The Tomb-Raiding Tunnel

The six crooked words written in blood were reflected in his eyes. A chill shot down his spine, leaving him with a sense of dread.

Even Xu Tong himself was startled by those six words.

He sat up and read the diary again, but there was nothing more to it.

It was less a diary than Master Hu's personal notes. He had left them here, but where had he gone?

The thought made Xu Tong look around suspiciously.

The cavern wasn't large. If Master Hu had written those final words, there were only two possibilities. The first was that he had planned to leave but wasn't sure he'd make it out alive. He had left the notebook behind to warn whoever came after him, then gone to look for a way out.

But if that was the case, why hadn't he written more clearly? Why leave only six words and make people guess at what he meant?

The second possibility was that he was close to death. He had hurriedly written those six words, then decided to risk everything.

But if that was so, who had he left the notebook for?

Of course, there was another possibility: both were true.

Whatever the answer, the problem they faced now seemed to have grown more complicated.

"What are you spacing out for?"

Seeing that Xu Tong wasn't saying anything, Captain Wang came over and asked.

Xu Tong handed him the diary and told him to read it carefully.

"How mysterious!"

Captain Wang frowned and took the diary, then sat down to read it. At first, his expression matched Xu Tong's: confusion, followed by amusement.

But as he continued, even Captain Wang began to feel uneasy. By the time Xu Tong pointed him to the last page, he had started to mutter under his breath.

Captain Wang's face turned grim. He didn't know what to make of it, but as he looked at the line written in blood, a chill rose from deep within him. He even glanced suspiciously at the shadow beneath his feet.

After a long moment, he slapped his forehead and frowned. "This place is a tomb? I thought it was supposed to be some kind of ascension site!"

Seeing that Captain Wang still hadn't figured it out, Xu Tong shook his head helplessly. The detectives of this era were far behind their modern counterparts when it came to investigative awareness and reasoning. How could he still not have worked it out?

Still, Xu Tong didn't want to spell it out. They had more pressing problems to deal with.

"Have you even thought about what we're supposed to do now?"

Xu Tong lay on the crystal bed, his hands behind his head, and asked Captain Wang.

"Uh..."

Captain Wang froze, finally realizing what the problem was. He'd been so focused on escaping that he'd forgotten they were trapped in this cavern. What were they supposed to do now?

He went to the entrance and took a look. His face twisted, and he sucked in a sharp breath. The female corpses were still standing on the cliff outside. They had no intention of leaving.

"We're done for. We're trapped like rats in a jar."

Back inside the cavern, Captain Wang began pacing anxiously. He looked this way, then that, but the cavern was so small there was nowhere else to go.

Outside lay a sheer cliff, guarded by those female corpses. There wasn't a drop of water in the cavern. They were truly stranded, with nowhere to turn for help.

By contrast, Xu Tong was calm. He lay on the crystal bed, staring at the empty ceiling, lost in thought.

Captain Wang paced back and forth beside him more than a dozen times. Seeing how calm he was, he finally couldn't take it anymore.

"Don't just lie there. Get up and think of something!"

Xu Tong rolled his eyes at him, picked up the diary again, and scanned it line by line. After a while, he slowly sat up.

He sat on the edge of the crystal bed, but instead of thinking up a solution like Captain Wang expected, he stared blankly into the air.

Just as Captain Wang opened his mouth to say something, Xu Tong finally moved.

But not in the way Captain Wang expected. Xu Tong seemed almost possessed. First, he wandered over to the stone steps lined with jars and bottles, feeling around at random.

Then he walked to the entrance, stood there blankly for a while, and came back.

"You..."

Watching Xu Tong act as if he'd lost his mind left Captain Wang completely baffled. Has he been possessed?

Uneasy, Captain Wang tried to guess what was going on, but didn't dare approach him. He could only watch as Xu Tong wandered around the cavern. Then Xu Tong took the diary, lay facedown on the crystal bed, and made a loose fist with one hand, scratching across the surface as if holding a pen.

After a while, he tossed the diary onto the bed and lay down to sleep again.

"Xiao Chen..."

Captain Wang stepped forward, about to try to wake him, when Xu Tong suddenly opened his eyes and flipped off the crystal bed.

He ignored Captain Wang and carefully examined the bed.

