Chapter Eleven: Volcanic Eruption

  After the gate was pushed open, nothing as terrible as imagined happened. The sound made when the door was opened was just the wood that was used to block the door being pushed away. Jiang Liu kicked the wood aside and everyone behind him entered smoothly.

  I imagined countless scenarios inside the gate, maybe poisonous arrows flying everywhere, maybe fog swirling around, but I never thought it would be this peaceful.

  The path leading to the main hall is paved with bluestone slabs and is very neat.

  I looked at the walls on both sides, and there was a lamp every two meters. The lamp has been recorded in ancient and modern times, China and abroad. In ancient China, the lamp was generally placed in the tomb chamber, and a lamp made of a large jar filled with wax oil was once found in the official room of Dingling. However, it had been extinguished for hundreds of years, and there was no oxygen in the tomb chamber, so it was impossible to keep the fire burning all the time.

  The wall full of lanterns was shining brightly, which really surprised me. I even had the illusion that someone lived here. As I was thinking about it, a gust of wind suddenly blew and the lights on the wall went out one after another. We all held our flashlights tightly in alert.

  "My god, it's Ghost Blows Lamp!" Jiang Liu wiped his sweat and said

  "You've watched too many 'Ghost Blows Out the Light' kind of things, I only read them in the middle and naturally don't believe."

  "Shh, don't speak." Uncle Cheng put his hand over my mouth and pressed me down into a crouch.

  A few of us crouched in the corner by the wall, listening to the faint sounds. Suddenly a group of bird-like things flew over our heads, making bat-like noises, hoarse and unpleasant. They flew from the direction of the main hall towards us, and just as they reached the door, they saw the bright light at the entrance and seemed to have been greatly frightened, losing their formation. At first, they bumped into each other in confusion, and the sounds they made became even more mournful.

  It was like a super strong sonic wave, making my ears numb. Before long, I started to feel dizzy and felt like vomiting at any moment. In this situation, there was no way to think, and usually calm Huo Ying also started to retch while holding her head.

  I saw Ma Si Zhe with his mouth open, shouting at me, but I didn't hear what he was saying. Ma Si Zhe cursed and pulled out a prepared gun from his bag. I quickly reached out to grab him, but it was too late. He fired a shot upwards.

  For a moment, all the bats were quiet, gathering along the sound of gunfire, confirming the source of the sound, and then swooping down together with bared teeth. I couldn't tell what it was, but it was bigger than a bat's head, with sharper teeth. Its wings were larger than its body, just like a bat's. All I saw was dozens of strange birds diving towards me at once, and my instinctive reaction was to cover my head. Every bite felt like a piece of flesh being torn off, the pain was excruciating.

  Huo Ying was also rushing towards the swarming bats, and looking at Ma Si Zhe, he was surrounded by the most ferocious ones, almost half of the bats were attacking him. This thing seemed to be the long-term resident master here, driving us away like a group of intruders. Maybe it was the light that came in after the tomb door opened that made them uncomfortable, or maybe it was Ma Si Zhe's gunshot that startled them. Anyway, they were now biting and tearing at us like madmen.

  I waved the backpack in my hand and thought about how to drive them away.

  "Fire, quick, this thing is definitely afraid of fire. If such a thing lives in the dark all the time, then there's one thing that must make them fearful, and that's fire."

  Jiang Liu heard what I said, and with great difficulty pulled out a lighter from his pocket, grabbed the bat that had fallen on his arm, held it upside down and flung it to the ground. With great effort, he managed to open the lighter. Sure enough, the bats around Jiang Liu scattered in all directions as if they had seen a fierce beast.

  I saw that this method was feasible, so I quickly took off the jacket on my body, borrowed the light to feel the position of the lantern just now, rolled the jacket in the lamp oil of the lantern, tied it to the metal detector, and then ignited it with a lighter. A expensive and simple torch was made.

  Bats saw the light of the torch and were frightened, some fell to the ground, and hastily flew back in the direction they came from.

  The shadows of the bats gradually disappeared at the end of the tomb passage, and we all crawled up in embarrassment. Ma Si Zhe was one of us who suffered the most, with his hair disheveled and his clothes torn into a off-the-shoulder style.

  He winked at me and asked with a smirk, "Sexy?" I didn't have the energy to banter with him anymore, so I just replied, "Sexy."

  This time he was terrified.

  "Ma Zhe, how can you fire a gun? There are stone slabs all around us. The bullets will ricochet and someone will get hurt." Cheng Shu had every reason to be angry. The walls around them were made of bluestone slabs, which would cause the bullets to easily bounce back, and one of them would end up dead.

