Recruiting souls

The brothers worked on the stone, and the stone was not too hard, so they worked on it in a few hours.

The bull's nose notch was punched out, and the rope was put on by the same method as before, with an inflexible needle.

"I shouted to one to make it harder, this thing is much smaller, it should be able to be done in one go." Sun Laosan was the first to pull up the rope, and we three followed suit and picked it up.

Taking a deep breath, he lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Three ..... Two."

"One!"

The rope was instantly straightened, with our force directed to the left.

"There was a loud boom," there was a loud sound of tap rocks falling to the ground inside.

Sun Laosan was right in his prediction; with the experience of the first time, this time we found the right way and succeeded in one go.

Following the principle of being careful, Sun Laosan first lit a white candle in the doorway, a test of the oxygen level in the space inside.

The candle stood on the ground, the fire burning brightly and dimly, not feeling the wind, but the candle's flame fell to one side.

"No problem, right San." I asked in a whisper.

He waved his hand, signalling to observe for two more minutes.

After a few minutes had passed, the candle was burning just as it had earlier, not suddenly getting smaller, which meant that the oxygen level inside was still stable.

"Watch your step," was the instruction, and we combined our efforts to push open the second stone door.

The temperature inside the second door was so cold that one could feel it instantly as soon as they entered, and although they were all dressed thickly, they still felt cold and the white air one exhaled was very noticeable.

"Hoo ... It's cold, Lao-san, the temperature outside here must be more than ten degrees different," a mole kept rubbing his hands.

Sun Lao San also felt strange, just heard him say, "The temperature is still constant on this side of Moth Mountain, I didn't expect it to be so strange here, I can't figure it out."

"If you can't figure it out, don't think about it Lao San, it's not like any of us are geologists, let's explore the road first," said the oldest Sun, expressing his opinion.

"Second Brother and Third Brother, you guys look up," flicking my torch haphazardly, I suddenly spotted something.

The southwest corner of the stone wall still had many brightly coloured murals remaining.

"Murals ... This ..... This doesn't seem to be a Western Zhou style mural." Sun Laosan looked up and used his torch to illuminate the frescoes, his expression incredulous.

"It's not Western Zhou? What do you mean?" I looked at it again.

On the stone walls, the overall colour of these murals had been mainly black and red, and there were a lot of them, not counting the places that were not seen, and almost everywhere that the torch illuminated.

The subject matter of the murals was mixed and strange.

There are men dressed in ancient times with hats, women with bare breasts, and children tied head down to wood. The whole style of the mural is a bit like that of cult worship.

The reason why Sun Laosan said after one look that the mural might not be from the Western Zhou period was because of the mineral pigment of the mural itself, because according to common sense, this mineral red had not yet appeared in the early Western Zhou period, and this mineral red was popular in the later Warring States of Chu.

A tomb from the Western Zhou period, not a fresco from the Western Zhou ... This, in any case, does not make sense. Also, who owns the white coffin on the mural?

So far, not a single decent burial object has been seen, and Yao Yumen flatly asserts that this is a large national underground palace with higher specifications than Mawangdui, and she also speculates that there are untouchable state-level relics inside.

But ... Where is the stuff?

"Lao-san come quickly!" A mole suddenly shouted.

Several people were busy running over to look.

Only to see that at the northwest corner of the stone wall, another fresco in a weird style appeared ...

When they got a good look at the mural, everyone's faces, including mine, turned white with a swish!

What I saw was this.

There were three men and one woman in the somewhat peeling paint mural, and the mural was exquisite, two of the men were in their forties, the woman was in her thirties, and the last man was obviously much younger.

In the mural, these modern men are all holding torches, gathered around them, and are shining them on a white coffin!

I glanced behind myself in horror, the back was empty and there was no white coffin ....

The four people on this mural were clearly depicting our group .....

"San... San," I spoke with a little tremor in my voice.

"Pah!" Sun Laosan suddenly slapped himself hard.

"No way, no way, it must be my eyesight," he turned his face white and twisted his head to look at a mole, "What is it that you see, Little Red?"

A mole said in a trembling voice: "I ..... I saw four of us, and .... and a monster with horns on its head."

"A monster with horns on its head?" I rubbed my eyes hard, "No, there was no monster with horns on its head? What I clearly saw was a white coffin!"

