Chapter 295: Trap

The trap: beneath this stone disk was a balancing mechanism. The weights of the pills on each star point of the star chart had been precisely calculated. The order of removal had to be strictly followed—taking the pills in a fixed sequence to avoid triggering the trap. Otherwise the balance would be immediately destroyed, the trap would tilt and pull the mechanism, causing a chain reaction. The surrounding jade figurines would instantly detach, and the blood corpses would rise.

Here could be called the most important sacred place of the Queen Mother's tribe. If this place were invaded, it would be equivalent to the core secrets of the royal clan being in danger of exposure. Thus such a terrifying trap was set here, entirely for mutual destruction.

Our current situation could be described as utterly hopeless. The cave entrance we came through was now sealed off. Everyone was trapped in this area at the bottom of the rocky cave.

Third Uncle's several men were already scared stiff. Not to mention us, even Fatty and Poker-face had lost color. This kind of formation might not have been seen even by my grandfather. In his notes he never wrote about how to manage and operate if you encountered a thousand corpses simultaneously rising. Damn it, I wonder if there's an EMBA course for tomb raiding.

At that moment, from among the mummies suddenly came a series of "cluck cluck cluck" sounds, then from another spot, and soon such sounds were everywhere. At the same time I saw the dry skin on these mummies constantly peeling off, as if they were really about to rise.

Mop looked at us and roared: "What the hell are you doing? Don't you want to think of a way? What do we do?"

Fatty cursed, picked up the gun from the ground, and said: "What do we do? Now we can just compare and see who lives the longest."

"Bullshit! I don't want to die. Think of a plan for me quickly, or I'll shoot you." That man pointed the gun over.

Fatty checked the bullets: "You can try surrendering, but it probably won't work. It's so deep here, even if God wanted to come it might not be that easy." He then moved toward the blood corpses, raised his gun and fired, making the nearest few mummies stagger. The dry skin on them was blasted off, and we saw the blue-purple corpse skin underneath. The bullets only made a notch.

I could tell Fatty had already let go. Although he still felt fear, he had accepted death in his heart. He fired three shots in a row, and only then did those men react, immediately helping. Strike first to gain the upper hand; live one minute at a time.

Fatty changed bullets as he walked over to me, pulled out a flare gun and handed it to me, saying: "Keep the light. Don't shoot upwards; shoot into their faces!"

"Upwards?" I looked up at the ceiling and suddenly had an inspiration. I remembered the story at the beginning of Grandfather's notes. What did he say?

Grandfather's first reaction back then was that these blood corpses couldn't climb trees! If they couldn't climb trees, then they definitely couldn't climb walls, and rock climbing was even less possible. Thinking this, I immediately said to them: "We need to find a way up! Go to the top of the suspended furnace. Since they could build the furnace so high with no stairs around, there must be some other way to get up there."

Suddenly everyone felt a glimmer of hope. Everyone immediately took action. Fatty yelled not to panic, those with guns should defend and buy time, those without should look.

I immediately rushed to a bronze vessel nearby. These things were as tall as a person. Climbing up would give a clear view.

But when I got up there, I immediately realized something was wrong. If there was any way to go up, we would have seen it earlier. And I knew the general design philosophy of ancient people: people don't move, the form moves. This suspended furnace wasn't built up there, but probably hoisted up. Any operation still had to be done below. That meant we couldn't get up there, because once the furnace came down we wouldn't have the strength to pull it back up.

But standing on this bronze vessel, I realized we didn't have to climb that high. As long as we climbed to a place the blood corpses couldn't reach, this bronze vessel would be enough.

Thinking this, I immediately shouted. Several people quickly reacted and all climbed onto the bronze vessel I was standing on.

Soon everyone had climbed up. On the steps, more blood corpses began to stand up. I looked and realized something was wrong: these corpses were very burly. This height wasn't enough. But there were no taller bronze vessels.

Firing from a height could only temporarily slow the approach of a few blood corpses. The mining lamp illuminated several strange faces already very close to us, and the places not lit by the lamp were even more unimaginable.

Just when we were almost in despair, Fatty shouted: "Boys, it's time to fight to the death!" He then shook out several detonators and yelled: "I'll charge through, tossing explosives along the way to blast a bloody path. You guys provide covering fire around us, and we'll rush forward."

I saw that and yelled: "Where did you get that stuff?"

