Tomb Raider: I Am Hu Bayi's Cousin

Chapter 797 Hu Ming: I praised you too soon!
When Hu Ming regained consciousness and his mind cleared, he found himself lying quietly in a dark underground cave, with the precious sword lying quietly beside him.

The horrific knife wound on his chest had disappeared, his clothes were completely undamaged, and there was no trace of blood on his body.

Hu Ming silently took out the gold fragment from his pocket. The gold had lost its luster and turned grayish-white. Under the warmth of Hu Ming's palm, it turned into dust and disappeared.

Above, stalactites hung upside down, slowly dripping murky water droplets.

With the help of night vision, the faint, almost invisible light was instantly amplified a thousandfold, making everything in front of us seem like daytime.

He stood up, shook his head, and dispelled the last trace of confusion in his mind. Hu Ming carefully considered the strange events that had occurred some time ago.

To be honest, he was still somewhat amazed by the power that could bypass intuition, golden eyes, and dragon and phoenix bloodline tattoos, and directly pull Hu Ming into some kind of illusion.

In the past, the most terrifying things he had encountered were undoubtedly the sound of the bronze hexagonal wind chime and the corpse-fragrant devil flower that had become a spirit. However, those things could only cause Hu Ming's consciousness to become dazed for a moment.

Besides
Was that really an illusion?
Hu Ming looked at the enclosed environment around him, a hint of confusion flashing in his eyes.

Hu Ming's experience and knowledge of the Thousand Machines Technique told him that there were no other mechanisms in the secret room except for the channel that held the sandalwood liquid.

Looking back now, the overflowing sandalwood liquid, as well as the strange power of the Buddha statues and pagodas, were probably the main reasons why Hu Ming fell into that peculiar state.

on the other hand…

Hu Ming raised his wrist and looked down.

A delicate little snake, about the thickness of a little finger, coiled out from Hu Ming's wrist, while a small, exquisite, crimson insect flew out from his waist pocket.

The two hissed and chirped in his ears.

Hu Ming's brows furrowed even deeper.

These two are extraordinary beings: one is the Pure Vision Agama manifested by the Golden Eye, and the other is the Corpse Beetle King, refined using Miao witchcraft techniques and not used for a long time.

Their cries just now roughly meant that only three short minutes had passed since Hu Ming lost consciousness!
"What can you do in three minutes? Become a painless person?"

Hu Ming suddenly recalled an advertising slogan that had been popular in Shaanxi Province many years ago, known to everyone from eighty-year-old seniors to eight-year-old children.

Upon closer inspection, this area appears relatively enclosed. At the very least, Hu Ming did not discover any hidden doors or mechanisms; everything was naturally formed.

However, Hu Ming's intuition told him that his current location was extremely far horizontally from the previous secret chamber. He vaguely sensed that he was probably at least ten kilometers away from there!
The non-existent wound on the chest and the ashes of the gold fragments both indicate that what just happened was definitely not a simple illusion.

However, time and distance told Hu Ming that it would take far more than three minutes to achieve this!
Coach, I want to report someone else who is brazenly performing magic under the guise of magic tricks, besides me!
"The Buddha statues and pagodas here—no, to be precise, the ones made of this gold material—most of them hold great secrets. It's a pity that most of the people who knew these secrets are already dead."

"It's a bit difficult to find out these things now..."

Hu Ming stood up, shook his head, and sighed.

The space is very small, so small that it can only accommodate three or four people standing side by side.

Hu Ming didn't dwell too much on the situation, which was clearly something he couldn't figure out in a short time, nor did he overthink how he came to be.
After all, these are obvious questions that even a fool could figure out; they can't be resolved in a short time. So why waste brain cells on them?
In the darkness, Hu Ming could clearly see a doorway hidden on one side of this space.

Calling it a portal is a bit of a stretch.

It's obvious that someone carved out this entrance. The traces around the opening are extremely rough, and those who frequently traveled here probably didn't have the time or inclination to refine it.

Hanging at the entrance of the cave was a rickety wooden door, nothing special.

The moment Hu Ming touched it, it turned into a pile of rotten mud that dripped to the ground.

"...In this kind of environment, the ground is inevitably damp, and over thousands of years, it would have rotted into dust by now."

Hu Ming was not surprised by this; it was something he had expected.