Sun Laosan took a deep breath and said, "What I saw was the four of us surrounding two poisonous snakes that were entwined with each other." ...

The oldest Sun also shook his head, "Mine and yours are different too, what I saw was a child crouching on the ground with his head buried in tears."

With those words, several people looked at each other, each seeing incredulity in the other's eyes.

An odd mural.

Four people looked at it at the same time and ended up seeing four different patterns .....

I looked at the coffin, a mole saw a monster with horns on its head, Sun Laosan saw two poisonous snakes entwined together, and Sun Boss saw a child with its head buried in tears.

Sun Lao San had seen many evil things before, but the situation of the four scenes in one painting before him was clearly beyond his knowledge.

At the moment, the only reasonable explanation we could get was a hallucination. We might have been hallucinating at the same time.

"This is not right, sit down all, don't go yet," Sun Lao-san greeted us as we sat down in place.

After a few minutes of consideration, Sun Lao-san fished out a small round iron box from his backpack. The box was small, made of old white copper, and there was no patterned trademark on it.

He unscrewed the box and carefully poured out a little yellow powder into his palm.

The yellow powder had a pungent smell, like that of staghorn, but it tasted even heavier than staghorn.

Sun Laosan asked us to hold out our right hands, and he poured a little into the palms of each of us.

Raising his hand to the tip of his nose, Sun Lao-san said, "Take a breath and inhale it through your nose."

He was the first to table his head.

"Ah-choo!"

"Damn, that's strong," he said, sucking his nose twice in quick succession and shaking his head vigorously.

The moment I inhaled this stuff, I felt a sudden chill in my head; this stuff was incredibly strong for refreshment, so much stronger than cool oil and flower lotion or something like that, it was completely out of its league.

After inhaling this yellow powder, a few people were fixing their eyes on it.

There were no more crying children, no more monsters with horns on their heads and no more poisonous snakes on the frescoes.

On the mural, there were only some ancient people dressed differently, and no animals or coffins.

"Damn, it's a good thing I kept an extra eye out before I came and got the Taoists to buy some soul-awakening pills."

Sun Laosan cursed and straightened up after he finished, he turned his head to look at the place he had just walked.

"The scent of nan, it's the scent of nan from earlier, it's also an ancient means of protection against grave robbery, formulated by the witchcraft and wizardry folk of the time."

"The group of southerners who came in should have been hallucinating like us, which caused them to kill each other in the dark."

"Luckily I was well prepared and we found out early."

Sun Lao-san looked up at the murals as he finished.

"Five minutes later, we wouldn't have known how we died."

"This is killing people by borrowing them."

"All a bit more awake, right? We'll leave when this medicine has dissipated, which will be about half a point, so just to be on the safe side, we'll have to wait a little while." When he finished speaking, Sun Laosan carefully retrieved the bottle of medicinal powder.

"Third Brother, this stuff is quite powerful, you said you borrowed it from a friend on the road? What friend?" I asked curiously.

Sun Laosan shook his head, "This stuff, ah, it was borrowed from the Eight Great Monsters Crippled Incense, luckily I was well prepared."

Many people have heard of a term called enchanting incense, in the old ancient TV dramas there would be unscrupulous people who would poke a hole in the window paper and then use a hollow bamboo tube to blow the smoke in.

This is not empty talk, it's just astonishing that this scent under the underground palace has not dissipated over the millennia.

Before the Republic of China, the eight gates, the eight gates and the seven gates of Yin included the eight monsters of Tianqiao.

What are the eight monsters of Tianqiao?

The eight monsters of Tianqiao are: the golden skin, the colourful hangings, and the crippled willow.

The crippled incense that San said is the penultimate of the eight monsters, whose status is ranked above the Liu Gate, which is the kiln girl, is in the leather business.

It took half an hour to wait for the medicine to dissipate. I was a bit curious about the eight great monsters he was talking about, so I took the opportunity to learn a bit more.

San said that some of the Eight Great Monsters are still around now, while others have disappeared, just like the lost ones in our tomb raiding, Touching the Gold and Removing the Mountain and Fat Cho.

These types of people were nicknamed in the jianghu back in the day, a cone of bewitching crippling incense was just one of them, there were many other strange people.

