After several people tried for a long time, they felt that there seemed to be no great danger, so they entered the tomb again and came to the side of the passage.
The passage is very deep and strange. The initial part of the passage is reinforced with blue bricks, but further down it is just loess. It looks like a robber's hole.
"Look, where there are no blue bricks, there are only shovel marks. These are where we dug together." Zhang Haike said. He leaned in to smell it. "The smell is dead. This should be our starting point."
"Not dug from the surface?"
"It shouldn't be, but we can't see the end, and we don't know where it leads to, so it's hard to say." One person said, "Excuse me, this doesn't look like a tomb. If this is a robber's hole, how can there be a mechanism on the opening that can be closed? It's impossible for someone to dig directly to the entrance of the mechanism in the tomb, so I think this must not be a tomb."
"Not a tomb?"
"This isn't even a grave," the man said.
"So what do you think this place is?"
"This place was not built by dead people, but by tomb robbers."
"This is a Linka." The man continued, a Linka is a temporary underground resting station set up by tomb robbers when they find an ancient tomb that is particularly difficult to enter. They will store food and equipment in it and work underground for a long time.
Most Linkas are very simple, like an adobe house, but if it is an extremely difficult-to-enter ancient tomb, or an ultra-large fortress-style ancient tomb, the Linka will be built very finely, because a Linka may be used for five or six years or even more than ten years in the excavation of such an ancient tomb.
If this is a Linka, it can explain some things, but what about the things above their heads?
"Can I borrow your shoulder?" Zhang Haike shouted, and flew up and stepped on his partner's shoulder, then lit a fire to look at the things hanging on the roof.
This time he went to see the joint between the ceiling and the coffin, and then looked at the other things hanging upside down on the side. His expression changed, and he turned over and said seriously: "Everyone, this is really a Linka."
"How could Linka be like this?" others said.
Zhang Haike said, "They have no choice but to make this place like this." He patted the ground, "There may be a big guy under this room. It's hard to deal with."
"All designs are based on vibration," said Zhang Haike. "This method of hanging things up is very similar to hanging a hammock on a ship. Sailors sleep in the hammock and will not fall down no matter how the ship pitches. This way they can rest well."
"Is it worth hanging things so high for the sake of shock? It's not easy."
"If the shock is big enough," Zhang Haike said, "big enough and frequent enough, perhaps more than ten times a day, then you will need a reliable method to protect the artifact you just stole."
"What about this mechanism? How do you explain this mechanism? Would you set up a mechanism in your own rest station?"
"I can't be sure, because we can't go back in time and ask the people who built this place what's going on, but I think this organization is not an organization, but an alarm."
"Inheritance theory."
"This mechanism is very sensitive and extends underground. If there is a violent shock here, people will be hurt. They can't just protect the artifacts and not themselves, so they made a shock detector here. As long as there is a shock, the mechanism will be triggered and the hole will open immediately. Maybe it's safer under this thief's hole."
"Is it safer down there?" someone said. "That's a bit far-fetched. I think it's possible that the senior who went down there was alone, and the entrance to the tunnel might not be safe if it wasn't sealed, as something might climb up. So he built this mechanism, and after he went in, he closed the secret door, and when he came back, he kicked the door panel, causing it to vibrate and the door opened."
"You don't know how to kick a zongzi?" another person asked, and then looked at Zhang Haike, "How did you come to those conclusions just now?"
"The hooks on top are all movable hooks. I looked at the bottom and saw springs with steel bars. These are shock-absorbing parts. These parts usually make these things seem to grow in the ceiling, but once they encounter vibrations, they can greatly reduce the shock. And why are the bricks and bluestone slabs here turned upside down like they are turned inside out? That's because all the materials were probably dug out from the ground. The bluestone slabs were too heavy so they laid them on the bottom, and the blue bricks were used to build this place. So, I think there must be a large ancient tomb under this Linka, and the scale must be very large, so they used local materials to build such a rest station here."
"That makes sense." They all nodded. Zhang Haike no longer had the heart to be complacent. He continued, "This door is heavily guarded. This is probably the reason why this Linka exists. This tunnel going down the floor has a mechanism protecting the opening. I think it's safe. We must go in and take a look."
There was no need to talk nonsense. All the confidence returned to the Zhang family children. They exchanged glances and said, "Let's go." Zhang Haike was the first one, followed by the others, who jumped into the tunnel one after another.
The tunnel went almost straight down. They used their feet as brakes and slid down together, swiftly reaching the bottom of the tunnel.
This process lasted for four or five minutes. When I looked up, it was pitch black above and the path I came down from was completely invisible.
The bottom of the tunnel was a round cavity, and on the other side, a brick wall appeared in the cross-cutting loess. It had been broken down by someone, but what was surprising was that the broken hole was only the size of a fist.
"This hole is not even big enough for peeping," one person said.
Zhang Haike kicked the ground and found many blue bricks under the loess, so he said, "No, it seems that the last person wanted to seal this hole again, but left a hole and didn't finish it, and the raw materials are still scattered here."
The hole was too small and the light from the tinder could not penetrate inside. Zhang Haike flicked a tinder in. With a "puff" sound, it seemed to hit something immediately, then fell down and went out instantly.
"Put your hand in." Zhang Haike said, and he looked around at the people behind him, "Whose turn is it?"
"Zhang Qiling. But let me do it." One of them said, taking off his coat and exposing his arms. Zhang Haike took out a pair of horse leg shears from his backpack, stuck them on the hole, put all his strength into it, and asked, "How many inches do you want to leave?"
"One palm at most." said the man, and then he reached his hand into the hole and began to feel around.
Everyone held their breath and dared not speak. This was a very hurtful act. Once there was any abnormality in the cave, Zhang Haike would press down the horse leg shears, cut off the man's hands, and sacrifice the pawn to save the chariot.
But the man touched it a few times and didn't see anything terrible happening, so he pulled his hand back. Everyone saw that his arm was covered with green-black soil, which seemed to be very damp.
"What did you touch, what was holding up such a wall?"
"It's me," the man said. "On the other side of this wall, there's a person leaning against it. It's a leather corpse, and it's all this mud."
"Sure?"
"I touched something." The man rubbed the mud onto his clothes, and when he let go of his hand, there was a ball of dirt. They rinsed it with water and found a pocket watch.
The pocket watch was completely broken. Zhang Haike turned it over and saw a unicorn carved on the steel cover behind the pocket watch. He opened the cover and saw that the needle inside had stopped moving. There was a photo on the inside of the cover, and the photo showed a strange man. He looked at it and frowned.
"What position is the corpse in?" someone asked. "Leaning against the wall with the watch on , face facing inward."
"That's good. This means he wasn't sealed in there alive by someone." The man said with relief.
"What a shitty watch ! Not only was he sealed in alive, but there was more than one thing inside. There was something chasing him, so he had his back against the wall." Zhang Haike put the watch in his arms and said, "Never mind, let's open this wall and take it out to see if it's a mule or a horse."