This is a staff, about fifty centimeters long and slightly heavy in the hand. On the surface, it's golden and has some patterns carved on it, which immediately remind him of the lines on the ancient well wall. The staff is obviously thicker at one end, with a group of strange symbols carved at the top: fish, arrow, and bird.
Looking at the thing in his hand, Cha Wenbin put it into his mouth and gently bit down on it, leaving a faint tooth mark. This is gold! How did a golden rod appear in this place?
"Hey, this guy is good," said the man with the stick, looking at the frog and saying, "Pal, do you know what this is for?"
The toad opened its big mouth, and its huge tongue flicked out, instantly sweeping away the staff in Cha Wenbin's hand. Wenbin looked at his empty hands, then at the toad, which seemed as if nothing had happened.
Just as he was about to ask, the giant tongue spat out again, and the stick flew into Zhang Wenbin's arms. After rubbing it several times, he finally caught it. Zhang Wenbin examined this treasure carefully and couldn't help but laugh, saying: "Is this your thing?"
The toad ignored him and instead took a step towards the cave behind him, then slowly moved his stout body towards Cha Wenbin and let out a "croak".
"You mean for me to go in?" Cha Wenbin asked, pointing at the dark cave ahead.
The three-legged toad remained silent, Cha Wenbin could only pick up the offerings on the ground, replace the batteries of the flashlight, take out a wet corn cake and nibble on it, and even say to the toad: "Don't you want some too?", but the three-legged toad was completely uninterested in this low-grade food, not even bothering to respond, and simply turned around and left.
He took another look at the entrance of the water pool, and Cha Wenbin thought to himself: Whatever, anyway I don't even know where I am now. Who knows if I go out from here and run into a python or a boa constrictor again? Wouldn't that be just perfect for them to have me as a snack? Might as well head in this direction and take a look. If this three-legged frog is really able to understand human language, at least it doesn't seem to have any malicious intentions towards me so far. Otherwise, with its abilities, it could even kill the silkworm king, let alone him, that would be easy as pie. Alright, I'll go in from here and take a look, if it's really not possible, then I can always come back out and try again.
"Come on, let's go!" Zhang Wenbin walked into the dark cave with his bag of Eight Trigrams on his back, holding the Seven-Star Sword in his right hand and wearing his own large seal at his waist. The three-legged toad followed closely behind him, maintaining a distance of about one meter, as they ventured into an entirely unknown world, making for a rather peculiar sight.
However, Cha Wenbin also knew that in their Taoist legends, where there are three-legged toads, there are often treasures, because this guy has a more auspicious symbol, which is money. Some people say it's because of the copper coin pattern on its mouth, anyway, so far no one has given it any malicious evaluation.
Another thing, the humps on its back, while others might find them repulsive, were all too familiar to Zha Wenbin. The seven humps were arranged in the same pattern as the Big Dipper constellation, and it could be said that this creature had a connection to Taoism from birth. And so, a tattered Taoist priest followed by three giant toads the size of a cow temporarily formed a small team. If they were to fight, these two would not be weak at all, so although Zha Wenbin was unsure what lay ahead, he still felt confident that he could retreat unscathed.
This cave, just walking in that moment seemed to be naturally formed, with several sections being extremely narrow, even requiring him to lower his head to pass through. The poor toad behind was almost stuck several times due to its chubby body, but fortunately it was quite clever and knew to hold its breath, shrinking its belly a bit to barely squeeze through. Zhang Wenbin couldn't help but praise its intelligence while laughing: "You're really something, your skin is so thick that even this can't hurt you."
It's true that the three-legged toad has a human-like personality. It seems to know when Zhang Wenbin is mocking it, and every time he laughs at it, it sticks out its tongue and flicks it towards Zhang Wenbin's neck. Although it doesn't hurt, being sneak-attacked by something sticky won't make him feel very comfortable either. This makes him feel that the journey is not boring at all, but rather more relaxing than before when he was outside.
It wasn't until they had walked for a while that Cha Wenbin saw the first "person", to be precise, a dead person. In front of him not far away, on the ground were scattered several broken bones, many of which had already rotted clean, and the remaining parts such as the skull, pelvis, and femur could still be identified, this was a "person", rather than any other animal.
