We headed back to the intersection, and took the path straight ahead of us which had a medium wind flow according to Jessica's inspection earlier. Unlike the first path that we had taken, the one we were walking at seemed to go to a lower level instead of higher. However, it was also worth mentioning that the path was significantly wider than the first one. I believe it was close to twice wider, and that the distance between the ground and the ceiling was perhaps somewhere around seven feet.
I also had a brief thought that if we had some sort of a rope we might be able to climb out of the cave through the crevice right above the gravestones earlier, although I was not sure if the gap was wide enough for each of us to get out in the first place. Since Jessica had a pickaxe with her, I was thinking of binding one of the rope end to its handle, before I could swing it to the crevice above and hoping the pickaxe to get stuck hard somewhere outside.
Therefore, we would be able to finally get out from the cave that way. Nevertheless, I realized that there was no use in imagining impossible things at our current situation and thus I focused my mind back on the road ahead of us. When I looked at my watch, I realized that we had been walking for nearly ten minutes from the intersection.
"It seems that this path is deeper than the previous one." I said to both of them, hoping that I could break the deep silence between us. "If I am not mistaken, it took us roughly ten minutes from the intersection before Jessica began to suspect that there was a faint light source."
"Hmm? Oh… yeah, I guess you are right…" Jessica responded from behind me, seemed to be not really listening to my words.
I waited for several more seconds, hoping that either she or Billy would add another words of their own, but we eventually went back to the deep silence that had surrounded us since we began to walk on the second path. In the end, I just fell silent and concentrate keeping an eye on the ground while I also lit our dark way ahead of us.
"Dua belas simbol…" Jessica mumbled to herself, mentioning the twelve symbols.
I assumed that she referred to the nine symbols that they found on the gravestones, and the other 3 carvings on the surrounding walls, which will give the total of twelve. Apparently she was completely absorbed in her attempts to try and figure out the possible meanings for the symbols that she did not really hear what had said earlier. As for Billy, he seemed to be also deep in his thought about something although I was also quite sure that he was thinking about a completely different matter.
Just then, my flashlight seemed to come across a dead end. However, as I take a closer look, the path ahead of us was actually separated by an elevation with the height of around four feet, meaning that we definitely had to climb it one by one, but not to the point that we needed someone from the lower ground to give a boost, at least not for me and Billy. As it turned out, Billy suggested that he sould climb it first, followed by Jessica, and lastly me.
"Want me to go first?" Billy said as he approached the elevated ground.
I responded by nodding, and since Jessica did not give out any respond, we assumed that she did not mind at all. When Billy had successfully climbed to the higher ground, he gave his hand to Jessica, only to be ignored by her as she still has her stunned but serious expression on her face. It was also exactly at that moment when I realized that she could be too absorbed on her work that she could technically dismiss her surroundings.
"Jess, ayo giliran elu." Billy said, as he was still lending his hand towards her while I watched the whole situation with deep awkwardness inside me.
Jessica was still stunned, not moving her eyes.
"Oi, Jess!" Billy said again, with an irritated, louder, and upset tone in his voice.
"Hah? Oh iya, iya." She responded to him, finally snapping out from her stoned condition.
I could hear Billy sighed with an exhaustive tone as I climbed to the higher ground and began to lead us through the dark path again. As we continued along the way, I heard Billy complained on her ignorance to her surroundings.
"Kumat lagi bengongnya elu." Billy said to her, expressing his irritation towards her relapsing bad habit in ignoring her surroundings.
"Sori, sori. Gue ga bisa berhenti kepikiran soalnya." Jessica responded to him, apologizing since she could not stop thinking about the twelve symbols.
"Memangnya ada hubungannya sama artefak yang kemarin?" Billy replied by asking, curious if there could be some sort of connection to the artifact that was found the day before.
"Gue belum bisa tau pasti, sih. Tapi, sekilas teknik pengukirannya ada kemiripan." Jessica answered to him, explaining that she was thinking about a brief similarity regarding the carving techniques on both the artifact and the symbols on the gravestones and the walls, although she was still not sure.
To be honest, I was also curious to know more about the things that she still doubted, but then again it came to my mind that my question could end up making her too absorbed in her own thoughts again, which was definitely something that both Billy and I did not want. Thus, I kept the question to myself for that moment. We continued to walk for about six more minutes before I began to hear a rushing water sound.
"Wait. Did you hear that?" I asked to both of them as I stopped walking.
"I am still hearing it, actually. Could it be coming from an underground river or something?" Billy responded to me.
"Wait." Jessica said. "If there is an underground river, then we can track where the exit may be by following the river."
"Then, we may as well look for the exit as we are trying to find other ancient relicts here." I responded to her, and concluding on what we should do next.
It took us some while, but not for really long before the sound was getting louder as we continued alongside the dark path. At first, I thought that the sound was getting louder due to the echoing effect of the cave since the path widened and heightened up again. However, it turned out that the sound was indeed coming from an underwater river, which slowly emerged from the darkness as I kept my flashlight on lighting the dark path.
