Huang Xiuhua took out the map, looked at the surrounding scenery for a while, frowned slightly, and said to himself: "Strange, grandpa's map does not indicate that there is a hole here!"
Li Xiaoran jokingly said, "Do you want to go in and take a look? Just like in the storytelling, maybe there will be any adventure?"
Huang Xiuhua said hesitantly: "The cave is one of the few places in the mountains that can shelter from wind and rain. Logically speaking, these places will basically live in beasts such as tigers, black bears, etc. If we rashly penetrate it, there will be dangers!"
When Li Xiaoran heard this, he nodded in agreement. Thinking of this, he seemed a little reckless.
Just as he was about to leave, he accidentally caught a glimpse of a few shallow scratches on the ground.
"Um?"
Li Xiaoran walked over, squatted down, observed carefully, and waved to Huang Xiuhua who was standing beside him.
"Miss Huang, come here!"
"What's wrong?"
Huang Xiuhua came to Li Xiaoran's side, but saw him pointing at a shallow scratch on the ground and asked, "Do you think... this looks like a trace of the wheels of a carriage crushing?"
"carriage?"
When Huang Xiuhua heard this, his first thought in his heart was that he felt it was ridiculous.
In these deep mountains and forests, there is not even a decent road, so how could there be a carriage?
Just talking about the section of the road entering Wumeng Mountain, the road was bumpy and difficult to walk. Even they both struggled to walk, let alone a carriage?
The trace on the ground was very short, and it only stretched a few inches on the ground and disappeared.
Just when Li Xiaoran felt ridiculous about his thoughts, he suddenly found several identical traces not far away and continued to extend in a certain direction.
Li Xiaoran's eyes looked in the direction where these traces extended, but it just fell into the dark hole!
"Miss Huang, come and see!" Li Xiaoran suddenly said.
"I think these traces on the ground are the wheel prints of the carriage!"
While grabbing a handful of soil from the ground and crushed it in his palm, he said, "Look, the soil on the ground is still wet and not very moisture! Do you remember that it suddenly rained a few days ago when we were digging medicine? This rain is the key point!"
Huang Xiuhua seemed to have some insight and said, "What do you mean..."
Li Xiaoran said: "A normal carriage, no matter how heavy the car is, even if it is an empty carriage, when passing by the soft mud, the traces left on the ground will definitely be long car marks, and it will not be intermittent!"
"If the premise of "it has rained here too" is correct, it is proved that there was a cart that was not long ago, not only a cart with heavy cargoes passing by! Because empty carts or lighter carts cannot leave too deep marks on the ground!"
"That is to say... the traces left by lighter carriages when passing by will be easily washed away by rain. The carriages loading with heavy objects will leave extremely deep car marks in the mud because of their heavy weight. Unless these carriages encounter heavy rain, it will be difficult to be washed away in a short time! So I concluded that someone must have passed by here!"
Huang Xiuhua shook his head and said, "Young Master Li, but these are all your guesses! You have also felt it when we went up the mountain. How could a carriage be able to walk on that kind of road?"
"Miss Huang, are you sure you can only walk to Wumeng Mountain from outside Zhuti Town?"
Huang Xiuhua's words were instantly paused. Of course, she was not sure about this.
Li Xiaoran thought, and said, "Miss Huang, don't you find it strange? Wumeng Mountain is such a big mountain, we walked for nine days! We didn't even encounter a beast! We searched for nine days, apart from the golden jade, you can count yourself, how many treasure medicines are there in your bamboo basket? You can count it with one hand!"
"At first I didn't doubt it. After all, it was the periphery of the mountain. And you said that there are so many herb collectors and hunters in the town. Everyone walked around in those places every day and was turned over several times. It was normal that there was no medicinal material growth or no beasts inhabiting it! But now? We have been in the Wumeng Mountain for nine days! No matter how we go, it is not considered periphery, right? But now? Medicinal materials are still so rare, and we have never seen any jackals, tigers and leopards, and we have never heard of even screams. Don't you think it's strange?"
Huang Xiuhua nodded. She felt something was wrong when she entered the mountain before, but she couldn't say something was wrong, so she just thought it was the illusion that she hadn't entered the mountain for a long time... But now she heard Li Xiaoran's analysis, it seemed that it was quite reasonable?
"What are you going to do?"
Li Xiaoran looked at the entrance of the cave not far ahead of them. The dark cave could not even penetrate the light, and it was like the secret hidden in the Buddha...
Li Xiaoran said, "I plan to go in and take a look!"
Seeing Li Xiaoran's firm look, Huang Xiuhua didn't know how to dissuade him, so he nodded helplessly and said, "Okay, then I'll go with you!"
"You want to go too?" Li Xiaoran was stunned.
"What can I do? You can't stay where you are, right?"
Huang Xiuhua spread his hands and said, "I'm not afraid of ten thousand, but I'm afraid of it! What if I'm in danger just after you leave? Who can protect me?"
Li Xiaoran then reacted, smiled embarrassedly, and said, "I forgot about this... Then let's go together!"
Li Xiaoran's current true qi cultivation is in the real palace realm, and he is also a little master in the world. Even if he encounters any danger, he thinks that there is no problem to escape with Huang Xiuhua.
So the two took out some rag strips from the bamboo basket, sprinkled the fire water on the rag strips, and found a thick wooden stick, tied the strips to one end of the wooden stick, took out a fire fold and lit it, and a simple torch was completed like this.
"Miss Huang, follow me and be careful!"
Li Xiaoran held up a torch and explored the way in front.
The cave was very deep. After the two of them walked for a short distance, the light outside could no longer be shining in. They could only rely on a small ball of light emitted from the torch in their hands to explore the way.
"Look at the ground!"
Li Xiaoran bent down and put the torch closer to the ground.
Under the illumination of the small light source, the two of them saw a few car marks on the ground that were deeply crushed into the soil, spreading towards the depths of the cave...!
Chapter completed!