Endless route

Chapter 272 42. Human bones in the mud and the tragedy in the city

Several people looked around in the attic. It was strange to say that the attic looked clearly made of wood, and the beams were all redwood, but it could stand firm under the weight of the mud.

This is swamp ecology.

After experiencing huge pressure, corrosion from silt and water, and erosion by natural decomposers, a wooden building can actually be preserved so well that even water cannot penetrate and fill it up.

Something is definitely wrong.

Regardless of whether this place is an important place for the Sea Guard Immortal Division, or whether there is a secret place under the attic that connects to the Immortal Gate, this strange situation alone is enough to arouse their suspicions.

"Master Immortal, we should be on the right track."

After careful observation, Ji Dao concluded that this attic must have undergone special treatment, and the preservation level was even higher than that of the pagoda that stored the soldiers' tombs, which shows its importance.

Then this is the right place.

Only the ancient building of Haiwei Jianxian Si in Dusi Mansion has this level of importance and protection measures. Even if it is not the headquarters of Jianxian Si, this place must be very critical.

"Um."

Zheng Yun was thoughtful.

Putting aside everything else, they have found two ancient buildings that have been protected by humans, and the protection method is very special. They should be specially designed to flood the city with swamps.

A result can be inferred.

The ancient city of Nanze must have known that the swamp was coming before the incident, and had time to protect key areas.

"If nothing else, the Immortal Gate is at our feet, on the first floor of this attic." Jidao continued.

"Let's take a rough look first."

Zheng Yun nodded and walked towards the dressing table. A bronze mirror was placed on the table, and the dark yellow mirror reflected their figures.

The part of the bronze mirror exposed to the water is well preserved, but the lower half of the mirror is slightly eroded, with black and green spots scattered here and there, just like the starry sky of Nanze reflected in the water of the bronze mirror.

Except for the bronze mirror, there are no women's items on the dressing table. The wooden tabletop is slightly rotten, but the frame is still intact.

Zheng Yun reached out to open the drawer.

At this moment, his toes touched a hard object, and when he lowered his head, he saw that it turned out to be a white leg bone.

Someone actually died here.

This is contrary to previous speculation. If Nanze Ancient City had time to protect ancient buildings, there should be no corpses.

"This looks like a woman."

Jidao squatted in front of the human bones and took a look. There was a whole human skeleton under the dressing table, which seemed to have been curled up here before death: "It's really strange. How could there be anyone here?"

"We didn't seem to encounter human bones along the way." Zheng Yun recalled that since entering the ancient city of Nanze, they had only found fragments of human bones in the dark hall of the east wall.

But the situation on the east wall is different.

When the city is in crisis, the soldiers guarding the city are most likely to be killed. They have to bear more responsibilities than ordinary people.

And the few pieces of human bones were similar to this place, and they happened to fall into the upside-down earthen jar to escape the disaster.

"There are some small black spots that have been eroded on this skeleton. Could it be that it was eaten by insects? That's why we didn't find it along the way?" Ji Dao pointed at the bones.

"Little black dot?"

Zheng Yun picked up the leg bones and took them out of the water for a closer look. Sure enough, he found a large number of black spots scattered on the bones. These black spots were so small that they could not be seen clearly in the water.

He reached out and stroked it slightly.

The expected uneven feeling did not appear. These black spots were actually wiped away by him, and the bones turned white again.

After he wiped away the black spots, some very small holes finally appeared in the white bones, which were almost the same as a hair, or even thinner, but the depth was amazing.

"It was indeed a bug bite."

Ji Dao also picked up a piece of arm bone Dao.

"Something's wrong."

Zheng Yun's scalp felt slightly cold without any warning. After the first wave of cooling, speculation suddenly arose in his heart.

He quickly took out the flashlight and pointed it at the bones to observe, only to see that the bones were very transparent and the holes were all over the inside of the bones, almost carving the bones into a complex jade object.

Observing his fingers carefully, he saw that the black spots he wiped off were all on the diving suit, and they were pitch black and somewhat oily.

"What's wrong, Master Xian?"

Jidao quickly looked at Zheng Yun.

"Pick up all the bones."

Zheng Yun lowered his head and looked at his feet, his expression became more serious, his ominous premonition became stronger, and he bent down to pick up the bones.

The two picked up all the bones and placed them gently on the dressing table. Ji Dao muttered and saluted the bones, but Zheng Yun picked up the leg bones and moved them, removing all the black spots on his hands.

Not long after.

Zheng Yun wiped the bones from top to bottom, and black spots the size of fingernails accumulated on his fingers. He raised the flashlight and looked carefully, but he saw that these black spots were exactly the same as mud.

Oily.

