Bai Hanyan asked, "Why are you so sure?"
Wu Tingxiu said, "Because the skull is the hardest bone in the body, difficult to crush."
"You mean someone put a living person into this stone mill, crushed them, and then took out the remaining skull to throw on the ground?" Bai Hanyan swallowed and asked.
"It should be," Wu Tingxiu replied.
"Why would they do that?" Bai Hanyan asked.
Wang Yang interjected, "Perhaps it was for some kind of ritual... This place looks like an altar."
As he spoke, he shone his flashlight towards a spot not far away, discovering a stone table. On the wall behind the stone table were many carved pictures.
"Look, doesn't that look like an altar table?"
When he said it like that, it really did seem to be the case.
It seemed we hadn't fallen into the eighteenth level of hell, but had arrived at an altar.
Curiosity drew me towards the stone table, and I used my flashlight to examine the carvings on the wall.
These murals were very rough, and not carved with much refinement, looking more like graffiti. It was impossible to tell what they were meant to express.
"Look, what's that?" Wang Yang came up beside me, pointing his flashlight at a "line" on the wall. It was a thick line, with many "short lines" along its edge.
"Doesn't that look like a centipede?" Wang Yang said.
I frowned and took a closer look. It really did look quite similar.
"I think those people were sacrifices to the Centipede King," Wang Yang joked.
I replied, "Then, according to you, this is the Centipede King's lair?"
"Can you two stop joking around?" Bai Hanyan walked over, her brow furrowed.
I glanced at her, "Then can you stop being so jumpy? The Centipede King hasn't even appeared, and you've already scared me to death."
"Who told you to be such a scaredy-cat?"
"Me, a scaredy-cat? I don't know who's really timid..."
While we were bickering, Wu Tingxiu called me over, "Xiang Fei, come look at this."
I walked over. She was crouching on the ground, covering her mouth and nose with one hand while searching through a pile of dirt with the other. Soon, she pulled out an iron chain.
I leaned in to look at the iron chain in her hand and frowned, "What's this chain for?"
Wu Tingxiu shook her head. Then she handed the chain to me, wanting to find the other end of it.
The chain was thick, and from its craftsmanship, it should belong to the late Western Zhou Dynasty. After all, ironware from that period had such a rugged style.
Song Bing also came over, wanting to help Wu Tingxiu. But unexpectedly, as he tugged on the chain, "click, click" sounds immediately echoed from all around.
The chain also moved on its own, clearly having triggered some mechanism!
Startled, I quickly looked around, finding that nothing had changed.
I pursed my lips and said to Wu Tingxiu, "We'd better not touch anything else recklessly..."
Wu Tingxiu was unconcerned. She glanced at Song Bing and said, "Go see what's happening."
Song Bing nodded, took something out of his backpack, and unfolded it. It resembled fire tongs.
He walked to the wall, pressed his ear against it, and gently tapped the wall with the tongs, as if searching for something.
Every five or six steps, he would stop, press his ear to the wall, and tap it lightly.
Before I could figure out what he was doing, I saw him stop about five or six meters away from me. He then wiped the wall with his hand, raised the tongs, and immediately inserted them into a crack in the wall.
With a twist of both hands, he gave a forceful pull, and a stone fell from the wall. "Manager