Lan Gaofeng lowered his head in deep thought. With his keen intuition, he too had become interested in the pit. Besides, Xiaoyang Mountain was only four kilometers away from Yanshi County. For an ancient city, four kilometers was nothing. Moreover, more than 3,600 years had passed, and dynasties had changed. Who could be sure that the ancient site of Shixianggou in Yanshi was definitely located in the present-day Yanshi County?
In any case, this is the only progress we've made so far.
After making his decision, Lan Gaozhang looked up at Ling Hui and said, "Ling Hui, immediately notify Director Wu of the bureau to prepare the tools for our cave exploration. Be quick!"
Ling Hui quickly stood up and responded. The higher-up from the Blue Bureau added, "Also, you should inform Director Wu to send police to monitor Xiaoyang Mountain 24/7 and not let anyone in."
Ling Hui responded and went out.
"Old Li, what else have you prepared? What do you need? We'll set off immediately!" Lan's senior executive said to Li Jinlong.
Li Jinlong nodded and said, "Yes, we need to go back home. Hehe, we need some professional tools, and also, that map from our ancestors, it might be useful."
The Blue leadership immediately assigned Li Yong and Fang Jianjun to go with Li Jinlong, Li Feihu, and Wang Dagui to their home to retrieve tools. Wang Qiang and his brother, along with Li Quan, then went ahead with them to Xiaoyang Mountain, splitting into two groups.
Li Yong, Fang Jianjun, and Li Jinlong drove the Buick minivan; even with six people, it wasn't crowded. The Blue executives, on the other hand, drove the twelve-seater van.
Zhou Xuan still has eight people on his side: Wei Haihong, Wei Xiaoqing, Fu Ying, Lan Gaozhang, Wang Qiang, Wang Sheng, Li Quan, and himself, making a total of eight.
There's a reason why the Blue administration kept Li Quan around. Li Quan is a local from Yanshi, familiar with the terrain, and can drive, so he can lead the way.
After leaving the west side of Yanshi County, it only took ten minutes to drive to Xiaoyang Mountain. The car was parked on the roadside at the foot of the mountain.
The group of eight people walked up the mountain path. Xiaoyang Mountain is not very big, and the mountain is not high, at most five or six hundred meters high, and the area is only two or three miles in circumference. The eastern end is quite rugged with no path, but the forest is very lush. The northwest side of the mountain has a small path, which is overgrown with weeds, and it is clear that few people use this path anymore.
Li Quan led the way, and after walking for about ten more minutes, they reached the top of the mountain. They then descended the slope from the east end, and after another two hundred meters, they arrived at the summit.
When they were still more than ten meters away from the dark cave entrance, the group felt a chill on their faces and exposed skin. The cave entrance was on a semi-slope, with a steep slope in front and a forest below. The cold air blowing out of the cave was like an extremely powerful air conditioner.
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Volume One: The Lotus Buds Just Begin to Emerge, Chapter Ninety-Six: Nine Bends and Eighteen Caves
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Zhou Xuan peered down into the cave. The entrance was circular, only about 1.5 meters in diameter. He could see down to about three or four meters below, then it was pitch black, and he couldn't see anything at all. He could clearly feel the icy air rising from inside. Zhou Xuan picked up a fist-sized rock and threw it in, then listened intently for over a minute, but still couldn't hear the rock hit the bottom.
Zhou Xuan shook his head. This unfathomable cave was different from the water cave in America, but they had one thing in common: they were both terrifying places.
Wei Xiaoqing picked up a stone next to Zhou Xuan and threw it down as he did, then listened intently.
Seeing that she was quite close to the cave, Zhou Xuan quickly pulled her back a bit and said, "A girl like you, don't you know how to be afraid!"
The Wang brothers, Qiang and Sheng, laid their tools on the ground and began surveying the terrain near the cave entrance, drawing lines on a piece of paper as they went. Zhou Xuan watched with interest, presumably calculating the depth and direction of the cave entrance; their job was digging tunnels.
The others looked at the bottomless pit and then sat on the open ground outside the pit, waiting for Li Jinlong and the others to arrive.
After Zhou Xuan pulled Wei Xiaoqing back, she didn't hear the sound of the stone she threw hitting the bottom for a long time. She stuck out her tongue and looked at him with a fearful expression: "It's so deep!"
“Of course!” Li Quan was a local and knew much more about the cave. After hearing Wei Xiaoqing’s words, he said, “In the cold winter, mist will rise from the cave, so much so that it can cover the entire mountain. After a heavy rain in June, sometimes a rainbow will rise from the cave into the sky.”
"Rainbow? You've really seen a rainbow come out of this cave?" Wei Xiaoqing asked in surprise. She had seen rainbows before, but she had never seen one come out of this cave.
Li Quan nodded and replied, "Yes, I've seen it with my own eyes. I've seen rainbows stretching from this cave to the sky five or six times, each time after a heavy rain. The elders say that it's the inner core of a demon refining elixirs inside the cave!"
