Chapter 4: A Preliminary Exploration of the "Three-Eyed Hole"

In the early morning, the car travels through the rugged mountain roads, and the mountains in the distance are covered by the mist, showing a bit of charm, like a curtain in front of you. The farthest and highest floors are light blue, then powder blue, powder blue, light green, dark green, and between light green and dark green are several earthen tiled roofed houses.

After more than half an hour of bumpy driving, the car stopped on a barren mountainside that was not next to the village in front of the village and there was no store in the back.

After passing through a bush and scratching a few flutters, the team stopped at a small hole. The entrance to the cave was not large, about two feet high and three feet wide, like an open fish mouth, and the inside was black and rumbling, spewing out bursts of cold air, and a layer of goosebumps suddenly appeared on the body.

But the French had already laid down their luggage, and were about to enter the hole. Not only did I wonder a little: the karst caves in Kuicheng are much more beautiful than this, and this kind of unsightly cave seems to be everywhere, is it possible that there are gold and silver treasures hidden in it, and the French actually traveled far and wide to "investigate" it.

Then there was an even more surprising scene: the French began to undress in front of us, the men took off only a pair of underwear, and the women also took off only three o'clock, could it be to prepare for some special entrance ceremony or ...... Although it was facing away from us, it was a little embarrassing to be so close to it.

The romance of the French has long been heard, but in such a situation, we should not do anything out of the ordinary, not to mention that we are out on an expedition today!

Shaq also took off his clothes, and lay down on a large rock at the entrance of the cave to smoke, spitting smoke rings out of his mouth. His hair was unkempt on his face, and his eyes were gloomy.

The French took out a pile of clothes from their respective backpacks, layer by layer, one layer of tights, the middle layer of cold clothing, and then wrapped in a layer of film-like clothing, the outermost layer was a nylon waterproof suit, and many hooks and buckles were tied to the shoulders, waist, and legs, like a firefighter. There are two lights on the helmet, one is an open flame carbide lamp and the other is a battery lamp.

It turns out that the French undress to put on professional adventure clothes, and they can't help but feel funny about their crooked minds.

The French have changed their clothes and brought a lot of equipment, such as GPS locators, underwater cameras, detectors, and some professional equipment that cannot be named.

Secretary Zhao and I and the two cameramen are all supernumerary team members, without any professional equipment, just wearing an engineering helmet on our heads and a miner's lamp on our waists as lighting equipment.

The moisture in the cave is very heavy, the first dozens of meters are very steep, there is a slope of almost 60 degrees, especially slippery, at the beginning of our few supernumerary team members did not fall somersault, gradually adapt to the experience of the experience, the foot to go forward, solid and then take the next step.

We six Chinese are inserted between seven French, one for safety, and the other to save energy, because the miner's lamp can only be used for two hours, while the calcium carbide lamp and battery lamp on the French helmet can be used for four hours each, so that our miner's lamp is only used as a last resort.

Don't look at the small entrance of the cave, after a small slope and a few turns, you will enter a hall, which can accommodate hundreds of people. By the faint light, I found that there were several stove pits and pools on the cave wall, and there were traces of smoke and fire, and there were actually people living in them, could it be the cave dwelling ruins of primitive people? I tried to find petroglyphs or stone tools, but my whimsical idea was soon interrupted by Professor Wan's explanation, it turned out that these stove pit pools were just used by the locals to boil nitrate earlier. Nitrate was an important ingredient in the manufacture of gunpowder, and it is possible that the cave was once a stronghold of bandits before liberation.

Although I was a little disappointed, I was still able to take a few photos for the investigation materials, but when I pressed the shutter, something unfortunate happened, only to hear the sound of the "horn", the flash actually short-circuited due to the moisture. It's over, I can't take a single picture of the cave, I hope the camera isn't broken, this is my only valuable net worth besides the car.

