The story of Rose starts with being a brother

Chapter 541 Heavenly Palace on the Clouds (Part 7) Zhang Wei's Trail of Ice Burial

"The 'Hanlong Jing' says, 'The central star of the Three Platforms is the most honored, with the left and right platforms serving as assistants.' Here, the mountains stretch endlessly, covered in snow all year round, and surrounded by clouds and mist. This also corresponds to what the 'Zang Jing' says: 'Hiding is riding on the vital energy.' It is indeed a feng shui treasure land pursued by ancient emperors and generals."

On the snow-capped mountain, Xinling gazed at the Five Sacred Snow Mountains ahead and spoke softly.

Upon hearing this, Wen Sheng raised an eyebrow, but before he could speak, Hu Yifei exclaimed in surprise, "No way, Xinling, you know about feng shui?"

"No, I'm just saying that based on what's described in the book."

Seeing everyone looking at her with surprise, Xinling smiled shyly.

At this moment, Wen Sheng suddenly remembered that when he went to Xin Ling's apartment, he saw that her home was indeed filled with various books. He just didn't expect that she not only read history books, but also books related to feng shui.

This is a truly niche girl.

Tang Youyou thought for a moment and said, "If Jian Ning and the others go on an archaeological expedition, is that where they're going? Will Zhang Wei go with them too?"

“But the problem is that the Three Sacred Mountains are not within our territory, so we can’t go there,” Zeng Xiaoxian said.

"Are we going to try to smuggle ourselves in?"

"..."

Lu Ziqiao's words immediately silenced everyone.

Seeing that this group of people wanted to attack the Three Saints Snow Mountain, the guide quickly advised them: "Don't be impulsive. There are only a few paths to the mountain, and they are all high hills. The soldiers on guard are all armed. The first shot is a warning, and the second shot will hit your leg."

Hearing them say that, the others had no choice but to focus their attention on Wen Sheng and Hu Yifei.

After thinking for a moment, Wen Sheng looked at Xin Ling and asked, "Xin Ling, what other knowledge do you have?"

"Huh? Let me think..."

Xinling paused for a moment, then frowned and recalled for a while before saying, "I remember that this three-headed dragon pattern is for one main burial and two secondary burials, called 'ministerial and assistant burial'. There was a Warring States period tomb with three sons buried together that was excavated in Mangshan that was quite similar. There were passageways connecting the main tomb in the middle to the tomb in the ancient tombs on both sides of the mountain, but these passageways had already collapsed when they were excavated."

After listening to Xinling's words, Wensheng had an idea in mind. Although he couldn't go up the Three Saints Snow Mountain, he could enter the burial mausoleum from the other two mountains and then enter the main tomb, the Cloud Palace.

Wen Sheng wasn't the only one who thought this way; the others also realized it. After exchanging glances, they headed towards Little Sacred Mountain.

……

A few days ago, perhaps no one would have imagined that this group of young people who were enjoying eating, drinking and having fun in Shanghai would actually come to this vast mountain, cross the primeval forest, and climb the towering snow-capped mountains. Forget about going online, they might not even be able to get a hot meal.

And everyone already knew that they might have to go down into the tomb next.

Therefore, after the initial sightseeing and tourism phase ended, the rest of the journey was filled with people worrying about Zhang Wei while simultaneously cursing him.

Fortunately, it is currently the hottest time of the year, summer, and the August sun has minimized the difficulty of their trip.

Even with their feet on the snow-covered mountain, the sun overhead gave them immense confidence.

However, the further they went, the more physically exhausted they became. As the saying goes, "looking at a mountain makes a horse run itself to death." They had thought that the Little Sacred Snow Mountain was only an hour or two away, but it wasn't until dark that they finally reached the valley at the foot of the Little Sacred Mountain.

After a brief discussion, everyone decided to set up camp here for the night.

"Come quick, there's a backpack here."

Not long after they had rested, Chen Meijia's shout drew everyone's attention again.

Wen Sheng walked over and saw a black backpack on the back of a rock. The backpack was half-buried in snow, and it would not have been easy to find if he hadn't come over specifically.

"I was just..." Chen Meijia's face turned slightly red when she saw everyone coming over. After hesitating for a moment, she still said, "I was going to the toilet, but I almost got knocked over when I walked over. When I turned around, I saw this backpack."

