The Lost Tomb : Tibetan Sea Flower

Chapter 91: Trap

"Hey, there are still tortoises." Fatty was delighted. "That's an even better supplement. Would you say it's God's fault that us three men are here to cleanse our kidneys?"

"It's not a real tortoise." Short Feng said. I looked up and found that it was something that should be called a decoration.

This thing may be something practical, or it may just be an ornament that was hard to see in this light.

I took a look, and even though I felt that the sculpture hadn't actually been finished, I already knew that it wasn't a tortoise, but a kind of Bixi [1], a mythical animal decoration originating from the Hans. The person who carved it was quite meticulous and clearly a very skilled craftsman, but the carving technique was very unrestrained and free. This obviously wasn't for a job, but rather an act of artistic creation or done for fun.

"This is something made by Han craftsmen." I glanced at Short Feng and he nodded. I remembered that the jars I had just seen were also made by Chinese.

The state of this place was also different from that of the local ethnic groups. All of the details were obviously similar to those of the Central Plains, including the decorative pattern on the bronze door outside and the custom of using fighting corpses.

Fatty picked up the tortoise I had just put down and said it might be worth some money. I quickly walked further into the pool, going more than ten meters before finding even more steps leading down.

The water reached my waist, and the light of the torch began to dim again. Fatty and I twisted it to cut off the flame, which caused the surrounding area to darken, but the fire could last longer this way.

As the water stretched out in front of me, I continued to move forward until I saw a huge shadow at the bottom. At first, I thought it was a stone and temporarily lit the torch again, but then I saw a decaying purple bronze plate under the water.

There were layers upon layers of them, and the rust was completely purple.

"Was the bronze door also made here?" When I climbed onto one of the bronze plates, my knees were exposed above the water. I took out all the remaining torches and lit them up, immediately seeing a large amount of bronze materials piled up in this part of the stone chamber. At the same time, I also saw a bigger shadow under the water.

It was giant smelting equipment.

"The copper must have been locally sourced. The rocks here contain a large amount of copper and perhaps tin, enabling them to smelt the bronze locally and cast it into these bronze plates." I blew out some of the torches so as not to waste them, and continued, "So the bronze door we saw before is actually hollow and has a very complex mechanical support inside that keeps it from collapsing."

I had studied architecture in school, so I quickly recalled all the details I had seen before. The huge bronze door I saw under the bottom of Changbai Mountain was so ancient and large that it wouldn't be able to support its own weight with a hollow frame. According to the logic of physics, that bronze door couldn't be opened in reality. Moreover, its details were so much more complex than that of the ones I had seen here before we blew them up.

"The bronze door here is only a replica." I sighed, "It's a replica that was made here locally by Han craftsmen using the very finest craftsmanship at that time. They were here to simulate the process of building the bronze door."

"There must be something wrong with them if they have nothing better to do. Who would do that in such a dark environment."

"This was a trap." I said faintly. There weren't that many stone sleeping platforms outside, and I was afraid that building the bronze door and bronze cave must have taken quite a long time to complete, even beyond the limits of people's lifetime. This kind of patience and perseverance— and extremely long life— basically told me which family these craftsmen had come from.

And they had made a bronze door here that was basically real. If this was a trap, then there were several possibilities floating in my mind for whom it was set for.

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Note:

[1] One of the nine sons of a dragon with the form of a tortoise.