The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 92: Advancing Underground

So Jerry’s brain is somewhat useful, Chen Qinghan thought and said, maybe there’s another passage below that we just haven’t discovered.

That’s true, there’s no rule that an ancient tomb can only have two levels. And not every Heavenly Maiden Tomb follows a fixed pattern; they are all built whimsically.

The space we’re in is somewhat like an elevator repair room. I don’t know, did the original builders plan for regular maintenance on the mechanisms and passages here?

In any case, the designers left us with a ’maintenance worker’s passage.’ Pete’s team, Chen Qinghan and Jerry, as well as the Five Sisters combination, all used this passage to escape the multiple traps.

The Five Sisters combination then also led us to discover the second hidden passage. Below a shaft that could be embraced by three people, there was a hole just big enough for one person to crawl through.

The footprints of the Five Sisters disappeared right by this hole. Chen Qinghan squatted down to examine the soil around the entrance.

"This wasn’t freshly dug." Chen Qinghan pinched at the soil crumbs, smelled them under his nose, and then frowned.

"What?" Seeing his head bowed in silence, I squatted down too and peeked into the hole.

"This hole was dug by that one." Chen Qinghan blurred the identity, but you could guess who he meant. If it were the Tomb Robber, he would have said so directly; such deliberate ambiguity surely referred to Jishi.

We all knew Jishi could move, and since the ’maintenance passage’ had no doors or windows, she could roam freely.

But why was she digging here? Was she planning to use tunneling to escape?

"We shouldn’t go down, it’s too dangerous." Jerry saw us planning to go down for a closer look and quickly waved his hands.

"You stay up here." Chen Qinghan wanted to leave him some food, pulling out two packs of compressed biscuits from his pocket, "Wait for us to come back. If we’re not back in 24 hours, find a way to leave on your own."

"No, don’t leave me behind! I’ll go down with you." Jerry pushed the biscuits back. Compared to death, he was obviously more afraid of staying alone in this dark underworld.

"Being afraid won’t help. No matter how much you fear death, eventually, you still have to—"

My last word was cut off by Chen Qinghan. He held my shoulder, saying, "You go down and scout."

As he spoke, he deliberately pinched my shoulder hard, throwing me a warning glance.

I really wanted to say that I was only trying to comfort Jerry, to help him overcome his fear of death.

But clearly, Chen Qinghan didn’t see it that way. He grabbed my hand and lowered me into the hole, not letting me finish my sentence.

The space below really was only big enough for me because it was extremely narrow. Chen Qinghan, although skinny, had a relatively large frame, and Jerry, well, he was out of the question.

I asked Chen Qinghan to pull me back up. This hole required you to go in headfirst to move forward; there was no room to turn around inside. Otherwise, crawling backwards was the only option.

Adjusting my posture, I entered the hole headfirst as Chen Qinghan lowered me in, then crawled forward inch by inch, cursing Jishi in my heart. If she could turn into a giant snake, why not into an excavator when digging? This narrow space left no room for hand or foot movement.

Still, my physical endurance was strong enough that I didn’t need to stop for rest. Though my movements were small, I crawled forward with quick frequency, and after about ten minutes, I heard voices.

I slowed down, moving forward lightly, straining to hear what those up ahead were saying.

The voices ahead belonged to the Five Sisters combination. They were discussing the underground river, saying this passage might lead to it, and Jishi planned to escape the tomb along the river.

Of course, Jishi is what I call her; they referred to her as the ’Priest.’

Apparently, the Five Sisters knew more than we did. The two people from Sakura probably did too. Perhaps those marked individuals had special ways of acquiring information about the Heavenly Maiden Tomb.

Searching my mind for any memories related to the ’Priest,’ I found pitifully little: recluse, mysterious, rarely seen...

Could Jishi really be such a person?

Of course, being a priest is just an occupation. There’s more than one person in that role, so to find information on Jishi, I still need to know her name.

The Five Sisters ahead mentioned ’traitor’ and ’punishment.’ Jishi’s tomb contained no burial items or mural decorations, only ’gorgeous’ mechanisms, similar in ways to my own tomb.

Are such tombs the Heavenly Maiden Clan’s prisons for criminals?

My tomb was even more dangerous than Jishi’s. Does that mean my crime was even more heinous?

But why did she turn into that form of Jishi, while I remained in my living corpse state for millennia?

The Heavenly Maiden Clan not only built strange tombs, but the people are peculiar too, all a bit unique in their abilities. I wonder if they’re like Marvel heroes, each possessing some special power.

When I realized my mind had drifted, the Five Sisters ahead suddenly halted.

They seemed to have reached the exit and sent two people to investigate.

Indeed, at the end of the tunnel, there was the sound of flowing water, and there might really be an underground river.

The two who went to check returned, saying there was a bridge across the river and suggested the others go take a look.

The five of them crawled out of the tunnel, and the shoulder-length-haired girl whistled, saying, "Who would have thought, there’s a whole world down here."

"Look at that bridge; it doesn’t look like the style of the Heavenly Maiden Clan," the waist-length-haired girl said.

"Yeah, but the original inhabitants of this place couldn’t have had the technology to build such a bridge. Maybe it’s naturally formed?" the ear-length-haired girl chimed in.

"That doesn’t matter; finding the Priest is the priority," the short-haired girl said, ending their discussion.

"We don’t even know where this river leads. Could she really travel by water?"

"Exactly, what if this river flows into a deeper underground water system?"

"Let’s check out the other side of the bridge. Maybe she went there."

The short-haired girl pondered for a moment, then agreed to this suggestion. The five of them one by one crossed the bridge. Who knows how long that bridge has existed in this underworld, but to this day it’s still standing, and all five crossing didn’t cause any trouble. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Once they crossed, I crawled out of the hole, walked around a bit, and stretched my limbs.

Outside the hole was a riverbank. This river was really wide, but the current wasn’t fast, so while inside the tunnel listening, I hadn’t imagined it was such a broad river.

There was indeed a bridge over the river. Standing on this side, I couldn’t see anyone on the bridge’s other side, showing just how wide the river was.

The bridge mentioned by the Five Sisters stretched straight to the opposite bank, a narrow suspension bridge with no supports underneath and flat, with its surface just half a meter above the river.

If the underground river level rose, this bridge would be submerged. I’m curious who built this bridge, with no piers to bear weight, constantly worn by river currents, yet still standing solid after so many years.

The period when the ancient tomb was built was not short, and this bridge, if anything, would have been constructed even earlier, not later.