The Lost Tomb Vol. 7

Chapter 46: Strange Blood on the Iron Plate

"Blood?"

"Yes, it's definitely blood. Someone poured a lot of blood on the iron plate, and more than once, too. It looks like once the blood dried, more was poured over it until multiple layers were formed. I don't know how many times it would take to accumulate this much." As I spoke, I looked at the lines on the iron plate and immediately realized what was going on. "Look at these groove lines. I've seen something similar before. These are blood guiding grooves. This isn't an ordinary iron plate, it's a sacrificial plate."

In order to test my theory, I immediately took out my canteen and started pouring water on the iron plate. I poured it very carefully and saw that the water's color under the flashlight's beam looked a bit like some mysterious ancient liquid. As I poured it from the center of the iron plate, it soon flowed along the grooves and rapidly expanded.

Once I saw how the water flowed, I was almost certain that these grooves had been designed by someone. The flowing water passing through the grooves had a strange and harmonious aesthetic feeling.

It was as if the current was a living creature as it cut a wonderful figure on the iron plate. Strangely enough, the water didn't fall onto the ground once it flowed down the side and raced along the lines around the iron plate. Instead, it flowed to the bottom of the iron plate along the side and continued flowing along the pattern on the bottom, converging towards the shaft.

It was because of the water's viscosity. Blood had more impurities and a higher viscosity, so it would flow more beautifully against the bottom of the iron plate.

"That's just how things were done back then." Xiao Hua had seen the world and wasn't surprised at all. "Do we have to drench it in a lot of blood?"

I touched the iron plate, unsure. The old dried blood that was now wet from the water had started to dissolve. It was still relatively fresh, so it must have been shed when the Mystic Nine came here before.

Grave robbers didn't speak of taboos like blood sacrifices, and it wasn't auspicious to bring blood into a place like this even though it wasn't an ancient tomb. If the Mystic Nine had drenched the iron plate in blood when they entered here before, then there had to be other ways. We didn't have any other clues right now, so maybe we'd have to give it a try.

I thought that maybe there was some kind of mechanism under the iron plate that could be activated by blood.

It wasn't all that difficult to deconstruct. This mechanism probably used the blood's viscosity in the grooves as a medium. I believed the ancient technology could do it. As long as the lines were cleverly designed, the flow rate of water or other liquids would be completely different.

I was going to send Xiao Hua out and get him to ask the people below to get us some blood, but he touched the dissolved blood and suddenly asked, "Wait a minute, what kind of blood is this?"

"What do you mean what kind of blood?"

"It's easy if it's pig or dog blood, but it'll be difficult if it's human. Moreover, the amount of blood can't be solved by one or two barrels. It would be a huge project to get so much blood up here."

When I thought about it, I agreed that using human blood would be troublesome. The Mystic Nine wasn't abnormal enough to use it, and I didn't think the ancient mechanism could distinguish the subtleties between the different types of blood. Moreover, Xiao Hua and I weren't full of blood. If we needed to, we could maybe fill up a cup between the two of us.

I thought about it some more and told him that pig blood and human blood were similar, so we should try pig blood first.

Xiao Hua shook his head and said, "Too much trouble." He thought for a moment, and then said, "We'll bring a pig up here directly."