"What should I do, Taozi? I can't get out!"
Chen Tao touched the stone wall with both hands and said: "Don't panic, this passage is so hidden, we won't dig here for no reason, there must be an exit! The passage on the stone pillar is still open, and Big Beard and the others may discover us at any time. We don’t have much time, look for it quickly!”
"Chen Tao, come here quickly!"
Ye Rong seemed to have discovered something. Chen Tao looked along where Ye Rong was and saw that she was touching a hole in the stone wall with her hand.
"This one looks like the one above!"
Chen Tao took a look, and sure enough, there was a square hole on the stone wall that was exactly the same as the previous stone pillar.
Chen Tao took out the beast box, asked Haozi and Ye Rong to take a step back, and inserted the beast box into the square hole.
"What's going on? There's no reaction at all!" Haozi said anxiously.
Chen Tao pressed the beast box hard again, but there was no movement at all.
Shouldn't it? After inserting the beast box into the above one, the mechanism opened. Could it be that this is a fake?
No......
Chen Tao touched the beast box and turned it tentatively.
Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.......
This turn actually turned him. The three of them took a few steps back and stared at the stone wall in front of them without blinking. They saw that part of the originally flat stone wall suddenly dented, and then slowly lifted up. There is actually a secret stone door hidden in it!
Click, click, click...
As the stone door slowly rose, another dark passage appeared in front of him.
Chen Tao threw the signal torch in his hand. Before it was thrown far, the torch seemed to have hit something and bounced back and fell to the ground. In the light of the signal torch, I saw that this dark passage was less than one meter wide, but it was very long and deep, and I didn't know where it led.
"Walk!"
The situation was urgent, and the three of them had no time to think too much. Chen Tao bent down and got in, picking up the signal torch on the ground, followed by Ye Rong, and Haozi at the end.
Before entering, at Chen Tao's instruction, Haozi unplugged the beast box from the stone wall. What he heard was another sound of the machine turning, and the stone door that had been pulled up into the air was slowly descending. .
Haozi was taken aback, but fortunately he was agile and rushed forward. He rolled on the ground and got up. He heard a loud click behind him, and the original stone door was blocked again.
"Why is this mechanism so familiar? It looks like the one on the cliff of Heizigou before!" Chen Tao glanced at Shimen in surprise.
"Don't tell me, it's really similar!" Haozi touched the fallen stone door and said, "It's strange...the machine expansion settings are the same. Do Tatunaans also know the art of mechanisms?"
The secret passage is short and constricting. People can only bend their waists and half-bend their legs in it, making it very difficult to walk. Haozi handed the beast box back to Chen Tao, and the three of them carefully half-climbed and half-walked towards the depths of the secret passage.
In order to guard against the sudden intrusion of the bearded men, Haozi held the rifle with both hands and was on full alert. Chen Tao carried his and Haozi's backpacks and held a signal torch in front to clear the way. Ye Rong was in the middle at any time.
Later support.
"It's so spacious up there, why is it so uncomfortable when you get down there!" Haozi said
"This secret passage is indeed a bit strange, with twists and turns and no rules at all." Chen Tao replied.
"Based on my understanding of Tatunaan culture, they will not bury two levels of tombs under the temple. There should not be a tomb hall under this passage to store corpses, let alone the entrance to Tatunaan. , it was impossible for Tatunaan’s army to come out to fight from a place like this."
The three of them speculated for a long time, not knowing what this secret passage was used for, so they had to give up. However, Chen Tao felt that since this secret passage had the mark of his grandfather, and he used that strange way to remember it when he was a child, It must be an unusual place to live. It is most likely the secret entrance to the ancient city of Tatunaan.
But it was impossible for him to say these words to Ye Rong.
After climbing not far, the secret passage had reached the end. The three of them got out of the hole, and their eyes suddenly opened.
I saw that the space in front of me suddenly opened up, with a high sandstone roof above my head, and yellow sand below me. There was no end in sight to the left and right, extending into endless darkness.
The three of them were dumbfounded. There was actually a dry underground river outside!
At this time, they were on the stone wall on the bank of the river. The three of them came down from the cave entrance and saw that the river was extremely wide. They didn't know how deep it was from the ground. Originally, there should be a very large underground river here, and there were still traces of it on the sand and gravel. Traces of water erosion, the stone walls on both sides are covered with large and small sand disks, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, extending all the way along the river into the darkness, forming a shocking scene in the desert underground that is unknown how many meters deep. The strange landscape of the human heart.
What surprised the three of them even more was that there were many holes on the rock walls on both sides, which were the same size as the hole they came out of. The entrances to the caves were randomly distributed, with no pattern, and were densely packed like briquettes. It seemed as if the entire river had been hollowed out.
Chen Tao looked at those holes and his throat moved unnaturally. What a good thing it was that so many sand holes were missing!
