"Hey, do you think this potion on us will work?" Chen Tao shook his arm, raised his sleeve to his nose and smelled it, frowning.
"What do you think?" Yang Lixuan glanced at him, turned back and continued walking forward.
"Probably, it will work..." Chen Tao hesitated. After all, he has never seen that kind of black insect so far, and he has not encountered any danger along the way.
"Shangui, how long have we been walking?" Uncle Long asked.
"Almost, six or seven hours." Shangui said as he glanced at his watch.
"Well... A normal person can walk five kilometers in an hour. Although we are moving slowly, judging from the current situation, we should have reached the depths of the mountain by now." Chen Tao said.
Uncle Long took out the map from his pocket, looked at it for a while with the light of his headlamp and said, "Our location is not far from the Man-Eating Valley. Everyone, please pay attention to your surroundings and stay vigilant."
Uncle Long collected the map and raised his wolf fang flashlight to take a photo of the road ahead. "The locals said that the people in this mine tunnel only got into trouble when they dug into the Man-eating Valley. That kind of black insect might be ahead. To be on the safe side, apply the potion again.”
After listening to Uncle Long's words, the others took the potion bottles from their backpacks, poured them out and applied them on their bodies and clothes. Although there was a gas mask, the unique smell of garlic and ginger mixed with the potion still penetrated Chen Tao's nose.
Soon, the air around him became strange. The potion was mixed with the smell of dampness and decay in the mine, giving people an indescribable taste in their noses.
Chen Tao joked: "Interesting, we are just like the chef marinating the fish before cooking! We smear the sauce all over our body and wait for it to be put into the pot."
"We are just here to eat the pot. However, the fish in the pot is a thousand-year-old salted fish. If you see it later, I will get some for you to eat!" Haozi said with a smile.
"If you want to eat it, you can eat it yourself!" Knowing what Haozi was talking about, Chen Tao couldn't help but roll his eyes at him.
"Hey, that's a good thing. Dip it in some bread crumbs and fry it until golden. The kids next door will cry! This stuff is a great supplement! Maybe eating it can prolong your life and make you ascend!" Haozi winked at Chen. Tao said nonsense.
Chen Tao was too lazy to talk to him anymore, so he poured a hand of potion and applied it directly to Haozi's gas mask.
"Holy shit, you are committing murder!" Not to be outdone, Haozi picked up the potion and poured it into Chen Tao's neck.
Seeing that they were still thinking about fighting at this time, everyone couldn't help but smile, and the atmosphere was much more relaxed than before.
"Huh? Look, there is a hole in the stone wall in front of you!" said the mountain ghost.
Everyone hurriedly turned on their flashlights and shined their light on the stone wall in front, and saw a big hole not far from the stone wall on the left side in front.
Chen Tao and Hao Zi stopped fighting and came over. Everyone stepped up and walked to the cave, holding up their flashlights to shine into the cave.
"This hole seems to have been dug at the same time as the previous one on the left." Uncle Long said, touching the chisel marks on the cave wall.
"Strange, why is there an extra hole here?" Boss Zhang said, holding up a flashlight and looking back and forth.
Yang Lixuan looked at the cave entrance on the stone wall, then raised his hand to look at the way he came, then turned around and looked at the stone wall on the right opposite the cave entrance. After thinking for a while, he said: "Could it be that those people knew that there was an ancient road here? And they also Do you know the direction of the ancient road?"
"Huh?" Yan heard the sound and walked over, took a look at the direction of the cave, then looked behind him and said: "This cave entrance is connected to the previous cave entrance!"
"What?" Except for Yang Lixuan and Yan, everyone else was shocked.
"It's possible? If that's the case..." Uncle Long muttered.
"They knew the direction of this ancient cave and dug a shortcut out!" Yang Lixuan said.
"That group of people is really not that simple! What are they going to do?" Uncle Wang said.
"Now that they know the ancient cave road and have found a shortcut, are they planning to settle here?" Boss Zhang said.
"I don't know the other purpose, but the purpose of digging this new mine tunnel is definitely to take a shortcut!" Yan said.
"Could it be a coincidence?" Chen Tao asked doubtfully.
"I think it's not a coincidence. Look, the ancient road ahead overlaps with the newly dug mine road. From the exit to the inside of the cave, there are countless overlaps. Can this be said to be a coincidence?" Uncle Long looked ahead. Said deep in the mine tunnel.
