When the man who had been arrested questioned our identities, before I could even speak, Jiang Man asked, "Since you occupied someone else's land, why did the lookouts patrol hundreds of meters away, but you dumped the soil so close by?"

The man responded blankly, "After we discovered the tomb raider's tunnel here not long ago, the leader said that he didn't know if the people who dug the tunnel here had gone far, so he sent a few people out to check if there was any camp of those people around. Only after confirming that it was safe did we start working."

I couldn't tell whether the man was telling the truth or not, so I got up and walked towards the edge of the valley: "You guys keep an eye on them, I'm going to check on the stolen soil they've dumped."

The place where the three men had just dumped soil was a hillside, with nothing else besides the silt they had just dumped.

I checked the soil they dumped, and it was all blue clay. This means the man wasn't lying. If they had just dug the hole, there wouldn't be only mud and no soil. If they had dug the hole themselves, they wouldn't have dumped the soil as far as the valley where Song Laosan was before. Now they've wasted all their efforts and dumped the soil in front of their own house.

Seeing me turn back from the valley, Jiang Man came up to me and asked, "Did you find anything?"

I nodded: "These people are dumping soil for the first time. That guy probably wasn't lying. They only recently discovered this hole, and they didn't dig it themselves, so they can dump soil nearby without any worries."

Jiang Man pointed to the valley where the tomb raider's tunnel was located: "According to what that person just said, those people who dug the tunnel here before are very likely to come back. Should we first control the people inside and then ambush them here?"

I pointed to the three people on the ground and said, "Tie these three up first, then we'll go back and deal with the others. Otherwise, if these three people dumping the soil are gone for too long, it will alert them."

After the bodyguards subdued the three people dumping the soil, we sneaked into the valley and headed towards the grave burial pit.

As soon as I approached the grave, someone inside heard the noise and poked their head out: "What are you all dawdling for? Get to work!"

"Bang!"

I saw this person peek out and kick him in the temple, knocking him down.

The others in the grave pit, seeing their companion fall, scrambled to their feet: "Damn it! Who is it?"

One of my bodyguards jumped in, using his clothes to shield his Taser, and pointed it at the crowd: "Don't move! Anyone who moves, I'll shoot you all dead! Everyone, put your hands on your heads and kneel down!"

As the bodyguard raised his hand, I jumped into the pit, holding the flashlight in my left hand, then resting the crossbow on my left arm and pointing it at the people in front of me: "Don't move if you don't want to die!"

This grave-robbing pit is about five or six square meters in size and about one and a half meters deep. A tree trunk serves as a main beam in the middle, with crossbeams on both sides of the ground. The pit is covered with camouflage branches and turf.

There were three people in this pit. Apart from the one I kicked over, the other two were terrified when they saw the weapons in my and my bodyguard's hands, and obediently knelt on the ground.

"Bang!"

At the same time, a gunshot suddenly rang out from the adjacent grave-robbing pit. The other bodyguards and I jumped down from above, subdued the two people in front of us, and shouted, "What happened in the grave-robbing pit next door?"

"fine!"

One of the bodyguards ran over from the pit: "We arrested someone from the next pit. There was a replica pistol next to him. When we arrested him, to prevent him from taking the gun, our men kicked it away. Who knew that the broken gun had no safety and went off accidentally!"

I heard that no one was injured, so I ignored it and went up to one of the men, pressing the crossbow against his forehead: "There are five of you here, where is the other one?"

The man looked at me with some fear: "Inside the tunnel, the guy inside and I are both earthworkers, taking turns digging! Brother, we're only responsible for digging, and we're paid by the number of times we dig. If you have any problems, talk to the boss, don't make things difficult for us workers!"

I squinted at him: "Who's the boss?"

The man gestured with his chin to the next room: "The boss is resting in the pit over there."

The bodyguard next to him turned around and tried to climb up: "I'll go bring the person over."

"Forget it, the person we're looking for isn't here, which means the guy we arrested earlier wasn't lying. They were just a tomb-raiding gang passing through, nothing worth asking them!"

I shone my flashlight into the hole next to me. This hole was dug at an angle downwards. Because of the soil that had been transported out before, the hole walls were severely worn, and there was a layer of slippery blue mud on the ground.

I shone my flashlight over the hole, and the shovel marks were beautiful fish-scale patterns, exactly the way monkeys usually dig holes.

The earthworker on the ground was also untied at this time. He chose one of the three ropes on the ground, pulled it a few times, and after feeling the resistance, he said to me, "Boss, the people down below have received the signal. Someone needs to lend me a hand."

"I'll do it."

Following the instructions of the soil worker, a bodyguard first pulled up the basket filled with soil, and then grabbed another rope to pull up the soil worker, who was wearing a rat-patterned coat and an oxygen mask.

"Holy crap, what happened?"

The soil workers who came up from underground saw this scene and turned to crawl back into the hole.

"You come back here!"

I grabbed the man's ankle and pulled him out: "Aren't you afraid that if you crawl in there, we'll bury you alive?"

Looking at his two bound companions and the unconscious man behind me, the earthworker said with a look of fear, "Brother, I'm just a worker digging a tunnel, I don't know anything, this has nothing to do with me!"

I kicked him: "Stop talking nonsense! I'm asking you, how deep is this tomb-raiding tunnel?"

"It's probably over fifteen meters long. This tunnel was already there when we arrived; I didn't dig it!"

The earthworker pointed to the tomb-raiding hole behind him and said, "The person who dug this hole must be a master. Not only is the craftsmanship superb, but there is also room to move around in the middle, and the loose soil was reinforced. In all my years of tomb raiding, this is the first time I have seen such a beautiful job."

I glanced at the altitude of the mountain in front of me and continued, "When you discovered this tomb raider's tunnel, had you already dug into the blue clay?"

"Yes, when I went in, the mud had already overflowed, but it wasn't too serious. I had just cleared the original entrance when you guys pulled me out!"

The geotechnical worker nodded curiously: "The hole we found on the mountaintop before was filled with mud at the bottom, and the hole at the foot of the mountain is also filled with mud. I'm wondering, is this mountain hollow, filled with mud except for the shell?"