Chen Hui spoke like this, not in a hurry, but always made some very dangerous decisions.

The cook looked at the cliff under the sinkhole, estimated and said: "Although I am not good at light skills, after all, people who practice martial arts, this cliff is not difficult for me." If you want to go down as the shopkeeper, I will naturally accompany you. ”

Ding Qiliang said very seriously, and the reason for his seriousness was probably because he was aware of the danger. Chen Hui smiled and said, "There should be no danger below, and even if there is, it is just a pile of bones." Sir, are you going? ”

The scholar shook his head:

"I'm not going, my martial arts skills are not as good as you and the cook."

"I can carry you." Chen Hui spoke.

", I don't want it. You and the cook will go down, and I'll wait for you up there." "The scholar insisted on not entering Tiankeng City.

Chen Hui smiled bitterly, but did not continue to persuade.

"That, Brother Ding, can you carry me down......" Zhong Yunxiu suddenly spoke, and asked Ding Qiliang a little shyly.

"Of course you can, but I feel very dangerous down there, Sister Axiu, it's better for you to stay up there."

"If they are just a group of people who have been imprisoned for many years, where is there any danger, if they are still alive, in such an environment, there must be patients who need my treatment. I...... Want to go down and have a look, right? Zhong Yunxiu looked at this bottomless sinkhole, a little timid, but still wanted to follow.

Chen nodded back, and the cook said, "Okay." ”

The scholar said: "No one has gone down to the empire for more than ten years, you must know that the people below are very likely to be dead. ”

"Sir, don't you really want to go down with us? I can feel that the gentleman's words are very worthless for them. Chen Hui always felt that something was wrong with the scholar.

The scholar was silent for a moment, and finally shook his head and said, "There are many things that make me feel unfair. But I'm not interested in everything. “

The scholar walked to the inn and waved his hand: "Since you want to go down, someone has to watch your inn." ”

Chen Hui felt that the scholar was a little different from the past, but he couldn't say why.

The three of them prepared for a while, connected each other with ropes in the inn, and then began to dive towards Tiankeng City.

In the inn, the scholar looked a little strange.

It's not that he refuses to go to Tiankeng City, he just understands that the return date is approaching, and every time he sees Chen Hui, he can't say that sentence.

That sentence, the green mountains do not change the green water. In other words, the rivers and lakes are far away, and there will be a period in the future.

Or maybe he'll be very brief, I'm leaving.

Since returning from the Nanban Secret Realm, he has been looking for an opportunity to say goodbye to the inn group, but he has never spoken. Now that Chen Hui and his party have gone to Tiankeng City, the scholar finally feels that it is time to go.

The martial arts conference is approaching, and he has to do something. He promised Xiang Wu one thing.

But leaving like this, he always felt as if something was missing, and the scholar looked at the barren surroundings outside the inn window, thinking that he had been with the people in the inn for almost three months, but it was so short, and he was a little stunned.

He found a pen and paper, what he had to do was very dangerous, although he thought that after three months, he didn't have too deep feelings with this group of people, but he still didn't want the people in the inn to get involved in the conspiracy of the martial arts conference.

Or is it just a worry? The scholar shook his head self-deprecatingly, where do people like themselves deserve any friends.

But when I put pen to paper, I still couldn't go against my original intention.

"There is a banquet in the world, and I, the account room, should also go. Maybe I'll come back when I'm done with my business, don't come to get in my way, don't go to the martial arts conference. ”

This is the care of chaos, the scholar is the smartest person, he knows that Chen Hui is a person who can work hard for Ding Qiliang, who has known him for less than a month, for Zhong Yunxiu, a person who asks to be able to withstand the attack of Akasi head-on, and a person who looks gentle and honest and wants to stay away from the rivers and lakes but can't help but meddle in things, he thinks that he is keeping Chen Hui away from the martial arts conference, but he doesn't want to, in this way, it will only have the opposite effect.

When he walked out of the inn, the scholar did not look back, he went all the way east, from the direction of Kyoto.

……

Chen Hui, who was diving up and down the cliff of the deep pit, suddenly felt a little bored and couldn't say why.

They had been slowly moving from the cliff for the next hour, and there was only a thin sunlight here, so quiet that the sound of breathing could be heard clearly.

"Will the gentleman encounter any danger, he is alone on it, I am a little worried." Chenhui's voice hit the middle of the empty sinkhole, full of echoes.