There were many others, such as Hua Jianliu, a beggar of the wind|stream, Zhang Xiaohong, a small skeleton of Su Qin's sword, Song Rong, a small drummer of Li Hua, Wei Guotong, a fallen son of Fengtian, Bai Yuqing, a raconteur of Jinmen, Wang Shaoyuan, a flying swallow of Li, and so on. All of these were people with great skills.

In those days, grave robbers, who were also in the lower ninth grade, were not on the stage, and only a few of them could be called by name.

I secretly wrote down the names of these people, thinking that I would have the opportunity to meet these strange people of the jianghu in the future.

"Lao San, how big do you think this underground palace is, and how big is Moth Mountain?" A mole asked with a heavy heart as he felt the medicine had almost dissipated.

Sun Laosan shook his head helplessly, "I don't know, let's take one step and see."

"Yunfeng, big brother, the medicine should have passed, let's continue to feel our way forward, this Western Zhou underground palace, if we don't feel our way, our months of hard work will all be wasted."

We continued to walk forward after a few people had tidied up.

After about ten minutes of walking, we found another very special building.

In the centre of the underground palace there was a dried up circular pit, smooth around the perimeter, in which stood three stone sculptures of men in robes, with no heads, only bodies.

If the sculptures had been deliberately damaged, the breaks in the necks would not have been so flat.

The pit in the underground palace is a bit like a cistern, and at a glance you can see that it was dug out deliberately by someone in the past.

"Hey, why are there so many holes on this side, what's the purpose of this?" A mole suddenly spotted something at the edge of the pool.

I saw it too, and indeed as a mole said, there were many small holes arranged on the side of this concave pool, I don't know what they were for.

Sango was bold and he was the first to jump in.

Walking to the middle of the pool, he frowned at the three headless stone sculptures.

"What's wrong old San, what have you found," said several of us who then jumped into the pool as well.

"Brother look, look at this place," Sun Laosan pointed to the chest of the headless stone sculpture.

I saw it too, only to see that the stone figure he was pointing at had some depressions in its chest. The depressions were not too obvious, but you could see them clearly if you were closer in.

"Lao-san, don't move yet!

Still a step too late.

Almost at the same time, Sun Laosan right hand pressed down, big brother said a few seconds too late

See the stone man's chest collapsed, a few of us stood still, the atmosphere did not dare to come out.

"Crunch, crunch ..."

I was the first to hear it, a gurgling sound from under the pool, a sound like one of those large iron chains being pulled tight.

Almost simultaneously, the place where we were standing under our feet suddenly started to sink!

"Run!"

Sun Lao-san reacted very quickly, and only when he felt the slightest hint of it, he jumped out of the pool in three giant strides, followed closely by Sun Boss.

"Click, click, click." The sound of the iron ropes grew louder and louder.

At that moment, the three headless stone figures suddenly turned around and became facing me.

"Yunfeng! Little Red! Quickly jump up!" San shouted anxiously.

The entire concave cistern was descending so fast and quick that I had already sunk close to two metres in a flash. At this point, with my bouncing power, it was now too late to go up.

"The rope! Boss! Get the rope!" A mole looked anxious as she shouted loudly upwards.

Suddenly there was another crunch, like the sound of an iron rope snapping.

Before Big Brother could lower the climbing rope, the whole cistern descended a few more notches faster.

"Come over to Yunfeng!" A layer of sweat broke out on a mole's forehead.

"It's too late! Half crouch down! Hold on to the stone sculpture!" She was the first to demonstrate to me.

A huge sense of weightlessness filled my whole body, and I could no longer see my big brother and third brother overhead, so I froze in place in fear, not knowing what to do.

Seeing me dazed, a mole bit her lip as she ran over in two steps and dragged me over.

It was only then that I reacted and hugged the same stone man with a mole in a hurry. I followed a mole's example and bent slightly at the knees.

At this point I saw that there were some very thick bronze chains on the stone walls around me, hundreds of them!

A mole and I grabbed each other's arms, but there was nothing we could do now but watch ourselves sink with the cistern.

There was a loud sound of water entering.

The impact was so strong that I couldn't hold the stone man and I was knocked backwards.

First my back felt cold, then my whole body felt cold.

It was the very cold water of the underground river.

The water flooded people so fast that I was still dizzy and didn't react at all. By the time I was a little more awake and wanted to run, it was too late.

As I couldn't swim, I choked several times, and I used all the strength in my body to shout for help.

I shouted and screamed as I stomped and waved my arms.

