The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 93: The Ancient Underground Bridge

I walked to the head of the bridge, there were no extra decorative carvings on the bridge, suggesting it was built purely for crossing the river, or in other words, the builders only intended it to be a simple river-crossing tool.

So why did the bridge builders want to cross the river? What were they doing over there?

No wonder the Five Sisters were curious, I was quite curious too, but I couldn’t follow them up, I had been down here a bit too long, and if I didn’t return soon, Qinghan would worry something had happened to me.

I crawled back into the hole, retraced my steps along the maintenance tunnel, and told Qinghan and Jerry that there was an underground river down below, and that there was an ancient bridge spanning it, neither collapsing nor decaying for a thousand years.

Upon hearing my description, Jerry immediately piqued with interest, saying how great it would be if he could go down and see it for himself.

Just moments before, he seemed like he was about to go crazy from staying inside, but upon hearing that there was a thousand-year-old bridge below, his eyes instantly sparkled.

"No matter where it leads, it’s certainly not an exit," Qinghan slightly frowned in thought, "Maybe it’s another underground project built by someone else."

"But the monster, what if they’ve fled down there, you guys wait for me here, I’ll just take a look and come right back." In this Underworld, I felt more carefree than outside; it’d be a shame to miss out on the excitement.

"Alright, you be careful," Qinghan nodded decisively.

"No, you can’t go, that creature went there, and so did those fierce women, you’ll be in danger," Jerry objected.

"Hmm... I won’t let them find me, I will hide very well." I swallowed back the words that were about to come out of my mouth and opted for a gentler tone.

Jerry was already quite stressed, I shouldn’t give him another blow; if I told him that I’m actually safer without him, it would probably hit hard.

Qinghan also chimed in, "She’s very professional, she even made it to the main tomb plaza all by herself without a single scratch."

Only then did Jerry come to a realization; amidst all the previous chaos, he probably hadn’t had the time to think things through.

Upon being reminded by Qinghan, he stared at me for two seconds, mouth slightly ajar as though intending to speak, then after moving his throat a bit, he closed his mouth and gestured ’please’ towards the hole in the ground.

Qinghan handed me a whistle, not made of metal but presumably some kind of creature’s bone.

"Blow this down there, if I’m not too far away, I’ll hear it. One blow means you’re alright, two means you can’t come up for now, and three signals danger, telling us to leave quickly."

I took the whistle, looped its cord around my neck, and nodded to indicate I understood.

"Wait, if she encounters danger, how do we get down to save her?" Jerry noticed the loophole in Qinghan’s instructions and quickly raised the question.

"We can’t get down there, and it would be too late anyway," Qinghan stated quite objectively.

Jerry wanted to refute but had nothing to say because Qinghan was speaking facts.

Unable to think of any solution, he had to keep quiet; in this Underworld, mere concern was useless, actual skill to overcome difficulties was needed.

Clearly, Jerry lacked such skills, so apart from kicking stones in frustration, there was nothing else he could do.

I returned to the underground hole, crawled to the riverbank beside the underground river; the bridge was quiet, and the river flowed silently, without a sound in the surroundings.

I grabbed the whistle first and blew it once to signal to Qinghan that I was safe; he’s got lots of interesting stuff, like Doraemon. After blowing it, I stepped towards the bridge head.

Judging from the bridge head’s position, when it was initially built, the water level was roughly the same as the ground level of the hole, and the river beach before my eyes should all have been underwater.

I felt the bridge’s handrail, it felt somewhat like metal, but metal soaking in water for a long time, even stainless steel, would rust, especially having been submerged for thousands or even longer years.

I lifted my foot and firmly stomped on the bridge a few times, finding it totally unmoved. I found it interesting, repeatedly stomping and bouncing on the bridge.

Once I was sure the bridge was solid enough, I proceeded further; the flashlight beam from the Five Sisters was long gone.

Following Qinghan’s method, wanting to know if the monster had crossed the bridge, I sniffed the bridge surface because the monster wasn’t real dung, so the scent she emitted wasn’t the foul stench of dung.

It was more like sulfur or some chemical solution odor; the whole underground hole was reeking of such, so I knelt down, moving my nose close to the bridge’s surface back and forth, eventually catching a whiff of her scent.

Since she indeed crossed to the bridge’s other side, I quickly followed, lest I’d miss the grand performance.

Across the bridge was a massive stone wall, the gigantic rock looking as if it had been knife-sliced, perpendicular to the river surface at a ninety-degree angle.

In the gap between two rocks, there was a triangular entrance; due to the distance, it was unseen from the river beach’s side.

I walked into the dark entrance, following the footprints on the ground. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

This place hadn’t seen visitors for years; the Five Sisters’ footprints were exceptionally clear. After about five minutes, a cluster of lights appeared ahead.

I thought something was off, since the underground river was below the tomb’s position, it couldn’t possibly be an exit out of the Underworld.

Approaching the exit, I found the light wasn’t natural but appeared to be from a lamp, similar to the one above the main tomb plaza.

Indeed, outside was just an ’empty hole,’ like an air bubble underground; at the cave’s top was a bulb identical to the main tomb chamber’s.

It’s said to be a bulb, but it required no electricity; I suspected that the one in the monster tomb was taken from here.

Standing at the passage’s end, mist enveloped below; at the exit’s edge, I found a hooked claw lodged in the crevice of rocks, with a rope attached, presumably the Five Sisters descended using it.

If I went down, I’d be even farther from the ground; not to mention what the bridge builders were engineering here, what was that monster doing down here?

The rope wasn’t taut, suggesting no one was on it; I waited two minutes, and it hadn’t moved.

While my eyes could see in the darkness, they couldn’t see through mist; night vision doesn’t equate to X-ray vision, so I turned on my mini flashlight dangling on my neck and started sliding down the Five Sisters’ rope.

After descending a while, I noticed something on the cliff face, so I stopped to feel and examined it, discovering it was part of a large machine, specifically, it seemed to be a part of an elevator shaft.

The type of elevator I mentioned wasn’t the kind hoisted by steel cables, but one with tracks embedded in the walls; I had seen it in a movie once but never paid much mind, so I couldn’t recall what genre of film it was.

However, these tracks displayed signs of deliberate sabotage, either fractured or missing parts, visibly results of violent destruction.

Someone had previously traversed up and down here frequently; if the constructors wished to prevent access, why not blow up the bridge too? Crossing such a wide underground river without a bridge, unless by boat—where would such boats be brought in?

Carrying numerous concerns within, my feet finally touched the ground.