I can’t quite remember what the symbols in the underwater tomb looked like, but I still vividly recall the two symbols that were just carved at the bottom of the moat and at the entrance of the passage. Now, this one symbol is completely different from those two.

Fatty Pan and the others really have no concept of English letters; they can’t distinguish between them at all, so they didn’t pay attention earlier. However, as someone who has been to university and taken the CET-4 and CET-6 exams, I may not have done well, but I at least know that these two are different words.

I always thought this was just a simple guiding symbol, similar to any basic shape, meaning “go this way.” But if it’s just a guiding sign, the symbol shouldn’t change. According to general human psychology, once you enter a tomb passage, your attention should be entirely on the surrounding environment. It’s unlikely that someone would deliberately change the design while carving symbols, especially since the carving was done very hurriedly. This indicates that the person leaving the mark was not in a very calm situation, which further rules out the possibility of them whimsically changing the symbol.

Now, this phenomenon can only mean one thing: these symbols have different meanings. While they guide us, they also seem to convey some information.

The question is, what exactly is that information? This foreign text isn’t really foreign, but it consists of English letters, and it’s hard to tell what language it is. However, it definitely isn’t similar to common languages like German or French, as the arrangement of the letters is too irregular.

Moreover, the symbol we saw at the bottom of the river and at the entrance of the passage didn’t lead to any danger. If we assume the meaning is: safe to enter, then this different symbol carved here must have a different meaning. It could very well be a warning, indicating that there is some terrifying danger in the direction of the tomb passage.

Fatty and the others found my thoughts somewhat troubling. We paused in place, not daring to act recklessly for the time being.

However, having reached this point is already a significant breakthrough; we can say we have succeeded halfway. At this moment, the question of which way to go in the tomb seems less important. Even without guiding symbols, we are not panicking.

It’s just that once we enter the underground palace, especially after the main tomb passage, we must be particularly cautious. Because if there are traps and mechanisms inside the ancient tomb, they are definitely in this segment, so we need to spend some time here.

Panzi said to me, “Little Third Master, you’re the only one here with some knowledge of foreign languages. If even you can’t recognize this, then we really can’t figure it out. Why don’t you translate these English words into Chinese? Even if we don’t know the entire sentence’s meaning, we can at least make some guesses.”

Panzi doesn’t know any English at all. He probably thinks that English is like Chinese characters, with one letter having one meaning. I was too lazy to enlighten him and said to them, “If we’re going to guess, we might as well guess who left this symbol and what their purpose was. That way, we might have a better chance of figuring out the meaning.”

Fatty asked curiously, “We don’t know who left it, but do we really need to guess the purpose? It’s definitely to guide us!”

I shook my head and said, “I used to think that way too, but not anymore. If this was really left for us, at the very least, it should be written in symbols we can understand. The form used by the person who carved these symbols is so obscure that it seems the purpose is not to help us; we might have just stumbled upon something trivial. These symbols might be meant for someone else.”

Panzi thought for a moment and found it somewhat reasonable, then asked, “So who is this ‘someone else’?”

“An Ning and the others have a lot of people, and they might have acted in batches. These symbols could be codes between their small teams,” the fat guy said.

I nodded, acknowledging that it was a possibility, but there was no solid evidence, making it impossible to guess the actual situation. I added, “It could also be for other reasons; speculating about it now is pointless.”

What concerned me the most was the information contained in these symbols. Such symbols should be similar to the legends on international adventure maps; some paths in primitive jungles are marked with different levels of danger. A symbol not only indicates that a path is passable but can also inform you about what you might encounter along the way. For example, if there are hippos in the river, there would be a symbol indicating their presence.

Now that we were here, the fact that this symbol had changed made its special meaning worth considering. Could it indicate that there are zongzi (sticky rice dumplings) in this tomb? That thought was quite frustrating.

I recalled the “Beware of Bears” sign on off-road vehicles; perhaps the person who left this symbol had a theoretical approach to adventure. This symbol could mean “Beware of Zongzi.” Then I thought about whether I should stick one on my little gold Mercedes if I made it out alive, to express my personality.

Panzi, unaware that I was lost in my thoughts, suddenly said to me, “That’s not right. I think the information conveyed by this symbol cannot indicate any danger. Think about it: in a tomb, you wouldn’t know if there’s danger until you walk through it. There’s no reason for them to carve this symbol after they’ve walked through; it means this symbol was carved just before they entered the tomb, indicating the direction they took and informing future explorers of their route. As for what lies inside, they wouldn’t have known at the time of carving. This actually has a significance, called ‘tracking language.'”

I had never heard of this concept, and the fat guy asked him, “What do you mean by tracking language?”

Panzi replied, “Before I hunted monkeys in Vietnam, I studied cultural subjects while serving in the military. Because I served in the jungle, I learned a lot about rescue techniques. ‘Tracking’ language means that if you encounter danger and get lost in the jungle, while you’re trying to find your way out, you must mark your walking route. There are specific rules for how to do this. When the rescue team sees your markings, they can understand what you’ve done in that area. For example, a marking indicating sufficient food is one type of sign, while a marking indicating that food has run out is another. If someone in the team has perished, that’s yet another sign. The rescue team can follow your markings to know your situation. If things worsen, they can use these markings to adjust their rescue strategy. I heard this was something invented by the Americans during their conflict with the Vietnamese.”

