Bai Ruoxue, feeling uneasy, looked over.
I nodded, "Xiao Jing is right, how would we know if we don't give it a try?"
That's what I said out loud and in my mind, I thought: Exhausting you all.
After selecting a location, Liu Yuanbao, with his feet shoulder-width apart and wearing a pair of gloves, started digging. Sun Tiedan stood by, handing him the pipe.
Together, they dug and lifted, their movements precise and skilled. Compared to the Chen brothers, they were slightly inferior, but given time, they should also excel in this field.
Big Nose, lacking in manners, ran around like a dog, pulling out grass from the ground, making a mess similar to dog feces with clumps of dark yellow soil.
"Tiedan, Yuanbao, I've marked all these places, we need to explore them all."
After squatting on the ground for a while, Big Nose complained, "Oh, it's too slow."
Liu Yuanbao, panting heavily, retorted, "What do you know? This is skilled work, ordinary people couldn't handle it."
Big Nose was unconvinced, "You're just bragging, even a stray dog could do it."
Liu Yuanbao kicked Big Nose to the ground, cursing, "Damn it, watch your mouth."
Big Nose muttered something under his breath, got up, patted the big footprints on his clothes, and also picked up a Luoyang shovel, attempting to work in a practiced manner.
After about an hour, the shovel had gone down more than twenty meters, but the soil brought up showed no change.
In northern regions, the graves of common people were typically about two to three meters underground, those of nobles around five meters, and royal tombs could reach fifteen to twenty meters deep.
Liu Yuanbao took off his coat, changed position, and rolled up his sleeves to continue working.
On the other side, Big Nose was sweating profusely, his movements were chaotic, and his progress was slow.
Walking over to take a look, I almost burst out laughing.
He was using a 12-centimeter Luoyang shovel, also known as an expansion shovel, typically used to expand exploration holes after confirming underground tombs.
Moreover, Big Nose hadn't attached a counterweight rod above the shovel head. Combined with his lack of experience, the shovel tilted as soon as it entered the soil. The Luoyang shovel only went down three or four meters before getting stuck.
"This is ridiculous, something's not right," Big Nose said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
I joked, "It's like a fish out of water, don't act like an expert, thinking you can touch the sky just because you've taken off your pants. This is embarrassing, isn't it?"
"Brother, stop teasing me, help me pull out the shovel first."
We both exerted force, managing to pull the Luoyang shovel out. However, due to excessive force, we both fell backward onto the ground. I didn't know when Bai Ruoxue had walked over, but I ended up lying at her feet, and she looked down at me with a cold expression.
"Du Guangting, you can fool them, but you can't fool me."
Lying on the ground, I observed how tall she was, absolutely model material for Victoria's Secret.
Getting up from the ground and brushing off the dirt from my body, I said, "Just now, I had no choice. Seeing you so anxious, I had to go with the flow."
"Me?"
"You see, you're anxious again. Don't worry, I've already figured out a solution."
"Spit it out."
Ignoring Bai Ruoxue, I used Shi Jingxia's kitchen knife as a shovel and dug up a piece of Cynodon dactylon grass, examining it carefully.
Big Nose asked puzzledly, "Seriously? It's just a piece of Cynodon dactylon grass, why are you treating it like ginseng?"
Shi Jingxia said, "If you don't speak, no one will treat you as a mute."
As everyone knows, Cynodon dactylon grass is different from other grasses because of its rhizomes.
The rhizome of Cynodon dactylon grass is a main root that goes deep into the soil, surrounded by many fibrous roots, resembling fish bones.
What I needed was precisely the rhizome of Cynodon dactylon grass.
Grandpa wrote the following paragraph in "The Mystery of Ten Thousand Tombs":
"All auspicious sites contain a place where wind gathers and energy accumulates, known as the dragon's lair, also called the energy eye.
The dragon's lair is hidden within, its true appearance indiscernible, but it can harness the power of nature. Birds, beasts, flowers, and trees are all influenced, especially the grass roots, which grow towards the lair.
Grandpa meant that all living things around the dragon's lair would be affected by its energy field, with grass roots being the most affected.
After clearing away the soil from the roots of the Cynodon dactylon grass, I indeed found something unusual: the rhizomes were bending northwestward.
I said to Bai Ruoxue, "Tell them to stop digging randomly. Let them dig like I did, every ten meters apart."
Bai Ruoxue immediately complied.
Two hours later, we had dug up nearly a hundred roots of Cynodon dactylon grass from various places, and all the rhizomes were bending northwestward. When placed together, they were neat and uniform, as if deliberately cultivated.
This reminded me of the scene of large sea prawns being packed on the Ji Yu 0825 fishing boat.
I frowned and said, "This is strange."
Big Nose stretched his neck and asked, "What's wrong now?"
Bai Ruoxue pulled Big Nose aside anxiously and asked, "How is it? Did you find it?"
"The dragon's lair isn't here at all, but in the mountains to the northwest."
Upon hearing this, Liu Yuanbao became agitated, pointing at me with a seamless steel pipe, "Du Guangting, you son of a bitch, spouting nonsense like a chimney sweep, I've tolerated you for too long."
I replied, "Watch your language, or I'll knock out all your teeth."
"Come on, let's spar." Liu Yuanbao raised his toes, eager to provoke me.
I didn't want to argue with him further. After all, I had already knocked Liu silly once, so it was understandable that he held a grudge against me.
"Yuanbao, that's enough."
"Miss Bai, this kid is obviously playing us."
Ignoring Liu Yuanbao, Bai Ruoxue looked at me and said, "As long as you're up for it, I'll accompany you to the end and lead the way."
I and Shi Jingxia walked in front, with them following behind.
Shi Jingxia whispered to me, "Guangting, I'm afraid we can't delay much longer. How confident are you?"
I whispered back, "To be honest, I'm not sure. We'll have to take it step by step."
"If things don't work out, let's run away while they're asleep tonight."
As we were whispering, Big Nose, who knows when he sneaked up, startled me with his sudden appearance.
"Bro, those two guys are so despicable, I was about to hit them just now."
"Thanks, brother."
After walking a few hundred meters, suddenly several bats flew past from the sky, like black lightning, extremely fast, and the sound of their wings cutting through the air could even be heard.
Time passed quickly, and it was already four o'clock in the afternoon.
With the sun slanting westward, the weather in Yanmen Mountain was changeable, and mist gradually rose.
As everyone knows, bats fear direct sunlight and usually hide during the day and come out at night. But such large bats were truly surprising.
"These bats here are huge, like eagles," Big Nose said, twisting his neck to look around.
Girls are naturally timid. Shi Jingxia was startled, and even Bai Ruoxue, who was usually ruthless, showed a trace of fear.
Sun Tiedan said, "You city folks are really unfamiliar with the world. When I was a kid, there was a year of poor harvest, and we even ate bats."
Upon hearing this, I couldn't help but shudder.
Big Nose has been living and working in the city for years, enduring hardships, and he gritted his teeth and said, "Tiedan, I'm not a city dweller. The city isn't ours; it's those damn city folks."