No one found Chen Meijia's words funny. In this desolate, snowy wilderness, one could only relieve oneself in front of the sky.

Just as Wen Sheng was about to drag his backpack out of the snow, Zeng Xiaoxian hurriedly said, "Wait, is there something bad in this bag?"

"Maybe it's fragments of people's bodies, someone dumped them here!" In this environment, Tang Youyou really loves telling scary stories.

Hu Yifei rolled her eyes at her and said, "Who would dump a body here? Aren't they afraid of getting themselves involved?"

"It's alright. Even if there's something scary, my 'Dojigiri Yasutsuna' is no pushover."

"..."

Listening to everyone's comments, Wen Sheng shook his head and pulled his backpack out of the snow. Seeing that the zipper was still in good condition, he easily unzipped it.

"what!"

Chen Meijia's scream made everyone take a step back.

"What did you see?"

"I didn't see anything, but I just couldn't help shouting."

"..."

After everyone rolled their eyes, they turned their attention to Wen Sheng, who was standing in front of the backpack.

"It's nothing." Wen Sheng turned around, carrying his backpack. "It's just a folded-up tent inside."

"call!"

A sigh of relief rang out from the crowd.

"A tent? I thought it was something else."

"Could you please stop shaking your legs?"

"It's frozen."

"..."

After calming down, Xinling asked, "But how come there's a backpack containing a tent here?"

"It must belong to Zhang Wei or the archaeological team. This bag doesn't look like it's from a long time ago."

After Lu Ziqiao finished speaking, everyone fell silent for a moment.

If it's Zhang Wei's...

“This isn’t your friend’s; I remember his backpack wasn’t like this.” The guide’s words immediately livened up the somber atmosphere.

"Are you sure? This really isn't Zhang Wei's bag?" Hu Yifei asked hurriedly.

"I'm sure, her backpack was pink, I remember it very well."

"..."

Hearing this, the group felt a little strange. How come they hadn't noticed that Zhang Wei actually had a tender heart when they were in the apartment?
“Since this bag doesn’t belong to Zhang Wei, it must belong to Jian Ning’s archaeological team,” Tang Youyou said, frowning. “But why didn’t they even take the tent?”

"It's not that we don't want it anymore."

Wen Sheng looked up at the small sacred peak under the night sky: "It probably fell from there."

"What do you mean?" Tang Youyou asked, bewildered.

Wen Sheng did not answer the question, but looked around and said, "Look around the neighborhood, there might be other things."

……

Half an hour later, everyone gathered together, looking at what they had found.

"Sleeping bag, waterproof jacket, flashlight... what's this little tube?"

Chen Meijia nodded and then pointed to a thin tube and asked.

Upon seeing this thing, Wen Sheng's expression turned serious, while the guide on the other side exclaimed in shock, "Detonator?! Are they crazy? Bringing detonators into the snow mountain? What are they planning to do?"

“They don’t intend to do anything,” Wen Sheng said, frowning. “They’ve already done it. Underneath the snow on the mountain is a layer of ice; the only way for them to get in is to blast it open.”

"Explode?! Aren't they afraid of an avalanche?!"

"So these things fell down, probably washed down during the avalanche."

This speculation immediately weighed heavily on everyone's hearts, both shocked by the madness of those people and distressed by the potential casualties.

Normally, in an apartment, people might cut their hands while cutting fruit, but here, it seems like there could be a real danger to their lives.

"Hey, what's that dark thing?"

Just as everyone was distracted, Dali pointed to an object shaped like a crescent moon and asked.

As she spoke, she tapped the surface with her hand.

"It's so hard, like a rock."

Zeng Xiaoxian picked it up in his hand, weighed it in his hand, and then brought it to his nose to smell it.

"Ugh~" Hu Yifei made a disgusted sound.

"What? I just want to know what this thing is."

"So, do you know now?"

"have no idea." "……"

Zeng Xiaoxian also realized that his behavior just now was a bit stupid. After clearing his throat, he said, "This thing has some weight to it. It doesn't seem like a stone. I think I smell a kind of... smoked bacon smell."

"Smoked bacon?" Lu Ziqiao scoffed. "Zeng Xiaoxian, have you gone starving on the mountain?"

