Chapter 163: Sound Coming From The Mist
From their angle, the statues on the altar were all wrapped by the tree roots dangling down from above. No one knew how many years that big banyan tree up there had lived to wrap its roots around this place. It wasn’t completely airtight without a single gap, but it was close.
Wu Xie squinted his eyes and looked for a good while before discovering that these few statues were respectively stationed in the four directions, as if guarding something. Could it be that this middle area was the place Lao Yang wanted him to come to? The center of an altar?
He turned his head to look at Master Liang: “Shall we go down and take a look?”
Master Liang was staring at those few statues at this moment, his face showing a fanatical expression, looking just like a real scholar. Hearing him say this, Master Liang nodded without thinking and walked straight towards there.
Wu Xie looked at his back and quietly asked Lao Yang: “Lao Yang, we’ve come all the way here, can you tell me exactly what thing you want to give me now?”
Lao Yang saw that he didn’t even turn his head back and helplessly shook his head: “Th-that also requires us to g-go down first before it’s p-possible!”
“Go down?” Wu Xie misunderstood, thinking to himself that after all this effort and risking life and limb to come up, in the end they still had to go down? Lao Yang’s behavior was truly idiotic, and not cursing him out would be letting down all the fear along the way: “What the fuck are you saying? If you said earlier we had to go down, why the hell did we come up?”
Lao Yang was stunned upon hearing this: “N-not that kind of going down, it’s entering inside here!”
Entering inside? Wu Xie suspiciously looked towards the center of the altar wrapped by tree roots. Was there another world inside this? Could it be that this bronze tree, besides the sacrificial vessel, had other uses? For example, he thought of the Nine-headed Serpent Cypress. Could this be another triple coffin?
He looked at Lao Yang with half belief and half doubt. But Lao Yang didn’t look at him anymore and followed Master Liang inside. Only then did he discover that in the time it took them to exchange two sentences, Master Liang had already quietly disappeared without a trace.
Coming closer to look at this place, he then discovered that although he originally thought the tree roots had wrapped everywhere tightly, and entering might require some effort, right in front of him were one after another tree holes wrapped by tree roots, like more than ten different passages forcibly created.
For a moment, he was stumped. With so many passages, which one to enter?
Lao Yang stopped at the cave entrance, searching for something along the cave entrance. Wu Xie then remembered that Lao Yang had come here three years before, so naturally letting him enter was because he had gone in before too. Lao Yang was always quick-witted, so leaving some mark wasn’t impossible. At this time, just following him would do.
Sure enough, after looking at several cave entrances, Lao Yang straightened up, breathed a sigh of relief, and pointed to one of them saying to him: “Go this way!”
Wu Xie nodded, picked up the flashlight nearby, first checked the battery capacity, and only after changing a battery did he follow him in. These past few days their batteries had been depleting too fast. Wu Xie thought that if there was a next time, they couldn’t skimp on batteries; they needed at least ten more spares, otherwise it wouldn’t be enough.
Master Liang had long vanished ahead of them, but in Wu Xie’s view, there probably wasn’t much danger here. These tree roots looked intertwined and complicated, but in reality many would be dead ends. When the time came and he couldn’t find the way, he would naturally turn back out to wait for them. If he happened to take the same path as them by coincidence, that would be his luck.
But from the looks of it, probably not? Ahead of him, only Lao Yang’s flashlight light was shining, illuminating the area a few meters in front. The cavity formed by these tree roots gave very little activity space; only skinny guys like him and Lao Yang could drill through like this. Even they had to hunch over and half-crawl in, and the deeper they went, the smaller the space became. Gradually, tree roots squeezed in from all directions, leaving them barely enough space for one person.
Luckily, the altar itself wasn’t very big. After crawling seven or eight meters, they reached the end. Wu Xie estimated that this was already the center position of the altar.
After Lao Yang stopped in front of him, his body leaned forward, and half his body disappeared, like he had crawled into something. Only after Lao Yang had fully gone in did Wu Xie discover that this was a corner of a huge stone coffin. On the grayish-white stone wall, a section of tree root had crawled in along the gap between the coffin lid and the coffin body.
How strange, was this coffin not properly sealed when built, or had it been pried open by later people? He roughly estimated that this coffin was about four or five meters long and a few meters wide, probably occupying the entire center of the altar. To pry this open would be what kind of engineering feat? This was as big as a small container!
He shone the flashlight downwards; it was all gray and hazy, nothing clear, only seeing Lao Yang’s flashlight light shining not far away, but no sign of the person.
Wu Xie felt a bit panicked: “Lao Yang?”
Lao Yang didn’t respond to him.
