Tyrkan wiped his short knife, and his companion was wearing bracers. They looked at the hole in front of them and began to slow their breathing.

Anyone who has ever been on the battlefield knows that if you charge your heart beat too early, you will use your attention before you meet the enemy, resulting in a few seconds of shaking during the fight, and if the opponent is more experienced than you, then it will be the last time to shake.

Don't get overly excited until you see the enemy. Hold your horses.

The companion used a short knife, and the two looked at each other, and the other asked him, "What do you think is inside?"

"What did the villagers say?"

"They say it's a human being, and it's a different action than a human, but it's definitely not an ape. ”

This cave is located in the depths of the West Mountain.

Zhongzhou City is in the basin surrounded by the West Mountain, which is like three barriers, protecting the city from being attacked from all sides, but the West Mountain is not a high mountain, and it does not rely on steep cliffs to resist the enemy. The West Hill is a continuous hill with giant trees and dense mud swamps. This prevents the wildfires from spreading, creating a fire attack. At the same time, the excessively humid environment has allowed Nishiyama to produce poisonous silk grass, known as fox silk, which grows like a carpet against the ground where there are no trees, and wraps the trees if there are trees.

The fox silk is the most poisonous plant on the entire continent, and its skin ulcerates when touched, and if it is cut, it will die within three minutes. This plant stretches for hundreds of miles in the primeval jungle of Xishan, so that no one has penetrated here for thousands of years, thus becoming the strongest barrier in Zhongzhou City. No one can pass through the jungle of the West Mountain and appear on the back of Zhongzhou City.

Of course, there are two sides to everything, every spring, the spores of fox silk will blow to Zhongzhou City with the wind in the West Mountain, and after a few weeks, the fields and mountain villages between Xishan and Zhongzhou City will grow fox silk seeds. The Betelgeuse cavalry to which Tilgan belonged was the only heavily armored army that could defend against the foxes, and every spring, they would carry out the activities of burning and clearing the mountains with torches. They will not only remove the poisonous weeds from the plains, but also go two or three kilometers deep into the western mountains to burn the poisonous weeds to ensure the safety of the year.

The smoke from the burning of poisonous weeds smoked onto the armor and weapons of the Betelgeuse cavalry, and the effect of sealing the throat with blood was seen on the battlefield, and over time, this activity was turned into a sacred ritual by the Betelgeuse cavalry. There is a special red variety of poisonous weeds that can paralyze people and is a very valuable smelting herb. Tirgan needed three of these herbs this year, but he was unlucky, so he had to go a little deeper into the western mountains.

In the past, it was just a simple adventure, but this year was different, and on the cleared hillside, they saw a lot of deep holes that they didn't have last year. Judging by the rumors of the villagers, these holes began to appear in the winter of this year. Some villagers went in and saw that there were red poisonous weeds growing inside. But, it seems, there is something else.

The special red breed often appeared in dark places, and the cavalry commander strictly ordered him to enter the cave without permission, but when Tirgan returned, if he did not have three herbs, he could only use his horse as a pawn to pay his gambling debts, and the Betelgeuse cavalry who sold his horse was executed.

"What do you owe money for?" Tirgan asked his companion. The companion was a quiet young man, and the other said, "Woman. ”

"Do you regret it?" said Tirgan, who when he was younger, he often owed money to women, which was a boring reason.

"She's dead. It doesn't matter anymore. ”

The two of them sneaked into the cave, the young man taking the lead, and Tirgan behind the palace.

The cave was very damp, and the entrance was covered in moss. Dressed in heavy armor, the two men walked very slowly, and Tirgan felt the wall of the cave, "Is this dug by animals, or by people?"

"These holes were dug in the winter, and the soil here was frozen to stone in the winter, and it was impossible for animals or people to dig such large holes. The young man said.

"But something just dug up. ”

"That's something else. "When young people talk about problems, there are no ups and downs, as if they are talking about something that happened a long time ago and has nothing to do with them.

The legend about the monster, in the mouth of the old man of the last generation, can often be mentioned, but up to now, there are not many people who talk about it, the earliest legend is brought by a traveler on the other side of the desert, in fact, the people of Zhongzhou have hardly seen the desert, the desert is thousands of miles away from here, Tirgan actually doesn't know what the desert is, only knows that place, there is sand everywhere.

As they went on, the light quickly dimmed, and the young men started their fire sickles, and soon they came to a fork in the road, which divided into four or five forks, and Tirgan looked up and saw the roots of the poisonous weeds hanging from the top of the fork.