The procession continued on its way, with passages sometimes wide and sometimes narrow, sometimes slow and sometimes steep. We use our hands and feet together, like burrowing reptiles. Sometimes there would be forks in the road, and the French would stop for a moment to discuss and determine the route to continue.

Pharaoh II carried a drawing board with him, and sketched on it every time he walked, presumably drawing a route map. The cave may have more than one or two floors, and sometimes you will encounter three passages, upper, middle and lower, while the French basically choose to go all the way down.

Seeing that they didn't pull the line or make any markings along the road, I couldn't help but worry a little about whether they would get lost, and I couldn't ask more when I saw that they were confident.

There are a lot of collapsed sandstone in the cave, its edge is as sharp as a knife, and only one person is allowed to pass by in the narrow place, after discussing for a while, Pharaoh took Secretary Zhao and two photographers and female graduate students to return the same way, and I insisted on staying.

Continuing to face down, after a few turns, entering the second layer of the cave, stalactites gradually increased, all kinds of strange shapes, full of strange and mysterious atmosphere.

A little further on, the humidity was getting heavier and heavier, and I was shivering with cold in my shorts and pants, and my knees were frayed and bleeding. Professor Wan asked me if I could persist and if I would like to take me back, and I shuddered and said that I could persevere, but I still stubbornly moved forward.

At this time, the curiosity about the cave has been invaded by the fear and boredom created by the boundless black silence, and the only force to support himself is the scene of the cave adventure in the martial arts novel that keeps flashing in his mind:

The cave wall suddenly showed a stone door, there was green light in the stone door, there was a gluttonous knob next to the stone door, although it was rusty, it could still turn when it was twisted, and then the stone door suddenly opened. Inside, there is a spacious hall, and the furniture in the hall is made of turquoise Xiuyu. In the middle of the hall sat a thin old man, with a silver beard and a face, motionless.

Walking in, it turned out to be a dry corpse, and there was a line of handwriting engraved on the floor in front of the corpse, which was written in a small seal, and I vaguely recognized the meaning of nine buckles and eighteen bows, so I knelt down very reverently and made a big salute.

Suddenly, torches lit around the cave wall, revealing the looming martial arts moves and a mysterious topographical map on the cave wall, but these moves were too strange to be learned for a while. So I focused on studying this map, the map drew a lot of irregular circles, there are zigzag lines connected together, and there are mountains and rivers marked in between, a bit like the parchment map that Mr. Dong gave me, but because there is no text, I can't see any mystery.

In the midst of the embarrassment, the old man suddenly disappeared, and where he sat appeared a purple-red carved lacquered wooden box, which must contain the answer I wanted or a rare treasure. I was suddenly excited, and I strode forward, but before I knew it, the floor suddenly moved under my feet, and I was about to fall into the bottomless abyss on my feet...... I screamed, the green light in front of me turned red, and Shaq and Sophia stood in front of me, and I saw their startled eyes in the light of the flickering calcium carbide lamp.

The adventure turned out to be a hallucination, and I had to force myself back to a dark reality. The future is getting more and more sinister, and I don't know how long I have to stay in it, I began to regret a little that I didn't return with Secretary Zhao and them, space and time seemed to be swallowed up by darkness, and my thinking seemed to be frozen, and a huge loneliness enveloped my heart, I just mechanically moved my body forward little by little.

Entering the third level of the cave began, the walls of the cave were slippery and there was the sound of dripping water. In the faint light, I vaguely saw that there were many more stalactites in the cave than before, and there were various calcite crystals all over the place, and the sound of running water came from the deep place, probably an underground river, and I began to feel a little excited.

After descending dozens of meters, I began to feel depressed in my chest, my head was swollen, it was difficult to breathe, the calcium carbide lamps on the helmets of the expedition members were also extinguished one after another, and the oxygen in the cave was insufficient, and it was no longer allowed to move forward. The French had no choice but to turn on the battery light and return the same way.