With the Blue High-Ranking Official in front, followed by Li Jinlong and Zhou Xuan, the three of them retreated from the mouth of the poisonous pool, returning to the bottom of the sinkhole.
After the senior officers secured Li Jinlong's safety buckle to the steel cable, they pressed the switch on the small rotating wheel at his waist. The wheel turned, lifting him towards the top of the cave.
Of the four steel cables, only three people were using them now. Lan Gaozhang sighed, said nothing, and together with Zhou Xuan, locked the safety buckle. Then the two of them climbed up to the top of the cave one after the other.
We didn't dare to go too fast when coming down, and we had to be careful of things below. It took us almost three hours, but the time to go up was almost twenty minutes faster. It only took us a little over half an hour to get to the top of the cave.
Zhou Xuan was the last one. When he reached the top of the cave, he saw Fu Ying and Wei Haihong anxiously looking at him from the cave entrance. When they saw him, their faces lit up with joy, and they both stretched out a hand.
Zhou Xuan loosened his grip on the wire and reached out to grab hands with Fu Ying and Wei Haihong. The two of them pulled him up to the top of the cave at the same time.
Fu Ying dragged him a few meters away from the edge of the cave, then suddenly hugged him without a second thought.
Zhou Xuan hugged her with a mixture of pity and sorrow. If all four of them had come up safely, the feeling would naturally be different. But now one person had died, four went down, and three came back. How could he be happy?
Moreover, this time is different from the one in the United States. In that incident, there were people like Ito among those who went into the water, each with their own ulterior motives. At least the people who went in this time did not have such thoughts.
Li Jinlong came up without saying a word, looking dazed. Li Quan and Wang Dagui were both asking him questions.
"Third Uncle, where is my brother?"
"Chatting with Third Uncle and Brother-in-Law"
Li Jinlong murmured, "Gone... your brother is gone."
Almost everyone at the cave entrance knew that something must have happened at the bottom of the cave, but Li Jinlong wouldn't say anything, and neither would Lan Gaofeng and Zhou Xuan.
Lan Gaozhang removed the safety harness from his body and then directed Li Yong and Fang Jianjun: "You two, along with the police officers who came with Ling Hui, will take turns on duty here. Do not let anyone into the cave. If anything happens, contact me directly by phone."
Then he instructed Ling Hui: "Come back with us and call Director Wu again. Tell him to send more police officers to strengthen the defense of Xiaoyang Mountain. No one is allowed to enter or leave without my order!"
Ling Hui responded and immediately made a special call to Director Wu.
After arranging the tasks, the senior executives led everyone back to Luoyang, traveling in two separate vehicles.
While in the car, Lan Gao instructed Ling Hui again: "Call Director Wu and have him contact the most famous paleontologists and historians in the country immediately, especially scholars and experts with profound knowledge of ancient culture and characters from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. I need top-notch personnel in this field!"
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Volume One: The First Signs of a Budding Lotus, Chapter One Hundred: The Dragon
After leaving the old Zhenluo City Hotel, Zhou Fu, Yuan Xu, Wei Haihong, Wei Xiaoqing, Wang Zhi, and Bi Wang rested in their respective rooms. Everyone guessed that something unexpected had happened in the cave, but the three people who knew the truth—Zhou Xuan, Lan Gaofeng, and Li Jinlong—did not say a word about the cave.
When Lan Gao returned, he went to the bureau with Ling Hui. There were many things that urgently needed to be clarified and processed.
Li Jinlong, Li Quan, and Wang Dagui returned home with several large bags and rushed back to the hotel. Zhou Xuan originally thought that Li Jinlong would not go down into that cave again, but unexpectedly, he went back, picked up a few bags, and hurriedly came to the hotel to meet them.
The senior executives from the Blue Group didn't return until very late, after everyone had gone to sleep. They didn't call everyone into their rooms until the next morning.
Li Jinlong's expression returned to normal. The high-ranking official glanced at the people who had just sat down before speaking in a deep voice, "If we enter the cave again, we must make proper preparations. One of the two professors Director Wu invited is on his way and should arrive around noon. The other is already examining the ancient characters on those pieces of hemp cloth; it might take some time. We have to wait. Understanding the meaning of the characters on the hemp cloth will likely be of great help to us."
The senior executive looked at Li Jinlong and hesitated, then said, "Old Li, you..."
Li Jinlong resolutely said, "I'm fine. I'll go as long as my nephew isn't hurt. For thousands of years, the Li family has been searching for this secret. Now that there's a clue and hope, how could I not go? Besides, Feihu is still inside. No matter what, I will bring him back!"
Seeing that Li Jinlong appeared quite calm and composed, the Blue executives didn't say anything more. If it were them, they would have gone even more.
