Absolute Gate

Chapter 80 Sacrificial Well

Wu leaped ashore, and Perrin's eyes sharpened.

Because he realized that he seemed to have underestimated this 'black iron'.

When Wu finally landed, there was another commotion on the shore, because both members of the fat and thin team had fallen to the ground.

Fatty Onion is alright, he's still twitching and coughing.

But the skinny man remained completely still, without the slightest ripple.

"Are you alright?" Yang Chunsha came to Wu Zhongsheng's side with concern, noticing that Wu Zhongsheng's face was deathly pale.

"I'm fine," Wu Zhong waved his hand, indicating that he was alright.

He rose rapidly and indeed felt excruciating pain all over his body, indicating that he had sustained some injuries.

Because gas can seep into bones and flesh under high pressure, and when pressure is suddenly reduced, the gas will expand rapidly, which can damage the body.

Wu Zhong felt excruciating pain in all his bones, and many blood vessels in his lungs had burst.

However, thanks to his recovery ability, the pain disappeared in no time.

"Someone! Quick, help!" McGonagall's eyes were filled with anxiety. Seeing the two lying on the street, he rushed over to help.

He prepared emergency personnel after Wu Zhong went into the water, and the female nurse also arrived.

"I...I'm fine, please save my brother."

The onion was in good health; after expelling the water from its lungs, it stood up on its own.

He also took out a stimulant sold in the mall, which can stimulate the body's potential and cause adrenaline to surge.

Without hesitation, he used the needle and plunged it into the skinny man's heart.

But the skinny guy was already cold.

McGur also prepared to perform CPR, but after a long time, the electrocardiogram showed no change; he was already dead.

"Brother!" Onion was devastated when he realized he hadn't been able to save his brother. He knelt down beside the body, his pupils trembling.

The other team was also shocked. They were really dead. The mission hadn't even officially started, and they had already lost a member, who was a diving expert with fish-man abilities.

“Sigh,” McGonagall sighed.

He looked at Wu Zhong: "What happened? How did he die? Do you know?"

After Wu finally reached the shore, he kept a close eye on McGar, and saw that his anxiety about the thin man's death seemed genuine.

So they said, "We found him at a depth of 400 meters underwater."

"He plunged headfirst into the mud and lay motionless; he must have been dead by then."

Upon hearing this, the blond-haired Perrin replied coldly, "To dive 400 meters deep without any equipment, and in a cave at that, isn't that just courting death?"

"What did you say!" Onion suddenly stood up, his eyes filled with anger.

He had just lost his brother and was already in a bad mood. Now, hearing these sarcastic remarks, he just wanted to fight.

Perrin pursed his lips, but said nothing more.

He knew that if he said another word, Onion would definitely make a move.

Although I am not afraid, such a struggle is pointless.

Wu Zhong patted Onion on the shoulder: "Calm down, let's think carefully about how Ginger died. It's more important to figure out the cause of his death."

McGurt told his men to lift the body and said, "Let's go inside first."

"Onion, I think you're injured too. It's probably decompression sickness. I'll send someone over with professional equipment right away to help dissolve and expel the bubbles in your body."

The group returned to the living room of the large wooden house, where the skinny man's body was temporarily placed in a side room.

Onion was alone inside, grieving as she sorted through her brother's belongings.

Perrin examined their diving watches in the living room and said, "You first went to 200 meters, then returned to 150 meters, and then went up and down several times, but the depth remained within this range. Are you lost?"

Wu shook his head and picked up the previous exploration map: "No, we never left the safety rope, so we naturally wouldn't get lost."

"I was lingering there because I suspected that Ginger had taken a wrong turn on his way back, so I was looking for him in that area."

As he spoke, he mentioned that the end of the guide rope was not secured, and he guessed that the ginger had accidentally slipped out of the rope.

McGill asked, "He let go of the safety rope, so why did he continue diving? All the way to 400 meters?"

Wu Zhong said in a deep voice, "Ginger's abilities are very suitable for diving. It can breathe underwater and ignore certain water pressure, and it also has rich experience in deep-sea diving. However, it seems to lack experience in cave diving."

"Neither Onion nor I had much experience. In the end, Onion suddenly realized that he might be completely lost and couldn't even tell up from down."

"He kept going downstream, but thought he was going upstream. At the point of 200 meters, there was a deep abyss below, very similar to the abyss he came from, at least it felt similar to the one he came from."

