Chapter 31 Superfluous Tomb Passage

We often called the thing I was holding in my hand cold fireworks, but that was actually wrong. This kind of thing was called a flame rod in the military, but we usually bought it from railway companies. In the railway business, this kind of thing was called a signal torch and it was often bought together with detonators. It would burn for about ten minutes. We called it a cold firework because many signal torches were actually cold torches that wouldn’t explode or catch fire. This batch Fatty bought was probably old railway goods.

I noticed it had burned my hair, which meant it wasn’t actually a cold firework. And if it wasn’t cold, then it was probably an underwater flame rod. The instantaneous maximum temperature it reached was 2600 degrees, so it wasn’t surprising that the murals had burned like this.

I figured the paint on these murals would volatilize when exposed to light, which could be related to the special minerals here. Painters often used red stones found in the local area to prepare their pigments. I didn’t know whether it was done intentionally or unintentionally, but the murals here definitely used this special red color.

Although it was dangerous to use a flame rod, the advantage was that it could be used as a weapon and a light. The entire mural was vaporizing right in front of me and I could clearly see the air distorting as the smell of the flame rod filled the air. At this time, I also noticed that there was the strange smell of blood. The two smells kept putting me in a trance and I had to keep slapping myself to stay awake. As I stood there in a daze, I felt as if my phone kept ringing with a new message alert, but when I looked down, I found that there was nothing there.

I thought of the several text messages in my hallucination, as well the room we had found Yang Daguang’s mummified body in. I kept feeling like something was wrong. Was it possible that I had already been poisoned in those ruins?

It wasn’t easy to think anymore, so I quickly took off my underwear and slathered it in mud before putting it over my mouth. Then, I buried flame rod in the mud and plunged my surroundings into darkness.

This kind of thing had its own oxidant, so it could continue to burn in both water and mud, but at least now the light couldn’t be seen.

I held the ancient statue’s head as I shakily climbed down. If I couldn’t walk in the mud, then there had to be something strange inside these ancient statues. There was also a chance something was hiding under the mud, so I had no choice but to take some risks.

I pulled out a detonator and hid behind the ancient statue I was holding onto. I then counted the distance and threw it out.

After throwing it with all my strength, I shrank into the mud, curled up, and silently counted, one, two… the detonator exploded before I reached three. I almost fainted as the shockwave slammed me into the mud. The left side of my body bore the brunt of it and I immediately threw up as soon as I climbed out of the mud.

The flame rod had been blown out of the mud by the explosion and landed about three or four meters away. It was still burning, but I couldn’t reach it at all. Under its light, I was able to see that another hole had been punched in the burial pit’s ceiling and gravel was raining down. I held my head, noticing that a big pit was now in the place where I had thrown the detonator. The mud had been flung in the air and landed on the eyes in the murals.

Ha! Look at me again and I’ll blow you up! I glanced at the large number of cracked murals on the ceiling, threw out three more detonators, and shrank into the mud again.

One, two, there went the next explosion. This time, the shockwave was much bigger and the earth shook. The hole from before hadn’t been completely covered by the mud before the second, third, and fourth explosions went off one right after the other. The mud was boiling hot. When the third explosion went off, I was directly thrown out of the mud by the shockwave. I rolled end over end before smacking into the mud. Then came an overwhelming flood of silt. The underwear on my face was long gone.

The ceiling completely caved in, the bottom of the burial pit collapsed, and all the mud began to surge in one direction.

There was only one sentence in my heart at this time, you’re a fucking dick. I asked Fatty to add a detonation lead time of three seconds, but there were only two. He must’ve been drunk when he did it. If it weren’t for me cherishing my life and immediately hiding after throwing that first one out, I would’ve gone bald when the detonator exploded.

I started to sink in the mud again as soon as I climbed back up. The mud on my body was steaming and I sneered at my surroundings. No matter what was hidden in these statues or in the mud, even dinosaurs wouldn’t be able to live after four detonators went off.

I struggled to turn in the mud so I could search for my underwear, but I didn’t see it at all. Well, this is embarrassing, I said to myself. I took a selfie with my cell phone and quickly checked it. I was completely covered in mud, but I was little relieved when I didn’t see anything else in the picture.

The mud started to pull me towards the hole, its force so strong that no one could resist it. I looked at the statues from before and saw that they had all been blown to pieces. I was surprised that whatever was inside didn’t come out and meet me after the statues were blown up like this. As I prepared to fall to the next floor, I gripped my knife in my teeth and got ready to fight.

Before I could react, something suddenly hung upside down from the ceiling and grabbed my equipment belt. I was just about to cut it with my knife when I heard a familiar voice say, “Don’t move!”

Then I heard Fatty call from the ceiling, “Coming up!”

My whole body was yanked out of the mud and pulled to the next level through the gap in the ceiling.

After I was thrown to the ground, the dim light of a phone screen approached me. I saw Poker-Face roll up, crouch on the ground, and look at me. Half of his tattoo was showing, which meant it must’ve taken quite a lot of effort just now.

Fatty held up his phone and asked, “Are you stupid? Were you trying to blow yourself up?”

I wiped my face and flopped to the ground while saying, “I learned it from you.”

Fatty handed me a towel, which was the one he usually tied around his hand to wipe his sweat. That smell… I reluctantly took it and asked Fatty and Poker-Face how they met up.

In fact, the three of us had been washed into the tomb passage by the mud, so it was easy to know each other’s locations. I looked into the underground burial pit and saw the mud pouring into the next level. The flame rod illuminated the whole scene in the pit, but it was soon swept down the hole. In those few minutes of light, I could see a bunch of bones buried under the mud. They weren’t human, but seemed to be the remains of horses and chariots. It turned out that this was a horse and chariot pit. When the mud level dropped, all the chariots below were exposed. It was no wonder there was such a huge drop in height just now.

Under the mud’s protection, many of these decayed Han Dynasty chariots still had the paint on them, but the axles had rotted and collapsed long ago. The whole burial pit was full of chariots and horse bones, which created a very spectacular sight. In the middle of these chariots were the thunder god statues, which looked like evil Minyue forest spirits as they were all swept away by the mud.

Fatty sighed, and Poker-Face patted us. The situation right now was unknown. Although it felt as if we had been down here a long time, it had only been a short while. We couldn’t afford to get delayed here.

“These tomb passages are all connected,” Poker-Face said. “Based on my experience, this king’s tomb isn’t that big. With the burial pit below and the drainage level below that, we know there are four levels. Based on our current location, we should be in the main tomb passage.”

I did some calculations and knew he was right. Fatty swiped some of the mud from my body and started drawing a picture on the ground. This tomb was different from Central Plains Han tombs because it was more three-dimensional. The tomb passage was above the burial pit, which meant they might be connected by stone steps. But…

I looked above my head. There was also a tomb passage up there that I had fallen down from. What was going on with this tomb?

Rules were very important in this line of work, so there had to be a special purpose for any unconventional tomb design.

Fatty also noticed my doubts and looked at the picture he had drawn, “This tomb passage is superfluous. It’s the topmost floor of the tomb and runs parallel to the main tomb passage.”

“One is abandoned.” Poker-Face looked into the depths of the tomb passage. “Maybe they dug something up and didn’t dare continue, so they readjusted the position of the tomb passage.”

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