After moving all the furniture, the others searched the cabin thoroughly, inside and out, and finally found a cellar in the weeds behind the house.
Fu Guanzai commanded the Tarot cards to open the cellar door. Rust fell off, and the ten-centimeter-thick cellar door made a clattering metallic sound. White smoke billowed from the sunless cellar entrance, and Fu Guanzai threw in two exorcism talismans.
"There's no need for such a heavy iron door for a cellar. Let's wait a few minutes before going down."
Five minutes later, a tarot card appeared, conveying the message that there was nothing unusual inside.
Fu Guan kicked Ye Zhan, telling him to get down first, before he himself went down.
The other seven people followed closely behind, with Shi Jinzhe and Shehe entering last. To ensure their safety, Shi Jinzhe deliberately left a section of golden vine outside.
The sun illuminated the inside of the cellar, where there were only two barrels of honey. Many dry, broken pieces of soil had slid off the mud walls, and the footprints inside were messy, indicating that someone had walked back and forth here.
Huang Yingzong stretched out his leg to show the footprint, which was very small, only half the size of his own.
"They are children's footprints."
Qian Chang also stretched out one foot to compare sizes: "The children went into the cellar to hide from the soldiers who were going to kill them, right?"
Lin Shu paced back and forth, tapping and examining the surroundings. "There's no blood here, so they must have escaped."
"uncertain."
Sher stared at Lin Shu's feet, as if trying to discern something from them.
Crackling sound.
Only Sheikh caught this extremely subtle sound. After a while, she told Lin Shu to lift her foot.
Lin Shu raised one leg. "What's wrong?"
"Shoe soles".
Lin Shu looked down at the sole of her shoe and found several wet marks on her left foot, with dead insects stuck to them.
Lin Shu felt disgusted by the black beetle stuck to the sole of her shoe. She stomped her foot and rubbed the sole vigorously, trying to wipe the beetle's corpse off.
After going back and forth more than ten times, a smooth stone slab was revealed under the sand.
Qian Chang: "This is...?"
Fu Guanzai: "There are traces of artificial cutting on the stone slab, and there is a road underneath, so please make way."
A square stone slab, about one square meter in size, was lifted up, and a nauseating stench rushed into the nostrils. Fu Guan, who was closest, gagged and said, "My God, even I can't stand this smell. Let's air it out and go in from the downwind."
Shi Jinzhe immediately used his hand to block the lower half of Sheh's face, altering the scents her olfactory system could detect.
Lin Shu covered her mouth: "You two... ugh, don't you think it stinks... ugh...?"
"good."
Shekh smelled the rich fragrance of osmanthus blossoms, as if she and the others were in two different worlds.
She didn't smell much and asked curiously, "What does it smell like?"
Lin Shu: "It's like... mixing 10,000 rotten eggs into a rotten vegetable jar that's been spoiled for a hundred years, adding expired Laoshan snake grass water, and then using this mixture to soak countless pairs of stinky socks, and then leaving them to sit in the hot weather for ten or eight days to smell..."
“…Awesome, that’s an accurate description.” Qian Chang gave a thumbs up. “It’s a truly nightmarish, intoxicating smell.”
Jiang Xiaowan rubbed her eyes: "It's so choking I'm already tearing up."
Shekh nodded uninterestedly, and instead asked, "What is Laoshan Snake Grass Water?"
Lin Shu: "The drink is made with an extract from a flower and herb that white flower snakes love to lick. It doesn't taste very good. One sip tastes like eating a tattered straw mat picked up from a garbage dump."
Shekh ignored the words "it doesn't taste good," nodded at the back of his hand that was bent as he spoke, and said, "I want to drink this. Let's go outside and drink it."
Shi Jinzhe nodded and said okay, which made Lin Shu wonder if he even knew what she had agreed to.
While waiting for the smell to dissipate, Sher took out a bunch of grapes and slowly sat down to eat them.
After finishing the bunch of grapes, Fu Guan, seeing that the others had barely gotten used to the pungent smell, decided to go downstairs.
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