The square hole is half a person's height, square in shape, and very roughly dug. The edges are full of broken stones about the size of watermelons, and there are quite a few inside. Obviously, someone has blocked this hole before. The square hole is pitch black inside, and no one knows where it leads to. It is a bit like the reservoir culverts we often see in the south.
In the pile of rubble on one side of the square hole, there was a relatively flat piece with a few crude words carved on it. They were carved very hastily and very shallowly. If those words were not in English letters, they would be very glaring in such an imperial mausoleum, and Shunzi might not have been able to find them. Unfortunately, it was impossible to figure out what was carved.
Did Uncle San carve it there to help us find our way? I thought so at the time, but Uncle San's foreign language was unreliable. How could he come up with the idea of carving foreign words as a secret code? This was really not his style.
The fat man walked closer to take a look out of curiosity, and suddenly he exclaimed, waved to me and said, "Xiao Wu, I think we have seen these twisted foreign words somewhere before."
I also walked over and took a look, and my heart skipped a beat.
It's not like that. We have indeed seen these symbols. This is what Fatty and I saw on the wall of the pool when we went down to the stele pool in the underwater tomb. After seeing this symbol, Menyouping suddenly rushed down to the stele pool, and then he remembered what happened in the underwater tomb. How did he suddenly appear here again?
At that time, I always thought that this symbol was carved by one of the people when Uncle San brought Wen Jin and the others down, but it suddenly appeared here again, which obviously was not right.
Judging from the traces of the carving, it seems that it was done by a mountaineering pick. Moreover, the traces are so new, so it must have been left by Uncle San, or by Men Youpingzi, or Aning, because only these few people here have mountaineering picks. The person who left this symbol must have entered the square cave.
At this moment, I suddenly had an idea. I wondered if the foreign language symbol in the underwater tomb was carved by Menyouping, so when he saw the symbol, he knew, "I have been to this place before."
This is really possible. I have to ask him when he shows up again.
Pan Zi saw me in a daze and asked me what was going on. I told them about the symbols that Fatty and I saw on the seabed. Pan Zi also felt very curious. But he said, "I have been with the Third Master for ten years. At least I have visited fifty graves, including several large ones. I have never seen him leave any secret codes. Moreover, the Third Master can't recognize all the abcd . This is definitely not left by the Third Master."
I thought that it must be Aning or Menyouping, so I turned to them and said, "Anyway, it looks like we are on the right path. Someone has already been in this cave. The entrance to the underground palace should be right below. Should we go in right away?"
"Go ahead!" the fat man said immediately, "What are you waiting for? Several groups of people are ahead of us. I have always been the vanguard. It's because of you unlucky kids that I have to be the rear guard. Let's not dawdle. When they finish their work and come out, we won't have the face to compete with them."
Pan Zi said to me, "Don't ask us, are you okay?"
I nodded to indicate that it was okay. "Fatty is right, we can't delay any longer. If I run into a Zongzi, I'll die even if I'm not injured. Now that I'm injured, I'll just die faster. Don't be afraid."
The fat guy had already taken off his backpack. When he heard what I said, he said, "Can't you say something auspicious? Don't you see where we are going now?"
I glared at him and said, "It's useless to stick two door gods on your forehead. You should take care of your hands first."
We each prepared our own equipment. Just now we were packing for a march. Now we put the wind lamps, fuel and other things into the bags, and then took out the cold fireworks, cold glow sticks and explosives and tied them to the belts. Fatty and Pan Zi each pulled the bolts, removed the magazines, took the bullets off the belts and loaded their guns. After loading the guns with ammunition, they put the hunting knives and daggers back in place.
The Type 54 rifle was too long and it might not be possible to turn around in the square cave, so the fat man gave the gun to Shunzi and took out his mountaineering pick. Several people tested the brightness of the flashlight. The fat man took out his own tomb-robbing talisman, held it in his hand and bowed to the sky.
Shunzi was also an expert in using guns. He took the gun and fired a few "clicks" to familiarize himself with it. He felt nostalgic, and then said to us, "Boss, I don't understand your business, but I want to remind you that when drilling holes in Changbai Mountain, you must be careful of snow bugs. If you see signs of something wrong, plug your ears with cotton first. This thing's head shell is not hard yet in this season, so it can only drill into your ears. In summer, when the shell is hard, it can drill directly into your skin, revealing its two whiskers. If you pull the whiskers off, the whole bug will be broken inside. You have to dig out the wound to dig it out. Also, this thing can drill into the anus, so be careful when you sit."
The fat man looked at Shunzi with disgust, tightened his belt subconsciously, and said, "Now insects have this hobby too?"
Shunzi said, "I'm not kidding you. If you get caught, figure it out yourself. Don't ask me."
