The shaking lasted for more than ten minutes before the surrounding area became completely quiet. After the panic, Logombu looked at his brother thoughtfully, something flashed in his eyes, and he immediately calmed down his emotions and lit the fire again to keep warm.
The oxygen in the cave was still sufficient. Several people used the tools they carried to move the snow accumulated at the entrance of the cave little by little into the gap at the back of the cave, and worked together to dig out the entrance of the cave blocked by the snow.
It was late at night, it was dark and gray outside, there was no moon, and no matter how many stars there were, they could not illuminate the vast land.
When they went out to take a look on the second day, they discovered that the side of the snow-capped peak where they were originally seemed to be like a sharp sword falling from the sky, flattening the snow layer. The snow covering the surface of the mountain had disappeared yesterday. Large areas of the night fell into the canyon further below.
What made them even more horrified was that there were many freeze-dried corpses hanging around the cave. These are the people who died here in an accident after entering the snowfield with Dong Can. Hanging on the edge of the cave entrance was a mutilated corpse that was strangled by a rope and fell to death on the mountain wall. His head had been filled with the snowy mountains. Some kind of falcon on the mountain ate up all the food.
The corpse's face was so damaged that it was impossible to tell what it looked like before birth. There must be more corpses buried deep in the snow in the canyon below.
After the initial surprise, the three porters were ecstatic and hurriedly reached into the corpse's pockets, trying to find something valuable.
Encountering corpses in the snowy mountains is sometimes not a bad thing. First, the corpse may carry a lot of things, which you can keep in your pocket and take out in exchange for money.
Second, if you can know the identity of the corpse and take it out as a personal token, you can get some information fees from the family members.
When they came out of the cave in the morning, the wind and snow had basically stopped. However, no valuable clues were found from the surrounding corpses. Judging from the exposed bones, the bones and joints of these people were relatively worn, especially the leg bones and shoulders. It seemed that they were used to doing it before they were born. of coolies.
The locals are familiar with how to climb the snow-capped mountains safely. Under the leadership of Luo Gombu, the group climbed down the steep cliff and stopped almost at the bottom of the canyon.
There are more corpses here than before. Some corpses were hard-frozen and piled in the ice. Judging from their clothes, they were not the same group of people who had hung on the cliff and fell to death.
There were no major external injuries on these people, but the old Tibetan Lhapa knew how these people died when he saw the posture of the corpses.
The backs of all the corpses were pressed against the cliff, just like they were doing now. These people must have been trapped by the heavy snowstorm when they came here not long ago. They wanted to take a rest before going up. As a result, the temperature dropped suddenly. Many people had no time to react. They were frozen by the extreme cold of the snowfield when they fell into a coma due to physical and mental exhaustion. Died here.
A large proportion of the corpses here have foreign faces. Laba said to his brother: "Boss, these people should have come out of the mountains and rested here, but they froze to death." There are too many corpses here, and there must be more in the snow-covered areas below. The bodies were buried in the snow, and the world changed, and they were never found.
"Come out?" the younger brother asked doubtfully,
"Is anyone active in the snowy mountains?"
"It's not what my boss thought." Raba explained,
"The faces of these people are not familiar to me. They are not from Medog. In the past 20 or 30 years, foreigners often entered the mountains for activities. I don't know their purpose. They are always related to this area. It has something to do with the no man's land." The little brother nodded and looked far away in the direction where these corpses came from, with no unnecessary emotions on his face.
Raba and the others still searched the dead people's belongings as usual, especially foreigners' packages, which contained many valuable and good things.
At this time, Logombu on one side noticed a larger black shadow in the distance, and pointed to the other two people.
He put his hand on his forehead to block the dazzling snowy light and looked over. He found that it was three foreigners hugging each other before they died. There were also several people who came close to hug each other for warmth. Their arms seemed to be protective. Wearing something.
The three of Laba looked at each other, and saw that the younger brother just glanced at it casually and didn't care. Then the three of them crawled over, used knives to pry open a crack in the frozen corpse, and stuffed it through the opening with a fire stick. I saw that there was indeed something wrapped in cloth hidden inside.