"What danger can he have, you are still worried about us, this hellish place, we have been climbing down for an hour, and we still don't see the bottom." The cook's words made Chenhui feel better.

Ding Qiliang carried Zhong Yunxiu on his back, grasped the rock of the cliff with his hand steadily, and stepped on it step by step. These cliffs, it seems that the people who mined them back then deliberately carved, there will always be some footholds, but it is easy to go down and difficult to go up.

If you want to climb up through these landing points, even if you are physically strong, it is impossible for ordinary people to go up in such a steep cliff without a certain amount of light skill.

Looking at the thin sunlight above and the boundless darkness under their feet, the three people in the inn were a little surprised. It's really a desperate dungeon.

If there are really people living in such an underground world in this world, what kind of life is they living?

Chen Hui hoped that they would not die, he didn't know if the remnants of the Chu State were extremely vicious people, but he knew that the people who lost their homes were enslaved here by the empire for fifteen years, and forgotten here for fifteen years, a full thirty years, no matter what sins, they should be washed away.

In fact, where is the sin? They are just a group of people who refuse to surrender after the fall of the country.

Chen Hui knew that he was actually not far from the bottom of the pit, and the pit of thousands of zhang, according to their downward speed, should be almost to the end.

He prayed that the group was still alive.

Because if you live, good things will happen, and only when you die will there be another kind of sorrow.

……

In the thirtieth year of the Qin calendar, at the end of summer, Tiankeng City.

There is no sunlight at the bottom of Sinkhole City, and Imi has adapted to the darkness since she was born, unlike the old people here, she is very young, and because she was born in the dark, Imi is very accustomed to the dark, just like most children or young people here, it doesn't take long for them to see things clearly in the dark. She doesn't like it anymore, but she's not as desperate as the old people.

The bottom of the sinkhole was originally a very empty land, but the rain in the past 30 years and the fact that the sun could not shine here made the water more and more accumulated, and the water level became higher and higher, and the people who originally lived at the bottom of the pit had to start digging caves in the cliffs for new shelters. These things started twelve years ago.

At this moment, Yimi took the tools that the empire had given them many years ago, and led a group of young people to start digging the stone wall.

"Eldest sister, why are you like an overseer, it's so early, and the sun hasn't even reached your buttocks before you call us up to work." It was a very thin and short child, and the hoe he held in his hand was almost as tall as the others, as were many of the children behind him, with yellow faces and thin muscles, and short statures.

As for sun-drying butts, this is the story that the old people have told them.

Many years ago, on the top of the sinkhole, people would be awakened by the sun every day to start a new day and start work. It is also the end of the work every day when the sun disappears.

Yimi, who was born in Tiankeng City, and the children were very happy, they had never experienced such an experience, so they turned the events in these stories into joking quotations.

They have never been awakened by the sun, nor have they finished their work because of dusk, but they are always assuming that they are in the sun.

In the black sun.

"Don't talk nonsense, hurry up, keep up, if you don't finish digging the nine-story stone cave before the next heavy rain, the old people on the third floor will have to drown."

Yimi is an outlier, she is relatively tall, and she is a vigorous girl on weekdays, so she has become the child king of this group of children.

The cliffs at the bottom of the pit are different from other places. There are many caves in the cliffs here, all of which have been carved out by people with knives and axes. In fact, it is not big, and a stone cave can't even accommodate two people to squeeze in.

The cliffs have also been carved out of mountain paths, which were built many years ago and were built while they were still digging down. The trail is also narrow, just as wide as your feet.

However, the group of children led by Yimi, even in such thick darkness, can walk on such a narrow mountain road.

In what year, heavy rains caused the water level at the bottom of the pit to rise a lot, and people were forced to start digging rock holes in the mountain road and then abandon the flat ground at the bottom of the pit.

The people of Sinkhole City realized that if they didn't dig a stone cave up for a new shelter, the water level would slowly rise, and then the rain would drown the people below.

So there is the first and second floors, the young people live on the top floor, so that they can continue to dig holes as soon as they are rested, and the old and infirm live on the bottom floor. It's just that the process of digging stone caves is very slow, unlike the stone that was excavated from top to bottom, when there were more than 100,000 people. Today, most of those people are dead, and the only ones who are alive are old, weak, sick and disabled. It took them fifteen years to dig down, and if they wanted to dig it back, they didn't know how many decades it would take.

