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Heeding her advice, Ji Yu slowly climbed down the wall, and the rest followed. Zhan Beiye refused to let anyone go after him and insisted on being the last.

Meng Fuyao was at the center of the group. While she walked, she touched the mud around her and suddenly ordered, ”Quick! Extinguish the lighter!”

She spoke in a tense voice, causing everyone to tremble. The soldier who was holding on to the lighter blew out the flame and asked Meng Fuyao, ”Why?”

Meng Fuyao's eyes shone as brightly as stars in the darkness. She did not directly answer the question and only said, ”Go down first. If I'm not wrong, there's something below.”

The hole was not very deep, and soon after, light shone from below. As the hole shifted left, it became wider, and it was impossible for everyone to maintain the spider posture. They faced the wall instead and moved down by stepping on protruding stones. After another ten meters or so, Ji Yu suddenly shouted in surprise, ”Ah!”

At the same time, everyone shut their eyes.

A magnificent light shone brightly.

Five strokes of light - red, blue, green, yellow and purple - shot out from the bottom of the hole. From far away, it looked like a rainbow-colored cloud rising out from the depths of the darkness, looking astounding, rich and crystal-clear.

It was an unprecedented, gigantic gemstone mine, its value incalculable.

What everyone was shocked at was not just this.

There were enormous and towering pillars of crystal, and their tips were as sharp as swords. These pillars were slanted in a criss-cross pattern, spreading as wide as a forest, standing tall and mighty. It was not hard to imagine that if everyone slid down as they would habitually do, they would have been penetrated by those sharp crystal pillars and ended up becoming an eternal sacrifice to the Gun Tribe's tomb.

Though the forest of crystals looked astounding, they were the deadly weapons that had been stationed here for thousands of years, waiting to take away the lives of humans.

Indeed, at the northwest corner of the crystal forest, there were a few sets of skeletons hanging from the crystals, with postures looking like they were in pain. Those skeletons must have belonged to tomb raiders from long ago who had dug a hole down but unfortunately died. Everyone shivered as they looked at those skeletons as though they saw themselves hanging there.

Zhan Beiye spoke softly behind Meng Fuyao, ”How did you know that there was this thing down here?”

How did she know? Meng Fuyao smiled. All tombs built had precautionary measures to prevent tomb raids, such as quicksand, concrete blocks, mercury, fake coffins, stone-blocked doors, etc. In tombs that were built on mountains, there was the precedence of making use of natural conditions to kill raiders. Meng Fuyao recalled that she had once excavated a tomb of the Warring States period, which had made use of a rock formation. Hence, she took caution.

This was her professional instinct that could not be explained. Zhan Beiye did not question, but suddenly, he let out a very soft sigh.

At that point, the group had already reached the end of the hole, and Ji Yu jumped down into the cave of crystals. The cave was brightly lit, and the walls were studded with mica and agate gemstones. Shining as brightly as the crystals, long shadows of the gemstones were projected on the ground. In front of the forest of crystals, there was a painting of a gigantic and strange bird.

The bird looked like a white crane but its feathers were red, and there were strange patterns on its body. It had only one leg and a long, white beak.

Meng Fuyao looked up at the painting and mumbled, ”The 'Classic of Mountains and Seas' had such a record: there is a bird with its shape like a crane and one foot. It has red patterns, a black body, and a white beak. Its presence signifies an impending fire… This is the God of Fire, Bifang.”

Zhan Beiye suddenly walked up and took a whiff of the surroundings. His expression instantly changed.

”Kerosene oil… ”

”Yes, the painting is hollow and filled up with the highly-flammable oil.” Meng Fuyao quietly spoke. ”If I'm right, there is probably a string below the painting that leads to the opening of the hole, where an explosive soil is.”

”So you that's why you told us to extinguish the lighters?” Zhan Beiye's turned serious. ”And not just this. That girl's corpse could not be burned as well. Once we burned it, the ground beneath us would explode, right?”

Meng Fuyao smiled without saying a word, but deep down, she felt a chill because of the Gun Tribe. The designer of the tomb must be insane. Just the girl's corpse incorporated three methods that could have killed them. He had predicted that such an inauspicious thing would be destroyed by people who entered the tomb and the methods were usually none other than burning or chopping. Hence, he had buried this string that connected to the painting so that once there was fire, it would trigger an explosion from the bottom. If the tomb raiders decided to chop up that corpse instead, there would be venomous insects in the belly to wipe out everyone. Even if someone managed to survive, they would probably let down their guard and slide down the hole, right onto the deadly tips of the crystal formation.

At that moment, Zhan Beiye also understood the dangers that they went through and said, ”Fuyao, you saved us thrice.” Quzhizhang is a type of burial mound found in Inner Mongolia that bears a resemblance to the Kurgan burial mound. Corpses found usually had their limbs bent and their bodies facing upwards or sideways.