"You're the one who's starving!"

Zeng Xiaoxian rolled his eyes at him, then handed the dark lump in his hand to everyone, saying, "If you don't believe me, smell it. It really does smell like smoked cured meat."

Upon hearing this, Tang Youyou was the first to bring her nose close and smell it, then exclaimed in surprise, "It really does smell like the smoked bacon from my hometown!"

She paused for a moment, then added, "No, it's not smoked bacon, it should be smoked pig's trotters."

"What do you mean by smoked bacon or smoked pig's trotters? This is called the smell of smoked meat, okay?" Hu Yifei corrected, leaning forward to smell it as well.

"Could it be that they were having a barbecue on this snowy mountain?" Guan Gu Shenqi reasoned. "I think that's very possible, because they really wanted to have a barbecue while they were on the mountain, and they got into a fight because they couldn't share it. In the end, one of them used a detonator to blow up the mountain so he could have all the barbecue, which triggered an avalanche!"

"..."

The valley fell silent, with only the howling of the wind.

After taking the dark, unremarkable object, Wen Sheng said, "I heard that when tomb raiders go down into a tomb, they worry about unclean things inside, so they prepare black donkey hooves specifically to ward off those unclean things. Those black donkey hooves are air-dried or smoked during the production process, making them as hard as stone and preventing them from rotting and smelling bad."

Everyone was surprised after hearing Wen Sheng's explanation.

"So, this thing is a black donkey hoof?"

"Is there something unclean in the tomb? A zombie or a ghost?"

"Can this thing really be controlled?"

"..."

A series of questions were asked by the crowd, but no one understood these things and no one could provide an explanation.

Zeng Xiaoxian looked around for a while and then sneered, "What era are we living in that you still believe in this stuff? You guys are all from the 80s generation, what a waste of your education?"

Upon hearing this, Guan Gu couldn't help but ask, "Teacher Zeng, aren't you afraid?"

"I'm a staunch materialist, how could I possibly be afraid of these things!"

……

Nothing happened that night. The next day, as soon as the sun rose, everyone packed up and started climbing Little Sacred Mountain.

What we discovered last night was a mixed blessing for everyone. We were happy that we hadn't gone the wrong way, but worried that there might be some extraordinary dangers ahead.

Although everyone here is a young man and woman living in the city, they can't help but feel a little worried about the possibility of going down into an ancient tomb.

Let alone ancient tombs, just thinking about grave mounds is enough to send chills down your spine.

Especially for Guan Gu, although he had been stubborn before, he was the one most afraid of horror movies. He had been using the unsharpened craft samurai sword as a cane all the way, and dared not let it out of his hand.

But to everyone's surprise, some daily necessities were occasionally found along the way up the mountain. Without a doubt, those were left behind by the previous archaeological team.

"That's strange. Shouldn't an avalanche have buried all these things? How come we can see them on the road?" Hu Yifei asked.

“Maybe it was just a small avalanche that didn’t completely bury everything,” Zeng Xiaoxian replied.

"Heh!" Hu Yifei was too lazy to say more.

Wen Sheng was also a little puzzled. However, an avalanche must have happened, otherwise, they should still be able to see the traces of the people ahead along the way. But now, apart from the objects buried in the snow, there are no other traces to be seen.

Or... Wen Sheng's eyes flickered slightly; someone in that group had been reduced in number.

The road up the mountain was always particularly tiring, so to prevent any accidents, everyone refrained from rushing, otherwise they might have ended up getting a ride before Zhang Wei could find them.

As they continued their journey, stopping and starting, the mountain range's three-headed dragon pattern became even more clearly visible to everyone.

Even these laymen who knew nothing about feng shui couldn't help but marvel at the sight of such a mountain range.

"When I die, I want to be buried here," Lu Ziqiao couldn't help but say. "That way, my descendants might become very wealthy and powerful!"

"Come on, Young Master Lü, you're just not destined for that!" Chen Meijia sniffed and retorted. "You can't even afford a house while you're alive, and you want to live here when you're dead? You might as well just find a mass grave and reserve a spot when you're old!"

"Lu Ziqiao, the money those kings and generals spent building their tombs here could buy so many houses in Shanghai!" Zeng Xiaoxian chimed in with a complaint.

