Chapter 28: Trapped in the Tiger's Lair

  Everything went according to plan, and they arrived at the "Tiger Wolf Cave" at 11 o'clock sharp. The Tiger Wolf Cave is located on the second mountain ridge of the Tiger Wolf Cliff, with steep cliffs on both sides and a winding stone path that leads to the entrance of the cave. Liu Ya and the others climbed up using their hands and feet, pulling themselves up by grasping onto small shrubs on either side. At the entrance of the cave, there is a 9-square-meter platform, which was probably developed later, and standing on it looking down into the underground cliff makes one feel a chill run down their spine as cold air rushes up. On the stone wall at the entrance of the Tiger Wolf Cave, there is a small stone plaque about 20 cm long and 10 cm wide, covered in moss, with the words "Tiger Wolf Cave Tunnel" written in grass script. The entrance to the cave appears to be about 1.5 meters wide and 2 meters high, with trees and vines growing on either side or hanging down to the entrance of the cave. When Liu Ya first saw the Tiger Wolf Cave, she turned around speechlessly and looked at Liu Jia Wei and Li Jin Yi behind her.

  "Are you sure you want to go in through this small hole?" Liu Ya had a premonition that something bad was going to happen, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it, so she asked them again. In fact, she secretly hoped they would retreat. Faced with this strange cave, Liu Ya's intuition told her that this wasn't an adventure or an exploration, but rather... a death wish! If anyone in the group had any mishaps, it wouldn't be a laughing matter.

  "Don't look at the small entrance, inside there are 4 main lines and 24 branch lines, each cave is connected, and there are also lookout holes, shooting holes, ventilation holes, traps, movable flip boards, signposts, wells, grain storage rooms, etc. It's thrilling and exciting! I guarantee that this experience will be unforgettable for you girls." Liu Jiawei excitedly described.

  "Thank you!" Liu Ya glanced around the cave and turned to Liu Jiawei, "I've already had a hard time forgetting this journey." Then she looked at the wealthy young masters and misses behind her and asked, "Who among you has been to this cave?"

  "It's our first time." Seagull, Canary and Lu Xuan replied without thinking. Liu Ya looked at Liu Fang and Zi Qing.

  "We are also here for the first time." Liu Fang and Zi Qing replied honestly. Liu Ya looked at the boys present again.

  "Princess, don't worry, we're also first-timers. Although it's our first time, this cave has been explored before, so the danger level is relatively low." Mu Linfeng said confidently, pulling out a compass from his backpack and adding, "See, we've got a 'steering wheel'! It's very safe. All previous explorers have brought one of these along. We can guarantee it."

  "Your Highness, why are you standing there? Please enter the 'palace'!" Li Jin stood very politely at the entrance of the cave on the left, slightly bowing his waist and slowly extending his left hand to make a welcoming gesture.

  "Alright! Since you all have made up your minds to go on this adventure, I'll accompany these young ones for a day." Liu Ya looked at Zi Qing, Mu Lin Feng and Liu Fang, who were all excited like they had been injected with chicken blood. Except for shaking her head in dismay, she could only make up her mind to seriously accompany them, just in case something happened, using the skills her old father had taught her to bring them back safely. "Little Li, lead the way for me!"

  "Ah!"

  "What's going on?" Liu Ya discovered the anomaly and quickly looked over at Li Jin. "Ah! How is this possible? We haven't even entered the cave or encountered any monsters, yet it's already broken?! This is too fragile!"

  "Yah... " Li Jin glanced at his companions who were sneering on the side with the corner of his eye, and weakly pleaded, "Can't we change the way you address me? Don't call me 'Little Li', okay? It's easy to cause misunderstandings."

  "What's there to be afraid of?!" Liu Ya said nonchalantly, "At worst, I'll just take you in as the eunuch grand manager. Isn't that 'proper and justified'?"

  "Little princess, this won't do, it won't do!" Li Jin anxiously pulled at Liu Ya's sleeve (Clang! - Why are you pulling someone's sleeve again!), weakly and pitifully begging, "You don't care about my face, but you should think of your own Xiaoxuan's reputation. If you put me under house arrest, what will happen to your Xiaoxuan?"