"There must have been other people here before us! And there were quite a few of them. They were able to dig mine tunnels and install sleepers and rails. That group of people definitely stayed here for more than a day or two." Uncle Wang said.
"Who are they..." Chen Tao whispered to himself.
"There is no way to know this now. Let's go and continue walking for a while." More than seven hours have passed since entering the cave. In addition to taking a short rest in the large space at the fork, everyone Basically no stop.
"How about it? After you come down, your physical strength will be exhausted very quickly, and you won't be able to get timely rest and food replenishment. Can you bear it?" Uncle Long asked Chen Tao quietly.
"It's okay, Uncle Long. I can still bear it. Although I'm a little hungry, I can still hold on for a while."
"Well, if we go forward for a while, we have to take a rest, eat something, replenish our strength, and pay more attention to yourself." Uncle Wang looked at Chen Tao and said.
Everyone continued to go deeper. No one could imagine what such a long mine tunnel was used for.
"The further you go, the more crystals there are on the stone wall, and the size and quality are much better than at the beginning." Haozi touched the large black crystal mineral fault on the stone wall.
"What kind of place was this Man-Eating Valley before, and how could there be so much of this kind of ore?" Da Bing said, speaking for the first time since meeting him.
No one can answer this question. The mine tunnel is no longer as spacious as when they first arrived. Everyone lined up in a long line and moved forward cautiously.
"Huh? Why is there no road?" Uncle Long asked.
Chen Tao followed Uncle Long's flashlight and saw that the cave entrance in front seemed to have collapsed and was completely blocked by large and small gravels, making it impossible to pass through.
"This was destroyed by a bomb." Yan said, squinting his eyes for a while.
"There's something wrong with the ground, and the rails are gone! And the ground..." Mountain Ghost stepped on it a few times and said, "It's a bit hard."
Yang Lixuan knelt down and picked up a bit of empty soil with his hands, put it to his nose and smelled it, "There is a very strange smell in the ground." After speaking, he fiddled with the wet soil on the ground a few times, but there was no sound. throat.
"Then what should we do now? We can't go forward. Do we have to go back?" Boss Zhang suddenly interrupted.
Yang Lixuan didn't say anything. He stretched out his hand to touch the surrounding stone walls, then raised his hand to Chen Tao and said, "Give me the shovel."
"Ah? Oh, here!" Chen Tao didn't expect that he would suddenly speak to him. He was stunned for a moment, then took out the folding shovel from the back of his backpack and handed it to Yang Lixuan.
Yang Lixuan picked up the folding shovel and smashed it hard against the stone wall, bringing up a bunch of sparks and gravel. Everyone picked up their flashlights and shined their light on the bulge on the stone wall where a trace of skin had been chopped off. They saw a black light flickering on it, and the entire The bumps are actually all black spar.
"Holy shit, it's so big!" Haozi exclaimed.
"More than that!" After saying that, Yang Lixuan took the shovel and slashed at several other places on the stone wall and said: "The entire rock formation here is made of that kind of black crystal stone. Including the surroundings, the top of the head, and the entire ground, we may be in In an extremely large black crystal."
"Hiss..." Everyone couldn't help but take a breath.
"It's all black crystal? How big a piece it must be!" Chen Tao looked up and around in shock.
"The location here... we have reached the edge of the Cannibal Valley!" Uncle Long said while holding the map.
"According to the legend, what happened to those people back then should have happened here. The collapse in front should have been caused by someone blowing up at that time."
"If you look at the story carefully, they didn't actually dig it to the end, but it ended here." Uncle Wang said.
"Then how should we go next? If we can't get through in front of us, why don't we dig a hole ourselves?" Mountain Ghost asked.
Everyone fell into silence again. Only Yang Lixuan kept walking around, looking east and touching. Everywhere he went, he gently tapped the rocks above with a shovel, making a clanging sound of metal tapping. Echoing for a long time in the long dark mine tunnel.
Everyone was silently thinking about what to do next. They heard the knocking sounds one after another, and couldn't help but feel a little irritated. Boss Zhang was about to have an attack, but Yang Lixuan raised two fingers to silence him. Then he waved his hands to everyone, indicating that everyone should stay quiet.
Everyone didn't know what he was going to do, but they didn't say anything. They all looked at him quietly. They saw him crawling onto the gravel in front and turning his headlights into purple light mode. Then, everyone saw the people in front of him. In the gaps between the gravel, there is a layer of green fluorescence under the illumination of purple light.