The fat guy asked him, “Since you’ve studied this, can you understand it?”

Panzi shook his head and said, “What I mean is, maybe this code is completely different from what I learned at the time, and I can’t recognize it. But I believe it should be a kind of tracking language. There’s no need for us to decipher it; the changes in this symbol might just mean that he twisted his ankle here.”

The胖子 sighed and said, “This is not good. If it really is a ‘tracking’ language, it means the person who left this symbol is not aiming for success; he’s preparing for his second team. This means he doesn’t have confidence that he can come out alive this time.”

Panzi replied, “Exactly! So after all this talk, it’s of no practical use. I think since this symbol wasn’t left for us to see, we should pretend we didn’t see it. Our main task now is to find Third Master. The symbol wasn’t carved by him, which means he might not have taken this path. Following it, no matter how smoothly it goes, won’t help us. We should take our own path. We’ve faced many challenges before, and we’ve encountered situations like this. I refuse to believe we can’t even handle exploring a tomb.”

This line of reasoning resonated with胖子, who nodded in agreement and said to us, “Old Pan, now that sounds more like it. How about we split into two groups? You and Xiao Wu go that way, and I’ll go with Xiao Shun to this side. Let’s see who finds something first. It’s a straight path anyway. If we reach the end and find something wrong, we can just turn back. The other group can wait outside the coffin chamber. Hesitating here won’t help.”

I felt uneasy about this plan and said, “That’s true, but I’m afraid this main tomb path isn’t that easy to traverse. Look at the four-foot stone slabs on the ground; this kind of tomb path likely has mechanisms like crossbows and trap doors. What if both teams reach the end and end up dead in the tomb? We might say goodbye forever once we split up.”

胖子 mocked me, saying, “By your logic, you shouldn’t have come at all. If you’re so worried about this little issue, why come down here? Since we’re already in the underground palace, we shouldn’t be afraid of such minor matters.”

I thought to myself, this was my choice to come here. My lifelong dream has always been to be a wealthy little citizen. I don’t know what kind of luck I’ve had this year, always running into sticky situations. Now I’m not even afraid of sticky situations, but they won’t let me be cautious. What kind of nonsense is this?

Panzi shared my thoughts and said to胖子, “No, Xiao San Ye is right. Just one reason: the people from Aning’s horse team must be nearby. We need to guard against the sticky situations, but we also have to guard against people. Two guns are definitely better than one. And what if one team goes out and disappears without coming back? What will the other team do? It’s better for us to stick together for support.”

Shunzi, who had been silent, also expressed his stance: “No matter what, I have to get Boss Wu there. I have to follow him.”

胖子 raised his hand in surrender to the three of us: “You two are engaging in personal worship here, isolating me! Talk about bad luck. Just do whatever you want; it’s all the same to me—might as well die together.”

Panzi said, “We’ll first head in the direction marked by the symbol. If it’s wrong, we’ll turn back. We should be careful about everything.”

We nodded in agreement. I understood very well that at this point, discussing things here was useless. Now, which way to go and how to proceed all depended on luck.

Then I got up, and Panzi pulled out a folding walking stick similar to a blind man’s cane, tapping it against the ground as we walked toward the direction marked with symbols.

We proceeded with extreme caution. In my heart, I was already very annoyed with this kind of place where even walking couldn’t be done in peace, but there was no other choice. Since we had come this far, we couldn’t skip this step; otherwise, all the hardships we had endured before would have been in vain.

I initially thought we would spend at least half an hour in this tomb passage, but unexpectedly, this section was very short, less than two hundred meters, and it suddenly widened, revealing a huge jade door at the end.

I recognized at a glance that this was the entrance to the Ming Hall, as the tomb door at the entrance wouldn’t be made of such good stone. The lower half of the door had already been blown off, revealing a large opening. Clearly, someone had entered before us; I didn’t know if it was An Ning and the others or someone else.

I felt a surge of joy in my heart; this meant we were on the right path. Behind the door was the core part of the entire underground palace. Many classic tomb structures immediately came to my mind. Although this was the royal tomb of Dongxia, it was built under the guidance of Han people, so it probably wouldn’t be too different from the tombs in the Central Plains. What would we see once we entered? I couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous, wondering what the coffin of the King of Ten Thousand Slaves would look like and whether there were accompanying coffins around.

The jade door of the tomb would most likely have traps, and the stone walls on both sides might be hollow, filled with poisonous stone powder. Moreover, these traps often had no way to be deciphered because once the tomb was closed, it was never intended to be opened again. Even if you were the craftsman who designed the door, you wouldn’t be able to enter once it was shut.

However, since the door had already been blown up like this, it was likely that any traps had also been damaged, so there was no need to worry about that. We bent down and entered one after another into the tomb chamber behind the door. Out of caution, Fatty lit a cold smoke fire to enhance our lighting, allowing us to clearly see the layout of the tomb chamber.

The moment the cold smoke fire lit up, we were confronted with a breathtaking scene that left us all in shock. None of us expected to see such a sight, and we were almost frozen in place, unable to move.