The morning mist in Beiling, Shenyang, had not yet dissipated. Tang Ren squatted beside a stone camel and ate a frozen pear. The scars on the cold pear flesh were like a sudden wound. Qin Feng scraped the snow on the stone saddle with his fingernails, revealing the mottled marks on the ground - a knife mark and two arrow marks intersected to form the symbol of the full text "Underground Palace".
"This stone statue has been tampered with!" Su Chen suddenly pointed at the folds of the stone statue's clothes. The corners of the robe that should have been hanging down were deliberately raised, revealing the circular groove on the base. Tang Ren took out the jade buttons he picked up in Changbai Mountain and pressed them on, sewing them tightly.
The stone statue suddenly turned, and a group of jackdaws started from the cypress forest behind it. Lao Jin suddenly stumbled, holding his chest: "I... I have had a seizure..." Before he finished speaking, his figure had disappeared in the shadow of the Shinto stele pavilion.
---
Qin Feng's flashlight illuminated the dome of the pavilion, and a half-length hemp rope hung between the spider webs. Tang Ren pulled the rope, and what fell was not a copper bell, but a rusty key with fresh blood on the handle.
"Look here!" Su Chen squatted beside the turtle-shaped throne. A simple map was drawn in blood on the side of the stele, with an arrow pointing to the Dumb Courtyard of Yueyu City. The blood had not yet dried, seeping into the floor tiles along the cracks in the stone, outlining the scribbled words "help".
Suddenly, a cold wind blew past, and Tang Ren felt a chill on the back of his neck. When he turned around, the stone beast spat out a ball of paper ash from its mouth, which vaguely looked like the burnt pages of "The Eastern Tomb Robbery Record". Lin Wanru's video call suddenly came through: "We found out! When Sun Dianying robbed Cixi's tomb in 1928, a burial object was secretly moved by Puyi..."
There was a sound of breaking glass on the other end of the line, and the picture suddenly stopped.
---
Half of the severed finger was buried in the snow in the Duba Courtyard. When Tang Ren picked it up with a branch, he found a jade ring on the knuckle. "This is the symbol of Sun Dianying's former subordinates!" Lin Wanru sent an urgent text message, "Back then, there was a group of people who were specifically responsible for disposing of stolen goods..."
Qin Feng counted the gaps between the bricks on the courtyard wall, and suddenly pressed down on the seventh brick. A copper box was exposed from the loose part of the brick surface. Inside the box, a sheepskin scroll was drawn with a map of the underground palace's secret passage, and the marking points coincided with the map on Lao Jin's pocket watch. When Su Chen unfolded the sheepskin scroll, half a piece of gold leaf with tooth marks fell out from the end of the scroll - exactly the same as the bite marks on the eyeballs of the Forbidden City Chiwen.
"Someone is coming!" Tang Ren suddenly blew out the fire extinguisher. A dark figure climbed over the wall and entered, the Luoyang shovel in his hand flashing coldly. The leader with a scarred face sneered: "Hand over the gold leaf, and I'll leave you with your bodies intact."
---
In the melee, Tang Ren knocked open the rotten wooden door. Behind the door was a stone staircase that tilted towards the sky, and a damp, fishy smell hit him in the face. Qin Feng's flashlight swept across the mural, and the portrait of Emperor Shunzhi had his eyes deliberately gouged out, and the empty space was filled with a rotting rat corpse.
"This passage was dug by tomb robbers!" Su Chen touched the shovel marks on the rammed earth layer, "It's in the shape of a Luoyang shovel from the Republic of China period." Tang Ren suddenly stepped on something soft - a corpse in camouflage clothes. He held a metal detector in his hand, and the screen was frozen at "depth 23 meters."
There was a sound of water coming from the front. When the two people waded through the waist-deep water, Qin Feng suddenly froze. In the flashlight, countless white snakes were coiled on the bronze door, and their bodies were twisted into the pattern of the Big Dipper. There was a half piece of jadeite stuck in the door ring, which matched the crack in the Changbai Mountain Ice Cave.
--
Tang Ren grabbed the engineer's shovel next to the dead body and slapped the water surface. The startled white snakes flew around like silver arrows. Su Chen suddenly found that the snakes were hiding behind a stone wall somewhere - there was a bilingual book "Snake Catching" engraved there in Manchu and Chinese, and the last stroke of each "snake" character was missing.
"Finish the strokes with blood!" Qin Feng cut his finger. When the last stroke was completed, the snakes suddenly retreated, and the bronze door slowly opened. A loud sound of the mechanism turning came from inside the door, and nine long-burning lamps were lit one after another, illuminating the Panlong stone platform in the center.
The groove on the countertop is shaped like a jade pendant, but it is a circle larger than the fragment of the Forbidden City. Tang Ren just took out the fragment when a crossbow arrow flew from the dark and brushed past his ear. Lao Jin appeared with a musket in his hand: "Give me the fragment, or I will blow up the underground palace!"
---
Lin Wanru screamed from the intercom: "Don't believe him! The seal is fake, the real dragon vein is in..." Before he finished speaking, Lao Jin pulled the trigger. Tang Ren knocked Qin Feng down, and the bullet shattered the stone dragon statue, revealing the hollow structure inside - inside was a dried corpse wearing a dragon robe, holding a gilded box tightly in his arms.
"This is the substitute tomb of Emperor Shunzhi!" Su Chen opened the collar of the dried corpse, and the inner lining was embroidered with the first image of "Tui Bei Tu". Lao Jin suddenly laughed crazily: "The Q organization is not looking for a person, but someone who can change the dynasty..."
An explosion sounded from above, and Sinuo's origami crane flew through the collapsed earth and rocks and landed steadily on the gilded box. The crane spread its wings, and the blood-stained words were glaring: "Game continues".
(The case of the Changbai Mountain Mystery Cave has been temporarily closed, the curse of the imperial seal has spread to the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, and the final chapter of the millennium imperial game is about to begin)