Chapter 485: Severed Head

I couldn't bear to describe the subsequent process. All I knew was that the blood flowing from Old Mrs. Huo's wound was black. We prepared a few backpacks and packed everything we needed to take into one of them. In Little Brother's backpack, we found two strange rings, which we immediately recognized as the cause of the two impressions we had seen in the coffin just now. These things were in Little Brother's pack, so they must be very important; we stuffed them all into the bag.

Poker-face still hadn't woken up. I carried him on my back and tied him tightly to me. Little Brother's weight was actually moderate, but his body had a lot of muscle mass, so although his figure looked slim and well-proportioned, his actual weight felt much heavier than the last time I had helped him up.

Fatty was carrying all the other stuff and Old Mrs. Huo's head. We planned to go back the same way. Before leaving, we sent everyone who was still alive back into the secret chamber. Although we knew they definitely couldn't wait for us to come in again, we still left behind some water and food: if they, like that ghostly shadow, could survive in the end, then what we left behind would be a glimmer of hope.

Honestly, making this choice was very hard, and I felt awful about it. But I told myself—I'm just an ordinary person, I can only do this much.

We went down through the hole we had burned open and arrived at the floor we had passed through before.

I asked Fatty if we should continue going up. Fatty said, "Damn it, our goal was to come in and save Little Brother. Now that Little Brother is saved, why not get the hell out? Even if there are countless Russian babes dancing on poles up there, I'm definitely not going up!"

There were many more floors above in the Zhang Family Ancient Building, and each floor should have all kinds of strange situations. But at this moment, for once, fear suppressed all my curiosity.

We carefully made our way back, and soon we reached the ground floor. I was drenched in sweat, and my legs were trembling involuntarily. Usually, Fatty handled this kind of heavy work, but now I felt like I was about to drop dead. I never expected carrying a person could be so exhausting.

Fatty was also exhausted from carrying the other stuff. He stopped to light a cigarette and said, "Hang on a moment, we can't go back the same way. That thing is definitely waiting for us there. Even if it isn't waiting, that quicksand layer is damn hard to get through. With so many strange bugs, we're bound to have bad luck if we go down. We need to find the route Little Brother took to get in!"

That bronze door earlier was sealed shut, so Little Brother and his group definitely didn't come in the way we did.

I thought to myself, how are we supposed to find it? This guy is in a deep coma! Fatty suddenly said, "Look at the ground!"

I looked down and saw the ground was covered in messy footprints. I gave him a bewildered look. He said, "You've been with me. I think you're gradually getting dumber. Look from the entrance to here."

I looked as Fatty said and realized what he meant. From the entrance in, there were only two clear sets of footprints, obviously mine and his.

"Little Brother and them don't seem to have come in through the door," Fatty said. "Look, the footprints here are very messy. Now we can find out where they came in based on the pattern on the soles of Little Brother's shoes."

I looked down at the countless footprints under our feet and understood that Fatty's method was feasible.

We followed his method backwards, searching as we went, and soon arrived among several pillars. We discovered that Poker-face's footprints actually originated from one of the pillars.

"Could he be a pillar man who walked out of a pillar?" I stroked my chin in confusion. Fatty immediately pressed his face up to it and carefully examined the details of the pillar.

This pillar was carved all over with patterns of pixiu, which was really quite rare in an ancient tomb. I was sure the pattern was pixiu—but on these pixiu, I noticed some scales of a qilin. I thought it might be a new hybrid mythical beast, or maybe Style Lei made a mistake, but with such meticulous carving, it didn't seem likely to be an error.

Fatty was feeling the butts of those pixiu, then suddenly let go and turned to feel another pillar. He went back and forth touching them dozens of times. Then he said to me, "The temperature is different! The materials of these two pillars are different. This pillar seems to be wrapped in some kind of metal, but it's deliberately painted with exactly the same lacquerwork as the other one."

"So there's a mechanism inside?" I said.

"No need to say that—Little Brother's footprints came out from here, so there's definitely a mechanism here. This place might be the proper secret passage in and out of this ancient building," Fatty said. "Let me press a few properly. One of them must have something off." With that, Fatty was about to take off his coat to study it carefully.

I quickly stopped him: "If the dust here touches your sweat, your whole body will itch unbearably—worse than death. And if you scratch, a piece of skin will come off. Plus, randomly touching the butts of these pixiu might trigger some mechanism." Hearing this, Fatty had to keep his coat on. But he wasn't too worried about the mechanism; he crept up cautiously and said, "We haven't encountered any particularly deadly mechanisms along the way. I don't think we need to worry. Just be careful. I, Lord Fatty, am very experienced after all." Saying that, Fatty studied each detail of the pixiu one by one, so carefully it was almost creepy, but no matter how he examined them, all the pixiu seemed fixed and couldn't be pressed.

Just as we were puzzled, Poker-face on my back suddenly moved: I saw his hand reach out.

I turned to look at him. He was extremely weak, still with his eyes closed, and I didn't know if he was fully conscious.

Fatty also turned to look at him and asked softly, "Little Brother, what do you want to do?"

"Let me," Poker-face on my back said softly.

I immediately understood what he meant and stepped forward a few paces. His unusually long fingers touched the cold pillar, then he gently slid his fingers over all the patterns.

Carrying him, I quietly circled the pillar again and again, not daring to make a sound. When we had gone around for the twentieth time, I heard Poker-face say: "Thirteenth in the first row, sixth in the second row, and seventh in the third row. Tap each one lightly once. Remember the order."

As soon as he finished speaking, his hand dropped immediately.

Fatty immediately did as instructed. After he finished, suddenly the pillars began to rotate slowly. As they turned, a gap appeared in one of the middle pillars, just wide enough for one person to pass through sideways. Inside the gap was a passageway, leading all the way down to the ground.

On the inner wall of this pillar, there were climbing spikes.

"Having a big brother at home is like having a treasure!" Fatty said.

The two of us put down our equipment. I first transferred Little Brother to Fatty, then squeezed sideways carefully down, and then caught Little Brother. Once at the bottom, I lit a lighter and was astonished—we actually saw a room built of stone, and from the surroundings, it should be an underground palace.

"Is this part of the Zhang Family Ancient Building too?" Fatty asked. I nodded—according to previous conventions, in the underground palace of this ancient building should be the tomb of the Zhang family ancestors. I'm afraid the people buried here are extremely ancient elders.

"What now?"

"Little Brother came out from here, so obviously the entrance and exit are here! Little Brother, you should be a good guy to the end and GPS it again," Fatty said to Poker-face.

Poker-face on my back showed no reaction; it seemed he had fallen asleep again. Fatty looked and could only shake his head, saying to me, "Out of battery."

"Let's go. We'll be careful. Since the way out is here, we'll find it eventually," I said. "We'll cut through mountains and build bridges over waters. We'll take it step by step. Let me put Little Brother down; let's look around first."

There was no dust here, so it was okay to rest. I saw Fatty was panting heavily too, so I told him to put all the stuff down first.

I had truly never been so tired before. As soon as Little Brother came off my shoulders, I felt dizzy. I rubbed my shoulders and then followed Fatty to look around.

After looking, we discovered that the only way forward was a stone door. The stone door was tightly shut, but from under the door we could see traces that it had been opened recently.