Chapter 21 Qinling Mountain’s Sacred Tree

Since I fired the homemade gun with my left hand and it had a monstrous recoil, the place between my thumb and forefinger now felt numb and I couldn’t lift my hand at all. Fortunately, the shot had such an amazing effect that even Lao Yang almost stumbled in fright, and those rats immediately retreated, no longer daring to attack rashly.

Seeing this opportunity, I quickly urged Lao Yang to hurry up. The gun was very powerful at close range, but the number of bullets was limited. Even if one shot could kill ten of those rats, it was still far from enough. Moreover, there was no telling if another shot would have as good of an effect as the first shot.

While I was busy thinking, I found that we had already retreated to the center of the pit. I looked down and saw that there was a dark hole in the ground, and a layer of bricks was faintly visible below the soil’s surface. Lao Yang forcefully shoved Master Liang into the hole. Once the older man was halfway inside, Lao Yang loosened his grip and let Master Liang fall. Then, Lao Yang put his hands on either side of the hole and lowered himself down.

I was bringing up the rear, so I waited for Lao Yang to give me the all-clear before I copied him and lowered myself down as well.

As it turned out, the drop was only about half a person’s height. When I felt my feet touch the ground, I flicked my lighter on and saw that Lao Yang was anxiously waiting for me to come down while Master Liang was lying off to one side. I didn’t know whether he was dead or alive.

I handed the lighter to Lao Yang and asked him to find something that we could use as a light source. Then, I picked up some ancient weapons that were lying on the ground and tried to use them to block the opening so that the rats couldn’t get in.

Lao Yang found some torches on the nearby wall and immediately lit them. As our surroundings brightened, I took a look around and found that we were in a stone chamber that had obviously been built in the style of the Serpent Kingdom. All of the walls in the chamber were made of stone and covered in colorful murals while the stones on the ceiling were inlaid with blue bricks. Due to the humidity, there were traces of mildew almost everywhere we looked.

The stone chamber was very small and didn’t have any funerary objects, but there were some weapons and tools lying around. I didn’t see a coffin in the center of the chamber, but there were traces on the floor that a coffin had once stood there.

In addition, after taking a cursory look around, I didn’t see any corridors leading to other places. I couldn’t help but wonder if this ancient tomb that the dead outside wanted to protect so badly was just a big area in the back with nothing inside of it.

A wave of hot air suddenly blew into the chamber from above, reminding us that there was a limited amount of oxygen in this place. The heat also caused the colors on the murals to become more and more vibrant until we couldn’t look at them anymore. We all knew that staying here could save our lives for a while, but it definitely wasn’t a long-term solution.

I took a few sips of water and then went to see how Master Liang was doing. When I touched his forehead, I found that his whole body was hot and his breathing was very weak—these were symptoms of hyperthermia. I quickly poured the remaining half of my canteen water down his throat while Lao Yang pinched his philtrum a few times. After a few minutes, he finally seemed to come to his senses a little bit.

The rats outside had gone completely crazy by this point and were shrieking around the entrance to the grave robbers’ tunnel as they tried desperately to come in. But luckily, the sharp bronze weapons I had placed there were keeping them from entering.

Lao Yang circled around the chamber a few times and realized that there wasn’t an exit, so he asked me if there was also a secret passage here. If there wasn’t, then we’d definitely turn into human jerky this time.

I looked around the chamber again. The place was so small that it was clear to see at a glance that there was hardly any room to set up a mechanism. But just as I was about to tell him this, there suddenly came a loud crashing sound and then something at the entrance to the grave robbers’ tunnel collapsed—one of the rats had actually chewed through one of the bricks and tried to squeeze its way through the gap. But the rat’s head was too big and it ended up getting stuck between two bricks.

It appeared that the rats, seeing that they couldn’t gnaw through the bronze weapons, immediately turned their attention to the loose blue bricks around them. I knew right away that the situation wasn’t good—although the blue bricks were also very sturdy, they weren’t on par with metal. As long as the rats continued trying to desperately chew their way through them, there was a chance they’d succeed.

I picked up a spear and pushed the rat back before shouting at Lao Yang to come and help me. He hurriedly took off his jacket and used another spear to stuff it into the recently created gap.

But his jacket didn’t work at all. Within a few seconds, the rats gnawed a giant hole through the fabric and then a dozen of them rushed into the chamber, crawling down along our spear poles.

Expecting them to attack us, we quickly dropped the spears and retreated, but to our surprise, the rats jumped to the ground and rushed towards one of the corners.

When Lao Yang saw this, he suddenly seemed to realize something and shouted, “Old Wu, they’re looking for a way to escape! Let’s follow them!”

We rushed over and found that there was an inconspicuous rat hole at the base of the wall. When we knelt down and looked, we saw that there appeared to be an open space behind the wall.

Lao Yang, without saying a word, picked up a bronze hammer from the ground, raised it above his head, and smashed it against the wall as hard as he could. After only one hit, the slate cracked and a hole the size of a human head appeared in the wall. We both leaned in to take a look and saw that there was another stone chamber behind the wall.

“Holy shit!” Lao Yang cried out. “So in order to find the secret passage here, you have to smash your way through!” He used the hammer a few more times to make the hole bigger and then the two of us grabbed Master Liang and climbed in.

