Up to now, there are only more than ten people left in the entire team, four of whom are outsiders.
But they didn't know how long it would take them to reach the main tomb chamber, nor did they know whether they could find a way to survive after reaching the main tomb chamber. They could only continue to move forward relying on their obsession.
Pedestrians stood on the shore and watched the blood slowly spread over the relief. The distorted human figures were wailing in the blood pool. The scarlet blood and the pale relief, as well as the green glowing lights that came from nowhere, like will-o'-the-wisp, were swaying up and down.
"This... is simply hell..." Jing Tao muttered to himself.
After the blood pool reached the same level as the shore, it stopped rising. The stench of rottenness rushed into the nose, making people feel sick.
Lu Yanli stared at the pool of blood intently.
This was not the first time he had seen the blood river. He had seen it before in Honghe Village, when he took the elevator to the eighteenth floor before newcomers entered. In this mission, he saw it again.
What is in the blood pool
He had an impulse to jump down and find out what was going on, but he couldn't guarantee his own safety at the moment, so he had to suppress it.
Seeing that the water would not come up for the time being, several archaeologists opened their bags on the shore, spread out papers, and prepared to start.
The bad thing was that they could not remember the way they came. In their memory of the long journey they had walked in a daze, only the hoarse voice of Captain Cen could tell them about the past. Therefore, they were in trouble at the first step of drawing, and could only draw the route of the later period.
“What about other places that haven’t been explored?”
"There is no other way. We can only hand it over to the next generation."
Spots of fluorescent light floated over, and some of them stuck to the paper. The team members hurriedly reached out to swat it away, but instead the fluorescent light stuck to the paper and their fingertips, and spread out into small pieces on the paper.
"What on earth is this?"
In the darkness, dots of green light floated, filling the entire space.
"I thought of bioluminescent fungi, but it doesn't seem like they were spores of fungi."
"Wait, these... these can also be used! Just imagine, thousands of people came in with our map, but there was no light and they couldn't see clearly."
The unfinished words of one of the team members were quickly echoed by the others.
"You mean..."
"Yes, since it can be attached to paper, why don't we make a fluorescent map?"
Under the dim light, the team members who lost their teammates immediately threw themselves into their work. They reached out to collect the fluorescent light in the air and then carefully smeared it onto paper.
Several task workers were also helping. After scooping up a large handful, they asked the archaeological team members in charge of drawing the map to scrape off some spots with their fingertips and then draw the route.
Lu Yanli was also helping, but he still had some concerns in his heart, so he didn't start directly. Instead, he took off his gloves and waved them in the air, then turned back after being covered in blood.
But the fluorescence in the air became more and more, from tiny dots to dense enough to almost engulf people. No matter how hard Lu Yanli tried to avoid it, his exposed skin was still inevitably stained with it. Not to mention the others, they almost became a moving fluorescent target.
"Okay, let's go."
Such dense fluorescence made them a little scared, and no one knew whether there were any harmful substances in it. After putting away the scroll, the pedestrians walked towards the path in the middle of the two tombs.
When you actually walk into the center of the tomb chamber, you will feel that you are extremely small. You don’t know how high the tomb chambers on the left and right are. In the darkness, you can’t see clearly even if you raise your head. You can only walk forward based on your intuition.
Gradually, they all had an illusion that they were not walking in a tomb, but in a hell that would never see the sun.
They didn’t know what the destination was, so they could only keep going.
"The road ahead is getting narrower." said the team member walking at the front.
His suggestion was correct. The tombs on both sides did not seem to be arranged in parallel. The walls on both sides gradually moved closer to the middle, forming a huge triangular shape.
The people walking behind also felt the pressure. The narrow path, which was originally half a meter wide, gradually narrowed, and in the end, it was almost squeezing people's shoulders. There was a slightly fatter person in the team. He was strong and could carry a lot of things. He was walking in the second half and soon got stuck and couldn't move.
"How about this, everyone take the necessary things and put your backpacks here first." He squeezed forward, but still couldn't move, so he had to discuss with the people behind him to move back, "Put your unnecessary things here with me, I'll wait for you here."
That being said, being alone in a dangerous ancient tomb is tantamount to committing suicide.
The others did not say much, but retreated silently. The people on the left stopped and waited. After retreating, the fat team member smiled and said, "Alas, there is nothing I can do. My wife kept urging me to lose weight, but I didn't listen. Now it's over. Remember to supervise me when you go out. I will definitely lose weight."
The others hugged him one by one, suppressed their sorrow, and continued to move forward with their small bags on their backs.
