Chapter 222: The Qinghai Mystery part 1

“Hey, Cong Xia, wake up.”

In a daze, Cong Xia felt someone slapping his face rather roughly. Already dizzy from the fall, the slapping made his head ring even more. “Ah, stop… don’t slap me anymore, ouch…”

“Awake? Nothing broken?”

“Brother Dan?” Cong Xia rubbed his head and climbed up from the ground. Everything around them was pitch black, and he could only identify the person beside him as Dan Ming by his voice.

“Yeah, that kid and Mr. Sun fell down too. They seem to be knocked out as well.”

“Are they okay?”

“They’re not dead.”

Cong Xia smiled bitterly. “Jesus, this is really… How high was that?”

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“Just the four of us?” Cong Xia asked.

“Just us four.”

At that moment, Mr. Sun also woke up. Instead of immediately looking for an exit, the four sat on the ground, placed the flashlight in the center, and stared at each other.

They were in quite an awkward and dangerous situation. In the past, no matter what difficulties they encountered or what dangers they faced, they always had powerful teammates nearby. They were never isolated or helpless. But now, there were two brain-evolved humans—one 13 years old, the other over 60—who had no combat ability beyond brain interference. Cong Xia himself only had the fighting level of an ordinary strength-evolved human, not even able to beat Dan Ming. And while Dan Ming was a tough mercenary, he was still just an ordinary human without any evolution. In other words, their group of four could be wiped out by any mutated creature in the forbidden zone. Even if they didn’t encounter any monsters, they were stuck underground at an unknown depth without water or food, and getting out was an even bigger problem.

“What do we do now?” Cong Xia asked glumly.

“Wait and see if they’ll come down to rescue us,” Zhuang Yao replied.

“We’ve been unconscious for two hours. If they had a way to save us, they would have come down by now,” Dan Ming said.

“Two hours, are you sure?”

“Positive.” Dan Ming shone the flashlight on his watch. “I checked the time not long before we fell. It’s been 1 hour and 57 minutes since then.”

Mr. Sun sighed. “Then I don’t think we need to wait. Dan’s right—if there was a way to rescue us, they wouldn’t have waited until now.”

“Let’s try to save ourselves,” Zhuang Yao said, getting up from the ground and taking the flashlight. “Let’s see what’s around here and if there’s a way out.”

This time, the four didn’t dare separate. They stayed close together, following the weak beam of the flashlight as they searched for an exit.

The basement wasn’t large, but it was obviously quite tall. Following the walls, they soon found a protruding groove containing oil. This oil, extracted from animals and plants, was commonly used for lighting in the Han Dynasty. Due to its age, it had now solidified into chunks.

Dan Ming threw a match into it, and the oil slowly caught fire, illuminating a large space.

By the firelight, they looked up and saw huge murals on the rough earthen walls. Most had faded colors due to their age, and some were so blurred that their content was unclear. To see more clearly, they found several more oil grooves and lit them one by one, finally illuminating the entire basement.

“This is… Could this be depicting Nüwa mending the sky?” Cong Xia asked in amazement.

Though crude and damaged, the mural clearly showed a female figure in a series of scenes holding something up toward the sky. Below were many tiny people and animals, along with widespread fires and monsters. This scene was easily associated with the legend of Nüwa.

Zhuang Yao nodded. “It’s the scene of Nüwa using five-colored stones to mend the sky.”

The story of Nüwa mending the sky was a well-known legend from ancient mythology. Seeing it here wasn’t particularly strange—perhaps the original inhabitants of this city especially revered Nüwa, like seeing someone worship Guan Yu in their home.

“Wait, this mural is continuous, spanning both left and right walls,” Dan Ming noted.

Looking around, they discovered that three walls of the basement had murals that seemed to tell a connected story. Reading from right to left, the first wall depicted a fierce-looking male deity fighting with a well-dressed person, set against a background of torrential floods and thunderstorms. Moving left, they saw mountains collapsing, the sky falling, and muddy torrents swallowing the world.

“This should depict the water god Gonggong fighting with Zhuanxu, one of the Five Emperors, for position. After losing, he angrily crashed into Mount Buzhou, toppling the pillar that held up the sky. The Classic of Mountains and Seas records it as ‘the sky pillar broke, the earth’s boundaries severed, the four poles abandoned, the nine provinces split, the sky tilted northwest, the earth sank southeast.’ This is why Nüwa had to use five-colored stones to mend the sky. These murals are indeed connected,” Zhuang Yao explained.

“Let’s quickly look at the last mural.”

They moved to the final mural, which showed Nüwa having completed mending the sky, placing the last remaining five-colored stone on a mountain. A Taoist riding a tiger stood beside the stone.

The mural ended there.

“Except for the last scene, the other murals all depict content recorded in Chinese ancient mythology. What’s the purpose of painting them here? And what does the last scene mean? Who is this Taoist?” Cong Xia wondered.

Both Mr. Sun and Zhuang Yao were too busy examining the murals to answer, walking back and forth between the three paintings, studying them carefully.

After a long while, Zhuang Yao finally spoke: “Based on the era, appearance, and mount, this Taoist should be Zhang Daoling, the founding Celestial Master of Taoism. Legend has it that when Nüwa decided to mend the sky, she searched for materials and chose the five-colored earth from Tiantai Mountain, a fairy mountain in the East Sea. This earth supposedly contained the essence of yin-yang and the five elements, absorbing mountain and sea spirits and gathering heaven and earth’s qi. Using the divine fire of the sun god, Nüwa refined 36,501 five-colored stones, using 36,500 to mend the sky and leaving the last one on Tiantai Mountain. The meaning of this final mural is probably Zhang Daoling coming to retrieve this five-colored stone. This part isn’t recorded in history, so his purpose for taking the stone is unknown.”

“Five-colored stone…” Cong Xia couldn’t help but touch the ancient jade pressed against his stomach, then felt he was overthinking. The jade had none of the characteristics of a five-colored stone, and this was probably just a folk imagining mural involving ancient mythology. His mental leaps weren’t quite that extreme—he didn’t even dare think about it.

Zhuang Yao saw through his thoughts: “There’s still not enough evidence to prove this underground ancient city is related to this disaster, but I have a feeling this place can give us many answers.”

“By the way, Cong Xia, can you still sense the puppet jade?” Mr. Sun asked.

Cong Xia paused. “Oh right, I was too dazed from the fall. Hmm, I can’t sense it again now.”

“Since the puppet jade can move underground, we should be able to as well. That way seems to be a corridor—let’s head out.”

The last wall faced a deep, dark corridor that seemed endless. It was pitch black and eerie, like a gaping maw ready to swallow anyone whole.

After scrounging around on the ground, they finally found a long stone. Dan Ming wrapped his jacket around it, scooped up a large chunk of oil, and made a simple torch. The four steadied themselves and headed deeper into the corridor.

Meanwhile, Cheng Tianbi, Shen Changze, and the others were frantically worried.

“How is that possible? They just went down from here. Why isn’t this mechanism responding now?” Shen Changze demanded harshly.

“Some mechanisms have limited activations or time restrictions,” Tang Tingzhi carefully pried open the mechanism hidden in the earth wall with his tools. The mechanism wasn’t visible on the surface—you could only feel it was different by touch. A slight manipulation would trigger it. Tang Tingzhi carefully explored inside with his fingers, and the deeper he went, the more his brow furrowed.

“Well? Can it be opened again?”