As for the bottom of the pit, it becomes a dirty pool, and every time a new layer of mountain roads and caves is dug out, the bottom layer of mountain roads and stone caves will become abandoned places, that is, places where all kinds of dirty things are stored.

The waterhole, on the other hand, emits the stench of rotting flesh and all kinds of filth.

It's disgusting, but everyone who lives at the bottom of Tiankeng City lives like this. They live in darkness and damp and filthy underground, and they are a group of exiles.

In the early years, the Empire threw food very frequently, and it was stored in sealed boxes, and although it would break a lot if it fell, there would always be good food.

And over the years, the interval between food throws has become longer and longer, and even the food is some food that has become moldy. The food fell into the deep pool like garbage, so that the people of Tiankeng City did not have any desire to salvage, but it was just to add some more stench to the bottom of the pit that already emitted the stench of death.

But they had other sources of food, and that was to rely on it, and they lived tenaciously in the dark sinkhole city, in this dark and foul-smelling hell.

Yimi is now wielding a hoe and digging a stone wall with her friends, and a little girl is doing this action very skillfully.

In a few days, the food should be coming, and the food from before is almost gone. Imi thought about it, I really hope he's okay.

Imi hadn't been outside, but Imi had heard the man say something about the outside. He said that the hearts of people outside were very sinister.

Imy would be worried about him, even though he would come back every little while and bring a lot of food, and even though he said that there could be no one in this world who was faster than him, and no one could catch him, every time, Imy would start to worry about him the day after he left.

Actually, he was already late, Immy thought. Normally, when the food was almost halfway left, he couldn't wait to come back, but this time, the food was almost finished, and he still didn't come back.

Yimi's hoe swung hard with each blow, and the pain of colliding with the rocks made her miss a little less.

Suddenly, there was a bustling sound of people on the mountain road.

Yimi and his friends stopped wielding their hoes.

"Finish work first, the evening rain is coming, rest and rest." As Yimi's words fell, the cheers of the children could be heard. She also had a smile on her face.

Sunset rain is not rain.

These people who live at the bottom of Tiankeng City do not see sunlight all year round, but in fact, every day, there is a time when sunlight can shine in.

For only a quarter of an hour, the sun will be facing the sinkhole, and at that time, the dark sinkhole city will see some light.

Among this group of refugees was a painter of the Chu State, who would paint every day during the evening rain, looking at the expressions of all the people on the mountain road, and catching the rare sunlight.

Finally, he finished the painting, and when he saw it, he burst into tears.

The people in the painting, some sitting, some kneeling, some standing, all of them raise their heads, like people who waited for rain in the midst of a great drought many years ago.

And those rays of sunlight are as thin as silk threads and rain curtains, and he gave this painting a name, called Sunset Rain.

Yimi liked the painting very much, although the painter of the Chu State who painted it had already died of illness.

At Yimi's insistence, the people of Tiankeng City began to call this time of the day, when the sun is facing the sinkhole, as the evening rain.

The sunset rain is coming.

Thousands of celebrities slowly poked their heads out of the cave to welcome the sun. They didn't have any means to keep their time, but over the years, their body's instinct for sunlight would have led them to start coming out of the cave as the rain approached.

At first it was a filament, a filament-like ray of sunlight, which cut a hole in the darkness, and then there were countless such filaments more and more, and the sunlight turned into golden rain, which fell more and more densely. The sinkhole city was washed by this rain, revealing its original appearance. Numerous stone caves and a huge deep pool, the nearby stone walls of which are covered with moss, and the deep pool itself is dead and silent.

People who have been in the dark all year round, their eyes feel extremely stinging, but they still try their best to keep their eyes open.

Some of them had numb expressions, others were confused, and some of them looked a little painful because of the light.

Yimi's face was smiling, she also raised her head, staring closely at the top of the sinkhole, the sunlight falling on her face, she breathed the sunlight, she looked at the sunlight, she waved her hand gently, trying to catch the sunlight.

Yimi looks cute, but her complexion looks pale because she can't get sunlight all year round, and she smiles happily. She was dressed in shabby linen, but at the moment, she was bathed in only a quarter of an hour of sunlight, like a flower blooming in the dark.

This is the sunshine, this is what you can see every day outside the sinkhole, how warm, how soft.

Yimi smiled, and tears flowed from her eyes.

She began to wield her hoe and continued to dig the stone wall that seemed to never finish, but she believed that one day, that man would take her and take them out of here.