After Jiang Man and I arrived at the altar of human sacrifice, we followed the marks on the ground and headed forward.
The cave where the altar is located is shaped like a short-handled spoon.
The altar and statues are located in the shape of a spoon handle, and in front of them is a huge cave.
Seeing that there were no lights on inside the cave, I turned my flashlight down to the lowest brightness and began to check.
This enormous cave is like a beehive, with the surrounding mountain walls filled with countless caves, covering an area of only one square meter.
In each of these Shandong statues, there is a half-meter-tall statue, which looks exactly like the large statues outside.
Besides a statue, these caves also contained piles of bones.
This means that each statue here corresponds to a slave who was sacrificed.
Jiang Man and I explored the cave, eventually returning to the rift valley where the giant statue was located. "After walking around here, we can confirm that there are no other passages here. So, do you think this is the exit or the entrance?"
"It's hard to say, but I think the entrance is more likely. However, we got here through a secret passage, which is a shortcut, so we can't be sure about the normal route."
I paused for a moment: "Of course, there is another possibility: this is neither the exit nor the entrance, but merely an altar within the Miao Jiang Immortal Palace, like a side chamber of a tomb. Only by opening the third door can one enter the main burial chamber!"
“I think even if this isn’t the path to the third door, there must be some connection! There are at least several hundred smaller caves in this mountain, and in each one there is a skeleton. If the craftsmen who dug the secret passage escaped from here, then the designer could have just killed them here. Why would they have trapped them here alive?”
Jiang Man offered her analysis: "I think the owners of those skeletons were similar to the sealers in ancient tombs, the people who needed to seal the tomb doors from inside. They probably discovered an escape route while building that giant statue, so after sealing some mechanisms, they chose to come here to escape!"
I largely agreed with Jiang Man's statement: "We've already explored the cave. Let's go in another direction and see if there are any other secret passages left by the workers."
After Jiang Man and I finalized our plan, we continued walking back along the handle of the cave.
Not long after passing the giant statue, a tunnel carved out of the mountainside appeared ahead. This tunnel was not naturally formed, but rather excavated from the mountain and painted with bright colors. The paint, made of an unknown material, remained as bright as new after so many years, like a rainbow.
Looking at the brightly colored cave, I slowed my pace and turned my flashlight to its highest brightness: "According to the conventions of this tomb, wherever there is concealment, there must be a trap. Be careful!"
Under the flashlight's beam, the cave ahead was exceptionally bright. I walked forward about a meter and noticed a crack in the paint on the left wall, which I then focused my flashlight on.
Seeing that I was drawn to the crack, Jiang Man spoke up, "This ancient tomb is so old, it's already quite remarkable that the pigments have remained so vibrant! The yellow mud we saw in the cave earlier was already cracked inch by inch, so it's normal for the pigments to crack as well, right?"
I rubbed the paint on the wall with my hand: "This paint has a special material that adheres very clearly to the stone. If it were to crack, it should show fine lines like ice cracks in porcelain, not this kind of crack! This means that the humidity and pressure in this area are different from other places, and there is probably some kind of mechanism around here."
Jiang Man shone her flashlight in front of the cave: "We don't know how long Duan Jinyan has been down here, but the people from Ping'an Village arrived half an hour earlier than us. They must have already checked the situation of the big cave behind us and will definitely turn back here. Someone has already scouted this route for us."
It's always best to be cautious in everything you do.
I knew Jiang Man was reminding me to hurry up and look for traces of the team ahead, but I didn't heed her advice. Instead, I started scraping around the crack with my knife.
As the paint on the wall was scraped off, two colors gradually emerged, divided in two by a crack in the wall: one side was the color of bluestone, and the other side was milky white.
I continued cleaning along the white trail and discovered that beneath the paint in the cave was a piece of jade the size of a shoebox, with the gap between it and the rock filled with a black material.
I gently pried at the black material with the tip of my knife and found that it was like a candle, and a piece was easily picked off.
Jiang Man saw that there was indeed something behind it and shone her flashlight on the jade stone: "This is top-quality mutton fat jade. Do you think this thing is a sacrificial offering hidden here, or a mechanism?"
"The material used to fill the gaps in the jade should be some kind of oil or clay, and since jade is relatively fragile, it is more likely to be a trap."
I shone my flashlight on the jade and found that four-fifths of the jade was a dark shadow, with several black lines in the blank areas: "There are water patterns inside this jade, so it should be a jade box containing poison. Therefore, the trigger mechanism must be on the same level as this jade box. Once we trigger the mechanism, the jade box will be broken by something and spray out the poison!"
Jiang Man shone her flashlight on the ground, looking at the colorful ground beneath her feet: "If we jump over it, we'll inevitably trigger other mechanisms. We might as well destroy these mechanisms."
“The things in the Miao Jiang Immortal Palace are strange and bizarre. Step back a bit and don’t get these liquids on you.”
I told Jiang Man to step back a little, and then I used the hilt of my knife to smash the jade stone.
The jade box was less than half a centimeter thick. After I smashed it, a purplish-brown liquid immediately flowed down the wall, quickly forming a layer of white foam that corroded all the paint on the wall.
Waiting for the liquid in the jade box to empty, I slid the blade horizontally across the ground. After feeling some resistance, I felt along the undulations of the ground with my fingers: "The ground in front of us is a single stone slab. Stepping on it will trigger a mechanism. I don't know how many more jade boxes there are ahead. I have to try them out. You back up a bit more!"
I had Jiang Man back a little further, and then I stepped on the pedal.
"Bang bang bang!"
As the stone slab beneath my feet sank deeper, a muffled sound suddenly came from the cave in front of me, and countless purple liquids sprayed out from the sides and top, making a hissing sound as they hit the ground.
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