Chapter 141: Let’s Rest For The Night—i Really Can’t Take It Anymore!
Due to the hurried descent, Uncle Tai and Master Liang only had some of their own things with them. Most of it was with Er Mazi and the middle-aged man, all left behind them.
After being washed down by the waterfall, Uncle Tai was the first to wake up. Master Liang was also lucky. Although they weren’t tied together with rope, the downstream current carried them in the same direction. Within seconds, Uncle Tai saw a bobbing head in front of him and, sure enough, it was the already unconscious Master Liang.
Anyone who has drowned knows that the instinctive struggles during drowning can pull down the rescuer. Although Uncle Tai hadn’t undergone systematic training, his instinct was not to wake Master Liang. Seeing a bonfire not far away and figures moving beside the fire, he knew that the few people who had escaped his grasp should have arrived here.
Therefore, carrying baggage, and to avoid alerting them, Uncle Tai chose to go ashore on the other side of the waterfall. The other side of the waterfall wasn’t a pebble beach like this place; it was a less than two-meter-high rock wall, with a cliff beyond.
The reason Lin Yan and the others didn’t see any movement by the waterfall was that Uncle Tai and his group had bypassed it along the cliff edge. They were coming from two different directions, and the bonfire’s illumination wasn’t strong enough. This allowed Uncle Tai to achieve a surprise attack; otherwise, they would have been discovered long ago.
While resting, Uncle Tai had considered abandoning Lin Yan and Wu Xie and going down alone. However, even Master Liang, who knew the map, couldn’t guarantee that the two groups wouldn’t meet in the tomb. Rather than have a final showdown later, it was better for both sides to observe a temporary truce and even cooperate.
When Master Liang hired him before, there were four of them; now only two remained. Regardless, Wu Xie’s group had three people and a little monster. If a fatal conflict truly arose, he was confident he could injure or even kill one or two of them, but he and Master Liang would also die. It would be better to cooperate, perhaps letting them scout the way first while he and Master Liang picked up the spoils later.
Besides, with such a large tomb, there must be plenty of good things. They weren’t confident they could take it all. Giving some to these three people could also gain them scouts and laborers. Wouldn’t that be good? However, even if they cooperated, Uncle Tai couldn’t tolerate being in a weaker position. Having navigated the world for many years, he deeply understood that whether or not a person was truly weak, the moment they revealed their weakness, they became fish on someone else’s chopping block.
He believed that even with baggage, he wouldn’t be reduced to being fish. Although they were facing three young people, who could guarantee that two of them weren’t schemers? If nothing else, Lin Yan, that little thing, might suddenly strike him or Master Liang.
Just thinking about it gave him goosebumps. However, with this in mind, their chances of conquering the tomb increased. Years of tomb raiding experience told him that in underground palaces, there were often things beyond common sense. Whether it was a zombie or something else, having a peculiar thing to counteract it was exactly what they needed.
However, if conditions allowed, it would be best to figure out what exactly this thing was. Was it simply a small creature that had gained spiritual energy, or… As he thought this, he decided to stay close to Lin Yan, in case he could exploit it.
On the other side, Lin Yan, seeing that a temporary alliance had been formed, got up and hastily tidied some things, making space for Master Liang and Uncle Tai by the bonfire. As Master Liang sat down, the warmth seemed to provoke him into sneezing twice.
Uncle Tai frowned and asked him, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I, I’m just a bit cold.” Uncle Tai found his answer a bit off and wondered if he had caught a cold. He rummaged through his bag and found most of his things were wet. He hadn’t brought any medicine, so he turned to Lin Yan and the others, “He might have a fever. Do you have any medicine?”
Lao Yang shook his head, “If you mean wound medicine, we have that. But for colds and fevers, this—we really don’t have any!” No one had thought of this when they set out. Where could they find it now?
Lin Yan thought for a moment and started rummaging through his bag again, “I think I remember bringing some, let me look…”
So everyone watched as he unearthed a small pouch from beneath the makeshift medical kit. He pulled out over a dozen blister packs of pills and, holding them in his hand, looked at Uncle Tai, “Which kind do you need?”
Lao Yang was stunned. He thought, “I just said we didn’t have any, and now you’re proving me wrong. Is that really okay? And where did all these medicines come from?”
Wu Xie leaned in to look. He saw that all the packaging had been removed, and the names of the medicines and their intended symptoms were crudely written on the back with a marker. He looked closely and found three types of pills just for fever. “Lin Yan, when did you bring these? How come I didn’t know?”
