Chapter 36 Those Who Abandoned Me (9) (1st + 2nd update) [VIP]
The sound of rain outside the cave gradually died down. Inside the cave, fire flickered. The seven members of the exploration team surrounded this newly discovered deep pit with different expressions.
"Brother Chu, are you still digging?" Lu Changfeng squatted at the edge of the pit and looked up at his brother Chu.
"Wait a minute," Bai Jinshu narrowed his eyes and looked down at the bones in the pit, "Does the Foundation Mall have a miracle that can identify the age of the tomb?"
She Mochu's eyesight was indeed poor, and he had to squint to see the general outlines of the still objects in the deep pits.
But in some ways, his eyesight was too good.
Abnormality attracts abnormality, and mystery attracts mystery.
In the eyes of this mythical creature, anything related to Cthulhu is as clear and obvious as a highlight mark with a highlighter, as if it were equipped with a radar specifically designed to detect abnormalities and mysteries.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to tell at a glance that there was something behind Lu Changfeng.
But his eyesight was not very good. He could only discover what these things were, and he had to ask others to come and see what they were.
"Yes," Zhang Lu seemed to be very familiar with this kind of miracle category that required basic knowledge literacy. "I have [Elementary Archaeology Mastery]."
It was she who said she had [Basic Geography Proficiency] before. Bai Jinshu looked up at Zhang Lu and suspected that she had all the basic proficiency miracles of the Foundation.
Zhang Lu didn't know what the snake-like young man with vertical pupils in front of her was thinking. She flipped through her inventory and used [Elementary Archaeology Mastery] before saying, "I can identify it."
"But..." She hesitated, "But we need burial objects to help identify the age."
"No, these two guys are almost fused together," Lu Changfeng couldn't help but point at the two skeletons in the pit and complain, "If we can use the burial objects, then these two should at least have separate coffins, right?"
Judging from the current shape, these skeletons were probably simply dumped in whole and buried. Not to mention that this is a mass grave is an understatement. Who would put burial objects when burying someone in a mass grave? Isn't this funny?
Zhang Lu shrugged: "There's really nothing we can do about it. The only clue to the time period is the average body temperature that She Mochu mentioned."
After all, archaeology doesn't come up with answers out of thin air. Usually, an approximate age range is determined through burial objects, and then the answer is reached through more detailed identification and excavation. Now there is just a pit with a lot of people buried in it. Not to mention her, an outsider with only [Basic Archaeology Proficiency], even if you call a master in the industry, he will be at a loss.
She was referring to what She Mochu said, that before the 19th century, the average human body temperature was above 37 degrees, so this temperature-sensitive pattern should have determined the visible temperature according to the average body temperature of people at that time, in order to achieve a very invisible marking effect.
According to this statement, the corpses here must be at least two hundred years old.
"Where is the body?" She Mochu asked with his eyes lowered.
Zhang Lu: "No, I can't do that."
Identifying the age of corpses falls into the realm of physical anthropology and requires instrumentation, which is certainly not available today.
"But there may be more than one cave with bodies. We can dig other caves after we get out. It is possible that this is a group of tombs, or it is the ancestral grave of the villagers down the mountain a long time ago." She thought for a while, "There are indeed groups of tombs in the caves."
"In this way, we can ask the villagers about the village history to get some indirect information about how these people died. Maybe we can find some clues." Yun Guang interjected.
This is also a method.
"Let's first take a look at what's inside this pit and see if it's our ancestral grave."
After all, we can’t confirm the age, so we can only confirm whether all the people in the pit died from “coriander”.
Lu Changfeng had already jumped down while the two were talking. After carefully avoiding all the skeletons, he put his palms together and muttered, "Dear brothers and sisters, please forgive me for coming all the way to dig up your graves. Every grievance has its perpetrator and every debt has its creditor. The source of all this is because of the foundation's mission project. This is our foundation's flyer. If you have any questions, go to customer service and ask for help in your dreams."
