Ancient tomb excavation traces

(This is 200,000 words. Please give me a reward, recommend it, and add it to your favorites.)

In fact, there are only two kinds of patterns on the ground: one resembles mountains and rivers, and the other is the fat face of this ugly monster. Bronze castings usually feature patterns like the Taotie or the Thunder Eye, but I've never seen these two before, so they're a new discovery.

Seeing that I was looking at it so intently, Chen Yi said, "Liuzi, don't worry about what it is. Our goal is to get into the main coffin chamber. Look at this, we can't conjure up a passage."

I smiled and said, "These patterns might just be the key to unlocking the answer, just like the giant carvings we saw outside the waterfall—weren't they the ones that helped us determine Princess Chu's identity?"

"So, did you see anything?" Chen Yi leaned closer. I shook my head and said, "If even someone as discerning as you can't see it, what could I possibly see? But I think there must be a reason why Sima Yan used it as a pattern."

I looked up at the young Taoist priest. The two manipulated stone figures were now completely destroyed, and the experiment had already begun on the eighth day of the lunar month.

He stood by the mechanism and carefully stepped down (this was the experience of tomb raiders; even if the stone figures were damaged, they would still act cautiously).

The first attempt yielded no results. On the eighth day, they tried again, but the outcome was the same. The third time, he stepped down with normal force, and suddenly, I heard a rustling sound from the bronze wall. We looked up at the small hole above, only to see the broken thread twitching. It wasn't a mechanical movement, but a painful twitching.

Chen Yi and I were shocked and stood up blankly. A lifeless thread shouldn't have such a reaction. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

With no other dangers present, Chu Ba stomped his foot hard this time. After he exerted force, the red threads began to dance wildly and demonically. To put it more vividly, it was exactly like a person who had suffered a mental breakdown and suddenly went mad.

This was just a small tuft of red thread, yet it seemed to contain immense power. No wonder it was able to pull the stone terracotta warrior's hand and attack people earlier.

However, that wasn't all that puzzled us. Chu Ba said, "Strange, when I step down hard, it feels like the bottom is soft..."

This is the Bronze Chamber. If you go down, you'll at most touch the cave's stone layer; there shouldn't be anything soft here. Unable to contain his curiosity, Chen Tai stepped onto the mechanism Bao Cai had just stepped on. He was stronger than Chu Ba, and when he stepped on it with normal force, he immediately felt something was wrong.

"I really have that feeling..." he said with a surprised look, "Could there be something buried down there?"

His words sent a chill down my spine. As the saying goes, "Being down-to-earth is the foundation of being a good person." I always feel insecure when I'm on a plane, and now, in this west cabin, I feel the same lightness in my feet.

We gathered together and began speculating about what the soft thing below was. But the more we speculated, the more exaggerated it became, and there was basically no accurate answer.

Chen Yi was impatient, especially when things were going nowhere. He said, "Let's just pry open this mechanism. We'll find out if there's a demon or a monster underneath once we open it."

I shook my head and said, "No, there's no way to pry open a hole. Even if there were, none of the tools we have are usable."

Chu Ba said, "Usually, if there's a mechanism, there's a hidden layer. This part is soft, so why don't we keep stepping down? Maybe we can get through."

This depends on the thickness of the soft material underneath. If you can actually step on it, that would be a bit strange, since who would put something soft under a grave?

However, there's no other way for the time being. Chen Yi and I have knife and arrow wounds, so we're not suited to exert force. Right now, we're relying entirely on Chu Ba and the young Taoist priest. They've practiced martial arts for many years and are incredibly strong. When they stomp their feet down, they're using a lot of internal energy.

The square pattern sank rapidly with a clattering sound. Surprisingly, as the mechanism sank, a reddish-black liquid seeped from the gaps. The liquid, with its foul odor, shot upwards, and we covered our mouths and noses. The young Taoist priest and Chu Ba's feet were already covered in the liquid. They exchanged a glance and continued downwards, the sound like something crushing flesh filling the air.

Upon hearing the sound, the young Taoist priest and Chu Ba frowned slightly, nodded to each other, and then stepped back. Strangely, the mechanism didn't push upwards again, but remained in its previous position.

Upon seeing this, I instantly realized that the soft material below was very thick, and the young Taoist priests might have embedded the mechanism inside it, which is why they couldn't get up after pressing the mechanism.

The young Taoist priest and Chu Ba crouched down, and Lan Quexi brought a torch to shine down. They could only see blood seeping upwards from the three-dimensional square gaps. However, because they were descending to the very bottom of the interlayer, there was no opening to completely deactivate the mechanism, so they still couldn't see anything else in the interlayer. Judging from the reddish-black blood, the soft substance inside might also be some kind of living being.

The familiar stench made me think of something, and I speculated, "Could there be a burial pit beneath the mechanism, filled with corpses? That's why it's so soft and smelly?"

Before anyone else could speak, a dull thud was heard, and the entire space shook without warning. We stumbled, and Bao Cai stammered, "This...this is...an earthquake?"

It was a chilling feeling...

The young Taoist priest coldly replied, "No, it's the strange creature below causing the trouble."

A strange object? Could it be a human corpse? I noticed the young Taoist priest's furrowed brows and knew that what was below was unusual. Moreover, I noticed that the jade pendant inside his clothes was starting to turn faintly red. My heart skipped a beat, and I wondered: Could it be that the jade pendant sensed the aura of a vengeful spirit?

