Time: The beginning of the first month of spring.

Location: The secret realm at the end of the Shuanglong Cave, temporarily called the secret realm of heaven.

Weather: Breezy, warm, cloudless.

I believe that anyone who has read the article "Peach Blossom Spring" should be envious of the fairyland described in the article.

And where I'm now, it's not quite like the scene in the book.

A huge grassland slope is covered with Lei Gong roots, and there are countless low earth slopes on the slope.

As far as the eye can see, the undulating waves, coupled with the towering giant tree in the distance, look spectacular.

It's just that now I don't have the heart to look at the surrounding scenery, I have climbed through the undulating dirt slopes, and headed towards the canyon forest at the bottom. To be exact, it should be towards the root of the towering giant tree.

Although this place is as beautiful as a fairyland, it reveals an eerie demon-like atmosphere.

I thought that under the Cave of the Double Dragons was a tomb of an evil dragon, which must be eerie and terrifying, with something terrible and weird. But I never imagined that this would be the case.

I came in with Yan Xiaoying and Lao Fei, and when I arrived here, instead of seeing Jingmei, I was attacked by a group of ghost-faced crabs, and the three of them were lost.

It stands to reason that this place is so peaceful, if nothing else, Lao Fei and Yan Xiaoying should be waiting for me in the peach blossom forest by the river.

But until now, they still can't be found.

This gave me a bad premonition.

Could it be that the two of them thought I had been buried in the crystal cave and headed for the towering tree below the canyon?

This is not impossible, with the character of Lao Fei, when he sees the big tree in the distance, he must think that there is a treasure under the tree.

And he can definitely do things that are open to wealth and abandon his brothers.

At the bottom of the slope is the forest canyon, where the ancient trees are towering, and the old vines are crossed, densely packed, like a primeval forest.

I took a deep breath, tried to calm my emotions, and took the whip and walked down the slope with my backpack on my back.

Under his feet, he stepped on the umbrella-like leaves of Lei Gong Root, and with every step he fell, the leaves broke and the juice splashed out.

This grassland is so lush that some of the leaves are as big as lotus leaves, and the purple-red rhizomes are as thick as thumbs.

As we all know, the rhizome of Lei Gong root is very slender, so thick, I don't know how many years it will take?

Seeing countless ghost-faced crabs in the crystal cave, my nerves were already a little numb, and now my only thought was to find Jingmei, Lao Fei and Yan Xiaoying.

As for other things, I don't want to think about it anymore.

But, many times, a lot of things are out of your mind.

When I cautiously climbed a small dirt slope to look into the distance, the accident happened.

I don't know how the dirt slope under my feet suddenly collapsed, and before I could fully react, the whole person fell all at once, and then the whole person began to do a free fall movement.

I secretly said badly, I thought to myself, should I fall into some canyon cracks and be smashed to pieces, right?

However, the free fall did not last long, and almost instantly, the soles of the feet touched the thick ground.

Because it was an accident, I was completely unprepared, and as soon as my leg bent, I rolled on the spot several times, as if I had hit a wooden shelf, and the thing I hit shattered with a bang.

I shook my head, ignoring the pain in my body, and shook the dirt from my hair on my face and looked around warily.

By the light from the hole when he fell, he faintly saw that the place where he was a narrow cave, and the surrounding and underground were made of bluestone bricks.

The hole above is about six meters high from me, and the bottom is a hard floor stone, and I fell from such a high place unprepared, and I didn't suffer much damage, and I don't know if I should be happy or unlucky?

This place is like a cave used to burn bricks, but it is cold underneath and the temperature of the ground is very different.

This cold is not your ordinary climate change, but it penetrates into the bone marrow.

Yin Qi condensed, could it really be that this is really a tomb?

As time passed, my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and I finally saw my surroundings more clearly, but I still felt dark.

When I unloaded my backpack and took out my flashlight to turn it on and look around again, I couldn't help but shudder even though my nerves were numb.

Because under the beam of the flashlight, I could see at my feet the skeleton of a human being, who had been dead for an unknown amount of time, and the musculature had completely eroded, leaving only a pile of white bones, scattered all about.

The thing I just hit when I fell was supposed to be this skeleton.

Look at the blue brick walls around me, and there are many characters densely painted on them, which is a font that I have never seen or heard of.

Like a pig, like a dog, like a snake, like a bird, like an animal pattern, but if you look closely, it looks like some kind of font narrative.

This is the first time I've seen this kind of glyph.

I couldn't read what was written on the walls, but I could see that the words were all smeared with blood, because I had a wonderful feeling.

There is a strong air of grievance coming out of each character.

Maybe it's because I've been with a yin like a ghost boy for a long time, and I'm extremely sensitive to this weird aura.