At this moment, Onion walked out of the morgue with a heavy heart. "I should have thought of that sooner. I wasted too much time up there. I didn't even realize until the very end that he might be deeper down there."

"If I had gone down sooner, he would still be alive. It was such a close call..."

He felt extremely guilty and went back to the living room to eat meat non-stop.

Onions seem to relieve stress by indulging in large meals.

Yang Chunsha couldn't help but ask, "When you found the body, he was stuck in the sand? Why is that?"

Wu Zhong shook his head: "I don't know either. Maybe I rushed too fast, crashed into a patch of mud, and knocked myself unconscious?"

The members of the blonde squad seemed to be frequent cave divers. Shi Changpu pursed her lips and said, "You also mentioned that the abyss we came from is very similar to the abyss further down. He can't see it; he relies on groping and memory to find his way back."

"But due to some unexpected events, they completely turned back in the wrong direction and instead charged down to the bottom."

"However, no matter how much of a misunderstanding there may be, since he couldn't find the rope, he knew he had gone the wrong way and entered a side path."

"An ordinary person would have given up at this point, but he was different. After entering the fork in the road, he chose to break through the rock wall to reduce the number of times he was forced to turn, in an attempt to dig out a road."

"Because he would think that as long as the general direction is right, with his more than three hours of underwater breathing and his extraordinary strength, he might be able to dig to the surface."

Upon hearing this, everyone fell silent.

Yes, if the general direction is correct, as long as there is enough damage to the rock face, coupled with an extremely long underwater breathing time, it is still possible to dig it back.

Of course, it's only a possibility. The main goal is to avoid being forced to turn at a fork in the road. It's impossible to actually penetrate thick rock layers; at least it would require the ability of a sandstone quarry.

Moreover, the skinny guy was completely wrong about the big picture.

That guy dug deeper and deeper, and he was still digging right up until the very last moment before he died.

It must have been a final, all-out attack, which is why the body was embedded in the rock wall and mud, and upside down.

What a humiliating death! If he asked himself honestly, Wu Zhong had also considered this way of surviving.

With his physical strength being twenty times greater and the Longevity Technique, if he gets lost in an underwater cave and can't find a way out, he will also choose to brute force his way upwards!

While searching for the path upwards, they would dig to create a clear route. If trapped in a maze and able to break through walls, most people would choose this method... as long as the general direction is correct...

"It was so desperate. He probably didn't realize until his death that he was digging in the wrong direction and kept going deeper and deeper..." Wu Zhong sighed.

“No… he realized it,” the blond Perrin suddenly said.

Everyone looked at him, and Perrin said with emotion, "In the field of cave diving, it is normal to get lost after being separated from the safety rope, especially since he didn't even have a headlamp."

"However, he is no ordinary person. Even if he cannot sense the depth through water pressure, he always knows how many meters he has moved in one direction."

"He was 200 meters underwater when he started trying to turn back."

"After that, he went about two hundred meters in one direction, but still hadn't surfaced. He should have realized that he had even gone in the wrong direction."

Wu Zhong frowned and asked, "Then why didn't he turn around?"

Perrin shrugged: "Maybe there's not enough time? Or maybe he doesn't trust his own judgment."

"Because that would mean he would have to turn around 180 degrees and grope his way up in the dark for another 400 meters! That would be too desperate."

"Perhaps he will doubt himself and then think that he has just deviated from the right direction, so the distance will be a little longer."

He thought that he had already gone two hundred meters forward, and might be very close to the water. Turning back now, instead of persevering to the end, might actually be giving up his hope of survival...

Wu finally closed his eyes; this was even worse.

One can imagine the other person struggling in the darkness underwater, with all sorts of terrible thoughts arising, only to be extinguished by themselves.

The major direction is wrong. This conjecture must have occurred to him, and more than once, but it was like the whisper of the devil that he instinctively rejected and extinguished.

He has to choose one of the two extreme directions and stick to it to the end.

Unfortunately, he made the wrong choice, heading deeper and deeper into the direction of death.

"Gentlemen, this accident was really inexcusable."

"Even if you all have superpowers, cave diving is still fraught with danger, actually more dangerous than deep-sea diving. So don't underestimate it just because you have the ability; you still need to be well prepared."

