of thing, and I don't know anything about unicorn blood, so I can't give him a definite answer. What's more, I just did it by accident and it was completely unconscious behavior, so I can't simply conclude that it was my blood that was working.

Seeing that I didn't answer, the fat man thought that I agreed with his idea and said, "Maybe he is your long-lost brother, younger brother, cousin or something like that, or he is your father's illegitimate child. Your family has inherited this special ability."

I scolded him, "Don't talk nonsense. I am the only son of my father. If a scholar like him had an illegitimate child, there would be no man in the world that we can rely on."

The fat guy still thought there must be something fishy going on. I really didn't want to discuss this with him, so I changed the subject.

After walking for a long time, the tomb passage finally came to the end. When I walked out of the tomb passage, a warm breeze suddenly blew, which refreshed me. I quickly turned on the flashlight and looked around, and found that this was a gallery built on the cliff, just like the sacrificial altar of the fake Ling Palace we saw in the ice dome when we came here. The floor under my feet was suspended on the cliff with columns. In the middle of the gallery stood a huge black tripod, one foot of which had sunk into the stone floor, showing a posture of toppling over. Obviously, we have to be careful when walking on this platform, because the stones underneath are aging.

The edges of the platform are cliffs, and it is pitch black above, so you can't see the top of your head.

The fat man complained, "Why... it's the end again, there's no way to go, and there's still no coffin. Where on earth is this King of Ten Thousand Slaves hiding?"

I said: "This is not the strangest thing. We followed the little brother's mark. There were very obvious clues along the way, but you see, there is no one here. Could it be said that these people found that this is a dead end?" . Have they all gone back? Or..." I looked to the side of the darkness, "Flyed away?"

We walked to the edge of the corridor, and the signal flare suddenly burned high in the sky. In this extremely dark space, it was like a small sun, illuminating the scene in front of us.

Through the magnesium light of the flare, I saw that this place was actually a huge crack in the mountain. The corridor we were on was built on the cliff on one side of the crack, and more than 200 meters opposite us was the cliff on the other side of the giant crack, far away. In contrast, it feels like you are on a cliff in a huge rift valley in Africa. We all couldn't help but let out an exclamation.

The flare gradually fell and landed under the corridor, illuminating the situation below us. Another shocking scene appeared in front of us. In the bottomless rift below, countless bronze chains as thick as bowls ran across both sides, connecting the rift together.

Following the falling light source, 20 meters below the gallery, to the depths of a chaotic rift valley, there was no telling how many such chains were there, and it was almost impossible to see sparse places, and on the chains deep inside, there were many things densely hung, like many bells, which were too far to see clearly. The clouds were deep and there was no trace.

At this time, the fat man found a climbing rope at one end of the balcony, and lowered it from one end of the platform to the top of the nearest bronze chain below, where he tied it.

The fat man frowned and said, "That's great. That guy is really persistent. It looks like he has climbed down. Should we also follow him and learn from the monkey?"

I said, "Looking at the density of the chains below, it shouldn't be difficult to climb, but where exactly is this place? Why is there such a strange setting? Could it be that the coffin of King Wannu is under this rift? Have you ever thought about how they were able to transport that huge coffin down there?"

The fat man said, "It's really possible, but the ancients always had their own clever ways. Should we go up and inform those foreigners, or go down first?"

I said, "We don't know if we can come back up after we go down, so we don't need to be their scouts. We can call them down. Their equipment and skills are better than ours, and they can be of some benefit. Besides, Pan Zi is still up there, and Uncle San has already found him anyway, so it doesn't matter if we spend a little more time."

The fat man thought of Kirk's muscular body and agreed with me. We returned along the same route. Knowing that the road was quite long, we unconsciously sped up while walking.

Aning and the others had been waiting anxiously, thinking that something had happened to us, and were relieved to see us back. I took Panzi's water, drank a sip, and told him what I had seen.

When she heard that there were bronze chains lying below, Aning hurriedly took out the photos she had taken from the underwater tomb and pointed to one of them. In the mural in the photo, she saw many Dongxia warriors climbing a cliff with bows and arrows on their backs, and in the background were countless things similar to chains. It was obviously depicting the scene when the Dongxia people were exploring the giant underground rift.

I said, "It seems that those chains were not set by the Dongxia people. They must have been very curious about what was happening under the rift valleys blocked by the chains."

The fat man said, "Could these chains be some kind of defensive measure taken by the ancestors who built this place to prevent something from climbing up from below? For example, the giant black soft thing depicted in the murals."