  "At that time I didn't know what happened either, and I completely lost control of myself"

  It seems that the bat's cry has a bewildering effect on people's minds. I've been feeling dizzy and nauseous all along, and I'm afraid that if I listen for a while longer, I won't be able to do anything.

  The appearance of bats caused us to linger for a long time at the entrance. After tidying up, we continued to advance towards the main hall.

  The path was a considerable distance, but fortunately it was spacious, so we walked very smoothly. On the way, Marx kept fiddling with his clothes and cursed a few words.

  "Don't let me run into those scoundrels again, or I'll burn them all"

  "Don't worry, can't you see they're all flying inwards? We'll definitely meet again." I teased, tugging at Ma Si Zhe's overly sensual clothes.

  Ma Si Zhe pulled her face and slapped my hand away 'Don't take advantage of touching me'

  I clapped my hands in disgust and thought about where I would go to wash up for a bit.

  Huo Ying couldn't help but laugh when she heard me and Ma Si Zhe arguing. To be honest, Huo Ying is a beautiful woman in her thirties, at the most charming age, with an air of independence that makes people want to get to know her better. I've always been puzzled - someone like her should have found a good husband, stayed home to take care of the family and children, why would she come here to work so hard for money?

  Ma Si Zhe didn't know much about her either, his uncle just said that the Huo family was a family with stories, everyone had responsibilities on their shoulders, since they wanted to come, it meant someone in the family still had plans for them, so they couldn't ask too many questions.

  Suddenly, I heard an animal's roar, the sound was not loud, but very close.

  I turned around, only to see Jiang Liu standing behind me, tilting his neck slightly, looking at me with a thoughtful expression. That voice just now couldn't have been made by Jiang Liu, could I have been in the tomb for too long and started hallucinating?

  As I walked, I felt a bit thirsty, so I took out the water that I had prepared earlier from my bag.

  It wasn't long after I left that a layer of dust had already settled on the package. This bluestone slab isn't an earthen wall, how could it have so much dust? I brushed off the dust on top and suddenly felt something was off.

  Before he could finish speaking, the tomb began to shake violently and large clumps of dirt started falling down.

  "My god, is this an earthquake?" Ma Si Zhe wiped his face.

  Everyone fell into a state of panic when Ma Si Zhe said that. If it was really an earthquake, we didn't need to struggle and it's more important to find a comfortable position to die in.

  It's impossible to run back now, and there's no time to spare. The road ahead is also endless, it's really a dead end.

  I didn't expect that I would die here without even seeing a coffin. Suddenly, I began to admire how my grandfather had managed to get through all this before.

  "If I die like this, my grandfather will definitely scold me to death later." Due to the vibration, we couldn't stand still, and I leaned against the wall, with a mouthful of dirt falling into my mouth.

  "What you should be doing right now is showing some apology towards me," Ma Si Zhe glared at me.

  I'm really starting to regret pulling Marx down into the water, I didn't expect so many unexpected and unprepared things. I thought everything would go smoothly as I imagined, now I know how ridiculous my thoughts were at that time.

  "Never mind about that useless thing, now quickly think of how to leave this place for real."

  During the brief exchange with Ma Si, the tremors grew even more violent, to the point where I could no longer stand. I felt the stone slab behind me begin to heat up, and I looked at Ma Si in terror.

  "This is not an earthquake, it's a volcano!"

  I finally know why, the top of Maoer Mountain and that stone seam, will occasionally have smoke coming out. This Maoer Mountain itself is a volcano, perhaps because it's an extinct volcano or its location is not active so it has never erupted before, today this rare opportunity actually caught up with us.

  The bluestone slab behind us had begun to collapse, and with a loud crash it cut off the road we came from. The five of us stumbled forward in a panic.

  The sound of footsteps followed behind us all the way, we were like racing with the god of death, running desperately forward.

  "This is not a funeral, it's clearly a track and field competition. From the beginning to now, I've just been running." Ma Si Zhe said while running.

  As we ran, two roads appeared in front of us. In the chaos, we scattered and I, Ma Si Zhe, and Jiang Liu ended up together. Cheng Shu and Huo Ying ran into another fork in the road. We didn't care which road was correct, just keeping our heads down and running forward.

  My two legs are getting heavier and the feeling of fatigue is getting stronger. Looking at Ma Si Zhe and Jiang Liu, they also didn't run as fast as before. We have all reached our limits of exhaustion.

  To my surprise, the shaking is now less intense than before, and both sides are gradually quieting down. The three of us looked at each other in dismay.

  After a while, there was no more movement, and we all lay stiffly on the ground like discharged electricity.

  Drip... drip... drip...

  The sound of water droplets echoed in my ears, I dragged my legs hard and stood up shakily, took a look. I was shocked by the scene in front of me and couldn't speak.

  We are now in a strange cave.