The three of them stood under the hole they came out of and looked around. They saw a broken wooden boat on the opposite shore. They didn't know how many years it had been there. The wood was rotten and rotten, leaving only a keel and a few pieces on it. A bare wooden pole.
Chen Tao looked at the boat opposite, his eyes dazed for a while, and a strange thought suddenly flashed through his head.
How come I've seen that little boat before?
The river in front of him was full of yellow sand. For safety reasons, Chen Tao threw his backpack up. The backpack rolled far away on the yellow sand, and then there was no movement.
"There should be no quicksand, be careful!" Chen Tao warned, holding the signal, he walked to the middle of the river step by step, picked up his backpack, and then walked to the broken boat.
As people got closer, they discovered that this small boat could not be described by the word ship. The hull had completely fallen apart and was rotten in the sand. Even the sawdust was almost gone, and only a small section of the keel was still intact. , but it was also buried deeply in the sand, and it seemed like it would break if touched.
"This ship...
...." Chen Tao looked at this rotten wooden boat that had been there for who knows how many years, and began to have uncontrollable thoughts in his mind. The next second, the river in front of him suddenly surged with surging water, which was bone-chillingly cold. The water is flowing fast.
He was lying in a small boat drifting with the waves, paddling the oars in his hands, and the waves kept hitting his face.
Chen Tao knew in his heart that the person paddling was not him, but he could not control what he saw. He could even feel the despair and panic in this man's heart at this moment, as if he was avoiding something terrible.
"Taozi, what's wrong with you?"
Suddenly a hand was slapped on his back, and Chen Tao woke up from that strange state, with cold sweat covering his forehead.
I looked down and saw that I was standing next to the broken ship, my fingers stroking the half-warped keel. I don't know what kind of wood the keel was made of, but it was not broken yet.
"It's nothing, I..." Just as he was about to speak, Chen Tao's hand touching the dragon bone suddenly stopped. His eyes widened and he looked at the position where his hand was touching, his eyes full of disbelief. .
Where he touched, there was a mark!
This is!
Chen Tao's heart was beating wildly.
The mark of the Chen family, and it was only engraved recently!
Chen Tao looked at the carvings on it. It was obviously carved with a dagger or other knife, and the time was not far from where he stood.
Then, this mark must have been left by Uncle Long!
After searching for so long, I finally have a clue about Uncle Long and the others!
Chen Tao suppressed the excitement in his heart and carefully identified the information contained in the marks.
"Master Long is in danger, there is someone behind you!"
Chen Tao was horrified that the person who left the mark turned out to be Lao Mao! And it was a warning to Uncle Long.
What does he mean?
Judging from the photos, Lao Mao and Uncle Long were together. Could it be that he and Uncle Long have separated?
Chen Tao's heart tightened, and he quickly turned around and asked Ye Rong, "Where are we now!"
Ye Rong was startled by Chen Tao, and realized in her heart that they had not positioned themselves well since being held hostage by Big Beard. She immediately took out her locator and Uncle Long's route map from her backpack.
"No signal!" Ye Rong's expression changed. After tinkering with the locator for a long time, a red line appeared on it.
"This is where the signal last disappeared, and we've reached where they disappeared!"
Looking at the two intersecting lines on the locator and the map, and remembering the mark left by the old cat, Chen Tao felt a strong uneasiness in his heart.
Uncle Long and the others may be in an extremely dangerous situation now!
"The two routes are different, but the location where they disappeared in the end is almost the same. My sister...oh no, Di Yilong and the others must have entered here from somewhere else." Ye Rong's mouth suddenly paused, and then Then he hurriedly said: "Takji said at the beginning that there was a well in the ruins of the ancient city, and there was an underground river underneath. It might be this one!"
Chen Tao was worried about Uncle Long's safety. When he saw Ye Rong talking about the underground river, his heart moved. The most precious treasure in the desert was
The most expensive thing is water.
Any place where people can live in the desert will either have a big river or an oasis, or even worse, there will be underground water veins.
The route left by grandpa leads directly to this underground river, which may have been the water source that the Tatunaan people relied on for their survival.
Thinking of the map in the box, Chen Tao felt regretful.
He couldn't understand that map in the past, but now that he thought about it, it was probably the route map to enter Tatunan!
It's a pity that he didn't bring that box with him, otherwise he wouldn't have to wander around like a headless fly like now.
Uncle Long and the others are uncertain whether they are alive or dead. What on earth can I do to find them?
Looking at the depths of the river, Chen Tao had never been so anxious as he was now. Something seemed to be rolling in the darkness, and finally formed faces that he was familiar with.
Grandpa, Uncle Long, the old cat who was missing but suddenly appeared in the desert, the haunting Qianshu Hongde, and the breathtakingly beautiful Desert Saint...
(End of chapter)
