Chapter 156: A New Mark

I couldn't clearly recall the appearance of the symbol in the Underwater Tomb, but I still vividly remembered the two symbols carved at the bottom of the moat and the entrance of the passageway just now. This current symbol was completely different from those two.

Fatty and Panzi had no concept of English letters at all; as long as it was English, they couldn't tell the difference, so they hadn't paid attention just now. But I, who had attended college and taken the CET-4 and CET-6 exams, though my grades were poor, at least knew that these two were different words.

I had always thought this was simply a guiding symbol, similar to any simple graphic, meaning only "go this way." But if it was simply for guidance, the symbol shouldn't change. According to general human psychology, after entering a tomb passage, one's attention should be completely on the surrounding environment; when carving a symbol, one wouldn't intentionally change the pattern, and the symbol was also carved very hastily, indicating that the person who left the mark was not doing it in a very relaxed situation. This also ruled out the possibility that he changed the symbol on a whim.

Now there was only one reason for this phenomenon: these symbols had different meanings. While guiding the way, they also seemed to be telling us some information.

The question was, what information was it? This foreign text wasn't real foreign text, but it was composed of English letters forming words; it was really hard to tell what language it was. But common similar languages like German or French were definitely not it, because the arrangement of letters was too irregular.

Moreover, the symbol we saw at the bottom of the moat and the entrance of the passageway—after entering, we encountered no danger. So if we assumed its meaning was "safe to enter," then this different symbol now, carved here, must have a different meaning. It might

Fatty and the others also found something off about my idea after hearing it, so we stopped where we were, not daring to make any rash moves for the time being.

However, reaching this point was already a considerable breakthrough—we could say we were halfway to success. At this moment, the question of which way to go in the tomb passage didn't seem important; even without the symbols to guide us, we weren't panicked.

But after entering the underground palace, especially the main tomb passage, we had to be extra careful about everything. Because if there were any traps or mechanisms in the ancient tomb, they would definitely be in this section. Spending some time here was necessary.

Panzi said to me, "Little Third Master, you're the only one among us with any foreign language knowledge. If even you don't recognize it, then there's no way to know. How about you translate these English letters into Chinese? Even if we don't know the meaning of the whole sentence, we can still guess, right?"

Panzi didn't know any English at all. He probably thought English was like Chinese characters, where each letter has its own meaning. I couldn't be bothered to educate him, so I said to them, "If we're going to guess, we might as well guess who left this symbol and what their purpose was. That way, the chance of figuring out its meaning is a bit higher."

Fatty said in surprise, "We don't know who left it, but do we need to guess the purpose? It's definitely to guide us, right?"

I shook my head and said, "I used to think that way too, but now it's not the case. If it were really left for us, they should at least have written symbols we could understand. The person who carved these symbols used such an obscure form. Now it seems the purpose wasn't to help us; we might just be benefiting from it by chance. This symbol was meant for someone else."

Panzi thought for a moment, found it somewhat reasonable, and then asked, "Then who is that someone else?"

"A Ning and her group have a lot of people; they might have split into teams. This symbol could be a code between their squads," Fatty said.

I nodded, indicating it was possible, but without evidence, the actual situation couldn't be guessed. I said, "It could also be for other reasons. Guessing now is useless."

What concerned me most was the information contained in this symbol. This kind of symbol should be similar to the legends on international expedition maps. Some primitive jungle paths on maps have danger level markings. A symbol not only tells you that you can go here, but also lets you know what you might encounter on this path—for example, if there are hippos in the river, there would be a code meaning 'hippo.'

Now that we reached this point, the symbol had actually changed. That made the meaning of this special symbol something we had to pay attention to. Could it indicate that there are zombies in this tomb passage? That would be really frustrating.

I thought of the "Beware of Bear" stickers on off-road vehicles. Maybe the person who left this symbol also had a theoretical approach to exploration. This symbol might mean "Beware of Zombies." Then I thought, if I could get out alive, maybe I should stick one on my Jinbei minivan to show my personality.

Panzi didn't know I was already daydreaming. He suddenly said to me, "That's not right either. I don't think the information this symbol conveys could be any kind of danger warning. Think about it: you have to walk through the tomb passage to know if there's danger. There's no reason for them to come back and carve this symbol after walking through. That means the person carved this symbol just before entering this tomb passage, indicating that they went this way, telling later people their order of movement. As for what's inside, they didn't know at the time they carved it. This actually has a name—it's called 'tracking language.'"

I had never heard of such a thing. Fatty asked him, "What's 'tracking language'?"

Panzi said, "Before I fought the Vietnamese monkeys, I took cultural classes while serving in the army. Since I was serving in the jungle, I learned a lot about rescue techniques. 'Tracking language' is when you're lost in the jungle and trying to find your own way out, you must mark your path. This marking method has specific rules. Later rescue teams, upon seeing your markers, will know what you've done in the area—for example, a marker for sufficient food, a different marker when food runs out, another marker when a team member is lost. The rescue team follows your markers and can keep track of your situation. If things get extremely bad, they can use these markers as a basis to upgrade the rescue strategy. I heard this was invented by the Americans during the Vietnam War." Fatty asked him, "You studied it, so can you read it?"

