This was an unexpected situation and everyone was panicked.
Pan Zi flipped up the folding shovel on his waist with one hand, jumped into the pit, and swung it to chop, but the fat man's feet swung back and forth, and he missed the chop, and hit the stone on the side, sparks flying. When the fat man saw how much force Pan Zi used, he shouted: "Chop more accurately, don't chop my feet!"
Pan Zi also shouted: "Don't move, or I'll start from your thigh!" As he said that, he turned around and hit her again, but he didn't expect that he still missed.
The fat man yelled, "Change people, change people. This guy doesn't like me and wants to take revenge."
Ye Cheng and Monk Hua on the side jumped down to help, trying to hold down the fat man's legs. Unexpectedly, before Ye Cheng could stand firmly, he suddenly fell into the trap, and the entire stone corridor below collapsed, and he shrank down.
This was just causing more trouble. Monk Hua rushed over to grab him, but he didn't stand firmly and stumbled, bumping into my hand that was holding the fat man. My angle made it difficult for me to use force, so my hand slipped away and the fat man was dragged down.
Things happened so fast, and the light was bad, so we were in such a panic. Several people rolled into a ball, and the fat man fell into the pit like a meatball. I, Pan Zi, brought him down heavily on the slope of the brick pit. At that time, I felt something was wrong. Before I stood up, I heard a series of "crackling" sounds coming from under the brick layer.
My face turned pale when I heard this, this sound was very familiar to me. It was the sound of large-scale longitudinal cracks in frozen stone materials when we were doing building stress tests.
Before I could figure it out, there was a sudden earthquake all around, and the entire pit suddenly sank downwards, and the stone corridor below the pit collapsed. No one could react, and suddenly lost their balance. They all rolled down the slope like a slide, and fell into the depression caused by the collapse of the wooden corridor, wrapped in bricks.
Before I could feel lucky for my foresight, my butt went numb and I fell onto a slope, then slid straight down. Fortunately, I was tied up with a rope, which held me back from sliding down, and then bricks from all around started to fall on my head.
My butt hurt so much that I covered my head and tried to sit up, but the slope under my butt was too steep and my feet had no strength to support me. I used my hands to block the bricks and asked if anyone was okay. No one answered me, I only heard a series of curses and the sound of bricks hitting each other.
Finally the bricks stopped, and I was able to raise my head and look around. It was a mess. Several flashlights were completely wrapped in bricks, and some fell down the slope into the darkness far below. Fortunately, these German mountaineering products were sturdy, and none of them broke. However, a little light came through the gaps between people and bricks, but it was still hard to see anything clearly. It was pitch black around. I could vaguely see a big hole above my head. It was the gap in the stone corridor. We slid down from above.
This should be the space below the Linggong Hall, on the steep slope of the rock. We were falling on the steep slope, and if it weren't for the rope, we would have rolled to the bottom.
Ye Cheng was hanging next to my head, and was hit hard. I pulled him to ask if he was okay, and he told me that he had already had lunch. He was stunned by the hit.
Monk Hua shouted in the darkness: "Be careful, there might be a zongzi here, grab your weapons. Take out any hooves you have! Fatty, where are you? Is the thing that grabbed your feet still there?"
The fat guy was at the bottom, and we threw all the bricks on him, which was really tough. Then we heard his groaning from the brick pile: "He's still holding on, he's almost touching my thighs, I've got him, fucking pull me out, or I'm going to lose my dick!"
"That's my hand!" Pan Zi on the side cursed!
" Fuck you !" the fat man said angrily, "Why don't you choose the right time to be a hooligan?"
Without a flashlight, the few people who were not pinned down had to dig bricks in the dark and push them down the slope. Pan Zi dug it out first, but his hand was clamped by Fatty and he couldn't pull it out. We continued to dig, and soon Fatty also dug it out. He was relieved and said with a breath of air: "You bastards really want to pin me down. Fortunately, I brought the magic fat with me, otherwise I would have been back to my original position this time."