It was a rather narrow, but fast moving river before our eyes. The width was probably only about five feet, and I could not determine its depth even by a rough estimation since the light source was only my flashlight. I also did not find any fish or other aquatic animals inside the river even though the water was clean, or at least that was what I saw based on the lighting. We then reverse followed the river current, in order to make sure if it would lead us to the cave exit.
Perhaps it had already been around ten minutes of following the river current, before we began to see a small light dot again, which was more vivid compared to the first one on the previous path. We fastened our pace towards the light dot that kept on getting bigger little by little, and still following the river only to realize in the end that it was coming from the mouth of a waterfall from the river outside.
"Ergh, serius nih?" Billy griped, as he bent his body a little.
I also sighed hard in disappointment upon the realization that we had met another dead end. In a brief moment I even thought if we were actually trapped inside a cave with no exit, and the exhaustion that began to conquer my body just made my spirit to decline. I noticed that Jessica also showed a sign of fatigue from her facial expression, and although it was completely made sense I had somehow thought that she would be able to perhaps hide it behind her enthusiasm in cave exploration activities.
"What are you lighting at?" Jessica asked to me.
"Wha- oh… nothing, I was just aiming it away from the both of you and the mouth of the waterfall." I responded to her, as my left hand was still holding the flashlight towards one end of the wall.
"No, no. Please keep on lighting it." Jessica replied to me, seemingly had her attention locked towards that direction.
I did exactly what she said, and shortly noticed that the wall seemed to be actually some sort of piles of large boulders, stuck with each other from the ground to the ceiling. Jessica then took out her lighter again, and told me to turn off my flashlight for a while.
She proceeded to do the same thing when she was trying to find out which path we should take by how hard the wind blew when she blocked one side of the lighter with her hand, and shortly found out that the wind flow of the second path was indeed coming from the small gaps between the stuck boulders.
"Well, perhaps if we were stuck in this cave thousands of years ago we would have found the exit right here in front of us…" Jessica said, clearly with an upset tone in her voice.
I quickly turned on my flashlight again as she turned off her lighter and put it inside her backpack. In an instant, all three of us were at lost for words and not sure of what to do next except for turning back to the intersection and try the last path, which had the least possibility to be the exit from the cave. It was completely clear that at that moment, no one was still optimistic about our attempt to get out from the cave.
Jessica then sighed hard and took a step back, probably to bend over for a while, before suddenly a loud crack was heard very clearly from the direction of her left shoe. Both Billy and I instantly turned to her, who then did not move away even a single step from where she was as I slowly aimed my flashlight to her shoe.
It was a tiny, but a clear white-milk colored thing that was slightly buried, being stepped on Jessica's left shoe. She then very carefully lifted her left foot from the buried thing and proceeded to move towards my direction. It did not take long for me to guess that it could belong to a prehistoric human remain.
"Human skeleton remains?" I asked Jessica, still aiming my flashlight towards the buried thing.
"Most likely." She responded to me, and with a determined tone.
She then asked me to keep lighting at the thing as she prepared to carefully attempt to dig out more using her pickaxe. At first, I had a little worry that it could damage whatever the thing that was buried there, but then I also realized that she was most probably would only plow it softly. It only took roughly three minutes before the very thing that was buried was finally revealed completely. As we had guessed earlier, it was indeed a human remain, already completely skeletonized.
The first thing that I noticed was that the skeleton seemed to be in a complete form, and if there was indeed nothing missing then it most likely belonged to an adult based on the teeth condition. I also had a rough guess that when it was still alive, it probably had the height of around five feet one inch. However, I could not guess even at the slightest on the possibility regarding its weight.
At first I thought that Jessica had finished digging with her pickaxe, but it turned out that she was just pausing for a little moment before she proceeded to plow through the ground softly again on the direction of the skeleton's right hand. I asked her why she was still digging, to which she answered that she wanted to know if there was something near its right hand, since she felt like the right hand's fingertips was not uncovered yet.
To be honest, I had my doubts on her words, but that was until it was revealed that there was actually something there in the shape of a trapezium and similar to the first artifact that she had found. She carefully continued to dig the thing out, to an extent where she left her pickaxe on the ground and proceeded to dig using her own hands.
In a brief moment, I turned to Billy, to see if he was also surprised by her actions. However it seemed like it was a normal sight for him, since he was also focused at the thing that she was trying to dig out instead of her action. It felt like it took her forever before she could finally take out the thing from the ground, and as I had expected, it was indeed another artifact. I quickly approached her as I was also curious to see what could be shown on that stone relict.
It showed us a figure of what seemed to be some sort of a large gate or an entrance to something on the top left of the drawing, and also six figures of six stickmen with the appearances similar to what was drawn on the first artifact lining in pairs in the middle of the drawing. There was also a rectangular object right in the middle of all of the stickmen. When I looked at it closer, I noticed that unlike the drawing of the stickmen and the gate, the object seemed to be drawn more precisely, as if it was the focus of the object on that drawing.
Jessica then turned the artifact over, and just like the first one there was nothing drawn on the other side of the drawing. I was about to ask her if she wanted to compare its size with the previous one when she suddenly crouched down and took out the first artifact from her backpack, before proceeding to line them up on both of her hands. As I looked at both of the ancient relicts, it became clear to me that there was a good possibility that they were both made by the same prehistoric community.
