I asked Shirley Yang rhetorically, "The three of us are getting smaller and smaller?" Where does this begin? ”

Shirley Young said to me, "The objects that can be referred to nearby, including plants and insects, as well as a large number of fossilized ancient trees, are unusually large, so I wondered if there is some mystery in this gourd-shaped cave that makes the bodies of the people who come in gradually smaller." ”

This thing sounds really unbelievable, and it is difficult to determine for a while. I said to Shirley Young, "Even if the body may be smaller, can the clothes and shoes also be smaller?" I think the whole ecosystem is bigger than the outside world because of the special environment. ”

But I'm not sure what I'm saying, this cave is really very similar to the red gourd in the mountain temple, the entrance of the cave is small and the belly is big, and it is in the shape of a horn arc, and it will gradually expand when you go deeper. There are no traces of man-made processing, and it is natural, maybe this is a more ancient relic than the tomb of King Xian. The locals may have regarded this gourd-shaped cave as a sacred place, so they enshrined a gourd statue in the mountain temple, but it is difficult to say whether this cave is really special. Our eyes are now dark, and the range we see is only about twenty meters, and it is difficult to detect changes in the environment a little farther away.

The nearby qiē is much larger than normal, especially the fossils of the trees, which are even more frighteningly large, and the trees poke out of the water with their teeth and claws, tangled with the vines hanging down from them, like the strange claws of an old dragon.

I think we should find some reference to make sure that our bodies are not getting smaller because we have entered this gourd-shaped cave, otherwise we will not be able to move on, so we will have to go back the way we came, and then we will pay attention to it.

At present, the most direct way is to dive into the water, using aquatic plants as a reference, algae have their own unique properties, and will not grow differently due to changes in the environment.

But as soon as I thought of the female corpse that suddenly appeared and disappeared suddenly, like a ghost, I felt a little frightened, so I had to hang the safety lock on the inflatable bag, and say hello to the fat man and Shirley Yang, and ask the two of them not to move forward for the time being, and wait for me to find out the situation when I go into the water.

I put down the goggles from my hiking helmet and plunged head-on into the dark water. Tactical spotlights on mountaineering helmets should have a illumination range of fifteen meters even in the water. But the groundwater here is full of impurities, with a large amount of plankton, microorganisms and algae, and the visibility range is as low as five meters.

The water is so deep that I can't touch it, and I don't think it's time to use oxygen yet, so I just hold my breath and dive down with my water. Through the diving goggles, the underwater world is even more blurry, and a large black object is vaguely seen floating slowly under the water, and there is a car ** small, and it is not clear whether it is an animal or an aquatic weed.

At this time, the black mass at the bottom of the water was getting closer and closer to me, and I carefully recognized that the fish did not have such a body shape, it should be some kind of aquatic plant, could it be that the aquatic plants were entangled and grew into such a large mass? If the aquatic plants are that big, then we're in big trouble.

When I thought of this, I reached for the pitch-black object, ready to grab a handful and see if it was a large mass of aquatic weeds. As soon as he stretched out his hand, the thing suddenly jumped forward, bounced out of the water on his head, stopped at a distance of one or two meters from the water, and lurked there quietly.

At this time, I could already see clearly, it was not a large mass of aquatic plants. The thing was round when it was huddled together, and when it was paddling, it stretched out two arched hind legs and forelimbs, and there were a lot of aquatic plants wrapped around its body, and it turned out to be a huge red-backed toad. And it seems that there are not only this one, but many others gathered about a meter above the surface of the water, and it is difficult to tell how many large toads there are, and I don't know if there are even bigger things.

How can there be such a big toad? I was startled and almost drank a mouthful of groundwater, but I felt that I couldn't hold my breath a little, and hurriedly floated upward. As soon as I got out of the water, I quickly took a deep breath and said to the fat man and Shirley Yang, "There's something under the water, let's get out of here quickly, and climb to the big fossil tree that has fallen sideways." ”

Some of the fallen fossil trees in this fossil forest are stretched across the surrounding fossils, forming natural stone bridges.

The three of them hurriedly put the weapon they had just taken out back into the waterproof bag, and quickly swam towards the fallen fossil tree. When we got closer, Shirley Yang reached out and grabbed the branch of the fossil tree, and the fat man and I supported her feet, first helping Shirley Yang climb up the fallen fossil tree, and then I climbed up and hung down the climbing rope for the fat man. The fat man who stayed in the water quickly drained the air in the inflatable air bag, hung the backpack on himself with a treksen, and I pulled the fat man up to the trunk of the tree, and finally hoisted the equipment backpack up.