In addition to the bones and the blood-colored characters on the walls, as well as the mud and masonry that he brought down when he came down, there was another thing in the cave.

It was a stone bowl, and the stone bowl was placed in front of the door.

The door had been sealed with bluestone, but the brick joints above showed that it was an arch that had been sealed later.

There was still something in the bowl, but it had become moldy and muddy.

I moved cautiously to avoid stepping on the bones that had just been knocked apart by myself, and came to the sealed door, bending down to pick up the stone bowl.

"What a poor old woman."

At this moment, the mountain whip in my hand suddenly trembled, and then I heard the childish voice of the ghost boy ringing in my ears.

I was stunned, and a strange scene suddenly appeared in my mind.

In the middle of the field was an old man with snow-white hair and a dead age, who was carried by several young people to a gloomy masonry cave.

The young men looked like her descendants, for the old man looked at them with kindness, but beneath the kindness there was a deep sadness that could only be seen from the third-party vision.

After entering the cave, several young people left, leaving the old man to sit alone on the dark and cold cave floor.

Before the last young man left, a long piece of masonry was built at the entrance of the cave.

Through the entrance of the cave, the old man silently watched a few young people go down the mountain, with a thick reluctance and desolation on his face, which is the desolation that only an old man can have.

Young people will never get it.

The next evening, another young man came up the hill to the cave, and he brought food and poured it into a stone bowl at the entrance of the cave, and then laid a block of masonry at the entrance of the cave.

I don't know how many days have passed, but several young people take turns to bring food to the old people in the cave every evening, and every time they leave, they will lay a brick and stone at the entrance of the cave.

As the masonry at the entrance of the cave became higher and higher, the old man's health deteriorated and deteriorated, until he could no longer see the inside of the cave from the hole where the masonry was built, and the old man began to bite his fingers and write on the wall every day.

I don't know what she wrote on the wall, maybe it was her own life experience, or her last words, or maybe she had advice and concern for a few young people......

But no matter what was written on it, the young men could no longer see it.

Until one day, when the remaining space at the entrance of the cave was about to be sealed with the last piece of masonry, the old man curled up on the ground trembled and sat up, and looked through the gap at the few young people who were masonry outside, and she finally burst into tears, crying silently.

But these are unknown to the outsiders, and they must have thought that the old man was dead, so they put the last brick and stone on it.

Since then, the cave has been completely darkened.

Since then, the cave has been isolated from the rest of the world.

The lonely old man in the cave is also isolated from the world......

"This ......"

I took a deep breath, turned my head to look at the scattered bones in the cave, and suddenly felt very heavy, as if my blood was clogged.

The picture in my mind was shown to me by the ghost boy in a strange way.

I could never have imagined that there were still people living in such an isolated and secret place, let alone that the old man in this cave died like this.

Before he died, he was locked in a cave, and every time his relatives came to deliver food, he would lay a brick when he left, until the entrance to the cave was completely blocked.

How cruel is that?

What kind of mood should the old man be in when he watched his relatives block the exit with bricks and stones?

No wonder...... No wonder the characters on the walls are full of sadness.

Could it be ...... There are protruding earth slopes on this slope grassland, and there is such a cave tomb under each soil slope?

And the owners of the cave tombs died like old men?

Thinking of this, I couldn't help but feel a chill, not because I was afraid, but because my heart was cold, not a taste.

It is often said that there is no greater mourning than the death of the heart. Before he died, he had to enter the cave and watch his relatives block the entrance to the cave every day, which is estimated to be more sad than facing death directly.

As soon as I thought of this, I suddenly remembered a strange funeral custom that I had heard from the old man when I was a child—crockpot burial!

At the time, I thought he was just telling stories to scare children, but I didn't expect that there were such cruel funeral customs in the world.

The so-called clay pot burial is a burial method specially prepared for the elderly. When an elderly person is over sixty years old, their descendants will choose a place and dig a pit in the ground in the shape of a clay pot. The surrounding area was first sealed with bricks and stones, and the top was also sealed, leaving only one exit, and then the old man was invited into the pit to live. From then on, every day someone brought food to the old man, and added a brick and stone at the entrance, and added one piece at a time until the entrance of the cave was completely sealed, so that the old man was trapped inside, and he had to die.

This cruel funeral system was popular in ancient times, because the ancient people were very superstitious, and they called this superstition Hu Sun Shou.

This means that if the old people in the family live too old, the children or grandchildren in the family die earlier than the old man, and the old man's body is still very healthy, others will say that the old man is too old, suppress the luck of the offspring, and kill the offspring.

So at that time, some people wished that the elderly in their families who were over sixty years old would die early.