These roots will regenerate in the next year, and the root system of poisonous weeds is as deep as more than ten meters underground, so the mountain must be cleared every year, and they carefully avoid it. At this time, Tirgan saw the first red weed, which grew upside down on the roof of the cave.

With a happy face, he cautiously passed, but found that the young man's face had not changed, and he looked closely, and suddenly the red dripping from the grass fell. He handed the fire sickle over.

It's blood! This poisonous weed is stained with blood and some flesh.

"Fresh blood. ”

"Animal blood?"

The young man looked at the ground, where there were many footprints, and there were blood stains in the footprints, leading to the depths of a fork.

"Human blood. "Human blood is fatier than animal blood. Betelgeuse cavalry faced death every day, huge wounds, and blood stains that could not be wiped clean were commonplace.

If the bottom line is death, and you are free from the fear of death, then you will become cunning and brave enough.

Tilgan and the young man looked at each other, and he took out a few brackets from his backpack, buried them in the roots of the poisonous weeds at the top of the cave, pulled out a silk thread, and stood vertically in the middle of the cave.

The thread is so thin that anything that passes through it will immediately trigger it. Steel arrows will shoot out in the shape of an umbrella, and there are twelve of them in total, all of which are highly poisonous.

The two of them walked on around the thin line, the blood staining more and more, and suddenly, far away, at the end of the darkness forced back by the light of the fire sickle, at the junction of the hazy black and the light, Tirgan saw something.

The young man also stopped, there was blood everywhere, he took out another fire sickle with his backhand, lit it, and at the same time threw the one in his hand out directly.

The fire scythe spun around and flew into the darkness, stumbling into something and falling to the ground. And they saw that thing in the darkness, a man, dressed in the clothes of a villager, covered in blood. The man was glued to the roof of the cave, and the roots of the fox silk on it had already merged with him.

It's a corpse, dead for a long time. The fire sickle passed, the air was hot, the air was moving, and they smelled a strange smell. There was a puff of dust in the smell of blood, and it seemed like there was a lot of dust in the air.

As they approached slowly, they saw that behind the corpses, there were all the corpses of villagers, more than a dozen of them, all huddled together.

"Look at the clothes that came in in the winter. "The clothes are very thick. "The winter was frozen, not too rotten. ”

"Why is the blood still flowing?" said Tirgan, wondering, even if it was thawed, the blood should have coagulated, he came to the first corpse, and very skillfully took the money bag from the corpse, there were only six coins in it, he took three and threw them to the young man, and put the remaining three in his own pocket. Then he opened the bag on the corpse's back, which contained some ore and red poisonous weeds. The corpse also had a dagger at its waist.

He tucked the dagger into his belt, the red weeds in the package were rotten, and the ore was worth a few dollars, but it was too heavy. He motioned for the young man to look at the other people's packages.

It was their habit to collect loot, and they were never polite to the possessions of the dead.

"There's red poisonous weeds in there, and these people come to the cave in the winter to find grass. He said, motioning for the young man to move on.

The burning of the mountain was a sacred ritual for the Betelgeuse cavalry. In the spring, the area where the cavalry can reach, the fox silk will be completely cleared. Nearby villagers can only get some red poisonous weeds in exchange for money, and they can only go deep into the cave in some areas with hot springs in winter, and there may be some.

"But how did you die? poisoned?" the young man looked at the deeper darkness behind the corpse. At this time, Tirgan found that someone had written in black ink on the cotton clothes behind the first corpse.

He approached with a fire sickle, flattened his clothes, and looked closely, and there were these words:

This corpse will be left alive, please burn it when you see it, and don't take away the corpse minerals.

"What do you mean?" Tirgan wondered.

The young man took off the corpse's shirt and saw that the joints of the corpse had been smashed into the ore as if they were inlayed. Tirgan immediately pried off a piece with a dagger, it was iron ore. But there are a lot of green dots on the ore, and it is not known what is accompanied.

"Say it's the corpse that will come back to life. If you see it, you will burn it. ”

"Why doesn't the person who wrote these words burn?" Tirgan pried down another piece of ore, which was in the throat area, "This piece can be sold for thirty coins, and the martial saint is building weapons, and he needs good iron ore, which is in good condition." ”

"The font is crooked, it doesn't look like the handwriting of a scholar, maybe it's a literate person from the same village, and the people of the same village can't bear to do it, so they drive the corpse into the cave and wait for someone to pass by?" the young man pondered, and suddenly, he pressed Tirgan's hand to continue digging the stone.

The young man did not look at Tirgan, but at the corpse, which had turned back and opened his eyes, which were full of blood.

"Zombie?" Before Tirgan could finish speaking, the corpse suddenly bit over, and the young man's short knife went up and pressed against the corpse's mouth.