After returning to his room, Zhou Xuan spoke with Fu Ying for a while. Fu Ying asked, "Zhou Xuan, I didn't ask you anything last night because you looked very tired. But now I'm asking you, what exactly did you encounter after you went down into the cave yesterday? How did Li Feihu die?"
Zhou Xuan pondered for a moment and said, "It's a very strange thing, it looks like a fish and a shiver, it's highly poisonous, it was in a small pool, the water was also highly poisonous, Li Feihu only put his hand into the pool a little bit, and as a result, in a very short time he was corroded and only his bones were left!"
Fu Ying's face turned pale upon hearing this. She reached out and gripped Zhou Xuan's hand tightly, biting her lip and pausing for a moment before saying, "I will never let you go down alone again. From now on, no matter where we go, we will be together!"
Zhou Xuan sighed, holding Fu Ying's soft hand but not knowing how to comfort her.
Around 1 p.m., Ling Hui picked up Professor Yang Guang from the airport and brought him to the hotel.
In Lan Gaozhang's room, Lan Gaozhang called Zhou Xuan and Li Jinlong over. Only the three of them had seen that thing before, and the three of them together could explain it more clearly.
Yang Guang, 51 years old, is one of the most famous paleontologists in China. After listening to the introductions from Lan Gaofeng and the other two, he opened the laptop he had brought with him, then opened a folder, pulled out several images, and turned the laptop screen towards the three of them, asking, "Take a look, which one does what you see resemble the most?"
There are twelve pictures on the screen. The pictures are all fossils of organisms that have appeared on the surface of rocks. They are only a few inches long. Some look like earthworms, some look like loaches, and some look like stags.
Zhou Xuan immediately recognized that the objects in the second row of the seven pictures were exactly the same as the strange fish in the pool. Lan Gaofeng and Li Jinlong also recognized them, and all three of them pointed to those pictures.
Professor Yang's expression immediately shifted between excitement and surprise. He said, "Are they really exactly the same? If they are, then it would be a groundbreaking discovery that would shock the world!"
Professor Yang then pointed to the picture on the computer and said, "This thing is called 'Shan'. In ancient legends, wax is a kind of dragon without horns. But this ancient creature is not the kind of dragon in the legends. It is an ancient creature that lived 16 million years ago. Moreover, it is not an ordinary creature. It lives in a very special environment. It lives in a very deep rock cave and feeds by absorbing water from the microorganisms in stalactites. The water it absorbs and then spits out is an extremely strong acidic substance. Its corrosiveness is a hundred times that of the strongest aquatic acid. If any creature comes into contact with this water, it will be corroded into a pile of bones by the strong acid in a very short time!"
It really is this thing!
While Yang Guang remained skeptical, Li Jinlong asserted, "That's it! My nephew only touched a tiny bit of water in that small pool, and within a minute, it turned into a pile of bones!" Yang Guang was genuinely taken aback. Initially, it was an official invitation, only stating that he needed to come and conduct on-site research. However, after hearing the detailed explanation from several high-ranking officials, he found it hard to believe. After all, they were talking about species that had become extinct millions of years ago, like dinosaurs, for which the only things that could be found were fossils and computer-generated special effects shots in movies.
But now Li Jinlong is talking about the cause of his nephew's death. He described in detail the appearance of the strange fish in the pool, and after the three of them confirmed it, could it be that...?
However, the final confirmation could only be obtained after Professor Qin Zeng, another professor of history and classical literature whom Director Wu had secretly invited, came to the conclusion. It wasn't until late that night that Professor Qin had completely turned over all the words on the hemp cloth pieces belonging to Li Jinlong's ancestor, Li Ben.
The Blue administration was in no hurry and sent Ling Hui to bring Professor Qin to the hotel.
This time, the Blue administration summoned everyone to listen to what Professor Qin had translated.
Professor Qin and Professor Yang are about the same age. They do different types of research, but their personalities are quite similar; they are both generally dull.
Qin Jiao handed the burlap sack back to the Blue executives, then read aloud the document he had flipped through. It was very difficult to understand, even more so than the classical Chinese with its archaic language.
Seeing that everyone in the room was confused, Professor Qin explained it again in plain language. Basically, during the reign of King Zi Tang, Li Ben was ordered by the king to build the ancestral tomb of King Zi Tang with three thousand skilled builders and ten thousand workers. The tomb was to be dug a thousand meters underground, but they happened to find a huge natural underground cave. So Li Ju and the three thousand skilled craftsmen used this underground cave as a model to build an underground mausoleum palace with nine bends and eighteen grottoes, with countless and endless mechanisms.
Just as the mausoleum was about to be completed, Li Feng discovered that what King Zi Tang had ordered his generals to bring was not the remains of King Zi Tang's ancestors, but dead people—thousands upon thousands of corpses. They also transported countless treasures and antiques to the underground palace, and then sealed the mausoleum. Three thousand skilled men and ten thousand workers were forcibly buried alive in the mausoleum.