I immediately jumped into the water, which only reached my waist. I slowly felt around and soon found that there was indeed a hole in the wall at the edge of the coffin river.
At the bottom of the river was a dead body that had been soaked, making the water quite smelly. I used a flashlight to shine around the mouth of the cave and touched the outer wall a few times. I then quickly shined my light on the position of the corpse, lest it float towards me.
Fatty also came down to help and when he touched the hole, he stood up and said to me, “Yes, they came out of this hole. It seems that the structure here is basically similar to that of Xisha"s underwater tomb."
All the mechanisms seemed to come from w.a.n.g Zanghai. It seemed that there were a lot of connections between the Zhang family and w.a.n.g Zanghai, and there was a lot of technology and knowledge pa.s.sed between them.
Fatty dove to the bottom, groped for half a day in the water, and then went into the hole. I watched the flashlight go deeper bit by bit and then slowly retreat.
“It"s very s.p.a.cious inside. A few meters ahead there are steps to the top!” Fatty surfaced and said, “But I guess it"s a waterway. I don"t know what"s up ahead, but if you want to go out, this is probably the only way.”
I was finally a little calmer.
We climbed out of the coffin river, retraced our steps, and prepared to come back with Poker-Face.
I had just picked up Poker-Face and taken a few steps when I felt something was wrong—my throat was really uncomfortable.
Fatty"s respiratory system seemed to have been injured and his discomfort was obviously worse than mine. He only took a few steps and immediately covered his nose and mouth, expression twisted painfully.
I thought it was strange, how could this happen?
Fatty"s face was already blue and he suddenly made a gesture to keep me from moving. He then turned and ran to the secret pa.s.sage that brought us here, almost rolling and crawling the entire way.
I put down Poker-Face and ran after him, but before we reached the entrance of the secret pa.s.sage, we saw a thick fog drifting in. As long as you breathed in this place, you"d feel a severe burning pain, all the way from the nasal cavity to the lungs.
“s.h.i.t, the mechanism was activated?” I was shocked.
Fatty nodded desperately beside me: “Go!”
We rolled and crawled our way back, and I thought to myself, "G.o.d d.a.m.n it, it was too dark and there wasn"t even any movement, this mechanism started so quietly."
When I ran to where I left Poker-Face, I picked him up while Fatty grabbed the backpack that he had put down, and then we continued to run desperately to the coffin river.
When we reached the river, we jumped in without hesitation. I quickly found the entrance of the cave and dove all the way in, which was less than 10 meters. Fatty grabbed my arm since carrying Poker-Face was causing me to float upwards, and I groped forward desperately. Soon, I found that there were stairs ahead. We walked up them step by step and soon emerged from the water completely.
We used a flashlight to take a look around and found that this was a pa.s.sage, and the water here only reached our knees. Looking forward along this pa.s.sage, however, we could see the entrance of the cave about seven or eight meters away.
Was it the poison gas cave full of pools? If so, I finally came out without any danger. I didn"t expect this time to go smoothly and if I really did get out like this, I would definitely find a fairy to express my grat.i.tude.
I was ecstatic, wading through the water while Fatty ran in front of me. As soon as I reached the entrance of the cave, however, Fatty immediately stopped and I b.u.mped my whole body against his bear"s back. Before I could react, Fatty began to retreat.
“What the h.e.l.l?” I asked. Fatty said, “d.a.m.n it, this thing is troublesome. It bodes ill for the three of us.”
I looked over Fatty"s shoulder and saw something very strange at the front entrance—there were a lot of things like silk thread hanging horizontally there, and a lot of things that looked like fruits were hanging on the silk thread.
How can I describe the structure of this cave? It"s really too difficult.
It was basically a circular cave, and at the bottom was an ankle deep pool. We could see a wooden bridge built with iron chains, which went all the way to the opposite side under the water where a hole was located. At the entrance of the cave, there were countless thread-like silk things that could have been iron wires or some other material that were as dense as coiled silk holes. On these silk threads, the fruit-like things I saw earlier were something I had seen long ago and I was a little scared of—hexagonal bells. And I saw a countless number of these bells hanging on it. Was this what Fatty was referring to? As long as one silk thread was pulled, all the hexagonal bells here would ring. If that happened, the situation would be completely out of our control and we"d have no idea what would happen. I gasped and said to myself, “Poker-Face and the others, how did they get here?” I figured that everyone was in a bad situation at that time; however, it was still possible if Poker-Face carried them one by one, with his skills and concentration.
“This is an anti-theft system.” Fatty said. He pointed to some holes carved with dragon mouths on the cave wall. "When the Zhang family pa.s.ses through here, they"ll pour water through these holes, flood all the bells, and then dive by themselves.”
It was obviously impossible for us to activate the mechanism so I looked at the top of the silk thread. We could do it if we could pa.s.s through the top of the cave, but looking at it, I found there were also a lot of bells above me.
“Walk underwater?” I asked Fatty. He shook his head: “Look, this cave is about 30 meters wide, but it"s only half a slap deep. We can"t dive under the water unless we become c.o.c.kroaches."
“You can become a tortoise.” I retorted. (TN note: think it"s a play on their last names. c.o.c.kroach= zhanglang, tortoise=w.a.n.gba. Since Poker-face"s name is Zhang and Fatty"s name is w.a.n.g).
Fatty said, “However, we are at least temporarily safe now. Don"t worry, take a rest, and we"ll come up with a way.”
I sat down on the ground and marveled at the fact that it really wasn"t easy to have a place to rest along the way. Then I went to check on Little Brother and saw his eyes open for a moment. I said to him, “We"ve already come out. Don"t worry, we"ll be safe soon.” Poker-Face was very weak and immediately closed his eyes again so I said, “Have a good rest.” With that, I saw his mouth move.
I felt as if he was trying to say something so I waited, and sure enough, his mouth moved again. I was sure he wanted to talk, so I put my ear close to his mouth and heard him say, “I love boats.”
What does he mean he loves boats? What computer brand is that? I said, “Ok, we"ll buy it for you when we go out.” Fatty turned his head. He was already a little dazed and asked, “What are we buying?”
I asked Fatty to listen. He frowned and said, “No, Little Brother asked us to cook porridge, he wants to drink porridge.”
Drink porridge, when was Little Brother so unreliable? Fatty clapped his thigh suddenly and said, “No time for porridge, Little Brother, let"s go quickly!”
“Go quickly? What do you mean go quickly, is there danger here?" I asked.
Fatty looked at the dark pa.s.sages around him and took a few steps back, then started yelling, “f.u.c.k, let"s go!”
“What"s the matter?”
“Fog!” I also looked over and saw that there were two small holes in the wall of the pa.s.sage where we came in, blowing out a strong white alkali fog. It looked like a living thing, slowly spreading in the air, and looking very dense.
The poison gas system here seemed to have no oversight, and would enter all pa.s.sages!
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