Just as Bai Jing said, there was no trace of anyone else having been around the river bank, not even a footprint, and the grass showed no signs of being stepped on by anyone. There were only marks left by her walking back and forth.

Lin Wu walked back and followed the direction Bai Jing had mentioned to look for the swamp that the other party had mentioned.

On the way, she even found traces of people cutting dead branches and leaves, as well as rummaging through the woods. Soon, she saw the swamp. There was an inconspicuous depression on the edge, proving that someone had indeed dug it up and smeared a lot of wet mud on it.

All these are enough to prove that what Bai Jing said was true, and the archaeological team that night really disappeared suddenly out of thin air.

Lin Wu frowned slightly, turned around and went back to the river bank.

The river is not very deep and the water is clean. You can see that the river bottom is mostly composed of silt and rocks that have been deposited for a long time and have not been dug or moved by anyone.

It is unlikely that there is another passage at the bottom of the river.

Having said that, Lin Wu still found a branch nearby, took off his shoes and went into the water.

In late autumn, the icy river water made Lin Wu shiver.

The riverbed was unexpectedly slippery, and the water was flowing fast, so Lin Wu almost lost his balance.

She found a foothold, bent down and tested the river water with her hand, then took a flashlight in one hand and a branch in the other, and poked the riverbed with the branch in the light to see if there was anything unusual, and headed towards the direction of the waterfall lake that Bai Jing mentioned.

Fortunately, the river is not very wide, so Lin Wu's carpet search won't be too slow.

Lin Wu also looked up at the downstream direction. The river meandered endlessly in the deep night, and it seemed to have no end. He didn't know how long it would take to search.

But what she didn't expect was that God was very kind to her.

Lin Wu had just started looking and had not walked far when he suddenly heard a muffled "bang" sound. A branch penetrated the mud and poked a hard, unidentified object.

Lin Wu stopped immediately, put the flashlight in his mouth and bit it to illuminate, then took out a dagger and used a branch to pick up the stones and clear the mud.

But in a moment, part of the river bottom was revealed.

I saw that it was a piece of material similar to black stone, with some fine and dense grooves on the surface. The patterns it presented were strange and bizarre, similar to part of some complete pattern.

Lin Wu continued to dig down, carefully cleaning the gravel and silt on the surface and around it.

Soon, it came into Lin Wu's sight in its entirety. It turned out to be a round lock plate with a diameter of about 30 centimeters. There were three separate parts on it, with a round black bead hanging in the middle. There were many complex and obscure unknown patterns around it, but when combined together, it formed a very strange pattern, which gave people an inexplicable feeling of magnificence and strangeness.

Lin Wu couldn't recognize what it was at first, but she noticed that there were embossed words on the inner wall of the three lock rings. She bent down a little lower and looked for a long time before she could barely make out that they were the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and the Six Yaos.

Then Lin Wu continued to clean the area around the lock plate, but found that there was only this lock plate. There was no door underneath, and the bottom of the lock plate seemed to be buried deep in the mud. She dug for a long time but couldn't see the bottom of the lock plate. There was only a cold column with the same complex patterns on the surface.

This made Lin Wu give up decisively and study the lock disk.

The three circles on the lock dial are rotatable. Lin Wu guessed that it probably needs to be turned to a specific position before the entire lock dial will respond.

Lin Wu had never heard Bai Jing mention it before, which meant that Bai Jing and others had not discovered it.

But it was obvious that there was something wrong with the appearance of this lock disk here. Lin Wu suspected that it should be the mystery of the disappearance of the archaeological team.

"But what secrets will it hold..."

Lin Wu rubbed his chin and thought, trying to find some relevant information to crack it, such as converting the current place and time into Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, and calculating with the Six Yao, and turning the lock dial to the corresponding position according to the result, but the lock dial did not respond at all.

She estimated the approximate time when the previous archaeological team disappeared, and put the result on the lock disk, but there was no response.

"Is it based on the timing of when this thing was made? Or is it a set of answers set by its owner himself?"

Lin Wu frowned.

If that were the case, without any hints or rules, how could she get the answer? Even if she studied it till the end of time, it would be in vain.

wrong.