Zhang Lu: …
Barrage:
【materialist】
【《I believe in the great Marx》】
[The speechless expression on Xiao Chu's face is exactly the same as that on Aoshen's face. ]
[Xiao Chu's face was not speechless, but disgusted. I think if he had the conditions, he would definitely pretend not to know Lu Changfeng.]
[Lu Changfeng’s universal faith is so universal.]
[He even got a flyer from the Foundation's store. I thanked him on behalf of the Foundation's customer service.]
[Who will tell Lu Changfeng that the customer service of the foundation is AI customer service, which is artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence does not dream. ]
["Will the Foundation's Bionic Customer Service Dream of Complaining to a Man or Woman Who Cut His Head?"]
[How many Japanese light novels are there in the previous meal? 】
"Hurry up and dig," She Mochu said ruthlessly, with his eyes downcast on the screen, directly interrupting Lu Changfeng's self-consolation. "Otherwise, if the rain stops later and the villagers come up and find us before we finish digging, your brothers and sisters will be left dead in the wilderness. They will all come to find you tonight."
This fat guy keeps saying that he is a materialist, but every time he prays to God, he is extremely successful.
【One strike kills.】
【Laughing.】
"No, Brother Chu," Lu Changfeng shuddered, "My house is so small, it can't accommodate so many people."
Li Ren and Jiang Jinming also jumped down from the edge of the pit and continued digging along the area with Lu Changfeng.
The three men dug very quickly, and soon the deep pit was expanded about half a meter downwards, and they finally saw the bottom.
Lu Changfeng counted the skulls below and found that there were at least dozens of people here.
He grabbed the edge of the pit, climbed up a few steps and flipped over, then turned back and pulled Li Ren and Jiang Jinming up.
"All the bodies here died in the same way." Jiang Jinming came up with a piece of skull in his hand. He compared it with the skull that Lu Changfeng had been holding, which was dug out from outside before the landslide. "The gaps between the teeth marks are almost the same. It must be the same creature."
"But there's one thing I don't understand," Jiang Jinming said puzzledly, "Why did we find these bones?"
"Bi Wu and I were killed by 'Xiang Cai', and then our bodies disappeared," he held the two skulls, puzzled, "Then why are these bones so complete?"
Is there anything else special?
"It may be because you died in the reverse time." At this time, Yun Guang, who had been behind, began to speak, "and these people may have died in the normal time."
"We haven't figured out why time is going backwards yet."
The sound of rain outside the mountain gradually stopped. As soon as he finished speaking, a voice called out from outside: "Yun Guang!"
"Yun Guang——"
Yun Guang looked up subconsciously, then he realized that the rain had stopped, the landslide had stopped, and his fellow villagers from the mountain came to find him.
The flickering fire in the cave makes people subconsciously ignore the sky outside. In a relatively dim environment, people always lose their sense of time.
They spent too much time digging this deep pit and analyzing the bones in it. The rain outside has stopped for a while. After confirming that there will be no more danger, the villagers at the foot of the mountain have come up the mountain to find the investigation team.
The shouts of the villagers outside the mountain have been transferred to other team members: "Guan Hongyan——"
"Li Ren——Zhang Lu——"
They should have read out the names according to Teacher Ma's exploration list.
"Fill the pit first," Bai Jinshu stood up from the ground, stomped out the fire with a few steps, bent down and threw all the almost burnt firewood into the pit, "Fill it first, then go out and answer the question."
As soon as the fire went out, the temperature in the cave dropped suddenly.
Lu Changfeng had just taken off his coat in order to climb out of the pit. Suddenly losing his heat source, he couldn't help but shiver: "Hiss, so cold."
Apparently, he wasn't the only one who felt this way.
Jiang Jinming also shook his shoulders, looking as if he couldn't bear it: "Fill it in quickly."
Once the fire went out, the only source of light in the cave was the light coming in from the cave entrance. It was dark outside, with dark clouds pressing down on the sky, so that the light that came in was not very bright. At best, it was just clear, and it was completely incomparable to the warm and bright scene just now.