Pan Zi didn't have time to argue with him and said, "Where's that thing on your foot?"
The fat man moved his feet in the darkness, seemed to feel it, and said, "It's gone! It's hard to hold on after falling like this. We might have knocked it down the slope. How the hell is there a zongzi in a place like this?"
Monk Hua said, "It must be nearby. Be careful. Hold on to the black donkey hoof and find the flashlight first!"
I hurriedly went to feel for the flashlight under the bricks, but I couldn't find it. But Ye Cheng on the side found it. He pulled out the pile of bricks, and suddenly the surroundings became bright. He picked it up and immediately shone it downwards.
I was right below him, blocking the light of the flashlight out of disgust. Just as I was about to ask him to dim it a little, I suddenly saw Ye Cheng's face turn green.
As soon as I saw his expression, I immediately started to sweat coldly, thinking, is he next to me again? I gritted my teeth and turned my head to look, and suddenly I saw a purple, dry and strange face sticking out from the side of my shoulder, only a foot away from my nose.
I was so frightened that I cried out "Ouch!" and shrank back. I picked up a brick with my left hand and hit him, not knowing whether I hit him or not. I turned around and started climbing up.
At this time, the other flashlights were dug out, and the surroundings were all bright. I climbed up a few steps, but because Ye Cheng was above, I couldn't get out of the way, so I slid down again. When I looked to the side, I couldn't help but gasp.
I saw that on the steep cliff under the main hall of the Ling Palace, there were layers of simple terraced protrusions, and on these protrusions, there were almost all these frozen purple-green ancient corpses sitting neatly, layer upon layer. It looked like the Arhat Hall in a temple, huddled together, densely packed, with hideous faces, and it was obvious that they had frozen to death. They were all meditating here like monks. There was no end to the black shadows and no one knew how many there were.
Ye Cheng was the least courageous one here. He said tremblingly, "Oh my god, is this the charnel house where monks pile up their golden bodies?" As he said this, he actually felt a little weak all over.
Chenpi Ah Si held him down, waved his hand, and said to him, "Don't be afraid, it's just a corpse." Then he pointed at my feet. I looked down and saw that among the bricks under our feet, there was a mummy that had been crushed into powder.
"The dead here are frozen like stones, they break into pieces when touched." Chenpi Ah Si said, "It's impossible for these things to have turned into corpses. There should be no zongzi here."
"What was that thing that grabbed my foot just now?" asked the fat man.
Chenpi Ah Si said: "Your foot might have just been hooked by the corpse's hand. Otherwise, if you were a zongzi, do you think you would still have legs? If you don't believe me, look at your trouser legs."
The fat man looked down at the trouser leg that he had just grabbed, and sure enough, there was a hole, and a dry hook-shaped hand was in the brick pile not far from his feet. I picked it up and saw that it was extremely hard and could not be stretched to grab someone's leg.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Pan Zi even sighed exaggeratedly, "You are so timid that you will make mistakes even if you look at it."
The fat man was furious. He wanted to refute but couldn't find any reason. He just sulked there and muttered, "That hand really grabbed my foot just now. Can't I tell whether I was hooked or grabbed? If you don't believe it, forget it."
We used the flashlight to shine around. This was a large space under the main hall. Because the bodies were so densely packed, we couldn't see the end, but apart from the bodies, there were no other suspicious objects.
Pan Zi asked Monk Hua: "Why are there so many dead people here? I have never even heard of it."
"It looks like this should be a compartment for burials. This... I don't understand it at all. No imperial tomb of any dynasty looks like this... Who are these dead people?" Monk Hua said to himself.
I suppressed my fear and shone a flashlight on one of the dead bodies. I found that the body's facial features were well preserved. The eyes were closed, the face was covered with wrinkles, but there was no beard. The body was covered with a thin layer of ice. What was scary was that the skin of these ancient corpses was purple, and the mouth was wide open, and there were fangs inside.
"These may not be human." The fat man looked at them and said, "Look at these teeth. They can tear off their faces with a wave."
