In the narrow and damp tomb passage, the bloodstains were shocking. Some of them were splashed on the stone wall. It was suspected that the blood was sprayed out by the corpse soldiers during the fight. The bloodstains had not yet dried up, and there were puddles on the ground.
I don't know whether this was left by Brother Yaozi or my master, or were both injured?
With such a large amount of blood loss, the injuries were serious.
"What are you still standing there for? Find someone!"
I couldn't calm down. Maybe my master and Brother Yaozi were lying somewhere, tasting despair alone...
The bloodstains continued to spread all the way to the "T"-shaped intersection of the corridor, and then spread to the left.
Sure enough, my master and Brother Yaozi walked ahead of us.
The bloodstains began to decrease here, at least there was no longer a large pool of blood, dripping in a string.
I was worried about their situation and injuries, and I hurried along the blood trail. They kept wailing, reminding me to take care of the injured and slow down a little. This is not a forced march.
But saving people is like putting out a fire, how can I stop?
The scale of this tomb is obviously much larger than the water burial tomb above. This corridor runs through the tomb and should be the main tomb passage. I ran all the way down. With the continuous deepening, the oxygen began to gradually become scarce. Coupled with the intense exercise and injuries, I felt burning in my lungs, dizzy and swollen, and I felt exhausted.
Just when I almost had to stop to rest, the main tomb passage also came to an end. My master and Brother Yaozi were in front of me.
My master sat cross-legged on the ground, with the ancient sword inserted in front of him, as if meditating, while Brother Yaozi crossed his legs and leaned against the tomb wall to ram the earth.
My master's condition was fine, just a little messy, but Brother Yaozi's condition was really worrying. His lower abdomen was injured, similar to mine, both were pierced, but the location was different. Mine was at most a layer of flesh pierced, his wound was infinitely close to the navel, even if the wound was only four or five centimeters, it was extremely dangerous.
As the saying goes, it is better to stab someone once than to slash him ten times. A slash is not terrible. As long as you don't hit the neck or other places, a slash will cut off the head, and the chance of death is very small, but a stab is different. A small knife may be fatal!
The location of Brother Yaozi's injury is not survivable no matter how you look at it!
After going so far with so many disasters, it is a good thing to meet again now, but looking at Brother Yaozi lying there with a pale face, just randomly tore a piece of cloth and tied it around his stomach, I really can't be happy.
"It's okay, I won't die."
Brother Yaozi was very open-minded. A strange look flashed in his eyes. He smiled heartily: "You can worry about my life, I recognize this brother, but my situation is different from that of normal people. Don't worry about my affairs. I will be alive and kicking in a day at most. Now you should think about this tomb. After all, this is the craftsmanship of your ritual officer, and you have the most say."
My master also shook his head at me, indicating that Brother Yaozi was fine, and said: "Find a way!"
The fatal injury is fine?
But thinking about Brother Yaozi's legendary experience of coming back to life, my heart gradually settled down. Along the way, Brother Yaozi's performance in all aspects was similar to that of a normal person, so that I really regarded him as an ordinary person. At this time, I suddenly realized that I couldn't help but laugh at my own nervousness.
After relaxing, I began to look at the situation here.
At this point in the corridor, there was no road ahead.
There is no tomb chamber, no fork, it is a dead end, as if the tomb was abandoned for some reason after it was built here.
"Is the entrance to the next level of the tomb not here?"
Lao Bai scratched his head: "Have we gone too far?"
"Absolutely impossible!"
I immediately rejected this guess.
The structure of this tomb is quite unique. The tomb passages are mostly forked, and it looks like a maze. In fact, to sum up, there are only two tomb passages, and they finally meet together. We acted separately and walked through the two roads. According to Brother Yaozi and Lao Bai, there is nothing special about the other tomb passage.
The weirdness is here.
From the overall point of view, this is a stacked tomb building. There should be four tombs of earth, fire, water and wind at the top. There must be a secret passage leading to the bottom at the strongest point, but there is nothing unique about the place we have walked so far. We are not even sure which tomb of earth, fire, water and wind this is!
This is too unreasonable.
There is only one possibility at the moment - there is still a part of this tomb that has not been excavated by us, and that is the most important place. The road we are looking for should be there!
Excavating a tomb is not a simple matter. It is not to say that just digging a hole in the ground and burying a thin-skinned coffin with a dead person in it is a tomb. There are some particulars. At least it cannot be against the yin and yang and deviate from the five elements. Otherwise, it cannot last underground. Many so-called tombs collapsed after a long time, and no traces were left after being buried by time. This is all due to unreasonable tomb design.
These things sound very mysterious, but all ritual officials pay attention to this.
I believe that even if the last heavenly official wants to bury demons and monsters, he must follow the most basic professional ethics, right?
This place must first be a tomb, otherwise if it really collapses, it will be useless to bury anything, and everyone will run away!
It is a tomb, it has a basis to follow! !
Following this line of thought, I forced myself to calm down, closed my eyes and reviewed the overall structure of the tomb, and soon a smile appeared on my face.
"The burial of the dead is quite interesting!"
I said to myself.
In some large tombs, the burial of the dead must be based on status. The tomb owner must be at the innermost, and the outermost is usually a sacrificial pit or something, where some insignificant characters are buried, and then there are craftsmen, concubines, family generals, confidants, etc. Don't question it, in the eyes of the dignitaries in ancient times, concubines are really not as important as family generals. In short, the closer you are to the tomb owner, the closer you are to the tomb owner in your lifetime!
Judging from the current situation of this tomb, this should be considered a military tomb.
