Chapter 10: The Ice Palace (4)

  Qin Zhong and the others, after their astonishment, returned to reality. They had to find the exit hole. Qin Zhong led the way, Yingzi was in the middle, and Guo Dafu brought up the rear. The three of them continued on, twisting and turning several times, until they seemed to have found a small palace. In Qin Zhong's impression, this location should be near the side gate, but when he compared it with the surroundings, he discovered that the palace's location was quite different from what was drawn on the map, and the difference was significant.

  It's probably due to geographical reasons that the construction of the palace was deeply considered in terms of geological structure, and ice blocks were transported in one by one. The question remains as to whether the craftsmen who built the palace were buried alive after completing it or left from which direction.

  Taking into account the factor of transporting ice blocks, they must have transported the ice upwards from a flat area, and the route for doing so would be that mountain peak's cave, and in the end they sealed off the palace, exiting directly from the delivery entrance. This makes sense, after all, it wouldn't make sense for them to put the ice blocks here by themselves, they must have used some kind of large-scale tool to arrange the ice blocks in a reasonable place, so it's absolutely unreasonable for them to enter through the ice entrance.

  So the route that Qin Zhong and his team took to get here is exactly the same as the one taken by the workers who built the ice palace, absolutely not a natural formation.

  In this side house, what can be seen are some objects that seem to be burial objects, some rough ritual vessels, and some ice-made porcelain.

  But just as the three were about to leave the room, they heard a strange gurgling sound coming from inside the room. The originally quiet palace suddenly became so lively that Qin Zhong and his companions were stunned. They didn't know where the sound came from, nor did they know if there were any other creatures in this long-sealed underground ice palace.

  "Older brother, listen, it sounds like the sound of water, and also like the sound of water snoring." Guo Dafu's big beard moved towards Qin Zhong's face.

  Qin Zhong's anger rose, and he pushed away Guo Dafu's face with his hand: "No matter what he is, from now on don't bring the whiskers on your face so close to me again, or I'll set a prairie fire."

  "Oh, you know it already, can't I just shave off my beard when I get back?"

  "Look at your door, look at the top!" Yingzi pointed to the ice on the roof.

  On the operating ice top, it seems to be a pool of water sitting on the ice surface, this pool of water has been bubbling, it seems that the water used in the ice palace is coming from here, plus the warm water they saw in front of the Anti-Japanese War Memorial Monument, it's not hard to think that there should be a spring above, but they don't know where the source of the spring water is.

  Just as Qin Zhong was about to continue moving forward, he looked out at the outer edge of this small palace and suddenly the ice wall turned golden yellow, proving that the sunlight had already shone directly into the palace. This didn't matter, but when Qin Zhong saw something, his spirit immediately lifted.

  He found a deep black fox shadow on the golden ice wall, and as the fox shadow passed by, the fox head in the shadow was still as big as the one he had seen before. The huge fox head made Qin Zhong recall what happened after leaving Geng's village.

  Just as the fox shadow passed, another figure flashed by. This figure was agile and had a high degree of agility, but from the shadow, this person still had no hair and wore black ninja clothes.

  Qin Zhong said in a low voice: "Let's not talk, let's go quickly, it seems like we have a tail that has followed us here."

  "What's with the tail?" Guo Dafu blinked his eyes, seemingly not quite understanding Qin Zhong's words. Of course, it was normal that he didn't understand.

  Yingzi didn't say anything extra, she just followed Qin Zhong closely. The three of them wandered around the palace for a whole day. With great difficulty and based on Qin Zhong's conjecture, they seemed to have arrived at an extremely large palace. Inside this extremely large palace were forty-nine ice-carved pillars, a beast-skin chair, and the civil and military officials standing on both sides looked lifelike.

  They say the wax figures in the museum are lifelike, but Qin Zhong thinks all the ice sculptures here are better than them.

  On the ice wall at the end of the palace, a huge painting was carved, and on the surface of the painting, it seemed to have a similar ingenuity with the mural that had just entered, although the things in the painting seemed to have changed, but the protagonist inside did not miss one.

  Until this place, Qin Zhong felt that the guessed place in Grandpa's notes was just here, but there were no two divine Shamans mentioned in the notes, and on their heads, there was not even a pair of yin-yang pearls that Zhu Lao Liu paid great attention to.

  Just as Qin Zhong was still thinking about this, he suddenly found that a blood stain had appeared on the top of the palace. A figure with a knife in his hand seemed to be chopping something, and soon the shadow disappeared.

  "This guy is how to follow here, mother's not good, can't let this guy find himself, if really found that this guy will have to turn the place upside down. But he finally found here, these things but let Qin Zhong always can't think clearly."

  He suddenly thought of something, and it seemed that there was something on his body. Was it a GPS locator? He immediately pulled his shirt clean and felt around every corner with his hands, but after feeling for half a day, he didn't feel anything; however, when he felt the pant leg, he felt a black sticky substance in the area of the pant leg that had not been washed away. When he pulled off the sticky substance, there was indeed a small black object underneath.

  Qin Zhong suddenly realized that he had been neglecting himself, and with a few kicks from his foot, the locator device was crushed into powder. He then carefully scattered the powder in every corner of the entire palace.

  Suddenly, four-colored flags dropped down from the four corners of the palace. These were the flags used by the Shaman: Xuanwu, Zhuque, Qinglong and Baihu. And in the center of the ice peak, a set of Shaman divine robes suddenly fell down, with the bells on the waistband ringing out loud, while the drum suspended in mid-air was being blown by the wind, beating out a rhythmic sound.

  "Not good, there's an anomaly!" Qin Zhong shouted loudly, and Yingzi suddenly pulled out a set of three-inch-long short flags of various colors from his back waist.

  Guo Dafu nervously cocked the handgun he had brought with him, aiming at the shamanic costume hanging straight down: "Whatever you are, if you move, I'll shoot."

  Qin Zhong widened his eyes and carefully examined the divine armor, but it seemed to be completely still, and all the sounds were just the noise caused by the unknown wind.

  And in this almost sealed ice palace, the gust of wind that can come out again is enough to show that the ice palace is ventilated, and through the power of the wind, it can be seen that the ventilation opening is not far from here.

  Qin Zhong placed one hand on his back waist and tightly grasped the hilts of the pair of daggers.

  The flag in Yingzi's hand doesn't know if it can be used as a weapon, but this girl seems to have gotten used to it. After taking out the flag, she seemed to be muttering something under her breath.

  "Don't chant or attack for now, let's observe and be careful." Qin Zhong instructed a few words and led the way towards the ice wall.

  In this last great palace, the ice sculptures of civil and military officials seemed to begin changing at the same time as the divine clothes fell. Each sculpture suddenly condensed the light gathered from the outside into a point, and the heat of that point seemed to be able to melt an ice sculpture in an instant. However, these ice sculptures were as solid as iron, and the place where the light melted only seemed to be their heads.

  In the blink of an eye, a fist-sized hole burst open on the top of each statue's head, and from that hole, slowly rising hot air began to emerge. As the hot air rose to the ice surface, it instantly condensed into ice beads, which gradually formed a curtain of ice beads hanging down to the top of each ice sculpture. Along this curtain of ice beads, some soft, wriggling creatures began to crawl upwards.

  "Older brother, what is that?" Guo Dafu looked foolish, fortunately, he knew to ask without getting tired.

  But this phenomenon was also inexplicable to Qin Zhong, he glanced at Yingzi, and Yingzi didn't know what it was either. Just as the three of them were somewhat confused, those things that crawled out quickly grew bigger after coming into contact with the ice curtain.