Slightly sticky.

It was illuminated darkly by the searchlight.

It feels very smooth when pressed between fingers.

This black spot is actually exactly the same as the special sludge in the underground waterway. It can be determined that they come from the same source.

Zheng Yun observed the silt situation along the way. There was some oily silt on the first floor of the underground sewer, but on the second floor of the underground sewer, most of it was filled with oily sludge from the moment it entered the underground tunnel. It almost filled the underground tunnel until it reached the underground iron cable bridge.

The silt on the surface of Dusi Mansion is not oily, is not that dark in color, and has more impurities. It has common sand and gravel distribution, and is more similar to ordinary swamp silt.

There is also occasional blending.

The two silts are mixed together.

Ordinary sludge can be poured into the underground waterway from the underground wells on the first floor, or from the underground wells on the third floor of the underground waterway that connect to the ancient city.

It is very difficult to analyze the layering of silt, and the site is very complicated, but Zheng Yun still made a rough guess that most of this oily sludge lies in underground waterways...

This may seem like nonsense, but what Zheng Yun wants to express is not this, but a more precise classification.

Oily sludge is basically found in closed spaces.

The underground sewers are actually closed. Most of the water seeps through the cracks of the bricks, and there is little infiltration from swamps.

Moreover, these oily sludges are all in low places, even if they are mixed with ordinary sludge, they are still on the same layer.

The cause of this phenomenon is likely to be natural sedimentation, just as in the mine in La Maine Town, the corpse was swept into the ventilation shaft by the current, causing a strange phenomenon.

These oily sludges may be distributed throughout closed underground waterways and naturally settle to low and subsurface levels.

Before the explorers opened the underground sewers and destroyed the wells, causing ordinary sludge to pour into the underground sewers, the waterways should have only had this oily sludge, and no ordinary sludge at all.

That's why the current situation is formed. The underground sewer contains ordinary sludge leaking from the well, and there is also oily sludge located in the second underground layer. There is a sequential relationship in time.

But what does this mean?

Oily sludge is associated with human skeletons.

The amount of oily sludge on the second floor of the underground sewer is so horrifying that even the most imaginative people would not dare to associate it with human skeletons.

But it has to be related.

The oily sludge is likely the excrement of some tiny bugs that are small enough to burrow into the enclosed spaces of the ancient city along with seeping water and decompose human bones.

In the entire ancient city of Nanze, only closed spaces are the most likely to have human bones. When a disaster occurs, the ancients may all dive into the underground sewers to avoid the swamps that flood the city.

"Iron chain bridge..."

Zheng Yun's tail vertebrae were slightly numb.

He didn't know if his guess was right, but if the entire ancient city of Nanze was buried in a swamp and there was no way out on the surface, the underground, which was harder than the swamp, would be the way out.

This must be mentioned. Among Gu Bo's speculations on the reasons for the flooding of the ancient city of Nanze, there are theories that a large number of rivers changed their course and violent plate movements could cause the swamp to suddenly flood the city.

Based on these conjectures, before the river was not diverted and the ancient city of Nanze was flooded, the underground of the ancient city of Nanze may have been hard or even empty, and bridges could have been built to transfer people.

In fact, there is no need to talk about these.

If the swamp flooded the city and trapped hundreds of thousands of people, making it impossible to find a way out on the surface, then even if there were mountains of swords and seas of fire underground, they would still have to dig out a way alive.

Therefore, the chain bridge is probably an escape bridge that can give people a way out when the surface is buried in swamps.

But it seems to fail.

There are still a large number of people trapped in underground sewers. After being trapped and killed alive and turned into bones, they became food for this kind of insect and were decomposed into this oily sludge.

And the number is staggering.

Too many to imagine.

Even if the density of the oily sludge is lower and the volume is larger, and it is mixed with ordinary sludge, its mass is so large that it is impossible to estimate the amount converted into human bones.

what is going on?

What exactly happened in the ancient city of Nanze?

Could it be that a shocking tragedy really happened in the entire ancient city? Leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the city?

What about the Immortal Sect?

Is there a fairy gate here?

Ji Dao once said that the Immortal Gate is not open to everything, but hundreds of thousands of people in the ancient city of Nanze are trapped, can this be called everything? If there is a fairy gate, is it open?

Zheng Yun was deeply worried.

He was a little afraid to reveal the answer.

If there really is a fairy gate underground in this attic, how should I understand this matter?

The feudal royal power caused the emperor's secret guards to refuse to save him and would rather all the people in the city die than allow them to be transferred to other places through the fairy gate? Don't let them know that the Immortal Sect exists?

Or perhaps, I am overthinking it.