They will come back.
!
The fat team member stayed where he was, opened the package, looked at the few small pieces of bread inside, and smiled: "Well, let's start losing weight from now on!"
Lu Yanli walked in the front half.
The fluorescent light that had just fallen on them now came in handy, enabling them to find each other in the dark, because as they walked close to the wall, they would inevitably rub against the stone walls on both sides, leaving a shallow mark that could point the way for those who came later.
The road was longer than they had imagined. In the end, they had no choice but to move sideways. They took off their backpacks and carried them in their hands as they squeezed forward bit by bit with difficulty.
"How far is it?" Lu Yanli asked.
The person walking at the back took a deep breath, trying to make himself look more dry: "I don't know."
As soon as he finished speaking, he found that his feet had stepped into an empty space, and then he fell out.
"We're here, we're here! Everyone, come out!"
The people behind him immediately became excited and quickened their pace. Lu Yanli was born thin, and after hearing that, he tried to move forward. Soon, he also stepped into the space behind the passage.
As soon as he stepped in, he immediately fell silent.
The scene just now could already be described as hell, and what appeared before his eyes now was even more horrifying and distorted than the scenery on the other side!
This... is it really just a tomb
The first team member who stepped out stood there blankly, tears in his eyes, and he no longer had the excitement he had when he first stepped out.
The wall behind me gradually made sounds.
It was like... something was moving, and the ground was shaking faintly.
"Hurry! Come out quickly! The walls are closing!" The team member who had just squeezed out yelled into the inside and reached out to pull the team member behind him out.
"Hurry up! Give me your hand!"
The next one was Jing Tao. Jing Tao pushed hard but was quickly pulled out by Lu Yanli. The skin on his shoulders and head was scraped and a thin layer of flesh was scraped off.
The next one was Yi Yun. She was smaller in stature and was also pulled out with force. The male team member who was walking at the end... had no hope at all.
His skull was completely stuck and a slight cracking sound could be heard.
"You guys... go away... don't look at me..."
I could faintly hear the sound of bones breaking and blood gushing out.
Among the team members who escaped, a girl fell to her knees and burst into tears.
He was in so much pain that he was no longer clear-headed. It would have been fine if the wall closed quickly, but it was squeezing him in slowly like this. It was hard to tell whether it was intentional torture.
The other team members turned their heads away without mercy. Lu Yanli stood at the entrance of the passage, staring at his painful appearance for a while, then took out a small knife from his pocket, exerted force on his wrist, and stabbed the knife straight into the man's throat.
The man died immediately.
"What do you do?"
One of them was extremely angry, but the girl went up to him and grabbed him, shaking her head and sobbing: "Don't blame him, you should thank him." She looked at the wall that had closed to nearly half the height of a human body and the blood that was slowly seeping into the ground with a green fluorescent glow, her eyes full of despair.
"Thank you for freeing him early, otherwise he would have been in so much pain." The girl said softly.
"Let's think about how we should proceed?"
The first team member to walk out gave a bitter smile, his face full of despair.
What appeared before them was still darkness, and it was hard to see clearly. The searchlight they brought could only vaguely illuminate a small area around them, and it was impossible to see farther.
But the man standing at the back still had a look of despair and fear on his face, and no one knew what he had seen.
"What's wrong?" The person behind walked up, and then he was also shocked by the scene in front of him and could not speak for a long time.
“This… This is…”
The others didn't understand what was going on and also went up, but were soon stunned with shock.
The ground was dark, not because of the square that collapsed in front, but because it was too deep, so it looked inconspicuous in the darkness. The first person who escaped subconsciously struggled a little further due to inertia, and then came to the shore and witnessed everything.
In the sunken square, there is a sculpture of a huge, fallen, bright red statue.
No one could tell how big the statue was. It had been there for many years, and when they saw it for the first time, words like weird and twisted came to their minds.
"Don't look!" The man who walked out first suddenly had a lot of blood in his eyes. "Don't look!"
The others turned around immediately. One of them grabbed him and pulled him back, but found that he was standing firmly in the same place, as if he was nailed there and couldn't move.
Lu Yanli also saw the statue, and blood immediately welled up in his eyes. He reacted quickly and turned around, but his heart was already in turmoil and he couldn't calm down for a long time.
Why is there a statue of it here too
All along, the information he received always hinted at the hostility between the two, but if that was the case, why was there a statue of the "God" in the "King's" tomb
If this is the case, the inference he made will have to be overturned again.