  "It's nothing!" Lu Xuan didn't wait for Liu Ya to speak, she flicked her sleeve and said loudly, "Worst comes to worst, I'll get our little princess a more handsome guy! You can just focus on being the 'Internal Affairs Lord'!"

  "As the saying goes, 'a day of husband and wife is a hundred days of kindness', are you so heartless? Li Jin looked at Lu Xuan with dissatisfaction. "After all, we've been lovers for several days, right? You should have some affection."

  "Alright, alright." Liu Ya pulled back her sleeve with force. "You're flirting and bickering, the sun has already set. Are you planning to spend tonight in Tiger Wolf Cave, recounting the tragic love legend of Tiger Wolf Cliff? Or are you going to hurry up and explore, and head home early to get some beauty sleep?"

  "We all want!" The beautiful sisters replied in unison.

  "Wow! You guys are really bold!" Liu Ya glared at them and turned to Li Jin, "Little Li, hurry up and lead the way!"

  "Can you really bear it? Can you really bear to let me go in and explore the way first? You? Will you miss me?" Li Jin asked with a 'hype' tone. Liu Ya didn't respond, taking advantage of Li Jin's distraction, she moved two steps back, lifted her right foot, and kicked Li Jin's butt, kicking him into the entrance of the Tiger Wolf Cave.

  "Ah-----!" Li Jin let out a miserable cry, covering his buttocks as he jumped into the Tiger Wolf Cave tunnel. At this time, a sentence came from in front of the cave, "I'll be back!"

  "Ah! Li Jin Yi has been exposed?!?" Mu Lin Feng looked at Liu Ya in horror, asking Liu Jia Wei in a low voice.

  "Seems like it, huh?!" Liu Jiawei replied in a low voice with twitching corners of his eyes and mouth.

  "I can be sure!" Xiao Yu's mouth twitched even more fiercely, "Exploded! Li Jin was exploded by the princess!"

  "I also saw it..." Xia Tian was usually very low-key, but now he was staring at Liu Ya with a look of astonishment.

  "Did Aya blow up our home?" Seagull and Canary looked at Liu Ya in incredulity, coming back to their senses and looking at each other uncertainly.

  "Little princess... she..." Lu Xuan looked at Liu Ya in disbelief, secretly discussing with Liu Fang and several sisters, "The little princess is much stronger than she looks on the surface?"

  "It's indeed much stronger than it looks on the surface!" Zi Qing also responded with a cool tone.

  "My goodness!" Liu Fang gently covered her mouth, "Is...is this still our gentle and lovely Ya?"

  "Alright! Stop yelling!" Liu Ya stood at the entrance and shouted loudly to him, "We will miss you! You can go in peace!" Then, she turned her head and beckoned to the people behind to follow up. When she turned her head and saw a row of petrified people behind her, the corner of her mouth twitched, "What are you doing? Are you waiting for me to give each of you a kick before entering?"

  "Ah!" The crowd gasped in unison, "No need to trouble Your Highness, we'll set off right away, right away." Then, the troops marched past Liu Ya's eyes, not forgetting to steal a glance at her with their peripheral vision as if she were a monster. Liu Ya pretended not to notice, playing with the small wooden stick in her hand, waiting for them to finish passing by before following behind their formation.

  As they entered the tunnel about 50 meters in, the light had already dimmed somewhat. Li Jin let everyone light torches and held a miner's lamp in his other hand. Although the lighting wasn't great, under Li Jin's leadership, the group moved forward in an orderly manner. The entire passageway was winding and curved, with a depth of about 1,500 meters. Occasionally, they would also encounter some small branches along the way, which might explain that this was indeed a tunnel used for underground warfare back then. They walked for almost half an hour before entering a spacious large hall. The entire hall was circular, approximately 50-60 square meters in size, with a yellowish-brown mudstone ceiling and a height similar to the passageway. On the walls of the hall, including the entrance they had just come from, there were eight tunnel openings in total, each one seemingly identical. Zi Qing and Lu Xuan excitedly ran around, looking left and right. Liu Jia Wei, Xiao Yu, and Li Jin also walked around, touching this and that, marveling at the ingenuity of the people back then. Liu Ya looked at them, feeling that this expedition wasn't very thrilling after all, so she put her heart at ease. She turned around to look at Xia Tian, who was standing at the entrance, and walked over to him.