There weren’t any decorations in this adjacent stone chamber, but there was a square well in the center of the room that led to a deeper place below. There was no water in the well, and the rats jumped into it without stopping.

The sound of brick cracking could be heard coming from the stone chamber behind us. Looking back, I saw that the lead used to seal the seams in the bricks had softened and was starting to flow—the stone chamber was going to collapse soon. Lao Yang and I steeled our hearts—if we died, then so be it—gritted our teeth, and followed the rats into the old well.

The well had a slight slope to it so I slid all the way down before landing heavily and rolling. After eventually coming to a stop on flat ground, I figured that Lao Yang and Master Liang were right behind me so I quickly moved to the side. Sure enough, Lao Yang crashed into the spot where I had just been sitting and Master Liang was only a few seconds behind him. When the older man landed right on top of him, Lao Yang let out a strange yelp.

There was a sudden roar from above, and then a violent tremor—the fire had finally caused the stone chamber to collapse. Flaming hot stones came rolling down the well and nearly hit us.

Lao Yang sat up with his head in his hands and asked me, “What is this place?”

I held up the torch that Lao Yang had brought from the stone chamber and turned to take in our surroundings. We were still in the square well, but we were now in a horizontal shaft that branched out in various directions. “It’s the ancient tomb’s drainage well,” I said. “It’s part of the drainage system.”

Lao Yang looked around at the complicated system of passages and asked, “So where do we go now?”

I looked at him while thinking to myself, how should I know? But at this time, a few rats slid down the well, jumped over Lao Yang’s shoulders, and ran into the passage in front of us.

Trusting my instincts, I said to him, “Follow them!” Then I chased after them.

The rats were crawling so fast that we could hardly keep up with them as they quickly led us past several turns. We frantically followed behind them for more than ten minutes before we suddenly felt a breeze blowing in front of us and then all of the rats disappeared. I didn’t even have time to register what was going on before the ground beneath my feet suddenly disappeared and I rolled out of the drainage well.

I didn’t know what kind of environment was awaiting me outside of the drainage well, so I quickly rolled over and stood up. At this time, Lao Yang and Master Liang also fell out of the well. Our surroundings were pitch black so I hurriedly raised the torch and looked around.

Now that everything was suddenly illuminated clearly, I realized that we weren’t in a tomb chamber, but at the bottom of a huge circular well that was more than sixty meters in diameter. The bottom was sunken into a deep pit, and there were several pyres located around the well. I went up and lit a few of them to make the surroundings even brighter.

There were obvious signs of excavation on the sides of the wall, which meant that this circular well was man-made. But why did they dig so deep? Was this also part of the stone quarry cave above?

I could vaguely make out some huge thing standing in the center of the pit, but there wasn’t enough light to see it clearly. Not only was this place very hot, but there was a scalding wind beating down on us from above that made us dizzy and unable to stand on steady feet.

I lifted the torch up and led the way to the pit with Lao Yang following behind, carrying Master Liang on his back. Under the torchlight, the scene in the pit became much clearer.

It was full of those stone figurines with human heads that we had seen outside. There were almost a hundred of them, and all of their heads had been mummified. That huge thing I had seen standing in the middle of the pit turned out to be a giant bronze pillar that was about ten meters in diameter. At first glance, I thought it was a curved bronze wall that went straight up to unattainable heights.

The bottom of this bronze pillar was inserted straight into the stone at the bottom of the pit, as if it had grown from there. Even the rock surrounding it had numerous cracks.

There were many small bronze rods of varying thicknesses on the bronze pillar that looked very similar to the one that Lao Yang was carrying. I didn’t know how many were actually on the pillar, but I figured there had to be more than a thousand of them. The shape of the entire bronze pillar was like that of a big tree growing out of a stone, with flourishing branches reaching for the surface above.

When Master Liang saw it, he looked like he was frozen in shock. Then he climbed off of Lao Yang’s back and said to us, “The people who built this place must have wanted to dig this bronze tree up. You guys saw the excavation marks on the walls here, right? It looks like they dug to the bottom of the mountain but didn’t find the base of this thing. There’s no telling how deep this bronze pillar is buried in the ground.”

I also felt chills when I looked at it. Such a huge metal ware went far beyond the limits of the ancients’ smelting abilities at that time. The She people simply didn’t have that kind of technology. But if they weren’t the ones who cast it, then who put this bronze tree here? Did it really grow from hell?

At this time, Master Liang suddenly tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to look and found that Lao Yang, who had remained silent this whole time, was staring fixedly at the bronze tree and walking straight towards it.

<Chapter 20><Table of Contents><Chapter 22>

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Ha, little Monty Python reference for you guys. I am SO SORRY that I went MIA this week. I’ve been doing OT for months now but this week was OT from hell and I’m pretty sure my brain was jello after doing 10+ hour days 5 days in a row (how do people do this on the reg? It’s exhausting). Anyways, I managed to get this chapter out before I go MIA for the holiday weekend (I know, I know. I’m terrible, I’m sorry. But know that I love you guys lol). Hope everyone has a good weekend and gets to see some cool fireworks ♡(>ᴗ•)