The two of them walked one in front of the other. But they hadn't gone far when the entire tomb passage suddenly changed direction and extended towards the other side.
Yu Shuang stopped at the corner. He held up the torch and took a closer look. He saw that the tomb passage had veered a lot to the left. He pressed his ear against the right - hand stone wall, then reached out his hand and tapped on it. After listening quietly for a while, he said, "It seems that due to the limitation of the mountain, they dug in another direction."
Shen Qingfeng squatted down and took a look. "It seems to slope downward ahead," he said.
He blew on his hands, and the white mist from his breath was clearly visible in the light of the torch. "There's already a lot of melted snow here, and it slopes downward. Are they collecting the snowmelt?"
Yu Shuang also squatted down and felt the ground. He saw that a hard layer of ice had formed on the stone wall due to the melting and refreezing of the snowmelt. "This place has been built for quite a while. The snowmelt should have accumulated into a pond," he said.
"Which means the water in this tomb was deliberately collected," Shen Qingfeng said.
"Yes," Yu Shuang nodded. "There are two types of water tombs. One is a tomb in a geomantic treasure land. If water accumulates in such a tomb, it brings wealth. But if water accumulates in a tomb of negative energy, it accumulates evil."
"Does that mean this tomb is deliberately accumulating evil?" Shen Qingfeng couldn't help but shiver. He cursed under his breath. "Who would build a tomb like this?"
Yu Shuang paused for a moment. "My lord, are you sure the person you're looking for is in this tomb?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," Shen Qingfeng answered truthfully. "But you said this is the only strange place within the Three Holy Mountains. Besides, this tomb is so eerie, with carvings of dragons and Xing Tian... I always feel like we'll discover something."
Yu Shuang looked at Shen Qingfeng, then at the dark passage ahead that seemed to have no end. He took out several nails with large heads from his bosom and handed them to Shen Qingfeng. "My lord, the path ahead slopes downward and is covered in ice. We need to take off our shoes and nail these nails into the insides of our shoes. This way, we won't slip easily when walking," he said.
Shen Qingfeng looked at the nails. "Okay," he replied.
This tomb always gave people a feeling of oppression and eeriness. Neither of them wanted to waste too much time here, so they quickly got everything ready, picked up their torches, and continued on their way.
Sure enough, using Yu Shuang's method, they walked much more easily. The two of them quickly made their way along the tomb passage. Before long, they heard the faint sound of "drip - drop" water coming from not too far away.
They quickened their steps. Suddenly, the tomb passage opened up. In front of them was a pond about five zhang wide. Above the pond was a deep, chiseled dome, as if the entire mountain had been hollowed out from the inside. However, the light from the torches was limited, and they couldn't tell exactly how high it was.
They were standing on a cliff about two zhang high on the edge of the pond. At their feet, the melted snow was dripping drop by drop from the cliff into the pond.
Both of them were startled by the empty - looking mountain inside. Since the torch could only illuminate a small corner where they were standing, Yu Shuang took out a fire starter from his bosom, lit it, and threw it towards the edge of the pond. The fire starter hit a stone with a "patta" sound and then illuminated an area.
The two of them stared intently. After seeing what was on the ground, they immediately gasped in horror.
On the ground illuminated by the fire starter, there were densely packed broken bones and scattered paper and copper coins.
"Damn it!" Yu Shuang cursed through gritted teeth.
The densely packed bones looked extremely creepy in this dark mausoleum. Shen Qingfeng swallowed hard, his scalp tingling. "Damn it, is this a mass grave?" he said.
Yu Shuang also felt his heart skip a beat. Although he had seen a lot of life and death, he had never seen such a dense collection of bones before. He gritted his teeth, took out a few more fire starters from his bosom, blew them to life, and threw them in several directions. The fire starters landed on the edge of the pond one by one, illuminating the terrifying things under their feet.
As Shen Qingfeng had said, this was indeed a mass grave. The densely packed white bones almost filled the entire bottom of the pit except for the pond. No, it wasn't just that. There should also be such eerie bones under the pond. One could say that if they didn't want to step on the bones, there was no place to set foot in the entire pit.