  "Why don't you go in and take a look, maybe you can find some souvenirs to bring back?" Liu Ya asked Xia Tian with a faint smile, holding up the torch. Xia Tian was a relatively low-key person, who ranked mid-to-high in class, and it was said that he had been classmates and close friends with Liu Jia Wei since kindergarten.

  "Hehe, I think so too, there's nothing much to look for." Xia Tian said calmly, "Let them search first. If they find something good, they'll definitely call out."

  "Rustle rustle"

  "Ah - mice! There are mice!" Zi Qing and Lu Xuan shouted in shock, each rushing to the side of Xiao Yu and Li Jin. "There are so many mice here! It's too scary!"

  "Where is it? Where is it?" Xiao Yu and Li Jin shielded them while holding torches to search for the culprit who scared their couple. Next, the people beside them also joined in the search for the mouse.

  "Aya, Xia Tian, don't stand over there, come here quickly, or you'll be carried away by the mice!" Zi Qing shouted exaggeratedly.

  "Or else, let's go in too?" Xia Tian looked around and said to Liu Ya with some trepidation.

  "Alright." Liu Ya didn't care; mice were nothing to her, having seen many when she was young. Now they seemed normal and not frightening at all.

  "Run away?" "Maybe run away, didn't see."

  "Ah!!!!!!" Liu Fang let out a scream of despair in a corner of the hall.

  "What's wrong? Fangfang?!" Liu Ya and Liu Jiawei's first reaction was to rush towards Liu Fang.

  "That...that..." Liu Fang's hand stretched out tensely, pointing towards a dark place, and she was too frightened to speak.

  "Don't be afraid, Jia Wei, take care of Fang Fang, Jin Yi, we'll go and take a look." Liu Ya instructed Liu Jia Wei and Li Jin Yi. Because the other girls were all scared by Liu Fang's sharp cry, they were all holding onto the hands of the boys next to them tightly. Lu Xuan had accompanied Zi Qing to watch horror movies many times before, so she was braver. That's why Liu Ya brought Li Jin Yi along to go and take a look at the situation. What on earth is it that scared my sister like this?

  Liu Ya and Li Jin walked in the direction Liu Fang pointed, shining their torches and miner's lamps. They were also stunned!

  "Ah——!" Just when everyone thought it was Liu Ya who shouted, they turned around to find that it was Huang Ying and Hai Yao. Because under the illumination of Li Jin's torch and Liu Ya's miner's lamp, a white skeleton appeared before them.

  "Human... no, not human, a corpse... no, not that either, it's a skeleton! A human skeleton!" The seagull and the oriole stammered in terror, "How can there be a skeleton here? It's too scary!"

  "This skeleton is not a relic of wartime." Liu Ya said to everyone with certainty, "This bone, the skeleton are all very complete, it doesn't seem like it died from injury."

  "What do you mean?" Li Jin also saw that this person should have died normally, what reason made it here? He was very surprised and thought it was a mystery. Liu Ya didn't speak, holding the torch and lamp to walk around the hall again, and found another one in another corner of the hall, with no obvious fractures or cracks on its body. Liu Ya couldn't understand. So, he plucked up his courage and seriously walked around the hall again.

  "These cave entrances are all the same, aren't they? Maybe back then, the masses used them to confuse the enemy when they invaded or raided, so they wouldn't know which way to go." Liu Ya examined the situation inside the cave while thinking about the answer. Suddenly, a bad thought flashed through her mind: "Oh no! Which entrance did we come in from earlier?"

  "Jin Yi, Jin Yi!" Liu Ya called out anxiously and walked towards them. Because the other girls were scared by that thing and didn't dare to move, the boys were accompanying them on the side. Only Liu Ya and Li Jin Yi were investigating separately on the side. Jin Yi heard Liu Ya's anxious call and thought she had found something, so he quickly gathered from another corner.