"Not a human?" Ye Cheng's face turned pale again. "What is it? A monster?"
"It might be the legendary snowman, except these are hairless." The fat man began to talk nonsense.
"Bullshit!" Monk Hua shouted, "What monsters and snowmen? The teeth of these corpses were sharpened by themselves. This is a custom of ancient shamanism. Later, because it was too troublesome, masks were used instead. These are definitely not the Jurchens of the Ming Dynasty. Look at the clothes of these corpses. They are very primitive, not Jurchen or Mongolian styles. And you see, some of the corpses are wrapped in linen. These are mummies formed by ice burial."
I thought of the ice burial pits I had seen when we camped in the Little Holy Valley that night, and said, "Could these bodies be the remains of our ancestors buried in ice when Wang Canghai dug out the mountain to build the mausoleum?"
Monk Hua nodded, "That's for sure. This fetus-shaped cave may have been a cemetery in the past. The local ancients performed ice burials here, but Wang Canghai's land was planned as a fake tomb for burial. These bodies must have been dug out when the cave was excavated."
The fat man asked: "If it's really like what you said, why don't you just burn them? What's the point of putting these bodies here?"
"Who knows? Look how scary these mummies are. Shamanism has many primitive and strange witchcraft rituals and curses, and it is said that they all require the help of corpses. The layout here may be related to shamanism. Maybe something weird will happen. Maybe we can't get out no matter how we walk on it. It's because of these corpses that we have to be careful."
I thought of the corpse array in the Qinling Mountains. It seemed that where there were a large number of corpses, things like this would always happen. Could it really be evil magic at work?
Shamanism is not a complete religion. It is actually a kind of primitive witchcraft, which means it has practical value and is closely related to pharmacology and spiritual worship. My knowledge of shamanism is limited to the dancing shamans in Qing palace dramas. However, it is said that shamanism , like China's Qimen Dunjia, has been lost in stages in history. Some good things were introduced into Tibetan Buddhism, and some evil things suddenly disappeared. From ancient books, we can see that many rituals of early shamanism in ancient times were extremely evil and perverse, with a lot of content about curses and corpses, which are inextricably linked to witchcraft. The Ku people believe in witchcraft. Are there any similarities between the two?
After hearing what Monk Hua said, the fat man suddenly realized, "No wonder I always feel like my feet are burning and I feel uncomfortable all over when I enter this spiritual palace. It turns out that there are so many zongzi buried underneath. The conscience of old Wannu is really bad."
Monk Hua said, "I am just guessing. The most important thing now is how to get out. Let's split up and look around to see if there is an exit."
After saying that, Monk Hua continued, "But be careful. This place looks a bit weird anyway. There are always potential safety hazards. The cliffs here are too steep. If something happens, you won't be able to escape even if you want to."
Everyone agreed, and the fat man couldn't wait any longer. Several people untied the climbing buckles, picked up the flashlights, and dispersed, starting to carefully search on the steep canyon wall.
Walking among so many corpses is not a pleasant thing, but what is a bit strange is that the more corpses there are, the less panicked you feel. It may be that when the fear reaches a certain level, you will have a rebellious emotion.
The corpses were packed so tightly that there was no space for people to walk between the rows. We had to squeeze through the gaps between the corpses. The corpses were old and young, all frozen like purple rocks. I saw some of them still carrying copper magic tools, which had completely rusted green. The lower parts of almost all the corpses were fused with the rocks below. You had to smash them to move them.
After searching for a long time, I found nothing in this direction. I felt uneasy as I was getting farther and farther away from the others. I was about to pretend that I had finished searching and go back to the hole to ask the others about their results when I heard Pan Zi shout, "Fatty, what are you doing?"
Following Pan Zi's voice, we looked in the direction that Fatty had been searching for, only to see that Fatty had stopped searching at some point, and was instead squatting in the pile of corpses below, facing us gloomily, with his mouth open expressionlessly. At first glance, his face was actually bluish purple, just like the corpses next to him. I had no idea what he was doing.