Notes on Tomb Raiders of Liu Bowen's Descendants

Chapter 19 Life and Death (3)
"Isn't this something on the roof of the yard?" Chang Sheng asked strangely, "Why are there four here, but only three there?" Before he finished speaking, Liu Ji clapped his hands and applauded. After he reminded him, Liu Ji remembered In the courtyard, there are three statues of these beasts, and there is no statue at the position of the door, that is to say, the formation of the door is left.Changing here, the key lies in the furthest northern beast, as long as its portrait can be erased, it can turn a living formation into a dead formation. gives a stark comparison.However, no one from the Xu family has come to this cemetery for so many years, Liu Bowen's hard work was in vain.

Liu Ji, who was so excited that he was almost crazy, wiped the portrait with his hands, only to find that the portrait was carved on the stone, and then polished and blurred, deliberately making it difficult to find.

He pointed to the portrait and said to Chang Sheng: "Quickly, take your shovel and polish this painting!" The stone of the portrait was shoveled over, and when two sides touched it, sparks flew in all directions, and most of the painting was destroyed in just three or five strokes.

As soon as the suppressing beast was gone, the formation immediately lost its effect.Tsui Hark's eyes lit up, and he walked straight to the coffin.Guo Laosi was unwilling to be left behind, fearing that the few people in front would rob him of the prize, so he strode over.

Tsui Hark stepped onto the high platform, and as soon as he stepped on the ground, he heard a "crack bang bang" sound, and Guo Laosi yelled: "No, everyone get down!" The whole hall vibrated, as if the moment of an earthquake Suddenly, countless hidden compartments opened on the thick wall.

There was a crossbow shining with cold light in this dark cell. When the mechanism was activated, although several people got down quickly, the crossbow shot through the scalp and took away a piece of scalp on Chang Sheng's head.

It took a few minutes for those crossbow arrows to stop.Looking at the surrounding walls, there are arrow tails all over, and the arrow body shot into the thick stone wall, more than half of it disappeared.

Mr. Guo looked at the arrows blankly. If he had reacted a little later, the entire group would have been turned into hedgehogs.Judging by the power of this crossbow, it should be no problem for each of them to penetrate a person's body.

Chang Sheng wiped off his cold sweat, covered his head with his hands, and the blood flowed down between his fingers, "Damn, I thought it was such a powerful thing, it turned out to be like this. I saw it on TV a lot." !” As soon as he was out of danger, he became proud again.

After the words fell, Tsui Hark said tremblingly, "It's over, it's over."

The wall full of arrow tails made a "creaking" sound and moved closer to the middle. The arrow shaft, which was still some distance away from the bodies of several people, slowly approached Chang Sheng's body standing on the far side.It can be seen from here that the walls of the entire hall are closing together. At this speed, even if they want to escape, they can at most escape to the door, and they will be squeezed into meat sauce.

After leaving the tiger's lair and encountering the dragon pond again, Guo Laosi glared at Chang Sheng and cursed: "Grandson, you belong to the crow in the end. In a word, we are all stuck here!"

"Go up!" Liu Ji suddenly pushed Guo Laosi, he looked around calmly, and found that only on the high platform where the coffin was placed, the wall did not squeeze over.

After being reminded by him like this, everyone was like flies in a glass bottle that finally saw the light and found the exit, and ran to the high platform at the fastest speed.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Chang Sheng complained: "Oh! This job is really not done by humans. There are more dangers one after another than when I was a soldier in the first half of my life."

Guo Laosi was in a good mood when he escaped from birth, and he didn't let Chang Sheng get up again, saying: "That is, if it weren't for this coincidence, this matter would not have happened to you, a bear-like guy." Chang Sheng ruthlessly After taking a deep breath, he turned to look at Liu Ji.He found that Liu Ji's face was still ashen, knowing that Liu Ji must have discovered something, so he hurried over to ask what's wrong.

The distance between the walls became smaller and smaller, and some arrow shafts intersected.It won't take long before the wall will close and there will be no way out.

"Hurry up and find out if there are any secret passages on the other walls above this platform, otherwise, even if we are not shot to death by crossbow arrows, we will starve to death on this high platform."

