From the fake emperor to the concubine

Zheng Yi held the soup but didn't drink it. Instead, he squatted on the snow and drew all three results.

Southwest near the shore, deep water.

Due west, cavity.

South bank, bone meal silt layer.

Wu Chen looked at it for a while and said, "Then the guide canal should still start from the southwest?"

“It’s still the southwest,” Zheng Yi said. “We can’t touch the due west; the cavity is too dangerous. There’s silt on the south bank, but it’s far from the valley, so digging there would be too slow. Although the southwest is deep, we don’t necessarily have to go directly into the depths if we retreat to the edge first.”

Wu Chen nodded: "I've measured the elevation. The lowest point in the southwest valley is about half a person's height lower than the lowest point along the lake."

Red Fang looked bewildered: "Is half a person enough?"

Zheng Yi said, "The water will find its own way. Once it successfully opens the channel, it will first drain the shallower part along the channel."

Wu Chen added, "But we have to be quick. If it freezes again tonight, the ditch might be sealed off again just as it opened."

Hearing this, the woman who brought the hot soup couldn't help but ask, "Then shall we open today?"

Zheng Yi and Wu Chen exchanged a glance.

Neither of them hesitated.

"open."

……

When the people of the Black Rock Clan get moving, they rarely waste words.

At a command, the people who were originally scattered in several places gathered on the southwest line. Short wooden stakes were first planted on both sides to mark the boundaries of the open areas that could not be stepped on; then, more than a dozen people shoveled snow and cleared the road at the same time, while another dozen people brought over the prepared large stone wedges and wooden supports.

The message from the Firemane Tribe hadn't arrived yet, but the Blackrock Tribe's own people had already started fighting.

Chiya originally wanted to go to the front to dig, but the woman temporarily sent by Bone Granny grabbed him and pulled him back to the back, making him carry ropes, deliver water, and relay messages.

He looked reluctant, but he was the fastest runner, and in no time he had scurried back and forth along the ditch several times.

"Zheng Yi! Wu Chen said the second support beam on the west side should be tilted a little more!"

"Zheng Yi! The Bone Granny told you not to keep standing by the entrance!"

"Zheng Yi! Where should we put the third basket of stone wedges?"

Zheng Yi responded while keeping his eyes on the ditch line.

"The second support should be two inches to the north!"

"I know!"

"Pile the stone wedges behind the high rocks first, without pressing down on the edges!"

After shouting at the top of his lungs, Chi Ya ran off to relay the message.

Before long, he was panting heavily, his face was flushed, but he still stubbornly refused to rest.

When the trench line reached the first layer of frozen soil, the speed slowed down significantly.

The bone shovel could only chip away a layer of hard shell. To go any deeper, they had to use ice chisels to gnaw away bit by bit. Several hunters took turns, their arms going numb from the impact.

Wu Chen glanced at the sky, took off his shirt, and picked up a large chisel to smash it himself.

a bit.

Two times.

Three times.

He smashed a crack in the hard soil.

The people next to them immediately followed suit and widened the crack into a groove.

Zheng Yi didn't try to outlast them physically. Instead, he walked back and forth along the entire ditch, checking for seepage and hollow sounds, and occasionally had people repair the stakes and replace the supporting timbers. There were two places where faint thuds came from under the snow. As soon as he heard any movement, he immediately stopped and had people go around them.

When Chiya returned with the water for the second time, his eyes suddenly lit up.

"People of the Firemane Tribe!"

Everyone looked up and saw a group of people rapidly approaching from the distant snow-covered slope.

The leader was extremely tall, with shoulders as broad as a wall, hair tied into several thick braids, bare upper arms, and carrying a black iron chisel thicker than a bone spear on his back.

Red Fang muttered to himself, "They run pretty fast..."

As the group approached, the leader, a man from the Firemane tribe, glanced at White Bone Lake, then at the Black Rock tribe members who were digging a ditch, his brows furrowed fiercely.

"Who wants to disturb the lake?"

