Wu Xie promised to double the bonuses to these guys when the fight was over, and Nie Xiaoba and the others were naturally happy when they returned to Hangzhou.
After the fat man woke up, Wu Xie told him what he had speculated before going to bed last night.
The fat man hesitated and said: "Innocent, if you ask me, this is not another trick brought about by your third uncle who cheated your nephew even if he didn't pay for it with his life."
Wu Xie glared at him, "Nonsense, my third uncle's surname is Wu and not Zhang. Besides, five or six hundred years ago, our ancestors of the Wu family didn't know where they were."
"That's right." The fat man clicked his tongue, "Then it was probably done by the Zhang family's seniors to deceive their own descendants. Originally, it was wooden fish that was deceived, but the two of us bumped into each other."
Wu Xie's voice lowered, "Whether it's a trap or not, we have to take this step."
The atmosphere suddenly calmed down, and the fat man patted his shoulder and sighed.
No one noticed that behind them, near the corner, there was a very small touch of fiery red, which flashed from behind the backpacks piled in the corner.
After entering the staircase passage, everyone kept moving forward. At first, the stone path was downward, but after walking for more than ten minutes, the stone path suddenly turned into a slope almost perpendicular to the ground, with an oval-shaped pit going down.
Everyone jumped into the pit and saw a lot of dried mud on the ground. There were also many messy crawling marks on the walls. There were also traces of black ash that had been burned and smoked by the fire. There was also a very strange smell inside.
The taste is burnt, fishy and smelly.
Wu Xie sniffed it carefully and felt that it seemed familiar, but he couldn't remember it for a while.
He asked the fat man, and the fat man said he was familiar with it, "No, no, we must have smelled this smell somewhere, but we just can't remember it."
Seeing this, several of the waiters sniffed around with their noses raised. A young waiter named A Zhai suddenly thought of something, "This seems to be the smell of burning realgar."
After being reminded by A Zhai, Wu Xie suddenly remembered that when they were in the snake swamp, they had burned a large amount of realgar. The already stinking smell was mixed with the moisture of the swamp and the burnt gas of the charcoal fire, and finally came out.
That's how it tastes.
"Someone has burned realgar here!" The fat man was a little surprised. "Looking at the blackened area, could it be that there were snakes here before? They were all burned to death."
Wu Xie's first reaction was that there were pheasant necks here, but they had not seen any snakes or snake sloughs along the way, which showed that the man had completely eliminated the snakes here, and no snake species remained.
There were no patterns on the stone walls and no other useful clues were found, so they continued moving forward.
The next section of the road was the same as before, with a downhill section followed by a deep pit. After walking for nearly two hours, the previous section of the road finally began to rise significantly.
There was sporadic light ahead, and this section of the stone path began to feel moist. There were little drops of water on the walls, and there was also a lot of water in the small pits in the gaps between the stone slabs on the ground.
When the stone path reached here, the height that was originally only about 1.5 meters suddenly increased a lot, and they were finally able to straighten up and walk.
When they got closer, they discovered that the top of the stone wall in front of them was actually a square, prison-like fence. It was as thick as the mouth of a bowl, and they were all made of small pillars made of stone.
After so many years of wind and rain, it is still standing there solidly. Most of the gaps in the stone fence have been blocked by dry branches and soil washed in by water from outside. Light penetrates through that little gap.
The fat man looked at it and suddenly said as if he had a sudden realization: "I understand, the place we are staying in now is actually the sewer that the Eternal Life Kingdom used to carry water."
Turning around, he found Wu Xie looking at him with speechless eyes. The fat man added: "Either this is a place specially set up by King Gu to hold something. Look at these small stone pillars. They are so strong."
Nie Xiaoba volunteered to go up and have a look. Dafu was the strongest among the guys, so he let Nie Xiaoba step on his back and stood up to look at the stone pillars.
Wu Xie did not speak, but slowly stroked the stone wall with one hand. Suddenly he felt that a stone brick under his hand was a little loose. He immediately motioned everyone to step back, and then used the big white dog's leg to hit the stone brick hard.
Go down.
After a dull sound, the originally heavy stone fence began to slowly shrink into the ground, and all the gravel and rotten branches blocking the outside poured in, hitting the ground like a waterfall.
There was also some rotten animal bone hair mixed in, and all the stench that had been accumulated underneath was brought out.
