Chapter 207
It turned out that Mi Xiaoqian's team was the largest team of more than 20 people that Xia Beibei had seen before. After asking in detail, they had a total of 22 people.
At first, they got lost in the forest for three or four days. Although it was scary, at least they had food and water.
Later, they all fell into this cave and met five players. After talking to each other, they said that a team member accidentally touched a boulder and everyone fell into the cave together.
After entering the cave, everyone didn't know the situation at first and didn't dare to move around. They also tried to climb up, but there was no foothold, and it was difficult to climb up with people stacked up. Fortunately, there was plenty of air in the cave, otherwise they would have died long ago.
Even so, they couldn't hold out for long. Soon the food in the bag rotted, and the water was gradually drunk up. As a last resort, everyone began to look for other ways out.
Mi Xiaoqian was in the second stone chamber. In the first stone chamber, a team member was injured by a sudden hidden weapon. Because everyone else was exhausted, they couldn't carry the injured forward, so they could only leave him there. No one knew what happened to him. When it came to her, he was just hungry, and then he was abandoned.
Mi Xiaoqian said this very obscurely, but Qiao Sheng and the others understood it clearly. They said they were teammates, but in fact they were just partners, which was different from the teammates who fought back to back.
"So these people didn't try to find a way out after falling down, and only got anxious when they ran out of food after squatting at the bottom of the cave. When we got to the island, they were still lost in the woods. Did they fall down after we started to clean up the island's supplies?" Xia Beibei sorted out the timeline and felt that this was the most reasonable way to calculate.
Several people followed along the corridor and passed through three stone chambers. There were some unexpected surprises in each stone chamber. Two of them contained backpacks dropped by players.
Picking up this one and being able to open it meant that a player had completely left the game. In the last stone chamber, they actually saw a skeleton.
This is very strange. After all, when a player dies, they turn white immediately. It is impossible for them to leave behind a skeleton. The skeleton that can be left behind must be an NPC.
Qiao Sheng and Li Mu moved the skeleton away and searched nearby. There was no information about the identity of the skeleton. However, there was a piece of soil under the skeleton that was clearly different from the soil in other places.
After digging it up, they saw an axe. Qiao Sheng picked it up and took a look. As expected, he was surprised. This axe was the one that required 50,000 points in the system store.
This was a pleasant surprise for them. After receiving the reward, they had to do something practical. They asked Lin Haiyang to dig a hole and bury the skeleton. They did not erect a tombstone. After all, they did not know who it belonged to or what it should be written on.
The axe was given to Xia Beibei. As soon as the girl saw the introduction, she wanted to return it immediately. It said [Axe for felling trees. Each tree only needs two cuts. The drop rate is five times that of ordinary axes.]
"Sister Qiao, I can't take this. The properties of this axe are too good." Xia Beibei was like holding a hot potato. "
Take it. It can save a lot of energy when felling trees. Don't push it back. We still have to move forward." Qiao Sheng pushed her outstretched hand back, and asked everyone to drink water and take a rest, and then continue to move forward.
After that, they didn't encounter a stone chamber again for a long time. They felt that their legs were out of control and they were still in the corridor. This situation made them feel inexplicably nervous. Before, whether they met people or skeletons, at least they had a chance to meet them. Now it was so quiet that it made people feel uneasy.
Just when the four people were about to collapse, Ah Dai suddenly jumped off Li Mu's shoulder and rushed towards the wall.
The posture looked too scary. Just when everyone thought it was going to break their necks, it disappeared from everyone's sight.
This situation made the four people look at each other in bewilderment. What just happened? It couldn't be their hallucination. Just when they were confused, Ah Dai's head drilled out of the wall again.
Obviously, he looked back after seeing Qiao Sheng and his team hadn't passed for a long time.
Li Mu reacted first and shouted to the other three people to rush over. The corridor was dark. After rushing through the "wall", they saw countless graves in front of them.
The sudden change made the four people who just rushed over very confused. What was going on? How could it change so much suddenly? There was a village not far from the grave circle. Several people decided to go to the village to investigate first.
