Ninety-eight corpses were all displayed in the clearing next to the reeds, and the smell of decay was so strong that it almost salted into the sludge on the ground.

I had to pull Zuo Youdao some distance deeper into the reeds to avoid the smell for a while.

After walking straight for two or three hundred meters among the reeds, passing through a small swamp, the smell finally became less intense, and Zuo Youdao and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Zuo Youdao fanned his nose with his hand, and glanced back at the place where the rotting corpses were displayed.

I asked him, "Have you seen anything like this before?" ”

Zuo Youdao nodded, turned his face and said: "I once saw an iron dragon king at the crossing of the Yellow River, that thing was originally a corpse, but in ancient times, the people around the ferry regarded it as a river god, and every year before the rainy season, a pair of boys and girls would sink alive to the bottom of the water as the best, in order to ask the 'river god' to give grace and avoid the local waterlogging disaster." Those boys and girls were stripped alive by the Iron Dragon King, cramped and robbed of their souls, and after death, they became such skinless blood babies. ”

Speaking of this, Zuo Youdao looked at the lake in the distance: "I guess there should be something similar to the Iron Dragon King in the lake here." However, the blood baby here is not as difficult to deal with as the blood baby at the bottom of the Yellow River, and the evil here, it is estimated that it is not as strong as the Iron Dragon King. ”

I asked Zuo Youdao, what is a corpse?

Zuo Youdao explained that this word was created by himself, and the so-called corpse is actually a special evil corpse composed of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of evil corpses.

In addition, the appearance of this evil corpse is very similar to that of a dragon, and the word pan itself has the meaning of coiling and filling, so Zuo Youdao simply named it "pan corpse".

Don't forget that Zuo Youdao is a contemporary corpse Taoist sect, he named the evil corpse, it is not a whim or a whim, this is his responsibility, but also his obligation, it is estimated that it will not be long before the name of the corpse will be recorded in the classics of various sects.

I said, "How can there be such an evil thing in the world?" ”

Zuo Youdao pondered for a moment before responding to me: "Heaven and earth are created, how many strange things you and I have never seen. ”

This seems to be a bit unrelated, but I can see a deep emotion from Zuo Youdao's face.

As for what exactly this emotion means, to be honest, I can't guess it.

Feeling the rancid stench coming from behind us start to fade, the two of us took a step forward and continued to feel our way forward.

After walking a short distance, Zuo Youdao suddenly stopped on his heels and stood in place and looked straight ahead.

I asked him what was wrong, and it took him a long time to reply that there was a dark green smoke about seven or eight hundred meters ahead, but it was too far away for him to really see.

When he said this, I looked straight ahead, but as far as I could see, there were only large reeds and a wide lake, and there was no smoke.

I can't see what I can't see with my ghost eyes, how can Zuo Youdao see it?

However, seeing that Zuo Youdao's tone was very affirmative, I didn't say much, just let him lead the way in front.

Zuo Youdao led me forward for about two hundred meters, and I still couldn't see the presence of smoke, but Zuo Youdao swore that he was right, and when I got closer, the dark green color that emerged from the smoke became clearer and clearer.

I couldn't help but wonder, "Why didn't I see the smoke you were talking about?" ”

Zuo Youdao was slightly stunned at first, and then said, "If you can't see it...... That smoke should be an evil breath wafting from the ground, this thing was originally invisible, but some colors could appear in the field of vision of the eye of the sky. ”

While talking, Zuo Youdao suddenly sped up his pace, and I was afraid that he would accidentally plunge into the swamp, so I quickly followed.

I have to say that Zuo Youdao's Tianyan is really powerful, and when I was about to walk to the edge of the lake, I could also feel an evil qi slowly floating from the ground, but this Qi field was very faint, and if it wasn't close enough, it was almost impossible to sense.

At the moment when I just sensed the evil spirit, I felt as if something had been poked on the tip of my toe when I took a step, and the thing was very tough and thin, and it seemed to be deformed by me when I poked it like this.

I immediately lifted the waist-high reeds and looked at my feet, and saw that half of the boot was exposed in the mud clinging to the toes, the toe of which had been completely sunk into the mud, leaving only one boot shaft still outside, which was supposed to be upright before, but which I had just poked with my toes.

Zuo Youdao also stopped, turned around and asked, "What's wrong?" ”

I didn't respond, just pulled out the boot and looked closely, the boot was made of tiger striped snake skin, scraped off the outer layer of mud, and I could see that there was a new layer of shoe polish on the leather surface.

If I'm not mistaken, there seemed to be people in Liang Houzai's team who wore these kinds of boots.