But they still disappeared, which means that this thing can be triggered automatically under certain conditions without anyone touching it. The premise is that it is really related to the disappearance of those people.

Lin Wu thought about it and looked up at the night sky.

Could it be related to a specific astronomical phenomenon?

The sky was covered with dark clouds, and not a single star or moon could be seen.

It has nothing to do with anything.

Could it be the terrain and feng shui? Lin Wu turned his head and looked around, recalling the terrain of the place within a radius of dozens of miles, and frowned again.

There is nothing special about this place, it's just very ordinary.

What else could it be? Lin Wu pondered, and suddenly remembered Bai Jing and Bai Ning. They did not have an accident here, but they had lost their memory like the surviving members of the archaeological team, which meant they had experienced the same thing.

The same happens in other places. Could it be that... there is a similar lock disk somewhere else, and the two are somehow connected, so one of them needs to react before the other will react?

If this is the case, Bai Jing and Bai Ning may not be able to find the answer to open the lock, and the lock in another place will also be triggered actively.

So if we find the reason over there, we can open this place, right?

Lin Wu turned around and wanted to go ashore.

Either of the two places could lead to the place where the accident happened. She could find the waterfall lake and go in from there without having to come back. If there was no unusual reaction there, she could just come back. It was no big deal.

However, just as Lin Wu was about to leave, one of her hands was scratched somewhere and she suddenly felt a stinging pain.

Lin Wu hissed, stopped and looked down. It turned out that her hand accidentally touched the sharp corner of the pattern engraved on the edge of the lock plate. A deep bloody mark was immediately left on her fingertip, and blood beads flowed out and fell on the lock plate.

It was not a serious injury, so Lin Wu did not take it too seriously. He simply immersed his hand in the river and shook it. The blood spread in the water and was washed to the edge of the lock plate. Then he withdrew his hand and walked away.

At this moment, a red light suddenly flashed by! Lin Wu stopped immediately, turned his head and saw a magical scene.

Her blood fell on the lock plate, but was not washed away by the water. Instead, it disappeared into the patterns of the lock plate and flowed rapidly along the grooves as if being pulled by some living thing. In just a few seconds, it flowed through the patterns on the entire lock plate! Where the blood flowed, a bloody red light also lit up, gradually becoming stronger, and finally concentrated on the black bead in the middle, which emitted a dazzling red light.

Before Lin Wu could react, the three circles of the lock on the lock dial suddenly began to rotate by themselves. The muffled "click-click" sound was particularly clear in the silent night, and then it quickly rotated to a specific position and stopped.

The next moment, a red light became brighter, instantly covering an area of ​​several meters around the lock plate, and also covering the forest fog!

An inexplicable suction force suddenly appeared, catching Lin Wu off guard, causing him to stagger a few steps and fall into the water with a bang.

Lin Wu choked on a few mouthfuls of water and started coughing violently, but he quickly came to his senses and forcefully thrust the dagger and branch in his hand into the mud to stabilize his body.

However, the suction force was so fierce that it almost turned the world upside down, leaving Lin Wu no room to refuse.

Before she could grab onto something to steady herself, she was dragged to the edge of the lock plate by the suction force, and slammed into the hard and cold shaft, groaning from the dull pain in her back.

In a flash, there was suddenly nothing underneath her! Lin Wu's eyes went dark, and an indescribable emptiness instantly submerged her, not giving her a chance to do anything else, she just fell straight down.

The feeling of weightlessness made Lin Wu's face change, and he realized that the lock disk was actually the key to triggering a certain mysterious technique. No wonder those people in the archaeological team suddenly disappeared inexplicably!

But there are too many mysterious arts that require blood, and Lin Wu couldn't think of which one it is now. What he can be sure of is that this mysterious art should be of the space type, and he doesn't know where it leads to.

The worst thing is that she is falling now. If she falls from a high altitude after completing the mysterious technique, she will be dead!

Thinking of this, Lin Wu quickly tried to find a remedy.

What she never expected was that just as Lin Wu had this thought, she landed on the ground the next moment! It all happened very quickly, in just a few seconds, so that Lin Wu was stunned.

(End of this chapter)