My commotion also alarmed the others ahead. As I fell, Qingyi's eyes flashed with a cold gleam, and with a loud shout, she leaped towards me, rushing into the corridor leading to the right ear chamber.
"How are you?" Rosa came over to help me up and asked in a deep voice, "Are you alright?"
I shook my head, calmed the agitated Heizi a bit, and then looked up to ask, "Did you see what was behind me just now?"
"I didn't see it clearly, just a dark shadow. After Heizi barked, that thing came up and pushed you, and by the time we reacted, it had already run off... We only saw the moment it pushed you."
Rosa sighed and hesitated for a moment before gritting her teeth and saying, "However, it seemed that the thing that pushed you was wearing ancient soldier's attire, and... it left a black handprint on your back!"
Rosa's words made my heart skip a beat.
Someone in ancient military uniform?
Could it be one of the soldiers buried with Gao Xianzhi?
I felt a chill inside. Although I knew my weak yang energy meant I wouldn't fare well after entering the tomb, being targeted so soon was something I was... not quite used to!
At this time, Qingyi returned. I quickly asked if he had found anything. Qingyi shook his head and after a moment of silence said, "We must not enter the right ear chamber under any circumstances. That thing just now hid in the right ear chamber. It seems that Gao Xianzhi's tomb is indeed unclean. Our previous speculation is most likely correct; soldiers were indeed buried with Gao Xianzhi. The yin energy in that right ear chamber is extremely heavy, and there are probably no small number of soldiers buried there. These ancient soldiers fought year-round, killing countless people. After death, they probably became very fierce dirty things. If there are a large number of them, they really aren't easy to deal with, so we should suppress the evil energy of this tomb and leave. Staying longer is of no benefit!"
Qingyi was the most formidable among us. If he looked so grave, the thing that pushed me must have been extremely dangerous!!
However, at that moment, my thoughts were still on the mysterious woman I had met outside the ancient temple. Could she also be in this ancient tomb? Since she knew how dangerous this tomb was, why did she insist on me entering it?
My mind was a mess, filled with all sorts of inexplicable thoughts. It wasn't until Zhou Jing, who was walking ahead of me, pushed me several times that I came back to my senses. It turned out that Qingyi and the others had already set off.
The corridor was actually not short, stretching a thousand meters from end to end. You should know that this corridor was just a passage connecting the main tomb chamber with various ear chambers and side chambers. Given the length of the corridor in this tomb, it could be estimated that the tomb was not small in scale and definitely comparable to the tombs of some princes and nobles. According to historical records, after Gao Xianzhi was wrongly killed, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang did not vindicate him. Naturally, the official family would not build any noble mausoleums for him. I guessed that the tomb we were in was probably built by Gao Xianzhi's family or subordinates. After all, Gao Xianzhi was made the Duke of Miyun at the age of 20, with hereditary succession. The scale of his followers and family cultivated throughout his life was definitely not small. Secretly building such a mausoleum for him was not a problem.
Walking along this path, we did not encounter any traps, which puzzled us. After all, ancient tombs with a dragon-fire glazed ceiling structure in the corridors are guaranteed to have traps, as the ceiling prevents tomb robbers from entering the main tomb chamber through the top. The corridor is their only path to the main chamber, and it would be strange not to have any anti-theft mechanisms. The fact that we found no traps in the corridors of this tomb was somewhat illogical.
To solve the mystery, Fatty later simply smashed open a piece of the corridor's stone wall with a crowbar. This action gave us quite a shock!
It turned out that the stone walls on both sides of the corridor were filled with crossbows!!
However, the strings of these crossbows had already corroded and broken.
After seeing this, we finally understood that it wasn't that the tomb had no traps, but rather that the main mechanisms were crossbow arrows, which had long since become ineffective. After all, the strings of ancient bows and arrows were mostly made of animal tendons, which could not withstand the wear and tear of time.
After discovering this, Fatty was not reassured but became even more cautious. Not only him, but we all became more alert because there were traps here. Although most of them were ineffective, what if one of them worked? Just like fireworks, most of them are fine to play with, but if one goes wrong, it sends you to the hospital!!
This was a matter of life and death; how could we not be careful? We only have one life, and no one wants to die and drink Meng Po's soup in the underworld. Although life has been tough, isn't it better to cling to life than to die?
Because of this, we became even more cautious as we walked through the corridor. We dawdled for a long time along the thousand-meter corridor, and by the time we reached the main tomb chamber, it was already three o'clock in the morning. I couldn't help feeling a bit uneasy and asked, "Is it okay to enter the main tomb chamber at this witching hour?"