Thinking of this, I raised my boots and shook them in front of Zuo Youdao: "Are you familiar?" ”

Zuo Youdao glanced at it and immediately nodded: "It's Wang Jianguo's boots." ”

In Liang Houzai's team, there is indeed a person named Wang Jianguo.

I threw away the boots in my hand, bent down to check if there were any other things left by my predecessors on the ground, and sure enough, I found that there were still some sapper shovels, compressed biscuits and other things scattered in the mud under the reeds, some things came from Liang Houzai's people, and some things were dropped by Huang Yuzhong and Niu Ge, during which I even found Shi'er's longevity lock from the mud.

These scattered objects seem to be arranged irregularly in the mud, but if you look closely, you can still see that they are spilling all the way in the direction of the lake.

In addition, some very shallow gullies can be found on the ground, which are slowly narrowing and shallowing at a very slow rate due to the soft mud on the ground, and it is estimated that in another hour or two, they will disappear completely.

I suspect that these ravines should have been left by Huang Yuzhong and them.

At that time, they seemed to be forcibly dragged in the mud by something, and their bodies were like plows, cutting out the ravines in the mud, and the things on their bodies were also spilled everywhere in the process of being dragged.

Zuo Youdao and I searched all the way down these ravines, and finally came to the lake.

I saw a mud hole about a meter wide on the shore of the lake, and like those ravines, the mouth of the hole was slowly shrinking with the mudflow.

At the edge of the hole, there were also three or four broken energy bars scattered.

Zuo Youdao reminded me on the side: "The evil spirit came out of this hole. ”

I nodded, leaned my head slightly closer to the hole, and observed the cave with my ghostly eyes.

Originally, I thought that there was a mud puddle under the entrance of the cave that was slowly closing, but when I saw it with the eyes of a ghost, I was also taken aback.

Underneath the mud cave is a massive underground rift!

The thickness of the mud is about three meters, and through the mud layer, there is a stone cave with a diameter of about 60 centimeters.

Due to the small diameter of the cave and the strong stickiness of the wet mud on the shore of the lake, when the mud is completely closed, it is like a glutinous rice cake pressed on the cave, except for the occasional seepage of water in the mud, it is difficult for the wet mud itself to fall down the hole.

Ordinary mud can't reach such a high viscosity, and I guess the wet mud in this place must be specially treated.

I roughly calculated, from the entrance of the stone cave to the bottom of the rift valley, the vertical distance is about 20 meters, and Zuo Youdao and I connected our respective climbing ropes, just enough to go down.

Then I told Zuo Youdao about the situation under the mud layer, and Zuo Youdao didn't talk nonsense, and immediately took out his climbing rope.

I summoned the karmic fire and dried the wet mud that was being closed until a large part of the mud was dried and hardened, and then I drove the trekking pegs into the mud and put a steel rope on it.

When the mud was dried, it became as hard as cement, and even when I smashed the peg into it, the powder that came out of the nail was almost like cement powder.

Zuo Youdao picked up a pinch of powder and put it in front of his nose and sniffed it, saying, "These muds seem to be mixed with plasma." ”

Indeed, when I was digging just now, the mud surface was shattered by nails, and I could smell a very bloody smell, but the smell was not as pungent as human blood, but with a smell similar to that of black rice.

The two steel cables are connected together, and the tail of the second cable can easily reach the valley bottom.

I finished packing up my work and tried the strength of the climbing pegs again, and felt that there was no problem, so I took Zuo Youdao's backpack and slid down the tightrope.

The reason why I want to help Zuo Youdao take the backpack is mainly because Zuo Youdao's body is too wide, and the stone cave under the mud layer is too narrow, not to mention him, I can't get off with the backpack on my back, I must first tie the two backpacks to my ankles, and then grab the steel cable with my hands, and go down the body little by little.

I carried two backpacks, and it was relatively easy to come down this way, but Zuo Youdao suffered a lot because his shoulders were too wide and the steel cable was shaking hard.

To be honest, a body type like Zuo Youdao is actually not suitable for going to the tomb, and it is easy to get stuck when drilling the thief hole.

When you first sink into the cave, the space around you is inverted cone-shaped, narrow at the top of your head and wider at the bottom, as if someone had drilled a regularly shaped cone groove into the rock formation at the top of the rift valley with a huge drill bit. It sank about seven or eight meters before the surrounding space suddenly became empty.

I arrived at the valley first, and then I freed up my hand to turn on the flashlight and help Zuo Youdao illuminate it, and Zuo Youdao sped up and slid down the steel cable.

The upper left side of the rift valley is the lake, and the humidity in the air is very heavy, and when I shine the light on the left side of the road, I can see a large number of tiny water particles slowly fluttering in the beam.

(End of chapter)