Li Ren quickly filled the hole while complaining: "Lu Changfeng, you should apologize to your brothers and sisters now. I feel a chill on my back."
Moreover, there was a constant breeze coming from outside the cave, making this cave without any firelight seem a little eerie.
"I am a materialist and I believe in the great Marx," Lu Changfeng also put on his coat and muttered, "You feel a chill on your back because you have done something wrong."
Jiang Jinming: "Who is Marx?"
"Great mentor," Lu Changfeng glanced at Jiang Jinming, his hands and mouth busy, "Don't you know?"
"I don't know," Jiang Jinming said, "If this person is very famous, then you and I are not in the same world."
"Ah? Aren't we from the same world?" Lu Changfeng was stunned.
"Of course not," Guan Hongyan said quietly beside him, "You have been to so many unknown spaces. You don't think that everyone in the Foundation is from the same space, do you?"
Lu Changfeng: "...Actually, including this project, I have only come into contact with two spaces."
Guan Hongyan rolled her eyes unceremoniously: "With your fixed attributes, I don't approve of you being invited to the high-end space as soon as you join the foundation."
Lu Changfeng is not like her. At the beginning, he was mistakenly considered useless because of his fixed attributes and has been stuck in the low- and middle-end. As long as investors have eyes, they will know how rare his fixed attributes are.
"Well, if that's the case..." Lu Changfeng suddenly thought of a question, "Then when I told Brother Ao last time that I believed in Marx, he didn't ask me who Marx was. Doesn't that mean we are from the same world?"
He blinked and suddenly felt that he had found the highlight.
But his brother Ao seems to be living abroad... With his poor English that only got him through the CET-4, it's better for him not to go abroad and embarrass himself in front of his foreign friends.
Lu Changfeng's head, which had just been raised, fell down again.
Bai Jinshu was leaning against the wall nearby, not panicking at all about being exposed, and acting as if all the busy physical labor had nothing to do with him: "If you guys keep talking, this hole will never be filled, and the villagers will come looking for you."
"Right away, right away." Fortunately, Lu Changfeng and the others didn't mind these things, and they restored the place to its original state in no time.
"Uncle, here!" After the cave was restored, the villagers outside were almost finding this place. Yun Guang hurried to the entrance of the cave and waved to the villagers above and below, "Here!"
At the front of the exploration team was the uncle who brought them breakfast every morning in the past few days.
The uncle heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Yun Guang, and asked in a hoarse voice, "Where are the other students in your team?"
"We are all here, all here." Yun Guang glanced behind him. Bai Jinshu made a gesture to him. He turned around and said, "We were all near this cave when the landslide happened. No one was injured."
"As long as no one gets hurt." The uncle turned around and said something to the young man behind him, then pulled a rope from behind.
"I'll throw the rope up later." He walked to the bottom of the cave. Only then did everyone see clearly that he also had a thick rope tied around his waist. "You tie this rope around your waist and then walk down holding the rope on my waist."
"Let the girls down first, they are lighter." The uncle threw the rope up, "I have already tied this knot, just pull the one next to it to tighten it."
Zhang Lu and Guan Hongyan looked at each other. Zhang Lu tied the rope around his waist first, then moved down little by little along the bulge next to the cave, and finally successfully reached the big rock where the uncle was standing.
A young man from the village came up with him. The young man helped Zhang Lu untie the rope and said to him, "You will follow this rope and walk down. There will be a small platform after this section. Your teacher Ma is down there."
"Okay." Zhang Lu was actually a little afraid of Teacher Ma.
When they came out of the cave today, they had clearly activated the sound-blocking miracle, but for some reason, she always felt that Teacher Ma seemed to be able to hear what they were saying, and her pair of emotionless eyes were staring at them.
But everyone had already come down, so she couldn't say much and could only follow the ropes on the uncle and the young man and walk down.