Lu Yanli took a deep breath and suppressed his turbulent emotions. He made a crazy decision, moved to the shore, and took a quick look.
He saw it clearly, completely.
There is no doubt about that statue, it is it, exactly the same.
The mark under his collarbone instantly chilled him to the bone, and blood flowed from his eyes. Lu Yanli leaned back hard, staggering back a few steps.
"Lu Yanli? What's wrong with you?" Yi Yun didn't realize what he was doing until she got closer. She was immediately anxious. "Why did you suddenly get closer? How are your eyes now?"
Blood and tears flowed from his tightly closed eyes, covering the original scar. Lu Yanli's voice was as calm as ever: "It's okay."
He stood there, letting the stinging pain hit his brain again and again, but he felt relieved in his heart. He smiled again: "It's okay, I only used one eye."
The injury to one eye would gradually affect the other. Lu Yanli only hoped that the impact would be smaller, at least allowing him to survive until the main tomb chamber before becoming completely blind.
"So what should you do now..." Yi Yun didn't know what to say.
Lu Yanli wiped the blood, tore off the corner of his clothes, and tied up the blind eye diagonally. His vision was a little blurry now, but it didn't affect his vision in the dark. He suddenly had an urgent mentality to reach the main tomb chamber, and this emotion was stronger than ever before. Lu Yanli walked to a few team members who were drawing maps with the fluorescent paint they had saved, and squatted down: "I'll do it too."
The green fluorescence was strange, and so were the team members, but he no longer cared. He just wanted to find out the real secret of this ancient tomb.
As he painted, Lu Yanli chuckled silently in the darkness.
This map...isn't it the map that was in the home of the village chief of Shangxian Village when the last batch of taskers arrived? He once doubted who the author of that map was, but now it seems that he also has some credit.
With Lu Yanli's joining, they quickly finished drawing the map and continued to move forward.
The sunken square in front of them was naturally inaccessible. The team member standing on the shore froze in place, having long since turned into a dried corpse.
Seeing death so often, it didn't seem so scary anymore. They thought of a way to cross the square from the edge of the square.
This time it was smooth sailing, and no strange phenomena occurred. After that, the journey was smooth, and no one died.
"At this rate, we'll be there in a few dozen minutes." The temporary captain was very happy. "We'll explore the area of the underground palace from outside. According to a conservative estimate, as long as there are no overlapping routes going down or up, we'll be there in half an hour at most!"
These words undoubtedly gave a shot of adrenaline to the teammates who were confused and in pain. Everyone cheered, even Yi Yun and others cheered.
It was too difficult. Even if they managed to survive, the pain of staying in the darkness for a long time was definitely not comparable to any previous missions.
The only remaining searchlight in the team dimmed again, and the captain simply reached out and turned it off: "Now, everyone has fluorescent materials on them. I suggest that the lights can be turned off temporarily and saved for use in the main tomb chamber."
No one else had any objections. They had lost a lot of the supplies they had brought with them during their escape, and they had lost all their electronic equipment, otherwise they wouldn't have had to draw the map with a pen.
Lu Yanli asked the team members for a piece of paper.
He covered the piece of paper with fluorescent light, and then folded it a little bit, and soon it turned into a lantern, a bright green lantern.
The temporary captain happily replied: "That's amazing. Fortunately, we have you on the road."
He looked happy, but when Lu Yanli saw his face, he couldn't help but take a step back.
The other person's face was also covered with green fluorescence and was rotting, but he seemed to be unaware of it and was only smiling.
"Now we can continue to move forward with a lamp." The temporary captain raised the lamp in his hand and walked in first.
The first person to sense something was wrong was the female team member in charge of drawing the map. She felt itchy on her body and reached out to scratch it, only to find that she had scratched off several pieces of flesh, with the texture of fat embedded in her nails, and a fishy smell.
She was stunned for a moment, but didn't say anything so as not to disturb her teammates.
Soon after, other people also discovered the problem one after another. They thought the same thing in their hearts, but in order not to hinder their teammates, this group of people did not say it out loud.
Yes... there's something wrong with those green lights!
Once you notice it, you can no longer ignore it. Pedestrians walk in the darkness, with a green paper lantern in front of them leading the way, as if leading them to an unknown hell.
The captain holding the lantern also felt itchy in his palms.
He knew that there was something wrong with this thing, but his teammates were behind him and he couldn't just retreat like that.
There were less than ten people walking, and they were moving closer step by step. The parts of their bodies that were touched by the fluorescent light were itchy, and then, debris fell down.