Raba thought to himself that something that these people went to such great lengths to protect must be very precious. In order to make the gap bigger so that they could take out the things, Laba and the others tried their best and broke several arms that were tangled together and frozen together, and then they took out the package from the enlarged gap. come out.
These people are not the faces that appeared in Medog, nor are they the snowy mountains starting from Medog. Laba and the others can sell off the things taken from them with peace of mind, without worrying about being sold by temples that have good relations with these foreigners. Discover.
At noon that day, Laba led everyone to a snow slope and dug a hole in the snow to block the wind and rest.
The little brother still had the same indifferent expression. He just ate dry food that was slightly heated on the fire. He rarely spoke along the way.
Raba and the others were still a little curious about this lonely and generous owner, but that was all. The most important thing right now was to divide the spoils.
They put together all the valuable items they took out from the dead people, divided them among themselves, and finally opened the tight package.
After the outermost layer of black cloth was removed, the inner and outer three layers were still wrapped with some velvet cloth. Unwrap the three layers in a row. The bottom gold cloth was wrapped with something like an iron box. There was also something like an iron box under the box. A thick black notebook.
They opened the box, which contained some fossil-like specimens and two fist-sized gold balls.
The golden ball was placed alone in the iron box, looking more precious than the other instruments in the box.
There is also a small emerald-green box inside the iron box. It is very delicate and looks like a large piece of emerald gemstone.
The third porter accompanying him was Raba's distant nephew. The young man couldn't control his temper and reached out to open the small box to see what was inside.
Unexpectedly, as soon as the lid was moved, a whooshing sound was heard. Before Raba and the others could react, the young man's face was already bruised and he fell to the ground with blood vomiting from the mouth. He made a painful sound in his throat and was still holding the emerald box tightly in his hand.
The two of them subconsciously stepped back in fear. The blood vomited by the young man gradually turned black. After a while, Laba reacted and touched his nephew's face, trying to breathe. However, as soon as he stretched out his hand, someone stopped him halfway. intercept.
"Don't touch it, it's poisonous." The boy said seriously. Laba tensed his face, stared at his nephew who fell on the ground, his body gradually getting colder, and sighed. He had not been with this nephew for a short time, and he did not feel too much sadness.
They have been walking in the snow-capped mountains all year round to make a living, and have long been accustomed to the sudden death of their companions. Today it is someone else who dies, and tomorrow it will be you and me. Accidents happen all the time, and death is an extremely common thing.
The little brother stared closely at a tiny hole between the eyebrows of Laba's nephew's corpse, then carefully opened his fingers and took out the box.
The little brother touched the lid of the box with his fingers, and the small hole where the fine needle had just been shot had now closed automatically.
He said slowly: "This is a mechanism box, and there are many poisonous needles in it." The death of Raba's nephew did not open this death box.
Luo Gongbu made a somewhat frightened suggestion.
"Why don't we just throw the box away? Anyway, we have already harvested enough." The little brother shook his head, holding the lid of the box with his right hand and stroking the gaps with his fingertips.
The two of them hurriedly hid further away, fearing that the box would pop open and poison them too. But I saw the little brother holding the lid of the box with one hand and slowly twisting it to the right. A series of gear grinding sounds came from the box. After two turns, he gently lifted the lid of the box.
Seeing that no poisonous needle was ejected this time, Luo Gongbu was curious and came over to take a look. He suddenly took a breath and exclaimed: "My dear mother, please close it quickly, this thing is too dangerous." There are countless densely packed silk threads under the cover, and half of the thin needles originally stretched on the silk threads have shrunk to the edge of the box.
The little brother ignored his words, put two fingers in, avoiding the silk threads, clamped the knob at the bottom and turned it gently, and the remaining half of the needle retracted along with the silk threads.
