The Lost Tomb Vol. 3

Chapter 27: New Mark

I couldn't remember what the mark in the undersea tomb looked like, but I still remembered those two marks that had been carved at the bottom of the moat and by the entrance to the tunnel. Looking more closely at the mark here, I found that it was completely different from the others.

Pan Zi, Fatty, and Shunzi really weren't familiar with the English alphabet, so as long as these marks were in English, they wouldn't be able to recognize the difference. That was why they didn't bother paying close attention to the other marks just now. But I, as someone who went to college and passed the CET-4 and CET-6,(1) at least knew that this mark was different from the others (no matter how bad my grades were).

I always thought that it was just a simple mark meant to guide us, similar to any other kind of sign that meant, "Go this way". But if that were the case, the mark shouldn't have changed. Generally, after entering a tomb passage, a person's attention would be completely focused on the surrounding environment, and they wouldn't intentionally change the style of their guiding mark. Moreover, these marks were usually done in a hasty manner, indicating that the person who left them wasn't very calm at the time, which also ruled out the possibility of them changing the style of the mark on a whim.

There was only one reason for this phenomenon now—these marks had different meanings. While they were used to show the way, they also seemed to be a message from the person who left them.

But this brought up another question: what exactly was the message? This seemingly foreign language wasn't actually a foreign language, but a word composed of letters from the English alphabet. I really couldn't tell what language it was, but I was at least certain it wasn't a language with common similarities to English—like German or French—because the arrangement of the letters was too irregular.

Moreover, after following the marks at the bottom of the moat and the entrance to the tunnel, we didn't encounter any danger. So, if we assumed that the meaning of that mark was that it was safe to enter, then the meaning of this mark had to be different. We couldn't discount the possibility that it was a warning, indicating that there was danger in this tomb passage.

After listening to my theory, Fatty and the others also felt that this mark was questionable. Not daring to act rashly, we decided to stop where we were and think it over.

But getting here could already be considered a small breakthrough. In fact, it wasn't unreasonable to say that we had half-succeeded, so figuring out which tomb passage to take obviously wasn't important right now. Even if there weren't any marks to guide the way, there was no reason for us to panic.

But after entering the underground palace—especially the main tomb passage—you had to be very careful in everything you did. This was because as long as there were traps and mechanisms in an ancient tomb, they would definitely be in this part, so it was necessary to be cautious and spend some time here.

"Little Master Three," Pan Zi suddenly said to me, "you're the only one here who has a little knowledge of foreign languages. If even you don't know what this is, then there's no way for us to know what it means. Is it possible to translate these English letters into Chinese? We won't know the meaning of the whole phrase, but maybe we can at least guess something?"

Pan Zi didn't know any English at all, so he was probably thinking that English letters were the same as Chinese characters, with every letter having its own meaning. I was too lazy to educate him, so all I said was, "If you want to guess, then it's better to guess who left this mark and why. At least that way, we have a better chance of guessing this mark's meaning."

"Even though we don't know who left it behind, didn't we already decide on their reason for putting it here?" Fatty asked in surprise. "This mark is meant to guide us, right?"