The itchiness came straight from the bones, as if something was about to come out of the bones.
Lu Yanli's right fingertips were also extremely itchy, from the dirt he had just stained while helping to draw the map, and from the places on his face that had accidentally stained it. But he was always able to endure it, so he ignored it and just walked forward, but even so, the skin on his right hand was falling off bit by bit.
He felt nothing at first, but at the end, it was painful, itchy and piercing. He held back and didn't make a sound, but the others couldn't hold back any longer and cried out in pain.
"Those fluorescent agents are poisonous. We didn't notice it just now."
"Everyone, please bear with it. There is no other way now. We can only move forward."
"Hold on! Everyone, please hold on. We have overcome all kinds of difficulties. Why should we be afraid of pain?"
The team members encouraged each other, constantly cheered up others, and kept moving forward while screaming and wailing.
But... it's not just about pain.
Lu Yanli stretched out his hand which had turned into bones.
With his only remaining eye he could see clearly that something was drilling into the area on his hand bone where there was a green dot.
Slowly, something green like a sprout emerged from between the finger bones. It shook and grew quickly.
That's fungus.
Fungi that glow all over.
Once the first one grew, there was a second one, and a third one. Slender fungi emerged from human bones and grew at will.
"This is not poison, this is parasite!"
"What is this fungus called? Do you know?"
"I don't know. I've never seen it."
"I know some fungi glow, but I've never seen anything like this. Maybe it's a new species!"
One of the team members asked: "Can we pull it off?"
Lu Yanli stopped him: "It's better not to!"
The archaeologist had already grabbed one of the roots, but he loosened his grip upon hearing this. Only the female member who had lost her lover smiled and said, "Let me do this experiment, and you must record it down."
After that, she ignored other people's dissuasion, grabbed a thin mushroom that fell on her face, and pulled it out with force.
"ah-"
She screamed miserably, and her whole body quickly withered away, as if all the bones in her body had been pulled out. She fell limply to the ground, and densely packed slender fungi quickly emerged from the surface of her body, vying to drill in, continuously absorbing nutrients, growing, and striving to open their caps.
Spots of fluorescent light floated out from the bacteria on the surface of her body.
"Go! Don't let her down!"
The captain had tears in his eyes and shouted loudly.
The others held back their tears and pain and continued to move forward.
Now, all of them have been parasitized, and they know that their lives have come to a countdown. It is nothing more than a question of how much or how little.
Important, find the main tomb chamber!
After walking for an unknown amount of time, another team member staggered and fell to the ground.
"I can't leave. You have to get out now."
He handed his backpack to Jing Tao: "Although I don't know where you are from, thank you very much."
Jing Tao laughed miserably and tried to reach out to take the backpack, but found that his legs could not stand and he also fell to the ground.
"I can't do it anymore." He fell on his back.
The severe pain had tortured him to the point of mental numbness. In fact, Jing Tao was already very impressed with himself for being able to hold on until now.
"If I can't find the Pisces jade pendant, I will die." He smiled, turned his head and said to Yi Yun, "You have to find it. You still have to go back to find your daughter."
"By the way, where is Wang Pengfei?"
Yi Yun shed tears, green liquid dripping down: "Have you forgotten? Wang Pengfei has long... "
"Yes, he is even worse than me." Jing Tao murmured to himself.
His voice gradually faded away.
"I really want to go back and see my mother... I miss her..."
Yi Yun burst into tears.
"Let's go." Lu Yanli stood beside her, squatted down and picked up the backpack.
He was the one with the least injury, but as it had dragged on until now, it was no longer a serious injury. Half of his body had been corroded into bones, and half of his face had also been corroded. Unknown fungi were crawling out of his bones, and green blood was oozing out, soaking his clothes.
"There are only two of us left, and we have reached the main tomb chamber."
Yi Yun was a little dazed and turned his head to look.
"arrive?"
She was still a little bit surprised, but the vague tall building that appeared not far away made her immediately believe that it was the main tomb chamber.
"We're here... We're here!" She suddenly gained energy, stood up, and stumbled towards the house.
Lu Yanli walked beside her. Both of them were unsteady on their feet, so they supported each other as they walked up the stairs.
All the strange phenomena disappeared, and only an underground palace that had been sleeping for who knows how many years sat quietly here.
Two people whose limbs were so broken that they couldn't even be put together to form a complete body stood at the door and stretched out their hands to slowly push it open.
A thin ray of light poured out from the crack in the door.
It was so dazzling that the two of them closed their eyes immediately.