After Jiang Man and I bypassed the wall with the giant human face, we entered a larger space. This space was built in a square shape, with a passage in the middle and many tall stone pillars on both sides.
Right now, not far from the entrance to this road, there is a large area of rubble on the ground.
I uncovered the cloth covering the flashlight head and shone it overhead, discovering that the space had a flat ceiling. At that moment, a section of the ceiling directly in front of the tomb passage had collapsed, and the rubble on the ground had fallen from above.
I saw rotten wood and square stone slabs mixed in with the rubble ahead, and I slowed my pace: "There's a trap here, be careful!"
Jiang Man nodded: "Wasn't this tomb converted into an altar to suppress berserkers? Why weren't the mechanisms here destroyed?"
"In this world, there is never a shortage of evil people with ulterior motives. Otherwise, Ping'an Village would not have been able to guard this place for so many years. It is not surprising that there are traps here. However, their purpose is not to protect this place, but to stop people with ulterior motives from coming here."
I bypassed the area where the boulder was and found a mark by the roadside, so I went over to check it.
At my feet was a white circle the size of a human face, surrounded by charred marks.
Jiang Man picked up a piece of iron the size of a sunflower seed shell from the ground and gestured to me: "This is a fragment of a fragmentation grenade. Judging from the placement of this grenade, it's definitely not a booby trap, but rather something thrown during the firefight!"
“I think so too. Everyone who can come here is a master. If there are traps, they would definitely notice them. In other words, if there are traps here that even they cannot detect, the person who triggers them cannot escape safely.”
I shone my flashlight on the ground next to me: "Both sides have guns, but there are no spent cartridges or bullets here. There are no signs of a gunfight, which means that the person who threw the grenade was deliberately using the explosion to trigger a mechanism."
"They did this to stop the people behind them from catching up!"
Jiang Man quickly realized: "This means that the two groups ahead have already encountered each other and a conflict has occurred."
"Chase after them!"
I threw out a sentence, quickened my pace, and chased after them along the passage ahead.
The grenade just now was enough to show that a fierce conflict had already broken out among the team ahead. Judging from the frenzy of those people from Ping'an Village, once they got their hands on Duan Jinyan, they would definitely kill him all. There was no way they would give Duan Jinyan a chance to scout ahead in such a hurry. So if there were any traps ahead, they must have already been triggered.
At the end of the passage were two huge stone doors. One of them had been pushed open, leaving a half-meter-wide gap. There were also many bullet holes in the door.
On the ground in front of the door, besides the marks of the stone door being worn down, there was also a large amount of blood flowing out from inside the door.
Seeing the bloodstains on the ground, Jiang Man stepped in front of me, raised her pistol and pointed it inside the door. At the same time, she turned on her flashlight and slowly moved over: "There are bullet holes behind the door. There was a gunfight here!"
Looking at the marks on the ground, I noticed the blood had stopped flowing at the edges and added, "The blood on the ground has already congealed, which means the person has been dead for a while. Don't be frightened by the corpse inside the door!"
"You're right, there's a dead body at the door!"
Jiang Man checked the inside of the door to make sure there was no threat, leaned in to look inside, and after confirming there was no danger, stepped inside.
Behind the stone gate, a man in plain clothes leaned against the door, his head drooping, already lifeless, and the bloodstains on the ground flowed out from under his body.
Jiang Man shone her flashlight on the man's abdomen where a gun had been fired, pushed him down, and checked his back: "This man has two gunshot wounds, one in his abdomen and one in his shoulder. Neither is fatal! I suspect he was injured while buying time for Duan Jinyan and the others to open the door, and then he was shot in the back as he entered!"
What struck me as odd was that this person had no other injuries or signs of bandaging. Logically, the people who had chased him in should have killed him if they saw he was alive!
"This person was probably worn down to death."
I stood inside the door and looked outside, then said, "Duan Jinyan and his team were chased all the way here. They finally found cover, so they must have stopped the people outside and taken a short break while also scouting the area inside! They came down from the water earlier, so they probably didn't carry much, which is why they didn't bandage this person. By the time they figured out the situation, he was already dead!"
Jiang Man looked around and asked, "Duan Shenxing, do you think this door is the third door we're looking for?"
"No, if this were the third gate, there wouldn't just be one corpse on Duan Jinyan's side. The people of Ping'an Village would definitely launch a fierce attack."
I shook my head: "Never mind him, let's keep moving forward!"
Immediately, Jiang Man and I avoided the corpses behind the door and continued walking inside.
Apart from the wall with the turquoise human face on the outside, there are no other decorations inside this cave, which is probably closely related to the fact that the tomb was not yet completed.
As we continued forward, we encountered no more obstacles, but the signs of battle along the way were quite obvious. Bullets and shell casings, as well as several streaks of blood, could be seen on the ground from time to time.
As Jiang Man walked through the empty tomb passage, she asked me in a low voice, "Based on my understanding of ancient tombs, opening the tomb door leads to the tomb passage, and opening another door in the tomb passage leads either to a side chamber or the main tomb chamber, or at least an antechamber, and then the tomb passage continues to lead to other tomb chambers! But after we passed the altar, we walked through two tomb passages in a row. How far do you think the main tomb chamber is?"
"It's hard to say! The Xia Dynasty is the first hereditary dynasty recorded in history books. No written records of the Xia Dynasty have been passed down directly, so we can only rely on ancient documents to understand the kings, officials, army, and criminal justice system of the Xia Dynasty. There are no accurate records of the tomb structure. Also, due to the long period of time, the number of surviving tombs is extremely small. My ancestors unearthed pottery, lacquerware, and a small number of jade artifacts in a tomb that is suspected to be a Xia tomb."
I paused for a moment: "During the Xia Dynasty, after emperors built their mausoleums, they would draw up a protective zone around the tomb and its ancillary buildings and station people to protect it. This is what we call the mausoleum area. This tradition has continued for more than 4,000 years, until modern times."
It is generally believed that the tombs of the Xia Dynasty were all shaped like the Chinese character "中" (zhong), and generally not very large. However, as you can see, this underground palace was built by an early tribal people. Before them, there was probably no precedent in history for building large tombs! This tomb is likely the first large-scale tomb in history, without any reference or precedent, so our knowledge is of no use here.
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