Chapter 9: The Glowing Skull

  The Immortal's Cave is not hard to find, it's just on the mountain waist of the north-facing slope. The stone slab at the entrance is still there, I had only heard about it when I was a kid and never actually came here before. Now that I've really seen it, I have to admit it feels a bit eerie and frightening.

  "This should be the Fairy Cave," I said, pointing at the entrance to the four of them.

  Ma Si Zhe walked around me to the front of the Xianren Cave, carefully looking towards the entrance. 'At this time, the snakes should have finished basking in the sun and gone back, right?'

  "Go ahead and go in." I kicked Marx's butt hard, and this kick sent him into the hole. The entrance might not be too high, and when he went in, his head hit the top of the hole hard.

  Jiang Liu let us go ahead, he was guarding against something in the back. To take care of the woman, I let Huo Ying go ahead, she didn't decline much either, Cheng Shu followed behind me, and we went in like this, front and back.

  It's pitch black inside the cave, and with only the flashlight, I can only see vaguely. The flashlight that Uncle Cheng asked me to buy can illuminate clearly within ten meters, but looking at the darkness in the distance, this cave won't be small.

  The cave emitted a damp smell, which made people feel sticky. Huo Ying's hand had been covering her nose and hadn't put it down yet. The space inside the cave wasn't very large, only about one person wide, and you couldn't stand up straight, having to keep your waist bent while walking. This posture was extremely tiring. Ma Si Zhe, who was in front holding a flashlight, complained after not walking for long. "This cave is getting narrower and narrower, I'm almost stuck!"

  The flashlight shone forward, but the front was still pitch black, and it was impossible to see the end. This shows that we are still far from the terminal point, but why is it getting harder and harder to walk? At this rate, we won't be able to move even before we reach the end. Moreover, I can clearly feel that the road under my feet is not flat, but slopes downward, with a gentle slope at first, but becoming steeper as the distance increases.

  "This won't be a dead end, will it?" Jiang Liu asked Cheng Shu after coughing.

  "It can't be a dead end. We've walked so far and should have been out of breath by now, but since there's still enough oxygen, it means there must be an exit ahead."

  The current geographical location is not easy to distinguish, I imagined in my mind where we are now.

  The Immortal Cave is located on the halfway up the mountain of Ma'ershan. We have been walking for about half an hour since we entered the cave, and the road has a overall downward trend, so now we should be in the lower part of Ma'ershan Mountain.

  After a narrow path, the road ahead suddenly widened from only allowing one person to pass through to space for two people. We all straightened our backs and quickened our pace.

  Ma Si Zhe, who was walking in front of us, suddenly let out a loud "ai yo", I couldn't see what happened and could only shout "what's wrong?"

  Ma Si Zhe didn't say a word and walked ahead of me. He Yang stuck his head out to take a look, then both of them fell silent, squatting on the ground looking at who-knows-what.

  I saw no one was paying attention to me, so I had to hurry up and follow quickly. As soon as I took a glance at the thing on the ground, I was really startled. The flashlight almost slipped out of my hand.

  It was a skull, facing upwards, emitting a faint white glow under the flashlight. Upon closer inspection, there was also a layer of milky white substance attached to it.

  What's going on? Has someone been here before us? The fossilization of that skull doesn't look like it died just in the last few years.

  "Could it be that the villagers, because they mistakenly entered the immortal's cave and got trapped inside, died?" Jiang Liu asked as he walked over.

  I thought about it and said, 'It shouldn't be, look at the road we came in, it's almost straight, there's no turning point at all, how could we get trapped? Moreover, from the degree of fossilization of this skull, it has been dead for at least thousands of years. It's impossible to have died from being trapped.'

  "What can trap people is not necessarily a road," Ma Si Zhe said slowly, looking at the skull on the ground.

  "Turn off the flashlight," he said suddenly.

  Although I didn't react in time, I saw a rare serious look on Ma Si Zhe's face, so I obediently followed his instructions. In the instant when the flashlight went out, I was stunned by the scene before my eyes.

  Just now, I was only focused on moving forward and didn't have time to look up. It turned out that we had unknowingly walked into a vast space with an area of several hundred square meters. The surrounding walls were straight cliffs, about six stories high. In every corner, there were flashing points of phosphorescence. It looked like a scene from Star Wars. The viewer's eyes were dazzled, each point emitting the same size and intensity of phosphorescence, not very bright, not enough to illuminate the cave, just dense enough.

  "My god, these are all human skulls!" Jiang Liu curiously walked towards the bright light, but was frightened and fell to the ground.

  After hearing that, I also squatted down to take a closer look at other bright spots. These one by one flashing fluorescent lights were actually human skulls! I looked up and saw that the scale of the skulls was at least a hundred. We turned on our flashlights one after another and found that the fluorescent color on the ground had disappeared, but the skulls became even clearer.

