(This chapter ends with the memories of the ancient city of Sizhou, and the follow-up of Tibetan sea flowers will begin tomorrow)

Zhang Haike took out a horse leg scissors from the package, stuck the hole, and asked, "How many inches are left?" ”

The child had already taken off his coat to reveal his entire arm, and said in a deep voice with a solemn face: "At most one palm." ”

With that, he put his hand into the hole and began to grope for it.

Everyone held their breath and didn't dare to speak, this was a very dangerous move, once something abnormal in the hole affected the child of the Zhang family, Zhang Haike would immediately press down the horse's leg scissors and cut off the child's hand to save his life.

This is a very wise way to abandon the pawn and protect the car.

But after groping for a while, nothing dangerous happened.

"How?" Zhang Haike asked him softly.

"Wait a minute."

The boy shook his head, then frowned and stretched his whole little arm in, but he didn't know what he touched, his expression changed a few times, and he immediately retracted his arm, pulled something out of the hole, and threw it on the ground.

When everyone looked closely, it was a blackened hand bone, covered with black-green dirt, and the inside of the wall seemed to be very damp.

"It's a corpse right inside?" Someone was surprised.

The child's face was very bad, and he said, "Take a closer look." ”

Zhang Haike picked up the hand bone and found that the joint movement was still very flexible, and to his great surprise, the index finger and middle finger of this hand bone actually had half a knuckle.

This is - the hand of the Zhang family!

Everyone was very surprised, they never thought that there would be a Zhang family who had died here before them, so the exquisite mechanism outside must have been the handiwork of the Zhang family.

"What's in there?"

"And this, in the arms of the corpse." The child spreads out his palm, and in the palm of his hand is an unknown object wrapped in black-green sludge.

"What is this?" Zhang Haike put away the scissors and took out the water bladder, "Wash it and take a look." ”

After rinsing it with water, they found that it was a pocket watch, very worn and old, with a half-rusted chain that had fallen and was completely broken.

Zhang Haike shook the water stains on it, turned the pocket watch over, and saw a unicorn carved on the green rusty steel cover behind it.

Several people frowned at once, every child in the family knew what the unicorn meant to them, it should not be a coincidence, there was a family member of the Zhang family who had been here before them, and died here unexpectedly.

The front cover was also rusted and stained with the dial, Zhang Haike scraped it with a small blade, and then inserted the tip of the knife and pried it open with a force.

The hands inside had long since stopped, and there was a black-and-white photograph of a strange man, very young, looking no more than twenty-five years old.

"What did that corpse look like?" Someone on the side asked.

The child replied, "Sit against the wall with your face facing inward." ”

"That's good." The child who had just asked was a little glad and said, "It means that he was not sealed alive inside." ”

"What a fart!" Zhang Haike scolded and said coldly, "Not only was he alive and sealed inside, but when he was sealed, he was not the only one inside, there was something chasing him behind him, so he sat with his back against the wall, and he was sealed inside." ”

"So what are we going to do, is this wall still open?" Someone asked.

The treasures hanging on the card were enough for them to split the difference.

"Open!" Zhang Haike put the pocket watch in the treasure bag, "It was the Zhang family who died in this person, even if we can't figure out the cause of their death, we have to bring their tezuka back." ”

The ancestor of the Zhang family, whenever he encounters the remains belonging to the Zhang family outside, he must find a way to bring back his mound, and finally let Zhang Qiling send the mound home.

The rest of the people nodded, "Good! ”

Destruction is always more effective than construction, but in ten minutes, they have opened a hole large enough for their size to pass through.

Zhang Haike and the others rushed in with torches, but after entering, they found that the situation inside was completely different from what they thought.

First of all, the mud, behind the brick walls was a large stone hall filled with mud, and on all four walls were carved many frescoes, but they had fallen off and rotted to the point that they could not be seen clearly.

The mud pool was surrounded by a very sloping edge that could barely be walked, and the corpse sat on the stone edge of the entrance.

They pushed the corpses as they entered, followed by a series of corpses that fell into the mud, and there were many such corpses in the mud pool.

The group carefully walked around the edge of the mud pool, and found no other openings for passage.

Someone wondered, "What's going on?" Could it be that it was sealed up like the outside? ”

Zhang Haike said: "This pool should be funnel-shaped, you see, the people on the side are low where they are flooded with mud, and those in the middle even sink their upper bodies." ”

"Besides, I think there should be openings under the mud leading to other places."

The corpses in the mud were wearing goggles and something to protect their mouths and noses, and even if there was no opening below, they should be salvaging something inside, but Zhang Haike preferred that there was a passage below.

A child used a pickaxe to reach into the mud and stir it up a few times, and scooped up a long green stick, which was almost rotten, "It looked like a rope." ”

He tugged at himself again, and a corpse in the pool moved a few times, and he sighed, "The rope is tied to these corpses." ”

"In this way, our judgment was wrong, this opening is not that the people outside want to close it, but that these people inside have to seal themselves here for some reason, and the traces of the seal are still there." Zhang Haike said.

