The burnt monster suddenly twitched, startling both Fatty and me.
I merely took a step back, while Fatty immediately hurled the entrenching tool in his hand.
The entrenching tool struck the monster with a "clang," as if hitting a stone.
At this moment, a green bead rolled out from within the monster. The bead was about half the size of a fist, emitting a green glow all over, like a green glass ball.
Fatty swallowed hard. "Xiang Ye... this monster isn't some ancient spirit, is it? It actually refined a demon core?"
I shot him a glare. "If this guy had refined a demon core, do you think the two of us would still be standing here talking alive?"
"Then what is this thing?"
"I don't know."
I leaned in and nudged it gently with my foot. Finding no unusual reaction, I picked it up, wrapping my sleeve around it.
"This looks like a luminous pearl," I said.
"A luminous pearl?" Fatty's eyes lit up at the mention. "Let me see!"
He eagerly took it and examined it for a long time before saying, "Xiang Ye, we're going to strike it rich this time! This luminous pearl is even bigger than Empress Dowager Cixi's! My goodness, if we took this out, it could sell for tens of millions! We're rich, rich!"
Without another word, Fatty stuffed the pearl into his backpack and carefully secured it.
Seeing him like that, I couldn't say much and just said, "Let's hurry. We need to find people first."
"Yes, yes, find people first."
Emerging from the small stone chamber, we found a passage nearby and entered it without hesitation.
As we entered the passage, the flashlight beam was already dim, indicating it was running out of power.
I rummaged through my backpack and discovered the spare batteries were long gone, leaving us in a predicament.
Fortunately, Fatty had a tallow lamp in his backpack.
We quickly added some water to the tallow lamp and lit it, then turned off the flashlight.
Unexpectedly, the moment the tallow lamp was lit, Fatty let out a shriek that almost made me fall onto the ground.
We were both squatting. When he suddenly yelled, I instinctively sat down on the ground.
Fatty had also dropped the tallow lamp to the side. I quickly picked it up and asked him why he was screaming.
He looked at me with a face full of terror, as if something was behind me. His expression sent chills down my spine!
Although my heart raced, I told myself that no matter what was behind me, I'd give it a good hit!
Thinking this, just as I swung my backpack to throw it, Fatty's terrified expression changed to one of confusion.
Seeing this shift in his expression, I became even more annoyed.
Deciding not to overthink it, I picked up the tallow lamp and glanced behind me.
Behind me, there was an alcove about a meter high, and in it sat a mummified corpse.
The mummy was not decayed and was very well preserved. However, its skin was dark brown due to the absence of moisture. Its eyes were narrow, its mouth tightly shut, and its head was bare, indicating hair loss. Its muscles were shriveled.
It was positioned sitting on the ground with its knees hugged to its chest. At first glance, it was quite terrifying.
"Why is there a mummy here?" I was a bit puzzled.
After all, in the Greater Khingan Range, bodies exposed to the elements would decay very quickly and could not possibly be preserved so well.
Moreover, this karst cave was not dry, so it was impossible for such a mummy to exist here, unless it had undergone special treatment before being placed inside.
I took out a telescopic baton and gently prodded the mummy. I found that its surface seemed to have a layer of hard substance.
I leaned closer to examine it carefully and discovered that its body was coated in a layer of transparent wax, which explained why it hadn't decayed.
"Xiang Ye, what are you looking at?" Fatty asked as I leaned in very close.
I replied, "This mummy seems to have something smeared on it."
Fatty came over and peered. "It's amber."
"Amber?"
Fatty nodded. "I've done some aging with amber for people at Panjiayuan before."
"You do aging?"
Fatty chuckled. "My technique is certainly not as good as yours, Xiang Ye, but I know quite a bit about amber. Amber is mostly composed of the bodies, excretions, or other debris of bees, ants, or other insects. It comes in several colors; the most common is brown-amber, but there's also yellow, red, green, and blue... transparent ones like this are not common."
It was rare for Fatty to know something, so I listened to him continue.
He said, "Amber is most often used in religion. Ancient Egyptians and Romans, for example, were very fond of amber. Although I don't know what this place is worshipping, it looks like an underground religious secret passage."
I agreed with Fatty's statement.
Using amber to seal a mummy was something only a religious sect would conceive.
It seemed this mummy was not ordinary before.
After a brief observation, we continued forward, carrying the tallow lamp.
Soon, we discovered at least seven or eight mummies in this passage. As we reached the innermost part, the space opened up.
And we also found traces of Guan Zhenwan and the others.
Because on the ground, we found a broken flashlight.
"It seems they also came this way," I said.
Fatty shouted at the top of his lungs, "Is anyone there?"
As soon as he spoke, an echo returned: "Is anyone there... anyone there... anyone there..."
We exchanged glances, and I couldn't help but be surprised.
Logically, to produce an echo, a large and very open space is required.
Even a mountain valley echo would produce at most two reverberations, yet here in this cave, the echo reached three times, and it was extremely clear. This indicated that a large space was definitely not far from us.
After walking about ten steps forward, I suddenly felt something was wrong and quickly told Fatty to stop. Then, I extended the tallow lamp forward and discovered that the space ahead was empty!
"Fatty, do you still have any glow sticks?"
"Yes!"
When we came in earlier, I had taken quite a few tools from Guan Zhenwan, including over ten glow sticks.
Fatty took out a glow stick and handed it to me. After igniting it, I tossed it forward and upward.
The moment the glow stick soared, it also allowed me to see the situation not far ahead.
About five meters away from us was a cliff. Next to the cliff stood a suspension bridge, and beside the bridge was a stone tablet. As the glow stick quickly fell to the ground, the stone tablet was not clearly visible.
Finding the direction, we moved towards it. Upon reaching the stone tablet, it was covered in several types of script, including Small Seal Script, Phags-pa script, and Tibetan script...