"Didn't I say last time, without explosives I'd never go down a tomb again?" Fatty shouted. "My private stash."

I saw that although this method was equivalent to suicide, at least there was still a glimmer of hope. I gave a loud roar: "Let's fight!" Fatty shouted: "Only four detonators. The distance is so far. Everyone must keep up. Fall behind by even a second and there's no saving you!"

Saying that, he pulled the fuse and tossed the first detonator. I watched the smoking detonator fly into the corpse crowd and immediately ducked. Suddenly a huge blast, the shockwave lifted several blood corpses into the air. We lowered our heads to avoid the flying gravel and debris. The bronze furnace became pitted and clanged. Looking up, we saw a gap had indeed been blown open ahead.

Fatty jumped down and immediately threw the second detonator, shouting: "Charge!"

We immediately jumped off the bronze furnace. At that moment, another explosion occurred. This time without the bronze furnace as cover, rocks flew at us like bullets. Several of us were thrown back. But ignoring the sharp pain, Fatty jumped up and threw another detonator. Those with guns aimed around and immediately fired to drive back the surging blood corpses.

We kept running forward recklessly, just like a war movie. Another explosion. We threw ourselves to the ground for a second. When the blast wave passed, we sprinted again. Everyone's ears were ringing. I thought, Shangganling must have felt like this.

Fatty roared: "Last one! Charge!"

Saying that, he threw the detonator toward the stone door. This one had to blow open the stone door, or else everything we did was for nothing.

We charged forward desperately, hunching our backs to wait for the blast wave. But just as we were almost there, the detonator didn't explode. Fatty, who was in front, suddenly stopped and turned back shouting: "Sorry, miscalculation! Dud!"

The blood corpses around immediately surrounded us. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and the pungent odor unique to blood corpses. We formed a circle. I shouted: "Use a gun! Shoot that detonator!"

Fatty said: "It's blocked. Can't see it."

Just then Poker-face suddenly leaped up, stepped on Fatty's shoulder and pushed off hard, flying into the air. He pressed his knees down in mid-air, locked a blood corpse's head between them, twisted hard and wrenched its head off, then kicked the headless corpse into the pile. The headless corpse tumbled into the group and was held up by the ones behind, forming a slope. He stepped onto it and kicked all those blood corpses down, revealing the detonator behind. Fatty moved very fast—he swung his arm and fired. Instantly the detonator exploded. We were very close to the detonator at that moment, and this time we caught the full blast. Everyone was blown flying.

I was dizzy, got up and vomited. I gritted my teeth to keep from passing out. Standing up, I saw that the stone door was actually not broken—it had a big gash on top. Looking closer I realized the stone door had bronze embedded inside! It was over. I stood up, looking at the blood corpses around me, thinking it was completely over. Before I could steady myself, suddenly behind me came a tremendous sound like a morning drum or evening bell. The whole cave shook, knocking us all to the ground. The ancient corpses around also fell over in large numbers. Turning around, I saw that the huge suspended furnace we had seen earlier, due to the vibrations from the explosions, had finally snapped its hanging chains and fallen from the cave ceiling, crashing heavily into the cave floor. Its enormous weight smashed a large hole in the cave floor, and the furnace body embedded itself deeply. There seemed to be space beneath the cave floor.

The buzzing of the furnace made my head numb. The corpse crowd was closing in from one side, and several of us couldn't get up. Poker-face shouted: "Fall back! I'll lure them away."

Looking back at the path we came from, because we had blasted our way through, the blood corpses hadn't fully gathered yet. We had no choice but to retreat back. Poker-face shouted to Fatty: "Knife!"

Fatty fired his gun while tossing out a dagger. Poker-face caught it mid-air, slashed his own palm, and spread it toward the blood corpses. Instantly, as if attracted by him, all of them turned toward him. He left us and walked upward. For some reason, the blood corpses immediately followed.

We took advantage of this gap to quickly retreat to the bottom. I shouted: "What about you?"

Poker-face didn't answer me. Fatty pulled me and retreated

I grabbed his gun and yelled, "To hell with brotherhood!" I wanted to charge back, thinking how could I let him sacrifice himself. Fatty still held me back and shouted toward the other side, "Xiao Ge, we're here!"

