Chapter 7: The Ice Palace (1)

  On one side was a precipice, on the other side were already collapsed walls and ruins, Qin Zhong and others had no way to retreat.

  At this moment, Qin Zhong looked down at the cliff and saw that he could clearly see the beehive-like cave entrances below. Although he didn't know what was inside those caves, he knew they had to head towards the caves below the cliff if they wanted to escape.

  Looking back is falling into a bottomless deep snow pit, only forward, they can only move forward to get the hope of life.

  Guo Dafu never expected that he would run into Qin Zhong in a place like this, and encounter such a thing.

  "Alright, we don't have time to think about it. If we take too long and exhaust ourselves, I'm afraid we won't even have the chance to jump off the cliff."

  Yingzi, after all, was a mountain girl, and her hands were relatively more agile than Guo Dafu and Qin Zhong. However, it was Qin Zhong who reached the front first. He grasped a pine tree with deep roots growing on the edge of the cliff, his feet treading on the upper edge of the cliff's rugged rocks, step by step, approaching the first cave entrance.

  A stone rolled down from the top of the cliff, rolling down the mountain with a rustling sound. It was Guo Dafu, who had just entered the first cave, and almost fell off the cliff from the stone wall on the cliff. If he had fallen, it's estimated that only his dying scream would have been left behind.

  Yingzi approached the entrance of the cave and looked around. To her surprise, it was a dry cave about three to five meters square.

  Qin Zhong leaned over to Yingzi and asked with concern: "Have you been to a place like this before?"

  "That's where we've arrived, such a high place, who can climb up here. But I heard Grandpa say that generally in places as high as this, holes like this appear, and they should be the nests of some large birds. However, when winter comes, they will fly away, so this should be a place where we can rest for a while."

  Facing Yingzi's understanding of the natural conditions of this generation, Qin Zhong felt that this explanation was quite reasonable: "Well, it seems to make sense, but let's take a rest first, and then we'll continue on our way down, hoping to arrive safely at the foot of the mountain."

  "Boss, it seems like this place is warm and weird." Guo Dafu touched the stone wall inside the cave with his hand.

  Qin Zhong reached out and touched it, and indeed it had a temperature, and the closer he got to the stone wall, the warmer he felt.

  "Yingzi, let's warm up here for a while, take a rest, and prepare to head towards the next cave entrance," said Qin Zhong.

  But just as Yingzi was approaching the stone wall inside the cave, a black shadow seemed to appear in the sky, and that black shadow was moving at an incredible speed, rushing towards where they were staying.

  At this moment, Yingzi suddenly turned around and felt a chill on her back: "It's bad, it's not warm here, the big bird has flown back again?"

  Qin Zhong's eyes widened as he looked out, and it seemed that he heard something again - the rumbling sound of an engine. He finally put his mind at ease: "Come on over, this is high enough, that shadow should be a plane, no need to make such a big fuss."

  Just as the two were talking, Guo Dafu somehow managed to get a pile of hay from somewhere and spread it out on the ground in the cave, right up against the stone wall, and fell fast asleep.

  Qin Zhong glanced around and saw that there was enough dry grass left on the ground for him and Yingzi to spread out another place to rest.

  Half an hour's rest, Qin Zhong opened his eyes, he lay at the entrance of the cave and looked down at the mountain, the dense cave entrances below made Qin Zhong very annoyed, if they continued to move forward, they would either die from exhaustion or be confused by these cave entrances.

  But he had no choice, so he got up with Guo Dafu and Yingzi: "Hurry up, let's go."

  Three people, in one breath, descended three unextended holes. When they reached the middle of the cliff, they suddenly found that continuing down would mean almost no place to step on the cliff wall, and there was nowhere for them to continue downward. If they continued down, it would be 100% certain that someone would fall to their death.

  Qin Zhong looked up in the cave, and above was also a dense layer of honeycomb coal, below was also a dense layer of honeycomb coal, this time there was no way to advance or retreat.

  He fell silent, one hand resting on the wall inside the cave, his mind constantly thinking of how to escape the current predicament, one hand tapping non-stop on the wall inside the cave.

  Perhaps it was because of his wild knocking that he seemed to feel that the back of this stone wall was empty, and a dull echo actually came out.

  "What a strange place this is?" Qin Zhong said, his hands moving faster as he knocked on the wall: "Come over here, it's empty inside, come and help me see if there's a way to break through this wall."

  Kuo Ta-fu was immediately excited: "Really? Boss, let me do it!" He spoke quickly and pushed his body to the entrance of the cave, took a few steps forward, jumped up and kicked the wall that Qin Zhong mentioned with all his might.

  "Crack!"

  "Huh?"

  Qin Zhong helplessly looked at Guo Dafu's painful expression, with beads of sweat the size of raindrops on his face, and a complexion as white as snow. His large mouth was twitching up and down in agitation.

  "Brother, you don't have to be so hard on yourself, I said it's empty inside, doesn't mean you can kick the stone wall open with your foot, that would be too amazing." Qin Zhong said, taking out the two steel knives from his waist and starting to pry open the stones in the empty area of the wall, slowly peeling them off.

  When he peeled off the stone slabs, Qin Zhong dug out a hole the size of an arm on the wall, and from inside came a damp breath like that in a cave. Due to the wind at the foot of the cliff, the airflow blowing out of the hole seemed to be singing.

  As soon as he heard this, Qin Zhong became excited: "We have a way out, the cave entrance here should lead to some open-air cave entrance, listen!"

  "Hoo-hoo!"

  Guo Dafu's pain from just now seemed to have alleviated, Yingzi approached the hole and looked inside with her eyes, seemingly not seeing anything.

  Qin Zhong pushed aside Yingzi: "I'm coming."

  He stretched his hand into the hole and wanted to use his own strength to pull open part of the wall, so that the opening could continue to expand, allowing people to drill in.

  Perhaps it was because of this idea that when he stretched his hand into the hole and exerted some force, he suddenly felt as if he had touched something dry and brittle. With a bit more effort, it seemed to make a sound like crushed instant noodles.

  Qin Zhong didn't think so much, he just pulled hard towards the back, a large piece of wall was pulled down, and the broken edge below happened to be where Guo Dafu had kicked with his foot earlier.

  A burst of yellow dust floated up, and Yingzi exclaimed in surprise: "Wow, there's actually a place like this here, it's too magical."

  But inside it was dark, with only gusts of wind blowing out from the hole. Qin Zhong suddenly enlarged the hole again, enough for a person to stand upright and pass through the crack.

  He pulled out a flashlight from his waist and shone it into the hole, but couldn't see the bottom. However, at the edge he had just grabbed, there seemed to be something. When Qin Zhong directed the beam of light towards the broken stone wall, he found that among the chaotic stones, something seemed to be stuck in between.

  The brittle thing he touched earlier seemed to be the fossilized bone of something that had weathered and turned into stone.

  When Qin Zhong pushed away these stones, he saw that inside was actually a huge skull, and half of the skull had already been pried open by Qin Zhong with great force. The remaining half of the skull looked even bigger than a normal person's head.

  Is there another race here? Are they giants?

  Qin Zhong took another close look at the skull, and indeed it was a human head, but there were no other parts anywhere. He couldn't figure out what this giant human head was all about, so he didn't think about it anymore. He shone his flashlight into the cave and stepped inside.

  "Hey, boss, how can there be such a big human head in here?" Guo Dafu was not afraid of these things at all.

  Na Yingzi was somewhat shocked, after all, she had never seen a skull so big.

  Just as Qin Zhong was about to head deeper into the cave, he suddenly laughed happily: "This time we're good, we can get out of here."