The more Chenpi A Si thought about it, the more frightened he became. However, this man was already nearly fifty-six at that time, and his experience and courage were naturally beyond my reach. After being frightened, he must have been distracted. He thought to himself, "What the hell are you looking at?" In a flash, he took out a few iron marbles, used his feet to steady his body, and threw two bullets directly at the white-faced Arhat statue.
As mentioned before, Chenpi Ah Si's philosophy of life is to strike first. My grandfather told me this more than once. It can be said that for those who travel around the world, this principle is the simplest but very practical. The two iron bullets did not hold back, and two muffled sounds were heard, hitting the eyes of the white-faced arhat statue, and the two eye sockets of the arhat statue were completely cracked. The iron bullets flew out and fell into the bottom of the Jing'er Palace.
If it was a human, he would have been blinded, which shows how vicious this move was. Although the Arhat statue was made of clay, it could not withstand such a blow. In this instant, two deep pits appeared where the Arhat's eyes were, which looked very empty and weird, but it was much better than before.
Chenpi Ah Si let out a sigh of relief and sneered in his heart, thinking that these stinky monks, what are they doing with the four emptiness, aren't they still using these tricks to scare people? Thinking of this, he took out a gecko claw from his arms, hooked one end on the curved wooden roof above, and tied the other end to his ankle with a single strand of walrus leather rope. He loosened it and the elastic walrus leather rope stretched downward. The use of walrus leather rope is a conclusion drawn by Chenpi Ah Si from his many years of experience in tomb robbing. The strength of this thing is second only to steel rope, but it can be stretched. In addition, Chenpi Ah Si is short and thin, and it is wrapped around his waist closely. It is only a dozen circles, and it is not visible at all when he puts on clothes. It can be used to deal with depths of about ten meters.
However, this "Mirror Palace" is only more than ten meters deep. Chenpi A Si let out the rope to the limit, but it was still a long distance from the bottom of the palace.
But from here, you can already see the outline of something below. The base of the palace seems to be made of white marble, and there are many unknown fragments on it due to earthquakes and natural peeling over the years. In the center of the palace stands a pocket-sized white pagoda that is not sure whether it is jade or ivory, covered with a translucent "treasure tent" of twisted yarn, so it looks white.
Chenpi A Si knew little about pagodas in his life, which was also related to the illiteracy of the generation before liberation. There is an old saying among the local scholars in Changsha: A marquis is not as good as a pagoda. That is to say, the things in the pagoda underground palace are often more luxurious than those in the tombs of marquises. Although Chenpi A Si has heard this, he did not understand it deeply. If it were me, I would have known what was underneath at that time.
Under the pocket pagoda, there should be an eight-layer treasure box for the Buddha's bones and relics, that is, eight boxes inside one another. This thing is used exclusively by Buddhists, and with the relics inside, it is the three thousand worlds and the six realms of reincarnation. Regardless of whether it is real Buddha bones or jade bones, the eight-layer treasure box alone, my God, is something that cannot be calculated at all.
I felt a little confused when I heard this. If Chenpi Ah Si really stole the Eight-Layer Treasure Box from the underground palace, how could these things appear in the newspaper? Could it be that he was so close to the treasure at that time, but gave up for some reason? With this kind of character, it is really unlikely.
Lao Hai didn't notice that I was distracted and continued to talk. But his narration was too long-winded and I couldn't get a word in, so I had to listen to him continue to fool me.
After Chenpi Ah Si saw the pagoda, although he didn't know what was underneath, he knew it couldn't be too bad. Now as long as he could get down there, he could naturally return with a full load, but how could he get down?
It's a pity that I didn't bring enough ropes. If I had known this would happen, I would have retreated and come back when I was ready, so I wouldn't be in this dilemma.
He shone the flashlight to the side again, to see if he could swing to the side of the underground palace, and then climb down along the Arhat statues. He used the flashlight to look at each section, estimating the height, until he reached the bottom. Suddenly, he saw some strange things around the pagoda, like a pile of yellow soil scattered at the bottom of the white marble underground palace. He didn't know if it had accidentally fallen down when the underground palace was sealed, or if it had been removed when he was using the thread to open the top.
He took a closer look, his heart skipped a beat and he couldn't help but think to himself, "Oh no!"
It turned out that what was at the bottom of the palace was not loess, but a large mound of earth. At first glance, you could tell that it was a wasp's hive.
Following the direction of the earth mound, you can see a half-person-high stone door next to the underground palace. It is very hidden and the earth mound "grows" in from there.
It seems that there are some underground buildings around the "Mirror Palace", and they are probably not sealed, so the insects use it as a summer resort to keep warm in winter and cool in summer. From here, the beehive is not very large, but the part inside the low door is probably very scary. No wonder the beehive is so huge, in an underground artificial building, it is not affected by wind and rain, it is really a "good location", and the old insects in the beehive also know Feng Shui.
The piece of curved wooden roof that I had just sawed off was stuck between several arhat statues on the lower level and did not hit the insect nest. Otherwise, I would have been hanging there like a sausage, unable to escape quickly and would have been nailed to death by the bees. I would have been a laughing stock for thousands of years for future generations.
