Cliff Burial

"Cliff burial? Xu Lao, what is a cliff burial?"

Su Ti asked with interest.

The other three also looked at Xu Lao with curious expressions. Although they had been following Xu Lao to rob tombs for many years, they had never robbed this kind of tomb.

Xu Lao pointed to the cliff below his feet and said.

"The so-called cliff burial is to dig a cave on this kind of cliff face as a tomb, place the tomb chamber in the cave, and then seal the entrance with a Dragon Blocking Stone. This is a cliff burial."

Xu Lao stroked his beard and said.

"The difficulty of building this kind of tomb is extremely high. Workers have to work on the cliff face, excavating the mountain. With the level of manpower in the past, it would take a lot of manpower and material resources, ten or even decades to build it. After it is built, the coffin and some burial objects and funerary objects have to be lowered from the cliff into the tomb one by one, which is very difficult. It is not something that ordinary kings and marquises can afford to build."

"According to my investigation, this tomb was built during the most prosperous period of the Mu Kingdom during the Hundred Kingdoms period. The first generation of King Mu was buried here. Later, the Mu Kingdom was defeated and destroyed, and some descendants of King Mu moved here to guard the tomb, which is the Mu Family Village we saw."

After recounting some history, Xu Lao returned to the main topic.

"Cliff burials are not only difficult to build, but once this kind of tomb is built, the difficulty of excavating it is also very, very high."

"You see, like ordinary tombs, they are built underground, at most four or five meters away from the ground, or at most a dozen meters. After careful positioning, you can dig a tomb raiding hole and go directly down to the main tomb chamber. You can come up directly after taking the things, which is convenient and fast."

"But this kind of cliff burial is not possible. Because it is directly dug into the cliff face, the tomb is located a hundred meters deep inside the mountain. It is impossible to dig a hole from above to get in."

"So we can only learn from the workers who built this mausoleum back then, hanging on the cliff face, and after finding the tomb entrance, enter from the tomb entrance where the Dragon Blocking Stone was lowered."

"This is not over yet. You heard me say that this kind of tomb is dangerous. Where is the danger? In some ordinary tombs of kings, marquises, and generals, if they are built underground, because of their noble status, to prevent being stolen by some later comers, some traps and mechanisms will be built in the tomb to prevent thieves."

"But as long as the position is measured accurately and the tomb raiding hole is dug well, these traps and mechanisms can be avoided, such as digging the tomb raiding hole directly into the main tomb chamber. Going down the tomb raiding hole is the main tomb chamber, which is equivalent to playing a game and going directly to the final treasure chest room, avoiding various mechanisms along the way."

"As long as the positioning is good and the digging is good. In most normally built tombs, those mechanisms and traps are just decorations and cannot be triggered at all."

"But cliff burials are different. Because whether it is the tomb builders or the tomb robbers, they can only enter from one entrance, so they will generally place a large number of traps and mechanisms in the only passage, and these mechanisms and traps are something we cannot avoid."

After saying a lot, Xu Lao was a little thirsty and said after drinking a sip of water.

"Now although we have found the approximate location of the tomb, we still have four difficult hurdles to overcome. The first hurdle is to accurately find the location of the tomb entrance. The second hurdle is to open the Dragon Blocking Stone at the tomb entrance and enter. The third hurdle is the various mechanisms and traps inside the tomb. And the last and most difficult hurdle may be the Evil Spirits inside the tomb."

When talking about this, Xu Lao's expression became serious.

"Brother Su Xiu, do you know why many ancient people liked to build tombs on Yin Meridians?"

Su Ti didn't understand and guessed casually.

"Why? Is it to create Evil Spirits?"

"Yes, they are artificially creating Evil Spirits."

Xu Lao said seriously.

"Since ancient times, our Xiya Country has been popular with live burials and human sacrifices. The higher the status, the more people are buried with them. What is the purpose? In addition to showing the nobility of their status, burying a large number of innocent people in the tomb together is to use the resentment of these people, combined with the Yin energy of the Yin Meridian, to artificially create Evil Spirits!"

Su Ti had also learned a lot about Evil Spirits in the past few days. In addition to Evil Spirits being produced by Yin Meridians, resentment is also a very crucial part. The more resentful the corpse, the more likely it is to be corrupted by Yin energy after death and turn into Evil Spirits.

"You should know that things like mechanisms and traps will decay. After a few hundred years, they will be useless."

