Tomb raiding live stream: Starting as the mute Zhang

The upward staircase seems to have no end.

Circling, endlessly circling. On one side, a cold, massive bronze pillar, carved with eerie reliefs; on the other, a bottomless abyss of darkness that sucks away all sound and light. Only the groans of the rusted footsteps beneath his feet and the slippery chains in his hands were the only realities.

The air grew colder and colder, not just a normal low temperature, but a chilling cold that seemed to seep into the very bones, carrying a sense of stagnation and decay. The eerie blue glow emanating from the bronze pillars became somewhat erratic here, flickering between light and shadow, making the distorted reliefs on the pillars appear to be slowly writhing and deforming.

The group climbed in silence, no one spoke, only heavy breathing echoed in the narrow space. The shock brought by the bronze corpse and the warning from the jade wall weighed on everyone's hearts like two heavy stones.

A layer of white fog fogged up Wu Xie's glasses, forcing him to frequently remove them to wipe them. His gaze, however, couldn't help but drift repeatedly to the bronze pillar so close to him. The closer he got, the clearer the details of the reliefs became, and... the more unsettling they were.

He saw a scene he hadn't noticed before: a group of reverent human figures surrounding a person lying on a high platform. The person on the platform had their chest cut open, and a glowing object with swirling patterns (shaped much like a jade eye) was removed and placed into a complex bronze vessel beside them. After the "object" was removed, the person lying on the platform quickly withered and weathered away, eventually turning into a skeleton.

In the next image: the glowing "thing" is placed into a new, robust humanoid body. The humanoid immediately becomes radiant, and a group of people kneel down around it.

"Transfer..." Wu Xie murmured, a chill running from his feet to the top of his head. "They're trying to transfer... something? Power? Or... life?"

“Not life,” Zhang Qiling, walking ahead of him, suddenly spoke, his voice unusually clear in the silence. He was also looking at the reliefs. “They are ‘marks’.”

"A mark?"

"Hmm." Zhang Qiling pointed to the swirling patterns on the glowing object. "This is a mark. It comes from the 'Gate,' or something behind the 'Gate.' Obtaining it grants power, but also... bondage and contamination. They want to transfer it to a new, clean container to delay or rid themselves of the contamination."

Zhang Qiling's voice came from above, carrying a cold certainty: "Failure."

Wu Xie looked in the direction he indicated. Behind the "transfer" scene, the subsequent reliefs became chaotic and terrifying. The new containers that received the "mark" soon began to twist, growing extra eyes or limbs, eventually collapsing into a puddle of pus or turning into mindless monsters. And from within those collapsing containers, the glowing "marks" flew out again, searching for their next target.

"A vicious cycle..." Xie Yuchen's voice was filled with suppressed shock. "They discovered that the power from the 'Door' was poison, but they couldn't get rid of it. They could only keep trying to transfer it, which resulted in more tragedies..."

"So those kneeling bronze terracotta figures outside," Huo Xiuxiu's voice trembled, "have holes in their chests... are they because their 'marks' were removed, or were they sacrificed as victims of a failed 'mark' transfer? Their pain was absorbed by this pillar?"

"Perhaps." Zhang Qiling replied with only two words, but the cruel implication they contained made everyone feel suffocated.

The floating livestream sphere, positioned above and to the side of the team, captured both the eerie reliefs and the solemn expressions on everyone's faces. The scrolling of comments in the livestream chat slowed down, as if even the viewers felt a sense of heaviness.

Prophet: This is not immortality, it's a curse!

Debunking the experts' claims: Using human bodies for energy transfer experiments? An ancient cult?

The male fan club: It's so depressing... Husbands, please leave here quickly.

Archaeological Truth Seekers: So the bronze pillar was a large-scale energy converter (or contaminant)?

They climbed for another half hour. Just as Fatty Wang started muttering "How much longer?" again, Zhang Qiling, who was at the front, stopped once more.

At the end of the steps ahead, instead of a platform, there was an arched portal embedded inside a giant bronze pillar.

The doorway was open, its edges carved with even more intricate, almost dizzying patterns of eyes and swirling vortices. Inside, it was pitch black, but a distinctly different airflow flowed out—dry, carrying a strong, aged spice and an indescribable, faint ozone smell, like burnt electronic components.

"Have we arrived?" Zhang Qiling walked to the door and shone his flashlight inside.

A beam of light pierced the darkness, illuminating a small, square room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of a smooth, dark gold metal, with no visible seams. There were no reliefs or decorations on the walls, only a dense array of neatly arranged, fingernail-sized circular indentations covering every surface. In the center of the room stood a metal platform about half a person's height, on which something appeared to be resting.

"Be careful," Xie Yuchen warned, "this might be the area close to the 'core.' Yu Bi warned us about it."

Zhang Qiling and "Zhang Qiling" exchanged a glance, and Zhang Qiling stepped into the room first. A solid, cool metal floor pressed against their feet.

The group then entered. The room was small, about twenty square meters. The flashlight beams reflected off the smooth metal walls, making them somewhat dazzling. The dense indentations gleamed mattely in the light, and staring at them for too long gave one a creepy feeling.

On the central metal platform, a transparent, crystal-like dome was covering the surface. Beneath the dome, three things lay quietly.

On the left is a palm-sized box carved from dark blue jade, with a closed eye engraved on the lid.

In the middle was a neatly folded, dark yellow, neither silk nor leather thin sheet, with slightly brittle edges.

On the right is a small, extremely complex bronze compass. The compass needles are two intersecting, hair-thin black metal rods that are trembling slightly and pointing in different directions.

