Looking at the open city gate, Song Laosan said with difficulty, "Xiao Duan, with our current strength, it's difficult for us to walk down on our own, and with Monkey in this state, I'm afraid he won't be able to hold on..."
When I heard Song Laosan's words, I looked at him as if I had been electrocuted: "What do you mean by that?"
Song Laosan took a deep breath: "We've been working so hard to find Duan Jinyan. If we bring the monkey with us, we won't be able to leave. You can see for yourself, we're so close to Duan Jinyan. If we want to catch up with him, we have to give up some things."
"Song Laosan! That's enough, you son of a bitch!"
I looked at Song Laosan dressed in a rat costume and felt completely unfamiliar with him: "I never thought you were this kind of person! Monkey and I both considered you our brother!"
“I consider you all brothers too! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have risked my life to bring the monkey out in that predicament! But what I’m telling you now is the reality!”
Song Laosan shone his flashlight on the city gate tower on the left, his tone surprisingly calm: "Duan Jinyan is inside. Every second we delay, he will take one more step. I am just making a suggestion; the choice is yours!"
"Take the monkey with you!" I answered without hesitation. "I want to find Duan Jinyan. Perhaps it's just an obsession in my heart, even though he is my father. But in my life, everything he has given me is far less than what the monkey has given me! If I can't find Duan Jinyan today, my life will not change at all. But if I lose the monkey, I will live in regret for the rest of my life!"
"I'll say it again: from beginning to end, I've only been after my own interests. Now that you've made your choice, I respect your decision!"
Seeing my firm answer, Song Laosan helped me walk towards the city gate with the monkey.
As soon as I entered the gate, I saw that the ground was littered with stray arrows, but there were no corpses, which meant that the traps here had been broken.
With Duan Jinyan and his group of experts clearing the way ahead, all our risks have been eliminated, and we only need to follow the road forward.
The road behind the city gate is very wide. The reliefs on both sides are not the themes of the banquet, pounding silk, and herding that are popular in Song and Jin tombs. Instead, they are carved with countless iron pagodas with bright armor, giving people a sense of solemnity.
Further ahead, there are two rows of upward steps, with a cloud and dragon relief on the sloping surface in the middle. When Hu Shahu's coffin was carried into the tomb, it should have been on this cloud and dragon relief.
This means that after all our journey, we have finally found the path to the main burial chamber.
It wasn't until I got closer that I noticed a brick had been pried off the wall below the steps, revealing a secret passage behind it.
It's called a secret passage, but it's actually just a tunnel dug out by hand, barely big enough for a person to crawl through.
Before the advent of sealing stones, most ancient tombs were sealed in extremely bloody and cruel ways, such as leaving the craftsmen inside to block the tomb door.
Some may wonder why the craftsmen would obediently comply instead of choosing to rebel.
I also looked up some information about this. The craftsmen who were left in the tomb to be buried alive generally had two identities. One was that they were captured slaves. In ancient times, slaves without household registration were not considered people in a legal sense, but rather livestock that could be bought and sold.
Secondly, the highly paid craftsmen who resisted not only couldn't escape, but their entire families would be killed.
In feudal society, for someone who could build a large-scale mausoleum, wiping out an entire family would probably be easier than ordering takeout for us today.
Some might argue that since they were already locked in the same tomb as the deceased, knowing they were doomed to die, why not pull the deceased out of the coffin, lie down in it themselves, and use feng shui to defy fate for their descendants?
So far, the only stone coffin I've seen that can be easily opened is in Li Fan's tomb. That's because sealing stones already existed in that era, eliminating the need for human sacrifice. The fact that the coffin didn't have any mechanisms was also to make it easier for later generations to move the grave.
This method of sealing the door with living people involves coffins and outer coffins weighing several tons, requiring molten steel and iron nails for reinforcement. Even if the number of workers left behind were two or three times that, it would be impossible to accomplish this, let alone three or five.
In this situation, the craftsmen began to leave themselves an escape route when building the tomb, and this method of digging secret passages was one of them. Therefore, many experienced tomb raiders would prioritize finding such secret passages when working, in order to avoid numerous traps.
I stood in front of the cloud and dragon relief for a long time, but I couldn't find any clues. I had no idea how Duan Jinyan and the others knew there was a secret passage here. But since the path had already been cleared, I was happy to take advantage of it. I put the rope under the monkey's armpit and was the first to crawl in.
At the other end of the secret passage is a natural cave of about five square meters. A two-meter-wide underground river flows across it and out through the opening on the other side. The river is well-shaped and can be seen to have been dug out by man for drainage. The watermarks on the stones on both sides also indicate that the water level here has dropped considerably compared to back then. At its peak, the river was at least four or five meters wide and occupied the entire cave.
Seeing the flowing water, a sense of joy rose in my heart. I dragged the monkey out of the secret passage: "Third Master, come and help! We need to swim across this river to the other side and wash off the filth."
The icy cold water of the underground river actually helped clear my head, which had been foggy from the poisoning.
I took off the monkey mask and started fixing the zipper and rope on my body: "Third Master, help me hold him up, I need to piss in his mouth!"
Old Song was shocked: "Are you fucking crazy?! The monkey is almost dead, and you're still playing such a perverted game?"
My hands kept moving: "I'm saving people! We've inhaled too much mercury vapor, so we have to induce vomiting in him this way. Not only him, but we have to induce vomiting too. I'm a virgin, so it's not like a monkey is losing out by drinking some of a boy's urine!"
"Pah! What kind of advantage is this?"
Old Song rolled his eyes, pinched the monkey's mouth and turned his face to the side, and I started urinating directly into the monkey's mouth.
"vomit!"
The monkey swallowed two mouthfuls of urine, then its eyes widened, and it lay down by the river and began to vomit uncontrollably.
Song Laosan gave a disgusted look, then made a bowl shape with his hands: "Xiao Duan, can you please stop spitting it into my mouth and let me drink it myself? Otherwise, the scene is just too much to bear!"
"Can!"
I nodded and started urinating into Song Laosan's hand.
"Damn it, I'll risk it all to survive!"
Looking at the urine in his hands, Song Laosan wore a righteous expression, forced himself to drink it, and then began to vomit.
After he had vomited enough, Song Laosan washed his hands clean, stood up, and began to unbuckle his belt in front of me.
I was startled by Song Laosan's actions: "What are you doing?"
Song Laosan retorted confidently, "You're going to drink my urine? Didn't you say we all had to induce vomiting?"
"Are you fucking crazy?! If I want to vomit, I can just gag my throat, why would I drink your pee?!"
As I was speaking, I lay down by the river and started gagging, and then suddenly vomited.
Seeing my actions, Song Laosan was completely petrified: "Duan Shenxing, you son of a bitch! You can induce vomiting just by gagging, why the hell are you making me drink your piss?"
"vomit!"
I spat again, turning to look at Song Laosan with displeasure: "When did I ask you to drink urine? I fed urine to the monkey because he was about to faint, and it was easy to get bitten on the finger if I tried to urinate him! I never said I would feed you urine, didn't you ask me for it? Do you know how hard it was for me to squeeze that urine out for you?"
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