The so-called military tomb is similar to the martyrs' forest garden we talk about in modern times. In ancient times, once a large-scale war broke out, the fallen soldiers were often buried together. They were comrades in arms in their lifetime and brothers in the next life. One tomb buried an army.
Of course, the tomb in front of us is not for the dead in battle, but for a troop that was buried alive by the last heavenly official. However, I think the specifications should be similar to those of a military tomb. The outermost part is the soldiers, that is, those mercury helmets. A little further in, there are some grassroots officers, that is, those corpse soldiers wearing paper armor. I roughly estimated the range. Whether it is the mercury helmets or the corpse soldiers, the burial sites are almost in a straight line. So... who is further in, needless to say?
It must be the commander of this army, or a high-level general.
"The tomb is right in front of us!"
I pointed to the end of the corridor and said with certainty: "There is definitely a tomb ahead!"
Even a layman like Zhang Xinya sneered at this inference. There was a soil layer in front, and there were traces of excavation on it. It was obvious that they could not dig any further here.
They had checked that place a long time ago and found nothing.
"Jingzhe, you may have really seen it wrong this time."
Brother Yaozi asked Zhang Xinya to help him stand up, grabbed a handful of soil at the end of the corridor, and said with a smile: "Look at this soil, the color is very light, and the fertility is not enough. This is obviously raw soil. We have also dug forward. Look at that pit. It has been dug for almost a foot, and the bottom is all raw soil!"
I understand what Brother Yaozi means. The so-called raw soil refers to the original soil that has not been disturbed by people, also called dead soil. The mature soil is the soil that has been developed by humans and has a high degree of maturity. In fact, this definition may not be accurate. It cannot be measured by whether it has been touched by humans. Some places have dense vegetation and high soil fertility. Even if there is no human activity, the soil maturity is very good.
For example, the soil fertility of Luliang Mountain is good. The surface is mature soil, and the bottom is raw soil.
When digging a tomb, a large amount of soil is dug out first, and then filled back after the tomb is built. At this time, the raw soil and cooked soil have been mixed together. After a long time, one layer is sandwiched between another layer, and the color is dark and light, just like fat and lean pork belly, which is called five-color soil.
Nowadays, many tomb masters look at Feng Shui before digging the ground. Once they see five-color soil, they basically get rich. This five-color soil is the most important sign to determine whether there is a tomb below.
Now it is all raw soil, which means that no one has touched it at all. How can the tomb chamber be in front?
But I didn't believe in this at all, and I taught Brother Yaozi in a very annoying tone: "You can't be dogmatic in academic research, you have to have innovative ideas, and the same goes for tomb robbing. You have to look at the situation and can't copy it mechanically! We must first understand why the five-color soil appeared. To put it bluntly, only when the soil in that section of the ground is dug out can the five-color soil be formed. But what kind of tomb is this? This is called a stacked tomb burial, which is built up layer by layer, deep underground. Except for the top layer of the tomb, other tombs cannot touch the cooked soil, so there is no condition for the appearance of five-color soil. How can you use the five-color soil to determine whether there is a tomb?" Brother Yaozi opened his mouth, but couldn't find any words to refute me. Finally, he glared at me fiercely. It seems that he is extremely dissatisfied with my annoying attitude. If he wasn't injured, he would have rushed up to beat me up. I was happy, and I took out the folding engineer shovel from the backpack beside Brother Yaozi and started to work. After a fight and escape, only Brother Yaozi's things were not lost, but they were just some tools, and there was no food or drink.
The current predicament destined us to fight quickly. If it takes too long, I am afraid that we will really die here.
As the saying goes, an expert knows whether there is a tomb with one move. Although I am not an expert, and strictly speaking, this is my first time to go to the tomb, but after a few shovels, I am basically sure that there is definitely a tomb in front.
Because the hardness of the soil is a problem! !
Normal soil is definitely not so hard. Although the last heavenly official has tried his best to disguise and hide this tomb, the soil layer must be compacted, right? No matter how good the craftsman is, it is impossible to restore the state of natural soil 100%. Everything in this world can be copied, but things formed by nature cannot be copied!
Moreover, in order to ensure that the rammed earth of the tomb walls is strong enough, the surface rammed earth can be camouflaged, but the rammed earth inside must be strong, otherwise it will fall off after a long time, so the inside is particularly tight. The engineer shovel that can cut off half of a person's head can only shovel off a thin layer of soil with all his strength.
After all, I was injured and couldn't do this kind of physical work. Not long after digging, the wound on my waist began to bleed, but the pain was not severe.
I secretly said badly, knowing that the wound was going to be infected and festered, but there was no better way at the moment, so I could only withdraw from the hole and replace Zhang Xinya.
Except for Brother Yaozi, three or four of us took turns to fight here, and spent more than an hour here. When even Lao Bai questioned whether I had seen it wrong, a crisp "click" sound came from the robbery hole.
At this time, Zhang Xinya was working on the tunnel. In a blink of an eye, she had climbed out and muttered, "It seems to be connected? The last layer of rammed earth is very hard, just like bricks and tiles. I put all my strength into it and poked it all at once. Some white paste immediately flowed out of it..."
Zhang Xinya was so tired that she was sweating all over. When she heard this, she almost swung the engineer shovel to chop Lao Bai, but I grabbed the shovel.
On the shovel head, there was some white paste similar to putty powder, but more delicate.
"This seems to be white plaster!!"
My eyes changed, and I muttered, "I'll do the rest of the work. If I keep working, I'm afraid you will die in there if something happens!"
After saying that, I bent over and climbed directly into the tomb.