Lin Yan smiled sheepishly. “Well, before, we were eating in the tomb. I figured eating in the tomb might not be clean, and we might pick up some bacteria or something. What if we got diarrhea? So I brought some stomach medicine. Also, I thought we probably wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave, and might play around for a few days. What if we ate too much and couldn’t digest it? So I also brought some indigestion tablets. Then, after I finished packing, I thought, what if we caught a cold? So I just brought all the medicine I could think of, and it ended up like this.”
Wu Xie took the medicine from him and flipped through it. As expected, there were all sorts of remedies, from headaches and fevers to muscle strain plasters, truly a treasure trove. “You’re quite well-prepared! Lin Yan, maybe you should be in charge of procurement for our equipment next time? I still overlook too many things!”
Hearing this, Lin Yan almost shook his head like a rattle drum. “I’m not going. If you want to go, you go yourself! It’s too much trouble to run around buying equipment, and communicating with those bosses is even more annoying! At most, I can give you a list; you go run around yourself.” Indeed, he found Wu Xie’s conversations with those bosses irritating. They would start with pleasantries, and then their haggling would be mixed with their jargon, which he couldn’t understand. He would just stand there like a piece of wood; he might as well have been lying at home.
Seeing this, Wu Xie could only shake his head helplessly and let him be.
After picking out a usable pill for Master Liang from a few blister packs and putting the rest away, a new problem arose. Everyone was exhausted. Wu Xie, Lin Yan, and Lao Yang were relatively fine, at most having taken a slightly warmer hot spring bath. However, Uncle Tai and Master Liang’s legs, especially their calves, had been severely scalded by the near-boiling water temperature. They hadn’t felt it during the rush to escape, but now that they had rested, the slight breeze from the waterfall blowing on their calves made them feel waves of pain.
But even Lin Yan had to shake his head. Without prior preparation, who would have thought to bring burn cream for such a situation?
Finally, Master Liang was in so much pain that Uncle Tai had to take him to the side. He saw that the water temperature at the edge of the water **pool** was not too warm, so he had him soak his scalded areas in it. It took a good while before he returned.
Master Liang was now cold and hungry, feeling drowsy after taking his medicine. His body ached all over, and his scalded areas throbbed with pain. He had never been so disheveled since he was born. Sitting by the bonfire, everyone’s expression towards him made them suspect he would start crying at any moment.
After a moment of silence, as Lin Yan and Master Liang were about to fall asleep, and Uncle Tai and Wu Xie were on guard against each other, Lao Yang spoke up. He shook his still slightly damp backpack and asked Uncle Tai, “Do you have any cold flame flare signals or anything like that in your bags? Ours is probably waterlogged and unusable. Do you have any spares?”
Uncle Tai nodded. Although he hadn’t expected to jump directly into the water **pool** when they came down, some important things were still wrapped in waterproof cloth, and flare signals were among them. This was also one of the few dry things in his backpack.
He rummaged through his bag and took one out, saying to Lao Yang, “Use it sparingly. We don’t have many of these left.”
What was he planning to do? Master Liang watched Lao Yang gradually walk towards the cliff, a little confused. Was he going to jump down?
At this moment, Wu Xie got up and, pulling Lin Yan along, followed Lao Yang towards the edge of the cliff, signaling Uncle Tai to join them. Uncle Tai weighed his options and decided it was better to cooperate in the early stages of their partnership, so he followed along. Only Master Liang was left sitting by the bonfire, somewhat bewildered, continuing to warm himself.
They also did not expect to witness such a scene.
As the flare signal slowly rose and then fell, the scene below the cliff was fully revealed to them.
“What the hell, is this a communal burial site? Did they bury an entire small country here?” Wu Xie blurted out, unable to contain himself. Lao Yang’s mouth hung open, speechless.
Looking at the scene before him, Lin Yan felt it was much more impactful than the documentaries he had seen about the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang.
Admittedly, the scene bore some resemblance to the Mogao Caves. The difference was that while the Mogao Caves had individual small caves dug within a large cavern, adorned with murals and Buddhist statues, this place… about ten feet below the cliff was also a huge natural cavern, but it was packed densely with coffins.
Layer upon layer, side by side, densely packed coffins, numbering at least a thousand.
“This…” Lin Yan was somewhat speechless. He suspected he had wandered onto the wrong set. What kind of burial was this? If this was a tomb accompaniment pit, there would be no need for everyone to have their own coffin, right? The tomb accompaniments he had seen were usually a massive pit, like the piles of corpses that filled half a pit on that island where they had replicated the underwater tomb.
