The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 122: Snake Nest

Li Cu soon realized that something was strange, but this place had him in a stupor for almost five or six minutes. He realized it was because he didn't believe what he was seeing, but there were really traces in front of him.

As they continued descending, he gradually saw that the ore veins hadn't been fully excavated, and the depressions weren't as dense.

Generally, at this depth, he should have been able to see what the main mine shaft looked like, as well as what the primitive ore or vein looked like in the rock stratum.

Such large depressions one after the other should have given off the feeling of precious stones or something, but all Li Cu saw were pieces of an almost translucent rock that were already very thin. When the light swept over them, he could immediately see the sheen of scales flashing amidst the rocks.

There were white, mesh-like snake skins inside that had been cast off, among which were black scales. The weirdest thing was that these rocks were no different from any of the surrounding rocks, meaning that the snakes must have existed in the original rocks here.

"It's like picking an edible bird's nest." He didn't know who in the team said it, but Li Cu couldn't help but agree. Edible bird's nests were also constructed on sheer cliffs and precipitous rock faces from the solidified saliva of swallows. Although they weren't minerals, the method for collecting them was also very similar.

But edible bird's nests were on cliffs, and these snakes were underground.

What kind of stones were they? Could they be excavated?

Li Cu was very puzzled, but he didn't have the corresponding knowledge to make an analysis. Judging from the luster and state of the stones, however, they must have been the ones he had seen in that underground water channel.

It looked like there was a huge rocky mountain underneath the sand, and they were inside of it. So if all of the stones here could be used as building materials, then even his mother could tell that they were already hard. It was absolutely impossible for the snakes to burrow into these rocks themselves, so that meant they were in the rock when it was formed.

He had heard of the legend of the fish in the stone before. It was about a stone without any cracks, and when it was opened, there were water and live fish inside. "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" seemed to have written many such stories. But it was absolutely inconceivable that so many snakes were embedded in the completely enclosed rock here.

Moreover, judging from the luster of the scales and the state at which they shed their skin, Li Cu was very certain that these snakes were alive. If they weren't, then their corpses must be in a very well preserved state, completely isolated from oxidation and other chemical changes.

The lower down they went, the more snake nests they could see in the unmined rocks. In reality, there was no such thing as a snake nest tonic, but previous experience showed that the people who had dug these mine shafts weren't collecting snake skins. They must have been digging up these snakes.

Just imagining the size of the mountain and the number of snake nests embedded in it made him shudder. What were these miners aiming for? Why did they construct so many buildings around this vein? And why did they erect those strange figures here?

Li Cu felt dizzy as he quickly recalled what had happened before. He suddenly understood the significance of those containers transporting the snakes.

It appeared that some of the snakes here were still alive, and after they were dug up, they were sealed in strange containers and then transported out of the desert.

Why was it abandoned after that? Was there an accident and the snakes started to escape, so they had no other choice but to abandon the factory? But these kinds of snakes weren't difficult to deal with.

The dense part of the snake nest stretched on vertically for nearly fifteen hundred meters, and it took him an hour to descend. During that whole hour, he was surrounded by countless snake nests wrapped in the rocks, but there suddenly seemed to be a strange cut-off at the end of those fifteen hundred meters, and they all disappeared.

The shaft became very ordinary, and he was surrounded by black rock.

But Li Cu wasn't happy at all, because he looked down and found that the mine shaft hadn't bottomed out at all.

Anyone with a little bit of logic would understand what this meant—a fully excavated mine shaft would never be dug any further.

If the vein had been excavated, and the shaft still continued downward, then it showed that the miners at that time believed there was something below.

This transitional period lasted about twenty minutes, during which time he slowly woke up from the shock. To his surprise, a huge depression appeared in front of him.

Compared with the spherical depressions from before, this depression left him with two thoughts: it was simply a hole, and if there was a snake coiled in this hole, then it was definitely a python.

He looked at the huge depression completely dumbfounded. The two people above and below him also seemed a little surprised, and everyone who saw the huge hole stopped for a few seconds before continuing on.

The translucent rock walls slowly began to appear again, but this time, the situation was even worse than Li Cu had thought.

Because the mine shaft's wall continued down past this huge depression, the snake scales that passed through the translucent rock began to get bigger and bigger. With his one light source, he wasn't even able to see all of the snake nests that hadn't been mined behind the rock wall.

Li Cu realized that the pattern on his back must not be leading them to the exit, because there was no way it would be this deep.

Unlike the previous snake nests that were almost the same size, the size of the snake nests here started to change very drastically and irregularly. They weren't as densely packed, but the smallest snake nest here was ten times larger than those seen above.

The leader obviously felt that something was a little off, so he stopped and ordered them to retreat. He went all the way back to the huge depression they had seen before, climbed in, and ordered everyone to rest.

Maybe because they were feeling slightly scared, everyone turned on their light sources as bright as they would go. Some people couldn't enter the depression and could only hang on the outside. Li Cu looked up and down and saw that the light fully illuminated the whole mine shaft. The shadows behind the thinner part of the stone were dense, and the shaft leading down looked like endless darkness. He didn't know why, but the temperature and air here seemed to be constant, so no one felt uncomfortable.

As several people communicated in that strange language, their faces became more and more worried. Then, they began to distance themselves and divided into several groups. Li Cu was placed in the last group, apparently for his own safety.

The groups went one at a time, sending someone down more than ten meters lower than the previous person, and looking around with their light. Those above would follow the lights down, but wouldn't come too close.

Li Cu understood what it meant. The rock walls here were too thin, and the snake nests below were getting bigger and bigger. The rock walls could no longer serve as a protective barrier.

They were afraid that the snakes would be awakened by the light.