Wu Chen walked over, chisel in hand: "Me."

The man stared at him: "Are you crazy?"

Wu Chen said, "If the thing in the lake is going to come out, it's better to go crazy first than to die later."

The man didn't respond to that, but instead turned his gaze to Zheng Yi.

"Cultivators from the south?"

Zheng Yi nodded: "Zheng Yi."

“Flame Mastiff,” the man said, his tone stiff. “Red Fang said you want to drain the water from White Bone Lake.”

Zheng Yi said, "It's not the whole lake. We need to retreat to the edge first."

Yan'ao glanced at the ditch line again and suddenly sneered: "If you keep digging like this, the ice will freeze back by tomorrow."

Chiya immediately retorted, "Then you come and try!"

Yan'ao glanced at him: "Shut up, you little pup."

Chiya's ears turned red with anger: "Who are you calling a little dog!"

Wu Chen grabbed his shoulder.

Yan'ao was too lazy to continue, so he walked directly to the front of the ditch, squatted down and touched the frozen soil, then looked up at the shape of the southwest slope.

“Your ditch is too narrow,” he said. “As soon as the water comes in, the sides collapse first.”

Zheng Yi said, "We don't have enough manpower right now, so we can only open one test port first."

Flame Hound stretched out two fingers and drew a wider arc on the snow.

“Even a test outlet needs a throat and a belly. The throat should be narrow and the belly wide. Right now, you only have a throat, not a belly. When the water hits, the throat will disappear.”

Wu Chen frowned: "You have a way?"

Yan Ao stood up and slammed the black iron chisel on his shoulder onto the ground.

"The Firemane Tribe opened up the mountain pass not by talking."

When he turned around, he saw that more than a dozen Firemane Hunters behind him had already unloaded all the heavy chisels, iron wedges, and long hammers they were carrying.

Chi Ya stared wide-eyed: "You brought your trump card?"

Yan Ao said calmly, "Or how about I come play in the snow with you?"

Zheng Yi looked at him for a while and nodded: "Modify it according to your method. Follow the original line for the throat, and widen the back towards the gravel pit to form the belly."

Yan'ao paused slightly when he saw how readily he agreed.

Aren't you afraid I'll deliberately bring random things?

Zheng Yi said, "If you really want to see the things in White Bone Lake go south, then just lead them randomly."

Yan Ao snorted, said no more, rolled up his sleeves and went to fight.

With the addition of the Firemane Division, the progress immediately accelerated.

Instead of using bone shovels for fine planing, they first drove in wedges and then swung sledgehammers to crack the frozen soil and ice-clumped rock layer by layer. The latter part of the gully was quickly widened, and the boundaries of the gravel pit were cleared again, forming a continuous area with a narrow throat and wide belly.

Zheng Yi and Wu Chen stared at the very beginning of the passage.

Once you get close to the planned opening point, you can't move too quickly. It's close to the lake shore, and if you're not careful, the entire ice edge could collapse.

The Bone Woman also arrived.

She didn't dig; instead, she sat on a high rock with three medicine barrels and a bundle of salt ashes beside her, her eyes never leaving the front line.

Red Fang leaned closer: "Bone Granny, what brings you here too?"

The old woman said, "I'll wait until you fall into the lake so I can retrieve your bones."

Chiya silently retreated.

As the sun began to set, the final section of the guide trench was finally dug.

There were less than three zhang ahead, just a thick layer of ice and frozen soil mixed together along the lake edge.

Behind the shell lies the waterway near the southwest shore.

Everyone stopped.

When the wind blows, everyone can hear themselves breathing.

Yan'ao wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at Wu Chen: "Smash?"

Wu Chen didn't respond immediately, but looked at Zheng Yi instead.

Zheng Yi walked to the front, knelt down on one knee, and placed his hand on the hard shell.

Divine consciousness seeped in little by little along the crack.

Sure enough, there was water behind it.

Cold, heavy, with the smell of bone meal.