My body started to sink.

My lungs felt like they were going to explode and I was submerged in the water, spitting bubbles.

As my consciousness drifted away, it was as if a slideshow was playing in my head, with images from my life flashing by.

There was the figure of my grandmother, the eyes of my great aunt, the teaching of the head, the smile of Li Jing.

I tried desperately to catch all of these, but I couldn't catch any of them.

Consciousness was dissipating a little.

That's when.

I don't know if it was an illusion before I died, but I suddenly felt that someone was hugging me from behind.

After passing out there was no sense of time and I woke up frozen.

My back was sore and numb, my chest hurt to breathe, and I wondered if I had broken a rib.

"You're awake."

I lay on the ground and whipped my head around to see a mole fixing her wet hair, she was as soaked as I was.

The sound of the river flowing could be heard beside my ears and I asked, fighting back the bout of pain coming from my chest, "Red .... Sister Hong, we survived?"

"Yes, we both survived quite well," she said, not bothering to joke with me either.

I struggled to get up from the ground, a movement that tore at my rib area.

"I've seen your wound, it's not a broken rib, it's a sprain," said a mole, helping me up.

When I had the time, I looked around.

There was an underground river in front of us, and where a mole and I were was barely on the bank, a small space of less than two metres.

The rucksack I was carrying was gone, I think it had fallen into the river and been washed away, but fortunately, a mole's was still there. She had some starter biscuits and emergency tools in her bag.

Leaning against a rock, I looked at her and said, "Sister Hong, thank you for saving my life, I don't know how to swim and if you hadn't saved me, I would have drowned."

A mole looked on as if no one was there, and she began to undress herself.

I was busy lowering my head.

Her voice came, "There's nothing to burn here to make a fire, so don't thank me yet, just take off your clothes and wring out the water or you'll lose your temperature."

When she saw me squirming, she shook her head and laughed lightly, "I've never seen any big guns or cannons, why should I be afraid of a child like you? Hurry up."

Five minutes later, all I had left was my trousers, and I was protecting my crotch with both hands, refusing to take them off no matter what she said.

"Hey, forget it," a mole helped me wring up my clothes and she wasn't asking me to take off my boxers.

This phone call, the second communication satellite of the Beidou was only launched in '07, so that we couldn't contact Big Brother and Third Brother at all anytime soon.

Now, it was up to us.

The biscuits in our backpacks were soaked with water, but that was all we could eat now to replenish our strength. The soaked biscuits were cool and loose, that really melted in our mouths, like we were drinking soup.

After resting for an hour or so and getting dressed, a mole asked me if I could walk and I gritted my teeth and said yes. I gritted my teeth and said I could walk. The two of us paired up and began to hobble along the short bank of the river.

The underground river flows from west to east and we walked in the same direction. The platform that looked like a cistern was now invisible, so heavy that it had probably sunk to the bottom of the river.

I thought hard about it on the way there and, to be honest, I still couldn't figure it out. I was impressed by those thick bronze chains.

I knew one thing, the casting of bronze wares in the Western Zhou period was done using the Fan Line mould method, the lost wax method was very far behind, and the bronze chains were interlocked and kept on going for 2,000 years. In my knowledge, bronze chains of this length could never have been made in the Western Zhou period because of the limitations of the process.

As we walked, the current became stronger and the bank we were walking on became narrower and narrower. At first we were able to walk side by side, but later, fearing that our feet would slip and fall into the water, a mole and I changed to walking one behind the other, with her in front and me behind.

Fortunately, we had bought a high quality waterproof torch, which helped us a lot at this point.

There was a cool breeze blowing in front of me and I felt it.

This was a good thing, and I thought then that if I kept going along the underground river, I would surely be able to find the exit without any problems.

"Wait!" She suddenly stopped in her tracks.

"What's wrong Sister Red?"

"Yunfeng what do you see there?" She turned over sideways and shone her torch ahead.

The range of the torch illumination was limited and the distance was a bit too far to see, I could only see some blurry round black shadows, like some orbs hanging from the roof of the cave.

"What is this thing?" I couldn't see it clearly either.

"Be careful, walk over and have a look," a mole twisted his head and admonished me.

As the distance drew in, this time I could see clearly .....

It was some sort of long ladder shaped bronze ....

