With Jiang Man pinning me down, I heard the whistling of bullets and my heart pounded: "What's going on? How did these people find us?"
Jiang Man pointed to a glimmer of light in the flattened grass: "An infrared alarm. These people are more cautious than I thought."
"Damn it!"
I heard the whistling of bullets, muttered something helplessly, then grabbed Jiang Man's wrist, rolled to a nearby low-lying area, and then got up and ran.
Jiang Man placed her hand on my back, pressing me down: "Our only way out is now blocked. What should we do?"
"hide!"
Having gone through so much, I have come to trust Jiang Man: "I have other friends in these mountains. I am looking for them, and they are looking for me. Since I have no hope of breaking out on my own, I can only join them."
Jiang Man was still worried: "Without specific coordinates, how will we meet?"
“We agreed to meet near the top of the Zewang Tomb, but it’s not safe there for the time being. We need to find a way to avoid the security guards. We’ll go back and meet them as soon as they leave this area.”
As I was talking to Jiang Man, I kept hearing flashlight beams coming from behind. Seeing that we were getting closer and closer, I pulled Jiang Man and ran towards a tree: "Climb the tree!"
I helped Jiang Man up, and she quickly grabbed a branch and crawled into the cedar vines. I cleaned my footprints off the ground and picked up a stone to climb the tree.
As the flashlight beam drew closer, I swung my arm and threw the stone in one direction.
"Splash!"
The bushes in the distance rustled. One of the security guards who had caught up lowered his body, pointed his flashlight on the gun at the bushes in the distance, hesitated for a moment, then did not chase after them. Instead, he took out his walkie-talkie, stood still and communicated for about half a minute, then slowly retreated and disappeared into the bushes.
Jiang Man hid beside me, pointed her gun in the direction the security guards had disappeared, and whispered, "This guy is too cautious. He's afraid we're trying to lure us away from our base, so he ordered his teammates to guard the vehicles, and he also had the sentries gather in that direction. He even called back the people who went out to search earlier... Do you think these people might have discovered us and are deliberately telling me this?"
"Impossible. He was chasing us here. If he had really found us, there would be no need for him to go through all this trouble."
At this point, I was also a little scared. Although the alarms they had set up had detected us, they had also allowed us to avoid the sentries by a twist of fate. Otherwise, if we had launched a forced attack, the consequences would have been unimaginable.
After waiting in the tree for a few minutes to make sure the security guard had really left, I jumped down. Just as I was about to speak to Jiang Man, I heard her cry out, "Ouch!"
"Jiang Man, what's wrong?"
I heard the sound and immediately looked up at the tree, but received no response. I became anxious: "Jiang Man! Jiang Man?"
"..."
Silence reigned, save for the howling wind.
I panicked completely and grabbed onto a tree branch to climb up.
I initially thought Jiang Man had been pricked in a vital spot by a tree branch during her descent, but after I climbed up the tree, I discovered that Jiang Man wasn't even there.
Just half a minute ago, Jiang Man and I were talking in the tree. Why did she disappear in the short time it took me to go up and down?
"Jiang Man! Jiang Man!"
I jumped back up the tree and onto the ground, calling Jiang Man's name repeatedly, but there was no response. I went to check the ground and found that the surrounding area was flat land.
A perfectly healthy person just vanished right there on the spot!
This was enough to make my hair stand on end. I gripped my pistol tightly, picked up a dry branch from the surrounding area, then grabbed a few handfuls of dry grass, wrapped it around the branch, lit a torch, and climbed up from Jiang Man's side.
I hadn't heard Lin Man fall before, so she must still be in the tree.
Cedars are highly flammable trees. As I climbed up, I kept the torch and branches at a distance. After climbing about two meters, I noticed the difference.
This cedar tree has been growing for countless years. Its trunk is about the thickness of two people's arms. Although the leaves are still green, the trunk has become somewhat rotten and has developed a large hole.
If you run your palm along the edge, the burrs are still fresh, indicating that the tree hole was only recently formed.
In other words, when Lin Man was climbing down, she accidentally stepped on a rotten part of the tree trunk and fell down.
The hole was no more than two meters above the ground; even if it were hollow, it shouldn't have knocked her unconscious.
With this question in mind, I slowly extended the torch inside: "Jiang Man, are you down there?"
It would have been better if I hadn't looked. Once I did, I discovered that the tree was completely dead in the middle, with a large, dark hole inside, like the mouth of a well. Jiang Man had likely fallen into it.
Five minutes later, I returned to the scene with a few vines, tied one end to a nearby tree, and then slowly descended into the tree hole along the vines.
The vines I connected were a full ten meters long, and apart from the outer part, the part extending into the tree hole was about six meters long, and there was still no bottom in sight.
I hung from the vine, wrapping the end around my ankle, and struggled to move the magnesium rod to try and provide light, when I heard Jiang Man's faint voice: "Duan Tao, is that you?"
"Snap!"
Sparks flew from the magnesium rod, and I couldn't see my surroundings at all as I shook. I whispered, "Jiang Man, can you see the sparks?"
Jiang Man replied, "Yes, you can. Your height is about two meters, but don't jump down! There are very sharp rocks below, and my leg is injured!"
"I can't hold on any longer!"
Upon hearing Jiang Man's words, I clamped the rope between my legs, emptied all the contents of my backpack, carefully wrapped my feet in the rope, and then released my grip.
"Splash!"
As soon as I landed, I heard a strange sound under my feet, as if I had crushed a lot of clods of earth.
After groping around for a moment, I found the torch and relit it.
The firelight illuminated the stark white bones.
This is a large cave with rammed walls on all sides, and the entire cave is filled with piles of white bones.
Jiang Man was startled by the sight and looked at me nervously: "Duan Tao, where is this place? How can there be so many human bones?"
"A mass grave!"
Looking at the weathered bones scattered on the ground, I took a deep breath: "If nothing unexpected happens, these are all slaves who built the Ze King's Tomb. In ancient times, to prevent the location of the tomb from being exposed, most people would kill these slaves afterward. Ashiyi, who built the Ze King's Tomb, was also a famous feng shui master. It's not too extreme that he built such a simple tomb for these slaves."
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