  "This thing is still glowing in the dark" Jiang Liu said incredulously "This immortal cave is actually a mass burial site"

  I didn't expect that inside Maotou Mountain was actually hollow. I suddenly had a familiar feeling, night light, and it seemed like I had seen this scene somewhere before. This scene is too familiar.

  I suddenly remembered that I had seen this thing before in Yunnan.

  About two years ago, our archaeological team went to Kunming, Yunnan Province to excavate the site of an ancient Dian Kingdom.

  The ancient Dian Kingdom was a state established by ethnic minorities in the middle and late Warring States period. It eventually perished due to plagues and other reasons, and was finally swept into the vast river of history. Among them, the most noteworthy is the Dian culture. It was a mysterious and ancient civilization, as well as a brilliant bronze culture. Although we still haven't fully deciphered the connotation of the Dian culture, the excavation of this site in Kunming shocked the entire archaeological community at that time.

  The largest in scale and the most unearthed cultural relics. However, these two points are enough to attract attention. I still remember that year's Kunming was rainy, with no three days of sunshine, which brought great trouble to the excavation of the site.

  The thing was discovered by Li Qinghai, the least talkative person in the archaeological team.

  After a day of archaeological work, everyone was exhausted. Someone suggested finding a teahouse to relax and have some tea, but Li Qinghai declined, saying he had to number the bronze artifacts, so he didn't join us.

  After we left, Li Qinghai counted the copper utensils and other things he found today alone. Suddenly, the storage room lost power. He was about to go out and see what's going on, but he discovered a strange phenomenon.

  The copper utensil in my hand suddenly emitted a pale green light. Not the whole thing, but starry and dotted, like water droplets splashing around. Looking at other copper utensils, they were all the same, with fluorescent-colored dots scattered all over them, as if they had been splashed with water.

  Later, after testing, the surface of all the unearthed bronzes was found to have a microorganism called noctiluca attached to it, which reacts with water. Because they were rained on when they were unearthed, that's why these fluorescent spots were formed.

  However, most of these microorganisms exist in water, and it is unclear why they attach themselves to the surface of copper objects.

  Is it possible that the skull in this tomb was also affected by those microorganisms, resulting in its current state? But why would two places thousands of miles apart have such a connection?

  "Isn't it strange?" Ma Si Zhe raised his head and asked me.

  What

  Skull

  I suddenly realized what Ma Si Zhe wanted to ask, skull, just a skull, no body.

  I suddenly realized that these hundreds of skulls didn't have any bodies, which means this absolutely isn't a mass grave. But who would be so twisted as to kill them all and then cut off their heads, sticking them in the ground one by one like rice seedlings?

  "This is a form of sacrifice." Cheng Shu looked around and then asked me, "Have you heard of Tà Gǔ Shēng Xiān?"

  I shook my head, and Ma Si-zhe explained beside me, "It's an ancient sacrificial ritual where the ruler would behead 99 unmarried virgins, pave the road with their skulls, burn their bodies, to complete the sacrifice. In order to seek eternal life."

  "This was just a brief sacrificial ritual that once existed among the minority people and has not been passed down," said Cheng Shu.

  I thought it was good that this hadn't spread widely, if this thing were to become popular, it wouldn't be a good thing. In my work, I mostly come into contact with historical records of moderate and normal funeral rituals. As for these folk customs or witchcraft that have been passed down in some ethnic minorities, I truly know nothing about them.

  "How did you know?" I turned to ask Ma Si Zhe, Ma Si Zhe said with a smirk "I've learned all sorts of things" Ma Si Zhe seemed to be intentionally evading my question.

  To be honest, I've always felt that the current Ma Si Zhe is completely different from the one in the past. Although he still speaks in the same arrogant tone and tries to act silly in front of me, I just feel that there's something more... complicated in his expression. I don't know what happened during the five years we were apart, maybe it was the environment Ma Si Zhe was in that made him have to deal with some things.

  "I really don't know who could come up with such a perverted method," Jiang Liu said with a twisted mouth.

  "This sacrificial custom was first discovered in Yunnan. It is speculated that it should have been passed down from the ancient Dian Kingdom." Ho Ying finally spoke up, "It's just unknown how this thing ended up here."

  He Ying's words were light and casual, but the doubts in my heart deepened. Another ancient Dian Kingdom, could it be that these two places really have some connection?

  "No matter how this thing came about, the direction things are heading is getting closer and closer to what we expected. Now the only thing that can be confirmed is that under Mao'er Mountain, it's really not that simple." Uncle Cheng said with a serious tone.

  Ma Si Zhe suddenly stood up "Let's speed up, who knows if there's really something precious inside" Ma Si Zhe winked at me.

  "This is an occupational disease"

  Ma Si Zhe didn't respond to my rant and turned around just as he was about to leave.

  Huo Ying suddenly stretched out his hand and grabbed Ma Si Zhe's collar. 'Do you hear that? What sound is it?'