Seeing this scene, everyone else followed Yang Lixuan's example and turned their heads to purple light. Under the illumination of many lights, they saw a bunch of fluorescent spots poking out of the cracks in the gravel.
"This is it?" Uncle Long asked.
"The excrement of bloodthirsty black insects." Yang Lixuan looked at the fluorescent objects and said.
"If I guessed correctly, that group of people should have taken the initiative to blow up this place, but they failed to control the amount of explosives and blew up the cave wall together. At the same time, they may have also blown up the nest of the bloodthirsty black worm, so There are black insects burrowing out through these cracks and holes.”
"Looking at the traces of excrement, it seems they have used this place as their entrance, right?" Uncle Long said.
"Well, and they are always around us!" Yang Lixuan looked at the crowd and said.
"What!" After hearing his words, everyone broke into a cold sweat, and Chen Tao couldn't help but get goosebumps all over his body.
"Those damn black bugs have been around us all this time? We didn't know!" Thinking about the flesh pupae dug out from the crazy boy's body, Chen Tao felt a chill in his body, and a cold air rushed down his spine and straight to the back of his head. .
"This kind of insect is very small and the surroundings are so dark. If you don't pay close attention, you won't see it at all. However, you don't have to worry, they won't bite you." Yang Lixuan waved his hand and said calmly.
"It's that potion! That potion has been protecting us!" Haozi said in shock.
Hearing this, everyone couldn't help but raise their hands and smell their own scent, feeling a little relieved.
"Then what should we do next?" Uncle Long looked at Yang Lixuan and asked.
"Those people definitely didn't want to blow up the top of their heads. They may have encountered some reason that made the machine unusable, so they chose this method."
"So what do you mean?"
"Get these rocks away and see what they were blasting! I guess they might want to go down there." Yang Lixuan raised his head and threw the folding shovel towards Chen Tao. Chen Tao took it and looked at the blade on it. It was a bit chipped. He couldn't help touching it and said:
"How hard did you use to smash the stone wall!"
"It seems that the hardness of this black crystal stone is stronger than ordinary stone." Haozi said.
"No matter how bad the stone is, if you hit it hard with a shovel, the shovel blade will break." Chen Tao said.
"In that case, let's blow it up!" Yan walked unsteadily from the crowd and said, "It's time for me to show off my skills."
I saw him rubbing his hands and taking something out of his backpack. Uncle Long shouted, "Wait a minute. After walking for so long, take a break and eat something. Since there is a nest of bloodthirsty black insects under the stone, wouldn't the explosion be like poking a hornet's nest?"
"Hey, that's right, my stomach has been growling for a long time. I'm starving to death!" Boss Zhang touched his stomach and sat down on a large piece of gravel.
Thinking of the insects all around him, Chen Tao felt that he couldn't even eat. Yang Lixuan seemed to have read through his mind and said, "You have applied medicine on your bodies. Those insects are lying on the stone wall two or three meters away. Don't dare to Get close, and they’re afraid of fire, so they’ll be fine.”
After listening to his words, Chen Tao felt a little more relaxed. He took a smokeless stove and a pot from his bag, boiled mineral water and made some instant noodles.
I bought the remaining box and a half from the canteen, plus the few buckets Chen Tao brought in his bag, which was enough for everyone to eat for two meals. It was really the first time in my life to eat instant noodles in a dark mine tunnel with countless black bugs around. Thinking about it, Chen Tao couldn't help but feel a little funny.
"When did my taste become so strong?"
He shook his head and started eating on his own. All the way to now, although he has persisted, he has been hungry very early. It was no different than usual. No one in the group said anything, so naturally Chen Tao couldn't say anything.
Raising his head and drinking up the last bit of noodle soup, Chen Tao looked at a piece of gravel and sat next to Uncle Long. Watching several other people smoking and cleaning up.
"Are you afraid?" Uncle Long looked at him with a smile.
"Not afraid." Chen Tao shook his head firmly. "I chose the road myself. Even if the sky falls, I will walk on it!"
"Okay! As a member of the Chen family, you should have this kind of courage and courage." Uncle Long lit up a cigarette and took a puff and said: "There is still a long road ahead. In the future, you will encounter many things that are incomprehensible and even beyond your knowledge. If you want something, hold on!" After saying that, he patted Chen Tao on the shoulder.
Looking into Uncle Long's eyes, Chen Tao smiled back and nodded gently. He didn't want to say anything, and he didn't want to make many empty promises to Uncle Long. He wanted to show him with practical actions and tell him that your nephew and I can definitely do it!
