The Lost Tomb : Sea Of Sands

Chapter 123: Sleep

No one spoke the rest of the way, and he could no longer see what was inside the rock walls without the light. Going all the way down in the darkness was a bit more frightening at first, but he later found that it was quite effective.

It was also because of this that Li Cu didn't see anything more valuable. His only additional discovery was that there were some marks carved on many of the rock walls.

The marks were all finely carved Arabic numerals, and they were engraved on the surface of the snake nests. But they weren't on all of the snake nests, which meant they must have been marking and counting some special ones.

They finally reached the "bottom", but it was still different from what they were expecting.

The shaft didn't end, but they couldn't go down any further because it had collapsed in the middle, and the lower part was blocked by huge stones.

They could see under the gap that the collapsed shaft was in bad shape. Based on common sense, it was unlikely for the vertical shaft to collapse like this, because the rock walls were unlikely to loosen in such a large area. They lit up the area where the collapse occurred and found that holes had been drilled into the rock wall, probably for blasting.

It was an artificial collapse, meaning they had wanted to close the lower part of the mine shaft.

The flashlights shining down below revealed that the stones hadn't completely blocked the area, and they could still see the darkness stretching further down.

On the collapsed part of one of the rock walls, there was a line of Chinese characters that read: The following is the periodization [1] layer.

The specific depth could no longer be investigated, but it was obviously impossible to continue.

Li Cu was actually relieved, but with things like this, did that mean the path had become a dead end? What were they doing here?

The black-clad people also had the same doubts, and turned on their lights again. They saw a horizontal gap along the edge of the collapsed shaft that was quite small, meaning that people who were slightly obese couldn't enter at all.

One of the groups explored the area first, and after making sure it was safe, they all entered one by one. There was a large stone cavity inside where they could squat, and there they saw a large number of folders hanging on the wall. There was another section in the cavity where a hole had been dug out horizontally, and probably led to other places. It looked like a secret passage.

The air was moving, and there was a weak draft, which may have been the reason why the temperature here hadn't increased.

Li Cu didn't get a clear look at the documents before they were quickly snatched up by the black-clad men, but he saw a rare expression of emotion on all of their faces after about five or six minutes. Although he couldn't understand what emotion it was, it was enough to surprise him.

Not long after, they rolled up a drawing that had been affixed to the cave wall. It was brittle, so they made sure to preserve the surface with some kind of spray before they dared to roll it up. During this period, Li Cu was able to get a few looks.

It seemed to be a cross-sectional view of the stratum, with some patterns marked at different depths. Li Cu could see the patterns clearly, and they all had something to do with snakes.

Everything in this narrow space had been snatched up in an instant, but everyone froze as soon as they started taking the drawing off of the wall.

It turned out that the rock wall behind the paper was also the surface of a snake nest. The wall was very thin, so once the paper had been pulled off, they saw a snake eye open behind it.

The snake eye was the size of a goose egg, with alternating gold and gray colors that looked just like a gem.

They extinguished all the lights instantly, and then one or two people turned on the dim lighting equipment. Because the light wasn't enough to penetrate the area, Li Cu could only vaguely see the snake's eye slowly recede behind the wall.

Li Cu's heart was beating like a drum, and he gradually felt like it was going to explode. Although he didn't need to exert much effort the entire way down, he didn't have the training to successfully put up with being manhandled, and ended up reflexively using his strength under the black-clad men's hasty mode of travel. This was especially true at those few key turns where he had to tense up in order to enable the other party to move him better.

Coupled with the confrontation with one of the black-clad men, and the strange wonders he had seen along the way, he began to feel weak and started to lose consciousness.

"Well done." The Wu Xie in his heart seemed to encourage him: "Get some sleep and exhaust them [2]."

He fell into a trance.

While in that semi- dream-like state, he felt as if he had been fed something. Then, there was a long period of being dragged.

Even though the dragging eventually stopped, he felt like his situation hadn't changed. He was still in a narrow space, but he wasn't moving and was just lying there.

While in this state, he fell into a deep sleep, and when he woke up, he found that the situation still hadn't changed.

He was in that horizontal tunnel he had seen before. It was only tall enough for him to lie on his back, meaning he couldn't see the people in front or behind him. When he moved, he could feel the rope under his armpits was still pulled taut. Obviously, whoever was in front pulling him was as silent as he was.

What's the matter? Is everyone tired, and just decided to go to sleep?

Were these people truly so carefree, that when the leader called 1, 2, 3, everyone just rolled over and went to sleep? If there was such a life, he also wanted to give it a try.

He listened very carefully and quickly realized that he was wrong. This wasn't the silence of sleep, but complete and utter silence. These people weren't moving, and were barely even breathing.

That was when he heard something else.

There were a lot of loud noises trickling down from above, which turned out to be the sound of plates and bowls colliding with wine bottles, along with the sound of music playing. In a daze, he even seemed to smell the delicious scent of roasting meat.

He was very familiar with this kind of sound and smell. Was it really BBQ? Someone was barbecuing above them?

But there was another, stranger scent mixed in with that BBQ aroma, and when he thought about it, he immediately woke up and knew what it was.

It was the smell of urine.

Then, Li Cu heard a commotion, followed by some strange sounds, and an even stronger smell of urine.

He wriggled a bit and felt some warm liquid flowing down the back of his head. The smell of urine was immeasurably strong, but fortunately, he was lying on his back.

He was on the verge of tears. Which of these seniors in front couldn't hold it? With such a superb lineup, were their images going to be destroyed all because of their unworthy bladders?

While thinking about the impossibility of the situation, Li Cu heard the sounds of laughter and zippers being done up come from above, and was suddenly enlightened. Apparently someone went to pee after the BBQ, but didn't know there was a stone tunnel here. As a result, all of their urine flowed down into this small tunnel, from the first black-clad person all the way to the last.

This was really too tragic. Li Cu thought of the fate Wu Xie had mentioned before and suddenly wanted to laugh.

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Notes:

[1] Periodization (of history) is basically categorizing the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time. Think like "Bronze Age", "Renaissance", "Middle Ages", etc.

[2] He means exhaust the Wang family. If Li Cu was asleep, he would become completely limp, and the person who carried him would be really exhausted.