Chapter 122: Main text Chapter 123: Strange Bottom Cave

Main text Chapter 123: Strange Bottom Cave

I retorted to Shirley Yang: "We three are getting smaller and smaller? Where does this come from?"

Shirley Yang said to me: "Nearby objects that can serve as reference, including plants and insects, as well as a large number of petrified ancient trees, are extraordinarily huge, so I wondered whether there is something mysterious in this gourd-shaped cave that gradually shrinks the bodies of those who enter."

This sounds utterly fantastical; we are currently drifting in the boundless underground water, and it's hard to tell for now. I said to Shirley Yang: "Even if our bodies might be shrinking, could clothes and shoes shrink as well? I think here, due to the special environment, the formed ecosystem is larger than the outside world."

However, I said this with no confidence at all; this cave really resembles the red gourd in the mountain god temple: the mouth is small, the belly big, and it forms a trumpet-like arc, the walls gradually widen as you go deeper, with no signs of artificial carving, completely natural. It might be a relic older than the Xian King's Tomb; locals may have regarded the gourd-shaped cave as a holy site, hence enshrining a gourd effigy in the mountain god temple. As for whether this cave truly has any peculiarity, it's hard to say, after all we are now in total darkness, our visible range only about twenty meters, making it hard to notice changes in ourselves or the slightly distant environment.

Nearby insects are many times larger than normal, especially the petrified trees from the primordial era, which are frighteningly huge; each trunk thrusts out of the water, teeth bared and claws waving, entwined with the vines hanging down above, like the monstrous claw of an ancient dragon.

I thought we should find some plant-like targets to use as reference, to confirm that our bodies haven't gradually shrunk from entering this gourd-shaped cave; otherwise we couldn't continue forward, so we'd better retreat along the original route first and then reconsider.

However, the thickness of those old vines is almost the same as a human body, and such thick vines also exist in the outside jungle, so we cannot use vines and plant rhizomes as reference; the most direct method now is to dive into the water and check the size of nearby aquatic plants, those algae have their own unique attributes and do not vary in size with environmental changes; under any circumstances they are roughly the same.

But when I think of that female corpse that suddenly appeared and then vanished underwater, like a ghost, I feel a bit uneasy. For now I can only hang the safety lock on the inflation bag, greet Pangzi and Shirley Yang, and tell them to temporarily hold back from moving forward while I go underwater to check the situation.

I lowered the diving mask on my mountaineering helmet, gritted my teeth and plunged into the dark water; the tactical searchlight on the helmet should have a fifteen-meter range even underwater, but here the underground water is full of impurities, with lots of plankton, microorganisms, and algae plants, reducing visibility to the extreme—less than five meters.

The water is deep, I can't touch the bottom; I feel it's not yet time to use oxygen, so relying on my own swimming ability I hold my breath and keep going underwater. Through the diving mask, the underwater world looks even more blurred. In the darkness I vaguely see a large dark mass slowly drifting on the bottom; due to lack of light I can only tell it's about the size of a wheel, but I can't tell whether it's an underwater animal or some kind of aquatic plant.

At that moment the dark mass underwater drew nearer to me; I thought fish don't have such a shape, so it must be some kind of aquatic plant—perhaps algae tangled together into this huge clump; if even the algae are this big, we're really in big trouble.

Thinking this, I reached out my hand toward that black mass, ready to grab a handful to examine up close whether it was a big clump of algae; but as soon as I extended my hand, it suddenly lunged forward, darting diagonally toward the water surface above my head, stopping at a position one or two meters below the surface, lying in wait there silently.

When that wheel-shaped object moved underwater, I could see clearly it wasn't a big clump of algae; when contracted it looked round and plump, and when swimming it extended two bowed hind legs and forelimbs, its body entwined with much algae—it turned out to be a huge red-backed toad, and there seemed to be not just this one but many more, all gathered around a meter below the water surface; in the dark mass of the bottom it's hard to tell how many such large toads there are, nor whether there might be something even larger.

How could there be such a huge toad? Startled, I almost swallowed a mouthful of groundwater, feeling I couldn't hold my breath any longer, and had no mind to keep diving to look for algae plants; I hurriedly surfaced, breaking the water. As soon as my head broke the surface I took a deep breath and told Pangzi and Shirley Yang: "There's something down there; we need to get out of here fast, first climb onto that fallen petrified big tree."

On the water surface of this underground cavern lies the fossilized remains of an ancient forest; some of the large tree fossils, due to natural causes, have collapsed and broken; those fallen fossil trees lie horizontally across the surrounding fossils, not sunk to the bottom, and amidst the dense fossil forest they form natural stone bridges.

Not far ahead we just happened to have exactly such a fossilized old trunk lying horizontally on the water, caught by the surrounding fossils, with many branches on the trunk.

The three of us hastily put the weapons we had just taken out back into the waterproof bags, then quickly swam toward that fallen fossil tree. When we got close, Shirley Yang first reached out and grabbed a branch of the fossil tree; I and Pangzi supported her feet, helping her climb up onto the fallen fossil trunk; then I followed and climbed up as well, lowering the climbing rope for Pangzi; Pangzi, still in the water, rapidly released the air from the inflation bag, used the climbing rope to sling his backpack onto himself, I pulled and hauled, getting Pangzi onto the trunk as well, and finally hoisted the equipment backpack up.

After my foot touched a stone, I felt a little more at ease, but we three still dared not relax; we quickly retrieved our weapons from the waterproof bags at top speed, and Pangzi asked me: "Just one Li Xiangyang scared you into this state—what exactly is down there in the water?"

Shirley Yang also asked me: "Did you see that female corpse sunk in the water?"