  "What's wrong? Yaer, what have you found?" Li Jin felt a sense of foreboding as he saw Liu Ya's anxious expression.

  "Take out the compass you brought and take a look." Liu Ya said somewhat uneasily to Li Jin, "Check the direction!"

  "Alright!" Li Jin replied, quickly pulling out a compass from his backpack. Since they had been walking forward all along, they hadn't used it until now. When Li Jin took out the compass, everyone curiously looked at it. Emma! The needle was spinning faster than a windmill! Most importantly - it wasn't pointing south. It pointed east for a moment, then spun around to point west...

  "What's going on!?" The crowd stared at the compass in shock and dismay!

  "This place has a strong magnetic field, the compass is useless!" Liu Ya was somewhat surprised, this was within her expectations. She hastily asked everyone: "Do you still remember which entrance we came in from?" Everyone heard Liu Ya ask this and quickly shone their lights around. Indeed, all the entrances looked exactly the same, and they were currently standing right in the middle of the hall!

  "We, we're lost?!" Liu Fang asked uncertainly, pulling on Liu Ya's hand in fear, "Are we really lost?"

  "It's okay! Fangfang, don't worry, we'll get out of here!" Liu Ya comforted her sister with an uncertain heart.

  "What shall we do? What shall we do?" asked the seagull and the oriole in terror.

  "We can't just sit and wait for death!" Xiao Yu walked out and said firmly, "Choose a path and keep moving forward, there will definitely be an end."

  "Do you have any better methods?" Liu Ya asked the other boys.

  "Let's try it according to Xiao Yu's method!" Li Jin said very seriously. It seems that he too can no longer distinguish the direction.

  "I agree too." Liu Jia Wei, Mu Lin Feng and Xia Tian also expressed their views together.

  "Jin Yi, you're still in charge of the team. Everyone, take out something that can be used for marking and mark as we move forward." Liu Ya arranged the next steps while quickly taking out a pack of chalk from her backpack. However, when she saw everyone staring at her without moving, their hands still in their bags, Liu Ya felt another surge of foreboding.

  " You?" Liu Ya asked cautiously, "Why don't you take out the things? Let's move!"

  "Yah, how many boxes of chalk did you bring?" Liu Jia Wei glanced at the other girls and asked Liu Ya weakly.

  "Don't tell me your bags are all snacks!" Liu Ya looked at their flustered expressions and understood a bit, feeling secretly anxious, but still calm on the surface. "No, didn't bring any medicine either?"

  "Congratulations, you're right!" Lu Xuan replied weakly.

  "What's going on?! Liu Ya was startled when she heard that they didn't even bring the most basic first-aid kit! She immediately stood up and said, "Didn't Mu Lin Feng and Zi Qing each bring a medical kit?!"

  "I... I thought Mulan had brought them, and there aren't many of us, so we wouldn't need that much medicine. So, I put all the medicine you packed in the car." Zi Qing said nervously and guiltily. Liu Ya looked at Mulan.

  "I, I thought Ziying had brought it, so I also put the medicine in the car." Mulin Feng was equally incoherent and flustered, with deep guilt. "If only I had known, I wouldn't have been so lazy and thrown away Aya's organized things in the car..."

  This time, Liu Ya was really stunned! What if something happened and there wasn't even the most basic guarantee? Now, all she could do was pray that nothing would happen to anyone. At first, Liu Ya had also considered that with so few people, having two spare medical kits should be enough, so she hadn't brought out many medicines either. It's really true that man cannot predict what heaven has in store!

  Except for Li Jin Yi, Xiao Yu and Liu Ya's backpacks which still had the original allocation of snacks, everyone else's backpacks were replaced with new ones by those snack-loving sisters at Lei Ling Temple! What to do? What to do? What on earth to do?! Liu Ya sighed...

  Digression

  How can it be so miserable? The things that should have been brought, all turned into snacks. These foodie sisters, this time out on an adventure, I guess they need to make some changes! Tomorrow, continue the adventure... Let's see what difficulties they encounter and how they get through them. Looking forward to sharing.