Suddenly we saw Poker-face flip out from the crowd of blood corpses. Like a god, he stepped on the almost vertical rock wall and actually kicked himself up, then leaped out of the encirclement. Using the momentum, he rolled on the ground and flipped to a place where blood corpses were sparse. Then we saw him almost bent over, jumping close to the ground, quickly weaving through the blood corpses, and in an instant he retreated to the side of the dan furnace.

Several of Third Uncle's men were stunned by the sight. After Poker-face flipped over, he said to us, "These blood corpses haven't tasted blood yet; their joints are still stiff, unlike the one in the Lu King's Palace that was soaked in blood. Otherwise, not one of us would have escaped. Don't just stand there, see if there's a way out."

Only then did we react. We immediately saw that the dan furnace was deeply sunk into a hollow below, with cracks all around leading underground. Indeed, there was more space below. The entrance must have been covered by that stone disc, which we hadn't noticed.

With no choice now, we lay flat on the dan furnace, hooked our hands onto its patterned surface, and started climbing down.

Below was a crawl space only half a person's height, where even squatting you couldn't lift your head. The floor was covered with broken stones. After we got down, we immediately grabbed stones and blocked the cracks. Only when not a single crack was visible did we breathe a sigh of relief, collapsing to the ground. My ears could barely hear anything; I felt the world spinning.

Wenjin immediately tore off some cloth to stop his bleeding.

Fatty used his flashlight to look around and found that this was only a very small stone cavity, also man-made, only about six or seven square meters. With the dan furnace smashed inside, it seemed even more cramped, and we couldn't move at all.

"Damn, what do we do now? Will those things disperse?" one of the men asked.

"Under normal circumstances, sunlight would knock them out, but there's no hope of that here. We need to find another way out." Fatty was shining his flashlight around erratically when suddenly we all saw something carved on a rock to the side. Upon closer look, it was the kind of script Poker-face uses, but it didn't look like a mark; it was a sentence.

Everyone crowded around. Fatty said happily, "Xiao Ge, look at this. Does it mean there's still a way down?"

Poker-face bent over and looked. His expression changed. We asked him what it meant. He shook his head, but from his expression, I could tell he understood.

But the place with the carving was a rock wall. Fatty felt it but couldn't find any flaw. Poker-face came over, ran his unusually long fingers along the texture of the wall, then picked up a stone and started smashing it. After two strikes, the rock suddenly crumbled like powder. He rammed it and knocked out a hole that could only accommodate one person crawling through with difficulty.

"How can there be a grave robber's tunnel here?" Fatty asked in surprise.

"It's not a grave robber's tunnel. This is a pipe used to design the mechanisms. The mechanisms above us are connected here," Poker-face said, and he had already crawled in first.

We exchanged glances and followed one by one. After crawling less than ten meters, the tunnel suddenly turned vertical downward. We couldn't turn around inside, so we had to crawl headfirst. After crawling until our heads were congested and we were about to pass out, we suddenly heard the sound of water.

Water meant we were connected to a channel. So we immediately sped up and soon reached the end, where we found a rock blocking the way. Poker-face slammed into it a few times, knocking the rock out. It rolled down, and the sound of water came from below.

We poked our heads out and found a wide water channel outside. The current was gentle and not deep; it looked like it only came up to the waist. The water was clear, and we could see the stone slabs at the bottom.

Poker-face went first, and several of us followed into the water. As soon as we entered, there was a commotion underwater. Countless insects were disturbed and scattered. Several of us were so startled we almost fired our guns.

I was also startled. The water channel was full of a kind of shell-less, flesh-colored insect, completely transparent, usually lying at the bottom invisible. They didn't seem aggressive; as soon as we moved, they scattered in all directions. After we all got down into the channel, several of us shone our lights at both ends. Upstream was an iron gate, piled outside with branches and debris washed down from upstream. Downstream was pitch black, leading to who knows where.

We went to the iron gate and shook it for a while, but found it couldn't be budged; it was very sturdy.

"What is this place?" one of Third Uncle's men asked.

"This channel is so deep and has such a large flow, it might be the main channel leading to the lowest reservoir lake," Wenjin said. As she finished speaking, someone suddenly shouted. We turned to look and saw that in the middle of the downstream channel, there actually stood a statue of a bird with a human face, over two meters tall. Its appearance here was very abrupt.

We walked over and saw that the statue was almost identical to the one I saw in the rainforest. Just as I was about to examine it closely, Poker-face drew in a sharp breath, then suddenly walked past the statue and headed downstream. We exchanged glances and immediately followed.