Twin female zombies come to the door: My lord, please have mercy!

At the innermost corner on the second floor of the Laoyaling Inn, there hangs a peeling wooden sign with the number "204" written on it.

The tungsten filament light bulb that hung precariously in the center of the ceiling was not turned on in the room.

The mountain wind outside the window was extremely fierce, causing the old wooden lattice window to rattle and bang against the window frame.

The cries of an unknown owl deep in the mountains, mingled with the sound of the wind, grew louder and louder, carrying a chilling and desolate quality.

The cramped guest room was filled with a strong, pungent smell.

The pungent smell of cheap, locally produced tobacco mixed with the acrid odor of traditional Chinese medicine for bruises and sprains.

It also has a lingering, rotten, earthy stench that can't be washed away.

Four men sat around a simple wooden bed.

Only a single, dark red flame burned in the darkness.

That was a homemade paper-rolled cigarette held between the fingers of the eldest brother, "Second Master Lei".

The rough tobacco leaves were moistened by his saliva, and as he sucked hard, the red glow on the cigarette tip flickered, illuminating his rough face.

He wore a black leather eye patch over his left eye, while his right eye was hidden behind swirling smoke, exuding a sinister aura forged from years of licking blood from the edge of a knife.

The room was eerily quiet.

Apart from the "whoosh" sound that Master Lei made when he smoked.

All that remained was the extremely suppressed, hoarse breathing of the third brother, "Rat," in the corner.

"Second Master."

The mouse clutched its right arm tightly, huddled at the foot of the bed, shivering.

His jaw was clenched so tightly that it was grinding, and his voice was clearly trembling with sobs.

"I'm afraid my arm won't last until tonight."

"The mud that came out of the lower reaches has seeped into my bones; it's climbing upwards."

The second son, "Dazhuang," sat on a bench with a missing leg.

He was as burly as a black bear, with bulging veins on his two thick arms.

He was holding a tattered rag in his hand, and with the faint moonlight coming in from the window, he was repeatedly wiping a homemade double-barreled firearm with its barrel shortened.

Hearing the mouse's mournful howl, Dazhuang frowned and growled in a rough voice:

"What's the panic! With Second Master here, the sky won't fall."

"Fourth brother, bring the medicine box from the pack and put some realgar powder on the rat to suppress its evil aura."

The fourth brother, nicknamed "Dumb," who sat behind the door, was a thin, bony man.

He was born unable to speak, but upon hearing Dazhuang's instruction, he immediately untied the canvas bag at his feet.

As soon as he reached his hand in, Master Lei tapped the edge of the bed twice with his pipe.

"Tap, tap."

The dull knocking interrupted the noise inside the room.

Master Lei exhaled a large puff of thick blue smoke, his single eye coldly sweeping over his three subordinates inside the room.

"Keep your mouths shut, and put all your homemade guns back in your bags and lock the safety."

"If anyone accidentally fires and makes even the slightest noise, causing a fatal accident in the next room, I, Lei Lao Er, will be the first to skin him alive."

Upon hearing this, the mute man gestured a few times in the air with his stubby fingers.

He pointed towards Lin Ye's room on the other side of the wall, placed his hand under his neck, and made a gesture of forcefully slitting his throat.

That face, which was usually expressionless, was now filled with fear of the unknown.

The mouse eventually couldn't bear the excruciating itching and pain any longer.

He recklessly ripped off the sleeve of his windbreaker that was over his right arm, exposing his arm to the air.

Da Zhuang turned on a military-grade high-powered flashlight, covering most of the bulb with his hand, leaving only a sliver of light shining on Haozi's arm.

As the light swept across, the skin on the mouse's forearm had completely changed.

A layer of grayish-white hard skin has grown on the originally fresh flesh.

This hardened skin has a strange fish-scale-like texture and a rough, astringent surface.

The texture is that of "Guanyin soil," which has been buried underground for hundreds or thousands of years and is mixed with corpse oil and underground river water.

The grayish-white, hardened skin had spread past the elbow and was gradually eroding towards the shoulder along the meridians of the upper arm.

Da Zhuang gasped, and veins bulged on the back of his hand holding the flashlight.

In the world of tomb raiding in the Great Xia Dynasty, everyone knows the four major schools: Mojin, Faqiu, Banshan, and Xieling.

But in this humid climate and densely networked underground water system of the southwestern Miao region, a hidden branch of the family remains unknown to outsiders.

Insiders call them "mud diggers," which is also commonly known as "mud and water workers."

Most of the ancient tombs in the Miao region were built deep in the mountains and forests, under the watercourses and swamps.

It has been soaked by water vapor and subjected to crustal movements for two thousand years.

The dome of the tomb chamber had long since collapsed, and the entire underground palace had turned into a bottomless pool of mud and sludge.

Traditional dowsing rods will completely fail under strong magnetic fields.

When the Luoyang shovel was used, all that came up was rotten, foul-smelling mud; it was impossible to find the solid bottom of the tomb bricks.

The diggers went down into the burial pit without a compass or candles.

They relied entirely on a long, solid copper "water-separating and mud-avoiding needle" that was several meters long.

The inside of this copper needle is hollow and filled with high-purity realgar and quicklime.

When entering the tomb, the needle was forcibly inserted deep into the mud. The mechanism at the tip of the needle was activated, and the quicklime reacted with water to produce a burst of intense heat, forcibly solidifying and hardening the surrounding flowing mud.