We felt a chill in our lower body and nodded. The fat man took the lead and crawled into the square cave. We followed him and entered one after another, moving towards the ultimate unknown world underground.
You have to walk with your back bent. The cave is dug parallel to the ground. You have to look around while walking. Because the height is too low, you have to walk very slowly. The rock bottom here is very solid. Looking at the traces of chiseling, this tunnel was obviously dug using the most primitive method. I guess how long it took to build such a large-scale imperial mausoleum? It must have taken more than 20 years. Many emperors started to build tombs when they ascended the throne. It took more than 20 years to dig this tunnel. It seems that the people who fled that year should have been a large group of people.
The further we went in, the more signs that many people had been there. There were more than one print of hiking shoes, and no snowflakes appeared. However, I did find some strange branch holes on the top of the tunnel.
These holes are not big, only enough to accommodate one person, and the holes are 180 degrees curved, going straight up for a while, then turning down, forming a curved pipe in the shape of the number 9. There is about one such hole every ten meters.
I have crawled through holes countless times since I started working in this field, but I have never seen a structure like this. From the perspective of construction accounting, the workload of drilling these holes is almost as much as that of drilling an entire tunnel. So there must be an absolute reason why these holes have to be drilled, otherwise it would be uneconomical. However, I really can't see any value in the existence of these holes.
Pan Zi said to me from behind: "Master San, do you find that this tunnel looks familiar?"
"Look familiar?" I paused, turned around and asked him why he asked that?
Pan Zi said, "When we were in Guazi Temple in Shandong, the corpse cave we passed through had a tunnel in the same shape. Didn't the old man hide in the cave above to harm us?"
After he said that, I looked carefully at the top of the cave again. When I was in Shandong, I was so panicked that I didn't pay much attention to the top of the corpse cave and the water robber cave. Now I can't compare. But since Pan Zi said so, it shouldn't be wrong. I was also curious and asked him, "Are you sure?"
Pan Zi was not sure, and said: "We only knew there was a hole on top after listening to the old man. It was pitch black when we passed by, so we didn't notice it."
I stopped and looked at these branch holes carefully. I immediately understood their function and said, "That corpse hole was also a water stealing hole, right?"
Pan Zi nodded and said yes. I said, "These branch holes are actually used for breathing. You see, when water flows into this channel, air will be retained in the branch holes due to their curved structure. In this way, you only need to swim for a while, then put your head into the branch hole to take a breath, and then continue to move forward."
Pan Zi was surprised and asked, "What a clever method. So, this road was really underwater back then?"
I said, "It's about the same. It looks like the water tunnel in Guazi Temple was probably dug by Wang Canghai's men." But it didn't make sense. The tunnel was so old that Uncle San inferred it was dug during the Warring States Period. It might have been dug when King Lu Shang went into the mountains to build his mausoleum. Could it be that Wang Canghai saw it after he went there and borrowed the ancients' technology? It's very possible.
After walking for a long time, I don't know how far I walked, the road gradually widened and I finally saw the exit. We climbed out and saw a very deep canal in front of us, about ten meters deep and five or six meters wide. There was no water in the canal.
I looked at the canal and said, "This is the water diversion canal. The water from the moat is diverted from here. It keeps the water flowing and does not stink. It also prevents the water from backflowing."
There were embankments on both sides of the canal that were wide enough for one person to walk on, and there was a stone bridge on top. We walked over carefully and came to the other side of the river. The fat man asked how to get there now?
I said, "This canal is connected to the canal outside, so it should be considered one canal. Let's follow the water."
Pan Zi squatted down and looked at the traces of the water flow, then pointed to one side, "There."
We continued forward, and soon, a very regular square hole appeared on the stone wall beside the river bank in front of us.
The fat man lit up a cold firework and threw it out, which illuminated the black stone slab on the ground outside the square hole. Obviously, this was the sealing wall stone of the underground palace. The fat man got out and lit up a lot of cold fireworks and threw them around. Then he greeted us, and we crawled out of the tunnel.
The place where they came out was a tomb built of black rocks. It was not high, and people could barely stand upright, but it was very wide. There were many earthenware jars neatly placed around the tomb. They might be wine jars used for burial. Each one was half a person's height. It was roughly estimated that there were more than a thousand jars. It seemed that Emperor Wannu might be a drunkard.
On the four black walls, there are some simple reliefs depicting the emperor's banquet. The reliefs are not well preserved, which may be related to the connection with the outside world. Although the volcanic gas here is not as deadly as Pan Zi said, it is definitely more corrosive than ordinary air. It is a miracle that the murals here can be preserved. Unfortunately, the pictures that have been preserved can only be seen roughly.
There was a stone gate on each of the left and right walls of the tomb, and behind it was a dark corridor. A cold wind blew out from inside, and the fat man picked up two cold fireworks and threw them in one at a time, without even seeing the end.