The road after the landslide was full of large and small stones and broken trees, making it difficult to walk. When she successfully reached the platform, the uncle under the cave waved to Guan Hongyan and said, "Come down."
One after another, in the end, only Bai Jinshu and Lu Changfeng were left in the cave.
The weather in the mountains was indeed changing rapidly. There was a heavy downpour in the morning which triggered a landslide. Now, within a few hours, the dark clouds in the sky dissipated and the sun came out again.
The uncle took off his coat and asked in confusion: "Didn't you say that this tourism project only investigates the caves? Why did all of you students come to the top of the mountain?"
Lu Changfeng: "We conduct a survey of the natural geography around the scenic area."
This was the unified answer they had discussed in the cave, and they would use it to answer if the teacher in charge asked about it.
"What is physical geography?" The uncle looked as if he didn't understand.
Lu Changfeng was stuck for a moment.
How does he know what physical geography is? These are all said by Zhang Lu. Zhang Lu himself has [Basic Geography Mastery], so what he says is definitely more correct than those who know nothing.
Zhang Lu said that if the teacher asked, he would answer this, and he just remembered this sentence.
"Count the trees," his brother Chu suddenly said beside him, "It means counting how many kinds of trees there are on the mountain and how they grow."
"Oh, this!" The uncle suddenly realized, "Then come and ask me! We are familiar with this area!"
"The leader who came to investigate asked me to lead the way," the uncle thought for a moment, "We three or four-year-old kids know there are many caves on the mountain. I didn't know they could be used as tourist attractions."
"We were all beaten by our parents when we were young," the young man complained nearby, "When we were young, our family wouldn't let us go into the mountains. If we were caught in the mountains, they would beat us with canes."
"It's because we're afraid something might happen." There were only two people left. The uncle and his friends, who had thought something might happen to the investigation team on the mountain, had almost calmed down, and their expressions became more cheerful. "Children don't take things seriously, and there are many caves on the mountain. What if something happens inside? It would be hard to find them then. We don't let you into the mountain because we're afraid something might happen."
"Besides, what do you think is in the cave?" the uncle said to the young man rudely.
"What's in the cave?" Lu Changfeng was startled, feeling that this seemed to be a key piece of information.
"Uh... this," the uncle was about to say, but when he came into contact with Bai Jinshu, he suddenly remembered something and got stuck. He quickly changed the subject and said, "I forgot that you just came out of the cave. Let's not talk about it."
"Are there wild animals?" She Mochu raised his eyelids and began to talk nonsense without changing his expression. "The safety rating of a scenic spot should be linked to the nearby ecology. If there are wild animals here, something bad will happen if you don't tell us. If you are discovered, you may not be able to develop it into a scenic spot."
"Oh, no!" The uncle patted his thigh, "You just came out of the cave, it would be embarrassing to say this."
"There are graves all over the cave," the young man blurted out, unable to see any more. "You don't mind that, do you?"
They really knew this.
"I don't mind, I don't mind." Lu Changfeng acted as if he wasn't the one who had made them go to the foundation's customer service not long ago. "It's much better than being a beast."
When the uncle heard that the plan to develop the scenic area would be linked to these things, he didn't care whether it was good or bad, and quickly explained: "Our village used to be in the mountains. Before we moved out, the ancestral graves were all in the caves. After we moved out, they were moved to the open space outside. There are basically not many in the caves."
"Which of you two will go down first?" He hurriedly changed the subject, "Hurry up and go down. When you came up from outside, your team leader, Mr. Ma, didn't look very happy. He must be very angry."
After the two of them went down the rope, they saw their team leader, Teacher Ma, sitting on the platform with a very bad look on his face.
When he saw Bai Jinshu and the other two coming down, the expression on his face eased a little.
Everyone else thought that Teacher Ma looked unhappy because his students ran around and were trapped on the mountain. Only Bai Jinshu felt that Huai Jiamu was not in the mood to play the role of a teacher who was worried about his students when leading a geography exploration team.