Zhou Xuan found it somewhat amusing. Although he had a fear of the unknown, he never believed in the existence of immortals, demons, or monsters. He believed that the world had superpowers, extraterrestrials, and many other strange and unknown things, but he absolutely did not believe in ghosts, gods, or monsters.
Fu Ying smiled and said, "Rainbows are formed when sunlight hits nearly spherical water droplets in the air, causing dispersion and reflection. When sunlight enters a water droplet, it enters at different angles and is reflected at different angles within the droplet. The reflection is strongest at around 40 degrees, forming the rainbow we see. During this reflection, sunlight enters the droplet, refracts once, is reflected from the back of the droplet, and finally refracts again as it leaves. Because water disperses light, different wavelengths of light have different refractive indices; blue light refracts at a larger angle than red. Since the light is reflected within the water droplet, the spectrum we see is reversed, with red light at the top and other colors at the bottom!"
Fu Ying's explanation can be described as a straightforward and textbook-like explanation that everyone can understand.
Can Li Quan's understanding of scientific and cultural knowledge compare to that of Fu Ying, who was educated at a foreign university?
However, Li Quan also remained noncommittal about Fu Ying's statement. In his opinion, what teachers teach is not necessarily all correct. For example, when it comes to ghosts and gods, those who work in the tomb raiding business are very particular. They steal things from the dead, and there are many rules for the dead, otherwise they cannot take away the things from the dead.
Time flew by as they chatted. Twenty minutes later, Li Jinlong, Li Yong, and their group of five arrived with their tools. About five minutes after them, Ling Hui also arrived, accompanied by six or seven police officers from the bureau, who brought several large bags of caving equipment.
Ling Hui then reported to the higher-ups at Lan: "There are plainclothes police officers guarding the area within 500 meters of Changxiaoyang Mountain, so there is absolutely no way for outsiders to break in."
Ling Hui and the police officers who came with her opened the bag again and took out the equipment they had brought, including a high-powered flashlight, a camera, nylon rope, steel wire pulleys, and a display receiver.
One of the police officers explained, "It's long. This kind of steel wire pulley can be fixed on it. The steel wire is 1,000 meters long and can bear a weight of 400 kilograms. The maximum speed for going up and down is 35 meters per minute. When going down, the speed can be adjusted automatically."
Then he took out more than a dozen sophisticated communication devices, similar to mobile phones, and introduced them: "This is a powerful wireless walkie-talkie, shockproof and waterproof, with a communication range of up to two kilometers. In the presence of obstacles, it can reach two hundred meters."
Finally, a batch of gas masks was brought out, indicating that Director Wu had made thorough preparations to meet their requirements.
In addition to all the tools needed for tomb raiding, Li Jinlong and his group also brought a bamboo basket, a rooster, a horsehair lamp, and a piece of red cloth.
Zhou Xuan had seen that lamp before. In some places it was called a horse tail lamp, and in others it was called a horse lamp. When he was a child, his hometown used that kind of lamp before they had electricity. It had a glass cover on the outside and an iron oil box at the bottom filled with kerosene. Once the lamp was lit, the glass cover was closed, and the wind could not blow it out. This kind of lamp is not common now because there are basically no places without electricity. Even in the event of a power outage, there are candles for lighting.
Zhou Xuan recognized these items; he had seen them before in his hometown.
In Zhou Xuan's hometown, there are quite a few sinkholes, but they are usually much larger than this one. There are none as small as this. The smallest sinkhole in his hometown is at least several hundred meters wide. When the old ox of Uncle Liu's family next door was eating grass on the edge of the cliff at the sinkhole on the back mountain, it lost its footing and fell into the sinkhole. Uncle Liu then asked someone to go into the sinkhole to pull the ox out.
Zhou Xuan and more than a dozen other children followed along to watch. They all felt a mixture of fear and curiosity towards the sinkhole.
The people Uncle Liu hired first put a rooster and a lantern in a bamboo basket and lowered it down. Zhou Xuan had heard at that time that the lantern was used to test whether there was oxygen or air at the bottom of the sinkhole. The lantern needed air to burn, and if there was no air, the lantern would go out. The rooster was used for the same purpose: first, to test whether there was air at the bottom of the sinkhole, and second, to test whether there were monsters or anything like that. He had heard the old people talk about it when they were chatting. They said that there were usually demons cultivating in those old caves and sinkholes. The rooster was put down to see if there were any demons. If there were, they would devour the rooster.
Li Jinlong first lit the lantern, covered it with a shade, and put it in the basket. The rooster's feet and wings were tied, so it couldn't move and could only cluck.
There were three loops on the side of the bamboo basket. One dragon tied a nylon rope to two of the loops. Then, he wrapped a red cloth around the waist of the basket.
There's a special term for this: "Releasing Red!" Red represents both respecting the gods and warding off evil.
After Li Jinlong finished doing all this, he was about to put the basket into the hole when Lan Gaofeng suddenly shouted, "Wait!"