It shouldn’t be that something happened, right? Wu Xie gritted his teeth and still crawled in following Lao Yang’s direction. Who knew that as soon as he came down, he heard some movement behind him.
“Who is it?”
Once bitten by a snake, afraid of ropes for ten years. Ever since being pointed at with a gun by Master Liang and them, almost losing his life, he was especially sensitive to sounds behind him. Hearing movement behind, he immediately turned the flashlight in that direction and drew his handgun.
“Fuck, the little brat finally came in. Even entering a coffin is so dawdling, you made me so anxious watching.”
The voice behind was very unfamiliar; he racked his brains and couldn’t match it to anyone in his memory. This wasn’t scientific. Could there be other people besides their two groups who came down?
But what first appeared in front of Wu Xie wasn’t a gradually clarifying human figure, but a gun pointed at his forehead.
Wu Xie then discovered that this hazy mist below seemed to absorb light extremely well; with their flashlight brightness, they could only see a bit more than one meter ahead, visibility less than two meters.
The person sneered, his face still blurry in the mist: “I advise you to put the gun away, otherwise your friend might not be doing so well.”
Wu Xie’s heart tightened, no time to think where he had heard this voice before. Lao Yang had come down before him, and now there was no movement, which was clearly unreasonable. This person in front of him most likely had accomplices; that flashlight light was probably to mislead him into thinking Lao Yang was fine and lure him down. “What did you do to him?”
That person’s voice was somewhat smug: “He’s fine now, but that doesn’t mean he will be if this continues.”
“Is that so?”
Lao Yang’s voice also rang out. Wu Xie didn’t dare shift his attention from the person in front of him and could only use his peripheral vision. The beam of flashlight light he previously thought was bait gradually moved towards his direction, but the figure inside was still blurry.
That beam of light stopped just at two meters from him. The uncontrollable smugness and schadenfreude in Lao Yang’s voice was something anyone could hear: “The one who should put down the gun is you, right? Do you want to see who I have in my hands?”
As if echoing Lao Yang’s words, Wu Xie suddenly discovered that the mist in front of him seemed to have dispersed a bit. Although the surroundings were still misty, at least he could now see the people around clearly.
He then discovered that the one in front of him was actually that honest-looking Fatty. When he was by Uncle Tai’s side, it wasn’t noticeable, but now having dropped the surface pretense, with sly eyes and a ferocious face, he really looked like a tomb raider.
Who was this guy again, seemed like Boss Li or Boss Wang? Forgive him for not matching the face and voice; this person’s presence was really too low. Who was the one in Lao Yang’s hands?
Seeing the gun in front of him still pointed at him, but the whole person uncontrollably looking towards Lao Yang, Wu Xie hesitated for two seconds, felt it was a good opportunity, and suddenly smashed the flashlight towards his wrist. That Fatty suddenly came back to his senses, felt a pain in his wrist, the gun became unsteady in his hand, and knew it was bad.
But at this point, even reacting couldn’t stop it. Wu Xie saw his gun fly out of hand, quickly grabbed it at the landing spot, stuffed it into his own pocket, and shone the flashlight on him again, slightly raising his chin: “Now who is the one in trouble?”
That Fatty clutched his wrist, his expression starting to fluctuate between dark and light.
Only now did Wu Xie have the spare to look at Lao Yang’s side. The person Lao Yang was holding, he didn’t recognize, but the face was very familiar; probably the other one besides Master Liang and this Fatty, the one who died in the fish’s stomach before.
After seeing Uncle Tai’s corpse twice, he accepted the fact that these two were still alive pretty well. Seeing these two people, his heart was still as calm as water. Like hell it was!
Fuck, seeing these two made him so angry he could explode. One died and one is still alive, what the hell? What places had this group been to, everyone having a clone, one dies and another comes, this was too annoying!
“How did you get in? How did you think of coming to this place to ambush us? Not afraid that we’d just climb back up at the end, drawing water with a bamboo basket in vain?”
That Fatty’s skin stiffened, his face turning green and white like a color palette, but after Lao Yang tightened his grip on his companion’s neck, he still reluctantly said: “We… woke up under this tree. At first I thought both of us were ghosts, but later confirmed for some reason, we two were still alive.”
He looked at Wu Xie, wanting to say something but stopping. Wu Xie impatiently raised his chin at him to signal him to continue.
Fatty shook his head: “I won’t go into the specific process. Anyway, both of us were scared badly, didn’t know the situation, so tentatively assumed we were still alive. Luckily our equipment was still on us. Seeing this bronze tree, he judged we had arrived at the place, but didn’t know how the others were, so first searched around… We knocked on that corridor above for a long time but couldn’t get up. So we two discussed and climbed up first.”