"What's wrong with that? The old saying goes, if you're afraid of ghosts, don't go down to the tomb; if you go down to the tomb, don't be afraid of ghosts!"
Wu Fatty gave me a sidelong glance and muttered, "I really don't know if you're really from the Ge family..."
After saying that, he started knocking and tapping on the tomb door of the main chamber with his crowbar.
The tomb door of Gao Xianzhi's main chamber was not particularly unique; it was just a simple stone gate that reached the ground, without any special techniques. Unlike many imperial tombs, where just the tomb door of the main chamber contained countless mysterious techniques, sometimes not even a bomb could blast it open. Take Qianling for example, when the warlord Sun Dianying looted the Eastern Tombs, he planned to rob Qianling next. He used bombs to blast the tomb door, but instead of opening the door, he ended up killing several of his own soldiers, scaring Sun Dianying into running away, thinking that Empress Wu Zetian in Qianling had lost her temper. In fact, it was the mysterious techniques on the tomb door, not some malevolent spirits causing trouble.
Opening the stone gate in Gao Xianzhi's tomb like this one was not difficult; just push it up with external force!
Wu Fatty was an expert in this area; how could he not know the ins and outs? He immediately inserted the crowbar into the gap where the stone gate met the ground, picked up a stone left over from the construction of the tomb from the corridor, and quickly lifted the gate nearly twenty centimeters. After Rosa inserted two "jack stands" on both sides of the gate, Fatty withdrew the crowbar, grinned, and said, "This tomb construction is really subpar. The corridor traps don't work, and the tomb door is so simple. It's practically welcoming us in. Lucky for today, it's me, Fatty, who's here. According to the rules of our tomb raiding code, we don't mess with the tombs of loyal and good generals. If it were someone else, they would strip everything clean!"
By this time, Rosa had already cranked up the jack stands, lifting the tomb door nearly fifty centimeters. The woman was quite decisive. After tossing her backpack through the gap, she lay down and crawled into the main chamber.
Following Rosa's actions, the others followed suit and crawled in one after another. Except for Fatty, who struggled a bit to squeeze in, the rest entered smoothly. In the blink of an eye, only Heizi and I were left outside. Seeing the situation, I couldn't care less about the late hour and hurriedly led Heizi in.
The main chamber was not small, covering more than two hundred square meters. It was empty except for two coffins in the center, one large and one small, which seemed to belong to Gao Xianzhi and his principal wife, as couples were usually buried together.
When I entered, Fatty, Rosa, Zhang Jinya, and Zhou Jing were all staring at the largest coffin with grim expressions. Qingyi was holding something like a compass, walking back and forth in the main chamber, seemingly searching for something.
I patted Fatty on the shoulder and asked, "Fatty, what's going on?"
"Bronze... coffin..."
Fatty shivered as he spoke a few words, then gave me a smile uglier than crying, pointing at the largest coffin, "Take a look at the material of this coffin!"
Curious, I walked closer to examine the bronze coffin. This glance piqued my interest—the coffin had a metallic luster, and because of severe oxidation, it was covered with green rust, clearly made of bronze!
A coffin is a layer of outer coffin placed around the inner coffin. When ancient people were buried, if the conditions were good, they generally used two layers of coffins. The inner coffin was used to hold the body, and the outer coffin surrounded it, with burial goods, mostly precious gold, silver, and jewels, placed around it. The less valuable items were kept in the side chambers!
I had heard of and seen wooden coffins, but this was my first time seeing a bronze coffin. I carefully examined the bronze coffin, but before long, I suddenly remembered a passage from "Fa Qiu Secret Techniques," which mentioned something about bronze coffins. I was stunned for a moment!
Bronze coffins!!!
These things are not auspicious!!!
Generally, bronze coffins are only used to suppress the burial when the tomb owner has turned into a zombie!!
Which means...
My eyes widened, and I couldn't help but take a sharp breath—damn, how could my luck be so extreme? My first time in a tomb and I encounter a big zongzi?
"Do you understand the severity now?"
Fatty asked me with a wry smile, then looked towards Qingyi and asked, "Qingyi, have you found the evil energy spot in this tomb? Once you find it, let's suppress the evil energy and get out of here. Damn it, Gao Xianzhi has turned into a zombie!"
At this time, Qingyi also stopped walking, looked down at the compass in his hand, then looked at us somewhat strangely. After hesitating for a moment, he pointed towards the bronze coffin and slowly said, "I found the evil energy spot. It's inside... this coffin!"