The fat man shouted about biological and chemical weapons, and everyone hurriedly put on gas masks and retreated further back.
The smell of rancid fermentation persisted in the passage for a long time. The fat man's voice was muffled in his mask, "Fat man just said that this damn thing is a sewer. If you still don't believe it, please open your eyes this time."
Wu Xie looked at the dirt accumulated at the entrance of the passage and frowned. When the rotten things poured in, a thought suddenly came to his mind, "Fat man, I suddenly feel that you are right."
The fat man was a little surprised, "I was just making this up, don't take it seriously."
Wu Xie said, "Coming this way, do you think this place looks like a place dedicated to raising something?"
Raising things? The fat man remembered the smell of realgar he had smelled earlier, and his eyes widened suddenly, "Holy crap, could it be that all the animals raised here before were snakes? Pheasant necks!"
Wu Xie nodded, "Judging from the clues we have so far, this is indeed the case. This fence with a mechanism is a feeding port. It is for the convenience of dropping prey down and feeding the contents inside."
As he said this, he avoided the dirt on the ground and carefully scraped off some light yellow scaly powder with his big white dog's leg. He took a closer look with his flashlight, took out his lighter and pointed it at the small ball of powder, and a flame burst out, puff.
It was lit on fire at once.
"This is a mixture of pine oil and an animal fat. Applying it to the wall will make it very smooth. At such a height, it is basically impossible for the snakes kept inside to climb up." Wu Xie said.
The fat man couldn't help but clicked his tongue, "My dear, no wonder there is so much dried mud in front of you. It seems that this place used to be a wet swamp pit specially made for raising snakes."
Another point similar to the Kingdom of the Western Queen, the truth is getting closer and closer to them.
Nie Xiaoba and others used shovels to clean up the fallen sludge to one side, and then climbed out of the opening, hanging the rope, and everyone climbed up one by one.
After hiding in the dark and humid underground for a day and a night, I finally saw the sun.
There were many ancient trees near the exit, blocking out the sky and the sun. They had entered a deeper part of the primitive jungle.
After checking the direction of the compass, everyone took a short rest, left a mark, and then continued moving forward.
After walking for half an hour, some traces of buildings were revealed in the bushes ahead. The fallen leaves here were very thick. The small temple was buried until only a few edge tiles were left in the corner. There was a large elm tree of considerable age that penetrated the roof of the temple.
Grow directly from the inside.
Elm trees are very easy to propagate. As long as the elm drops fall into a certain gap like a dandelion and there is enough rain, a small elm sapling will soon grow in that place.
The large elm tree growing through the top of the tree most likely grew in this way.
Nie Xiaoba said that the temple here was not the mountain temple he had seen before. Wu Xie speculated that it might be covered on the surface to hide it from others, and the real Ksitigarbha Temple was hidden here.
Everyone cleared an area on the tile roof, removed the tiles close to the tree trunk, and made a half-meter-diameter hole close to the tree.
Although the temple is small, it is built very carefully. According to the feeling under your feet, the beams are relatively stable. They may be stone beams. This is a real ancient tomb repair method.
The fat man said that Wu Xie was the leader all the way, and this time he came to explore the way.
Wu Xie turned on the lamp and looked down. There was only the sound of water drops falling inside, and no snake was seen. However, he still handed a safety buckle to the fat man and asked him to hang it around his neck.
"Be careful."
"You're looking down on me, Fatty. What's wrong with such a small corner? Don't worry." The fat man responded and slid down the rope.
Hearing only a huge splash into the water, Wu Xie hurriedly looked down and asked, "Are you okay?"
The fat man scolded me underneath, "What a bastard, what's really special underneath is tree roots and water, and the strings look like human hands. It's all white. I was shocked. I thought they were all special."
Floating corpse."
Wu Xie was relieved and laughed at him, "Did your big ass get submerged?"
When Nie Xiaoba and the others heard this, they immediately burst into laughter.
The fat man was furious, "Fat Master, I am here to clear the way for you, lest you Southern bastards dare to laugh at the fat man's hot butt."
Wu Xie laughed and scolded, "You are so poor, just tell me how deep it is down there."
"It's not very deep. It only reaches the top of Fatty's thighs. Oh my god, it's so cool. It's all rain. Come down quickly." Fatty said.
Seeing this, Wu Xie no longer hesitated. He jumped down the rope and fell into the water. He stepped on a slippery tree root and almost fell over. The splash of water hit the fat man in the face.