But this would be a problem, because as soon as your feet touch the ground, even if you move as fast as smoke, it would be impossible to move such a small tower in such a small space without disturbing the ground bees.
Chenpi A Si only thought about it and realized that it was impossible to go down. There was only one way left to get the things up.
Here we have to mention the origin of Chenpi Ah Si. He grew up in a fishing village on the coast of Zhejiang. He fled to Changsha when the Japanese invaded, so his Changsha dialect is not very "authentic". But he is very smart. Since ancient times, local farmers basically did not pass on their skills to people from other provinces. He is a rare one.
When Chenpi Ah Si was in Haiyan, he already had a unique skill, which was catching crabs on the mudflats. Of course, he didn't catch them with his hands, but with a tool called a "nine-claw hook".
This thing is similar to the Flying Tiger Claw in martial arts movies, or the three-hook claw used by special forces for rock climbing. But this claw has nine hooks, arranged in a circle and very densely. When catching crabs, you tie a rope to the tail of the hook, and then when you see a crab popping up on the mudflat, you throw it out, and you can catch a crab with one hook. Then, you pull it, and the crab will fly back and fall into the basket by itself.
According to my grandfather's notes, this skill is so accurate that he can hook a raw egg from 20 meters away with a flick of his hand, and it will not break when it hits the ground. It is simply a magical skill. If it is farther away, he has to throw it with a stick, which is also very accurate.
Chenpi Ah Si was at a loss at this time. He had no choice but to grit his teeth and use his best skills. He swung to the side first, and climbed down layer by layer along the Arhat statue. When the distance was close, he took out the nine-claw hook, raised one head, and hooked the treasure tent with a very small angle. Fortunately, this thing was not made of common bluestone, and it was very light. Chenpi Ah Si lifted the treasure tent and put it on the Arhat's head. The strength in his hand changed, and the hook slipped out and returned to his hand.
The next step was to remove the jade or ivory tower, but no matter what material it was, it couldn't be lifted up with the nine-claw hook. Chenpi Ah Si threw out the nine-claw hook, hooked the pocket-sized tower brake, and pulled it a few times, but it didn't move at all.
It's not even half a ton, but at least it's 500 kilograms, Chenpi A Si cursed inwardly.
He scanned the tower with a flashlight and saw four miniature pillars at the base. This tower must have been made in the same proportion as the collapsed tower above, so the structure should be similar. These four pillars supported all the weight of the tower, and the treasure box was in the middle of the pillars, but the angle was wrong. Otherwise, if he carefully hooked it, he should be able to hook it up.
At this time Chenpi A Si was already a little impatient. He estimated that he had been here for four hours. He had just vaguely heard a few whistles. The Miao people might be nearby. There was no time to hesitate and think of a solution.
He was overwhelmed, his mind was hot, and evil thoughts arose in his mind. He flicked his hand and shot two more iron marbles. The marbles hit the small pillars on the base of the tower, and the pillars broke. Then he jumped up and stepped on one side of the tower. Then he used his momentum to tilt the tower to one side. The other two pillars were originally unbalanced, and they broke at once. The tower sank down, and the tower body and the base cracked.
Chenpi Ah Si lay on the tower, controlling the force. The tower was heavy and the force was slow, so it tilted very slowly. When Chenpi Ah Si saw a corner of the treasure box under the tower, he swung the nine-claw hook and hooked the thing up from under the tower. Then he retracted the hook and swung it out, hooking the Arhat statue on one side, and stabilized himself like pulling up a tow rope.
This series of actions took only 3 seconds to complete, but he did not expect that the Arhat statue could not hold up the tower and his weight. When he pulled, the Arhat statue became unstable and fell off the wall.
The circle below is almost a beehive. If you fall down like this, it's like falling directly into the beehive, and there's no way you won't die.
In a flash, Chenpi Ah Si used all his strength to pull the Arhat statue towards him, and threw the eight-layer treasure box into the air with one hand. With a lightning-fast change of hands, he caught the Arhat statue steadily, but the top of the pagoda inevitably hit the wall of the underground palace, and more Arhat statues were knocked down by the tilted pagoda.
This time Chenpi A Si was completely helpless. He watched as a row of Arhat statues smashed into the wasp's nest. Dust suddenly flew everywhere and the wasp's nest was almost completely dented and cracked.
In the chaos, he had no choice but to drop the Arhat in his hand, then took the treasure box and reflexively shone the flashlight on the beehive. He thought it was over, his life was over, he didn't die on the battlefield, but died in the underground palace, just as our ancestors said.
When he shone the flashlight, he saw that the cracks did not have the large number of wasps pouring out as he had imagined. Instead, he saw that the cracks in the hive were dry and without any moisture, as if it was an abandoned beehive.
However, what made him feel cold all over was that there was a dark thing in one of the cracks. It seemed that it was wrapped in when the nest was being built. He didn't know whether it was a dead person or the body of some animal.
He jumped down and opened it. He saw that it was wrapped up with a Luohan statue of the same style as the one here. It had been broken into several pieces. It was probably because it fell from above and shattered before the honeycomb was formed, and ended up being wrapped inside.
Chenpi A Si looked up. Although he didn't pay attention when he came down just now, he didn't feel that there was a missing Arhat statue anywhere. Where did this one fall from?