Could it be that when She Mochu descended to the heavens, Huai Jiamu, as the evil god, also sensed some unusual aura?
However, everyone was there at the time, so he couldn't get close to him and could only vaguely guess in his mind.
Yun Guang and several members of the exploration team were sitting nearby. There were still a lot of supplies brought out of the cave on the platform, and there was also a small generator. Several fellow villagers were there helping to transport these things down the mountain.
The landslide on the mountain is not serious, but it is always a safety hazard. The rocks and soil washed down have to be cleaned up by manpower.
Fortunately, the falling rocks did not hit the main road. The enthusiastic villagers took the students downstairs and cleared out the familiar courtyard for them.
After all the hassles, it was already lunchtime. The group passed through the middle of the village. Every household was having lunch. Li Ren sniffed, frowned, and asked, "What's that smell? Is something bad?"
Why is there a strange smell in every household? It smells faintly sour and alcoholic, like some low-quality fake wine that has gone bad.
"The taste of pickles." She Mochu answered faster than the villagers.
"Oh, this, these are the pickles made in our village." The villager next to him answered.
"Hey," the uncle tilted his head and praised, "Xiao She, you have a very sensitive nose."
How could it not work, Li Ren slandered himself.
Judging from the way he eats pickles, he is the only one here who is most familiar with this taste besides the villagers.
"Don't be fooled by the strange taste. It smells strange but tastes delicious!" The uncle next to him was still introducing it to others, "This is a specialty of our village. Every household in our village can make this kind of pickled vegetable."
"I have some at home, if you like them, I'll bring some for you when you leave."
"No, no, no, no," Li Ren refused repeatedly.
Their taste buds are still alive and well.
The "fragrance" of this delicious taste is indeed still controversial.
"Uncle," Bai Jinshu suddenly asked, "What is this pickled vegetable made of?"
"This is just wild vegetable from the mountains, not valuable," the uncle waved his hand, thinking that they were embarrassed to take it, and quickly said, "I don't know what it is called specifically, but it's all over the mountain in the spring."
"We have a lot of dust in the spring here, so eating this pickle and fungus can clear your lungs."
"The air in the mountains is so good, why do we need to clear our lungs?" Lu Changfeng said.
"Oh, this... I don't know," the uncle was asked. "Anyway, we have this saying here. My mother said this when I was a child. My mother also heard it from my grandfather. Our village was moved out of the mountains. Maybe there were catkins in the mountains in the spring so we needed to clear our lungs."
"My ancestors have been eating this way for generations. We are used to picking vegetables and pickling them in the spring. Now I feel like something is missing if I don't have a dish of pickles with my meal."
"Hey, we're here," the uncle suddenly stopped and pointed to a familiar yard and said to the team members, "This is a yard that was vacated in our village. Not many people lived here before, so the conditions may not be very good, but it's all cleaned up. You can live in it for a few days and then leave."
"It's time for dinner. I'll get you some pickles for you to try. If you like them, take some back home."
The uncle left in a hurry.
"I think..."
"It's possible..."
Bai Jinshu and Yun Guang both spoke at the same time.
If the skulls blown off in the caves on the mountain are the ancestors of these villagers, then it means that they are not attacked by "coriander" not because of their special bloodline.
Otherwise it doesn't make sense that the ancestors would be attacked but the descendants would not.
The only possible reason for them not to be attacked is some other element.
Guan Hongyan was impatient: "Don't think so, just say it directly."
These two people, one is slow and the other is lazy, which can drive people crazy.
Bai Jin said: "Isn't this pickle the fundamental reason why they won't be attacked?"
This unknown plant emits a pheromone that makes the mythical creatures that look like hounds feel disgusted, so they will not attack the villagers at the foot of the mountain.
So, on the first day when he ate a lot of pickles, which was the sixth day when the exploration team entered here.
For the entire day, the mythical creature that looked like a hound never appeared.
The author has something to say:
No more moving for a day, take a day off
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