I nodded and said, "It's possible." Then I asked Aning, "Which mural is this? What's the next one?"

Aning said: "According to the general rules of describing murals, this should be the sixth mural from the last. There are five more to come, in order..."

Aning spread out the last five photos. I saw the mural in the last photo. It was a scene of many Dongxia warriors shooting arrows with bows. It seemed like a fierce battle, but there were no enemies in the mural. I didn't know what they were fighting against. I thought of the strange bird whose shape could not be seen when flying in the sky. My heart tightened. I thought, could there be such a thing down there?

The next picture shows many evil spirits coming out from the rocks.

There doesn't seem to be much plot connection between the murals, but they seem to give people endless associations and a very conscious feeling.

Ah Ning asked me, "Have you noticed something strange again, Wu Chaoren?"

I laughed at myself. "It's not like I saw anything. Look, behind the mural of climbing the cliff is a battle scene. I think this might be telling us what kind of dangers we will encounter after we go down into the rift valley. Those who have weapons should prepare them."

Several people regarded me as a spiritual leader, and whatever I said was what mattered. Kirk quickly picked up his M16 and made a gesture to wrap it around him. We packed up our bags and walked towards the tomb passage deep into Changbai Mountain.

I followed the end of the team to see how my third uncle was doing, but he was still unconscious. I didn't know what horrifying things he had seen here. Pan Zi reassured me. He said that even if he had to crawl, he would drag my third uncle out of this hellhole with him.

Walking in the tomb passage, looking at the nervous people in front of me, I also had a strange feeling in my heart. In the absence of Chenpi Ah Si and Uncle San, I had to become the leader of these people. This feeling was something I had never felt before. There was an inexplicable pleasure. But were my thoughts and decisions really correct? Would I be pushing all these people to death? Thinking of this, I felt hesitant again.

Soon everyone came to the balcony. Fatty fired another flare to let everyone see the spectacular scenery around the rift. Pan Zi and I took out ropes and prepared to climb down. This was an extremely risky decision, but our way was completely blocked and we had no other choice.

I didn't know what the situation was like down there. Aning and his group weren't good people either. After I took out all the ropes, I pulled the fat guy over and told him to be careful. We were all in trouble now. Everyone seemed to be cooperating, but once we got down there and had a clue of the way out, we had to be careful of that stinky woman in case she turned against us.

The fat man patted my shoulder and gave me a look, which meant that he had kept something in reserve. Fearing that I might be worried, he pulled open a corner of his clothes to let me see that he had the remaining ten detonators tied around his waist.

We tried it out and found that the rope of Men Youping was very strong. Pan Zi was still the pioneer and was the first to climb down. After getting on the chain, he hung his body like a horizontal bar athlete and easily jumped onto another chain below. He repeated this five or six times. He had already gone down more than ten meters and gave me an OK gesture.

Aning and his friends were much better equipped than us. Kirk put on a diverging guidance headlamp, turned himself into a moving light bulb, and climbed down second. We followed Kirk's head as a guide and climbed down the corridor one after another and came to the suspended chain world.

However, the density of the chains is quite high, so climbing is still very convenient. No matter what the original purpose of the bronze chains was, it actually provided people like us with a convenient ladder. After climbing for a long time, I became proficient in various movements and mastered some tricks. It felt like Spider-Man was reborn.

Like spiders, more than a dozen people slowly descended. Nothing unexpected happened along the way, and the strength of the chains also amazed us. Four hours later, the corridor above our heads had become very small, and we entered the depths of the rift valley, which was beyond our sight from above. Those bronze chains with giant bells hanging on them, which were not clearly visible from above, appeared in my sight.

To be cautious, I blew a bat whistle to make Kirk and Panzi at the bottom stop. I looked down with Aning's night vision binoculars. In the dim green field of vision, I saw the things hanging on the chains. They were all dead people hanged there. A black cloud of hair-like silk thread extended from the back of their necks and hung on the chains. Judging from the number, the chains below were so dense that it was almost impossible to count them all.

Wang Canghai's dragon fish secret text revealed that the human-headed strange bird we encountered, which cannot be seen when flying in the air and only appears when landing, likes to hang its prey on branches to dry for later use. There are so many corpses here. Could it be that the following is their nest?

No wonder Menyouping told us not to go down, but we have no other way to go now. If we don't go down and give it a try, won't we die anyway? I suppressed the fear in my heart, made a gesture, signaling everyone to be on guard and continue to go down.

Now that we have come this far, even if there is hell below, we have to go down.