But after they illuminated the area, they found that the pit wasn't as big as they had imagined. And below them, directly opposite, there was another stone door, which seemed to lead to some unknown place.
Both of them were a bit scared. They looked at each other, not knowing what to say.
"It seems we have to go inside that stone door," Shen Qingfeng said in a low voice after a while, pointing to the opposite side. "We have to go down."
Hearing this, Yu Shuang slowly squatted down and observed the area below from a high position. He looked for a while, then suddenly said, "Wait, my lord. There's something wrong with these bones!"
"What's wrong?"
Yu Shuang pointed at the bones. "These seem... not to be human bones," he said.
Hearing this, Shen Qingfeng squatted down and looked carefully in the faint light. Sure enough, he saw a long skull, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, which seemed to be the bone of a wolf or a leopard.
"... Are they animal bones?" Shen Qingfeng blinked and looked at a few more carefully. He found that none of them seemed to be human bones.
That meant that in this large mass grave, all the sacrifices were animals.
"This is a 'Pit of All Beasts'," Yu Shuang said. "In tomb structures, there are special side chambers for placing the wild beasts that are buried with the dead. They're considered burial objects... But this side chamber seems to be too big, and I've never seen a side chamber with a pond."
"I don't think we can consider this tomb with normal thinking," Shen Qingfeng said. "First of all, the purpose of building this tomb wasn't for the dead to rest in peace, but to accumulate evil. According to ancient records, if one wants to accumulate evil, it's either to suppress something even more evil or for sacrifice. It's the same principle as sacrificing living people or animals, to accumulate the resentment of people or livestock to suppress ghosts and gods and keep a place safe."
Yu Shuang was stunned. "What does my lord mean?" he asked.
Shen Qingfeng raised his hand and pointed at the stone door in the distance. "Behind that door, if it's not an altar, then there should be something even more eerie than these," he said in a low voice.
Yu Shuang thought for a while. "My lord, should we still go?" he asked.
Shen Qingfeng laughed. "We've come this far. What reason do we have not to continue? Besides... this tomb has really piqued my curiosity," he said.
"But we don't know what's inside," Yu Shuang said. "I've never seen a tomb like this before. My lord, why don't you stay here while I go and check it out first?"
"Wouldn't it be more dangerous for me to stay here alone?"
Yu Shuang was at a loss for words. "This..."
"Alright," Shen Qingfeng patted Yu Shuang on the shoulder. "Let's go."
Climbing down the cliff wasn't very difficult. The hard part was how to overcome the psychological barrier when they were actually standing in the mass grave full of animal bones and paper and copper coins.
Shen Qingfeng took several deep breaths before he stepped down. But no one knew how long the bones had been in the pit. Due to the environment, their texture had changed. When he stepped on them, they made a strange "creaking" friction sound, much like the low growl of a demon.
Yu Shuang walked beside Shen Qingfeng. They held their torches and walked unsteadily on the remains. The mass grave, which didn't seem very big, was actually very difficult to traverse. After walking for a while, they had only covered less than one - third of the distance.
Shen Qingfeng was breathing heavily. He had been looking down at his feet all the time because there was really no place to step. He could only try to step on the relatively flat bones to avoid slipping.
"Dingling..."
Suddenly, Shen Qingfeng's ears caught a faint, crisp sound of metal clashing.
He suddenly stopped, stood up straight, and looked around. But it was pitch - black all around, and he couldn't see anything.
Seeing this, Yu Shuang asked, "My lord, what's wrong?"
"Did you... hear any sound?" Shen Qingfeng asked.
Yu Shuang was stunned for a moment, then listened intently for a while. "No," he said.
Shen Qingfeng thought to himself, could I have heard wrong?
It made sense. In such a gloomy environment, maybe he was just having an auditory hallucination. Maybe he was just too nervous.
"Maybe I heard wrong," he sighed and continued walking with the torch in his hand. But before he had taken a few steps, his ears caught that strange sound again.
"Dingling..."
Cold sweat broke out on Shen Qingfeng's forehead.
This time, he was a hundred percent sure that he had really heard it, and it was very clear!
He suddenly stopped in his tracks and grabbed Yu Shuang's body, who was about to continue walking. He shouted in a deep voice, "Don't move!"