After all, Hu Ming felt that even putting himself in their shoes, this gate was clearly not something that had been put into much effort. In that case, using the power of gold to prevent it from being eroded by time would be a waste of its potential.

Moreover, to make a bold guess, the special substance mined here back then has probably been completely exhausted.

It was cast into pagodas and Buddha statues by monks, and...

Outside the door, the passage remained narrow, the dark entrance resembling the gaping maw of a monstrous beast lurking in the darkness, menacing and terrifying.

Hu Ming walked forward along the narrow passage, but now there was no way back.

At least, Hu Ming could swear on his chest that there was absolutely no way out from there!
This walk took a full fifteen minutes.

Darkness and deathly silence are like the most terrible plague in the world. If an ordinary person were in this environment, they would probably be completely suffocated in three minutes, let alone fifteen minutes.

Besides the environment, Hu Ming clearly sensed a kind of crazy force lurking in the surrounding rock walls, trying to erode his mental will.

However, these pale in comparison to the cicadas chirping in the previous secret room. Hu Ming easily ignored them.

As the twenty-minute mark approached, Hu Ming narrowed his eyes. There was light at the end of the road ahead!
After listening intently with his eyes closed for a while, Hu Ming sheathed his precious sword and strode forward.

It's safe ahead.

At the end was a bottomless cliff. No, strictly speaking, the passage Hu Ming had passed through was a natural erosion cave formed in the center of a fissure in the ground.

The light, of course, was the sunlight shining down from the crack overhead.

Looking up from below, one can vaguely see the outline of the sun.

This underground fissure is nearly twenty meters wide. Even if Hu Ming wanted to jump across it, he would most likely fall halfway and be smashed into a pulp.

Clearly, this is not a place that a normal person can pass through.

No matter how outrageous the monks who did all this back then were, they couldn't possibly have jumped twenty meters through the air...

That level of achievement is beyond human capability.

It would be more like having a Superman instead.

My gaze swept around, and sure enough.

Hu Ming discovered a suspicious platform about two meters directly below the cave entrance.

At a glance, Hu Ming could vaguely see traces of human intervention on it.

After all, thousands of years have passed, and the traces of human intervention are now negligible. Many traces have been covered up, and even the slightest clue is hard to discern.

However, staying here and spacing out isn't a solution.

With a light leap, Hu Ming landed precisely in the center of the platform.

He slowly ran two fingers across the platform, using his experience with the Thousand Machine Technique to try and find a hidden mechanism.

Suddenly, Hu Ming opened his eyes, a glint of light flashing in them.

With two fingers joined together like a knife, muscles taut, piercing the center of the platform beneath their feet, the two fingers subtly flick, hook, and smear.

Dead silence...

After all this was done, the surrounding area remained deathly silent.
It was as if Hu Ming had made a rare mistake.

Hu Ming remained expressionless, withdrew his two fingers, wiped them clean, and stood still, waiting quietly.

Ten seconds, a full ten seconds later, a dull sound rang out, and the platform beneath their feet began to tremble.

"A thousand years! A mere thousand years! The mechanisms here are almost completely worn out. What about those mechanisms in China that have remained pristine for thousands of years?"

Hu Ming exclaimed in sincere admiration.

I'm not afraid of my skills not meeting the standards; I'm afraid of comparisons, and whoever is worse off will feel embarrassed.

Of course, a secret passage with a shelf life of a thousand years is already quite remarkable; it's just that the craftsmen of ancient China were simply too amazing.

To some extent, in ancient times when resources and technology were scarce, being able to create mechanisms that could last for thousands of years was a feat that could be described as a skill that approached the level of Tao.

"I praised it too soon."

However, half a minute later, Hu Ming fell silent!

Below the platform, a gray floating bridge, whose material is indistinguishable, slowly extends out.

However, embarrassingly, when the pontoon bridge was about halfway extended, it got stuck and couldn't move.

This thing is totally scrap, okay?
Hu Ming fell silent, not explaining how to cross the remaining halfway point, but simply...

Can this extended pontoon bridge really support the weight of a person?
Hu Ming was no longer sure.

What if... what if it just snaps as soon as it goes down...?

Hu Ming didn't think he could survive falling from a height of over 100 meters.

No matter how strong Hu Ming is, he's still just a person of flesh and blood, okay?
If it really falls in, you don't even need to chop it up; you can just use it to make dumplings.