Zha Wenbin tried to use his sword to rake around, but he didn't find anything that could prove the identity or era of this person, except for these few bones, there was nothing else.
Simply gathering up the bones and covering them with some moss from the stone wall, he prepared to continue on his journey. He walked a few steps forward, but then felt that it wasn't right, turned around and pulled out an incense stick from his乾坤袋, lit it with his fire starter, stuck it in front of the pile of bones, before turning around and leaving.
The three-legged toad didn't care about these things, seeing Cha Wenbin hurry along the road, he immediately shifted his pace. This time there was enough space, and it could finally use its jumping ability. With one kick of its leg, it could shoot out more than five meters away. Several times it rushed ahead of Cha Wenbin. Cha Wenbin looked at this large toad with a smile: "I'm not competing with you, slow down." He left the fragrant flame burning slowly on the ground, and when Cha Wenbin turned around a bend, the incense stick suddenly fell to the ground. After a wisp of green smoke, it went out immediately. This scene was something that Cha Wenbin didn't see.
Nor did they know how many bends they had turned, nor did they know how many ridges they had crossed. A pile of rubble blocked their way forward. Zha Wenbin spread his hands and said: "Buddy, there's no road ahead, we can't get through, let's go back."
As he spoke, he turned his body and prepared to leave, but unexpectedly the three-legged frog suddenly flicked out its tongue, which happened to hit Zhang Wenbin's forehead. This time it was a bit heavy-handed, and everyone felt a bit painful. Just as Zhang Wenbin was about to get angry, the frog let out a "croak" and moved its body forward a few steps, then flicked out its tongue again to pick up a piece of broken stone and threw it backward. Zhang Wenbin wondered what it was doing, but the frog actually used its front paws to dig at the pile of stones with great effort, then stopped and looked at Zhang Wenbin before continuing to dig.
Cha Wenbin seemed to understand its meaning and said emotionally: "Do you want me to move this pile of stones? Buddy, are you sure there's still a road behind?"
The three-legged frog croaked and then continued working...
"Alright, let's get it over with. Since we're already in this together, I might as well trust you. So, I rolled up my sleeves and walked over to pat the frog on the nose, saying 'I'll take care of this one, you just wait in the back.'"
He thought there were many rocks, but Cha Wenbin had just moved a few from the top when he suddenly discovered that behind this was really another cave, with a passageway leading inside. Cha Wenbin made an effort to push it with his hands, and a loud rumbling sound came, the stone wall collapsed instantly, and it turned out that this stone wall was so weak that it couldn't withstand the wind. This completely exceeded his expectations. In less than half an hour, he had already cleared a path for him and San Zu Chan to continue on their way.
As they continued to move forward, the space of this cave gradually began to expand. Zha Wenbin stopped several times to carefully examine the surrounding rocks and came to a conclusion that it was very likely that someone had been active here before. Because he found that although the years were long gone, some man-made excavation marks could still be faintly discerned.
Along this path, walking further in, several more corpses were discovered, one of which was relatively well-preserved. As a Taoist priest, he had seen such things many times before. Qian Wenbin could tell that these people were all males and in their prime years. How did they end up dying here? Were they on their way out from inside or on their way in from outside?
Crouching down, under the light of the flashlight, Cha Wenbin carefully examined the relatively intact skeleton and found that the person's cervical vertebrae had obvious signs of fracture. From the traces, it seemed to have been killed by a sharp object, or rather, beheaded.
This discovery made him feel that these people were very likely not to die of natural causes but to be killed, and as they went deeper, the more corpses appeared, the frequency of appearance also became more frequent, and the closer to the inside was a dense pile. The color on the ground gradually turned black, and with the tip of his knife, he carefully scraped off a bit and smelled it in front of his nose, confirming that these were all bloodstains.
Looking around at the stone walls and the large black area below, Cha Wenbin can recreate the killing scene in his mind. From these people's bodies, no objects were found that could infer that this group of people was unarmed at the time, being chased and killed from behind until they reached the place where he had just entered and discovered the first body, which is likely to be the last person to be killed, unless someone escaped from this purgatory. What kind of secret was buried in the depths of this cave that could make them kill so ruthlessly? For this lost world, Cha Wenbin was not only filled with his original purpose but also fell into more confusion.
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