"Similar size…" I muttered to myself, as I still had my attention locked towards both of the stone relicts.
"And… a similar carving technique…" Jessica responded, with a confident tone in her voice.
Shortly after, she put both of the artifacts inside her backpack, and told us that she believed had collected enough evidences inside the cave, unless if we revealed or encountered more along our way to get out from the cave. She also told Billy that we were already finished there and that we must go back to the intersection when he responded that there was still something left there.
"Bill, ayo." Jessica said to him, who was standing on the other side of the wall and close to the river and told him that we had to move on.
"Belum. Elu harus lihat ini." Billy responded, telling her that she must see what he had found on the wall.
At first, I could not see anything when I was still quite far from the wall in front of him. However as I was getting closer, I could begin to see three familiar figures carved horizontally and neatly on the wall right in front of him. When I was just beside him, it became clear to me that those figures were none other than the very same carvings that I had seen on the surrounding walls of the gravestones earlier.
"Hey, these are-" I said to him, before Jessica cut off my words.
"The same symbols." Jessica responded, as she quickly took out her memo and pencil again from her backpack.
When she was done, she put them back inside her backpack again, and we began to head back to the intersection, with Billy leading the way that time. Although both Billy and I began to feel more exhausted, it seemed that Jessica had gained her spirits again after she had uncovered another evidence of an ancient life. In order to distract my mind from further exhaustion, I decided to ask Jessica if she had any hypothesis on the prehistoric relicts that we had found up until that point.
She began by mentioning the three symbols that were carved on the wall, explaining that she hypothesized it had belonged to either three different clans during their time, or three different functions in their respective contributions on their community. She further broke down on the possibility of the description.
By clan, she meant that the community that had made up the ancient burial ground might originally formed when three different tribes decided to join forces either in order to increase their chances of survival, or because they had the same believes. By same believes, she meant a same 'God' that they worshipped and decided to team up in order to make their spiritual processions easier and more organized.
By function, she meant that the community had different roles in their daily lives. She hypothesized that there might be some who were focusing on managing their communities, others who were more inclined to farming or infrastructures, and the rest who recorded the astronomical conditions from time to time.
If the latter was the case, then she also had another hypothesis regarding which symbols belonged to which group. The first group that she was most confident on was the community manager group which would most likely symbolized by the ten-line star. She explained that the center of the star might represent each individual's responsibility for managing the community, and that the ten lines possibly represented the large numbers of people that they had to lead.
The second symbol that she could hypothesize next was the six revolving holes. She said that it might be belonged to the astronomers, with the symbols representing the inconsistencies and their uncertainties towards the astronomical conditions. She also told us that by astronomical condition, she meant that it might include the recording of the sun���s position, moon's position, and could also possibly the reappearances of few certain stars.
As for the third symbol, which looked like a rotated 'K' alphabet with a line dashing through its center she admitted that she still had yet to be sure if it could belong to the farmers and construction workers since if that was the case then the center point of the symbol should have been drawn as a hole instead of just a carving, representing their dependence on the astronomers.
When she had finished explaining the possible meanings of the symbol, she proceeded to tell us about her hypothesis on the meaning of the second artifact. She first began by asking me if I already had a guess on what the drawing might represent. I answered by saying that it could mean some sort of a burial process since it appeared to be focusing on the rectangular object in the center of the drawing, leading me to assume that it was probably a form of a coffin.
She responded by saying that I had guessed most of the meaning of the drawing correctly, except that I did not state where it had taken place, which was also the very thing that she still had no idea on. I first asked if it could be where the large boulders had caved in and stuck on the end of the second path earlier, to which she said that she highly doubted it since we would have found some sort of a trace of a megalithic structure there if that was the case.
She was not even sure if the dead bodies inside the gravestones received the same procession as what was drawn on the second artifact since the large gate was almost certainly someplace else other than the cave. In the end, she only stated that another artifact would be necessary in order to further hypothesize on the connections between all of the findings and relicts that we had found so far.
That being said, shortly after Jessica had finished explaining everything, we came across another elevation. It was taller than the one before, since it had a height of roughly about six feet and five inches, meaning that each of us would definitely need someone to either help climb up from above, or to give a boost from the lower ground.
The first one to climb up was Billy. I gave him a boost, and he could climb it up easily. Jessica followed, assisted by both my boost and Billy's help from the higher ground. I proceeded by first taking a few steps back and jumped as high as I could, grabbing the edge of the elevated ground before Billy pulled my arm and helped me to get up. When I had finally reached the higher ground, I suddenly saw a considerably large and bright light dot for a brief moment.
"That is our exit." Billy said to both me and Jessica with a relieved tone. "Apparently the small wind blow was because the exit to the cave was so further away compared to the other two paths earlier."
"Well, thank goodness." I responded to him, as I quickly headed to the cave exit with a faster pace.
I could not describe the feeling of relieve inside me as I stepped outside from the cave. The sound of tree branch rustlings, the cold mountainous wind, and the sound of a stepped grass put a lot of ease to my mind. We were finally freed from the pitch dark maze that had kept us for quite some time…