Yin Shou Shu

Chapter 158 Rhino Cave
At the door of the old wooden-tiled house, a young man wearing a black traditional robe with red cloth was standing in the loess courtyard feeding chickens.

Seeing a group of people appear, the young man was stunned for a moment and asked in surprise: "Zong Shu? Your child is not in school, so why is he here?"

"And these two are..."

There was obviously no telephone in the village, so Long Zongshu did not greet his cousin in advance.

Long Zongshu quickly introduced them, "They are my classmates. We need to go to the tiankeng for something, and we'd like you, third brother, to lead the way."

After several young men from the village who helped guide the way brought the people there, they smiled and said goodbye.

Ran Qing and the others hurriedly expressed their gratitude.

The dark tile-roofed house had very poor lighting, and the uneven yellow earth ground looked like a bunch of raised steamed buns.

The crooked wooden door was open, and the light from outside came in, illuminating two-thirds of the room.

In the center of the small house stood a stove made of loess.

In the corner of the room, there was another small stove burning wood for heating. But now it was summer, and no one used the stove. The cold ashes gave off a dead smell of dust.

"I'll ask your sister-in-law to come and get you some food. After we eat, we'll go to the Rhino Cave."

Long Zongshu's cousin brought out a small stool from the house and invited the three of them to sit down. After listening to Long Zongshu's explanation of the situation, he immediately went to call his wife back.

He walked to the gate of the yellow earth courtyard and shouted towards the depths of the village: "Xiao Yanmei! Come home quickly! Something's wrong!"

The man's powerful shout echoed among the mountains and traveled far away.

He shouted loudly three times in a long tone, and a woman's response came from the other direction of the village.

"Come on, come on! Call the soul!"

After hearing his wife's response, the man walked into the house with a smile and said to the three people, "Zongshu, you go greet your classmates first. I'll go pick some cabbage sprouts from the field."

Long Zongshu quickly stood up and said, "Third brother, just heat up some soup and rice for us to eat. Don't make it too much trouble."

The man said, "Since you rarely come here and bring your classmates with you, I should at least make some food for you... Please sit down."

After the man finished speaking, he smiled at Ran Qing and the others in a friendly manner and said, "You guys take a seat first. I'll be back soon."

The man was about thirty years old, with tanned skin. It was obvious that he worked in the fields all year round. The smile on his face was simple and friendly.

Soon, Long Zongshu's sister-in-law also came back.

This was a woman with rough skin and a weathered face, but she was smiling and very friendly when she entered the door.

After greeting Ran Qing and the other two, she went into the house, opened the closed stove, let the coal in the stove burn, and then started to boil water and steam rice.

Long Zongshu's cousin came back from the fields, carrying half a bamboo basket full of fresh vegetables.

He even walked into the house, took out a kitchen knife, grabbed a chicken that was wandering around the gate of the yard, and was about to kill the chicken with the knife.

Long Zongshu and Ran Qing hurriedly stopped him and persuaded their cousin again and again before he gave up the idea of ​​killing a chicken.

I simply fried two vegetarian dishes and had a full meal with them.

Ran Qing and the other two set off immediately and left Tianmen Village under the leadership of their cousin Long Zongshu.

"To enter the tiankeng, you can only go in through the rhino cave."

Long Zongshu's third brother said, "The tiankeng is surrounded by cliffs, and there's no way to get down."

"The bottom of the pit is full of trees, like a primeval forest."

"A couple of years ago, a team went in to investigate and said there were plants there that were hundreds of millions of years old." "I was the one who led the way at that time."

Long Zongshu's third brother said, "But after I led them through the Rhino Cave, I stood by the tiankeng waiting for them and didn't go in."

"You guys are also going into the tiankeng to investigate. I suggest you don't go too far after you go in. You must make sure to walk back before dark."

Long Zongshu's third brother said, "That tiankeng is very dark and eerie. As soon as it gets dark, many bats fly in. It's a bat nest."

"There are also many poisonous snakes and strange insects in there. The further you go in, the more dangerous it becomes."

"I heard that in ancient times this tiankeng was an altar, and the ghost sorcerers of the ancient Luo Kingdom would drag living people into it and kill them."

"A few years ago, Liu Laoyao from Sanjia Village went into the mountains to look for cattle. He found himself at the edge of a tiankeng in the dead of night. The moon was bright that night, and he stood on top when he saw some figures dancing inside the pit."

"One of them even raised his head to look at him and said half of his face was just bones with no flesh."

"Youngest Liu was so frightened that he ran away crying for his parents. When he returned to the village, he fell seriously ill and stayed ill for over a month. We invited several wet nurses to perform the Bodhisattva dance, but they couldn't cure him."

Long Zongshu's third brother recounted the horrors of the tiankeng and warned the three young people, "Also, you all have to wear waders and wear warm clothes. There are leeches in there!"

"When walking in the tiankeng, be sure to be careful of leeches jumping on you."

"If a leech jumps onto you, never pull it out with your hands. If you pull, the leech will break off inside your flesh."

"I've got a bag of salt for you. When a leech jumps on you, sprinkle the salt on its butt and it will come out on its own."

"Anyway, the deeper you go, the more dangerous it becomes. You'd better not go too deep."

"The last expedition team went too deep. Two of them were poisoned, and one was addicted to blood. When they were carried out, I saw that all three were almost dead. They were rushed to Yuezhao City for medical treatment, but I don't know if they recovered."

Each of these warnings was explained in great detail.

Some of them were told to Long Zongshu in advance, but there were also some that Long Zongshu didn't even know about.

After the motorcycle stopped at the end of a remote loess road, there was no road ahead.

The four of them started walking the rest of the way.

On the steep mountain road, you can occasionally see pale stones lying in the soil.

This is a typical karst landform. Some mountains are even completely made of huge rocks. There is almost no soil on the mountain, and only some branches growing in the cracks of the cliffs.

The three of them carried heavy bags and followed Long Zongshu's third brother, climbing the rugged road with one step deep and one step shallow.

After climbing for more than half an hour, the three of them were once again exhausted and sweating all over, and they finally arrived at a huge cave entrance.

This place is extremely desolate. There is no village or house nearby, not even a corn field.

There is only a small amount of soil on the barren rocky mountain, and there is no space for farming at all.

Long Zongshu's third brother stood at the entrance of the eerie cave and said, "This is the Rhino Cave. Go through this cave and you'll see the Huaga Tiankeng across the way."

On the steep hillside, a small and narrow cave entrance is hidden among the trees.

In the Qiangke area, such small holes several meters wide are very common.

But the strange and rugged stone walls at the entrance of the cave were piled up and crowded, inexplicably like a monster's fanged mouth, waiting to devour the living people who entered.

Ran Qing stood at the narrow entrance of the cave and felt the eerie chill blowing in from inside.

(End of this chapter)