The secret passage that the people of Ping'an Village used was winding and twisting. It was not opened by man, but a natural cave. People could only crawl inside, and they could not even support themselves with their arms and legs.

Jiang Man followed behind me, and after climbing forward for a while, her head hit the cave wall. She couldn't help but complain, "That guy just said that all twelve passages here are interconnected, so we shouldn't be too far from the passage next to us. But we've already climbed fifty or sixty meters here. Do you think that guy tricked us into a trap?"

"No, this passage doesn't lead to any other tomb passages."

I crawled ahead and said to Jiang Man, "The direction of our secret passage is the same as the main passage outside, so it should lead directly to the main burial chamber."

Jiang Man was even more puzzled: "The people from Pingzhai just said that all twelve passages here lead to the main tomb chamber. Since there are already paths, why did they leave out this extra passage?"

I had already guessed the significance of this secret passage, and said to Jiang Man, "This passage is not for us to use, but for the slaves and the people who designed the tomb."

Jiang Man rubbed her head and continued following behind me: "Is this different from what I said?"

"Of course, the outer tomb passage was built for us to walk through. Just like you said, when we walk through it, we are like rats trapped in a rat cage, and this path leads out of the rat cage."

I heard the sound of flowing water ahead and quickened my pace: "We are walking in the tomb passage and can only see what they want us to see. Behind those seemingly ingenious mechanisms is an extremely complex linkage device, and these things cannot be seen when you are in the middle of it."

“I understand. You mean that walking through the tomb passage is like riding an elevator, where we can only see one side of the world inside the elevator, while this passage is like the elevator shaft, allowing us to see the cables and transmission devices outside the elevator.”

After Jiang Man explained my statement, she asked, "Do you think it's possible that this passageway used to set up the mechanisms leads to the main burial chamber?"

“The twelve entrances we saw earlier were all only half a meter wide, which was absolutely impossible to transport a coffin through. So the coffin must have entered the main burial chamber through another passage. We haven’t found the entrance to that passage, but I think this passage is probably related to that one.”

As I was talking to Jiang Man, we finally reached the end of the road and crawled out through the cave.

The first thing that catches the eye is the pile of white bones on the ground, with many skeletons leaning against the wall, maintaining their postures from when they were alive.

This is a large man-made cave. The left wall connects to a waterway, forming a waterfall that hangs down.

A crevice was carved into the mountainside beneath the waterfall, from which a stone structure resembling a large spoon protruded, catching the waterfall and pressing it down.

The spoon-shaped part of this component has been damaged by a layer of bronze. Due to years of water erosion, the palm-deep patterns on it have been washed away, and only some cloud-like patterns can still be seen at the edges.

Jiang Man walked to another spot to check, shining her flashlight on a pile of things in the corner: "Duan Shenxing, look over here."

I walked over to Jiang Man and found that the ground was littered with tools made of stone and bronze, some of which still had wooden handles, but these handles were so rotten that they crumbled into dust at the slightest touch.

I shone my flashlight on the cave walls around the cave, looking at the passages, each about half a meter wide, and finally fixed my gaze on the largest passage: "Just as I thought, this is where the mechanisms controlling the outer tomb passage are located. This passage is wider than the others, so it must be where the tools and coffins were transported into the main burial chamber! Let's go take a look!"

We are currently in the area where the mechanisms were set up in the tomb. Normally, after the mechanisms are set up in a tomb, this area needs to be backfilled. However, this Xia Dynasty tomb is very old, and there was no unified style for tombs in that era. It is already very difficult to build such a large scale. Backfilling is extremely difficult, and it is estimated that only the entrance and exit were blocked.

This road was originally intended for people to set up traps when building tombs, so it's impossible to set up traps here.

Not long after entering the largest passage, I saw a stone platform by the roadside with several human heads on it: "Judging from the style of the skull walls built by those tribal rulers, this table is the altar for entering the main burial chamber, and the coffin was carried through here."

There's something here.

Jiang Man shone her flashlight under the stone platform and used her knife to pull out the wrapper of a compressed biscuit: "It seems the people from Ping'an Village rested here. They can still eat while looking at so many skeletons. They're quite something."

"Let's rest here too."

I unzipped the rat-clothes, pulled out the grain bag from my waist, cut a slit in it with a knife, grabbed a handful of fried rice, and stuffed it into my mouth to chew: "The people of Ping'an Village are resting here, which means that after passing the altar, the next step is to reach the main tomb chamber. The dangers ahead are unknown, and this is the last place where we can rest."

Jiang Man took the bag of grains I handed her and asked, "We've fallen behind the other two teams. Shouldn't we set off as soon as possible?"

I took the water bottle off my waist and shook my head: "No, we have plenty of time. If the people from Ping'an Village take this shortcut, they will most likely be able to reach the third gate before Duan Jinyan and the others. If we arrive too early, we will clash with the people from Ping'an Village, which would be a loss."

Roughly speaking, we have been in the Miao Jiang Fairy Palace for more than ten hours, and we have been engaged in high-intensity physical activities, so we are already exhausted.

After a short 20-minute rest, I finally regained some energy. Seeing that there was no movement ahead, I crept towards Jiang Man.

Twenty meters past the altar, the road ends. The stone gate that opens inwards has been opened, the stone bolt hanging on the gate stands to one side, and there is a rope used to drag the stone gate on the ground.

Seeing this, I turned off my flashlight and said to Jiang Man, "This passage is a secret passage leading to the main burial chamber, so it won't be too complicated. After passing the exit ahead, we should be at the location of the third door."

Jiang Man, clutching the pistol she had taken from the Ping'an Village tribesman, asked me in the darkness, "What are we going to do next?"

I hid behind the stone gate, staring into the pitch-black darkness outside, and said, "I've estimated the time. Duan Jinyan and the others definitely haven't arrived yet. Let's wait here and wait for Duan Jinyan to show up."