Stepping on the stone under our feet, Fang felt a little more stable in our hearts, but the three of us still didn't dare to slack off, and took the weapon out of the waterproof bag as quickly as possible. The fat man asked me, "A Li Xiangyang scares you like this, what is there under the water?" ”

Shirley Yang also asked me, "Did you see the female corpse sunk under the water?" ”

I pointed to the water and said, "There is no Li Xiangyang, there is no female corpse, and there is a big toad under the water, that is, a big toad." The big ones are the same as the wheels, and the small ones are also big. Fuck, there are a lot of poison glands in the pimples on the back of these guys, and you must not come into contact with them, otherwise once you get poisoned, you will be in danger of one hundred and twenty points. ”

Shirley Yang raised the wolf-eyed flashlight and swept the beam of light towards the water where we had just stayed, where it was already quiet, only a few traces of water left by the rapid swim we had just now, and there was no sign under the dark and dreary water. Shirley Yang glanced at it twice, then turned to me and said: "In the past, when I was doing real yàn, I often used toads, I remember that this animal should hide in the damp mud, under the rocks or among the grass during the day, and only come out at dusk and night, how can it appear in such a deep place in the water, have you read it wrong?" ”

I shook my head and said, "It's the first time I've seen such a big toad today." But I can't be mistaken, I think your essentialism is not suitable here, I am not very suitable here, I am only three meters away from the big toad at the bottom of the water, I can see very clearly, they are floating not far from the water, I don't know what to do. This fossil forest flooded by groundwater is too weird. ”

The fat man suddenly made a silent gesture, and let us see the area not far in front of us where midges gathered, and countless large dragonfly-like midges were making a "buzzing......" harsh noise. It was not far from where we had stayed, and we could see it very clearly with a wolf's eye flashlight. The midges that gather like mulberry walls have no eyes, so they are not sensitive to light, and still circle around the densest areas of plant rhizomes like headless flies.

Shirley Yang whispered to us: "The plants on the ground are so dense that there is a lack of nutrients and water, so the plants that extend down are desperately trying to grow down in order to draw the groundwater directly from here. Those flying insects...... They seem to be laying eggs. ”

Just now I dived into the water and found a lot of big fish, these fish are different from the blind fish that grow underground all their lives, they all have eyes, which shows that this groundwater, although it flows through the cave, is a clear water, and it communicates with the outside world.

Suddenly, there was a commotion on the surface of the water, and a large tongue several feet long stretched out from under the water, attacking the large midges on the surface of the water at a lightning speed. As soon as the long tongue rolled, hundreds of midges were enveloped, and countless large mouths appeared on the surface of the water, swallowing those midges that were wrapped in blood-red long tongues. It turned out that the large toads that were potentially underwater and when the time was ripe, they all jumped out of the water to prey on the large swarms of midges that were congregating.

At this moment, the water surface became a pot of porridge, and when the toad's mouth opened and closed, countless midges lost their lives. Those strange toads were amazingly big, their eyes were like two red lights, dense, and I couldn't count how many there were.

The three of us crouched on the fallen fossil tree, and when we saw the pimple glands on the backs of the big toads, we felt so sick that we had to keep our bodies lying on the trees as low as possible, hoping that the toads would disperse when they were full, so that we could go into the water again, leave this strange cave as quickly as possible, and reach our final destination before dawn.

I found that there are many small sand holes on the fossil tree, which has been soaked in water for thousands of years, and has been washed out by the current.

So I turned off the wolf-eye flashlight in my hand, turned on the more energy-efficient spotlight on my hiking helmet, and then beckoned Shirley Yang and the fat man, gestured, and led the two of them to a relatively flat stone platform on the left.

The stone platform on the left is very solid and stable, and the area is not small, which is more than enough for three people. In this forest of fossil branches, this square stone platform stands out from the rest. The boxy ones are quite neat, and they are obviously man-made, but the surface is covered with vines, and there is a lot of wet moss.

I said to Shirley Yang and the fat man, "I wonder if this place is a relic left by the construction of the king's tomb, and if so, what is it used for?" Could it have something to do with the female corpses we saw underwater? ”

The fat man said: "No matter how clumsy your eyes are, you can see that this is an artificially built stone platform. Didn't we see a burial ditch full of ivory before? Eighty percent This is also a place to place valuable utensils. As he spoke, he pulled out the sapper shovel and shoveled the wet moss off the stone platform, wanting to see if there was any dark pavilion with bright tools below.

Shirley Yang and I saw that the fat man had already started to do it regardless of it, so we had to help him illuminate. Not far away, the big toads were still devouring the midges, stirring the water loudly, and it seemed that it would not be finished for a while.

The fat man shot like the wind, and in a blink of an eye he had cleared out a small half of the stone platform, only to see that there was no stone box below, but one after another relief, the composition was complicated, but just a glance will know that these reliefs record some kind of secret sacrificial ritual in ancient times. This is a very bizarre and mysterious ancient ritual that we have never seen before, and the ritual is carried out in this gourd, and this stone platform is a special altar.