Using this fleeting hardened space, the mud diggers carved out a narrow "mud tunnel" that could only accommodate one person at a time.

From childhood, they practiced an unorthodox method called "Breath-Holding and Breath-Contraction Technique," which enabled them to hold their breath for the full duration of an incense stick in the dark, foul-smelling mud.

With their eyes closed, they relied solely on their bare hands to feel for the outline of the coffin in the cold mud, prying open the coffin lids to retrieve the funerary objects.

This kind of work, where you risk your life, is known in the industry as "wet fighting."

Soaked in the extremely yin mud of the tomb for many years, the body of the tomb digger will inevitably be eroded by the evil energy of the earth veins.

The grayish-white hard skin that grows on the rat's arm is a fatal occupational disease left over from working in the wet bucket.

The mud workers call it "mud disease".

"Second Master, the mud has already gone past the joints."

The mouse was panting heavily, and tears mixed with the black mud on its face left two white streaks.

"If I can endure this for another three days, half of my body will become a completely numb clay statue. I don't want to die in these mountains. My elderly mother is waiting for me to bring money back for her medical treatment."

Lei Erye stared intently at the rat's deteriorating arm, the light in his single eye flickering uncertainly.

"What are you crying about? In our line of work, we reach into the pockets of dead people to steal money. We should have risked our lives long ago."

Lei Erye tapped his pipe on the edge of the bed, then poured the ashes on the ground and stomped them out.

"I told you. Only the blood from the heart of the poisonous insects deep within the Ten Thousand Gu Demon Cave, combined with the extremely yin water of that pool, can dispel the mud evil in your bones. Our trip into the mountains is to find the antidote in that underground palace."

He sighed, his tone becoming extremely heavy.

"As you know, in the past two weeks, we've been digging three water holes in the Xishan area with mud-repelling needles, and underneath them are piles of rotten bones and broken pottery shards."

"The real bronze gate to the Yellow Springs Palace is hidden in a maze, and we can't find the way in at all."

Dazhuang gritted his teeth and turned to look at the mute man squatting behind the door:

"Fourth brother, empty the funerary objects out of your backpack and let Second Master examine them carefully again. I refuse to believe that the things we brothers risked our lives to dig out can't provide a way to survive."

The mute man nodded.

He untied the thick canvas bag covered in yellow mud, turned it upside down, and carefully emptied all the contents onto the wooden bed.

Several unearthed artifacts, reeking of a strong, fishy smell, were revealed in the dim light of a flashlight.

A bronze inscription piece broken in two.

The surface is covered with a thick layer of blackened patina, and a few fragmented ancient seal characters from the Zhou Dynasty are faintly visible.

A headless Buddha pendant, about the size of a palm, carved entirely from black jade.

The carving on this pendant is rough and strange, and the broken neck of the Buddha statue is extremely smooth.

As soon as the pendant was taken out, a pungent stench of corpses filled the room.

Finally, there is a fragment of a hand-drawn map of the Xishan water system made of crude sheepskin.

The edges of the sheepskin were soggy from being soaked in groundwater, and the surface was covered with dense lines and cinnabar markings.

Lei Erye took out a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and put them on, then brought his one eye close to the broken bronze inscription piece.

He gently scraped away some of the patina with his rough fingers, his fingertips slowly tracing the grooves of the ancient seal script characters.

In his early years, Master Lei studied epigraphy for several years under an old scholar from the late Qing Dynasty and was quite knowledgeable about ancient scripts.

"This bronze fragment is a remnant of a commemorative stele left by the tomb-building craftsmen during the Western Han Dynasty."

He lowered his voice and explained the contents to his subordinates, word by word.

"It is engraved with a secret: when the Zhou emperor assembled a large army for a southern tour, it was actually to suppress a terrifying evil creature that crawled out from underground."

Master Lei put down the bronze tablet and pointed his finger at the wrinkled sheepskin map of the water system.

"Look at the feng shui layout on this map. The remnants of two extinct volcanoes converge here. The entrance to the Yellow Springs Palace is hidden in the location of this bead."

Dazhuang, listening anxiously from the side, reached out and scratched his messy hair:

"Second Master, it's all clearly drawn on this map. Why don't we just follow the route and get there? Why waste time in this shady inn at Old Crow Ridge?"

Lei Erye took off his reading glasses and gave Dazhuang a cold glance:

"You don't know anything. The maze set up by the ancients is not something you can break into with just a broken map."

"The latter half of the inscription on the stele clearly states that to open the gate to the underground palace hidden beneath the swamp, one must find a token called the 'Zhou Emperor's Key to Suppress the Years.'"

He held the headless black jade Buddha statue in his hand and weighed it in his hand, his eyes deep and thoughtful.

"Without that guide, anyone who steps into the outer perimeter of the Ten Thousand Gu Demon Cave will be instantly corroded into a pool of yellow water by the poisonous miasma that has accumulated for two thousand years. We won't even be able to touch the threshold of the underground palace."

The mouse clutched its numb right arm and leaned against the wall in despair.

"The Key to Suppressing the Year... This thing has long been lost to the annals of history. Where are we supposed to find it? Second Master, I guess I'm going to die here."

Lei Erye picked up the pipe from the bedside table, put it in his mouth and took two dry puffs, but did not light it.

His single eye gleamed with an extremely greedy and calculating light in the dimly lit room.