The two of them stared at the little brother's hand, dumbfounded, and they were so surprised that they didn't know what to do. The little brother took out a black stone from the box, with a diameter the size of a bottle cap. The surface was bumpy, very irregular, and very ugly, as if there were many small twisted faces crowded together.
"What is this?" Luo Gongbu asked doubtfully. The little brother shook his head and looked a little confused. He had never seen such a thing before.
There was nothing fishy about the black lump. Luo Gongbu turned around and picked up the black notebook on the side and looked at it. This thing seemed to be equally worthless. It was full of tadpole writings by foreigners.
He couldn't understand it, so he flipped it over and put it aside, and divided the two golden balls equally with Raba. The younger brother picked up the notebook he had put aside. The text recorded on it was in German. In other words, these foreigners who froze to death in the canyon were most likely from Germany.
Raba was immersed in ecstasy and felt that this was the luckiest day of his life. While he was happy, he was thinking about how to explain the reasons for retreating to the employer who hired him.
Now that he has a golden ball, he may be richer than his boss, and there is no need to continue venturing deeper into the snow-capped mountains.
But this was always a bit unkind. When he was hesitating, he saw the younger brother holding the notebook in front of him, pointing at a string of awkward words written on it, and asked him what it meant.
It turned out that there was a very complicated pattern drawn on a page in the middle of the notebook, with many strange patterns on it, and a crooked Tibetan comment on the side.
This string of Tibetan language is an old and rare script here in Medog, called Ga Lai dialect. It sounds very similar to Monba language, but it is actually very different.
There are no more than 3,000 people in the world who can speak Ga Lai, and it happened that a chance encounter in the past allowed Raba to learn a few words of this language.
He stared at the line of words and translated it half-guessingly,
"The edge of the sky and the earth seems to be the limit of the world." ﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉The previous Deren recorded these contents in very detail. The younger brother only briefly mentioned some things. He also based on his own guesses and previous experiences. The records are supplemented in small characters on the side. They are very detailed, but some contents are inevitably a bit lingering.
Zhang Zhuxun didn't want to miss any information, so he could only read it word by word with patience. The black notebook that the younger brother got from the Germans is also in the box. Deren seems to have obsessive-compulsive disorder. He also wrapped a layer of square oil paper on the outside and preserved it very carefully.
Zhang Zhuxun opened his notebook and read as fast as he could. The previous records in German can be traced back to before the 20th century. During the period when Laojiumen was prosperous, these Germans had already begun to investigate and analyze them.
The origin of the matter was that one day, their supreme leader received a piece of sky stone from the interior. It was sent by a middle-aged man with an Asian face. The sky stone was carved with patterns that mortals could not describe. It was exquisite. It's like a door leading to the endless divine realm, very mysterious.
As soon as he saw the sky stone, the German leader was deeply attracted, and then invited the middle-aged man to have a secret conversation with him.
No one knew the specific content of the secret conversation, but after coming out of the secret room, the leader began to arrange for his men to investigate.
They found a lot of things, but they were very scattered. Following the middle-aged man's reminder, they set out to investigate all the rumors about the snowy mountains near the Himalayan border. After spending decades, they only found some rough things.
Until the appearance of Dong Can and his party brought hope to the German leaders. Around 1942, the Germans discovered the survivors of the cavalry team in some places, but two of them were fools and were beaten to death by losers out of anger because of gambling.
They tortured the remaining man, and finally found more than a dozen golden balls buried in the ground from his manor.
The man told what they had encountered in the snowy mountains, and pointed out that surrounded by golden balls, there was a huge black sky stone with countless patterns on it, which looked similar to the German rubbings. The patterns on the drawings are fifty or six points similar.
At that time, the German leader was already old. When a person is about to die, some bad qualities will inevitably be revealed.
His sons were dissatisfied that their old father was still holding on to such a huge business despite his old age, so they simply tortured the old man to death without stopping.
Several sons of the leader fought with each other, and they were all defeated. In the end, the ruined business was taken over by an American businessman.
It is worth mentioning that the name of this American businessman is Cox Hendry.