These bronze vessels are also suspended from a number of round clay balls in front of them with thinner bronze chains, and it's not at all clear what these things are for.

A mole looked up and frowned : "Yunfeng, do these .... look like chimes?"

"Chimes? Trapezoidal bronze chimes?" I was taken aback.

The more I heard her say that, the more I looked like them.

There are many types of ancient bronze, about 34, and chimes are just one of them. Later generations classified them as round chimes, square chimes, hat chimes, trapezoidal chimes, etc.

Why are there such a large number of bronze chimes hanging from the underground caverns beneath Moth Hill? What were the round clay balls in front of the bells for?

People are always curious about some unknown food.

"Hit one down and see," said a mole, picking up a small stone from the side.

She raised her hand and threw it as hard as she could, just like hitting a fruit, but unfortunately the first one fell short.

She followed it up with a second attempt and still failed to hit the orbs.

"Let me try Sister Red," I said, taking a small stone from her hand.

I used to shoot birds with my slingshot when I was a kid, so I still had some accuracy in my hands.

The first time I hit it, the ball swayed back and forth like a swing, but it didn't fall because it wasn't strong enough.

This time I used all my strength.

"Poof," the round ball of mud fell into the river.

"It hit Sister Red!"

A mole gave me a blank look.

Seeing that the falling orb was floating towards the centre of the underground river, a mole quickly took off her top as she turned around and said, "Wait for me here, I'll fish it up and have a look."

"Poof," she leapt into the river before I could say be careful.

Two minutes later, the water was calm, I hadn't seen her yet, and the ball that had fallen was gone.

"Sister Hong!"

"Sister Hong!" I shouted as I stood anxiously on the bank.

A round ball was pushed by the water to my feet, a mole without a figure ... I was terrified and stayed where I was, not knowing what to do.

"Hullo!" The upper half of a man emerged from underwater.

I was relieved to see the person, it was a mole.

After swimming to shore, her face clouded over.

"Is it hurt Sister Red, what's wrong?" I asked worriedly as I saw her face look bad.

She took a moment to slow down and turned her head to look at me and said, "The water

"Ah? The big spinning wheel? What does it mean?"

"I don't know, let's not talk about that, let's see what this thing is first," she pointed to the spherical object at my feet.

"Oh, oh, okay."

The thing was hard, the size of a football, and it took me several hits with a sharp rock to crack a small crack.

It was like opening a coconut shell, and I stuck my hand in and tried to break the thing open hard.

The first time I didn't break it open, but the opening was stretched wide, so I shone my torch.

There was a white thing inside and I tried to reach out and touch it.

As I touched it, my face changed.

It felt like, I had snapped my fingers into two holes in the eye.

"What's wrong?" A mole asked.

I hurriedly withdrew my hand and sat down on the floor and took several steps backwards propped up on my hands.

"People .... Human head."

"Dead ... It's a dead man's head!" As soon as I touched the two holey eyes I knew it was skulls encased in orbs.

A mole blushed slightly, but she reacted better than I did.

She braced herself and said, "Yunfeng, you're a big man, you're still a tomb raider, what are you afraid of? If Lao Er were here, he'd still dare to kiss this thing."

"Get up! I'll do it!" She frowned slightly and went straight to work.

As the orb had already been smashed open by me before, this time she didn't need much effort and smashed it open with a few strokes.

This time it looked real, and I was right in my previous guess that there was indeed a dead man's skull encased inside the orb.

Parts of the skull were weathered and what made it strange was that the skull had some gilt layers on its surface, which were staggered and looked less like writing and more like some kind of patterned symbol.

I have heard of copper gilding, silver gilding, thin gilding on hairpins, gold and silver gilding, and gold and silver filigree, but I have never heard of gilding being used on a dead skull.

The gilding around the eyes of the skull is brilliantly golden, and together with the solid black skull, the style is quite eerie.

A mole frowned, "I'd seen something similar when I was helping a Chengde gang with logistics back in the day, but it wasn't a skull, it was a small section of human finger bone, and the head of the gang at the time told me that it was from the Spring and Autumn period."

She looked up at the trapezoidal bronzes on the roof of the cave and said, "Yunfeng, you've got a good head on your shoulders, there must be dozens of these things, so smash one down and we'll look into it."

"Yes," I agreed, nodding my head.

At this height, I couldn't even reach it by jumping up, so I used the old method of smashing it with a rock, and I deliberately picked a bigger one.

