The fire burned for five or six days, and the high temperature is still there, especially near the hole I dug. The ground was burned hard and black, and the soles of my hiking boots were burned soft. If I stood in the same place without moving, I was worried that the soles would melt.
This situation made my face as black as the bottom of a pot. In fact, we had given most of the day to let this place cool down, but the result was not satisfactory.
"It won't cool down so quickly, and we can't wait."
Brother Yaozi smiled, squatted at the entrance of the hole and looked inside. The fire in the tomb was not completely extinguished, and there were still dots of red light, and the smell of burnt grass and trees was very strong. He poked the entrance of the hole with his fingers, as if to feel the temperature. After hesitating for a moment, he simply took off his clothes and tore them into pieces, tied them to his elbows and knees respectively, and asked me to wait here first, and then he went into the hole all at once.
Soon, Brother Yaozi was already in the tomb. He saw that I was only wearing a small vest on my upper body, and he was very considerate and threw his torn clothes out of the robbery hole.
I saw that he didn't make a sound from beginning to end, and thought that the temperature in the robbery hole might not be that high. I tied my clothes hurriedly and crawled into the robbery hole like a cat. Then I screamed "Ah".
It's too hot!
Although the temperature inside is not enough to burn people to death, it is at least 100 degrees. I regretted it as soon as I got in. My elbows and knees were burning!
Under the extreme scorching, I used my hands and feet and crawled more happily than an old dog running away with its tail between its legs. In the blink of an eye, I got into the coffin that I had violently destroyed. At this time, the skin on my elbows and knees had been burned, and the tissue exudate mixed with blood had soaked my clothes, making me slip constantly. I almost fell out, and black ash flew around for a while.
On the floor of the tomb, there was a pile of several dozen centimeters of black ash. My mouth and nose were full of it, and I coughed repeatedly. After a while of struggling, Brother Yaozi finally pulled me up.
With the light of the mining lamp in his hand, the situation in the tomb was clear at a glance.
This tomb was indeed very large, and it was empty inside. There were stone coffins around the edges, and I destroyed only one of them.
I counted carefully, and there were as many as sixteen coffins here, but after a big fire, these coffins were burned black, and some were even completely destroyed.
Moreover, when I was walking here, my feet slipped, and I scraped the black ash piled on the ground, and found a layer of green and greasy stuff on the ground, which was shining under the illumination of the mining lamp.
I dipped my finger on the ground and put it to my nose to touch it. There was a strong smell of water.
"Yes, this is the cremation tomb in the stacked tomb building."
I made some judgments in my mind.
If I'm not mistaken, the oil on my hand is called water dragon oil.
Of course, it's just a name, and it actually has nothing to do with dragons. This is the oil on a thing called a water viper.
The water viper is similar to the 鸩鸟, and is probably an ancient water snake. Legend has it that this thing can turn into a dragon after 500 years, a dragon after 1,000 years, a horned dragon after 500 years, and a Yinglong after 1,000 years. Anyway, it has a little relationship with dragons, but it's just a little distant, so we call the oil peeled off this thing water dragon oil.
It is said that the water viper is extremely yang, and must live in extremely cold water. Moreover, it is lustful, probably to reduce the yang energy in the body, otherwise it will spontaneously combust and die. This body of oil is exactly the thing with the heaviest yang energy in it.
I was wondering how this fire could burn for so many days. It turned out that these water dragon oils were helping to burn. There must have been a lot of water dragon oil here before. What I see now is just the oil flowers that evaporated in the air during the fire and settled down.
The water dragon oil is placed in the fire pit tomb, which will make the dead buried here burn in flames forever!
I shuddered, thinking about what I saw and heard along the way. I was really a little scared of the methods of my ancestor. I also deeply understood the horror of the ritual officials. If you offend these people, you will be disturbed even after death!
While I was strolling in the tomb, my master and others came in one after another.
Lao Bai has never been a quiet person. While I was looking for the secret passage, he kept groping on those coffins. I guess he was still thinking about making a fortune. In the end, he didn't find gold, silver, and jewelry, but he brought a large bag of charred insect corpses with the hem of his shirt.
"Brothers, the food is here!"
Lao Bai shouted, and threw the black insects into his mouth, just like eating beans, chewing them with a "crunch, crunch" sound. At the end, he gently closed his eyes, with a look of enjoyment on his face. If you don't know, you might think he was eating some kind of delicacies.
"You eat everything in the tomb..."
Zhang Xinya said disdainfully: "Things that can survive in this place must eat corpses. What's the difference between you eating this thing and eating corpses?"
"Look at what you said. Crops are watered with manure. Do you think eating food is eating shit?"
Lao Bai grumbled in dissatisfaction, but what he said made some sense. He picked up the burnt insects and threw them into his mouth one by one. His teeth were blackened by chewing: "If you like to eat, eat. If you don't like to eat, stay away. But I have to remind you that this thing doesn't eat corpses. We call it ground crawlers. It's clean."
I glanced at the insects that Lao Bai found. They looked no different from mantis shrimps, but they were several times smaller. At most, they were only the length of an adult's thumb. Because they were completely burnt, I couldn't tell what color they were originally.
