Chapter 94: A Familiar Grand Hall
Lin Yan’s premonition was correct. This island was indeed not as simple as they had imagined, not just some undeveloped primitive island.
Zhang Qiling, walking ahead, was about several hundred meters in front of them. He was now standing in a daze in front of a cave that had clearly been artificially carved.
This could no longer be called a cave; it was clearly a small base! Although the entrance was cave-like, the door at the cave entrance was clearly an iron door! But now this cave had been abandoned, the half-closed iron door was severely rusted, covered in patchy rust, and some areas had even turned black.
Logically speaking, finding an abandoned base here should be good news, as it would allow them to shelter from this storm, but a mark on the iron door made Zhang Qiling hesitate about whether to let Wu Xie and the others enter.
It was a phoenix.
Although the pattern was severely eroded, Zhang Qiling’s exceptional eyesight allowed him to recognize it at a glance: it was a phoenix. He glanced at the sea of trees swaying in the wind outside the cave, hesitated for a moment, but did not go back to change course. There was no time left for him to find another shelter.
He took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
As expected inside the door, there was a musty smell of a place long unattended. He frowned, added some strength to his hand, and fully opened the door. Fresh air surged in, quickly replacing the stale air inside the cave. From behind came the faint voices of Fatty and the others talking.
Zhang Qiling ignored them and shone his flashlight to examine the inside of the cave. Behind the iron door was not the narrow cavern he had anticipated. What appeared before him was a passage three people wide and one-and-a-half people high. It was clear that the passage had been built very casually, with traces of knife and axe cuts left on both sides, not entirely smooth.
He paused, confirmed there was no danger around, and then raised his flashlight to probe deeper inside.
The passage was extremely long; even with the light from his flashlight, he could only illuminate the dozen meters ahead. It seemed this passage led deep into the mountain. Even for a temporary base, it shouldn’t be like this. His intuition told him there must be other things inside this cave.
As expected, after walking twenty or thirty meters, he saw a huge stone door. This stone door was not as large as the jade door under Lu King’s Palace, but it was about two-thirds the size. Seeing the stone door, Zhang Qiling actually breathed a sigh of relief. For him, any door that could be opened with a mechanism was no problem; what he feared were mechanisms that required modern methods to open, as his Fa Qiu Finger was useless against those.
From this door, he could tell at a glance that the opening mechanism was on the door itself. The stone door had two door rings that needed to be rotated a specific number of times to open. This was the simplest type of mechanism, naturally no problem for him. After smoothly passing through the stone door, what appeared before his eyes was a grand hall almost identical to the main tomb chamber of the underwater tomb. The difference was that the pillars and heavenly palace model were all carved from stone, as if using local materials, but it lacked those few mirrors, and the four walls had no relief sculptures formed by light and shadow.
Upon closer inspection, shock appeared in Zhang Qiling’s eyes. From afar it hadn’t been obvious, but up close he realized that these stone carvings were actually all one piece! He observed carefully again, and whether it was the heavenly palace model or the golden body replicated in stone above it, they were all seamlessly integrated! What an enormous engineering feat!
After walking around, he discovered some traces on the ground directly in front of the golden body.
If he wasn’t mistaken, this should be a grand hall for sacrifices. But if it was for proper sacrifices, then the casual construction of the outer passage didn’t make sense. What exactly were they trying to do by building a grand hall identical to this one?
Zhang Qiling looked at the golden body’s stone statue and fell into deep thought.
Not long after, Fatty and the other two followed the marks he had left and found the cave. They walked in and, seeing the grand hall, showed shocked expressions: “Holy shit, isn’t this exactly the grand hall from inside the underwater tomb? How is there a stone replica?” Fatty had sharp eyes and immediately spotted the traces on the ground in front of the golden body stone statue: “Wow, this was for sacrifices, right? Descendants of that golden body? They couldn’t enter the underwater tomb, so they replicated a main hall on a nearby island for worship? Talk about having too much time on their hands.”
Wu Xie retorted, “Come on, Fatty, that’s their descendants showing filial piety. This time we’re benefiting from their kindness with this place to shelter from the storm. Shouldn’t you be a bit more respectful to them?”
Lin Yan nodded: “Wu Xie is right. But if the descendants of that dried corpse had the spare time to build a main hall here, how could they not enter the underwater tomb? I disagree with that. Maybe they go in every year, we just don’t know. Building a grand hall might be like us, for times when storms prevent entry during the year, using this as a substitute. But now the underwater tomb is completely destroyed. Thinking about it, we really owe it to their descendants; we blew up their ancestor’s corpse.”
Hearing this, Fatty nodded solemnly, clasped his hands toward the stone statue: “Although we’ve said it before, seeing your statue really makes me want to say it again. Great senior, you’re magnanimous. Blowing up your tomb with your corpse wasn’t our intention; it was just that the situation was critical at the time. If we didn’t, we’d all have suffocated down there. Plus, your corpse was about to rise as a zombie. You wouldn’t want to become a mindless zombie, right? We basically cremated and buried you. At least you’re still in your tomb…”
The more Fatty spoke, the more off it felt, his voice getting smaller until he awkwardly smiled, bowed a few times to the stone statue, and considered it done. Lin Yan and Wu Xie watched him, thinking this guy was utterly shameless, taking all the advantages and still wanting verbal ones, but thinking about themselves…
Lin Yan and Wu Xie exchanged a glance; they couldn’t learn to talk like that. They simply imitated Fatty and sincerely bowed a few times, as thanks to the tomb owner for helping them escape and providing this place to shelter from the wind. Although this place was built by their descendants.
Zhang Qiling glanced at them, ignored their antics, and went to the wall corresponding to the white coral secret passage in the underwater tomb, starting to grope the wall with two fingers of his right hand.
Seeing him do this, the other three curiously gathered around.
In the underwater tomb, this secret passage had been blocked by mirrors. Here, without mirrors, the smooth wall didn’t look like there was a secret passage. When they first entered, the three had noticed this difference, initially thinking no passage had been built on purpose. But seeing Zhang Qiling’s reaction, could it be that the secret passage was just concealed, with a stone-carved white coral inside and a stone-carved bronze bell hanging on it?
Wu Xie glanced at Lin Yan; that bronze bell was still in Lin Yan’s pocket, brought down from the ship together.
Without keeping them waiting long, Zhang Qiling’s hand paused while moving over the stone wall, inserted into a barely visible gap, twisted two fingers, and a well-hidden stone door silently slid open.
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