"Bang!"

The first time I hit it, the stone and the bronze clashed together with a loud, crisp echo.

When I heard the sound, I agreed with the mole's previous guess that ninety percent of the trapezoidal bronze was a chime.

"Put a little more force into it," said a mole, looking up.

"Bang!" This last one hit solidly.

The bell fell into the river with a loud bang, but a mole was prepared for it and it took her less than a minute to retrieve the object.

We studied it as soon as we got it out.

The bronze was narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, with some red spots and green patina, but otherwise the waistline, the fan line and the cloud and thunder pattern were all very well done.

I weighed the weight and felt that the weight was a little too light, and it rose up with a gentle lift.

"Sister Hong, try it, why do I feel that the weight is not right."

A mole reached out and took it, "Huh, it's so light, it's not bronze?"

A mole is older than me, she has been in this business for years, she has seen much more than me, she used her nails to snap those green patina on the bronze braided bell, the green patina was very floating, it fell off with a light touch.

Once the green patina fell off, the inside of the trapezoidal chime revealed a grey and black base.

A mole looked at it and frowned, "It's not bronze, it's a good one, if I'm right, it should be of heavenly iron ..."

"Iron chimes?" My eyes were wide and incredulous, "Sister Hong, there were iron weapons during the Western Zhou period? No, right? Are you mistaken?"

She shook her head, "You didn't understand, I'm talking about heavenly iron, not pig iron, iron appeared in the late Spring and Autumn period, to put it bluntly, heavenly iron is meteorite iron, a meteorite ore. No wonder the weight didn't feel right as soon as it was in my hand."

A mole saying that the trapezoidal chimes are made of meteorite iron is actually based on the fact that just a few years ago, in '96, the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology joined forces with the Sanmenxia Cultural Relics Task Force, who carried out salvage excavations at the Guo State Cemetery in Shangcunling, Sanmenxia, and eventually discovered two rusty iron swords, which came from the tomb of Guo Zhong, and after x-ray radiological analysis, on the iron swords, the archaeological team found many unidentified components resembling high concentrations of nickel, and finally, these two swords from the Bronze Age were identified by the national archaeological team as meteorite swords...

"Sister Hong, you say, this thing is so precious, why don't we carry it out?" Knowing how precious this chime was, a hint of greed arose in my heart.

I then muttered in my mind, "Instead of putting it in this dark underground river, let me take it out, it's not a waste is it."

A mole glanced at the chimes on the floor and she too was a little tempted.

"It's not that heavy, let's take it with us then, this place probably won't get a single person down for hundreds of years," she shook her head and gestured for me to take the chimes with me.

I took off my shirt and twisted it into a rope, not minding that the bell was cold, I put the bell behind my back and tied it with my clothes, then tied a knot in front of my chest, and that was the end of it, I shook it, it didn't move, it was stable.

"Is your chest all right?"

"It's fine Sister Red," I patted my back, "I'm carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars, it doesn't hurt at all now, it's fine."

A mole laughed, "Don't panic, I'll get some help when we get out, then we'll get the boss and the oldest, and we'll take out the whole set."

"A package, that's good," I said, tightening the straps of my shirt around my chest.

As we continued along the underground river, I glanced back from time to time, feeling that the chimes hanging from the roof of the cave were like large banknotes hanging in the wind, waving at me.

About two hundred metres from here, as I walked on, my nose got hot and I suddenly had a nosebleed for no apparent reason.

"Wait Sister Red," I said, tilting my head back and shouting to a mole to stop.

A mole was still teasing me, she said, "Youngsters are so hot, they can have nosebleeds even when they are naked, wait," she tore off a piece of cloth from her body, "keep your head up and don't move, I'll wipe your blood."

"Sister Hong how come you have a nosebleed too!" I saw a mole suddenly start to bleed from her nose as well.

Nor did she help me wipe it, she was busy tilting her head back and using the cloth to stop the bleeding.

"Bang ..."

Just then, a low metallic strike suddenly came from behind us, a sound that sounded somewhat similar to the sound made by ringing a chime.

I was carrying the chimes that had been struck down, and I craned my neck to look back.

In that instant, my sweat exploded!

The underground river kept bubbling, and the brass chains that held the skulls of the mud balls began to pull rapidly.