Lao Bai said that this little thing is very unique and very rare now. It can be basically confirmed that it is a creature that has been extinct for thousands of years. Its main food is red soil with relatively high fertility. Its excrement is similar to animal feces, which are both very good fertilizers. There used to be a lot of red soil in the southwest. The Xunchuan barbarians in Yunnan used to raise this thing to fertilize the soil for farming, but later they disappeared for some reason.
Needless to say, the diarrhea that was blown out during the explosion was left by this thing, so Lao Bai had no psychological barriers to eating this thing.
A big fire has burned the tomb beyond recognition, but through these clues, we can probably guess the layout of this tomb.
The white mud paste was sealed with charcoal to make the tomb well sealed, and then ground beetles were put in to eat the soil here to make manure. After a long time, this place became a manure pool, and methane was everywhere. A standard cremation tomb was created. With the addition of fire dragon oil, the entire tomb naturally became a sea of fire and swords in the underworld. It is easy to imagine what the fate of the dead people here would be...
Such an arrangement can only be described as a masterpiece of nature. Apart from these four words, I can't think of any other words to describe it.
I also tasted the ground beetles. They were crunchy, like big melon seeds. Except for the strong burnt smell, they were definitely high-protein food. Unfortunately, the number was a little small, and at most they were a snack, but it also made me extremely satisfied. People in desperate situations have such low requirements. Two burnt insects are enough for me to continue working with a smile on my face.
Originally, there were feces left by ground beetles here, but after a fire, the feces turned into ashes. The secret passage we are looking for must be on the ground. In desperation, I could only use my feet to dig up the ashes on the ground to take a closer look.
This is a lot of work. I checked all 16 coffins and searched the ground for a long time before I found it in the center of the tomb. I kicked away some black ashes and revealed some shallow grooves underneath. The grooves were dyed red with red pigment.
I immediately squatted down and started to clean up the black ashes on a large scale, but when my hands touched the ashes, they felt wet.
The fire burned here for several days, and the moisture in the air was almost evaporated. How could these ashes feel wet?
This discovery made me a little confused and accelerated the cleaning speed.
Not long after, a round stone slab that was obviously embedded in the ground appeared. It was at least two meters in diameter and engraved with a large red hexagram. Even after a thousand years, it did not fade at all.
I touched the grooves on the stone slab. The red pigment felt extremely delicate and even a little slippery, much like paint today.
Although paint did appear quite early, in primitive society, the Chinese ancestors knew how to use natural lacquer made from the sap of lacquer trees to make paint. In the Warring States Period, colored paint had already appeared, but it was different from the paint today, and the craftsmanship was also very different, and it could not reach the current state.
The pigments that make up the hexagram are no different from the paint today! !
The last celestial official who built this place could not have traveled from the modern era, so I basically concluded that these pigments were not paint at all.
In addition, I also found that the material of the grooves of the round stone slab was somewhat different. It was not stone, but had many pores. It was quite elastic when pinched, which was very similar to the foam today!
"This looks like Huang Lao's magic machine technique!"
I was dumbfounded and said, "This is something recorded in the Tianguan Juque chapter of the Ten Thousand Burial Scriptures. My dad mentioned it to me before, but I'm not qualified enough to learn it."
Huang Lao's magic machine technique is also a special mechanical technique, which is somewhat related to the alchemy in the past.
Alchemy must be related to Huang Lao's learning, so this mechanical technique is also called Huang Lao's magic machine technique.
Speaking of alchemy, it is the most primitive chemistry. Gunpowder is made in this way, and the primitive version of drugs such as Hanshi Powder is also made in this way! !
Well, although our ancestors did not make alchemy for the pursuit of science, but for immortality, gunpowder and the like were discovered by accident. It sounds a bit unprofessional, but it is indeed the most primitive chemistry!
This Huang Lao magic machine technique has something to do with chemistry. My dad said that this machine technique can change ghosts and gods. In today's scientific terms, it studies not only the chemical reactions between substances, but also changes such as gene combination when practiced to a high level. To put it bluntly, it has something to do with biology!
For example, if I want to crack the mechanism in front of me, I must at least first figure out what the pigment of the hexagram is, what can react with it, and then drip it in...
If nothing unexpected happens, this round boulder has also been specially treated. The special material full of pores runs through the entire stone slab. When the pigment on the surface undergoes the correct chemical reaction, the pigment will become liquid and penetrate through the pores, and finally a violent explosion will occur, directly blowing up the boulder, and the passage below will naturally be exposed.
We spread our hands and our attitude was very clear. This job is fucking impossible. I am not only a poor student, but I have not even read the Tianguan Juque Sutra. The level of this mechanism is a bit high, I can't do it!
"You're playing tricks. Have you read that damned "Ten Thousand Burial Scriptures"? Are you going to rob the tomb designed by your ritual officer?"
Lao Bai curled his lips, picked up a crowbar and smashed it hard on the boulder, but not even a white spot was left. The recoil made his fat face tremble constantly.
Now, even he was out of the fire. We gathered together and sighed. This mechanism really embarrassed us.
Click.
Suddenly, a drop of dark green liquid fell on the stone slab and splashed.
I was stunned and stared at the dark green liquid. I was sure that it was definitely not water dragon oil. I was a little confused for a while, and subconsciously looked up...
On the top of the tomb, a person was hanging there, grinning at me...