"But Evil Spirits are different. Evil Spirits will not die of old age. They live by absorbing Yin energy and can guard a tomb for hundreds or even thousands of years!"

"It can be said that the existence of some Evil Spirits is the tomb guardians artificially created by the owners of these tombs."

Su Ti had not expected this reason, that they would artificially create Evil Spirits to guard their mausoleums.

Doesn't that mean that archaeology and tomb raiding in this world are very dangerous, because the tombs of more powerful kings will definitely invest more energy and effort to create more powerful Evil Spirits to guard them?

Why had he never seen any reports or news about this in the tomb raiding industry?

Could it be that the country suppressed it?

Just as Su Ti was thinking, Xu Lao looked at the cliff face in front of him and said.

"Next, I will conduct a vertical survey on this cliff to locate the specific tomb entrance. It will take about three days. After the positioning is successful, how to open this entrance will depend on Lao Li."

Lao Li put down his engineer shovel and chuckled.

"Xu Lao, don't worry. As long as you find the tomb entrance, even if it is guarded by a ten-thousand-jin Dragon Blocking Stone, I guarantee I will open it for you."

"Okay."

Xu Lao nodded slightly.

In the following days, Xu Lao was surveying the location of the tomb. The specific method was to tie a safety rope from the top of the cliff, and then hang himself on the cliff face to carefully investigate.

Su Ti couldn't help much with this, so he just practiced boxing on the cliff every day, waiting for Xu Lao to survey the tomb.

Xu Lao's survey process was also quite dangerous. Like a climber, with a rope tied around his waist, hanging in the air a hundred meters high, he kept tapping and hitting the mountain wall, looking for the location of the tomb entrance.

Xu Lao's calculations were extremely precise. As he said, it would take three days, and he had already found the location of the tomb entrance at noon on the third day.

The location of the tomb entrance was about a hundred meters vertically down, and about a hundred and several dozen meters above the ground.

After confirming this location, the rest was left to Lao Li.

He took his tools, hung himself on the tomb entrance marked by Xu Lao on the mountain wall, conducted a precise measurement, and then came up to write and draw. Finally, he found more than a dozen points at the tomb entrance.

Using a hammer to chisel open the points, Lao Li took out his best tools.

More than a dozen detonators, and some high explosives for blasting the mountain.

After precisely mixing the explosives, he filled the explosives into the chiseled points. This process took another two days.

Two days later, with a bang as the explosives detonated, the Dragon Blocking Stone was blown open. After a cascade of rocks rolled down, a bottomless cave appeared where the mountain had been.

"Professional, too professional."

Looking at the opened tomb entrance, Su Ti praised.

To be able to blast such a precise cave on a sheer cliff face without damaging the overall structure of the mountain, Lao Li was more than qualified to be a demolition engineer.

Xu Lao stroked his goatee, looking calm and composed.

"Now that the tomb is open, the air inside is still very murky. It needs to be ventilated for a while."

"We'll rest for the night today and go in to investigate tomorrow."

On the cliff at night.

Several people gathered around a bonfire, with small tents pitched.

Branches crackled, and rustling sounds came from the distant jungle.

"They're here again."

Su Ti glanced at a few points of crimson in the woods, which flashed and disappeared.

Although they hadn't encountered any new Evil Spirits these past few days, they had constantly felt a sense of being watched from the woods while camping on the mountaintop.

"What exactly is it? Wild beasts?"

Cao Man frowned. There were many wild beasts in these deep mountains and old forests, and it wasn't strange for them to observe humans who had arrived.

"It should be something like monkeys, but it's hard to say."

Xu Lao glanced at the humanoid figures that climbed branches in the woods, flashing and disappearing, and also frowned slightly.

Because someone had been on watch every night these past few days, nothing had happened, and those things had only watched from afar, so they didn't know what exactly was watching them.

"Anyway, we're going into the tomb tomorrow. I hope everything goes smoothly."

"That's right. No matter what's hiding in the woods, we won't interact with them. We'll just rob the tomb and leave."

The next day at noon, when the sun was strongest, everyone packed their gear.

Everyone wore climbing suits, climbing shoes, carried two climbing axes, and had two safety ropes. One was tied to a tree at the top of the cliff, and the other was kept on their person, ready to drill into the rock face at any time to make their own backup safety rope.