Dozens of round mud balls began to sway from side to side, very rhythmically, and began to hit the meteorite iron chimes one by one.

The skeletal heads that hit them were able to operate on their own under the control of some kind of underwater organism technique, and these chimes, on their own, began to play a rhythm from more than two thousand years ago.

"Bang."

"Dang!"

The low sound of the chimes grew louder and louder, as if it reached the depths of the human soul, and my scalp tingled as I listened.

Less than two hundred metres away, as I listened to the sound, I began to feel my eyes swelling, my heart tightening and the veins on either side of my temples beginning to bulge.

The nosebleed I had just had could not be stopped at all now, and it was getting worse and worse.

A mole was in a similar situation to me, also unable to stop the nosebleed.

Her eyes were swollen red and veins were visible on her forehead, just as she heard her shouting angrily, "Yunfeng, run! We're going to die!"

...

Many people do not know that chimes do not make sound on their own; they vibrate under the hammer blows, and the vibrations are transmitted through the invisible air as a medium and finally to the human ear. This is why it becomes the chime rhythm.

A few years later, in order to understand the principles involved, I spent some money to impersonate a director of a Hong Kong art troupe, and I found Professor Wang Dan, an old technician who had worked for the National 703 Musical Instrument Factory, and who had personally presided over the complete restoration of the Zenghouyi chime set.

So I asked her old man if it was possible, under certain circumstances, that the sound of the chimes could kill a person.

Professor Wang was very surprised to hear this, and when she asked me why I was asking this, I said it was pure curiosity.

In the end she told me that it was possible, and she gave me the example of someone who could shatter a glass with a high decibel sound, so it was possible that the chimes could do the same.

Looking back now.

It was a concert to die for, with dozens of gilt-ruled skeletons playing and a set of meteorite iron chimes from the Western Zhou period as the instruments.

And the host family who invited Sister Red and me to listen.

I think that it should be Mustard Wait.

"Run ..... Run ...."

A mole and I held each other up and ran forward along the underground riverbank with staggering steps.

Behind us, bells chimed.

The underground river's current was dark and tidal, and a small whirlpool gradually rose from the surface of the water. As a mole had said, there was a huge chakra-like mechanism underwater. The underwater wheel drove the bronze chains, which pulled the gilt head, and finally, the head struck the chimes.

I vigorously covered my nose with my hand, but in vain, scarlet blood still dripped down through the cracks of my fingers.

Just then, a mole suddenly seemed to think of something and she shouted at me, "Plug your ears! Run back!"

After she yelled this, she started to pull me back without a word.

If we ran back this far, it would be a death sentence! I couldn't figure out what she was trying to do, but I was led backwards anyway.

Despite plugging my ears, it was a step backwards, and the closer I got to the source of the sound, the more my eardrums hurt.

Even crawling and running, I returned to the original point.

"Throw ..... Drop the clock ....." The shirt on a mole's chest was already mostly wet from her own nosebleed, and she spoke in a weak voice.

Forcing back the gushing pain in my ears, I undid my clothes and violently threw the chimes I was carrying behind me into the underground river.

Almost at the same time.

The sound of the bell stopped.

The gilt skulls hanging from the bronze chains lost their source of power and swung a few last times by inertia.

The underground river returned to peace as if nothing had happened before.

A mole and I lay side by side on the ground, breathing heavily.

"Red ..... Sister Red, how did you know we were heading back."

A mole's face was pale and her chest was already a crimson red, so I heard her weakly say her guess.

I briefly thought back on what she had said and thought it was very likely; it was a good thing she was the one with a cool head, otherwise we would certainly not have survived if we had kept running forward blindfolded.

This underground river is in the shape of a dense long tube, and because of this construction, sound travels fast, and we definitely couldn't outrun the sound, plus, she had been in the water earlier, and the chimes were only able to ring because of the power of the chakras and the current, and the only reason they were triggered was because I smashed one down."

The meteorite irons have a suction force on each other, it's the gravity balance, if one is missing it breaks the weight balance, it's a very sophisticated set of organs. I also secretly speculated that maybe there was no such underground river more than two thousand years ago, and that big turntable, perhaps, was exposed on the ground.

In the time of King Wen of Zhou, the Zhou Yi had just been written, but the Qi Men Dunjia had already taken shape for a long time. The idea that the Qi Men Dunjia was born out of the Zhou Yi is not correct; the Qi Men Dunjia must have predated the Zhou Yi.