As soon as these words came out, several people split up and got busy.Guo Laosi knocked on the ground with a shovel, and Chang Sheng followed suit, but he checked the walls around, and the sound of knocking on places with passages must be different from that on solid places.Only Tsui Hark didn't check other places, but pushed the lid of the coffin with both hands.

The walls finally collided.During the collision, the pressure generated by the seemingly slow collision caused those arrow shafts to break off and fly towards the high platform in all directions.These crossbow arrows are quite insidiously designed. Not only do they happen to be stuck on the wall after a volley, but they also hollow out the middle of the arrow shaft. This collision splits the arrow shaft by the force of the collision. The momentum caused these much shorter crossbow arrows to shoot at the position of the high platform again. After people escaped, they were in a happy mood, relaxed in spirit, or found that the road was blocked and anxious to find a way out.

Fortunately, there was a sound of breaking through the air when the crossbow bolt collided and flew. With the lesson of the last continuous shooting, several people were alerted and rolled on the spot one after another, rolling to the back of the coffin.The unknown material used in this coffin was obviously very hard, even the crossbow arrows that shot through the wall made a rush of impact sound and fell down one after another, but the coffin body was not damaged at all.

Even so, Chang Sheng and Tsui Hark were also wounded and shot with arrows, one on the left arm and one on the shoulder.Because Liu Ji discovered it early, he fell to the ground in advance and rolled behind the coffin, so he was unharmed.At this time, Guo Laosi also showed his years of experience in earthwork. While rolling, he used one hand to play with the fortification shovel like a flower. Although his hand was numb from the shock, he did not suffer any injuries. .

Liu Ji couldn't hear the movement, so he stood up and looked at the arrows all over the place, feeling a little relieved. From this design point of view, if there is no way to leave on the high platform, there is no need to waste so many short arrows, just let the incoming people live It was a matter of starving to death. Although the arrow rain is coming fiercely, fortunately, everyone only suffered minor injuries. The hope of leaving here is obviously much greater.

Liu Ji couldn't help smiling at the thought of being able to get out of this stone box that was airtight on all sides.Suddenly, the lights on the high platform were all extinguished, and the surrounding area became dark.Guo Laosi yelled at everyone "Don't move", took out a bright flashlight from his bag and turned it on. The moment the light flashed, Liu Ji suddenly felt a strong wind blowing at his hand, causing severe pain in his fingertips. When Chang Sheng also turned on the flashlight , the light on the high platform lit up, and only then did he see a strange arrow sticking out of his finger.

Unlike ordinary crossbow arrows, this arrow is not in the shape of a triangular cone, but has a thin blade-like thing on the shaft of about an inch. The blade of this thing is only two or three millimeters wide. Passing by, a small opening was cut.

Chang Sheng murmured: "You're not lucky, you only met such a toy-like thing, it's not like me, it's pierced on the arm, and I dare not pull out the arrow shaft, so I can only bandage it and apply medicine, and I'll figure out a way when I get out. Seeing that he was jealous about this, Liu Ji thought it was funny, but Guo Laosi came over and grabbed his hand. Liu Ji looked at his wound and thought that there should be nothing serious.But in just a moment, it seemed that there was something heavy falling down under the skin of his wound, where the thing went, the skin and muscle were separated immediately.The pain was like skin peeling, Liu Ji couldn't help but yelled, and then hugged his injured hand.

The heavy object reached the root of the finger, and the muscles and skin on one of Liu Ji's fingers were completely separated, which looked as terrifying as wearing a human skin finger cot.And he felt that after the thing reached the palm of his hand, it seemed that he had separated dozens of objects of the same size. Although the volume had changed, the feeling of falling still existed, but the speed had slowed down.

At this speed, it would take less than half an hour for my entire arm and even my body to be detached.Chang Sheng came over and grabbed his hand, pressing it hard.But where he exerted force, the thing spread out like water, and reunited in other places, obviously this method couldn't resist its attack.

Liu Ji looked at Guo Lao Si, hoping that he would know what it was.Guo Laosi stomped his feet, "Who would have thought that there would be arrows from crossbows on this high platform." Liu Ji couldn't bear the pain, he gritted his teeth and insisted not to scream.Hearing Guo Laosi's words, Liu Ji's face, which had never changed much before, also changed. He had read the records in the wild history of this crossbow Yin Arrow, which originated in the army, and the dynasty is unknown.At first, it was used to deal with the enemy's invincible general. Luo Chengcheng, the white horse and silver spear of the Tang Dynasty, died under this arrow.