I pointed at the water surface and said: "No Li Xiangyang, no female corpse—underwater there are huge toads, that is, giant toads, as big as a cartwheel, the smaller ones the size of a bean; damn it, the bumpy spots on their backs contain many poison glands; we must absolutely avoid contact with them, otherwise once poisoned we'd be in 120% danger."

Shirley Yang raised her wolf-eye flashlight and swept the beam over the water surface where we had just been staying. It was now quiet, only the ripples from our rapid swimming remained; beneath the dark, deep water surface nothing special could be seen. Shirley Yang glanced twice, then turned to me and said: "In past experiments we often used toads. I recall this animal should hide during the day in damp, shady soil, under stones or in grass clumps, and come out to act at dusk and night; how could it appear in such deep water, did you missee?"

I shook my head and said: "To be honest, such a huge toad—I'm seeing it for the first time today, but I'm absolutely sure I didn't missee; I think your stick-to-the-rules approach may not apply here—I was underwater and within three meters of that giant toad, seeing it very clearly. They float not far below the surface; I don't know what they're up to, but I worry it's unfavorable for us, which is why I urged you to climb up here quickly. Anyway, let's first get a clear look before we talk; I always feel that this petrified forest submerged in groundwater has some spots that just aren't right."

Pangzi suddenly made a hushing gesture, indicating we should look ahead not far off. The area where the moying mosquitoes gather, countless mosquito-like moying insects are emitting a piercing "buzzzz" noise; it's extremely close to where we landed, and even with the wolf-eye flashlight we can see it clearly—since those insect-wall-like moying have no eyes, they aren't sensitive to the flashlight's light, still swarming like headless flies around the spots where plant stems and roots are densest.

Shirley Yang whispered to us: "The plants on the ground are overly dense, causing a shortage of nutrients and moisture, so the downward-extending plants desperately grow downward to grab water, in order to directly contact the groundwater here; those flying insects……they seem to be gathering there to lay eggs."

Just now when I dove into the water I found many large fish; these fish differ from the blind fish that always live in underground environments, as they have eyes, indicating that this underground water, although it flows through the cavern, is actually clear water connected to the outside world.

However, the environment here is too unique; plants and insects constitute independent ecosystems. It's not necessarily true that just because there is clear water that reaches the outside world we should be able to follow the flow and reach the vicinity of the main burial chamber of the Xian King's Tomb.

The pressing matter now is to figure out whether this huge cave, which strongly resembles a gourd shape, actually causes our bodies to gradually shrink the deeper we go, or whether it's merely due to the gourd-shaped cavern's unique trumpet-like terrain—space enlarges inward—and the large plants and insects growing in this special environment create an illusion, making us mistakenly think our bodies are shrinking.

Suddenly a commotion arose on the water surface: numerous foot-long tongues shot out from below with lightning speed, striking the large moying on the surface; a tongue flicks out and wraps around ten moying, then countless big mouths immediately surface, swallowing those moying ensnared by the blood-red tongues—turns out the large toads lurking beneath the surface, having awaited the right moment, all leapt out of the water to prey on the swarming masses of moying gathered together.

At this moment the water surface in front of the fossil tree turned into a chaotic stew; as the toads' huge mouths opened and closed, countless moying had already lost their lives; those monstrous toads, each astonishingly huge, had eyes like two red lamps, thickly packed, making it impossible to count exactly how many there were.

We three lay prone on the fallen fossil tree, seeing the pustular poison glands on the backs of those huge toads, we instantly felt nauseated to the point of not wanting to look any further; we lowered our bodies as much as possible, kept our heads down to avoid seeing the water surface, hoping those toads would quickly finish eating and disperse, so we could go back underwater, advance swiftly, leave this strange cavern, and reach our final destination before dawn.

When I lowered my head, I noticed many tiny sand holes on the trunk of the fossil tree; this fossil tree has been soaked in water for millions of years, eroded by the flow into countless sand holes, and I fear it won't withstand our three persons' main rations—it might break apart.

So I turned off the wolf-eye flashlight in my hand, switched on the more energy-saving searchlight on the mountaineering helmet, then greeted Shirley Yang and Pangzi with a gesture, leading the two of them forward to a relatively flat stone platform on the left side.

The stone platform on the left side is quite solid and stable, its area not small, easily accommodating the three of us; amidst this forest of intersecting fossil branches, this square stone platform stands out as somewhat distinct, its neat four‑by‑four layout clearly showing signs of human carving, though its surface and surroundings are covered with vines and a lot of wet moss.

I said to Shirley Yang and Pangzi: "I don't know whether this place is a leftover from the construction of the Xian King's Tomb; if it is, what was it used for? Could it be related to the female corpse we saw underwater?"

Pangzi said: "Even if you're blind as a bat you can see this is a man‑made stone platform; earlier when we were foraging we saw a burial trench all made of ivory, so there's an eighty percent chance this place is also where precious grave goods were laid out." Having said that, he pulled out an entrenching shovel and began to scrape off the moss and plants on the stone platform, wanting to see whether there was a hidden chamber below for storing funerary objects.

Seeing Pangzi already working without regard for anything else, Shirley Yang and I could only help by providing light; not far away those huge toads were still voraciously devouring moying, churning the water with loud noises, and it seemed it wouldn't be finished anytime soon.

Pangzi worked like the wind; in the blink of an eye he had cleared away a small half of the stone platform, revealing beneath not any stone mechanism box but a series of carvings, one after another, with complex composition and abundant information; yet a single glance suffices to know that these reliefs record some ancient secret sacrificial rite—a rite we have never seen before, extremely bizarre and full of mysterious color, the ceremony taking place inside this gourd, and this stone platform is a special altar.