Mantra

Chapter 139 Enter the thief's den

In such a dry place...why would I step on a crab?

With this question in mind, I couldn't help kicking the crab again.

With this kick, I suddenly realized that the thumb-sized crab was just an empty shell.

The crab shell is still green, but the crab meat has disappeared, as if... was eaten by a human being?
Surprised, I gradually raised my phone and began to search around.

Soon, I saw the remains of more creatures in the tomb...

Everywhere the light goes, the corpses are full of everything. I took a cursory look and found cow horns, pig intestines, dog bones and... a mouse head? !
In this long and narrow burial alleyway, animal corpses of different sizes were scattered irregularly on both sides. Their corpses were decomposed in different degrees. Some of them were only left with white bones, and some were still covered with blood and flesh.

Although the species are different, they all have a distinctive feature, that is, they are all "raw", and there are obvious signs of being bitten on them.

I looked at the wreckage scattered on the ground, and combined with the traces of human bites and cat claws on it, I immediately realized a very terrifying fact.

All of these are leftovers from Duan Tianshi and his kittens and grandchildren.

This also means that Duan Tianshi is indeed the same as Xiao Ah Si described... eating raw food!

There is only such an explanation, otherwise I would not be able to convince myself.

The image of Duan Tianshi once again subverted in my heart.

Originally, I thought he was just a liar, a rascal who was greedy for money, a monster, nothing more.

But this time, he equated with the "cat demon".

Isn't his so-called "Six Meridians Excalibur" the sharp cat's claws?Able to talk to cats, and "spells" that can make people cheat corpses, plus the habit of eating raw meat and the cat's tail in the crotch... All these are not the characteristics of cats?
... Is Duan Tianshi a "human" transformed from a cat, or a cat transformed from a "human"?I can't understand, let alone understand.

And if I want to know the truth, I can only explore deeper into the tomb.

Just when I was surprised by all this, Zhao Shuihe and Xiao Ahsi also walked down the robbery cave one after another.

Looking at the "scenery" in front of her, Zhao Shuihe was as surprised as I was, and at the same time she whispered to me: "I didn't expect...the matter would be so serious!"

Seeing that there was something in her words, I asked, "How far? What do you know?"

Zhao Shuihe didn't answer me immediately, but pointed to the fire light at the end of the tomb passage, and said close to my ear: "Go first, stop Tianshi Duan from talking."

Knowingly, I raised my eyes to look at the fire, nodded hurriedly, then picked up a brick from the ground, and took out my saber from my pocket to lead the charge.

In this way, the three of them walked step by step towards the shining place in the tomb passage.

As we approached, the three of us held our breath and stopped every step, for fear of making any excessive noise or touching some terrifying mechanisms.

I don't know how long it took, but I first moved to the light of the tomb.

The tomb passage turned a bend here, and there are still stone strips and fragments that blocked the tomb at the bend.

I can see that there used to be a stone door used to block the main tomb here, but it was blown away by explosives.

The "masterpiece" of the Japanese, Duan Tianshi's lair.

I was about to enter the tomb, and my mood suddenly became tense, so I adjusted my breathing, then leaned against the wall, slowly stretched my head to the corner of the tomb passage, and looked in through the shattered stone gate.

The glowing stone room immediately appeared in front of my eyes.

At this time, my vision suddenly opened up.

The tomb at the end of the tomb was about the size of an ordinary bedroom. There was no one in it. There was a sarcophagus in the center. The sarcophagus had been turned into a table, and it was filled with various cans, clothes, luggage, banknotes and flashlights.

The light we saw also came from the flashlight on the coffin head.

Obviously this is the lair where he is hiding, but compared to this discovery, my eyes are more focused on the sarcophagus.

The sarcophagus is simple and elegant, with an inexplicable mysterious style, which is easy to remind people of something.

From my point of view, the sarcophagus is placed very distorted, obviously it has been knocked by external force, and judging from the uneven surface texture of the sarcophagus, the owner of the sarcophagus is very identity.

I have never been in such close contact with this kind of coffin since I grew up, so I was very curious for a while, and I couldn't help scratching the lid of the coffin with my hand.

A strange tactile sensation was transmitted into my palm immediately.

I suddenly felt that there were words on the lid of the coffin!
Out of curiosity, I hurriedly picked up the flashlight on the coffin lid and took a picture of the font I touched.

There is an "Epitaph" on it.

Because of the age, the epitaph is not very accurate, and most of the ancient classical Chinese inscriptions have no punctuation marks, so although I can understand the words, I basically don't know the meaning.

But even so, I knew immediately who the sarcophagus belonged to, because I could only understand the first sentence on the coffin, and in this sentence, there was the name of the sarcophagus owner.

It reads: "In the seventh year of Yongli in the Ming Dynasty, Jingguanglu Temple's delicacy department was officially "Zhao Huo" from the Sixth Grade Department, and its ancestral home is Yimeng, Shandong."

I can understand everything in this sentence.

The old squad leader told me before that the so-called "royal chef" in ancient times was just a general term for official chefs. These royal chefs have very professional titles and divisions in the palace. The most official name should be "饧smith" Or "palm solid".

These people belong to the specialized agency of the imperial court to organize banquets, and this specialized agency is called "Guanglu Temple".

The old squad leader also said that his ancestors have been working in the institution of "Guanglu Temple" since Zhao slaughtered chickens, from Ming to Qing for more than 500 years without interruption, and the last time he was a "fire man".

Among these ancestors of the Zhao family with superb culinary skills, many of them have been "official officials because of cooking" and have been serious court officials. Some small officials who are as big as sesame seeds and mung beans are serious "civil servants" anyway, and they are considered to be at the leadership level.

It is also because of this court background that the Lunan Zhao family became famous in the Wu Zang Temple and has its own inheritance history.

And the sarcophagus in front of me is obviously the coffin of "Zhao Huo", the last imperial chef of the Zhao family in the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, I turned around and said to Zhao Shuihe: "This is the coffin of your ancestor Zhao Huo! Is it the Zhao Huo who raised the first cat demon, Huoweilian?"

After hearing what I said, Zhao Shuihe hurried over and looked at the first line of writing on the sarcophagus with a look of astonishment and regret.

After a while, she sighed softly and said: "It seems that the legend is true. Before Zhao Huo died, he felt ashamed to see his ancestors. So he buried himself in a sarcophagus, and buried with him, and the Zhao family's taboo of refining cat demons." .”

I didn't understand: "What legend?"

After Zhao Shuihe thought for a while, he told me: "It is said that after Zhao Huo refined the cat demon, he gradually realized that he had made a big mistake! And this mistake will sooner or later kill the Zhao family."

Soon, Zhao Shuihe told me the second half of Zhao Huo's story.

(End of this chapter)