Although the dark arrow is light and small, it is not easy to be discovered because of this.Often the arrows raining down on the battlefield can be resisted by those famous generals with their own martial arts.As long as the reinforcements arrive, the crossbow will lose its effect.The negative arrows are fired in disorder during the rain of arrows, or fired at the moment when the enemy is negligent after the arrow stops, and hit the enemy.In order to make up for the lack of lethality, some arrows are often smeared with various poisons.

Looking at the condition of his body, Liu Ji knew that there must be some kind of poison on the little arrow, and none of them knew the medicine stone. It seemed that he would suffer the pain of skinning to death.

Thinking of this, I couldn't help but feel sad. I was young and innocent, and I traveled thousands of miles from Zhejiang to Beijing. I ended up in such a fate. To die under such torture is not a good end!
Losing the support of hope, Liu Ji could no longer support him, so he could only lean on the coffin and sit down, hanging his injured hand down.Blood flowed down from the wound on his hand and wet the entire ground.However, this can be regarded as a change. Those scattered things fell back towards his fingers as his hands drooped.After a while, a silver-white ball dripped from the wound on that finger. As soon as the ball landed, it rolled softly into the blood, shining brightly.

The remaining ones were accumulated between the skin and muscles of the fingertips, making the skin swell up.Liu Ji quickly bit the skin of his fingertips with his teeth, and dropped those balls to the ground.The balls touched the ground and gradually sank in the blood. After a while, they could no longer be found.

Holding his finger with a cyst on his skin, with only a little muscle hanging on it, facing the bloody palm, Liu Ji smiled surreptitiously, looking like a rotting ghost just crawled out of hell.

"Mercury." Liu Ji smiled, it turned out to be Mercury, and the rest of the three were also stunned.As the saying goes, mercury pours into the ground and penetrates everywhere.Mercury has a high specific gravity. One of the torture methods in ancient times was skinning. During the execution, a small opening was made on the scalp of the prisoner, and half a bowl of mercury was taken and poured into the wound on the top of the head. After half an hour, the human skin completely fell off from the human muscles.

At this time, the executioner came over, cut two knives on each foot and hand, divided the human skin and took it to the government for inspection.

Because the criminal law of skinning was too bloody, it was not used much in the past dynasties. Only in the Ming Dynasty, it almost became a common thing to punish prisoners.However, although there are records in the official history, there is a big discrepancy between the number of executions recorded and the actual number.

During the Hongwu period, those who embezzled a tael of silver were punished by skinning. However, according to official history, there were only about [-] people who were punished for skinning during the Hongwu period.But in fact, corruption was very common in the early Ming Dynasty, and the threshold of corruption indicators set by Emperor Zhu was low. Thousands of people were probably killed by this punishment, and it was only carried out in secret.

The battalion was full of wounded soldiers, Guo Laosi's hand was corroded by the mucus of corpses, Chang Sheng and Tsui Hark were shot again, and Liu Ji's left hand was almost crippled by mercury.There are only two options before them, one is to find a way out first, and the other is to open the coffin first.

Several people argued endlessly, and in the end it was Guo Laosi who expressed his opinion.In the field of soil, there are many birth tombs in dead places, which means that after being trapped, the way to live is often in the dead place.A coffin is a thing of death, so it is better to open the coffin and see if you can really find a way out of it.

After the discussion, several people stood up and lifted the coffin with their hands and shoulders.Tsui Hark chanted, one, two, three, and after counting three times, everyone pushed hard on the coffin lid together.But the lid of the coffin seemed to weigh ten thousand catties, and it seemed to be made of copper and iron, and it didn't move at all.

After trying a few more times, several people were exhausted, so they had to sit down and rest first.Only Mr. Guo walked around the coffin with a flashlight.He touched the gap between the coffin cover and the coffin body with his fingers, walked back and forth carefully a few times, then sat down and said: "No, this coffin is fake. The coffin cover and the coffin body are a whole. I found the wrong cemetery, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to see the true God this time.”

(End of this chapter)