Panzi shook his head and said, "I mean maybe. This code is completely different from what I learned back then, so I can't recognize it either. But I believe this is a kind of tracking language. We don't need to decipher it. The change in this symbol might just mean he sprained his ankle here."

Fatty sighed and said, "This doesn't look good. If it really is 'tracking' language, then the person who left this symbol wasn't sure of success. He was preparing for his own second wave, which means he wasn't confident he'd make it out alive this time."

Panzi said, "Right! So after all this talk, there's no practical use. I say, since this symbol wasn't left for us, let's just pretend we didn't see this marker. Our main task now is to find Third Uncle. The symbol wasn't carved by Third Uncle, which means Third Uncle might not have taken this path. Even if we follow it and it goes smoothly, it's useless. Let's go our own way. We've robbed many tombs before and have encountered similar situations. I don't believe we can't handle just exploring a tomb passage."

This argument appealed to Fatty. He nodded in agreement and said to us, "Old Pan, now that sounds like something a human would say. How about we split into two groups? You and Little Wu go that way, and me and Little Shunzi go this way. Let's see who has the better luck. Anyway, it's a straight path. If we reach the end and find it's wrong, we can just come back. The group that took the right path can wait outside the coffin chamber. Hesitating here is not a solution."

I felt this was unwise and said, "That's true in theory, but I'm afraid this main tomb passage isn't so easy. Look at these four-foot stone slabs on the ground. This kind of passage is likely equipped with arrow traps and trapdoor mechanisms. Don't let both teams end up dying in the passage. Once we split up, it might be goodbye forever."

Fatty mocked me, "If that's how you think, you shouldn't have come. What are you doing down here if you're not up for it? Since we've entered the underground palace, we shouldn't be afraid of such trivial things."

I thought to myself, "Did I want to come? My lifelong dream has been to be a wealthy commoner. I don't know what kind of luck I've had this year—all I encounter are zombies. Now I'm not even afraid of zombies anymore, but I can't even be cautious. What kind of mess is this?"

Panzi had the same thought as me. He said to Fatty, "No, Little Third Master is right. Just for one reason: A Ning's horse team members are definitely nearby. Even if we're not guarding against zombies, we need to guard against people. Two guns' firepower is always better than one. And what if one team goes out and disappears, never coming back? What would the other team do? It's better for us to stay together, so we can watch each other's backs."

Shunzi, who had been silent all along, also spoke up: "No matter what, I must deliver Boss Wu safely. I definitely need to stay with him."

Fatty raised his hands in surrender to the three of us: "You two are practicing a personality cult. Damn it, you're isolating me. Fine, I'm outnumbered. Do whatever you say. At worst, we'll die together."

Panzi said, "Let's first go in the direction marked by the carving. If it's wrong, we'll turn back. We just need to be careful with everything."

We nodded in agreement. I understood clearly that, since things had come to this, no matter how well we discussed it here, it was useless. Which way to go and how to proceed now all depended on luck.

So we got up. Panzi pulled out a folding walking stick similar to a blind person's cane and tapped the ground as we walked toward the direction where the symbol was carved.

We walked extremely cautiously. Actually, I was already very tired of places where even walking was not peaceful, but there was no choice. Since we had come this far, we couldn't skip this step, otherwise all the previous hardships would have been in vain.

I had thought we would spend at least half an hour in this tomb passage, but unexpectedly, this section was extremely short. In less than two hundred meters, it suddenly widened, and at the end appeared a huge jade door.

I recognized at a glance that this was the door to the main chamber, because the tomb passage doors wouldn't use such good stone. The lower half of the door had been blown off, revealing a large hole. Obviously someone had already entered—whether it was A Ning and her group or someone else. I was secretly pleased; that meant we were on the right path. Behind the door was the core of the entire underground palace. My mind immediately conjured up the structure of many classic mausoleums. Although this was the imperial tomb of Dongxia, it had been built under the supervision of Han Chinese, so it probably wouldn't differ too much from Central Plains tombs. What would we see after entering? I couldn't help but feel a bit nervous. I wondered what King Wannu's coffin looked like, and whether there were any burial coffins around.

There was a ninety percent chance that the jade door of the tomb chamber had a mechanism. The stone walls on both sides were likely hollow, filled with poisonous stone powder. Moreover, there was often no way to disarm such mechanisms, because once the chamber was closed, it was never meant to be opened again. Even if you were the craftsman who designed this door, once it was shut, you couldn't enter.

However, the door had already been blown up like this, so even if there were mechanisms, they had probably been destroyed. There was no need to worry about that. We crouched down and filed in one by one through the door into the tomb chamber. To be cautious, Fatty lit a cold flare to increase our illumination, so we could see the layout of the chamber clearly at once.