Someone answered, "You mean, I'm afraid there is something strange in this mud, and the Zhang family doesn't want this thing to get out and harm people, so they sacrifice themselves." ”

Zhang Haike lifted his lips and sneered, "I never think of doing our business so noblely, there are bricks on the ground outside, which means that when something terrible happened at that time, the people inside kept blocking, and the people outside probably didn't know what was going on inside, and kept trying to dig in." ”

Everyone was nervous, how terrible it was to be able to kill so many Zhang family members at one time!

Someone asked, "I don't know how many bones of the family are here, and there are things in the mud, how can we get them, hook them one by one?" ”

Zhang Haike waved his hand and said, "Don't worry, I suddenly discovered something more terrible than the fact that there may be danger in the mud." ”

Everyone looked at him suspiciously, Zhang Haike took a deep breath, took out the pocket watch again, opened the lid, and let everyone look at the photos inside, "Do you know who this person is?" ”

Everyone shook their heads, since they could carry the pocket watch engraved with the unicorn, it must be someone from the Zhang family.

But there are so many members of the family, and most of the people they see every day, except for the elders who are taking the homework test and a few elders who are closer, most of the others just feel familiar.

Zhang Haike lowered his voice, "This person is the father of the little ghost, I saw him when I was a child. ”

"What?!" Everyone was shocked, and suddenly remembered that the little ghost had followed them when they had just come down, and immediately turned their heads to look for the little ghost.

The firelight flashed, and he was caught off guard by a miserable little white face at the entrance of the cave, Zhang Haike's heart almost stopped, and everyone quieted down for a moment.

The little brother stood quietly where they had just entered, and looked at them.

After a long stalemate, Zhang Haike spoke, "You arranged for us to come here, why?" ”

He suddenly remembered that the clues along the way were all provided by the little ghost, but before that, none of them had noticed anything wrong.

With such a deep scheming at such a young age, they suddenly felt frightened and shuddered.

Zhang Haike quickly calmed down, the only exit at the moment was occupied by this little ghost, the slope under their feet was very steep, and they would slide down if they were not careful, and they couldn't be sure if there was a killing move in the mud, so they couldn't act rashly now, it was best to figure out what this little ghost wanted to do.

The little brother asked rhetorically, "Do you know how these people died here?" ”

Zhang Haike and the others glanced at each other, and someone immediately pulled the rope to fish up a corpse from the mud, but found that the head of the corpse was crooked, and with a slight twist of the hand, the head of the corpse was twisted off, which was very easy.

Zhang Haike and the others instantly understood something, and went to check a few corpses, all of which were broken, and there were many obvious fight breaks on their bodies.

These people were murdered, and the method of killing them was the usual way of killing people in the Zhang family, that is, they were killed here by the other Zhang family!

This is the scene of the Zhang family's infighting!

The hand carrying the corpse trembled uncontrollably a few times, and they had all heard about the family infighting, but they never expected it to be in this place.

So how did this little imp find out?

"You're here to investigate the cause of your father's death?" Zhang Haike asked him.

The little brother shook his head and looked at them silently.

Zhang Haike gritted his teeth and continued to guess deeply: "Your father was murdered here by a few of our fathers?" So you brought us here just to get revenge? ”

The little brother shook his head again, "I don't know who your father is, and what you think is my father is actually not my father." ”

“？” Zhang Haike and the others looked at each other, "Then why did you trick us here?" ”

The little brother looked at Zhang Haike and said, "I was also present when all this happened. ”

Zhang Haike subconsciously wanted to ask something, but when the words were about to blurt out, he suddenly reacted and immediately closed his mouth.

"I'm going down to this place." The little brother said lightly, "But I'm still too young to do many things, so I need your help." ”

"What are you doing here? What's beneath this quagmire? Zhang Haike asked.

"What I'm going to do next has nothing to do with you."

The little brother explained: "Under this quagmire, there are cobweb-like corridors, all of which are filled with silt, but each corridor is connected to various rooms where you can rest and breathe air, and there are several rooms with a lot of things you need, and you can use the equipment of these dead men to advance four or five rooms to complete the test." ”

"Once you get your things, you get out of here as soon as possible, and things will change later."

"What about you?" Zhang Haike felt a strange feeling in his heart.

"I'll have to go deep." The little brother said.

Zhang Haike faintly touched the strange point just now, "What kind of place is this?" ”

"It's a long story, this is the site of the ancient city of Sizhou." The little brother briefly told them, "There are at least four layers of rock buried under our feet, and we are only on the first layer. ”

"This ancient city, the Zhang family has been operating, it was because of a flood, the ancient city was directly buried and disappeared by silt, so there are too many good things in it, and the things I want are in the deepest place."

Zhang Haike didn't understand how his young child could still remain calm in the face of the corpses of so many family members, even a few of them, they were still a little unable to digest the scene at hand for a while.

Later, after learning some things, he realized how much pain a child has to go through in order to calmly face the darkness and loneliness of being with corpses, because this child is deliberately destroyed by those people, and he doesn't know what loneliness is.