However, the area hasn't yet developed the obvious cavity seen on the west side, which is good news.

He withdrew his hand and said, "You can open it."

The old woman called out from afar, "Stand up straight first!"

The wooden supports and large stone wedges on both sides quickly pushed up, stabilizing the area around the throat. Yan'ao and Wuchen stood on either side, each holding a heavy chisel.

Chi Ya's breathing became even lighter as he watched, and he couldn't help but whisper to Zheng Yi, "What if they all rush out at once?"

Zheng Yi said, "Yes, so please step back."

"What about you?"

"I will not back down."

Chiya gritted his teeth and obediently retreated a dozen steps.

Wu Chen shouted in a low voice: "Rise!"

Two heavy chisels struck down at the same time.

boom!
The first strike only produced a white line.

The second time, the white line widened into a crack.

On the third strike, a muffled sound suddenly came from deep within the crack.

It felt like someone had kicked the ice from behind.

Zheng Yi's expression changed: "Get out of the way!"

Wu Chen and Yan Ao leaped backward at the same time.

The next instant, the crack exploded open with a deafening roar.

A stream of grayish-black water, carrying ice shards and bone powder, suddenly shot out like a beast that had been suppressed for a long time, crashing violently into the drainage ditch!

The wooden supports on both sides of the throat made a piercing creaking sound at the same time, and the first row of large stone wedges was shaken by the impact.

Everyone was on tenterhooks.

"withstand!"

The Flame Hound roared, and several strong men from the Fire Mane tribe immediately picked up the prepared large stones and pressed them down on both sides.

Wu Chen also led his men to rush up and used long wooden poles to firmly hold back the left-side support.

The water was not pure; it contained a lot of grayish-white debris, which crashed against the bottom of the channel, making a gurgling sound, like countless small bones rolling together.

But it still went down the ditch in the end.

First it darted through the narrow throat, then plunged into the widened "belly" behind it, its momentum immediately slowing by half. Further on, it split and poured into the gravel pit, swirling and churning up layers of gray-black waves.

Chiya stared, mouth agape: "Really...it really worked?"

Zheng Yi didn't speak, still staring at his throat.

After the first wave of water receded, a section of the hard crust along the lake edge clearly collapsed, revealing a dark, wet edge around the originally straight ice shore.

it works.

Just as everyone breathed a sigh of relief, someone suddenly shouted from the gravel pit.

It moved!

Everyone turned around abruptly.

In the grayish-black water that had just been poured in, several clumps of white things were seen swirling outwards with the current.

It's not wood, it's not stone.

It's bone.

There are many bones.

There were human bones and arms, animal spines, and white stripes as fine as bird ribs, all tumbling and colliding with each other in the water.

Red Fang's face drained of color: "How can there be so many..."

The Bone Woman abruptly stood up from the high rock and shouted sharply, "Salt and Ash!"

The people guarding the rubble pit immediately scattered handfuls of the salt and ashes they had prepared into the pit.

As soon as the ash entered the water, the churning bones seemed to be scalded and briefly sank down.

Yan Ao's expression changed upon seeing this: "This pit isn't enough."

Zheng Yi also noticed it.

The first wave of water has already washed out so much bone fragments and remains; if more water is added later, the rubble pit will eventually fill up.

He quickly glanced at the structure around the pit and shouted, "Seal the outer ring first, don't let it overflow! Wu Chen, set up the second barrier!"

Wu Chen turned and left.

Before he could speak, Yan'ao had already ordered his men to move the stones.

Chi Ya stood there in a daze until Zheng Yi grabbed his arm.

"Snap out of it!"

"what?"

"Go tell Bone Woman to remove all the hot soup and replace it with kerosene and bundles of hay. Also, have the tribe send ten more large nets."

Chiya suddenly woke up and ran away.

Zheng Yi turned around and went to the edge of the rubble pit, staring at the bones that had been pressed down by salt and ash and were slowly floating to the surface.

They are just drifting for now.

It didn't move on its own.

But he knew that this only meant "the time was not yet right".