The Warring States period came immediately afterwards. At that time, the Zhou Yi was not yet popular at all, but there were already the arts of the Zongheng school, the genealogy of the Bing school, the methods of the Quan school and the organs of the Mo school, which created a large number of lords such as Guigu Zi, Sun Bin, Ying Zheng, Ying Ying Ying and Bai Qi.

This huge group of human head chakra organ sets must have had the support of the Moist organ techniques and the Yin Yang family during the Western Zhou period, if we look at it in another way, this is the township-level cultural relic that Yao Yumen is talking about ....

Unfortunately, we can't take it with us.

These chimes, if any of them were taken away, would certainly trigger the great underwater spinning wheel and would endanger the lives of the living.

"Sister Hong, do you think we will not be able to walk out and be trapped in this underground river," I wiped my nosebleed.

A mole didn't reply.

"Sister Red?"

"Sister Hong?"

I strained to get up and look, but saw a mole with embroidered eyebrows locked, her face pale and already in a coma.

"Sister Hong! Sister Hong! You wake up! Wake up!" I shook her desperately.

A mole was shaking my upper body, but she still didn't move a muscle.

"Drink water Sister Hong, yes, drink water," I fished out mineral water from my bag and fed it to her, but the water wouldn't go in, it all dribbled away from the corners of her mouth.

I was at a loss for words, and with red eyes I said, "Eat, Sister Hong, eat some biscuits."

The biscuits soaked up and became semi-liquid like the water, and I couldn't feed them all the same.

A mole was now breathing weakly.

"Go, go, we must get out, we still have to get to big brother, brother two and brother three, go!"

I gritted my teeth and strained to carry a mole.

The torch was a little low on power and the illumination was already much weaker. I was naked, bending over to hold her buttocks, and just kept going along the underground river bank.

Sweat was falling down my forehead and dripping into my eyes, which hurt a little.

I drank river water when I was thirsty, ate some soaked biscuits when I was hungry, and throughout, I never thought of giving up a mole, I wanted to save my partner.

I didn't know if it was day or night, but I was cold and hungry with a mole on my back, and my legs were churning.

My legs went weak, I still couldn't support myself and passed out.

...

I slowly opened my eyes as my body got a little warmer.

The sound of burning wood thundered in my ears, and a fragrance entered my nose.

Suddenly, a hairy face peeked out.

I sat up with a jerk and took two steps back.

This startled me, and I thought I had come across a man-eating savage.

"You ..... Who are you!" I asked, wary, after keeping my distance.

He imitated my speech and said, "You ... Who are you."

I took two steps back and pointed at him, "I asked who you are and why are you talking like me."

Unexpectedly, he took the same two steps back and also pointed at me and said, "I asked who you are and why you are talking like me."

"Fuck," I cursed, "are you stupid!"

The man with the hairy face followed the same pattern and said, "Fuck, are you stupid!"

I was speechless and was busy checking how a mole was doing.

I was relieved to see how she looked. Although a mole still looked bad, the rhythm of her breathing was noticeably smoother than before, which was a sign of improvement.

I took a deep breath and turned my head to look at the man, "Anyway, thank you, for saving me and my friend."

He still spoke like me.

I hadn't walked out of the underground dark river yet, and I didn't know where this man had gotten the dry firewood from, and I subconsciously swallowed a big mouthful of water as I looked at the roasted fish roasting on the fire.

"Hey, can I have some fish." I said.

"Hey, can I have some fish." He said.

This weirdo kept imitating my words, so I had an idea and said, "You can have some, don't be polite."

Sure enough, he imitated me and said, "Go ahead, eat, don't be polite."

I was so happy, so I didn't have to be polite.

I hadn't eaten anything hot for a day or two, so I immediately gobbled it up, saying I'd eat a little, but I ended up eating a whole grilled fish, with only the bones left.

"Pfft," I said after the last bite, spitting out a fish spike, "You eat some too."

I had expected him to follow my example this time.

Unexpectedly ....

Only to see the strange man daze for a moment, and then he shook his head vigorously.

I was surprised to find that the man's eyes were now a little different from before, I can't tell you.

He looked down at the floor of fish bones and slowly raised his head again.

"Paralyze, who are you kid, where's my baked fish?"