Before I could ask the young Taoist priest, I heard the sound of gears turning again. This time the sound was louder, unlike the gears in a small mechanism.

I was incredibly nervous, looking around and thinking to myself: What... what's going on? Just as I was thinking this, one of my feet slipped... because of the sudden tremor, I hadn't been paying attention to where I was stepping, and now, damn it! The mechanism that Bao Cai and the others had been standing on had suddenly expanded to the side, gradually forming the shape of a rectangular coffin. While everyone else stepped back, I was still standing there dumbfounded.

Faced with this situation, I was on the verge of tears. My body swayed unsteadily, leaning forward and backward. I wanted to stop and back away, but unfortunately, my balance was too poor, and I was also nervous. So, after a short while, my body still tilted down toward the coffin-shaped pit.

In a flash, the young Taoist priest grabbed me, and I saw something red wriggling below. It looked like an enormous tongue, covered in a slippery liquid that reflected the torchlight.

As it churned, I saw a claw, like a human's. The claw was curved, and the flesh was gone, leaving only a layer of sticky mucus, like freshly dripped wax—utterly disgusting.

The young Taoist priest and I fell to the ground due to inertia. I was quite frightened, my chest heaving violently. I turned my head to tell him what I had just seen, but I saw him staring ahead in astonishment, clearly having also seen what that thing looked like.

In an instant, everyone was thrown into a panic by the sudden turn of events. Chen Yi, though fat, was a nimble fat man. He dodged the traps that were expanding outwards, but unfortunately, due to his injury, this hot-blooded hero collapsed to the ground, panting heavily. He cursed, "Damn it, these traps can move on their own! What kind of design is this? It's like a space-age Transformer!"

On the eighth day of the lunar new year, I helped him up after he fell to the ground. Just as we were in complete chaos, the entire space returned to extreme silence. My whole body stiffened, and my heartbeat stopped. It was like the calm before a storm, a silence that was oppressive, making it hard to breathe.

"Did you...did you see what was inside just now?" I sat back on the ground, the scene I had just witnessed was too terrifying to bear.

"What's inside?" Chen asked me.

I took a breath and described what I had just seen.

Chen Yi said, "You didn't see some giant snake that looks like an anaconda, did you?"

I shook my head and said, "No, that thing is more than ten times thicker than a anaconda!"

"Holy crap! You're describing something like the tongue of a tree spirit in a movie. Did you get scared and misread it?" Chen Yi clearly couldn't believe my description. To be honest, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes just now, I wouldn't have believed that such a creature existed in the world.

At this moment, the young Taoist priest next to me said with a solemn expression, "We're in big trouble this time."

There are very few things that the young Taoist priest would describe as "big trouble," so I asked him nervously what he meant.

He said, "There are indeed corpses below, but they were not used for funerary sacrifice..."

"Then...what is that for?" Bao Cai sensed something was wrong and shrank back.

At this point, Chu Ba's expression was also very unpleasant. To be honest, my impression of him had always been that of a bold yet meticulous person who took everything in stride. But his expression at this moment was something I had never seen before. It was an expression of immense tension, because his forehead was covered in cold sweat, clearly indicating that he also knew what was below.

"What exactly is going on?" Bao Cai sensed that something was wrong and pressed for an answer.

The young Taoist priest's eyes were sharp as he looked at him and said, "Stay away from that mouth."

Before Bao Cai could absorb his words, the bronze interlayer below was violently struck again, the sound remarkably like a fish tail striking a blacksmith.

We staggered back a little, our eyes fixed on the rectangular pit below, as if something extraordinary might crawl out if we looked any further.

The young Taoist priest took out the jade pendant hanging around his neck. The jade pendant vibrated continuously, indicating that the evil energy beneath it was so strong that even this Taoist magic weapon could not withstand it.

He stretched out his hands, blocking us behind him, took a step back, and said urgently, "The red thread has been connected to the stone figure all along, which means it is not dead at all. The reason it was quiet just now is probably because it was hungry and had been sleeping."

"Sleeping?" Bao Cai and I exclaimed in unison. Suddenly, something dawned on us: if the red thread were truly dead, it would have shriveled up, so how could it still be wearing the terracotta warrior? Moreover, when Chu Ba stepped on the mechanism earlier, the red thread seemed to sense it, which is why it struggled. We had undoubtedly woken up that sleeping thing.

I sighed inwardly, thinking that before coming to ancient times, I had participated in a blood donation drive. Now that I'm here, I've lost a lot of blood and need to replenish it. In this situation, I have to donate all my blood!

Just as he was feeling down, the young Taoist priest revealed an even more unacceptable fact: "The corpses below weren't meant for burial. If there were rotting bones in such a location, it would definitely disrupt the feng shui of this place, creating a rotten grave!"

Upon hearing this, Chen Yi hurriedly asked, "Then what's this pit used for?"

"Feed the things inside the interlayer!" the young Taoist priest said in a deep voice.

Upon hearing this, I got goosebumps all over. Feeding them with humans? Was it just to set up such a trap?

In an instant, I seemed to understand why the young Taoist priest was still uneasy when Chen Yi pointed out that the true form of the silk was dead. It turned out that he had known all along that the true form was still alive, but he had kept it to himself, considering our emotional capacity. Now that things had happened, he had no choice but to tell the truth.

"Oh my god!" I cried out inwardly. What on earth was that thing down there? Could it really be some kind of terrifying monster?