He was silent for half a moment, saw the gun in Wu Xie’s hand get closer, and then reluctantly said: “After arriving here, we discovered that one of the cave entrances surprisingly had a mark. Originally thought there might be some treasure inside, but who would have thought…”
“Who would have thought what?”
Could there be something here that scared them so much they didn’t dare go down? Wu Xie’s heart sank, but unexpectedly this Fatty spoke of news about Lin Yan: “After we came in, the mist here was much thicker than now.”
He gave a bitter laugh: “At that time, even with flashlights we couldn’t see anything, so didn’t dare go further in and went back the way we came. Originally I wanted to climb up directly along the tree roots, but Li Pipa—” he pointed to the person held by Lao Yang, “said to wait a bit more, saying you all would come sooner or later, so we waited outside. After probably almost a day? Your other companion came up first, with two big rats behind him? Saw us like he didn’t see anything and directly rushed into this tree hole.”
“And then?” Wu Xie perked up, knowing he must be talking about Lin Yan; who else would have two big rats following? So that meant during their sleep, Lin Yan had already come in. Then where was Lin Yan now?
But that Fatty shook his head at this time: “Your companion was too fast. I just managed to run to the tree hole side and look in, and he had already jumped down. By the time I jumped down, even his shadow was gone.”
Wu Xie couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed, but then comforted himself that at least he knew Lin Yan had come in here too. That meant as long as they explored this place thoroughly, they would definitely find traces of Lin Yan. It’s just that the mist here was so thick.
He glanced at this Fatty and that pale-faced Li Pipa, hesitating in his heart about what to do with them. Kill them again here? But they had already died once; though he didn’t know why they came back to life, killing them again still made him a bit reluctant.
Lao Yang beside him seemed to see what he was thinking and was about to open his mouth when the Li Pipa he was holding trembled and spoke: “D-don’t kill me, I-I am useful!”
Wu Xie was puzzled in his heart, thinking which eye of his saw that he was going to kill? Although… indeed for that one second he had thought about it, but he wasn’t that kind of person, okay? But since Li Pipa said so, he still wanted to hear where this person was useful.
So he raised his eyebrow, made an interested expression, signaled Lao Yang to release Li Pipa, and used the handgun to point at that Fatty to make them stand together.
This looked much more convenient now, no need to worry about this one making small moves on the side. Lao Yang stood beside him, winked at him, chuckled, and whispered: “This expression of yours really has some aura, pretending to be—like a big boss!”
Wu Xie helplessly glared at him to shut up and not get in the way. He still felt a bit uneasy in his heart; if he hadn’t reacted quickly before to subdue this Fatty, they would probably still be in a standoff now, not knowing what would happen. But it was also Lao Yang who first subdued that weak-looking companion, giving him the opportunity.
Li Pipa looked at the gun playing in his and Lao Yang’s hands, swallowed, and stuttered: “Th-this place is recorded in my ancestor’s ‘Riverwood Collection’—”
“Wait, ‘Riverwood Collection’?” Wu Xie gestured for him to pause, looked him up and down, and asked interestedly: “You are the descendant Master Liang mentioned who was ordered to tomb raid?” Li Pipa nodded. Speaking of this, Wu Xie remembered: “Where is Master Liang? Didn’t he come in ahead of us two? Where is he?”
That Fatty shook his head: “He entered a different tree hole from us. It’s so intertwined here, don’t know where he drilled off to.”
Wu Xie thought about it and agreed, but he also didn’t want Master Liang to find the entrance again. The situation here was chaotic enough; don’t have another person come to make trouble. Then they’d have to tie up one more, which was tiring… Back to the point, he looked at Li Pipa who shrank back after being interrupted, and asked: “In your ‘Riverwood Collection’, what does it say about the things here?”
Li Pipa shuddered and stuttered a bunch, making Wu Xie impatient. He rubbed his forehead and sighed: “You said so much, summed up it’s just a few points: First, discovered here in the thirteenth year of Qianlong, your ancestor received a secret order to dig; second, in the eighteenth year of Qianlong discovered a dragon-pattern stone box here, couldn’t open it so sent to the palace; third, your ancestor came up here, right?”
Li Pipa swallowed, nodding like a chick pecking rice: “Y-yes…”
Wu Xie frowned: “Then what did your ancestor mean by saying here has everything one wants? What does that mean exactly?” He looked around; clearly there was nothing here, just an empty coffin?
Li Pipa was tongue-tied, wanting to cry but no tears: “I-I…” How would he know? This was his first time here too, okay?
At this moment, Wu Xie seemed to hear some sound coming from the depths of the thick mist, quickly made a silencing gesture and listened intently: “Da da…”
Done cooking, crawled out rolling and tumbling to update