Although it was called a crystal bed, it hadn't been carved from a single block of crystal. Instead, it was assembled from more than a dozen crystals of various sizes, with a sturdy base made of top-quality nanmu.

If this thing had been found in the modern world, it would have been considered a national treasure. Master Hu's diary didn't say where it had come from, but he had lamented that he couldn't take it out with him.

But what Xu Tong was more interested in was why the bed had been placed here.

He glanced around, and when he noticed the faint marks on the ground, everything suddenly clicked.

This wasn't a comfortable spot. The low rock wall nearby made it feel oppressive, like sleeping inside a tin can.

The cavern was spacious, so the bed could easily have been placed somewhere more comfortable.

Besides, this place was so eerie that an ordinary person probably wouldn't be able to sleep here at all. Even if Master Hu was bold and skilled, there was no reason for him to go out of his way to set up a bed.

After thinking it over, Xu Tong could only come to one explanation: there was something wrong with the bed.

"Give me a hand!"

He called Captain Wang over, asking him to take the head while he took the foot. Together, they shoved hard, and the bed slowly slid to one side.

As the crystal bed moved aside, Xu Tong and Captain Wang's eyes lit up.

Beneath it was a huge tomb-raiding tunnel.

"What a massive hole! Master Hu really was a tomb raider."

Captain Wang examined the entrance and couldn't help marveling. He'd arrested plenty of thieves, but never a tomb raider. He'd once heard the old hands on his team talk about how tomb raiders tunneled through mountains and dug through rock, but he'd never taken them seriously.

Now that he was seeing a hole this big with his own eyes, he couldn't help marveling. He wondered if even the army's engineers could dig one this neatly.

"Just as I thought."

Xu Tong let out a long breath. No wonder Master Hu had been able to sleep so soundly. He'd blocked up the tunnel, so even if there really was something below, he would hear the slightest sound.

"Let's go take a look!"

Without waiting for Captain Wang to respond, he jumped into the tunnel and headed inside.

"Hey!"

Captain Wang had no choice but to follow. In fact, he felt a little admiration for this young Xiao Chen.

If it had been him, he'd never have thought to move the bed, not in a million years.

Besides, if it weren't for Xu Tong, he'd probably be dead by now.

Thinking of that, Captain Wang's poor impression of Xu Tong improved considerably.

The two of them jumped into the tunnel one after the other. It sloped downward at an angle of about sixty degrees, like a slide. Captain Wang had no idea how Master Hu had dug it, but somehow he had avoided all the impenetrable rock.

Halfway down, Xu Tong suddenly planted both feet against the sides and brought himself to a sudden stop.

Captain Wang, right behind him, nearly crashed into him. He complained, "Why'd you stop so sud—"

"Shh!"

Before he could finish, Xu Tong made a shushing gesture and cupped a hand to his ear, signaling Captain Wang to listen carefully.

The sound of footsteps came and went, sometimes close, sometimes distant. If they listened carefully, they could hear people talking, too.

"Are you sure you don't know where those two are hiding?"

"No idea. We only noticed they were gone when we looked away for a moment."

"Hmph. You'd better not try any tricks, or Huo Ying will make sure you learn what it means to wish you were dead."

It was Mad Dog's voice. Xu Tong couldn't mistake it. But he couldn't tell whether it was coming from above or below.

The other voices seemed to belong to Yang Zixuan and the others. It looked like they had fallen back into Mad Dog's hands, but Xu Tong had no way of knowing exactly what had happened.

Once the voices had gradually faded away, Xu Tong let out a careful breath. He was worried Mad Dog's sharp sense of smell might let him detect where they were.

"Keep going!"

He urged Captain Wang onward. They slid for another five or six minutes before reaching the bottom of the tunnel, but it didn't seem to end there.

In the darkness, there was only a tiny glimmer of light. It was coming from above them.

"Ow!"

Captain Wang had just stood up when his foot slipped. It felt as if he'd stepped on something. He reached down, felt around, and picked it up. It was a piece of a flashlight.

He ran his fingers over it a few times and felt the words "Zhenwen Flashlight Factory." He tried pressing the switch, and to his surprise, the flashlight still worked.

"Hey, look!"

Seeing the dim yellow light, Captain Wang was overjoyed. At last, they wouldn't have to feel their way through the dark. But the moment he raised the flashlight, a bloodied corpse was illuminated right in front of them...

There'll be another update tonight.