Out of caution towards the things in the mountains, even though they set off at noon, everyone left one person to guard the luggage to prevent sneak attacks from those things. This person was Zhu Wendong.

Zhu Wendong's martial prowess was good, reaching the Tongli Stage. However, he didn't join an Ancient Martial Arts sect like Su Ti, but was self-taught.

He had mastered the three most widely circulated Ancient Martial Arts on the dark web: the Body Tempering Art, the Black Tiger Fist, and the Fang Wolf Saber. He had both training methods and empty-handed fighting techniques, as well as methods for fighting with a saber. His close combat ability was very good. Before Su Ti joined Xu Lao's team, he was the person with the strongest frontal combat ability in their team.

Although Cao Man was also a Tongli Stage martial artist, she was only skilled in a bit of whip technique and throwing hidden weapons. Her frontal combat was still not as good as Zhu Wendong's, so she went down into the ancient tomb with everyone to explore.

After everything was ready, the four people lowered the ropes and descended along the cliff face towards the tomb below.

Su Ti had a safety rope tied around his waist, held the rope in his hands, and stepped onto the hard rock face one step at a time.

This was his first time climbing, but perhaps it shouldn't be called climbing; rappelling would be more appropriate.

Although he was hundreds of meters in the air, his willpower was firm, and he wasn't very afraid.

Coupled with his body being much stronger than ordinary people, even though it was his first time rappelling, he seemed to be at ease.

After descending for a while, just as everyone was about to hammer in rock pitons on the cliff face to make hooks for their second safety rope, something unexpected happened above!

A sound similar to a baboon's cry and Zhu Wendong's shouts of killing suddenly came from above!

In the chaos, they only heard Zhu Wendong let out a loud roar from the top of the cliff.

"Come up quickly! There are so many Evil Spirits up here!"

Hearing this, everyone's expressions changed. They didn't have time to think about why they were being attacked by Evil Spirits at this moment and quickly grabbed the ropes and started climbing up!

And just then, suddenly! Su Ti's rope began to shake violently! It was as if someone was cutting his safety rope!

"They're cutting the ropes! I can't hold them off alone! Come up and help me!"

Zhu Wendong roared from above, his voice filled with intense pain! It seemed he couldn't hold on for long!

"Quickly hammer in the rock pitons!"

Seeing this, Cao Man quickly shouted at Su Ti.

Su Ti was still fifty meters away from the top of the cliff at this time. With the degree of shaking of the rope, it was definitely too late to go up.

His expression changed. Just as he was about to hammer in the safety piton, the rope holding him above snapped with a bang!

The rope snapped too quickly. Su Ti had no time to react. He was holding a hammer in one hand and a rock piton in the other, and had no time to grab the rock face and stabilize his body.

The stone Su Ti was stepping on slipped. He felt his body become empty, and the next second he was falling head over heels down the cliff!

And at this critical moment, a sound of something cutting through the air suddenly came. A long whip, like a spiritual snake, flew out, wrapped around Su Ti's left arm a few times, and then snapped taut with a bang the next second!

It was Cao Man!

She was agile and had been paying attention to Su Ti. The moment Su Ti fell off the cliff, she threw the whip tied to her waist and saved Su Ti!

"Quickly hammer in the safety piton!"

Cao Man shouted, her face flushed.

Although she was a Tongli Stage martial artist, she was just a woman and not very strong.

Furthermore, with her body suspended in mid-air, it was very difficult for her to hold onto an adult strong man like Su Ti.

"Okay!"

Su Ti shouted in response. He had been startled by the fall just now, almost letting go of the hammer in his hand to grab the rock. Fortunately, he saw Cao Man's intention to act and didn't do so. Now that he was temporarily safe, he quickly started hammering the rock nails.

But when it rains, it pours.

The next moment, Cao Man's safety rope also vibrated violently!

Her expression changed at this moment. With one hand holding the whip, she had no way to hammer the rock nails unless she threw Su Ti down.

At the same time, Lao Li and Xu Lao's safety ropes also began to shake violently!

However, they had already started hammering the safety nails before Su Ti's rope shook. They were already halfway done at this point, so they definitely had enough time!

At this moment, verbal communication was too slow. Cao Man's expression changed several times, but in the end, she chose to trust Su Ti, holding the whip in one hand without making any moves.

A few seconds later, Cao Man's safety rope snapped with a bang, and she, like Su Ti before her, fell down the cliff!