The lake is being tested.

The things in the lake are also being tested.

The first breach has already been opened, so there's no way to expect it to quietly allow them to continue releasing water.

Sure enough, not long after, the bone bells at the southwest throat suddenly rang in unison.

It wasn't the soft sound of the wind, but a rapid, piercing, and chaotic vibration.

Zheng Yi suddenly turned around.

Something was pushing upwards in the black water behind the throat.

The ice layer first bulged, then cracked.

A grayish-white hand slapped the edge of the crack, followed by a second and a third.

Red Fang hadn't run far when he turned around, his hair practically standing on end: "They're here again!"

Yan'ao, carrying the large rock, turned around and cursed, "They came really fast!"

Wu Chen charged forward, spear in hand, his voice like muffled thunder: "Keep quiet!"

Zheng Yi drew his short sword, and icy spiritual energy rose along the blade.

"It doesn't want us to keep releasing it."

The Bone Woman's voice came from behind, sharp yet steady.

"Then do it!"

No sooner had he finished speaking than the ice behind his throat cracked open with a loud "crack".

The first one that crawled out was not a complete humanoid shape.

Its upper body resembled that of a hunter, while its lower body was still dragging in the water, its waist and below completely tangled with broken bones and ice tendrils. As soon as it emerged, it gripped the edge of the ice tightly and struggled upwards. Its movements were eerily fast; with a flick of its elbow, several sharp bone spikes sprouted from its entire arm, aiming to stab at the nearest dark face.

Wu Chen did not retreat an inch.

The bone spear sweeps horizontally, first striking the wrist, then following up with an upward flick.

With a snap, the hand broke off on the spot, and half of the hand bone flew into the ditch.

But the inanimate object felt no pain. Its other hand had already climbed onto the edge of the ice, and its body suddenly shot out halfway, opening its mouth to bite.

Wu Chen blocked with his left arm, and a screeching sound immediately came from the leather armor, like wolf teeth scraping against stone.

The next instant, Zheng Yi's knife arrived.

The blade didn't aim for the head; instead, it sliced ​​diagonally into the open jaw, cutting all the way down to the chest cavity.

With a flash of cold light, the upper body of the dead creature split into two pieces, while the grayish-white gas in its chest immediately tried to escape.

Zheng Yi flicked his wrist, and the icy spiritual energy on the blade twisted violently, pressing the wisp of gray energy back into the broken bones. He then slapped down with a palm of spiritual fire.

With a loud bang, the broken bones twitched twice in the fire before finally coming to rest.

But it was only the first one.

Beneath the cracked ice, even more bony hands had emerged.

Some looked like humans, some like beasts, and some were simply a spine with half a skull, thrashing about in the icy water. They weren't climbing up one by one, but rather stepping on, pulling, and pushing against each other, as if the entire underwater pile of bones was about to burst out of their throats.

Yan'ao rushed to the edge of the ditch, and upon seeing this scene, his face darkened.

"Damn it, this isn't just a few, it's a whole litter!"

He swung the heavy black iron chisel in his hand and smashed it down in a wide arc.

boom!
The first skull, which had just emerged, was smashed back into the ice crevice, momentarily blocking the two behind it as well. The men of the Firemane tribe possessed immense strength; the blow was like a black hammer, causing the ice edge to tremble.

"Another stone!" roared the Flame Hound, "Suppress this bite first!"

Several Firemane hunters immediately worked together to push up a large stone wedge that had been prepared beforehand, hoping to take advantage of the chaos to wed the left side of the crack.

But just as they were halfway through pushing, a gray shadow suddenly darted out of the water.

It wasn't the previous kind of skeletal remains, but a "whip" made of many thin, long ribs, pulled from the water with a trail of black liquid, which lashed against the edge of the stone wedge with a sharp crack. The two hunters, caught off guard, were struck in the arms, their skin and flesh instantly torn open. They groaned in pain, nearly tumbling into the ditch along with the stone. (End of Chapter)