The source of the oily sludge is elsewhere, and it has nothing to do with human bones. Is it because I have too much imagination?

To figure out this problem, it is actually very simple. Just ask Gubo to dig some oily sludge and test its specific components, and then he can detect the relationship between it and human bones.

Perhaps Gubo had already tested it.

But even if the test results show that there are bone components in this mud, no one would think of human bones.

After all, this is a swamp ecosystem. There are too many biological populations, and it is normal for there to be bone components in the mud.

"Master Immortal? Shall we go down and have a look?"

Ji Dao looked at Zheng Yun and asked worriedly.

"Get off."

Zheng Yun slowly put down the bones.

Whether there is a fairy gate or not, you only need to look at it to know, and you can't get results even by wishing here.

He did not believe that Haiwei Supervisor Xiansi would die without saving his life or opening the Immortal Gate. Then there would be no Immortal Gate in the entire ancient city of Nanze.

But at the same time, he also knew very well that there was indeed a possibility that the Supervisory Immortal Division would not open the Immortal Sect, and the reasons were very complicated.

It's not that he blindly believes in Jianxiansi, but that the ancient city of Nanze is too secretive. This ancient city may hide a shocking secret that even Zheng Yun cannot imagine.

He has a rich imagination.

But he had no clue at all.

Oily sludge.

Attic human bones.

Auspicious colored porcelain.

Weird chain bridge.

Soldiers' memorial tower.

Tiger Marsh Camp and military exploits.

The reason why Nanze was founded.

The route break of E-09.

They accumulated a lot of clues along the way, but compared to the huge area of ​​the entire ancient city of Nanze, the route they took casually by chance was only a small part of it.

Therefore, these clues are still far away from completely solving the mystery, maybe not even one percent.

How many clues are hidden in the entire ancient city? How many clues can we find out the truth? I'm afraid there are so many clues that people are desperate, because this is only City No. 1, and there are No. 2, 3, and 4 behind it...

This is not something that happens overnight.

You must communicate a lot with the archaeological team.

Or create conditions for the Fuen Archaeological Team to enter the interior of Dusi Mansion as soon as possible to explore.

Fortunately, I brought a lot of people with me this time, and there are also undercover agents such as Kedester in the Western Expedition Team. They can collect clues from all directions. As long as you wait for a while, you will get results.

While thinking.

Ji Dao has already led the way to the stairs and leads to the attic level through the stairs. There is also only water and no mud below.

Shine the flashlight into the water.

The water quality is clear and there is little silt. Most of them were brought in when they broke the window, and there is no silt precipitation.

But the scene in front of me is still slightly eerie.

The ancient wooden stairs lead straight to the depths, bending and floating in the water due to the refraction of light. The light at the bottom of the stairs is dim, and there is a blind spot in the line of sight, making it impossible to observe the situation on the first floor.

Ji Dao walked down carefully.

The reason why he chose to break in through the second-floor window was because he was afraid of Jianxiansi's attic. Until now, they didn't know when the ancient city of Nanze was lost.

If Haiwei had not taken over the Dusi Mansion at that time, but was inspecting Nanze Dusi as the emperor's secret guard, then the possibility of a fatal mechanism in this attic was extremely high.

There is still a big difference between the emperor's secret guards and the later generations of Jianxiansi. At that time, the sea guards were a little less stable, and their methods were even more ruthless than the Jinyi guards of the East and West Factory.

Especially when guarding the Immortal Gate.

Haiwei's defense of the Immortal Sect is absolutely foolproof. From the perspective of an intruder, it means death but no life.

Have to guard against it.

So the two were extremely careful.

They were afraid that there was some mechanism hidden in this attic that could kill them both here after hundreds of years.

But it was smooth sailing.

The first floor of the attic is very ordinary, with an ordinary ancient layout. The furnishings soaked in the water are antique, and you can't tell that it is the center of Triton. The decoration is very elegant.

There are bookshelves and wooden chairs next to the stairs.

A screen separates the front room from the front.

There are ancient porcelain vases on the wooden table.

"Did Haiwei disguise this place as an ordinary residence for powerful people?" Jidao walked down the last wooden steps.

Combined with the women's boudoir upstairs, this place looks like the residence of the family members of a capital commander.

"Do we need to find a fairy gate?"

Zheng Yun looked at Jidao and asked.

"It shouldn't be necessary. It's clearly marked on the blueprint. The entrance to the secret place underground should be under this bookshelf, in the center of the entire attic."

Noriichi pointed to the ground.

There are neatly arranged floor tiles under the bookshelf in front of the stairs, and the secret place that is similar in height to the Immortal Gate is under the floor tiles. There is no trace of it, but it is not blocked by the bookshelf.