It's called a village, but in fact it's just a dozen thatched houses and wooden houses. They stood outside the house and shouted a few times. No one responded, so they went in. After walking around, they found that these houses should have been abandoned for a long time. The furniture was covered with cobwebs and dust, and there was no trace of human habitation.
"An underground village, no one lives there, and there are graves nearby. Isn't this the standard configuration of ghost stories?" Qiao Sheng felt that his brain was tied up. What was going on?
"Could it be that the island sank, and this village was originally above sea level, but because of the rising water level, it was flooded, and the skeletons we saw just now escaped from the village." Li Mu thought about it, it seemed that this was the only possibility, otherwise there was really no other way to explain the village below sea level.
Sure enough, his statement was soon confirmed. In front of the tombstone of the largest grave in the circle of graves, a book was found, which clearly recorded the situation of this village and this island.
The boulders, caves, and stone chambers were all man-made. The reason was very simple, which was what Li Mu said. The sea level rose and the island sank. Because there were not enough ships on the island, the villagers could only work together to dig tunnels and then move the village in the forest underground.
However, since living underground, the villagers' health gradually deteriorated and they died one after another until there were only three villagers left. They decided to save themselves, leave the island, and find a way to survive.
From this note, we know that the entrance is near the boulder and the exit is in the village. If you keep walking in the corridor, it will be a loop. It takes endless time to walk and can kill people in it. This is a very effective way to prevent outsiders from coming.
So since these villagers moved down, they have never been disturbed.
As for the children who want to go out and take a look, they didn't stop them. After all, they can't let the whole village live without seeing the sun for the rest of their lives. It would be better if there was a way to let everyone leave this sinking island. But what
disappointed everyone was that the young people who went out one after another, but there was really no one who came back to save the villagers. Many people in the village died in this expectation, until only three people were left in the end.
"Does that mean that the skeletons in the stone chamber are not from this village? After all, the exit is in the village, and it is unlikely that the villagers will get lost in the tunnel. And we may not be able to save those players. The notes say that the tunnel is built along the island. Even if we chase them out now, we may not be able to find the remaining people." After reading the notes, Qiao Sheng couldn't help asking.
The other three people nodded heavily. It was obvious that the wall leading into the village was really no different from other walls, but it was able to allow people to pass through. If it weren't for Ah Dai, they would probably have missed it.
After much deliberation, the group returned to the location of the corridor and hung a wooden board on the wall on the side of the corridor, writing that it was passable. As for whether the players would come back and see or touch the wooden board, it was hard to say.
After doing all this, the four of them searched the village and the graveyard again. Unexpectedly, they found another axe of the same model. This harvest was indeed a pleasant surprise. Xia Beibei was happy that their two teams could each have one, and she would not have to bear the burden.
Qiao Sheng was happy in the opposite way. He was only thinking about saving 100,000 points. That would be a lot of supplies. Of course, the most important thing was not the supplies, but the days of endurance. One axe every month and a half, two axe every three months. Xia Beibei and the others would never know how valuable the things they got this time were.
After getting the things, there was really nothing good to stay in this place, so they searched around according to the records in their notes, and finally found a cave with stairs behind the small wooden house at the edge of the village. It
looked like a cellar. After walking down a few steps, it became a flat road, and soon it became an uphill road. It took them several hours to walk from underground to the ground.
Because the trees on the island had been cut down by Qiao Sheng and his team, they could see huge rocks far away from them. It was unknown how long they stayed in the cave. Qiao Sheng could only calculate based on the number of times the hunger bar was empty. They should have stayed in the cave for more than a day.
It was daylight at this time. Judging from the position of the sun, it should be around seven or eight in the morning. If they counted carefully, they hadn't closed their eyes for a long time. In that cave, they had no concept of time and could just endure it. Now that they came out and had a sense of time, they were all very sleepy. They
hurried to the boulder first. When they arrived, they untied the rope tied to the boulder, took Su and the cassock with them, and walked towards the shore where their boat was parked. They
sweated more and more as they walked. They had walked underground for two days, but they had not sweated as much as they had in less than an hour. Qiao Sheng also said that the temperature underground and on the ground were almost the same. Although it was summer underground, the temperature difference was definitely more than ten degrees compared to that on the ground.