McGurt said seriously that the skinny man's unexpected death was largely due to his overconfidence in his own abilities.

He didn't even bring any lighting equipment, so a small accident like losing his grip on the safety rope directly cost him his life.

Wu Zhong looked at him; so far, the benefactor's performance had not been problematic.

The thin man's death was also largely an accident.

Even the quest item, the golden sculpture, was indeed underwater; he saw it before he left.

However, the densely packed corpses at the bottom of the water, as well as some strangely styled jade and gold artifacts, caught Wu Zhong's attention.

But he didn't say it.

Next, McGur told everyone to rest well and that they would go into the water again tomorrow when more complete equipment and large salvage tools arrived.

Then they sent people to bring medical equipment to treat Onion, to help dissolve the bubbles in his body, and then sent people to take away the body.

However, Onion refused, stating that he would abandon the mission, take the body away himself, and dispose of it himself.

"You've abandoned the mission?" McGonagall frowned.

Onion lowered his head bitterly: "My brother and I came here for the money, but now that he's dead, why would I be in the mood to help you find things?"

“I’m giving up on this mission. All I want now is to take him home.”

McGonagall looked helpless: "Yes, that's a pity."

“However, we, the Havel family, are respectable people. It’s so late, you don’t need to rush. The body can be kept in my family’s cold storage for now.”

"Tomorrow I will send someone to order a coffin and arrange a plane. Tell me your address and I will send someone to airlift your brother there. It's my way of doing my part."

Onion was stunned. He didn't expect his sugar daddy to be so good. Usually, when a mercenary dies, the sugar daddy doesn't care and no one says anything.

"Well... thank you, Mr. McGall."

McGurt waved his hand and asked Wu Zhong if he needed treatment for decompression sickness. Wu Zhong shook his head and just asked him to send over a few cows as soon as possible.

Without eating anything, he and Yang Chunsha went back to their room.

Upon arriving at the room, Wu Zhong immediately asked Yang Chunsha to look up information about the place.

Yang Chunsha was confused: "Investigate what? Didn't we already investigate before we came? This manor has a history of three hundred years, and the Javier family is a first-class family in Mexico."

Wu finally told Yang Chunsha everything he had seen underwater.

Upon hearing this, Yang Chunsha immediately became solemn: "Is that so? The patron never mentioned it."

She immediately began to search, but her channels were very ordinary; this place and this lake were not famous and had no historical records.

Wu wanted Edelweiss to help him investigate, but he didn't know how to describe what he saw underwater.

"De Biao, stop investigating this place. Just investigate whether there was any ancient civilization here before."

"I suspect this is some kind of ancient site. The bodies in the water are all skeletons, indicating they've been dead for a long time. There are also some strangely shaped gold and jade artifacts."

Yang Chunsha nodded, and sure enough, that's how they found out some things.

"Yes, the Yucatan Peninsula is a typical territory of the Mayan civilization."

"Around 600 to 1000 AD, as the classical core of the Mayan civilization declined, new great cities emerged in northern Yucatan, the most dazzling of which was Chichen Itza."

"Their culture is characterized by the worship of the feathered serpent god and the use of natural wells."

"'Chichen' means natural well, so the name of this city means 'Itza people at the edge of the well'."

Wu Zhong was startled: "A natural well?"

Yang Chunsha explained: "A key feature of the Yucatan Peninsula is that there are no rivers. Water resources depend on rainwater and natural limestone traps, which are called 'natural wells'."

"The Maya people needed water from these natural wells for their daily lives, which profoundly influenced their beliefs and architecture."

Wu Zhong immediately looked out the window at the lake under the night sky. It was round, calm and still, with a vertical sinkhole leading directly to a vast underground cave, indeed resembling a well.

Yang Chunsha continued, "And some famous, or huge and deep, natural wells are called 'sacrifice wells'."

“There, the Maya offered precious jade, gold and pottery to the rain god Chak. During droughts, they would even sacrifice living people, throwing young men and women into them to pray for rain and a good harvest.”

"Sacrificial wells are a sacred yet cruel cultural feature of the Mayan civilization."

At this point, Yang Chunsha herself was startled and exchanged a glance with Wu Zhong.

Clearly, the huge underwater cave below them is actually the so-called sacrificial well.

The countless corpses were those of young men and women who had been sacrificed to pray for rain.

……

(End of this chapter)