On the wall facing the entrance to the metal platform, two lines of huge, sharply written ancient characters are engraved. Each character is a foot square and deeply engraved in the metal, with dark red edges, as if cast from molten iron.

"Newcomers, stop here."

"Touch it and the door opens, all things return to nothingness."

The warning and resolve conveyed in the handwriting were more direct and chilling than the message on the jade disc.

"This..." Fatty Wang swallowed hard. "Is this supposed to be the final warning sign? And it even has a glowing effect?"

"The meaning is very clear," Black Bear said, arms crossed, his sunglasses scanning the two lines of text and the items on the stage. "If you touch these three things, you might open that 'door' that shouldn't be opened, and we'll all be finished."

"But we came here to find clues, didn't we?" Wu Xie looked at the jade box, the thin slice, and the compass on the platform, his eyes filled with struggle. "The jade disc mentions 'key and metal,' and the metal slice mentions 'eyes, door, blood sacrifice.' The jade box on the platform, judging from the eye carving, is very likely related to the jade eye. That thin slice might be an even more important record. The compass... might be a guide. If we don't look at it, we'll never know the truth."

"Looking is fine," Xie Yuchen said in a deep voice, "but we absolutely cannot 'touch' it. In particular, we cannot try to 'unite the keys.' We can only observe, record, and then... leave."

Zhang Qiling had already reached the metal platform and was carefully examining the three items through the crystal cover. His gaze was mainly fixed on the bronze compass. "The compass is moving. The pointer... is unstable."

Zhang Qiling also walked over and looked at the jade box. The eye carving on the jade box and the swirling symbol on the jade eye in his hand had a subtle connection in spirit, but they were not exactly the same. This eye was closed.

"A box is a container," he said.

"The other half of the 'key'?" Zhang Qiling guessed.

"possible."

Their brief exchange only heightened the tension. If the jade box contained the other part of the "key," then the allure and danger of "the key and the body being one" were lurking just around the corner.

The levitating livestream sphere approached the crystal dome, giving a close-up of the three items and the two lines of warning text. The chat exploded again:

Prophet: The ultimate choice! To open or not to open?

Deter the so-called experts: Look at the compass needle trembling wildly; the magnetic field here is extremely chaotic!

The male fan club warns: Husband, never touch him! Take this warning!

The Archaeological Daredevil Squad: How can we know what it is without taking a look? I support Wu Xie!

The rational approach: Flower Master is right, just look and don't be tempted to click!

Fatty, are your hands itching today? Fatty, control your hands!

Just then, Huo Xiuxiu suddenly exclaimed "Huh?" She was carefully shining her flashlight on the side of the metal table, where there were some very shallow engravings, almost the same color as the metal, which seemed to have been added later.

"There are words here...! Very small!"

The crowd immediately gathered around. In the slanted beam of the flashlight, several lines of tiny, meticulously written characters, as thin as mosquito gnats, appeared:

"I, of the Ji clan, am the seventh elder of the Pillar Guardian. The core of the pillar is on the verge of collapse, its corruption deepening daily, and it is beyond control. Our sins are countless. If any descendants of the same lineage reach this point, never attempt to repair it or touch the core. The only way to survive is to 'sever the pillar.' However, the method of severing the pillar requires injecting pure blood into the three openings of the platform's foundation, triggering them simultaneously. This may ignite the earth's fire, burning the pillar and causing mutual destruction, thus eliminating future troubles forever. Be careful! Be careful!"

The small characters end here, with the last two characters, "慎之," having messy strokes that seem to penetrate metal, as if the engraver had used up all their last bit of strength and despair.

"Broken pillar..." Xie Yuchen gasped. "Total destruction...this is the last resort. Before utter despair, this elder left behind...not hope, but a method of ending."

"Three holes?" Wu Xie immediately shone his flashlight on the bottom of the metal platform. Sure enough, at the bottom of each of the three corners of the platform, there was a thumb-sized, bottomless circular hole that blended almost seamlessly with the dark gold base and was almost invisible without careful observation.

"Pure blood..." Hei Xiazi stroked his chin, his sunglasses turning towards Zhang Qiling and "Zhang Qiling".

The meaning is self-evident. The "same lineage" and "pure blood" mentioned by the elder likely refer to the gatekeeper's bloodline passed down through generations. And at present, it seems that only Zhang Qiling and "Zhang Qiling" meet the criteria.

"No way!" Wu Xie blurted out, "To die together? How can that be!"

"This is a last resort," Xie Yuchen's voice was hoarse. "It can only be considered when the 'door' is about to open, and all hope is lost... And it requires three people to trigger it simultaneously..."

Before he could finish speaking, his gaze swept over Zhang Qiling, "Zhang Qiling," and then... stopped on Wu Xie.

Wu Xie was taken aback.

Zhang Qiling suddenly looked at Wu Xie, his eyes filled with complex emotions. "Your blood... is also somewhat different."

Zhang Qiling also looked at Wu Xie in silence.

Wu Xie felt uneasy under their gazes: "Me? What's wrong with me? I'm not some kind of gatekeeper..."

"Your third uncle," "Zhang Qiling" said slowly, "may have come into contact with the 'Door,' or something related to it. There are very faint... residual traces on you. Not complete, but... usable."

Wu Xie was struck dumb, standing there stunned. Third Uncle…the door…on himself…

"Now is not the time to discuss this," Zhang Qiling shifted his gaze back to the three items under the crystal dome and the two lines of alarming warning text. "Let's look at them first. We'll decide later."

His voice remained calm, but in the face of this desperate, confined room and terrifying options, that calmness carried a resolute weight as heavy as a mountain.