Although Zhang Haike no longer dared to underestimate him, looking at his thin little body, he couldn't help but be a little worried, "You don't need help?" ”

"You can't help me." The little brother walked in slowly from the entrance of the cave, looked at them and said, "I have lived here for a long time, and you don't know everything here. ”

"You take your things and go back as soon as possible, if you let the Zhang family know that you are here, you will not end well, even your parents will not be able to protect you."

After speaking, before everyone could react and ask, the little brother had already jumped into the sludge and flipped in.

A few bubbles came out of the mud and fluttered a few times, and the little brother jumped off quickly disappeared without a trace, and Zhang Haike and the others looked at each other again.

"How?" It took a while for someone to speak, "Is what that kid said true?" ”

"It doesn't really matter if it's true, anyway, I don't want to fail this time." The other answered.

"Do you really want to listen to him?" Someone said angrily, "Why listen to him, there must be more precious treasures in deeper places, the wild time is about to end, I don't want to lose to this little rabbit cub, we are already faceless enough, anyway, I can't swallow this breath." ”

The air was silent again, and the man looked left and right, scolded "coward", and then grabbed the equipment of the dead man next to him, put it on, and jumped into the mud.

Seeing this, the others no longer hesitated, and hurriedly packed up their equipment and jumped down.

Zhang Haike didn't have time to stop it, the key was that no one would listen if he stopped it.

The bad feeling in his heart was getting stronger and stronger, but at the moment he couldn't help it, he still jumped into the mud with the other children, and plopped down the dive.

After swimming in the mud for about three minutes along the rope of the corpse, they drilled out of a wellhead, but there was no sign of the little brother.

The few people had no time to pay attention to the surrounding scene, and hurriedly chased forward along the small mud footprints on the ground, and saw two holes under a collapsed wall, one large and one small, and the small one they couldn't get into anyway.

"It looks like the little ghost went into a small hole, no wonder he said that only he could get in." There is humanity.

The entrance to the cave was fixed with bluestone slabs all around, and it couldn't be enlarged, so they had no choice but to drill into the big hole.

They couldn't figure out why there were children of the Zhang family who were not old enough to come here to fight, and it was a violation of the clan rules to let such a young child go to the ground.

I thought that these two holes would lead to the same place, but in fact, they didn't, and after walking for a long time, they realized that they were separated from the little brother.

At the same time, Zhang Haike and several others also noticed the abnormality of their bodies.

At some point, there was an unknown rash on everyone's body, which was extremely itchy, and the most serious child fell directly to the ground and began to convulse.

Zhang Haike hurriedly poured some egg whites into him to induce vomiting, and found that there were very small things wriggling in the muddy green water that vomited out.

When he looked closely, he found that they were countless tiny leech eggs, wrapped in a white translucent egg membrane, as dense as sesame seeds in the broken gnocchi.

Zhang Haike took a closer look at his skin, and the cold sweat suddenly came down, and in the thin layer under his skin, there were countless small bulges, and they were constantly shaking and crawling all over his body.

He used a dagger to pick through the skin, and his eyes quickly picked out what was inside, and sure enough, it was a leech.

This kind of leech is several times more tricky than ordinary leeches, and ordinary treatment methods are useless at all, but will also urge leeches to drill deeper into their bodies.

Zhang Haike saw the corpses of the three Zhang family children placed at the turn in front of him, and suddenly understood what the little brother meant by what he had said before that he had lived here for a long time.

That little ghost, and these children of the Zhang family who are less than ten years old, they are all orphans of the Zhang family.

In this dark underground ancient city, he was forced to become a tool for those adults to collect blood to avoid trouble.

——

Zhang Haike felt a little thirsty and paused.

Wu Xie was fascinated by this, and quickly poured him a cup of tea and asked, "Then, how did you survive later?" ”

Zhang Haike drank it in one gulp, refilled another glass, and then said: "Later, we realized that only the blood of that child could help us get rid of the leeches on our bodies, but we didn't know where he was, and in order to lure him out, we began to wreak havoc on the second layer." ”

"As you can probably guess, we brought explosives, the structure of the ancient city is very unstable, and if he doesn't want to give up his purpose, he will definitely come back to stop us."

However, the reality is always cruel, after the ancient city was flooded, the local government not only did not excavate, but instead carved a lake and built an embankment on the ruins of the ancient city, and poured a large amount of mercury into the silt above the ancient city to seal it, which was very strange.

Some people speculate that the sudden flood that hit the ancient city did not seem to be a natural disaster, but someone wanted to bury some secret in this ancient city forever.

There is also a layer of Sanhe soil on top of the mercury that completely surrounds this place, Zhang Haike and they didn't know anything about it at the time, and after a wild bombardment in the depths of the ground, it destroyed the structural balance of the ancient city, and the ancient city collapsed in a large area.

Cracks appeared in the soil that covered it, and mercury vapor leaked out, poisoning all the crops in this area on the ground.

The little brother had already gotten what he wanted out of the ancient city at that time, and when he found out about this situation, he knew that Zhang Haike and they had an accident underneath, which is why there was the story about the scorpion tomb told by Jin Wantang later. (End of chapter)