"What do you know? I'll just set up a grave here and soak up some of the dragon's energy," Lu Ziqiao snorted.

At this moment, Xinling laughed and said, "In ancient times, some tribes that lived in the icy and snowy land would throw the bodies into the glacier after someone died. This is called ice burial."

"I mean, do you really have to talk about this at a time like this?" Hu Yifei, who was walking ahead, turned around and said, "Can't you save your energy? If you're going to talk about something, can't you at least say something cheerful?"

"Oh right, right, spit it out!" Lu Ziqiao immediately realized that this place was already dangerous, and saying such things would be cursing himself.
After walking for a while, Wen Sheng suddenly stopped. The people following behind asked, "What's wrong?"

“What Xinling said is true.”

Currently, the group is on the mountainside of Xiaosheng Mountain. The snow-covered slope looks like a snowfield, but in front of Wen Sheng, a long crack is revealed, and the cross-section of the crack is frozen into an ice layer by the snow that never melts.

A glacier appeared.

From Wen Sheng's perspective, beneath the glacier lay countless corpses.

"This is..." Lu Ziqiao looked at the scene below the glacier through binoculars, then swallowed hard and said, "Ice burial?"

If everyone's initial mental preparation for this trip involved the hardships of traversing mountains and rivers, as well as the fear and excitement of possibly encountering "dirty things," then seeing the corpse in person now made them feel exceptionally heavy-hearted.

They should have been resting at this time, but perhaps worried about the bad luck of the corpses under the glacial crevice, everyone wanted to walk further away before resting.

And so they walked until evening.

"I can't go on, my legs are going to go numb if I walk any further!" Zeng Xiaoxian plopped down on the ground.

Hu Yifei tried to pull him up, but she lost her balance and sat down herself.

Tang Youyou checked the time and said, "Teacher Wen, let's rest. We didn't eat enough on the way here."

Wen Sheng nodded, looked around for a moment, and then said, "Okay, let's go to the leeward slope over there. We can pitch a tent there."

After saying that, he looked at Xinling and Dali beside him. The two of them were also quite tired. Although they had stopped and rested many times, the current journey was too much for them.

"Do you regret it? You could have had a good time down in the mountains, but you came here to suffer instead."

Xinling, who was covering her face with a windproof mask, waved her hand, it was unclear whether she was saying she didn't regret it or that she was too weak to speak.

Dali, however, stubbornly insisted, "Exciting!"

"..."

Just as everyone was heading over to set up camp, Wen Sheng twitched his nose a few times and then walked back up the snowfield.

Upon seeing this, Lü Ziqiao quickly shouted, "Wen..."

He had barely uttered a single word when Zeng Xiaoxian swiftly covered his mouth.

"Brother, this is a snow-capped mountain. If you shout and trigger an avalanche, we'll really be buried in the ice!"

"Woo!"

Lu Ziqiao nodded to indicate that he understood, and then pointed in the direction of Wen Sheng.

After Zeng Xiaoxian let go of him, he got up and followed Wen Sheng. The guide next to him followed as well.

"What's wrong, Wensheng?"

"I think we've arrived at our destination."

Standing on the thick ice and snowfield, Wen Sheng looked at a large, abrupt hole in the ice and said.

Below this huge hole is a vast, gray space, where the entire ice layer—or rather, the ice dome—is like a transparent bowl overturned on a cliff.

On the mountainside of that cliff, a huge, fetal-shaped cave appeared, and inside this cave, there was actually a huge palace with horizontal eaves and flying beams.

"Incredible, this is simply a miracle." Lu Ziqiao exclaimed as he looked at the palace through his binoculars.

"Are we going down into this hole?" Zeng Xiaoxian asked in a panic as he realized this.

Wen Sheng looked at the distant Three Saints Snow Mountain and shook his head, indicating that he hadn't decided yet. But then he heard Lu Ziqiao exclaim, "I see a pink backpack down there!"

He paused, then added, "There are also some fragments of clothing."

"Zhang Wei, he really went in? And... he encountered danger?!"

……

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds, a lewd sound rang out.

"So what if she's a female ghost? Since you're already here, I, Zhang Lushi, don't care if you're cold or hot, hehehe~"

(End of this chapter)