After listening to my analysis, the two of them started to lift the Luoyang shovel together, and I also shone my flashlight over to join them.

As the Luoyang shovel was lifted upwards, I suddenly smelled a strange, fishy stench in the air. It smelled particularly pungent, like a corpse that had been suffocating in a room for a long time in the middle of summer. The stench rose straight up my head through my nostrils, making me gag.

Smelling the odor in the air, I suddenly thought of the hydrogen sulfide that Monkey and his team had dug up during their survey in Qingyun Town. I covered my nose with my elbow and said, "Stop what you're doing and everyone put on your gas masks."

The earthworker choked and gagged repeatedly: "I can't stop here, there's nothing down there, the shovel head has already been shaken once, if I let go now... ugh! If I let go now, the stuff will be gone!"

I saw the earthworker's movements, took off the gas mask from his belt and put it on his face, then stepped forward and grasped the handle of the Luoyang shovel: "I'll hold you, you carry the equipment."

"Make sure you hold on firmly with both hands and don't lift it up yourself, to avoid the vibration causing the soil in the shovel to fall down."

As soon as the soldier finished speaking, he spat on the ground, then took the gas mask handed to him by the bodyguard and put it on his face.

After putting on her gas mask, Jiang Man quickly walked over, turned on an instrument, and pointed it at the probe. After hearing the alarm, she picked it up and glanced at the screen: "The gas below contains methane at a concentration of over 15%, which means it will explode if it comes into contact with an open flame. There is also a small amount of ammonia, which is also a toxic gas, but the concentration is not high!"

For tomb raiders, understanding the toxic gases in tombs is also an important lesson. When I heard Jiang Man's response, I shook my head and said, "Methane is a colorless and odorless gas, but the smell coming from underground is so foul, which means there must be other gases, but your instrument can't detect them!"

At this point, the earthworker also put on a gas mask, took the Luoyang shovel from my hand, and began to slowly lift it up, while another person began to disassemble the handle.

With the help of two earthmovers, the Luoyang shovel was quickly lifted out of the ground, and I shone my flashlight over it.

As I expected, there was a layer of pottery soil inside the Luoyang shovel's head, mixed with pottery fragments.

After the earthworker emptied the soil from the shovel, I squatted down and broke up the clods of soil. I saw a paste-like substance inside, so I put on disposable medical surgical gloves, picked it up, and rubbed it between my hands.

The texture of this stuff is strange. Although it's a paste, it's harder than I expected. Because I'm wearing a gas mask, I can't smell it. However, judging from the soil structure, there are clearly many jars in the ground beneath our feet, and the soil layers on top of the jars are not distinct, indicating that these jars are not stored in a compacted space, but rather buried in the soil.

The paste-like substance in my hand was stuck tightly to the pottery shards, and the stench in the air, which came from the pottery being smashed by the earthenware workers, indicated that this paste-like substance was very likely a type of wax used to seal the pottery.

Jiang Man picked up a twig and moved it around at the base of the earthen pillar: "There's mud here, did you dig up some blue clay?"

"This isn't green clay; the particles are too coarse."

I crushed the earthen pillar with a stone and saw that the middle was still dry. I shook my head and said, "This is not mud. It's just soil that the Luoyang shovel had stored before breaking the pottery jar. It got wet from the liquid inside the jar. The liquid inside the jar is the source of the stench we smelled."

Jiang Man pressed on, "You mean the protective measures for this mountain aren't made of clay, but rather these jars like the one below? The liquid inside would produce a large amount of methane, and ancient tomb raiders could only use torches for lighting. If an explosion were triggered, the people inside would surely be reduced to ashes?"

"Gurgle!"

Just then, a strange sound came from the probe next to us, accompanied by a hissing sound of air deflation.

Get out of the way!

I heard a strange noise coming from the probe, and I quickly waved for everyone to step back.

"Whoosh!"

The sound from the probe grew louder and louder, and just a few seconds later, a flame suddenly shot out from inside, and the flames began to burn at the probe's exit.

The earthworker on the side was startled by the flames: "Holy crap! How did we dig a fire hole?! It's still flaming up from more than ten meters away, that's really weird!"

I looked at the flaming test hole in front of me, picked up a shovel, walked over, shoveled some soil onto the hole, and turned to the earthworker, instructing him, "Move it two meters laterally and drill another test hole."

"Boss, we've been working for hours. Even animals need a rest!"

The earthworker looked at me with a wronged expression: "When we were caught before, we had already been held in the hole for half a day. Now we have to dig a hole more than ten meters deep with shovels. Our arms are sore and we really can't do any more!"

The Jiang family's bodyguard drew his Taser, his eyes flashing with menace, and threatened, "What, can't you understand a proper discussion?"

"Boss, digging tunnels is a skilled job. If you misjudge, the tunnel is ruined. You can't force me to do this kind of thing well!"

The earthworker looked at me pleadingly: "Boss, I know you're an expert, and I know you're in a hurry, but people aren't machines, you have to let us rest!"

I told them to keep digging the exploratory hole so I could figure out if the pottery below was a single piece. Although I was anxious, I knew that these two earthworkers were the only ones in our team who knew how to use a Luoyang shovel. Even though I was anxious, I couldn't push them too hard: "I'll give you half an hour to rest, and then you can get back to work."

Because two of the construction workers asked to rest, I ordered everyone to retreat 300 meters and enter a grove of trees behind.

Jiang Man opened the thermos, poured a cup of hot water with the lid, and handed it to me, saying, "You said before that the pottery fragments that were dug up were very likely products of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. People in that era probably couldn't even detect methane, let alone store it. Moreover, this gas is insoluble in water and lighter than air. How did they seal it in the pottery jar as a mechanism?"

I pursed my lips: "We can't analyze what the liquid in the pottery is right now, so when we drill the probe later, we'll have to have them use a big shovel. Only when they dig up a larger piece of pottery can I draw a conclusion."

At this moment, a bodyguard walked over quickly and said in a fast voice, "Miss, Mr. Xue just sent a message saying that our lookouts have spotted a group of people entering the mountains and moving this way."

Upon hearing the bodyguard's words, I immediately stood up: "Can you confirm the identity of that team? Is the person we're looking for among them?"