The fat man quickly gave him a hand with quick eyesight and laughed unceremoniously.
Wu Xie stood up straight and found that the water was up to his waist. He immediately looked at the fat man angrily.
The fat man said with a swish, "Oh, I thought you had long legs."
Just when Wu Xie was about to scold him for being a liar, the fat man suddenly shined his flashlight to one side, shook it slightly towards a place protruding from the water, and lowered his voice, "Shh, naive, look, there is something good there.
"
Wu Xie looked over and found that the place where the water had not yet flooded was a high stone platform, on which was enshrined a stone statue of a strange species composed of a scorpion and a snake lying on the stone platform.
Like the eight-petaled plum blossom, the tail ends of the nine snakes are connected to something like a turntable, and the scorpions on the upper body are also in anthropomorphic shapes, with the raised pincers pointing upwards.
Obviously, the meaning of these scorpions in this posture is the same as that of the guide figurines seen earlier, as if they were expecting something to fall from the sky.
The two of them were silent for a while, but suddenly they heard that besides the sound of water drops and their breathing, there was a faint sound of exhalation.
Wu Xie looked at the fat man, and the two looked at each other to confirm that neither of them had heard anything.
Wu Xie was afraid that the pheasant's neck was imitating human breathing, so he immediately lit a light above to signal Nie Xiaoba and the others not to come down for the time being.
Wu Xie pulled out the big white dog leg inserted in the scabbard at his waist. The fat man held the gun. The two of them quietly and slowly moved in the water towards the place where the shallow breathing sound came from.
.
When they got closer, they discovered that there were six or seven cocoons entangled in tree vines hanging from the beam boat behind the strange stone statue. They were dark, oval-shaped, and covered with white spider webs.
The eyes of Wu Xie and Wu Xie were focused on the latest cocoon of Vine Leaf. The sound of breathing came from here, and there was obviously a living thing inside.
The fat man silently made a gesture of swimming forward on his palm, meaning to ask him if this was a snake cocoon with little snake babies inside.
Wu Xie held his breath and sniffed closer. He didn't smell the sticky smell that belonged to a snake, so he gestured back to him. He wasn't sure, it was probably not the smell.
"Then get it out of the way. If it's a mule or a horse, you'll know if it's a mule or a horse." After the fat man finished speaking, he held the flashlight to Wu Xie, climbed up the stone statue and approached the tree cocoon, preparing to cut off the vines bit by bit with the blade.
The tree vines were wrapped so tightly that you couldn't see what was inside through the gaps.
Just when Fatty was about to make a move, Wu Xie suddenly stopped him, "Fatty, don't move yet!"
"What's wrong?" Fatty didn't know why.
Wu Xie reminded him, "Don't act rashly. Put on the gas mask. This tree vine is Trachelospermum vine, and the juice inside is poisonous. If it accidentally splashes into your mouth, it will cause dizziness and diarrhea, and it will also affect your heart."
The fat man quickly retracted his hand, took the mask and rubber gloves from Wu Xie, put them on, and then started cutting carefully.
Trachelospermia is very tough. It took the fat man a long time to cut a hole. Just when he tilted his head to see what was inside, a ball of white stuff suddenly fell out, which almost frightened the fat man.
"Damn, let's do a surprise attack."
The thing fell straight into the water. Wu Xie carefully went over to check and found that the naked thing turned out to be a person!
Moreover, he was a man whose joints were removed and his limbs were twisted behind his back to resemble a reptile.
Wu Xie used the tip of the knife to lift the man's hair covering his face. When he saw the man's face clearly, he exclaimed, "Tie Tuo!"
"What?" The fat man was also shocked. There was nothing else in the cocoon, so he jumped down from the stone statue in a hurry.
When Nie Xiaoba and the others heard this, they jumped in one after another and said anxiously: "Why is Tie Tuo here? Wasn't he taken away by the mandrill?"
Seeing Tie Tuo's miserable appearance, Dafu was filled with grief and asked cautiously, "Little Third Master, Tie Tuo, is Tie Tuo still alive?"
Wu Xie's face darkened, "He's still alive, but if he can't be sent to the hospital immediately, his arm will be completely disabled."
Tie Tuo's two shoulders were torn open by sharp claws, and the ligaments and muscles inside were messed up. Most importantly, the two shoulder blades were missing.