“W-what’s wrong?”
Master Liang, seeing their reactions from behind and sensing something was amiss, stumbled his way over. Had Uncle Tai not quickly grabbed him, he would have almost tumbled to the bottom of the cliff. Even so, he arrived just in time for the flare signal to be about to extinguish.
“Could this be a cave burial site of the Miao people?”
“Miao people?” “Cave burial?”
Wu Xie and Lao Yang, interjecting one after another like a comedy duo, almost made Lin Yan, who was immersed in shock, burst out laughing.
Master Liang nodded hazily, “Yes, it might truly be the cave burial site of the Gaopo Miao people. Don’t forget, this place before—” He swept his hand left and right, as if encompassing the entire Qinling Mountains.
“was a gathering place for the Miao people. Some Miao tribes, following tradition, practiced cave burial, which is a unique form of burial where the bodies of ancestors are enshrined in a cave. Before the flare signal extinguished, I took a look. The coffins below were already decayed, likely several hundred years old.”
Master Liang paused after speaking. Seeing Wu Xie frown, he knew what he wanted to ask. “The coffins here are different from those used in Central Plains burials. They are not made of very good wood; they are basically just six sides nailed together and sent off. They are far less exquisite than the coffins used in Central Plains burials; even ordinary families’ coffins are better. It’s normal for them to decay within one or two hundred years.”
Wu Xie nodded thoughtfully, “So that’s how it is. However, if this is related to the Miao people…”
He turned to look at Lao Yang, with a look of disappointment: “You damn fool, you said this was a Qing Dynasty tomb! It’s nothing of the sort!” Lao Yang’s eyes widened, looking somewhat helpless. “I, I had no idea. When I came here before, I, I also didn’t know it was a Miao place? And, and besides, can’t a Miao place also be a Qing Dynasty tomb? That doesn’t make sense!”
Wu Xie gave a dismissive cold snort and asked Master Liang, “Do you know which way to go next?”
Master Liang was stunned for a few seconds and was about to speak when Lao Yang interrupted, “Why don’t you ask him how he got here? Ask me instead! Look!”
He reached out and fired another flare at Uncle Tai. It was then that they finally saw clearly that in the center of this tomb, something was different—in the northeast corner of the cave burial, there was a recessed area, which should have been a pit.
Lao Yang pointed there, “We came out from there! If we go in now, we should also go in from there!”
Wu Xie frowned, seeing that there seemed to be no coffin there, “Did you move all the coffins away? Why is that area so empty?”
Lao Yang shook his head, “What do you take me—us—for? We are tomb raiders, not grave robbers! Some things are better left undone, right? We were also strange when we came up, that place was just empty, there was nothing there!”
This was strange, it shouldn’t be like this. Wu Xie was a bit confused, and with his basic understanding of Feng Shui, he said, “This doesn’t make sense. Why wasn’t there a coffin placed there?”
Lao Yang shook his head. He said that when he came out, he did so according to the method for Ming and Qing dynasty underground palaces, “three across, four down”—this could also prove that he had indeed gone into a Qing tomb, otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to get out using this method, right?
Wu Xie had taught him this method. Although he wasn’t going out or raiding tombs at the time, he understood everything perfectly. This method was a trick used by tomb raiders when trapped by a mechanism, to dig a hole from below to retrieve bricks. Otherwise, they could easily be crushed to death by the entire tomb top. This method was only useful for ordinary Ming and Qing tombs; tombs from before that were not like this.
Hearing Lao Yang mention this, Wu Xie finally started to believe him a little.
The group returned to the bonfire and looked at each other, momentarily awkward. Master Liang couldn’t stand it anymore, “Why don’t we rest for the night? I’m cold and tired and can’t take it anymore. If I had to climb down now, I wouldn’t have the strength. What do you think?”
He first looked at Uncle Tai, who looked at Wu Xie noncommittally. Although he didn’t understand the relationship between the taciturn Lin Yan and these two, he didn’t interact much with Lao Yang, but his attitude towards Wu Xie was indeed gentle. And Lao Yang clearly followed Wu Xie’s lead, so he was certain that Wu Xie was in charge of this three-person small group.
Wu Xie thought for a moment, then turned to look at Lin Yan, “Are you hungry?”
Lin Yan’s eyes widened slightly, and he showed the small bag in his left hand, “I’ve been eating for a while now, you just noticed?”
